Science & Tech

January 30, 2020

“Two Years After Fire and Flood”: Santa Barbara Community Evaluates Impacts and Responses

By Sean Crommelin

On Sunday, Santa Barbara community members attended a public conversation regarding the aftermath of the Thomas Fire in December 2017 and January 2018 and the Montecito mudflows.

January 27, 2020

UCSB Researchers Use Shark Denticles To Better Understand Pre-Human Era Population Baselines

By Sean Crommelin

Dillon is looking at the dermal denticles of sharks, the tooth-like scales which cover shark skin, to better understand their population baselines and abundance in a number of contexts. 

January 23, 2020

The Strange Case of Parasitic Castrators Amongst Hermaphroditic Barnacles

By Hannah Hirou

The study made the prediction that infection would be mainly in female-functioning barnacles due to the parasite’s feeding habits.

January 23, 2020

Womxn/Hacks Organizes Second Annual Hackathon Over Weekend

By Surya Pugal

Over 250 students spent 36 hours coding nonstop at the second annual Womxn/Hacks, a hackathon dedicated to promoting an inclusive environment for female-identifying people interested in S.T.E.M.

January 16, 2020

Seeing the Forest AND the Trees: Predicting Forest Responses to Contrasting Climate Change Influences

By Jacqueline Wen

The study published in PNAS investigated how forests are responding to global warming and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

January 16, 2020

The Code Less Traveled: SB Hacks 2020 Focuses on Hacker Experience

By Sean Crommelin

For 36 hours from 5 p.m. on Friday to 9 a.m. on Sunday, over 340 coders worked tirelessly in Corwin Pavilion during SB Hacks VI, UC Santa Barbara’s largest annual hackathon.

January 9, 2020

One Limb, Two Limb, Left Limb, Right Limb: The Ground Rules of Planar Cell Polarity

By Sean Crommelin

The way in which structural symmetry is broken and complexity forms in an organism depends on the directional instructions given to cells, provided by pathways known as planar polarity pathways.

January 9, 2020

Researchers Study Hawaiian Volcano Kilauea’s Destructive 2018 Eruption

By Jacqueline Wen

Scientists’ understanding of collapsing volcanic calderas had been severely limited by poorly-documented caldera-forming eruptions up until this 2018 outburst.

December 13, 2019

Researchers Compare Computational Models of Mate Preference Integration Across 45 Counties

By Jacqueline Wen

In their paper published in Scientific Reports, the researchers investigated eight different human mating models to determine which can most accurately predict our realized mate choices.

December 5, 2019

Recapping the First Annual Blockchain Summit at UCSB

By Sean Crommelin

On Nov. 23, the campus organization Blockchain at UCSB hosted the first-ever Santa Barbara Blockchain Summit at Corwin Pavilion, featuring tech industry leaders, start-up founders and professors. 

December 5, 2019

A Sunsational Study: UCSB Researchers Examine Political Identities and Participation of U.S. Solar Households

By Jacqueline Wen

“If you look inside a neighborhood, Republicans and Democrats have the same probability of having solar,” Mildenberger said.

November 25, 2019

Racial Discrimination in Medicine: Physician Bias, Income and Mortality

By Catherine Beaudin

On Monday, Nov. 18, UCSB’s Broom Center for Demography invited Economics Professor Trevon Logan to speak on his research on the racial disparities in health care. 

November 21, 2019

You Reef What You Sow: Coral Reef Management and Status in a Warming World

By Sean Crommelin

“Many reefs around the world are losing ecosystem function and declining to degraded states with a loss of coral cover, less fish and the proliferation of algae,” Donovan said.

November 21, 2019

Mental Health in Medicine: Presented by Vania Manipod, D.O., at UCSB

By Sean Crommelin, Jacqueline Wen

Manipod described her own experience with occupational burnout and how living with the condition led to her reevaluate her career and her priorities as a psychiatrist. 

November 14, 2019

UCSB Researchers Investigate Snail Control Efforts To Combat Parasitic Disease

By Jacqueline Wen

Schistosomiasis, an acute and chronic disease caused by parasitic worms of the genus Schistosoma, affects over 200 million people worldwide.

November 7, 2019

Fungus Among Us: Researchers Map Lineages of Chytrid Fungus Affecting Sierra Nevada Frogs

By Sean Crommelin

Not unlike the plot of a B-list horror movie, a fatal disease in frogs, chytridiomycosis, has spread all across the world on a pandemic scale in mere decades.