News Archive

May 16, 2018 — Undergraduate students from UC San Diego designed and built an extremely affordable solar-powered lantern to provide not only light, but a source of income to a partner village in the Philippines. Their engineering and business savvy earned them the top spot in the Energy and Resources category at the Big Ideas social innovation competition at UC Berkeley, a third place finish at Booz Allen Hamilton’s Ideas Festival, and a spot at the Clinton Global Initiative University.

May 16, 2018 — A UC San Diego-led team has identified a gene that helps prevent the harmful buildup of proteins that can lead to neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. As published in Nature, the researchers found that the “Ankrd16” gene acts like a failsafe in proofreading and correcting errors to avoid the abnormal production of improper proteins.

May 16, 2018 — The Gary and Mary West Emergency Department at UC San Diego Health in La Jolla has been accredited as a geriatric emergency department by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). The accreditation is the first of its kind and is part of an effort to improve the quality and standards of emergency care provided to the nation’s older patients.

May 15, 2018 — Using new analytic tools, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have decoded the epigenetic landscape for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a common autoimmune disease that affects more than 1.3 million Americans.

May 14, 2018 — From a gripper equipped with gecko-inspired adhesives, to artificial muscles and robotic joints, to talks on human-robot interaction and health care robotics, the University of California San Diego will have a strong presence at the 2018 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 21 to 25 in Brisbane, Australia.

May 14, 2018 — UC San Diego scientists have unraveled a decades-long mystery on how genes are activated. Until activated, human genes are blocked by structures known as nucleosomes, components that serve to package DNA inside cells. Scientists have been trying to determine how these nucleosome roadblocks clear out to allow genes to be turned on. Now, a team of scientists has identified a key factor that partially unravels nucleosomes and clears the way for genes to activate. The identification of “NDF,” or nucleosome destabilizing factor, is described May 14 in the journal Genes & Development. The researchers say the finding provides a new perspective on how genes are turned on and off—knowledge useful in the study of human diseases such as cancer, which can be caused by improper gene activity.

May 10, 2018 — The congressman from Georgia’s high ethical standards and moral principles have won him the admiration of many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the United States Congress. As a devoted advocate of nonviolent activism, he’s inspired millions of Americans. And as UC San Diego’s 2018 All Campus Commencement speaker, he will address thousands of graduating students and campus community members at 9 a.m. on June 16 at RIMAC in what will undoubtedly be a historical milestone for the campus.

May 10, 2018 — UC San Diego physicist Massimo Vergassola, physics graduate student Gautam Reddy and the lab group of Venkatesh Murthy at Harvard explain their research in a paper titled, "Antagonism in olfactory receptor neurons and its implications for the perception of odor mixtures,” published April 24 in “eLife.” The study bears implications for future olfactory research since it recognizes a new way to analyze olfaction, which also applies to other sensory processes in the brain.

May 10, 2018 — In December 2017, the U.S. Postal Service announced that Sally Ride would be commemorated on a Forever stamp in 2018 along with other icons including rock ‘n’ roll hero John Lennon; legendary singer and actress Lena Horne; and beloved children’s television host Fred Rogers.

May 10, 2018 — That’s the goal of the All of Us Research Program, which officially opened for public enrollment this week. Led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), All of Us is an unprecedented effort to gather genetic, biological, environmental, health and lifestyle data from 1 million or more volunteer participants living in the United States. A major component of the federal Precision Medicine Initiative, the program’s ultimate goal is to accelerate research and improve health.