Recent ucsb items

Increased aluminum exposure induces widespread changes in silicon, carbon, and nitrogen metabolism in Entomoneis vertebralis

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

BackgroundDiatoms are a class of algae that play an essential role in global ecology and produce valuable chemicals. They are known for forming intricate nanostructured silica cell walls (frustules). The introduction of non-siliceous elements like aluminum into diatoms induces properties such as a lower dissolution rate of the frustule, increasing the specific surface area of the frustule and enhancing metabolism. Previous studies have focused primarily on characterizing physiological impacts, leaving the genetic response(s) to non-siliceous elements largely unexplored.ResultsThis study investigates the transcriptional response of the pennate diatom, Entomoneis vertebralis to dissolved aluminum. Our findings reveal that in the presence of added 10 µM aluminum, biogenic silica content of the cell wall increases approximately twofold along with significant changes to core metabolism. An increase in transcription of genes encoding nitrate transporters has been observed despite...

Do Tax Credits Increase Heat Pump Adoption?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Economists have long argued that many recipients of clean energy subsidies are likelynon-additional, but there are relatively few empirical studies. This paper uses U.S.monthly shipment data to test whether income tax credits increase heat pump adoption. When the tax credit increased from $300 to $2000 in January 2023, there was no increase in shipments. Then, when the tax credit expired in January 2026, there was no decrease in shipments. This lack of a discernible relationship persists after controllingfor seasonal patterns, energy prices, and housing starts. The evidence suggests thatmost recipients of the $2000 tax credit were non-additional, and would have installeda heat pump even without the subsidy. The paper discusses implications for policydesign, economic efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Finally, the paper points out thatheat pump shipments continue at a strong pace thus far in 2026 even without the taxcredit, with large benefits for the environment.

Are Consumers Myopic? Evidence from New and Used Car Purchases

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We investigate whether car buyers are myopic about future fuel costs. We estimate the effect of gasoline prices on short-run equilibrium prices of cars of different fuel economies. We then compare the implied changes in willingness-to-pay to the associated changes in expected future gasoline costs for cars of different fuel economies in order to calculate implicit discount rates. Using different assumptions about annual mileage, survival rates, and demand elasticities, we calculate a range of implicit discount rates similar to the range of interest rates paid by car buyers who borrow. We interpret this as showing little evidence of consumer myopia.

If You Build It, They May Not Come: Willingness to Participate in Managed EV Charging

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Despite the importance of program participation for policy, treatment effects are often measured on self-selected samples. We study electric vehicle (EV) managed charging, intended to reduce electric grid strain by optimally allocating charging across EVs. Prior work finds large impacts of managed charging among households who volunteer for an RCT. In contrast, we test managed charging with an experiment including all EVs within a California utility. Enrollment is low even with high incentives, and we can reject even modest intent-to-treat effects on electricity consumption. Managed charging is less effective than previously thought, underscoring the value of population-wide experiments.

Why Did Air Conditioning Adoption Accelerate Faster Than Predicted? Evidence from Mexico

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A common theme in the vast literature on climate change is the estimation of models using historical data to make predictions many decades into the future. Although there is a large and growing number of these types of studies, researchers rarely return later to check the accuracy of their predictions. In this paper, we perform such an exercise. In Davis and Gertler (2015), we used household-level microdata from Mexico to predict future air conditioning adoption as a function of income and temperature. Revisiting these predictions with 12 years of additional data, we find that air conditioning in Mexico has accelerated, significantly exceeding our predictions. Neither errors in predicting income growth or rising temperatures, nor migration patterns, nor an overly restrictive model can explain the large prediction gap. Instead, our results point to the failure to account for falling electricity prices and technological changes in air conditioner efficiency as key drivers of...

Competing for (In)attention: Price Discrimination in Residential Electricity Markets

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper studies the causes and consequences of pricing heterogeneity in markets for residential electricity, a nearly homogeneous good. I uncover adverse efficiency and distributional impacts of competition when consumers face heterogeneous search frictions. I show that consumers pay different prices for electricity in the same market, with low-income households and marginalized communities paying systematically higher electricity prices than their higher-income counterparts. These pricing patterns are consistent with a model of firms price discriminating on search frictions through marketing. Using data from Baltimore, I estimate a structural model that shows that this marketing leads to an annual welfare loss of 14% of industry-wide variable costs. Despite having only slightly larger search frictions, low-income households pay substantially higher prices than high-income households primarily due to lower marketing costs in low-income communities. Auxiliary analyses rule out...

