University of California, Santa Barbara

The primary premium: Why legislators are incentivized to side with primary voters over general election voters

How are legislators incentivized to behave when their primary and general electorates disagree about an issue? We argue that primary electorates are generally more unified in their issue preferences and more sensitive to roll-call positions than general electorates, incentivizing...

Climate Policy Progression: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. Cities’ Climate Action Plans Over Time

Climate Action Plans (CAPs) are important tools for translating climate plans into actions. As many U.S. cities are developing their second round of CAPs, it is essential to consider how and why a city's CAP objectives may change over time, given local political contexts. To exam...

Image transformations, Markov operators, and sample median

Abstract (I.) We consider generalizations of an iterated function system and the associated Markov operators. A Markov operator, defined on the space of (deficient) topological measures on a locally compact space, is an infinite convex linear combination of adjoints of (d-) image...

Diastereo- and Enantioselective Photobiocatalytic α-Alkylation of α-Heteroaryl Amines Enabled by Pyridoxal Photochemistry

Abstract We report a photobiocatalytic system for the enantio- and diastereoselective α-alkylation of α-heteroaryl amines, a largely underexplored class of synthetically valuable non-native amine donors. Evaluation and directed evolution of thermophilic threonine aldolases, enabl...

Not This Sh*t Again! High-Tension Religions and the Rise of Coercive Control in Child Protection Law

Social scientists and scholars of high-tension religious groups (often referred to as new religious movements or emergent religious groups) have spent nearly half a century debunking the social psychological theory of “brainwashing.” But there is now a veritable brainwashing lega...

Sub-Doppler rubidium atom cooling using a programmable agile integrated PZT-on-SiN resonator

Abstract Programmability and precise control of laser frequency are essential for quantum experiments and applications such as atomic clocks, quantum computers, and cold-atom sensors. Current systems use bulky, power-hungry modulators and frequency shifters which are difficult to...

Global Pax Silica and the Gaza ‘Board of Peace’

Three interwoven developments converge to form the deep backdrop to the Israeli extermination campaign in Gaza. First , the genocide may be the horrific culmination of seventy-five-plus years of Zionist settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid, but in the broader picture we...

From past, persisting, and consolidating ecologies of segregation to ecologies of repair

Across the United States and Europe, urban and periurban spaces have historically been shaped by land dispossession and enclosure that systematically exclude marginalized, non-White communities from the benefits of society, including access to nature. These dynamics, which have p...

The plausible relationship between deep long-period earthquakes and volatiles: a case study of the Alaska-Aleutian arc

Abstract Deep long-period (DLP) earthquakes are observed beneath volcanoes in various tectonic settings during background activity, unrest, and eruption. The exact processes generating DLPs have been subject to ongoing debate, as they may provide insight into deep magmatic plumbi...

Mn Disproportionation, Not Redox Cycling, Explains Low-Temperature, Thermochemical “Water Splitting” with MnFe2O4/Na2CO3

Abstract The development of redox-active materials for thermochemical water splitting to produce hydrogen is an attractive alternative to water electrolysis due to the low cost of heat and generally favorable scaling relationships of heat-driven processes. Recently, a material sy...

Divergent biological consequences of APOE isoforms across industrialized and non-industrial environments

Abstract The apolipoprotein ε4 (APOE ε4) isoform directly alters cholesterol and immune biology and is associated with an increased risk of neurodegenerative and cardiometabolic disease in industrialized settings; nevertheless, APOE ε4—which is ancestral in humans—has persisted o...

Modeling climate adaptive habitat connectivity for conservation planning in Colombia

To remain effective under global change, conservation decisions must anticipate shifting climates, species responses to climate change and the dispersal pathways needed to track suitable climate. Yet most assessments of ecological connectivity do not consider how the landscape wi...

Cold Starts and Burning Desires: Reputation System Misalignment and Late-Career Transitions to Platform Work

Workers face a cold start when entering new work contexts in which their reputations do not precede them. Cold starts are a particularly challenging problem for late-career workers who leave decades-long careers in formal organizations to pursue freelancing through online labor p...

Diagnosing CESM2 Biases in Northwest Indian Ocean Warming and Its Implications for India Summer Monsoon Precipitation

Abstract Declining monsoon rainfall over agriculture‐dependent Eastern Central India (ECI) during 1901–2014 threatens regional food and water security. Observations link ECI drying to rapid Northwest Indian Ocean (NWIO) warming, which weakens monsoon circulation. However, the wid...

Improving smallholder representation in crop maps

Abstract Farms smaller than five hectares produce more than half of the world's crops. Accurate maps of smallholder croplands thus hold great potential to inform a wide variety of policies including those that aim to address food insecurity, provide agricultural support, or encou...

Optimal Mixing for Randomly Sampling Edge Colorings on Trees Down to the Max Degree

Abstract. We address the convergence rate of Markov chains for randomly generating an edge coloring of a given tree. Our focus is on the Glauber dynamics, which updates the color at a randomly chosen edge in each step. For a tree [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] verti...

Multi-stage single-cell atlas of a chordate non-embryonic development unveils dedifferentiating bud founder cells

Abstract Colonial tunicates are the only chordates capable of forming fully functional bodies from somatic tissues through non-embryonic development, or budding. In Botryllus schlosseri , budding produces new individuals (zooids) from a portion of the peribranchial epithelium of...

Survival of cancer cells following taxol-induced apoptosis is supported by ZEB1-mediated ferroptosis sensitivity

Abstract Chemotherapy remains the mainstay treatment of many solid cancers; however, resistance and recurrence compromise patient outcomes. We investigated chemotherapy resistance mechanisms in Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) by examining cells that survive chemotherapy-indu...

The nutritional value of invertebrate aquatic foods

Abstract Aquatic invertebrates are a diverse, nutrient-dense, and socio-ecologically important food whose contribution to human nutrition is frequently overlooked. We quantify their contribution to global nutrient supplies and estimate the nutrient content of >50,000 macroinverte...

Restoring sparsity in potts machines via mean-field constraints

Abstract Ising machines and related probabilistic hardware have emerged as promising platforms for NP-hard optimization and sampling. However, many practical problems involve constraints that induce dense or all-to-all couplings, undermining scalability and hardware efficiency. W...