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April 7, 2021 at 10:30 pm by Sean Crommelin During the historic California drought from 2012 to 2015, warm temperatures and piddling precipitation took the state for a whirl unlike any other. In the 2015 wet season, the Sierra Nevada snowpack reached its lowest peak in half a millennium, while reservoirs left boats grounded and farmers with little water to tend their crops and livestock.  The canopy of a valley oak tree (Quercus lobata). Courtesy of Leander Anderegg Governor Jerry...

March 3, 2021 at 9:00 am by Sean Crommelin On Wednesday, Feb. 24, the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara hosted a public forum, “The Green New Deal in Action,” to discuss the relevance of the mammoth policy initiative to residents of the Santa Barbara area and other communities in the Central Coast. A booth hosted by Sunrise Movement during the pre-pandemic Dec. 6, 2019 climate strike. Sophia Lovell / Daily Nexus Over 130 people attended th...

February 28, 2021 at 8:55 pm by Sean Crommelin Increasingly, disciplines like physics have found a home in research into biology — particularly research looking at the functioning of biological systems within and between cells. A row of yeast cells with glowing-green polarization caps. Courtesy of Carlos Gomez Researchers working at UC Santa Barbara, including Samhita Banavar, a former graduate student in the department of physics who is now at Stanford University, Otger CampÃ�...

February 25, 2021 at 8:00 am by Sean Crommelin Over the past two decades, American universities have become more racially diverse. From 1996 to 2016, the percentage of undergraduate students of color in the United States increased from 29.6% to 45.2%, according to a report by the American Council on Education. Currently, Tettegah and her collaborators have been gathering data from students as part of a broader self-assessment of UCSB’s current climate and practices.  Emily Liu...

February 17, 2021 at 1:00 am by Sean Crommelin Save the San Marcos Foothills, an organization led by Channel Islands Restoration and established to protect undeveloped property next to the San Marcos Foothills Preserve, carried out a demonstration on Monday, January 8th to announce a series of legal actions to the public. Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, a Barbareño Chumash Elder, spoke alongside members of Channel Island Restoration and Save the San Marcos Foothills. Sean Crommelin / D...

February 17, 2021 at 12:30 am by Sean Crommelin Jeff Dozier, distinguished professor emeritus and the founding dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, first sought to understand snow grains while at 20,000 feet in the Hindu Kush mountain range of Afghanistan.  A six meter deep snow pit located near Emerald Lake. Courtesy of Jeff Dozier. “My colleagues, two partners that I was with at the time while climbing, asked ‘Are we in avalanche danger?’...

February 5, 2021 at 11:30 am by Sean Crommelin “All work that is done in Antarctica is hard and difficult,” Bruce Luyendyk, a professor emeritus and oceanographer with the Earth Research Institute at UC Santa Barbara, told me over Zoom. Research icebreaker N.B. Palmer in the sea ice of McMurdo Sound. Mount Erebus is in the background. This ship was used in UCSB surveys of the Terror Rift in the Ross Sea by Luyendyk and his students. Courtesy of Bruce Luyendyk The temperatur...

January 31, 2021 at 11:30 pm by Sean Crommelin In 2010, Raytheon, a major U.S. defense contractor, unveiled the XOS 2, a robotic exoskeleton which imbued wearers with the power to effortlessly lift hundreds of pounds. Designed to be used by the military, the development of XOS 2 drew significant media attention and was even dubbed by Time Magazine as one of the 50 best inventions of the year. Now, fast-forward 10 years later, and one observes interest coming from firms outside of the ...

However, the strength of the relationship was not quite as strong as others have proven to be, such as social distancing policies.

January 30, 2021 at 11:45 pm by Sean Crommelin Yesterday, California Senator Monique Limón, U.S. Representative Salud Carbajal and California Assembly Member Steve Bennett hosted a town hall over Zoom regarding the status of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Santa Barbara County. Joined by them were Dr. Van Do-Reynoso, the Santa Barbara County Public Health director, and Barry L. Zimmerman, the Ventura Healthcare Agency chief deputy director, who spoke on the vaccines themselves and ...