Materials that are more readily available to the public can also be effective for some folded mask designs, says Jonathan Realmuto, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Irvine. For example, non-fiberglass MERV-13 filters, which are commonly used for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, are particularly effective and available at most hardware stores.

An analysis of Twitter messages has surfaced certain features of COVID-19-related tweets by public health agencies that were associated with a higher likelihood of the tweets being passed along—"retweeted"—by individual Twitter users. Jeannette Sutton of the University at Albany, New York, and co-investigator Carter T. Butts at the University of California, Irvine, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 16, 2020. Read More

“Whoa, this is something you can do?” says Angelica Rippee, a Latina who is the first college graduate in her family. “I didn’t know about higher education.” When she applied to the one-week Undergraduate Student Initiative for Biomedical Research (USIBR) in the lab of Michelle Digman in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California Irvine, “I was a very confused undergraduate student,” says Rippee. Read More

Might I suggest we all try to bring the same energy to the next few days as this beetle, which can survive getting run over by a car? The beetle is the subject of a study being conducted by Purdue University and the University of California, Irvine, where researchers are trying to figure out why this tiny insect is so strong. … Researchers hope to use the beetle’s virtually ironclad armor to learn how to engineer structures that require connecting different materials, like aircraft turbines, for example.

But Amir Aghakouchak, an Iranian-American professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, who has written on water scarcity in the country, said he was not sure a higher profile would translate to action on the ground in Iran. "Unfortunately, when it comes to water and environmental management, I am not optimistic about the level of government engagement," he said. Read More

As if Hurricane Ian didn't cause enough damage, hurricanes are only growing stronger and more frequent due to climate change - same with other mass flooding events. So how can communities better protect themselves from rising waters? Well, to help us answer that question, I talked earlier with Brett Sanders. He's a professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and he specializes in urban flooding. And I started by asking him, are we seeing storm damage more often now? And if so, why?