Mind-wandering ? or task-unrelated thought ? and the effects of negative stereotyping have long been areas of study for social and cognitive psychologists. Now, a team of researchers has demonstrated that the threat of a negative stereotype increases mind-wandering, which in turn leads to a drop in performance. Their findings appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

     ?Our ongoing efforts are aimed at revealing the causes, characteristics, and consequences of mind-wandering,? said Michael Mrazek, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology, and one of the paper?s lead authors. ?Our research shows that part of the reason stereotype threat can impair performance is because it leads to distraction by thoughts completely unrelated to the task. This provides us with not only a richer understanding of stereotype threat itself, but also new insight into how its effects might be avoided.?

Nanosensors May Light Path to New Cancer Tests and Drugs

     Sensors made from custom DNA molecules could be used to personalize cancer treatments and monitor the quality of stem cells, according to an international team of researchers led by scientists at UCSB and the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

     The new nanosensors can quickly detect a broad class of proteins called transcription factors, which serves as the master control switches of life. The research is described in an article published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

     ?The fate of our cells is controlled by thousands of different proteins, called transcription factors,? said Alexis Vallée-Bélisle, a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry, who led the study. ?The role of these proteins is to read the genome and translate it into instructions for the synthesis of the various molecules that compose the cell. Transcription factors act a little bit like the ?settings? of our cells, just like the settings on our phones or computers. What our sensors do is read those settings.?

$20M Grant from NSF Will Sustain Materials Research

     The Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) has received nearly $20 million in renewed support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue its cutting-edge research and education programs through 2017.

     The MRL is one of the NSF?s Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers, a flagship program that supports a national network of centers.

     ?We are delighted with the renewal, which recognizes our achievements in research and education,? said Craig Hawker, director of the MRL. ?This could not have come about without the dedicated participation of students, faculty, and staff. Competition for these flagship centers is fierce. What sets materials research at UCSB apart is the emphasis on a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment.?

New Technology May Help Identify Prostate Cancer Cells

     A team of researchers has developed a breakthough technology that can be used to discriminate cancerous prostate cells in bodily fluids from those that are healthy. The researchers? findings appeared in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

     While the new technology is years away from use in a clinical setting, the researchers are nonetheless confident that it will be useful in developing a microdevice that will help in understanding when prostate cancer will metastasize, or spread to other parts of the body.

     ?There have been studies to find the relationship between the number of cancer cells in the blood, and the outcome of the disease,? said first author Alessia Pallaoro, postdoctoral fellow in chemistry and biochemistry. ?The higher the number of cancer cells there are in the patient?s blood, the worse the prognosis.?

     The team developed a novel technique to discriminate between cancerous and non-cancerous cells using a type of laser spectroscopy.

     Although the primary tumor does not kill prostate cancer patients, metastasis does, the researchers explained. ?This delay is not well understood,? said Gary Braun, second author and postdoctoral fellow in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. ?There is a big focus on understanding what causes the tumor to shed cells into the blood. If you could catch them all, then you could stop the metastasis. The first thing is to monitor their appearance.?

Scientist Contributes to Discovery of a Planet With Two ?Suns?

     Astrophysicist Avi Shporer is part of the NASA team that has found the first known planet with two ?suns,? an idea popularized by the 1977 movie ?Star Wars.? The discovery was published in a recent issue of the journal Science.

     In the iconic scene from ?Star Wars,? Luke Skywalker gazes into the distance as two suns set on the horizon. This type of planet is called circumbinary, meaning it orbits a binary star system, as opposed to a single star like our sun. Astronomers have been pursuing circumbinary planets for decades.

     The system reported in the Science article is called Kepler-16, because it is the 16th planetary system discovered by NASA?s Kepler space telescope. It is located approximately 220 light years from our sun, near the constellation Cygnus, in the Milky Way galaxy.

     ?It is the combination of the unprecedented precision and the continuous observations from space that allowed the detection of Kepler-16,? said Shporer, who is also a researcher with the UCSB-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network based in Goleta.

For more information on these and other research developments, visit www.ucsb.edu.