Science & Tech

April 16, 2013

Study Examines Vascular Health, Cognitive Decline

By Priyanka Shindgikar

UCLA researchers have been studying the specifics of a broader concept that vascular health and stroke risk affect cognition independent of dementia processes. The published study, titled “Vascular Risk and FDDNP-PET I...

April 12, 2013

Should the Next Xbox Require Constant Internet Connection?

By Timothy Fok

Rumors have been circulating that the next Xbox will always require an Internet connection to use the console. These rumors resulted from twitter posts made by a creative director at Microsoft Studios named Adam Orth. He...

April 2, 2013

Sony To Release PS4 This Holiday Season

By Timothy Fox

After six years of the PlayStation 3, Sony has finally announced the PlayStation 4 on Feb. 20 at its PlayStation Meeting in New York. The next-generation home console features an x86 CPU, unified 8GB GDDR5 memory and a n...

April 2, 2013

Gender Selection Process of Seven-Sexed Organism Uncovered By UCSB Researchers

By Brigitte Naughton

UCSB researchers recently discovered the mechanism behind sex-selection in the unicellular freshwater organism Tetrahymena thermophila, a free-living ciliate species that has seven sexes. Their results, published in the ...

April 2, 2013

Scientists Improve Efficacy of Cancer Drugs

By Andrea Weinstein

Altering the shape of chemotherapy drugs from spherical to rod-like has proven to increase the efficiency in targeting and treating breast cancer cells by nearly 10,000-fold. Samir Mitragotri, a professor of chemical eng...

March 5, 2013

The Passing of a Radioactive Dating Pioneer

By Daniel Saleh

Dr. Garniss H. Curtis, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of earth and planetary science, died Dec. 18 in Orinda, California at the age of 93. Curtis’ work with other UC Berkeley professors and seismologists pioneered a ...

March 5, 2013

With Dead Week on the Horizon, Is It Time For a Cup of Coffee or a Nap?

By Brandon Shin

Remember the last time you had trouble sleeping at night? It’s a cruel sort of torture, having to endure every single second of sleeplessness while the hours seem to whisk on by unnoticed. But that doesn’t even compa...

March 5, 2013

Team of UCSB Researchers Creates New Method For Harnessing Solar Energy

By Andrea Weinstein

Researchers at UCSB have found an alternate way to harvest energy from the sun without the use of semiconductors. Although the method is still in its infancy, the research team has already obtained substantial progress i...

February 26, 2013

Researchers Consider Solar-Powered Asteroid Vaporization Method

By Priyanka Shindgikar

On February 15, Asteroid 2012 DA14, an asteroid about half of the size of a football field, flew extremely close to Earth. Recently, a meteor about 55 feet in diameter and weighing 10,000 tons crashed into Earth, landing...

February 26, 2013

Southern California Linux Expo Features 3D Printing, Cloud Computing, Product Demos

By Evan Crook

While most of the world’s attention was focused on Hollywood for Oscars weekend, several miles to the south the Hilton at Los Angeles International Airport was packed with over two thousand Linux users, free software e...

February 26, 2013

Behavioral Therapy Impacts Brain Function In Austistic Children

By Brigitte Naughton

Brigitte Naughton Staff Writer   A team of UCSB and Yale researchers recently used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to view increased brain function in autistic children who received the behavioral thera...

February 19, 2013

UCSB Researchers Conduct Study on Cocaine Addiction and Treatment

By Daniel Saleh

UC Santa Barbara researchers have found that the impaired brain function and learning difficulties that are caused by cocaine addiction can be treated and potentially cured. UCSB scientists Karen Szumlinski, Tod Kippin a...

February 19, 2013

The Importance of Mindset: Fix Your Results By Unfixing Your Beliefs

By Brandon Shin

“Good job! You must be very intelligent.” “Good job! You must be very hard-working.” These two compliments are nearly identical, yet a single word’s deviation can mean a world of difference in terms of achievem...

February 19, 2013

Life Finds A Way: The Evolutionary Science Behind Jurassic Park Dinosaurs

By Chris Nebergall

This spring, Steven Spielberg’s dino-adventure classic “Jurassic Park” will be turning 20, and Universal will be celebrating by re-releasing the movie in 3D. That’s all in anticipation of 2014’s “Jurassic Par...

February 5, 2013

Researchers Examine Connection Between Sleep Deprivation and Memory Loss

By Brigitte Naughton

A recent study conducted by scientists at UC Berkeley linked poor sleep habits and brain degeneration in the elderly with memory loss. The study focused on how older adults between the ages of 60 and 80 store memory duri...

February 5, 2013

Scientists Study Arthritis Friction

By Priyanka Shindgikar

The research of UC Santa Barbara scientists from the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and the Materials Dept. is making way for new, low-cost methods of early arthritis detection. Jacob Israelachvili, UCSB professor of chem...