As California Develops More Clean Energy, Researchers Delve Into How to Store it
As California lawmakers consider a package of bills aimed at increasing the production of clean energy, a major question arises: How would we store all this new power?
As California lawmakers consider a package of bills aimed at increasing the production of clean energy, a major question arises: How would we store all this new power?
"I like research on the Internet of Things because it solves problems in people's lives," said Shijia Pan , a professor of computer science and engineering at UC Merced and a principal investigator at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS). "You can ask - 'What do I wish to have to make our lives easier?' - and you can build one yourself."
Cattle are a fairly regular sight around the UC Merced campus. They graze along the 6,500-acre Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve and the 40-acre Experimental Smart Farm, and an annual student-run spring event is even named "Cowtopia."
But cattle, as effective as they are, can't get everywhere to graze, so this summer the campus has received a visit from their smaller, more nimble colleagues: goats.
Hundreds of goats are grazing large swaths of land on the northeast side of the campus.
University of California and campus leaders broke ground Tuesday evening on a building to be constructed of steel, glass and Earth-friendly electronics.
But the Medical Education Building at UC Merced is also fashioned from decades of dreams and dedication of those determined to improve health access in the Central Valley.
The speakers who will address graduating UC Merced students at their commencement ceremonies May 10-12 come from a variety of backgrounds and achievements, but all three are vanguards in their fields.
UC Merced's School of Engineering is expanding its offerings into some exciting areas.
Most recently, the university added a major in aerospace engineering, one of the fastest-growing industries in California, with the number of jobs projected to grow 8.5 percent in the next decade, according to the proposal to add the major. The new major begins in fall 2025.
Sometimes public service at UC Merced looks like finding ways to grow crops with a changing water supply. Or delving into how children translate for their non-English-speaking parents.
And sometimes it looks like picking up a paintbrush and refurbishing park benches and curbs at Lake Yosemite.
The newest major in UC Merced's School of Engineering is one of the most exciting subjects in - and out of - this world.
Aerospace engineering, one of the fastest-growing industries in the state, will be available as a major area of study at the university in fall 2025.
The adoption of an aerospace engineering major at UC Merced is exciting for all the romantic reasons you might expect - visions of alumni working on satellites and spacecraft and taking part in missions to explore the vast frontier.
University of California researchers from the USDA-funded Secure Water Future project recently found that increases in crop water demand explain half of the cumulative deficits of the agricultural water balance since 1980, exacerbating water reliance on depleting groundwater supplies and fluctuating surface water imports.
Discussions around climate change often center around the bad news - the planet is warming, weather is getting more extreme, resources are increasingly scarce.
But there also is cause for hope. There are options to mitigate climate change, and some of them are already happening.
