Science & Tech

Kim Lewis brings the environment into the labroratory to develop antiobiotics to counter the growing antimicrobial-resistant bacteria that are threatening effective treatment of infections.

January 23, 2015

Tricking Soil Bacteria to Grow in Lab: Discovering a Class of Antibiotics to Combat Drug-Resistant Bacteria

By Kendra Witt

Finding new antibiotics to combat the growing list of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria is crucial to fighting infections and maintaining food supplies. Now, scientists are introducing the first new class of antibiotics d...

January 15, 2015

Size Matters: Smaller Fish and Endangered Reefs

By Kaitlin Cuskey

UC Santa Barbara research biologist Jenn Caselle recently published a study revealing the importance of and threats to the California sheephead fish (Semicossyphus pulcher) in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems. Casel...

January 15, 2015

UCSB Alums Found – and Grow – Apeeling Food Technology Company

By Kendra Witt

Apeel Sciences is a start-up that aims to reduce worldwide food waste and pesticide-use through ultrathin film-like crop sprays that extend the shelf life of produce and camouflage the growing crops from pests. James Rog...

December 4, 2014

UCSB Researchers Successfully Immortalize Rodent Stem Cells

By Kendra Witt

Researchers led by UC Santa Barbara Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology professor James Thomson recently found a way to hold mouse stem cells on the threshold of differentiation, allowing them to self-renew and pro...

November 20, 2014

Santa Barbara’s Doctors Without Walls Turns Tech

By Morris Aguilar

Beyond the beaches and beautiful weather of Santa Barbara lies a prevalent homeless population. Since 2008, however, the organization Doctors Without Walls — Santa Barbara Street Medicine (DWW-SBSM) has provided health...

November 20, 2014

MCDB Professor Receives Grant to Study Polycystic Kidney Disease

By Priyanka Shindgikar

UCSB Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Thomas Weimbs, was recently awarded a three-year grant for $600,000 by the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust of New York to support his lab’s investigation...

October 23, 2014

A Week of Science Round-Ups

By Brian Crotty

1. Top-secret military space plane returns from orbit. On Oct. 17, an ultra-secret space plane belonging to the United States Air Force touched down in Southern California. Unbeknownst to the world, the United States Air...

October 16, 2014

A Look Into the Physics Behind Shuji Nakamura’s Nobel Prize

By Priyanka Shindgikar

Shuji Nakamura, Professor of Materials and Research Director of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC) at UCSB, recently received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics from the Royal Swedish Academy of...

October 9, 2014

Adding Mathematics to the Biological Equation

By James Perez

Mathematics can be used to express a variety of phenomena; a masterful Mozart sonata, for example, can be represented as an elaborate sequence of longitudinal pressure waves or acoustic wave functions; the flowering of a...

October 9, 2014

UCSB Outreach Allows Kids Deep-Sea Insight

By Shannon Trumbull

UCSB’s Marine Science Institute (MSI) is partnering with Robert Ballard — most famously known for his discovery of the Titanic — through the MSI’s new facility for Outreach to Teach Ocean Science (OCTOS) to creat...

September 25, 2014

UCSB Engineers Introduce An Innovative Biosensor that Rivals Graphene in Sensitivity

By Shannon Trumbull

UC Santa Barbara researchers recently engineered a 2-D next-generation field-effect transistor (FET) biosensor using molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a compound 75 times more sensitive than graphene in detecting single molec...

August 27, 2014

Artificial Intelligence: Can Science Truly Recreate You?

By Suraj Sood

With the unprecedented rise of millennial computing, lightning fast telecommunication, vibrant social media and virtually limitless access to information, our lives are consumed by a torrent of powerful technological inf...

August 27, 2014

American Doctors Respond Successfully to Ebola Treatment

By Priyanka Shindgikar

Two Americans doctors infected by the recent outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Liberia were released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Aug. 21 following a successful treatment with the experimental drug Z...