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FEATURED NEWS
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 Analysis of Impact Spherules Supports Theory of Cosmic Impact A comprehensive study undertaken by Earth Science Emeritus Professor James Kennett and 28 colleagues from 24 institutions reveals new evidence in support of the theory that a cosmic collision was responsible for the Younger Dryas episode, an anomalous period of abrupt and dramatic cooling that was thought to be responsible for the mass extinction of megafauna and the decline of the Clovis culture. |
 Researchers Find Political Motivations May Have Evolutionary Links to Physical Strength In the animal world, it's pretty easy to predict who will come out on top when, say, a pair of lions go head to head over food or an attractive female. The he-man who most values the resource in question and has the brawn to fight for it will, in all likelihood, emerge victorious. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Aarhus University in Denmark have found that general concept also applies to humans when issues of resource distribution are on the table. Their findings appear in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. At the level of individuals, redistribution involves a conflict over resources, so the human mind should perceive issues of economic redistribution through that lens, noted Daniel Sznycer, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology and co-lead author of the paper. |
 Study Shows Where Scene Context Happens in Our Brain Though a seemingly simple and intuitive strategy, visual search function –– a process that takes mere seconds for the human brain –– is still something that a computer can't do as accurately. Over the millennia of human evolution, our brains developed a pattern of search based largely on environmental cues and scene context. It's an ability that has not only helped us find food and avoid danger in humankind’s earliest days, but continues to aid us today. Where this –– the search for objects using scene and other objects –– occurs in the brain is little understood, and is for the first time discussed in the paper, "Neural Representations of Contextual Guidance in Visual Search of Real-World Scenes," published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers were led by Miguel Eckstein, professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. |
| Feminist Studies Scholar Addresses Prophylactic Mastectomy When actress Angelina Jolie tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation and learned her odds of developing breast cancer could be an astronomical 87 percent, she decided to minimize the risk as much as possible by undergoing a double mastectomy. No breasts, no breast cancer. That’s the idea. But as Laury Oaks, an associate professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara, notes, preventive measures that are effective and appropriate for one woman — like Jolie — might not be so for another. And even if they are appropriate, they aren’t necessarily available. |
 UCSB ‘Like Family’ Alumni Lynn (’55) and Winnie Reitnouer (’54) will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in June. They were married in 1953, in the midst of their college years at what was then called UC Santa Barbara State College. The university in many ways launched their life together, and they haven’t forgotten it. The pair have made a habit of sharing their time and money with the campus they praise as “world-class” and “like family.” An auditorium in the Intercollegiate Athletic building is named in their honor, a thanks for their longtime, generous support. |
 Arctic Tundra Research Reveals Unexpected Insight into Ecosystem Resiliency As the world eyes the Arctic nervously for the effects of global warming, UCSB researchers discover a surprising resilience in the steadily warming far north ecosystem. Despite 20 years of rising temperatures, net soil carbon, expected to decrease as the ground thaws, remains the same. |
 Scientist Studies Methane Levels in Cross-Continent Drive After taking a rented camper outfitted with special equipment to measure methane on a cross-continent drive, a UC Santa Barbara scientist has found that methane emissions across large parts of the U.S. are higher than currently known, confirming what other more local studies have found. Their research is published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, stronger than carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though on a century timescale, carbon dioxide is far stronger. “This research suggests significant benefits to slowing climate change could result from reducing industrial methane emissions in parallel with efforts on carbon dioxide,” said Ira Leifer, a researcher with UCSB’s Marine Science Institute. |
 History Professor’s Book Elucidates, Celebrates ‘Visioneers’ In a fascinating new book, history professor W. Patrick McCray offers an examination of American physicist Gerard K. O’Neill and other radical innovators who never quite got their due. “The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future” (Princeton University Press, 2013) is a history of –– and, in turn, an homage to –– these "modern utopians" who believed their technologies could transform society. Equal parts visionaries and engineers, McCray's visioneers were futurists, ace self-promoters, and indefatigable optimists. Their schemes were not pie-in-the-sky; these Ivy-trained experts had hard science on their side. Yet their grand plans were never fully realized, impeded by skeptical colleagues, staid politicians, and, perhaps, their own zeal |
