Science & Tech

April 5, 2016

Fecal Matter to Fuel: UCSB Lab Does the Dirty Work

By Emily Ohara

Get a load o' this shit.

April 4, 2016

Paleontologist Finds ‘The Lost Giant’ on Expedition to Sahara Desert

By Effie Sklavenitis

In 2008, National Geographic paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim was on an African expedition when he and his team found “the lost giant” of the Sahara—the Spinosaurus—he told UCSB students Sunday.

April 1, 2016

Healthcare Apps Save Money, Lose Interaction

By Stephanie Pernett

With a rise in mobile healthcare applications, “telehealth” services such as Lemonaid Health, Maven, Doctor on Demand and Nurx are providing students with increasingly immediate medical assistance.

March 31, 2016

Capps’s H.O.P.E. Act Yields Two Successful Surgeries

By Supriya Yelimeli, Sierra Deak

Johns Hopkins University Medical Center announced the first successful HIV-positive organ donation on Wednesday, made possible by the HIV Organ Policy Equity (H.O.P.E.) Act, sponsored by Santa Barbara Congresswoman Lois ...

March 9, 2016

Organs Made to Order

By Janani Ravikumar

A team at Wake Forest University has refined the process of 3D-printing to create human body parts such as ears, muscles and jawbones, through a combination of living cells and a special gel.

March 3, 2016

Sylvester’s Guide to Roadside Geology

By Natalie Overton

Since his retirement, Arthur Sylvester has been researching and leading student tours all throughout Southern California.

March 3, 2016

Cloudy With a Chance of Monsoons

By Daniela Garcia

Recently, there has been a rise in debates and information regarding intense weather events. Californians are not the only ones experiencing both extreme drought and dangerous flooding; there has been an increase of extr...

February 25, 2016

How to Prevent Alzheimer’s 101

By Emily Ohara

How many times have you walked into a room and forgotten what you needed? Forgetfulness is a part of everyone’s daily lives, but many fear that as they age and their scatter-brained tendencies increase, it can be a sig...

February 25, 2016

The Kidney-Saving Diet

By Lawrence Esbig

Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a genetic disease, characterized by giant fluid-filled cyst growing in the kidneys, which enlarges the organ to potentially fatal sizes. Treatment for slowing or stopping cyst growth ca...

February 24, 2016

Gravitational Waves Detected As Suggested by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

By Janani Ravikumar

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has successfully recorded the sound of two black holes colliding billions of light years away. A faint rising tone in the recording is the first direct evide...

February 18, 2016

Zika Virus Prompts Public Health Emergency

By Emily Ohara

The Zika virus is causing international concern due to its rapid spread across the globe and potential connection to a microcephaly, a neurological birth disorder. According to World Health Organization (W.H.O.), the agg...

February 18, 2016

Fit AND Fat: The Downfall of BMI

By Natalie Overton

Everyone has heard of it; some know it all too well. The Body Mass Index (BMI) has served as the go-to source for affirmation and criticism of health for too long, according to UCSB researcher and graduate student Jeffre...

February 17, 2016

The Force in Our Stars

By Natalie Overton

Matteo Cantiello, postdoctoral fellow, Jim Fuller, a professor at California Technical University, and Lars Bildsten, the director of Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), have been “listening” to the stars...

February 11, 2016

Laying Down the Roots of S.T.E.M. Education

By Stephanie Pernett

“Science is more than a school subject, or the periodic table or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity t...

February 11, 2016

Science Through the Lens of an Artist

By Natalie Overton

  At first glance, the whirling, shimmering zigzags of color seem like a modern tech-art combination — so distant from their roots in the detailed scientific processes that inspired them. These works of art are ab...

February 4, 2016

Clam-tastic Solar Power Technology

By Lawrence Esbig

Giant clams contain light-reflecting cells, called iridescent cells, on their exposed epithelium that allow the giant clam to reflect incoming sunlight into vivid shades of gold, blue and green. The giant clam can mix an...