Faculty

Parasitic Weeds Threaten Tomato Plants on California Farms

At first glance, Orobanche ramosa looks like an interesting blossoming plant, one that could add a unique flair to flower arrangements. But it’s a parasitic weed that attaches to roots, sucks out nutrients and is threatening California’s lucrative $1.5 billion processing tomato industry.

Matter at Extremes: A Question of Scale

In a paper published last week by Physical Review Letters, Jean-Pierre Delplanque, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the dean of graduate studies at the University of California, Davis, and a team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Sandia National Laboratories, have developed a scaling law to analyze the kinetics of high-pressure, rapid solidification of metastable liquids observed in national laboratory and academic experiments over the past few decades.

When It Comes to AI, Farmers Will Need to Strike a Balance

AI has affected numerous job markets with Goldman Sachs economists estimating that 300 million jobs across the globe could be automated by AI. However, AI is not always better, faster or cheaper with current iterations prone to mistakes or false information.