Do Time-of-Use Prices Deliver Energy Savings at the Right Time?

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Time-of-use (TOU) electricity prices are increasingly being adopted to reduce consumption during the higher marginal cost afternoon hours. There is ample evidence that TOU rates reduce average consumption during the peak price hours of the day, but it is unknown how these energy savings are distributed across days. Using a unique dataset from households with smart thermostats, we find that adopting TOU rates causes large decreases in peak period AC usage, resulting in energy savings that are concentrated on the hottest, highest demand days when the benefits of conservation are the greatest.

Understanding Support for Cost-Ineffective Environmental Policy Instruments

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Many governments use environmental standards rather than more cost-effective market-based instruments like pollution taxes or cap-and-trade markets. Using a nationally representative survey experiment, we study whether and why limited understanding of economic principles helps explain this practice. Holding environmental impacts constant, respondents prefer standards over market-based instruments, and prefer producer taxes and cap-and-trade over consumer taxes. These preferences reflect consumers’ beliefs about how these policies will affect electricity bills. Respondents also prefer the weakest environmental targets for consumer taxes and the strongest targets for standards, which suggests that policymakers face a tradeoff between policy stringency and cost effectiveness. A separate survey of environmental economists shows that they have strikingly different beliefs about the effects of environmental policies than the respondents in our representative survey. For example,...

Effects of the Proposed New California SAF Tax Credit

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Wu et al. (2025), we developed a detailed partial equilibrium model of road and air transportation fuel markets to compare policy options to incentivize the deployment of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). We used the model to examine policy options for meeting a 3 billion gallon annual SAF target by 2030, which would result in SAF comprising about 12% of U.S. jet fuel consumption in that year. This goal, whether formally adopted or not, represents a useful near-term benchmark along a meaningful path toward decarbonizing aviation and appears to be feasible from a technological perspective. In this note, we add California’s proposed SAF tax credit to the model and evaluate the effects on fuel prices, volumes and emissions. See Wu et al. (2025) for details on the model.

Profiting from Regulation: An Event Study of the European Carbon Market

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We investigate the effect of cap-and-trade regulation on firm profits by performing an event study of the EU CO2 price crash. We examine returns for 124 carbon-intensive stocks and over 400 additional stocks, all from the broad EUROSTOXX index. Despite a reduction in environmental costs, we find that stocks fell for firms in carbon-intensive industries. We find similar effects for firms in electricity-intensive industries. The effects are most pronounced for firms that sell primarily within the EU. Our results imply that investors focus on product price impacts, rather than just compliance costs. We find evidence that firms’ net allowance positions also strongly influenced the share price response to the decline in allowance prices.

The Trouble with Green Subsidies

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the efficiency consequences of pursuing pollution reduction through a reliance on green subsidies rather than pollution taxes. It presents a stylized model of “subsidy-first” policy in which subsidies are rationalized by missing or incomplete taxes on some goods. It delineates five sources of inefficiency in subsidies, several of which relate to information requirements. In the model, green subsidies are justified because they induce substitution away from dirtier alternatives. Thus, subsidies hinge on counterfactuals, which creates information challenges analogous to the additionality problem. Insights from the model are used to comment on the Inflation Reduction Act.

Variation in the production of te reo Māori opening vowel sequences

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Variation in the production of te reo Māori opening vowel sequences

Groundwater and Crop Choice in the Short and Long Run

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How do agents respond to policy when investments have high upfront costs and lasting payoffs? We estimate farmers’ short- and long-run responses to changes in groundwater pumping costs in California—where perennial crops with these features are prevalent, and where groundwater pumps consume 6% of the state’s electricity. We use both fixed effects and dynamic discrete choice models that leverage quasi-experimental variation in agricultural electricity tariffs. In the short run, farmers’ groundwater (electricity) demand elasticity is −0.76 (−0.72), and they do not change crops. In contrast, the long-run groundwater (electricity) elasticity is −0.36 (−0.37), driven in part by meaningful reductions in water intensive perennial cropping. Meeting California’s sustainability targets would require reallocation of 9% of acres, including a 50% increase in fallowing. This would also reduce electricity consumption for this end-use by nearly 20%.