 Artist Favianna Rodriguez Donates Personal Papers to the UCSB Library Favianna Rodriguez, the Oakland-based activist artist best known for bold posters and digital art that explore issues of social justice, has donated her personal archive to the UC Santa Barbara Library. The Favianna Rodriguez Papers are now housed in the library's California Ethnic Multicultural Archives (CEMA). The Rodriguez archive, which currently consists of an initial installment of 31 art prints, will grow over time to include additional prints, sketches, lectures, correspondence, photographs, videos, and ephemera. “I am honored to make my art accessible in the CEMA public archive,” said Rodriguez. |
 Professor John Bowers Receives UCSB Faculty’s Top Honor John Bowers, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of materials, has been named Faculty Research Lecturer for 2013. The award is the highest bestowed by the university on one of its faculty, and Bowers is being recognized for his “groundbreaking scholarship, outstanding research contributions and scientific leadership.” |
| Cartography 2.0 Is it possible to predict when, why, and how something will go viral? What if we could identify digital tipping points before they induced potentially massive chain reactions? The answer may lie in network modeling, a way of mapping the digital landscape in order to more readily identify when a new highway is evolving — or when something, or someone, is about to go metaphorically off-road. Call it cartography 2.0. Such hypothetical solutions may soon become reality, courtesy of an ongoing project in which a group of UC Santa Barbara computer scientists is playing a key role. |
| Greening Higher Ed Registration is now under way for the 2013 California Higher Education Sustainability Conference, set for June 23-27 at UC Santa Barbara. Hoping to bring greening into greater consciousness by sharing strategies for effective storytelling around such efforts, the event will bear the theme “Communicating Sustainability.” Hosting for the sixth time, UCSB founded the now-annual affair in 2002. |
 Economic Forecast Project Summit Analyzes World, National, Santa Barbara County Economies The local, national, and international economies were the focus of the first day of the 2013 Santa Barbara County Economic Summit, an annual two-day event presented by the UCSB Economic Forecast Project. Peter Rupert, chair of the Economic Forecast Project and professor of economics, remains optimistic on the recovery of the region and the nation, while other speakers discussed the bailout and the Eurozone crisis. |
 IEE’s Summit Focuses on a Sustainable Energy Future Materials and their role in the future of energy efficiency were the focus of the 2013 UC Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency. A two-day event, the summit was a place for some of the best and brightest minds in the field to share ideas, network, and discuss the latest developments in what has become a mutual goal for science, technology, industry, and public policy. Steven Chu, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy, delivered the opening keynote address. |
 Use of Laser Light Yields Versatile Manipulation of a Quantum Bit By using light, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have manipulated the quantum state of a single atomic-sized defect in diamond — the nitrogen-vacancy center — in a method that not only allows for more unified control than conventional processes, but is more versatile, and opens up the possibility of exploring new solid-state quantum systems. |
 UCSB and The Trust for Public Land Partner to Restore Wetlands Aiming to restore and preserve the wetlands on the upper Devereux Slough — which 50 years ago was filled with topsoil to make way for a golf course — UC Santa Barbara and The Trust for Public Land are teaming to return Ocean Meadows Golf Course to its natural state. The project will ultimately open to the public an expanse of land extending some three miles along the Elwood Devereux coast in Goleta by connecting several existing preserved properties. |
 Professor Galen Stucky Elected to National Academy of Sciences Galen Stucky, professor of chemistry and materials, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his excellence in original scientific research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Stucky will be inducted into the academy next April during its 151st annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Stucky brings to 38 the number of UCSB faculty elected to NAS. There are currently 2,179 active NAS members. Among the more renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. Nearly 200 living academy members have won Nobel Prizes. |
 UCSB Researchers Successfully Treat Autism in Infants By modifying a form of therapy developed at UCSB’s Koegel Autism Center to treat autism spectrum disorder in children, researchers have found a way to lessen the severity of the condition in infants — and perhaps alleviate it altogether. Pivotal Response Treatment is a game playing protocol based on principles of positive motivation. As part of the treatment, parents focus on the activities their infants find most enjoyable, and avoid those that elicit a more negative response. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Positive Behavioral Interventions. |
