All posts tagged: UC Davis

New AI model finds a cheaper path to healthier eating

New AI model finds a cheaper path to healthier eating

Published by Jenni Sidey

Breakfast cereal bowls, deli sandwiches, pizza dinners, soups, yogurt plates. Most people do not eat from a blank slate, they eat from habit. That is part of what makes nutrition advice so hard to follow. It is also part of what a new artificial intelligence system tried to solve. Rather than designing ideal meals from scratch, researchers at the University of California, Davis built a model around the meals people already eat. The goal was simple: keep meals recognizable. Then, see whether a very small number of ingredient swaps could make them better aligned with dietary targets. The researchers also looked for ways to make the meals less expensive at the same time. The answer, at least in a computational test, was yes. Using national U.S. dietary survey data, Trevor Chan and Ilias Tagkopoulos developed a framework that generated realistic breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals based on common eating patterns. Then, the system searched for one-, two-, or three-item substitutions that improved nutrition. In the study, published in PLOS Digital Health, those limited changes improved …

Los Angeles dog outbreak reveals how a preventable bacterial disease spread in plain sight

Los Angeles dog outbreak reveals how a preventable bacterial disease spread in plain sight

Published by Jenni Sidey

Dogs were showing up at West Los Angeles veterinary hospitals with the same alarming pattern: fever, vomiting, lethargy, damaged kidneys, and, in some cases, a fast slide toward death. Many had recently spent time at dog daycare. A new investigation led by the University of California, Davis, now suggests that a 2021 leptospirosis outbreak that sickened at least 201 dogs across Los Angeles County was fueled by conditions that many owners would have considered routine, crowded boarding and daycare settings where vaccination against the disease was uncommon. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, traced 59 confirmed cases seen at two specialty hospitals and compared them with more than 15,000 other canine patients. The analysis points to a major weakness in local prevention practices at the time: most infected dogs with known vaccine histories had never received a leptospirosis vaccine. “The outbreak was massive,” said lead author Jane Sykes, professor of small animal internal medicine at the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine. “It might have been the biggest outbreak of leptospirosis …

Penguin ‘toxicologists’ find PFAS chemicals in remote Patagonia

Penguin ‘toxicologists’ find PFAS chemicals in remote Patagonia

Published by Jenni Sidey

Penguins living along the Patagonian coast of Argentina can serve as living monitors of their environment by using small, chemical-detecting leg bands, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. For the proof-of-concept study, published in the journal Earth: Environmental Sustainability, UC Davis scientists outfitted 54 Magellanic penguins with silicone passive samplers placed gently around their legs for a few days during the 2022-24 breeding seasons. The sensors safely absorbed chemicals from the water, air and surfaces the penguins encountered while the unwitting “toxicologists” foraged to feed their chicks. Once retrieved, the samplers were sent to University at Buffalo-SUNY for testing, which revealed that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — often called “forever chemicals” — were detected in more than 90% of the bands, even in this remote region.  Magellanic penguins in Argentina served as sentinels of their own environment by wearing chemical-detecting leg bands for a few days during their breeding season in a UC Davis and SUNY-Buffalo study. (CREDIT: Ralph Vanstreels/UC Davis) “The only …