“Emerging data of massive simulations of flooding suggest that existing flood control systems are a ticking time bomb,” said Brett Sanders, a professor of civil engineering at UC Irvine. “Southern California, in particular, is completely unprepared to deal with the consequences.” “Once the water goes outside of the structures intended to rein it in, it will go everywhere,” he said, “and there will be little time to get out of its way.

Alon A. Gorodetsky of the University of California, Irvine, and coworkers have given some of that camouflage ability to human cells. The researchers engineered human embryonic kidney cells to make a protein called reflectin that gives somecephalopod skin cells and organs their optical properties …. Read More

Ariane Jong-Levinger [engineering graduate student] and colleagues from the University of California, Irvine used stochastic modelling to study the effects that changes in extreme rainfall and wildfires have on flood-protection infrastructure such as flood channels and debris basins in a mountain watershed similar to those found in southern California. They find that more frequent and severe fires lead to more events that exceed the capacity of the protective infrastructure. Read More

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have revealed a security weakness in the 3D printing process − sound waves. Scientists designed a program capable of recording and analyzing the sounds emitted by the printer's moving parts. Once decoded, the sounds − each connoting a precise movement − can be used to reverse engineer the product being printed.