 Researcher Studies Correlation Between Changes in Hormone Levels and Sexual Motivation Among Young Women Researchers have long suspected a correlation between hormone levels and libido, but now scientists at UC Santa Barbara, led by James Roney, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, have actually demonstrated hormonal predictors for sexual desire. “We found two hormonal signals that had opposite effects on sexual motivation,” said Roney, the article’s lead author. The researchers’ work could eventually lead to a better model of the signals in a natural cycle, which could, in turn inform medical research. |
 Two Faculty Members Named Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Gary Horowitz, professor of physics, and Ken C. Macdonald, professor emeritus of marine geophysics and earth science, have been elected fellows of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their selection brings to 31 the number of UCSB faculty that belong to the academy. The academy is an independent policy research center that conducts interdisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. Members of the 233-year-old organization hail from a broad spectrum of disciplines, allowing the academy to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies in public policy research. Membership includes more that 250 Nobel Laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. The academy's research focuses on science and technology policy, global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities, and education. |
 Religious Studies Scholar Receives Guggenheim Fellowship Ann Taves, professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, has received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for 2013. She is one of 175 artists, musicians, scholars, and scientists from the United States and Canada to be so honored by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and one of only four in the field of religion. Guggenheim Fellows are selected on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishments. Taves, who holds UCSB’s Virgil Cordano OFM Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies, is a prolific scholar and award-winning author, and is well known for her work on religious experience. |
 Neuroscientists Study Connectivity in the Human Brain Using magnetic resonance imaging technology, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have identified organizational features of human brain anatomy that support coordinated changes in functional brain activity when an individual is at rest, attending to a visual task, or remembering something such as a word or face. Their work was highlighted in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Understanding how human cognitive function arises from interactions between different regions of the brain has proved to be one of the great challenges in modern neuroscience. |
 Scientist Identifies Protein Molecule Used to Maintain Adult Stem Cells in Fruit Flies Understanding exactly how stem cells form into specific organs and tissues is the holy grail of regenerative medicine. Now a UC Santa Barbara researcher has added to that body of knowledge by determining how stem cells produce different types of “daughter” cells in fruit flies. Denise Montell, Duggan Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and colleagues studied the ovaries of fruit flies in order to see stem cells in their natural environment. Because these organisms are excellent models for understanding stem cell biology, researchers were able to shed light on the earliest stages of follicle cell differentiation, a previously poorly understood area of developmental biology. |
 UCSB Offers Admission for Fall 2013 — Its Most Selective Year Ever UCSB has offered 24,248 high school seniors a place in the campus’s fall 2013 entering class. They were selected from a total of 62,416 applicants — the largest pool in UCSB history. The campus expects its fall freshman class to number about 4,450. Applications from the 13,842 students seeking to transfer to UCSB are still under review, with decisions to be announced by the end of April. Admission will be offered to approximately 6,000 transfer students, and roughly 1,550 will be enrolled in the fall. Freshman applicants who have been accepted to any UC campus have until May 1 to submit a Statement of Intent to Register. Transfer students will have until June 1 to return the form. |
| UCSB Ranked No. 2 in the World in Leiden Rankings In the latest rankings by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, UC Santa Barbara has been ranked Number 2 on the annual list of top 500 major universities in the world. The Leiden Rankings are based on data from the Web of Science bibliographic database produced by Thomson Reuters. UCSB, which last year was ranked Number 7, was second only to M.I.T., and this year ranked above Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, and Rice universities, which came in third to sixth place, respectively. UC Berkeley is Number 7 and Caltech is Number 8. |
