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A line of clouts stretches from the tropical Pacific to western North America where it becomes a massive storm.
Photo Credit
Stuart Rankin via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Pineapple Express — an atmospheric river originating in the tropical Pacific — walloped western North America in February 2017. These systems are becoming more frequent at higher latitudes, leaving mid latitudes drier.

Atmospheric rivers are shifting toward the poles, possibly following a long-term cycle

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A globe made out of healthy foods with a stethoscope against a blackboard background.
Photo Credit
Udra via iStock

Billions worldwide consume inadequate levels of micronutrients critical to human health
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

Physicists work toward theory to describe pattern formation in conserved fields
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Aspiring engineers receive national research fellowships, with significant funding
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
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UCSB geographer receives NSF grant to study adaptations to land degradation and ‘bright spots’ of resilience
two men standing against a gray background
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang
Professors Andrew Jayich, left, and Jon Schuller

Two UCSB professors selected by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to be Experimental Physics Investigators
image of developing zebrafish retina
Photo Credit
Rana Amini/Campàs Lab
Microscopy image of a developing zebrafish retina, with cell nuclei (blue) and membranes (yellow) shown

How cell nuclei organize eyes and brain
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
A stack of blocks with the rare earth element symbols on them.
Photo Credit
Thibault Renard via iStock
Scientists and engineers would love if separating rare earth elements were as easy as picking one out of a stack of blocks.

A cleaner, more efficient way to process and recycle rare earth elements
man with glasses and woman in hijab at table with laptop
Photo Credit
Lilli Walker
Kerem Çamsari (left) and third-year Ph.D. student Shaila Niazi, who used p-bits to create images that were not part of a machine-learning training data set.

Proving the value of an old algorithm in training deep-learning models for AI
A shortfin mako encountered off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
Photo Credit
Neil Ferdinand Nathan
Apex predators like this shortfin make have an outsized influence on their ecosystems. Unfortunately, they’re also the hardest hit by fishing.

Big sharks have a big impact — and a big problem
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