Office of Research

The California Current is a major influence on the climate of western North America and on the productivity of both terrestrial and marine ecosystems along the West Coast. But 6,000 years ago, the California Current wasn’t quite what it is today, according to a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. New…

Peering back in time more than 7 billion years, a team of astronomers using a powerful new spectrograph at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has obtained the first maps showing the distribution of galaxies in the early universe. The maps show the clustering of galaxies into a variety of large-scale structures, including long…

Lead-based paint from deteriorating buildings still poses a hazard to wildlife on Midway Atoll, despite extensive environmental remediation efforts undertaken as part of the conversion of the site from a military base to a national wildlife refuge. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that Laysan albatross chicks in…

Scientists have pieced together the key elements of a gamma-ray burst, from star death to dramatic black hole birth, thanks to a March 29 explosion considered the “Rosetta stone” of such bursts. The results are described in the June 19 issue of Nature, in an article coauthored by Stan Woosley, professor and chair of astronomy…

Blue-throated lizards that help each other achieve reproductive success are also helping scientists understand how social cooperation evolved. Most examples of cooperative behavior in animals involve cooperation between genetically related individuals, which is explained by the theory of “kin selection.” Now, researchers have described an example of cooperation between genetically similar but unrelated members of…