Utilizing Noncoincident Needs to Site Data Centers with Solar+Storage at Existing Gas Plants

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Data centers and large electricity loads are power hungry, raising concerns about higher electricity costs, increased emissions, and reliability risks. We show that co-locating solar+storage systems with underutilized natural gas plants offers a practical, near-term pathway for reliable, low-cost industrial power. Using eight years of hourly weather data, we co-optimize load and hybrid solar+storage+gas configurations at 68 existing plants near data center developments, meeting over 95% of demand with solar+storage. Across these sites, levelized costs range from $60-138/MWh, competitive with data centers’ recent contract prices for 24/7 clean power. Conflict analysis indicates minimal overlap between solar+storage backup needs and grid stress across most regions of the United States today, allowing gas units to provide dual roles: facilitating large load integration while supporting grid reliability. By optimizing existing infrastructure, this approach offers a scalable pathway...

Competitive Effects of Entry in Gasoline Markets

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We use panel data on the location, prices, and quality of the universe of gas stations in Mexico to study the competitive effects of entry on incumbent firms. Using more than 1,000 entry events and defining local markets based on the road network, we find that the entry of a new station within three minutes driving time decreases regular gasoline prices by 6 percent of the retail price spread. Competitive effects decline with travel time and are largest in markets that previously had only one station. Entry of stations with the same owner as the incumbent has near-zero effects on price. In addition, we find that entry increases the service quality of incumbents, with fewer customer complaints.

Dynamic Grid Management Technologies Reduce Wildfire Adaptation Costs in the Electric Power Sector

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wildfire is among the fastest-growing economic risks of climate change, yet strategies to adapt cost-effectively remain under-explored. In the electric power sector, where ignitions have triggered some of the most destructive wildfires on record, utilities are investing heavily to mitigate risk. This study evaluates the cost, reliability, and risk reduction benefits of the largest utility wildfire mitigation program in the U.S. Using detailed weather and vegetation data for 25,000 miles of high-risk powerlines, we develop a prediction model to estimate ignition risk and compare outcomes across locations with similar risk that received different interventions. With this quasi experimental design, we find that a new strategy that dynamically adjusts protective device sensitivity during elevated wildfire conditions reduces risk more cost-effectively than conventional measures such as burying powerlines underground or trimming vegetation. By combining models of wildfire risk, costs,...

Does Regulation Distort Exit Decisions? Evidence from U.S. Power Plants

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hundreds of power plants have closed in the United States since 2010, including 130+ gigawatts of coal and 50+ gigawatts of natural gas. In this paper, we highlight the potential for regulation to distort this type of exit decision. Using generator-level data from 2010–2023, we show that regulated units have been 45% less likely to exit than unregulated units. For unregulated units, exit decisions are made based on wholesale electricity prices, ongoing capital costs, and other traditional economic factors. In contrast, owners of regulated units are largely insulated from these factors and, in some cases, have a strong incentive to continue operating capital-intensive equipment. Previous work documents how this regulatory distortion affects investment decisions. Our paper emphasizes that these same incentives affect exit decisions as well.

The Distributional Effects of U.S. Tax Credits for Heat Pumps, Solar Panels, and Electric Vehicles

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. households have received over $47 billion in tax credits since 2006 for heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles, and other “clean energy” technologies. Using information from tax returns, we show that these tax credits have gone predominantly to higher-income filers. The bottom three income quintiles have received about 10% of all credits, while the top quintile has received about 60%. The most extreme is the tax credit for electric vehicles, for which the top quintile has received more than 80%. These patterns have changed little over time. We then present evidence on cost effectiveness and discuss broader economic considerations.

Deep Learning Projects Jurisdiction of New and Proposed Clean Water Act Regulation

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Projecting the effects of proposed policy reforms is challenging because no outcome data exist for regulations that governments have not yet implemented. We propose an ex ante deep learning framework that can project effects of proposed reforms by mapping outcomes observed under past regulations onto the legal criteria of proposed future policies (i.e., by “relabeling”). We apply this framework to study changes in jurisdiction of the US Clean Water Act (CWA), which regulates many sites used for renewable and fossil energy, transmission lines and pipelines, transportation infrastructure, and other types of land use. We compare our ex ante deep learning projection of jurisdiction under the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision against widely used projections from domain experts. Ex ante machine learning generates exceptional performance improvements over the leading domain expert model that the US Environmental Protection Agency currently uses, with 65 times more accurate identification...

