The age and origin of the E280A gene mutation responsible for early-onset Alzheimer’s in a Colombian family with an unusually high incidence of the disease has been traced to a single founder dating from the 16th century.

Kenneth S. Kosik, Harriman Professor in Neuroscience at UC Santa Barbara and co-director of the campus’s Neuroscience Research Institute (NRI), conducted the study. The findings appear in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

Sepsis, the body’s response to severe infections, kills more people than breast cancer, prostate cancer and HIV/AIDS combined. On average, 30 percent of those diagnosed with sepsis die.

Among the most impressive ecological findings of the past 25 years is the ability of invasive plants to radically change ecosystem function. Yet few if any studies have examined whether ecosystem impacts of invasions persist over time, and what that means for plant communities and ecosystem restoration.

From better ways to detect post-traumatic stress disorder to a more efficient blood-clotting gauze for the battlefield, UC Santa Barbara scientists and students are conducting research to benefit the men and women who serve their country.

The November issue of the Ecological Society of America’s journal “Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment” contains papers from a diverse group of more than 50 ecological scientists, including UC Santa Barbara’s Joshua Schimel, professor and chair of the Environmental Studies Program. The paper he co-authored looks at how climate change affects terrestrial ecosystems.

Ben Mazin has taken the next step in astrophysical mapping by building a superconducting detector array can measure the energy of individual photons. The Array Camera for Optical to Near-infrared Spectrophotometry (ARCONS) is the first ground-based instrument based on Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs), superconducting photon detectors he developed a decade ago while earning his Ph.D. from CalTech. MKIDs are used for astronomy across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Sea urchins adapt so quickly they’re helping answer a question that’s key to understanding ocean acidification: As fossil-fuel emissions disrupt marine life, will evolution come to the rescue?

Like Darwin’s finches or Great Britain’s peppered moths, these hedgehogs of the sea increasingly embody nature’s stunning capacity for resilience.

UCSB physics team helped design, build and fill the water tank that houses the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment. With 122 detector tubes, LUX is much more sensitive than its closest rival in the competitive field of dark-matter searches. After a run of more than three months, LUX results completely rule out any hints of dark matter from earlier experiments.

UC Santa Barbara parasitologists examined a small sampling of the 18-foot oarfish that was found two weeks ago by a Catalina Island snorkeler. Their findings reveal that the enormous deep sea fish, whose shape and size has given rise to its sea monster legend, hosted its own little monsters. The results of their dissection also reveal clues into the ecology of the elusive creature.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to theorists Peter Higgs and François Englert, to recognize their work developing the theory of what is now known as the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles mass. U.S. scientists played a significant role in advancing the theory and in discovering the particle that proves the existence of the Higgs field, the Higgs boson.

West Nile virus. Hantavirus. Lyme disease. All are infectious diseases spreading within animal and human populations. Scientists are now asking if our interaction with the environment is somehow responsible for the increased incidence of these diseases.

Determining the structure of membrane proteins, which are important drug targets, has become somewhat simpler thanks to a new tool developed by the Han Research Group in the Department of Chemistry. The tool uses a method called nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry but refines it by inserting an electron spin driven by microwaves to measure surface water dynamics.

Researchers in the Department of Physics have taken the first step in translating electrical quantum states to optical quantum states in a way that would enable ultrafast, quantum-encrypted communications. Their latest research outlines the concept and presents a prototype device that so far uses classical electrical and optical signals but whose essential parameters look very promising for quantum information transfer.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that the female market squid possesses a pair of rainbow iridescent stripes. These flank a single stripe, which can go from complete transparency to bright white, mimicking the male testis. This may allow the female to masquerade as a male to discourage multiple matings. READ MORE (UCSB Featured News)

New findings demonstrate how taste preferences can be modified by long-term exposure to a specific diet. In this study, conducted by UC Santa Barbara’s Craig Montell, Duggan Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, fruit flies exposed to a diet containing camphor learned to like it, and the process was reversible. The results suggest a general neural mechanism underlying food experience-induced changes in taste preferences.

New research from the Department of Earth Science reveals that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet existed earlier than previously thought. Using their new bedrock elevation map for the Antarctic continent, Doug Wilson, Bruce Luyendyk and colleagues showed that, contrary to the popularly held scientific view, Antarctica’s nascent ice sheet at the time of the global climate transition 34 million years ago included substantial ice on the subcontinent of West Antarctica.

In a recent study, researchers from University of California at Santa Barbara hypothesized that science, as a notion, “contains in it the broader moral vision of a society in which rationality is used for the mutual benefit of all.” As such, it “facilitates moral and prosocial judgments and behaviors.”

Nora Noffke of Old Dominion University and Stan Awramik of the University of California, Santa Barbara describe the interaction of carpet-like communities of benthic microorganisms (biofilms) with sediment dynamics at the sediment-water interface to form distinctive sedimentary structures called microbialites published in GSA Today.

A UC Santa Barbara study explains how fruit flies respond to sugar when bitter compounds are added. The researchers found that an unexpected molecule — an odorant-binding protein (OBP) usually found in the olfactory system — impairs avoidance behavior in mutant flies missing the OBP protein. This is the first molecule shown to promote the suppression of sweet by bitter compounds in these model animals.

By mapping, modeling, and recreating in data the daily travel of Southern California’s 18 million residents, geographer Konstadinos Goulias and colleagues are helping to pave the way toward more sustainable transportation. Their successful pilot project is now being replicated in Baltimore. Collaborating with municipalities to inform emissions policy through data collection, synthesis, and analysis, their ultimate aim is to transform the transportation habits of the very people whose movements are being mined for insight.