Unplugging: Good for the Planet, Good for Your Wallet
“You look better with the lights off” — admittedly, the catchy chorus of this terrible pop song is not the most lyrically tasteful, but it may be sending just the message I’m trying to deliver. While some may argue that turning the lights off in the bedroom is an act of intimacy, I think there’s […]
Help Give Every Child the Opportunity of an Education
As a teacher at West Charlotte High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, I taught an incredibly talented, intelligent group of ninth graders. But when they entered my classroom on the first day of school, they were, on average, reading at a fifth-grade level. Of the 2,000 students at West Charlotte High — almost all of […]
“I’m Rooting for Peyton Manning”
Watching the Super Bowl for girls is like watching the WNBA … for anyone. We hate it, we really do. But we’d never tell you that. In fact, we spend our entire Super Bowl Sunday attempting to show you how much we like totes magotes know about football. This is the one day a year […]
County Passes Program to Increase Plastic Recycling
The Santa Barbara County Public Works Dept. approved a plastic bag recycling initiative on Monday that allows residents to dispose of the containers in blue curbside recycling bins. Waste Management and MarBorg Industries will begin collecting and recycling the bags as part of the county’s latest measure to minimize the negative environmental impact of the […]
Fund Asks Seniors to Give Back
The Alumni Association Scholarship and Recreational Sports Legacy funds are asking graduating students to each make a $20.12 donation to help the organizations reach their $100,000 goal for this year’s senior class gift. The senior gift program donated over $72,000 to the Alumni Association Scholarship Fund and Associated Students Food Bank last year, and departing […]
Kavli Receives Grant to Host Physicists
The Simons Foundation awarded the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics $2.5 million to fund the institute’s on-campus visits and conferences with renowned theoretical physicists. The five-year renewable grant will allow KITP, founded by the National Science Foundation in 1979, to continue hosting visits from international figures in the physics field. The institute plans its programs […]
Union, UC Agree on New Pension Plan
After a year of negotiations, the UC finalized a revised pension plan and health care agreement for employees within the University Professional & Technical Employees-Communication Workers of America union, which covers over 12,000 employees. Last week members consented to the plan’s provision of increased contributions to the pension plan for both union members and the […]
Scientists Link Rising Ocean pH Levels and Declining Marine Life
An international group of scientists led by UCSB researchers demonstrated the effects of carbon dioxide on the acidity of the ocean’s surface. The study’s results indicate that human greenhouse gas emissions play a critical role in ocean pH levels and, consequently, marine habitats. The findings of the study were recently published in PloS ONE in […]
Study Connects Human Activity with Increased Fires in Amazon Basin
Scientists from UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis recently published a paper in collaboration with Eric Davidson of Woods Hole Research Center and several Brazilian scientists, revealing how human activity and land use have begun to affect water and energy cycles in the Amazon Basin. The research team’s primary goal was […]
Decoding Breakthrough Debunks Mayan Myth
UCSB Chican@ studies professor Gerardo Aldana discovered a new translation to a single Mayan verb, redefining modern understandings of Mayan astronomical texts and the manner in which Mayan hieroglyphs are interpreted. Aldana refutes knowledge about the Mayan calendar such as the longstanding myth of the Mayan’s prediction of global destruction in 2012, which researchers have […]