 Scientists Find Resilience in Shelled Plants Exposed to Ocean Acidification Marine scientists have long understood the detrimental effect of fossil fuel emissions on marine ecosystems. But a group led by a UC Santa Barbara professor has found a point of resilience in a microscopic shelled plant with a massive environmental impact, which suggests the future of ocean life may not be so bleak. Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, a professor in UCSB’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, and postdoctoral researcher Bethan Jones, who is now at Rutgers University, led a large-scale study on the effects of ocean acidification on these tiny plants that can only be seen under the microscope. Their research breaks with traditional notions about the vitality of calcifiers, or creatures that make shells, in future ocean conditions. |
 Professor Named Fellow of American Educational Research Association Education professor Russell Rumberger has been named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He is among 23 scholars from around the world to be so recognized, and will be inducted on Saturday, April 28, during AERA’s annual meeting in San Francisco. In addition, Rumberger, a faculty member in UCSB’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, has been selected to receive another AERA honor — the Elizabeth G. Cohen Distinguished Career in Applied Sociology of Education Award. |
 Sustainability Success Story Engaged in greening since the 1970’s, UCSB has been racking up successes ever since, becoming a sustainability leader in the process. The latest example: UCSB’s recently unveiled water conservation plan, the first of its kind in the UC system, has won a Best Practices Award from the 2013 California Higher Education Sustainability Conference. All the winners will be honored during the June 23-27 conference being hosted this year by UCSB. The campus that gave birth to the now-annual event back in 2002, and has served as host six times. |
 Amgen Founder Named Honorary Alumnus Honored for his altruistic philanthropy, and celebrated for a decades-long devotion to improving health by advancing science, Amgen founder William K. “Bill” Bowes has been named an honorary alumnus. Bowes and his wife, Ute, are longtime benefactors of UCSB who have helped establish fellowships, endowed a handful of professorships and, most recently, gifted the campus $5 million for an endeavor to develop stem cell therapies aimed at ocular disease. |
 Researchers Uncover New Pathways in Bacterial Intercellular Competition There’s an epic battle taking place that’s not on the national radar: intercellular competition. While it’s not an Olympic event, new research from UC Santa Barbara demonstrates that this microscopic rivalry can be just as fierce as humans going for the gold. Christopher Hayes, UCSB associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, along with postdoctoral fellow Sanna Koskiniemi, graduate student James Lamoureux, and others, examined the role certain proteins, called rearrangement hotspots (Rhs), play in intercellular competition in bacteria. |
 Scholar of Early Imperial China Wins Fellowship to Study Egyptology With a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, UCSB history professor Anthony Barbieri-Low will study Egyptian archaeology and hieroglyphics. The highly competitive fellowship is awarded to mid-career scholars, enabling them to pursue their interests outside of their specializations, with the appropriate advanced training. The fellowship is awarded to only about a dozen scholars every year. Barbieri-Low, a specialist in the social, legal, economic, and material-culture history of early imperial China, will research ancient Egyptian texts and conduct a comparative study with Chinese civilization circa 200 B.C., the time of the rise of the Chinese Empire. |
 Marcy Carsey to Lead the UCSB Foundation Bringing the expertise gleaned from a successful career in the entertainment business –– and a passionate dedication to the university her children attended –– Emmy-winning television producer Marcy Carsey has been named chair of the UC Santa Barbara Foundation Board of Trustees. Carsey, who has been named one of the 50 greatest women in radio and television, and recognized as one of the most successful American businesswomen in or out of show business, will assume the role on July 1. A 14-year member of the UC Santa Barbara Foundation, Carsey also sits on the advisory board for UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center, named for her and fellow producer Dick Wolf, as benefactors. Carsey replaces outgoing chair Bruce G. Wilcox, whose two-year term began on July 1, 2011. |
 Cell Sex Selection Fifty years after scientists discovered that the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has seven sexes, they’ve at last learned how each cell’s mating type is determined, thanks largely to researchers at UC Santa Barbara. By identifying Tetrahymena’s long-unknown mating-type genes, a team of UCSB biologists, with research colleagues in China and San Diego, also uncovered the unusual process of DNA rearrangements required for sex determination in this organism. The discovery may hold human health implications for tissue transplantation, cancer treatment, and more. The findings have been published in the journal PLOS Biology. |
