"Los Angeles and Southern California, in general, have relatively poor (public) transit services," says Michael G McNally, a professor at the Institute of Transport Studies at the University of California, Irvine. "There really aren't options (other than) cars for most travel in most areas. But even within transit-served areas, overall travel times are much greater by transit than by car."

“Those risks exist here,” said Brett Sanders, a UC Irvine professor whose research focuses on flooding. “We have a lot of the same possibility of flash flooding. We have hilly topography.

A new study warns lab instruments used in biomedical research, such as DNA synthesising machines, may be leaking sensitive information through some kind of noise or sound that they make. The study by University of California researchers serves to highlight new security risks created by the cyber-physical nature of biotechnology workflows. The researchers found that speakers similar to smartphone speakers had the capability to determine what a DNA synthesiser was producing from the sounds its components made as it went through its manufacturing routine.

In a study released this week a UC Irvine team found that if winter temperatures increase by 1 degree Celsius, it will lead to a 20 percent jump in the likelihood of below-average snow accumulation in the high country. "Warmer winter temperatures tend to decrease the amount of water stored as snow,” said the report's lead author, Laurie Huning with UC Irvine. She says less snow makes it more likely for drought conditions, and could make the wildfire season longer.

UC Irvine researchers detailed how they developed a flexible textile that allows clothing to communicate with nearby devices. … “This means you could potentially keep your phone in your pocket, and just by brushing your body against other textiles or readers, power and information can be transferred to and from your device.” said co-author Peter Tseng, UCI assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

Some researchers agree with SoCalGas that substituting cleaner fuels for gas would be easier and cheaper than swapping out gas for electricity. They include Jack Brouwer, a UC Irvine engineering professor, who has led a project to inject small amounts of hydrogen into the university’s gas pipelines. “Our policy goals cannot be met without hydrogen, is my view,” Brouwer said in an interview last month. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.]

Austin Russell, [founder and CEO of Luminar, which makes sensors for self-driving cars], the 26-year-old Orlando tech genius and billionaire, is plunging into the philanthropy sector with a personal donation of $70 million in stock to create a charitable fund in Central Florida …. He … attended classes at Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California, Irvine, as a high-school student. His goal, he said then, was to eradicate automobile accidents.