Machine Learning Predicts Which Rivers, Streams, and Wetlands the Clean Water Act Regulates

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We assess which waters the Clean Water Act protects and how Supreme Court and White House rules change this regulation. We train a deep learning model using aerial imagery and geophysical data to predict 150,000 jurisdictional determinations from the Army Corps of Engineers, each deciding regulation for one water resource. Under a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, the Clean Water Act protects two-thirds of US streams and over half of wetlands; under a 2020 White House rule, it protects under half of streams and a fourth of wetlands, implying deregulation of 690,000 stream miles, 35 million wetland acres, and 30% of waters around drinking water sources. Our framework can support permitting, policy design, and use of machine learning in regulatory implementation problems.

The Environmental Costs and Geography of U.S. Data Center Expansion

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Data centers powering artificial intelligence are growing rapidly across the United States, raising concerns among policymakers and local communities about their environmental and social costs. These costs depend on where data centers locate, and strategic siting has been proposed as a way to limit them. Using a comprehensive facility-level dataset of past, operational, and announced U.S. data centers, we characterize how the environmental and community characteristics of data center locations evolve over 2010–2030. We quantify how much of the projected growth in environmental damages can be attributed to changes in data center locations versus growth in power requirements. Decomposing projected carbon emissions and monetized local air pollution damages into scale and location-driven composition effects, we find that over 2010–2025, composition changes reduced carbon and local air pollution damages by 4 and 12%, respectively. Over 2024–2030, scale accounts for approximately 97%...

The Effects of “Buy American”: Electric Vehicles and the Inflation Reduction Act

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We provide the first ex post microeconomic welfare analysis of the electric vehicle (EV) tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Relative to pre-IRA policy, the credits generated $1.96 in domestic benefits per dollar of government spending, with taxpayer cost of $36,500 per additional EV. Relative to having no EV credits, they yielded $1.11 in domestic benefits per dollar of government spending. A leasing loophole that sidestepped domestic content rules created negative domestic benefits. A prominent example of green industrial policy, the credits harmed foreign countries by shifting surplus to domestic producers and helped them by decreasing CO2 emissions.

Benefits, Costs, and Distributional Outcomes in an Environmental Market

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We study the benefits, abatement costs, and distributional outcomes of the EPA’s NOx Budget Program, a seasonal cap-and-trade market for NOx emissions. Using a new empirical approach, we recover source-specific marginal abatement cost curves and combine them with source-specific air pollution damages to quantify market outcomes. We find that abatement costs under the market are roughly one-sixth those of an abatement-equivalent non-market policy. Despite these large differences in aggregate costs, the market and the non-market policy yield similar air quality benefits, both in overall magnitude and across demographic groups. We show that these results reflect the weak correlation between source-specific marginal damages and abatement behavior.

Can Vertically Integrated Firms Evade Pricing Regulation? Evidence from Energy Utilities

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Vertical mergers can be used by a natural monopoly subject to cost-based price regulation to evade regulation: when regulators allow increases in input costs to be passed onto customers, a monopolist that is vertically integrated with an input supplier can earn profits by inflating input costs. I test for evidence of evasion by US electric and natural gas utilities through their purchase of interstate natural gas pipeline capacity. Building a novel data set of the vertical relationships of natural gas pipelines, I find incentives for evasion are widespread in this industry: 53% of US households with gas heating purchase gas from a utility that is affiliated with a natural gas pipeline. I leverage variation in buyers’ vertical relationships with pipelines and exposure to regulation to test whether evasion incentives cause buyers to inflate input costs. Results show that evasion incentives lead buyers to inflate costs by overbuilding pipeline capacity: capacity under contract with...

