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Life Sciences

A box of mounted and labeled iridescent bees.
Photo Credit
Gayle Laird ©2021 California Academy of Sciences
Museum collections hold a wealth of data just waiting to be brought into the digital age.

The Big Bee Project brings natural history collections into the 21st century

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Six UCSB researchers named among world’s most influential scientists
Three mountain yellow-legged frogs perched on a rock.
Photo Credit
Roland Knapp
The Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog is recovering in Yosemite, a beacon of hope for amphibian conservation.

Frog populations once decimated by disease mount a major comeback
Yellow silhouettes of a large female and small male mosquito facing away from each other.
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
If a male mosquito can’t hear a female, it’s as though she doesn’t exist.

Deaf male mosquitoes don’t mate
side by side photos of ferret and penguin
Ferrets are among the vertebrates that get the most tumors, while black footed penguins get the fewest

Researchers complete the largest compilation of cancer prevalence across vertebrates
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UCSB, Community Environmental Council to hold Living with Fire Summit
An electron-microscopy image of the fruit fly's anterior visual pathway
Photo Credit
Dustin Garner, Emil Kind
An electron-microscopy image of the fruit fly's anterior visual pathway — all neurons involved in processing visual information and conveying it to the navigation center in the fly brain. Compass neurons are in the circular area at the center

Researchers' reconstruction of fruit fly’s anterior visual pathway will lead to insights into animal navigation
Samantha Mladjov pilots a drone above a beachgoers and dogs.
Photo Credit
Neil Nathan
With an eye in the sky, researchers can track white sharks off the coast.

Scientists use drones to track white sharks along California beaches
scientist looking at brain imaging scans
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
Emily Jacobs

New study reveals changes in the brain throughout pregnancy
scientists in lab with crates
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang
UCSB ExFAB staff and senior participants, from left, Oliver Vining, Elaine Kirschke, Jean-Marie Volland, Nathalie Elisabeth, Sherylle Mills Englander, Max Wilson, Michelle O'Malley, Joel Rothman, Niels Volkmann and Carolyn Mills.

UCSB to lead $22M NSF-funded center on exceptional microbes
Pedestrians in IR walk along a cobblestone street.
Photo Credit
Ildar Abulkhanov via iStock
It’s not quite heat vision, but mosquitoes do use thermal infrared to find human hosts.

Mosquitoes sense infrared from body heat to help track humans down
An illustration of macrophages attacking a cancer cell.
Photo Credit
Wildpixel via iStock
Priming macrophage immune cells could supercharge certain cancer therapies.

An appetizer can stimulate immune cells’ appetite, a boon for cancer treatments
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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