 Mindfulness Improves Reading Ability, Working Memory, and Task-Focus If you think your inability to concentrate is a hopeless condition, think again — and breathe, and focus. According to a study by researchers at the UC Santa Barbara, as little as two weeks of mindfulness training can significantly improve one’s reading comprehension, working memory capacity, and ability to focus. Their findings were recently published online in the empirical psychology journal Psychological Science. “What surprised me the most was actually the clarity of the results,” said Michael Mrazek, graduate student researcher in psychology and the lead and corresponding author of the paper. “Even with a rigorous design and effective training program, it wouldn't be unusual to find mixed results. But we found reduced mind-wandering in every way we measured it.” |
 NCEAS Research Sheds Light on Achieving Conservation’s Holy Grail Solutions that meet the broad, varied, and often competing, priorities of conservation are difficult to come by. “People often think of conservation solutions that are effective, cost-efficient, and equitable — the so-called triple bottom line solutions — as the holy grail, the best possible outcome,” said Ben Halpern, researcher at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. In a paper to be published in the March 28 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Halpern and co-authors take a hard look at why, in an effort to find ways to resolve the issue. |
 Theater Arts Scholar Wins Prestigious Book Prize “Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea” has garnered Suk-Young Kim, professor of theater arts, the prestigious James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Awarded annually, the prize recognizes an outstanding English language book from any discipline in the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts that addresses some aspect of Korean studies. Kim received the award last week at the association’s annual conference in San Diego. In the book, Kim analyzes how art practices — mainly film, live productions, and large-scale propaganda performances — serve as tools to regulate North Korea’s collectivist society and provide a certain internal logic. |
 UCSB Scientists Play Key Role in Planck Mission’s Success The Planck space mission has released the most accurate and detailed map ever made of the oldest light in the universe, revealing new information about its age, contents, and origins. Planck is the European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation. Five UCSB scientists are part of the Planck team. |
 Art History Ph.D. Student Receives Rare Book School Fellowship For her dissertation project, Sophia Rochmes, a doctoral student in the history of art and architecture at UC Santa Barbara, is researching 15th-century manuscripts in ducal and noble libraries of present-day France and Belgium. She will be assisted in her work through a fellowship awarded by Rare Book School (RBS) at the University of Virginia. Rochmes is one of 20 early-career scholars to be recognized through the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography program, which aims to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities. The 20 RBS-Mellon Fellows were selected from a field of 250 applicants in the humanities, affiliated with institutions throughout the United States. |
 UC’s Unofficial Favorite Sea Slug Poised to Make a Comeback After almost four decades of absence from local waters, a special sea slug appears to be making a comeback, and marine scientists at UC Santa Barbara are eagerly anticipating its return. With its vivid blue and gold colors and its discovery by UC zoologists in 1901, the nudibranch Felimare californiensis, also known as the California chromodorid, has been a favorite species of sea slug for UC marine scientists and students for decades. But while it held a special place in their hearts, it lost its place in local waters. |
 Strategizing Water Savings UCSB hopes to educate its campus community about water usage — and, more importantly, to reduce water consumption and waste — with its just-approved Water Action Plan. The first of its kind in the UC system, and, to date, among the most comprehensive plans nationwide for a university, the detailed document is the masterwork — and master’s project — of a six-member team of graduate students from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. |
 White House Winners A cross-disciplinary cadre of UCSB students recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for the Better Buildings Case Competition — a White House-held sustainability competition put on by the U.S. Department of Energy. The contest engages college students in the hunt for creative energy efficiency solutions. The 10-member Gaucho team came back victorious, with a “Most Innovative” award for its strategic proposal to help Montgomery County, Pa., complete a renovation that achieves significant energy savings in a publicly owned, multi-tenant office building. Carnegie Mellon, MIT, University of Chicago, and Yale were also winners in the 14-university contest. |
 New Pope May Signal Some Change, Say UCSB Religious Studies Scholars With the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as its new leader, the Roman Catholic Church has its first pontiff from Latin American. Pope Francis I, as Bergoglio is now known, is the former archbishop of Buenos Aires. “The symbolic significance of a non-European pope is huge,” said Ann Taves, professor of religious studies. Taves holds UC Santa Barbara’s Virgil Cordano OFM Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies. “A little over a century ago, the majority of the world’s Catholics were still in Europe. Today, the situation is just the reverse. There are more Catholics in Asia and Africa than in Europe, but Latin America is the powerhouse when it comes to numbers of Catholics.” Pope Francis will likely continue the church’s emphasis on evangelism, according to Taves, but with some possible shifts toward social justice, concern for the poor, and the economic effects of globalization. |
