As the world eyes the Arctic nervously for the effects of global warming, researchers discover a surprising resilience in the steadily warming far north ecosystem. Despite 20 years of rising temperatures, net soil carbon remains the same. READ MORE (UCSB Featured News)

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.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 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 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 Drosophila (fruit flies). The findings appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On the eve of a recent Earth fly-by courtesy of the asteroid known as 2012 DA14, physics professor Philip M. Lubin and a Cal Poly researcher unveiled their proposal for a system that could eliminate a threat of this size — half as large as a football field, with energy equal to a large hydrogen bomb — in an hour. The same system could destroy asteroids 10 times larger than 2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun.

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara are researching cocaine addiction, part of a widespread problem, which, along with other addictions, costs billions of dollars in damage to individuals, families, and society. Laboratory studies at UCSB, led by Karen Szumlinski, a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, have revealed that the diminished brain function and learning impairment that result from cocaine addiction can be treated — and that learning can be restored.

UCSB scientists have published groundbreaking results of a study of Type 2 diabetes that point to changes in cellular metabolism as the triggering factor for the disease, rather than genetic predisposition. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition in which blood sugar or glucose levels are high. It affects a large and growing segment of the human population, especially among the obese. The team of scientists expects the discovery to become a basis for efforts to prevent and cure this disease.

Theoretical physicists at UCSB’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics have made important strides in studying a concept in quantum physics called quantum entanglement, in which electron spins are entangled with each other. Using computers to calculate the extreme version of quantum entanglement –– how the spin of every electron in certain electronic materials could be entangled with another electron’s spin –– the research team found a way to predict this characteristic.

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. However, to get a real idea of what a person is up to, according to UC Santa Barbara researchers Miguel Eckstein and Matt Peterson, the best place to check is right below the eyes. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

An invasive grass species may be one reason fires are bigger and more frequent in certain regions of the western United States, according to a team of researchers that includes scientists from UC Santa Barbara. The researchers used satellite imagery to identify cheatgrass, a plant species accidentally introduced by settlers in the west during the 1800's, in a disproportionately high number of fires in the Great Basin, a 600,000-square-kilometer arid area of the west that includes large sections of Nevada, as well as parts of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, California, and Oregon.

Dark Matter Detector installed underground and submerged will begin data collection in 2013. An experiment to look for one of nature’s most elusive subatomic particles is finally under water, in a stainless steel tank nearly a mile underground, and a UC Santa Barbara physicist is among the scientists participating in the project. The Large Underground Xenon experiment, nicknamed LUX, will be the most sensitive device yet to look for dark matter. Thought to comprise more than 80 percent of the mass of the universe, dark matter has so far eluded direct detection.