Education & Outreach

How Autocrats Control Internet Traffic Out of Sight

Authoritarian regimes exert control over the internet through transit networks that operate largely out of public view, according to a recent study by researchers in the U.S. and Germany. The work, published in PNAS Nexus, also shows how more sophisticated authoritarian regimes extend their influence by providing network access in poorer but politically similar countries.

Using Jewelry to Communicate

 

The face already plays an important role in communication, but a group of UC Davis computer scientists led by Ph.D. 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. By reading a user’s conscious and unconscious gestures, the technology has the potential to help silently operate lights or other devices or discreetly send messages to get out of potentially dangerous situations.

Coding for Two Audiences: Humans and Computers

Software code is written to be read by both computers and humans. Machines quickly and perfectly understand the computational meaning, while humans read it the same way they read natural language: not as quickly and sometimes incorrectly. With a new $1.2M three-year NSF-funded project, a group of software engineers and social scientists at UC Davis will leverage this bimodality to develop tools that make writing, reading and maintaining code easier and improve the overall programming experience.

UC Davis Student Builds COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment Notification System to Increase Vaccinations in India

As the pandemic surged in spring 2021, third-year computer science major Shrey Sheladia used the programming skills he learned at UC Davis to help increase India’s vaccination rate. For four months, Sheladia ran an online notification program that helped more than 40,000 people in India receive COVID-19 vaccines by alerting them when a vaccine appointment was available.

UC Davis Study Suggests Providing Emissions Information Can Make Flying Greener

As of October, Google Flights displays carbon emissions estimates alongside the duration, layovers and price for each flight. New research from UC Davis computer science professor Nina Amenta and Institute of Transportation Studies environmental psychologist Angela Sanguinetti suggests that this new interface will cause small but important changes in how people choose flights and possibly lead to lower emissions.