Global Policy Spillovers: How Environmental Policies Propagate through Product Attributes

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How should policymakers evaluate policy impacts when firms design products for global mar kets? Standard economic analyses typically focus on domestic outcomes, implicitly assuming that policies affect only the jurisdiction in which they are enacted. Yet multinational firms often harmonize product design across markets, creating the potential for policies implemented in one country to generate global spillovers through changes in product attributes. We call this phenomenon “attribute propagation” and develop a framework to measure and assess its quantitative importance. Applying this framework to an environmental policy affecting auto mobiles, we find that a fuel-economy subsidy in Japan led to significant improvements in the fuel economy of vehicles sold in the United States. We then develop a model of multinational automobile markets featuring cross-market cost complementarity as a key mechanism driving attribute propagation. Using the estimated model, we conduct counterfactual...

How Much Has Shale Gas Saved U.S. Consumers?

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It may seem like a distant memory now, but as of the mid-2000s, U.S. natural gas production had been flat for a decade, and the U.S. was importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), with plans to import much more. Then shale gas happened. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling caused U.S. natural gas production to increase significantly, and the U.S. went from being a net importer of natural gas to being the world’s largest exporter. This paper calculates how much shale gas has saved U.S. natural gas consumers. Using price differences between the United States, Europe and Japan, we calculate that U.S. natural gas consumers have saved $3.1-$4.3 trillion between 2007 and 2025, equivalent to $164-$227 billion annually. Access to low-price U.S. natural gas has been particularly valuable during major supply shocks such as the war in Ukraine, and the benefits of shale gas have been experienced broadly across sectors and states.

Queer Asian American Women’s Search For Identity, Belonging, and Community

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Queer Asian American (QASAM) women often have difficulty finding spaces that are accepting of their intersecting identities as both queer women and as Asian Americans. Because mainstream queer spaces are not inclusive for people of color and women, and many ethnic spaces are not accepting of queer identities, QASAM women often do not feel a sense of belonging in the community and social spaces that already exist. Through survey methods of 50 participants and in-depth interviews from 8 of those survey participants, this study investigates QASAM women’s perceptions of identity, relationships with their families, experiences in their ethnic communities, and experiences in gender/sexuality communities to help understand the strategies QASAM women deploy to build hybrid spaces and communities for themselves. This study provides insight into QASAM women’s community building by analyzing the ways in which they transition between ethnic communities and queer communities, how they create...

The Role of Fulfillment in Undergraduate Learning Assistant Professional Development

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This qualitative study examines the developmental outcomes of Undergraduate Learning Assistants (ULAs) in three STEM departments (Psychology, Statistics, Chemistry) at a large public institution. The purpose is to understand how fulfillment in the ULA role relates to ULAs reported professional development. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews (n=10) revealed fulfillment as a central theme in the ULA experience, based on participants' accounts of sense of purpose, enjoyment, and perceived impact in their role. This sense of fulfillment provided the foundation for professional skill development like communication, confidence, leadership, and networking. Findings highlight the importance of emotional dimensions in shaping professional identity and suggest that peer-instructional programs should be intentionally designed to cultivate connection and meaning for all participants.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Puberty Blockers in Gender-Affirming Care for Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Many claim that puberty suppression is an unsafe and unnecessary treatment for transgender adolescents to leverage support for limiting policies for gender-affirming care. This review establishes an overview of research on puberty blockers to evaluate the treatment’s effectiveness and risks for gender dysphoric adolescents. Studies confirmed the necessity of puberty-blocking treatment after discovering that gender dysphoric individuals who do not receive treatment are significantly more likely to have suicidal ideation compared to individuals who have received treatment. Studies also found that puberty blockers are effective in reaching their desired functions as they lower the need for gender-affirming hormones, slow the development of secondary characteristics, and surpass their expected effective durations. Puberty blockers only posed a few serious risks to the individual's health, mainly a risk to bone health. However, most studies have not been able to define the severity...

Physiological Alcohol Dependence Alters Risk-Taking Behavior in Drosophila melanogaster Larvae

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Alcohol use disorder alters cognition, risk evaluation, and behavior across species. Drosophila melanogaster larvae are innately attracted to ethanol in nature, where moderate concentrations enhance fitness but higher levels increase mortality. Their conserved alcohol tolerance and withdrawal phenotypes make them a tractable model for studying how dependence alters survival-relevant decision-making. We investigated how alcohol dependence and withdrawal impact larval risk-taking using the dig-and-dive assay, where larvae explore agarose chambers under hypoxic conditions guided by odor gradients. We hypothesized that acute ethanol exposure would suppress exploration, while ethanol-dependent larvae in withdrawal would show hyperexcitability characterized by increased surfacing, decreased digging, and similar levels of diving. Canton-S larvae were chronically exposed to 5% ethanol food for six days to establish dependence, then either tested immediately (inebriated group) or after...

