University of California, Santa Barbara

About: University of California, Santa Barbara is a education organization based out in Santa Barbara, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Galaxy. The organization has 30281 authors who have published 80852 publications receiving 4626827 citations. The organization is also known as: UC Santa Barbara & UCSB.

The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention.

Abstract: People have a basic need to maintain the integrity of the self, a global sense of personal adequacy. Events that threaten self-integrity arouse stress and self-protective defenses that can hamper performance and growth. However, an intervention known as self-affirmation can curb these negative outcomes. Self-affirmation interventions typically have people write about core personal values. The interventions bring about a more expansive view of the self and its resources, weakening the implications of a threat for personal integrity. Timely affirmations have been shown to improve education, health, and relationship outcomes, with benefits that sometimes persist for months and years. Like other interventions and experiences, self-affirmations can have lasting benefits when they touch off a cycle of adaptive potential, a positive feedback loop between the self-system and the social system that propagates adaptive outcomes over time. The present review highlights both connections with other disciplines and lessons for a social psychological understanding of intervention and change.

Controlled production of aligned-nanotube bundles

Abstract: Carbon nanotubes1, 2 might be usefully employed in nanometre-scale engineering and electronics. Electrical conductivity measurements on the bulk material3, 4, on individual multi-walled5, 6 and single-walled7 nanotubes and on bundles of single-walled nanotubes8, 9 have revealed that they may behave as metallic, insulating or semiconducting nanowires, depending on the method of production—which controls the degree of graphitization, the helicity and the diameter. Measurements of Young's modulus show10 that single nanotubes are stiffer than commercial carbon fibres. Methods commonly used to generate nanotubes—carbon-arc discharge techniques1, 2, 4, catalytic pyrolysis of hydrocarbons11, 12 and condensed-phase electrolysis13, 14—generally suffer from the drawbacks that polyhedral particles are also formed and that the dimensions of the nanotubes are highly variable. Here we describe a method for generating aligned carbon nanotubes by pyrolysis of 2-amino-4,6-dichloro-s-triazine over thin films of a cobalt catalyst patterned on a silica substrate by laser etching. The use of a patterned catalyst apparently encourages the formation of aligned nanotubes. The method offers control over length (up to about 50 mum) and fairly uniform diameters (30–50 nm), as well as producing nanotubes in high yield, uncontaminated by polyhedral particles.

Role of particle size in phagocytosis of polymeric microspheres.

Abstract: Purpose Polymeric microspheres are extensively researched for applications in drug and vaccine delivery. However, upon administration into the body, microspheres are primarily cleared via phagocytosis by macrophages. Although numerous studies have reported on the biochemical pathways of phagocytosis, relatively little is known about the dependence of phagocytosis on particle size. Here, we investigate the previously unexplained dependence of phagocytosis on particle size.

The mTOR pathway is regulated by polycystin-1, and its inhibition reverses renal cystogenesis in polycystic kidney disease.

Abstract: Autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is a common genetic disorder that frequently leads to renal failure. Mutations in polycystin-1 (PC1) underlie most cases of ADPKD, but the function of PC1 has remained poorly understood. No preventive treatment for this disease is available. Here, we show that the cytoplasmic tail of PC1 interacts with tuberin, and the mTOR pathway is inappropriately activated in cyst-lining epithelial cells in human ADPKD patients and mouse models. Rapamycin, an inhibitor of mTOR, is highly effective in reducing renal cystogenesis in two independent mouse models of PKD. Treatment of human ADPKD transplant-recipient patients with rapamycin results in a significant reduction in native polycystic kidney size. These results indicate that PC1 has an important function in the regulation of the mTOR pathway and that this pathway provides a target for medical therapy of ADPKD.