To understand what makes diabolical ironclad beetles so resilient, materials scientist David Kisailus at the University of California, Irvine, and his collaborators imaged the creature using various techniques, including micro computed tomography scans using an X-ray synchrotron, a particle accelerator that produces bright beams of X-ray energy. Read More

Jesus Rivera liked to scan Craigslist for crashed motorcycles. The first one he ever took home was a totaled green Suzuki GSX-R. It took him about a year, tinkering with wires, cutting metal, and forging new parts in the subterranean machine shop of the engineering building at UC Irvine, but he and a small group of fellow grad students in the materials science program eventually turned the motorcycle into a Formula One–style race car. … The first eerie thing Rivera read about the diabolical ironclad beetle, or Phloeodes diabolicus, was the pushpin thing.

“Over time, as the infrastructure gets built out everywhere, we will see a huge private investment in the production of hydrogen and the delivery of hydrogen in these cheaper ways,” said Jack Brouwer, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and the director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center [advanced power and energy program]. … “Someday, renewable, clean hydrogen will be cheaper than what we are paying today for gasoline,” Brouwer said.

David Kisailus, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Irvine, was part of a team that  launched a study to find out how the beetle could be so tough.

"One of the major push for that technology actually was the adoption of that system by our former President Carter," said Ayman Mossallam, a civil and engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine.

When you love a sport as much as Terry Lovingier loves horse racing, the time and effort you put into it is irrelevant. That is why when you ask Lovingier where he finds the time and energy to be chairperson of the board for the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association, secretary for the Thoroughbred Owners of California, owner of a successful Thoroughbred breeding operation and be the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association's Breeder of the Year, he just smiles and says he wouldn't do it if he didn't enjoy it. … Breeding horses isn't Lovingier's only source of income.

Human activities, including excessive groundwater pumping, inefficient farming practices and unchecked urban water use have pushed the region “toward what can only be described as water bankruptcy,” said Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.

“This study really bridges the fields of biology, physics, mechanics and materials science toward engineering applications, which you don’t typically see in research,” said lead author David Kisailus, a UCI professor. While at present, engineers do have the materials required to create innovative aerospace and infrastructural designs, there are still problems in joining various materials together without making them vulnerable to fracture. This is where the research on the diabolical beetle comes in.

Wildfires in the western US have been steadily growing bigger and more severe for decades, while the time of heightened risk known as "fire season" has been