UC Santa Barbara researchers have helped unravel one of ocean science’s long-standing puzzles: Who is actually fixing carbon in the sunless depths of the ocean?
In a study published in Nature Geoscience, microbial oceanographer Alyson Santoro and collaborators challenge the prevailing assumption that ammonia-oxidizing archaea are the main drivers of deep-ocean dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fixation. By using a targeted chemical inhibitor to temporarily shut down these archaea, the team discovered that carbon fixation rates barely declined — revealing that other deep-sea microbes, particularly heterotrophic bacteria and archaea, are far more important to this process than previously believed. The findings resolve long-standing mismatches in nitrogen and carbon budgets and offer first quantitative evidence that heterotrophs, known for consuming organic matter, also take up and fix carbon dioxide in meaningful amounts.
The work reshapes scientists’ understanding of the deep-ocean food web and the planet’s long-term carbon storage system, which absorbs roughly a third of human carbon dioxide emissions. By clarifying how carbon moves through the dark ocean and which organisms form the true foundation of deep-sea ecosystems, the study lays essential groundwork for predicting how climate change may alter global carbon cycles. Santoro’s team now aims to investigate how fixed carbon becomes available to the wider food web and how carbon, nitrogen and trace metal cycles interact in the deep sea.
UCSB engineers have unveiled display technology that allows digital images to be both seen and physically felt
Developed in the RE Touch Lab by doctoral researcher Max Linnander and mechanical engineer professor Yon Visell, the system uses arrays of millimeter-scale pixels that rise into tiny bumps when struck by brief pulses of light from a scanning laser. Each pixel contains a graphite film and air cavity; when the film absorbs light, the heated air expands and pushes the surface outward, creating an instantly perceptible tactile signal. Because the same light simultaneously powers and addresses the pixels, the displays require no embedded electronics, enabling lightweight, scalable surfaces that can render dynamic visual-haptic animations. The technology represents a major advance in human computer interaction, with users in early studies accurately sensing shapes, motion and patterns through touch alone. The UCSB team has already demonstrated more than 1,500 independently controlled pixels and envisions applications ranging from automotive dashboards that mimic physical controls to immersive architectural walls and tactile electronic books. What began as a speculative challenge — “Can light be made touchable?” — has yielded a new class of interactive displays that blur the line between digital imagery and the physical world.
UCSB unveils new findings in split-brain science
UCSB researchers have overturned assumptions about split-brain function, showing that even a tiny remnant of the corpus callosum, the vast bundle of roughly 250 million axons that connects the brain’s hemispheres, can sustain full cross-hemispheric integration and a unified conscious experience. In a rare functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of callosotomy patients, psychological & brain sciences professor Michael Miller and his colleagues examined an individual whose surgeon unintentionally left about a centimeter of callosal fibers intact. Instead of displaying the classic disconnection symptoms first documented in the 1960s, the patient’s brain activity appeared fully synchronized and functioned in the same way as that of a neurotypical adult. This suggests that the brain can reorganize its networks and reroute communication pathways over time, even after major structural disruptions.
The study challenged traditional models that predict specific functional deficits depending on which portions of the corpus callosum are severed. It also questioned the common assumption that strongly synchronized brain regions must be directly wired together. The team’s results reveal a surprising level of neural resilience and highlight the posterior corpus callosum as potentially essential for maintaining unified perception, action and awareness. The findings raise new questions about how consciousness is organized in the brain and about the minimum connectivity required to bind the hemispheres into a single cognitive system. They may also shape future approaches to epilepsy surgery, recovery from brain injury and evolving theories of the neural basis of consciousness.
