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Life Sciences

two researchers on a boat
Photo Credit
Courtesy Image
Volunteer taxonomist Gustav Pauly from the Florida Museum of Natural History, left and SBC-LTER lab technician Darrin Ambat on a morning dive to retrieve Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures from the sea floor

Bioblitz reveals hidden biodiversity in the Santa Barbara Channel

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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
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
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