Jingwen Zhang, a professor of communication, has been developing and testing artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots designed to motivate and persuade
us to get in those extra steps for health.
New research using large-scale online experiments suggests that rewarding people to contribute to a virtual public good, such as a simulated online rating for a ferry system, increased the accuracy of the ratings and improved the overall quality of that resource.
While adoration for Disney princesses continues to grow in terms of film ratings, some parents wonder what effects these idealized images of young women might have on how their children feel about and express themselves. In new research, a favorite princess improved—but did not harm—young children's confidence in their own bodies and the diversity of the ways in which they chose to play.
A program that gets students into labs as early as their first year at UC Davis transforms lives — leading many to pursue careers in research. Accelerating Success by Providing Intensive Research Experience, or ASPIRE, has begun reaching out to a wider pool of students. “We wanted to find the students who, given this opportunity, would go the farthest relative to where they started,” says co-founder Steve Luck, Distinguished Professor of Psychology.
Social media connects people and amplifies different aspects of humanity in good and bad ways. But the effects of social media appear neither universally good nor bad, but rather present an oscillating, dynamic system that can be divisive but also uniting, a new UC Davis study suggests.
Three College of Letters and Science graduate students will test their research communication prowess at the upcoming 2023 UC Davis Grad Slam. Created and organized by Graduate Studies, the competition provides 10 graduate students the opportunity to present a three-minute pitch about their research. The competition will be held at the UC Davis Graduate Center on April 6 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Melinda Guzman, Cathy Rodriguez Aguirre and Lydia Ramirez attended UC Davis at different times, pursued different majors in the College of Letters and Science, and followed different paths to successful careers in law, business advocacy and banking. Their paths converged at various times, most recently with a shared honor: each was named to The Sacramento Bee’s inaugural list of Top 25 Latino Change Makers for leading positive transformations in their communities.
While social media platforms are the primary source of political information for a growing number of people, a majority of Twitter users do not follow either members of Congress, their president or news media, a new study suggests.
Despite vaccine availability, vaccine hesitancy has inhibited public health officials’ efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, which has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. and nearly 6 million people worldwide.
The face already plays an important role in communication, but a group of UC Davis computer scientists led by doctoral student Shuyi Sun is taking this to the next level. The team is designing facial jewelry that can use signals from a person’s facial muscles to send wireless commands to at-home devices like Alexa and Google Home.