 Assistant Professors Receive National Science Foundation CAREER Awards With combined grants totaling more than $1.3 million for their proposals integrating research and education, three assistant professors at UC Santa Barbara have received National Science Foundation CAREER Awards. Katie Byl, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Theodore Kim, in the Department of Computer Science's Media Arts and Technology program; and Megan Valentine, of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, are UCSB's CAREER honorees for 2013. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of the early career development of teacher-scholars deemed most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. |
| U.S. News & World Report Ranks UCSB Graduate Programs Among the Best In its annual ranking of leading graduate and professional programs at American universities, U.S. News & World Report magazine has rated two UC Santa Barbara programs among the top 10 in the nation. UCSB’s materials program was ranked number two in the 2014 U.S. News list of American universities, and number one among public institutions. The chemical engineering program at UCSB ranks number 9 overall, and number 5 among public universities. In addition, UCSB’s College of Engineering was ranked number 20, moving up one spot from the 2013 rankings. Tied with Northwestern University, it is number 11 among public universities. Also listed among the top graduate schools is UCSB’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, which was ranked number 40 –– an impressive leap of 23 spots from last year. The graduate school ranks number 29 among public universities. |
 Sociologist Examines Feminism, Femininity, and Firearms In her new book “Girls With Guns — Firearms, Feminism, and Militarism,” France Winddance Twine, a professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, addresses what distinguishes women who use firearms for recreation from those who purchase them for protection, and those who use them professionally. She also studies women as gun owners, and the different sensibilities they have regarding their handguns and rifles. |
 Physicists Make Discovery in the Quantum Realm by Manipulating Light Physicists at UC Santa Barbara are manipulating light on superconducting chips, and forging new pathways to building the quantum devices of the future –– including super-fast and powerful quantum computers. The science behind tomorrow’s quantum computing and communications devices is being conducted today at UCSB in what some physicists consider to be one of the world’s top laboratories in the study of quantum physics. A team in the lab of John Martinis, UCSB professor of physics, has made a discovery that provides new understanding in the quantum realm and the findings are published this week in Physical Review Letters. |
 In Support of Rockfishes Research biologist and ichthyologist Milton Love has published “A Guide to the Rockfishes, Thornyheads, and Scorpionfishes of the Northeast Pacific.” It is an encyclopedia of the approximately 84 known species of scorpaenid fishes (rockfishes, thornyheads, and scorpionfishes), which are found predominantly on the Pacific coast of the United States. In addition, Love has lent his expertise –– as well as his voice and rockfish puppet –– to a short video designed to inform anglers about rockfish and barotrauma, a life-threatening condition that occurs when the fish is caught in deep water and brought to the surface so quickly that the gas in its swim bladder expands. |
 Changing Shape Makes Chemotherapy Drugs Better at Targeting Cancer Cells Bioengineering researchers have found that changing the shape of chemotherapy drug nanoparticles from spherical to rod-shaped made them up to 10,000 times more effective at specifically targeting and delivering anti-cancer drugs to breast cancer cells. Their findings could have a game-changing impact on the effectiveness of anti-cancer therapies and reducing the side effects of chemotherapy, according to the researchers. Results of their study were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
 Scientists Develop New Way of Harvesting Energy from the Sun Using a “forest” of gold nanorods, scientists at UCSB are developing a new method of harvesting the Sun’s energy. Though still in its infancy, the research promises to convert sunlight into energy using a process based on metals that are more robust than many of the semiconductors used in conventional methods. The researchers' findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. “It is the first radically new and potentially workable alternative to semiconductor-based solar conversion devices to be developed in the past 70 years or so,” said Martin Moskovits, professor of chemistry at UCSB. |
