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Life Sciences

orange and black butterflies on a branch
Monarch butterflies undertake a multigenerational migration that covers thousands of miles

Neurobiologist Sung Soo Kim receives 2024 Scholar Award from McKnight Foundation

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Yellowtail dascyllus and other tropical fish swim by a cauliflower coral in American Samoa.
Photo Credit
Dam via Adobe Stock
Damselfish like these yellowtail dascyllus have an outsized effect on reefs compared to their humble proportions.

Coral reefs: battlegrounds for survival in a changing climate
concept illustration of chemical reactions using light
Photo Credit
Courtesy Image

Shining a light on new chemical reactions
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Understanding aging on a cellular level
eye with circuitry blue tint

AI learns to pay covert attention
A mantis shrimp emerges from its burrow to confront a rival.
Photo Credit
Roy Caldwell
These territorial crustaceans use their tails as shields to defend against the explosive punches of their rivals.

Rolling with the punches: How mantis shrimp defend against high-speed strikes
2024 Goldwater scholars
Clockwise, from left: Matthew Unger, Riya Nilkrant, Xuanwei Liang, Isaac Hair, Anika Jena

Five UC Santa Barbara undergraduates named Goldwater Scholars
aerial shot of North Atlantic right whale and calf
Photo Credit
NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center/Lisa Conger and Elizabeth Josephson
North Atlantic right whale mother and calf as seen from a research drone called a hexacopter

Whale-saving cargo ship speed tracking program heads east
the cellular development of an embryonic tooth
Photo Credit
Neha Pincha Shroff and Pengfei Xu
Tooth epithelium (cell surface; yellow) and mesenchyme (cell surface; magenta). Proliferating cells (cyan) expand the tissue, generating a mechanical pressure at the tissue center that drives the formation of the main tooth signaling center or organizer, the enamel knot.

Pressure determines which embryonic cells become ‘organizers’
Two views: An Etruscan shrew and the breeching hide of a blue whale
Photo Credit
Shrew: Trebol-a/CC BY-SA 3.0 Whale: Jeff Jacobsen

Reference genomes from the world’s largest and smallest mammals pave the way toward solving mysteries of development and lifespan
A chiton sits among algae on a rock.
Photo Credit
Marcelo Rojas González via iNaturalist
The shell of the variable tonicia is covered in complex, image-forming eyes.

Unraveling the mystery of chiton visual systems
a cathedral in the middle of a mountain town in Colombia
Yarumal, a municipality in the foothills of the Andes north of Medellín, is one of several communities in Colombia that host a large kindred with a genetic form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease

Untangling a sticky mystery: Researchers make precious headway into a genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease
A large crescent moon shines in the early twilight over tidal mudflats.
Photo Credit
DALL-E, prompt by Harrison Tasoff.
A soft summer evening in the Paleoproterozoic, as envisioned by DALL-E.

Even the oldest eukaryote fossils show dazzling diversity and complexity
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