Mother and Child: Gender Ambiguity and Fluidity in Ancient Mesoamerica

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper I consider how gender was expressed in ancient Mesoamerican figurines. I focus on a Nayarit figurine (300 BCE-300 CE) from UCSB’s Art, Architecture and Design Museum, considering its physical attributes, physique and clothing in reference to other Mesoamerican sculptures. The artwork’s gender ambiguity reflects a more dynamic role of gender in ancient Mesoamerica; one not confined to biological characteristics but rooted in broader cultural and societal values.

Connecting the Dots: Pinpointing Hotspots of Harmful Algal Blooms on the California Coast and Analyzing the Applicability of Common Mitigation Methods

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are a conglomeration of algal cells that can release toxins that worsen water quality, kill marine life, and ultimately endanger human health. Species of the diatoms in the Pseudo-nitzschia genus, which produce the marine neurotoxin domoic acid, are largely responsible for toxic blooms along the US West Coast. Ocean acidification, increased water temperatures, intensified precipitation unpredictability, and increased water stratification – all caused by global warming – are each linked to increases in domoic acid production in species of Pseudo-nitzschia. In response to HABs, statewide agencies issue advisories against eating certain seafood species and may formally close important commercial and recreational fisheries. These closures can last for months, shortening the fishing season, and costing millions of dollars in revenue or lost days of recreational fishing opportunities. To ease statewide fisheries management and support coastal communities,...

Political Moral Violations on Social Media: How Emotional Responses Shape Political Cynicism

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The rise of social media has fundamentally reshaped the political information environment. Citizens now regularly encounter political content on platforms where messaging is designed to evoke strong emotional reactions that drive virality. This study investigates whether short-form video content depicting moral violations committed by politicians increases political cynicism through the activation of negative emotions (anger, disgust, and outrage). A between-subjects survey experiment was conducted testing whether exposure to a moral violation committed by a politician increases political cynicism via emotional activation. It also examines whether the effect is stronger when the violator is a member of the viewer’s out-party rather than their in-party. Results show that moral violations increased political cynicism through negative emotions. Group identity did not alter the strength of these effects. Given the established association between political cynicism and reduced political...

Husmann and Phylloxera: An Early Window into Napa’s Future

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article recenters Napa Valley's rise by challenging the dominant narrative that defines its history through luxury, refinement, and economic success. Instead, I argue that Napa's transformation in the late nineteenth century can only be understood through an analytic framework that links three histories often examined separately: ecological change, working-class experience, and capitalist consolidation. Using the period between 1880 and 1905 as a critical window, the paper adopts a multispecies, history-from-below approach to show how phylloxera's disruption of grapevines, the social effects of widespread brandy consumption among immigrant laborers, and the creation of exclusive wine cooperatives formed the foundations of Napa's modern identity.Rather than treating environmental issues, public disorder, and business organization as separate developments, this article demonstrates that they worked together as interdependent forces that shaped the region's image, economy, and...

Sustaining Attention with Varying Response Frequencies

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Sustaining attention has shown to be increasingly difficult over time, and it has become important to understand how task demands impact the maintenance of focus on any given task. Sustained attention tasks using both high and low target frequencies have measured declining performance over time. This project investigates, within a single task, how target frequency (high: 90%, low: 10%, intermediate: 50%) impacts different measures of sustained attention performance when subjects continuously monitor for subtle visual targets. As predicted, higher target frequencies showed higher false alarm rates, along with significant increases in participant responding and decreases in response times. Further, increases in target frequency predicted changes in attention, such as increased difficulty distinguishing targets from noise and a more liberal response bias. This suggests that the type of sustained attention task, in respect to target frequency, may influence subjects’ sustained attention....

