Just as Time magazine named the Protester as its person of the year, so did unrest shape much of 2011 for the University of California.

Reverberations from January and February's anti-Mubarek protests in Egypt were felt halfway around the world, as UC took emergency measures to evacuate 30 students, faculty and staff enrolled in a study abroad program and taking part in an archaeological dig.

America's growing sweet tooth is super-sizing waistlines and the nation's health care price tag, warn University of California researchers.

People in the U.S. are eating 21 times more sweet stuff today than the pilgrims and pioneers did, according to data presented by scientists at a symposium on sugar and other sweeteners, sponsored by the Center for Obesity Assessment, Study and Treatment (COAST) at UCSF, the UC Office of the President, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Long before UC Berkeley author Michael Pollan told us omnivores had a dilemma in books that questioned the industrial food complex, college students were at the forefront of a movement to rethink what we eat.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when organic was a foreign word to most Americans, students at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz were part of a wave of environmental activism that sought alternatives to agricultural methods that distanced people from farms and relied on heavy use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

MERCED — The burning of sugarcane fields prior to harvest for ethanol production can create air pollution that detracts from the biofuel's overall sustainability, according to research published recently by a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California, Merced.