Futurity.org » University of California at Santa Barbara

Team gets rare glimpse at how black holes grow

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:05:42 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — Scientists have made the most detailed observation of a supermassive black hole’s accretion phase.

The international team used a unique method to observe the black hole—which is in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away—combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes.

Plants spring up sooner in warming climate

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:47:49 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — Plants may be reacting to climate change more than we think, and the uncertainty could leave us ill-prepared for the future effects of global warming, say scientists.

The team’s findings are published in the early online edition of the journal Nature.

“This suggests that predicted ecosystem changes—including continuing advances in the start of spring across much of the globe—may be far greater than current estimates based on data from experiments,” says the paper’s first author Elizabeth Wolkovich, an ecologist at the University of British Columbia, who led the study at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Modest moves are sexier, say female cowbirds

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:00:26 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — Female cowbirds find more modest displays from males more attractive than flamboyant wing flapping and feather puffing, say researchers.

While sexual selection theory predicts that females should find the more flamboyant displays the most sexually attractive, the opposite holds true for brown-headed cowbirds, a small songbird common in North America, according to University of California, Santa Barbara researchers Adrian O’Loghlen and Stephen Rothstein.

Their findings are published May 2 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Reborn beaches are tsunami’s silver lining

George Foulsham-UC Santa Barbara — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:53:09 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — A devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit south central Chile in 2010 triggered a reappearance of long-forgotten habitats and a resurgence of species unseen for years along the country’s sandy beaches.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute (MSI) and Universidad Austral de Chile were able to document the before-and-after ecological results of these cataclysmic occurrences.

To better allocate aid, forecast famine

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:38:38 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — Using climate and vegetation data, researchers say it may be possible to predict rainfall deficits in East Africa that could lead to food shortages.

With these predictions, food aid and other humanitarian efforts could be put together sooner and executed better, say University of California, Santa Barbara geographers Chris Funk, Greg Husak, and Joel Michaelsen, who are part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET).

“We’ve been looking at climate in East Africa and trying to relate that back to patterns in sea surface temperatures, rainfall, and winds over the Indian and Pacific oceans,” says Funk, who analyzes and predicts large-scale climate anomalies in Africa.

Friction may drag down protein folding

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:24:35 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) —Internal friction may play a more significant role in protein folding than previously thought.

An international team of researchers has reported a new understanding of this little-known process that happens in virtually every cell of the body. Protein folding is the process by which not-yet folded chains of amino acids assume their specific shapes and take on specific functions.

No protocol ready for Deepwater oil spill

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:52:13 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA / UNC-CHAPEL HILL (US) — Scientists have created the first complete conceptual model for understanding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and any similar disasters in the future.

On the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform blowout, a national panel of researchers is providing new insight into what happened in the disaster, as well as a guide for how to deal with such events in the future, and why existing tools were inadequate to predict what lay before them.

The study, produced by the Gulf Oil Spill Ecotox Working Group at University of California, Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), is published in the May issue of the journal Bioscience.

Extreme salmonella’s Trojan Horse trick

Sonia Fernandez-UCSB — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:54:43 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — The recent discovery of “hypervirulent” Salmonella bacteria has given researchers a way to potentially prevent food poisoning outbreaks.

The findings, from University of California, Santa Barbara researchers Professor Michael Mahan and Douglas Heithoff, have been published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

Salmonella is the most common cause of infection, hospitalization, and death due to foodborne illness in the U.S. This burden may continue to worsen due to the emergence of new strains that would tax current health-control efforts. To address this problem, researchers sought out—and found—hypervirulent strains that present a potential risk to food safety and the livestock industry.

Native forests ravaged by bug imports

George Foulsham-UC Santa Barbara — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:11:21 +0000

UC SANTA BARBARA (US) — Imported plants, which are now valued at more than $500 million annually, may be a boon for the U.S. economy, but are having a devastating effect on the environment.

A study conducted by researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis finds that almost 70 percent of the most damaging non-native forest insects and diseases currently afflicting U.S. forests arrived via imported live plants.

Some anti-gay bias may be self-directed

Susan Hagen-Rochester — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:17:44 +0000

U. ROCHESTER (US) — Homophobia is more pronounced in people with unacknowledged attraction to the same sex, according to a new study.

In addition, the series of psychology studies demonstrates that people who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires may be more prone to homophobia.