Psychedelics: Friend or Foe? Perceived Parental Attitudes, Use, and Current Personal Attitudes Toward Classic Hallucinogens

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This project investigates relationships between parental attitudes toward classic hallucinogens (i.e., LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline) during adolescence, frequency of personal hallucinogen use, and current attitudes toward hallucinogens from the perspective of recreational psychedelic users. Previous literature highlights self-reported benefits, spiritual experiences, and less harm in comparison to other substances when reporting on recreational classic hallucinogen use. However, the associations of parental communication and level of familial religious affiliation with current relationships involving hallucinogens have seldom been investigated. 120 participants took a web-based survey on Qualtrics marketed on Prolific regarding the parental communication involving classic hallucinogens during adolescence, first age of use, current frequency of use, and personal attitudes toward legality, medical value, and safety of hallucinogenic substances. In comparison with infrequent hallucinogen...

Surveying Multiethnic Undergraduate Students at UCSB About Ethnic Studies

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into how mixed (multiracial and multiethnic) students at UC Santa Barbara experience, interact with, and perceive Ethnic Studies at the university. We will derive conclusions about how mixed students measure their sense of belonging and representation in Ethnic Studies, as well as gather data on how Ethnic Studies impacts their identity, class participation, and other performances. We hope our findings provide important information on the role that Ethnic Studies plays for multiethnic UCSB students, as well as how campus can potentially be a more inclusive and intersectional space.

Expectations about plant edibility in 6-month-old infants

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Watching what others put in their mouths is a powerful way to learn what to eat. Yet human diets and eating behaviors are complicated, and not everything that goes into another person's mouth is food: The fusilli is edible, but the fork is not. Therefore, some selectivity is necessary to guide social learning processes about food. Here we examined 6-month-old infants' expectations about what kinds of entities are likely to be edible using a violation-of-expectation setup in which infants viewed an actor eating from two different items. We hypothesized that infants may have selective edibility expectations about plants, and in particular fruits, that stem from humans' long evolutionary history of foraging wild plant foods and specialization in higher caloric density plant parts. In Experiment 1 (N = 40), we found that infants expect plants, relative to feature-matched artifacts, to be edible, replicating a previous finding [Wertz & Wynn, 2014a ]. In Experiments 2...

Political Emotions:Undergraduate Experiences and Expressions of Political Grief

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Grief is a complex emotion brought about by both perceived and actual losses that can profoundly shape an individual. In the context of politics, one’s experience, processing, and expression of grief has significant impacts on our understanding of disenfranchised grief and invisible loss. These dynamics affect individuals who experience grief outside the conventional frameworks of recognition, validation, and support. The present study uses in-depth interviews to gain insight into how college students experience and express their grief in relation to politics with those who both share and conflict in values. Findings suggest strong parallels between the experience of political grief and traditional grief while highlighting differences in how individuals navigate these conversations across a political divide. Participants’ willingness to express grief relating to the election with those that disagree with them politically varied depending on their perception of the permanence of...

The Bonds That Ground Us: A Mixed-Methods, Cross-Cultural Exploratory Study on the Psychological Construct “Place Attachment"

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This mixed-methods, cross-cultural exploratory research study investigates the construct of place attachment by integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches across diverse geographic and cultural contexts. Study 1 employed focus groups in the United States, Spain, and Singapore to identify core predictors of emotional bonds to place, including autonomy, psychological security, personal growth, and social belonging. Thematic analyses revealed autonomy in movement, safety, opportunities for self-development, and cultural fit as key factors shaping attachment to meaningful places. Study 2 quantitatively examined these predictors using a Place Attachment Scale and Place Attachment Predictors Scale in a sample of 150 U.S.-based adult participants, stratified by ethnicity and migration background. Results from correlational and regression analyses demonstrated moderate to strong associations between attachment and predictors such as self-sufficiency, cultural belonging, community...

Maize, Ritual, and Resistance: Identifying Nixtamalization at Ancient East St. Louis

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Maize has been a significant part of the North American diet for over 2000 years. Archaeological work has placed the origins of maize in the Midwest Native American diet at c. 900 CE; this timeline is based on the identification of maize kernels and cobs. Since humans began domesticating maize nearly 10,000 years ago, they have invented many ways to cook and process the plant. One of the many ways including a process called nixtamalization, which consists of soaking and boiling maize in a solution to enhance its nutritional value producing foods such as tortillas and hominy. To find evidence of this process, we apply the findings from archaeologists Johnson and Marston (2020) who conducted experimental analysis of nixtamalized maize to our analysis. The objective of this research project is to analyze ceramic samples from the pre-colonial Illinois site of East St Louis (ESTL) to identify the first direct evidence of nixtamalization in the Midwest region. The ceramics were washed...

