UC Davis Frontiers

Professors Charlie Bamforth and Andy Waterhouse take on the Frontiers challenge: "Is beer or wine better for your health?" The two scientists discuss recent research about nutritional merits in both beverages and cultural biases of wine and beer drinkers. (September 2007)

Can farmers get more bountiful harvests from the land without threatening the environment or taking away land from other needs? UC Davis agricultural researchers Pam Ronald and Eduardo Blumwald argue that biotechnology -- genetically engineered crops -- is key to the future of food. (September 2007)

Two campus professionals who work with young, talented athletes — sports psychologist Ross Flowers and strength and conditioning coach Andy Bloom — debate the issues surrounding the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing supplements. (July 2007)

Trevor Suslow, a plant pathologist, and Dean Cliver, an expert on infectious diseases that can be spread through food and water, talk about the outbreak of illness attributed to a particularly virulent strain of E. coli bacteria. (June 2007)

Two researchers from the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, David Amaral and Judy Van De Water, discuss autism and the most promising avenues for finding answers to this perplexing disorder. (June 2007)

UC Davis scientists Anthony Wexler and Kent Pinkerton talk about how air pollution can make us sick and what we can do to clean up our air. (June 2007)

William Reisen, the leader of the research team that discovered the first mosquito in California infected with West Nile virus, and Keira Simmons, a UC Davis staff researcher who developed a particularly nasty case of the disease, talk about West Nile Virus. (May 2007)

Cathy Toft, a UC Davis expert on population ecology — the complex relationships that connect plant and animal communities, discusses animal hoarding. (May 2007)

Undocumented immigrants and civil rights — Law professor Kevin Johnson and sociology professor David Kyle consider civil rights for undocumented workers and issues with smuggling, slavery and anti-immigration measures. (February 2007)

Medical genomics: Connecting genes to health — Ray Rodriguez, professor of molecular and cellular biology, explains the links between genes, nutrition and disease. (February 2007)

Avian influenza: What's to worry about? — Two medical experts on avian influenza explain what the flu is, how it differs from a pandemic and what you can do about it. The guests are UC Davis Health System's Christian Sandrock, assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine, and Warner Hudson, clinical faculty member in family practice and occupational medicine. (November 2006)

Terror in a bottle: Chemistry's answer to national security — Matthew Augustine, associate professor of chemistry at UC Davis, discusses how his patented invention for scanning wine for spoilage could be used for national security at airports. (November 2006)

Art and ethnic politics — Malaquias Montoya, professor of Chicana/o studies and art and art history, looks back to his own childhood in a migrant Mexican family to explain how art created his future as a nationally renowned Chicano artist. (November 2006)

Law and rights in the Middle East — Madhavi Sunder, professor of law, and Keith Watenpaugh, associate professor of modern Islam, human rights and peace, discuss how Muslims are dealing with human rights and working to transform their societies from within. (November 2006)

Hurricane Katrina and the damage next time — Emphasizing how environmental historians look at our past, Louis Warren, the W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, and Ari Kelman, associate professor of history, discuss how humans create the potential for environmental disasters in New Orleans and Sacramento. (November 2006)

Hurricane Katrina: race and rumor — Patricia Turner, African American and African Studies professor, has spent the last year researching the rumors generated by Hurricane Katrina, seeking out persistent urban legends from both black and white perspectives. (November 2006)