For half the world’s population, the water in their drinking glasses comes from below them. Groundwater also supplies 40% of global irrigation projects. Alarmingly, more than a third of the planet’s ...

Santa Barbara County has many of the ingredients needed for walking, cycling and other forms of active transportation: great weather, relatively flat city centers, walkable streets and a robust and ...

Solid catalysts underpin many of the large-scale chemical transformations used to manufacture modern materials, converting hydrocarbons — including renewable or recycled forms of carbon — into the ...

Shifting focus on a visual scene without moving our eyes — think driving, or reading a room for the reaction to your joke — is a behavior known as covert attention. We do it all the time, but little ...

The thunder of a rifle echoes across the savannah. Antelope scatter as birds of all feathers take to the air. A dull thud signals that the marksman’s shot was true. The horn from the felled rhino will ...

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have invented a display technology for on-screen graphics that are both visible and haptic, meaning that they can be felt via touch. The screens are patterned with tiny ...

Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a debilitating hereditary condition in which fluid-filled sacs form and proliferate in the kidneys. Over time, the painful, growing cysts rob the organs of their ...

In our modern society, aging tends to be something we ignore, and then try to avoid. Mainstream culture is geared toward the young, using the youth to gauge trends and styles, and targeting their ...

The path toward realizing practical quantum technologies begins with understanding the fundamental physics that govern quantum behavior — and how those phenomena can be harnessed in real materials. In ...

UC Santa Barbara physicists John Martinis and Michel Devoret have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. Selected for the honor alongside UC Berkeley physicist and former advisor John Clarke, ...

Results from the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, co-founded by UC Santa Barbara physicists, mark a major step in defining what dark matter can and cannot be Determining the nature of dark matter, the invisible ...

With CO 2 emissions continuing unabated, an increasing number of policymakers, scientists and environmentalists are considering geoengineering to avert a climate catastrophe. Such interventions could ...