Science & Tech

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...

May 28, 2014

Behind the Psychology of Trauma, Grief and Healing

By Brigitte Naughton

Many in our Isla Vista and UCSB community experienced fear and grief in the days since the May 23rd tragedy. When fear sets in [...]

May 21, 2014

Nintendo Slated to Release Revamped Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire for Nintendo 3DS this November

By Suraj Sood

Suraj Sood details Nintendo's latest title announcement.

May 7, 2014

Geologists Discover 2.7 Million-Year-Old Landscape Hidden Beneath Greenland’s Ice

By Annette Kleinman

Scientists were recently shocked to discover an ancient tundra located two miles below the Greenland Ice Sheet [...]

April 30, 2014

TEDx Hosts UCSB Faculty to ‘Spread Ideas Worth Sharing’

By Suraj Sood

This past Saturday evening, UC Santa Barbara’s Regents and Chancellor’s Scholars Association invited seven esteemed faculty members to share their ideas and wisdom at the second annual TEDx event. The theme of this y...

April 24, 2014

Mitsubishi Extending MRL Partnership with $6 Million

By Suraj Sood

Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials (MC-CAM) — a UCSB entity representing the ongoing materials research alliance between Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (Tokyo) and UCSB — has recently announced its ex...

April 24, 2014

Synthesis to Degradation: Building a Chemical Database

By Annette Kleinman

Imagine every known chemical and compound: ammonia, ethanol, pure water, diamond ­­— the list goes on. Yet every day more chemicals are discovered and registered with the American Chemical Society’s chemical list. ...