Science & Tech

January 15, 2014

Scientists Discover Ancient and Luminous Supernovae

By Annette Kleinman

Imagine how bright something must be in order for us to see it from 10 billion light-years away, or approximately 9.5 x1025 meters. Often it is bright enough to keep us awake during an all-night finals study session.

January 15, 2014

Searching for Dark Matter a Mile Underground

By James Perez

To cap off the year in science, the European journal Nature named the Large Underground Xenon Dark Matter (LUX) experiment­­­ — a search for dark matter in which faculty of the physics department at UCSB contributed...

January 8, 2014

Late Bedtime? Expect Lower GPA, More Emotional Stress

By Suraj Sood

Researchers at the Golden Bear Sleep & Mood Research Clinic at UC Berkeley recently found that teenagers who go to sleep later are more likely to face emotional and academic problems down the road than their earlier-slee...

January 8, 2014

UCSB College of Engineering Researchers Design Innovative PTSD Diagnosis Technique

By Priyanka Shindgikar

The end of war brings home soldiers, and accompanying many of these veterans is post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. This disorder occurs after experiencing a stressful or frightening event and often makes veterans feel...

November 5, 2013

A Data Storage Device Built to Outlive Ourselves by 1 Million Years

By Morris Aguilar

The past few decades in technology advancement have increased data storage capacities while simultaneously reducing the size of storage devices. Yet until now, modern storage devices have not been designed with data long...

October 22, 2013

Greenhouse Emissions Rise as Projects Aimed to Cool Are Placed on Back Burner

By Daniel Saleh

Despite continued and growing evidence of climate change, the disparity between the amount of effort required to slow the process and the amount of projects aimed at such a goal continues to grow.

October 22, 2013

Taking a Look at How We Define Intelligence

By Suraj Sood

Intelligence: it’s a notion we’re all intimately familiar with. After all, we are intelligent, right? Do we not attend a top-tier public university? Have we not made all the necessary, intelligent moves to get where ...

October 15, 2013

UCSB Makes Quantum Leaps in Rapid Information Transfer

By James Perez

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara recently addressed a major issue in security by successfully transferring reliable and ultra-secure communication via quantum-encrypted information.

October 15, 2013

U.S. Scientists Awarded 2013 Nobel Prize In Physiology or Medicine for Discovery of Mechanism Behind Cell Transport

By Morris Aguilar

Cells replicate, grow and communicate by transporting specific molecules to specific targets. But how exactly do cells carry out these vital and intricate movements among themselves?

October 8, 2013

Testosterone and Sharing: A Scientific Oxymoron

By David Chau

Long gone are the days of believing that increased testosterone levels only lead to hostility, competitiveness and aggressiveness. Scientists and economists in the Netherlands published a study this month that revealed t...

October 8, 2013

UCSB Researchers Unravel Membrane Protein Structure

By Annette Kleinman

As you pick up this issue of the Nexus and turn the page to the Science & Tech section, millions of membrane proteins are hard at work inside your body. All the body’s functions, from movement to cell-to-cell commu...

October 1, 2013

SpaceX Launches New Rocket

By Staff Report

SpaceX’s new Falcon 9 V1.1 rocket launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this past Sunday to carry Canada’s 1,100-pound CASSIOPE research satellite into space.

October 1, 2013

Meningitis Bacterial Defense Mechanism Finds Applications in Future of Regenerative Medicine

By Priyanka Shindgikar

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara, the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University recently created a technique to target and correct genetic mutations in the gen...

August 30, 2013

Points of Pride for Gauchos in Lab Coats

By Brigitte Naughton

A number 2-ranked university in research citations worldwide with many top-ranked science programs, UCSB has a reputation as a top-notch scientific institution.

June 6, 2013

Health and Wellness Columnist Toasts Graduating Gauchos

By Kiyan Rajabi

As We Take Our Last Breath As Undergrads My Fellow Graduates, When you took your first breath on Earth, you underwent a beautiful, irreversible transformation. Before, your lungs were fully immersed in fluid, but your bo...

May 28, 2013

Politics, Money and Muscles: Researching the Link Between Physical Strength and Motives

By Kaitlin Cuskey

UCSB researchers recently found an evolutionary link between political motivation and physical strength in males, where increased upper body size indicated a more aggressive and self-serving stance toward resource redist...