Artistic Identity in a Material World: Qualities of Kashan Ceramics in 12th Century Iran

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Kashan, Iran’s long-lasting legacy as a major hub of artistic innovation and influence in the Middle East began around the early 12th century. Kashani ceramicists are credited with perfecting the practice of glazed fritware, with unrivaled production at an industrial scale as well as artistic paramount of the medium. UCSB’s AD&A Museum collection contains several Kashani ceramic vessels, allowing us to bear witness to one of the most historically rich regions in the world through the lens of the artisans. However, the vessels in the museum’s collection have very little provenance or research attached to them. The goals of this research are to first build a foundation of knowledge surrounding the creation of this type of vessel, then identify key aspects of the Kashani ceramic pitcher through close visual analysis that link it to other ceramic vessels of the time. In doing so, this allows us to contemplate the significance of these vessels and their influence on other Middle...

Effects of Chronic Sleep Deprivation on Medical Residents’ Patient Outcomes: a Systematic Review

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A systematic literature review was conducted to examine existing studies pertaining to the impacts of chronic sleep deprivation on the quality of patient care delivered by medical residents. Several keyword searches were conducted using Google Scholar, evaluating the first 20 of each search based on established inclusion and exclusion criteria. Analysis of the 7 relevant studies revealed that those utilizing direct clinical evaluations provided the most extensive data. Findings suggested that chronic sleep deprivation impacted the quality of surgical and nonsurgical patient care differently. While impacts on surgical care were largely inconclusive, chronic sleep deprivation appeared to show a negative correlation with the quality of nonsurgical care. These results indicate the need for institutional regulations regarding medical resident working conditions to mitigate performance related effects of chronic sleep deprivation. With residents serving a critical role in the foundations...

Culture and Social Support-Seeking Behaviors

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Although research has shown that social support is a strong buffer against mental illnesses, Asian Americans are one of the least likely ethnic groups to speak out about mental health and seek social support. The present study proposes two mediators - filial piety and perceived parental stigma towards mental health - as possible explanations for why Asian Americans are less likely to seek social support. A total of 340 U.S. undergraduates identifying as Asian American or White answered a writing prompt about a social stressor and questions that measured filial piety, perceived parental stigma, and likelihood of seeking social support. Results showed that Asian Americans were less likely to seek social support, have higher levels of filial piety, and are more likely to perceive greater parental stigma. Both filial piety and perceived parental stigma were significant mediators, but had different effects on the relationship between culture and social support. Higher filial piety...

WHO or WHY: The Roles of Ally Race and Perceived Motivations in the Target Disadvantaged Group's Personal Outcomes

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Past research has demonstrated that the target disadvantaged group’s perception of allyship behaviors differed by ally race (i.e. advantaged vs. disadvantaged group) and perceived allyship motivations (i.e. sincere vs. ulterior). One possible reason behind this different perception was the differentiation of suspicion level toward allies. Consequently, this can lead to different perceivers’ personal outcomes, such as self-esteem and collective action intention. However, past studies often failed to incorporate these variables into a single framework and establish causal relationships between them. Therefore, the current study aims to manipulate ally races and perceived allyship motivations and directly compare their consequential impacts on the target disadvantaged group. In a two-part survey, Black participants first rated their suspicion level toward White (i.e. advantaged group) and Latino people (i.e. disadvantaged group) in general. Two weeks later, the follow-up survey was...

Recentering the Narrative: Political Communication, Indian Women, and Hindu Nationalism

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, India has seen a great shift in its political landscape. Under his rule, the BJP has quickly transformed into a dominant electoral force, drawing on support for the Prime Minister and promoting certain conservative values that echo Hindu Nationalist ideals. To observe and analyze how Modi’s rise to power has impacted other elements of the Indian government and its political communication, this paper analyzes primary sources that specifically relate to women in India. By analyzing differences in annual reports from the National Commission for Women before and after the rise of the current Prime Minister, legal provisions passed after his ascension to power, and other forms of online communication from the Prime Minister to the public, it is evident that the Prime Minister has been able to utilize these avenues of political communication to reconstruct conceptions of progress with his own image and the central government.

The End of Neutrality? LCFS, Technology Neutrality, and Stimulating the Electric Vehicle Market