Ecologists report findings from a nearly eight-year, large-scale survey of woodrat populations throughout North America in the Sept. 15, 2025 issue of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences, which reveal constraints on diet breadth in herbivorous mammals.

Researchers at UC Davis have been awarded a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to develop new technologies and workforce training programs to grow plants in low-resource environments both on Earth and in space. 

Rising temperatures of the world’s oceans threaten to accelerate the melting and splintering of glaciers—thereby potentially increasing the number of icebergs and, with it, the need to better understand more about their movement and impact. Through a series of experiments, a team of scientists has pinpointed some of the factors that cause icebergs to capsize, offering insights into how climate change may affect Earth’s waters.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor David Jackson and former postdoc Xiaosa Xu have uncovered new stem cell regulators in maize and Arabidopsis plants and linked some of these regulators to variations in maize size. Such links could one day empower corn growers to increase production.

Fibroblasts, cells that repair heart damage, might end up causing a vicious cycle of stiffening and scarring in certain heart conditions. Mechanical cues might be driving the problem. As the heart weakens and expands, the fibroblasts might be trying to prevent overexpansion. Researcher found that shutting down a signaling pathway in the rogue fibroblasts restored heart functioning in laboratory animal models. The finding could have therapeutic implications for developing new treatments.  

Researchers at UC Davis have created a miniaturized microscope for real-time, high-resolution, non-invasive imaging of brain activity in mice. The device is a significant step toward revolutionizing how neuroscientists study the brain.

Biologists discover mechanisms of evolutionary change in a cheese fungus. The discovery may point to more robust domestication of fungi for greater diversity in cheese products, avoiding industry threats like the "Camembert extinction"

A novel strategy developed at Rice University allows scientists to zoom in on tiny segments of proteins inside living cells, revealing localized environmental changes that could indicate the earliest stages of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer. The study, published in Nature Chemical Biology on Sept. 10, also shows promise for drug screening that targets protein aggregation diseases.