 Anthropologist Studies Cattle Ranchers in Brazilian Amazon In a new article titled “Black Hats and Smooth Hands: Elite Status, Environmentalism, and Work Among the Ranchers of Acre, Brazil,” UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Jeffrey Hoelle studies the growing cattle industry in Brazil as it relates to rubber tappers, ranchers, and other rural groups. His article, which received the Eric R. Wolf Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Work, appeared in a recent issue of the journal Anthropology of Work Review. While much has been written about the internationally celebrated “forest guardian” rubber tappers, few researchers have tried to understand the ranchers, who, in the minds of many, remain the violent and environmentally destructive villains of Amazonia. |
 Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman: 'We Need Better Science and Engineering Education' To be a successful teacher, you must understand how a student thinks. To be a successful student, you must learn how an expert thinks. That was a major part of the message delivered by Physics Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman at a public lecture at UC Santa Barbara's Corwin Pavilion. The lecture outlined an emerging, evidence-based method of teaching, specifically in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields which have become a priority for public education in the United States. "It's clear in our society today: We need better science and engineering education," said Wieman, 2001 Nobel winner and director at the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia |
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Archive of Featured News
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CAMPUS TOPICS
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Current Campus Construction Impacts UC Santa Barbara is in an unprecedented era of construction and campus renewal. Facilities Management now maintains
a web site with the latest information on current campus construction and the impact such projects might have on traffic, parking, etc. WEB SITE
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Scholarship Fund Memorializes Shark Victim Lucas Ransom A scholarship fund has been established in memory of Lucas Ransom, the UCSB student who tragically lost his life in a shark attack off Surf Beach in northern Santa Barbara County. The fund will seek to assist economically disadvantaged students in engineering and in the sciences. Information on the fund and how to donate to it can be found here. Go
here for a press release about the Ransom Scholarship Fund.
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Clery Act Campus Security
Report The University of California, Santa Barbara campus safety report is published annually to provide safety policies, information and statistics to its community and to prospective students
and employees. FULL REPORT
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The Campaign for UC Santa Barbara In 2012, this comprehensive campaign to raise private funds to further UCSB’s promise of excellence, opportunity, and innovation, kicked off a new phase, with a new goal, of raising a cumulative $1 billion. Since the Campaign’s original launch in 2004 — with an initial goal of $350 million that was later expanded to $500 million — more than $700 million has already been raised, thanks to UCSB’s dedicated volunteer leaders and generous supporters.
CAMPAIGN WEB SITE
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Campus Emergency Preparedness Site UC Santa Barbara takes safety seriously, and takes a proactive approach to emergency planning. UCSB urges students, parents,
faculty and staff to become familiar with the campus response procedures and plans already in place. WEB SITE
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UCSB's Long Range Development Plan In 1990, the University updated its Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) to plan for our next 20 years. It is now time to review
the existing LRDP and revise it to address the University's plans to the year 2025. The LRDP is a planning tool that will shape how the campus will change over the next two decades, including changes
in our academic programs and the development of additional campus housing for students, faculty, and staff. WEB SITE
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Register Now for the UCSB Alert Emergency Notification System UCSB Alert is a new campus tool that will be used in the event of a campus emergency. It enables university
officials to contact you during an emergency by sending text messages to your e-mail account, cell phone, or smartphone or other handheld device. UCSB Alert is your connection to real-time updates, instructions
on where to go, what to do or what not to do, who to contact and other important information. Register on the UCSB Alert WEB SITE.
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The UCSB Portrait A pdf document with a wide range of background information about the campus for prospective students and parents. The information
is presented in a format similar to that used by many colleges and universities, making it easy to compare important characteristics of our educational program. The portrait also provides many live links
to campus Web sites and serves as a gateway to deeper understanding of UC Santa Barbara.
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Communications from the President A new edition of the Our
University newsletter from the UC Office of the President has just been released and is available online. OUR UNIVERSITY
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