Long before the Europeans arrived on Easter Island in 1722, the native Polynesian culture known as Rapa Nui showed signs of demographic decline. However, the catalyst has long been debated in the scientific community. Was environmental degradation the cause, or could a political revolution or an epidemic of disease be to blame?

In a new report published in the journal Science, UCSB researchers and colleagues review the past, present and future of marine animal life.  Over the past 500 years, approximately 500 land-based animal species have gone the way of the dodo, becoming extinct as a result of human activity. In the ocean, where scientists count only 15 or so such losses, the numbers currently aren't nearly as dire.  

A team of chemistry and materials science experts from Univ. of California, Santa Barbara and The Dow Chemical Company has created a novel way to overcome one of the major hurdles preventing the widespread use of controlled radical polymerization.

Optogenetics, which uses light to control cellular events, is poised to become an important technology in molecular biology and beyond. The Reich Group in UC Santa Barbara's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has made a major contribution to this emergent field by developing a light-activated nanocarrier that transports proteins into cells and releases them on command. The findings appear in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

The ocean is a complex ecosystem. The ocean carbon cycle is governed by the relationship among carbon, nutrients and oxygen, and the ratio between certain elements is key to understanding ocean respiration.

Immortal in the lab, pluripotent stem cells divide and grow indefinitely under the right conditions. This ability may also exist further down the development path with the workhorse progenitor cells -- the "sons and daughters" of stem cells responsible for creating specific tissues.

Former postdoctoral fellow Pedram Roushan and several colleagues have been exploring qubits (quantum bits) for quantum simulation on a smaller scale. Their research appears in the current edition of the journal Nature.

The adult human body is made up of some 37 trillion cells. But microbes, mainly bacteria, outnumber our body's cells by a ratio of 10-to-1. Scientists now recognize that this huge community of benign microbes--called the microbiome--affects the health, development and evolution of all multicellular organisms, including humans. Studies show that interactions between such microbiomes and pathogens, or disease-causing microorganisms, can have profound effects on infectious diseases.

With no cure, no approved treatment and no known means of slowing its progression, polycystic kidney disease is a biomedical cold case that affects more than 600,000 people in the U.S. alone -- and some 12 million worldwide.  

Hoping to crack that case with science, UC Santa Barbara biologist Thomas Weimbs is working to develop a new therapeutic approach by targeting the mechanism that causes the cysts to grow. A new gift to his lab is providing a big boost to that effort.  

Three next-generation dark matter experiments--the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment Gen 2, LUX-ZEPLIN and the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search at SNOLAB--got a green light for funding in July, 2014. Each will be at least 10 times more sensitive than today’s dark matter detectors. We know that dark matter is five times more prevalent than ordinary matter, and we’re able to infer that clumps of dark matter help hold together clusters of galaxies. So this substance is a huge part of what makes up our universe and an important part of why our universe looks the way it does.

It's the most common cause of death in American hospitals and among the top five killers worldwide, but sepsis remains largely under the radar in conversations about public health -- and in promising treatments.

A biomedical scientist at UC Santa Barbara may have a hand in reversing both those trends, thanks to his novel therapeutic approach and a big new grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Due to its unprecedented scope, the damage assessment caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been a challenge. One unsolved puzzle is the location of 2 million barrels of submerged oil thought to be trapped in the deep ocean.  

UC Santa Barbara's David Valentine and colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Irvine have been able to describe the path the oil followed to create a footprint on the deep ocean floor. The findings appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A longstanding question among scientists is whether evolution is predictable. A team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara may have found a preliminary answer. The genetic underpinnings of complex traits in cephalopods may in fact be predictable because they evolved in the same way in two distinct species of squid.

UCSB researchers underscore the need for definitive science to create best practices for unconventional oil and gas development
Hydraulic fracturing is a polarizing issue, one that will be addressed at the polls in several California counties -- including Santa Barbara -- in November. Better known as fracking, the process releases gas or oil trapped in shale by injecting water, sand and chemical additives under high pressure.  

A UC Santa Barbara geochemist studying Samoan volcanoes has found evidence of the planet's early formation still trapped inside the Earth. Known as hotspots, volcanic island chains such as Samoa can ancient primordial signatures from the early solar system that have somehow survived billions of years.  

Carl Gwin, a professor in UCSB's Department of Physics, and colleagues have analyzed images collected by the Russian spacecraft RadioAstron. Their findings appear in the current issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Is life in the oceans changing over the years? Are humans causing long-term declines in ocean biodiversity with climate change, fishing and other impacts?  

At present, scientists are unable to answer these questions because little data exist for many marine organisms, and the small amount of existing data focuses on small, scattered areas of the ocean.  

Evolution in extreme environments has produced life forms with amazing abilities and traits. Beneath the waves, many creatures sport iridescent structures that rival any materials scientists can create in the laboratory.  

A team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania has now shown how giant clams use these structures to thrive, operating as exceedingly efficient, living greenhouses that grow symbiotic algae as a source of food. The findings appear today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

UC Santa Barbara's Paul Atzberger, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, often works in areas where science and math intersect. Some of his recent research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and featured on the cover of the journal Soft Matter focuses on problems specific to lipid bilayer membranes. These microscopic structures can form a sheet that envelopes the outside of a biological cell in much the same way that human skin serves as the body's barrier to the outside environment.

At the bottom of the ocean's food chain, phytoplankton account for roughly half of the net photosynthesis on Earth. Their photosynthesis consumes carbon dioxide and plays a key role in transferring carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean. Unlike the plant ecosystems on land, the amount of phytoplankton in the ocean is always followed closely by the abundance of organisms that eat phytoplankton, creating a perpetual dance between predators and prey.