News Archive

June 7, 2018 — For more than 20 years, Lucero Felicita Camarena felt a dissonance inside, assigned a gender that was incompatible with her internal sense of womanhood. In her experience as a Mexican-American raised by a single mother in Turlock, Calif., Camarena was never exposed to representations of transgender identity. By sharing her story as UC San Diego’s All Campus Commencement student speaker, she hopes to inspire courage in others to channel their truth as a powerful form of social change.

June 7, 2018 — The University of California San Diego ranked 3rd among public research universities in the United States in this year’s annual ranking of high-quality scientific research papers by the journal Nature. In the Nature Index 2018 Annual Tables, the La Jolla campus ranked 12th in the world out of 500 institutions and 6th among U.S. universities in the research results its faculty, students and staff others published in 82 high-quality journals in 2017.

June 6, 2018 — Patients at UC San Diego Health can now read the medical notes signed by their primary care physician. This move toward transparency is part of an international trend to make patients feel more in control of their health care.

June 6, 2018 — Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine discovered that they can block inflammation in mice with a naturally occurring antibody that binds oxidized phospholipids (OxPL), molecules on cell surfaces that get modified by inflammation. Even while on a high-fat diet, the antibody protected the mice from arterial plaque formation, hardening of the arteries and liver disease, and prolonged their lives.

June 6, 2018 — For the second year in a row, the London-based Times Higher Education ranked UC San Diego the world’s number one research university founded during the “golden age” of higher education development, in the two decades between 1945 and 1967—when higher education was characterized by rapid university expansion and increasing investment in research.

June 5, 2018 — Due to a UC-wide speaker boycott called by AFSCME Local 3299, Rep. John Lewis has withdrawn as UC San Diego’s commencement speaker. Leading the ceremony and speaking in his stead will be UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. Commencement is a very special milestone for our students, who have worked very hard to reach graduation and their achievement deserves to be recognized and celebrated appropriately. More details about UC San Diego commencement exercises can be found at commencement.ucsd.edu.

June 1, 2018 — Reporting results from a first-in-human phase I clinical trial, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found that treatment with cirmtuzumab, an experimental monoclonal antibody-based drug, measurably inhibited the “stemness” of chronic lymphocytic leukemia cancer (CLL) cells — their ability to self-renew and resist terminal differentiation and senescence.

June 1, 2018 — Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that a first-in-human phase I clinical trial in which neural stem cells were transplanted into participants with chronic spinal cord injuries produced measurable improvement in three of four subjects, with no serious adverse effects.

May 31, 2018 — To begin to understand the field of plasmonics, picture the rich colors of stained glass windows in Gothic cathedrals; or, the pixelation of a digital photo on a laptop screen. In some way, shape or form these are plasmons on display. Basically, plasmons are traveling waves of rippling electrons that can be excited in plasmas, metals or semiconductors. They lie at the heart of plasmonics. In such systems, plasmons bunch up and spread out as a group, enhancing and manipulating electromagnetic energy and concentrating optical energy beyond the diffraction limit of light. But much of this energy in common materials is quickly lost, or dissipated, as heat. And, while plasmons have found commercial applications in chemical sensors (e.g., common drug-store pregnancy tests), they have not been applied more widely or ambitiously because of high dissipation, which has frustrated scientists—until now.

May 31, 2018 — Rush D. Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the Science family of journals, will speak on campus June 11 on “Becoming an Advocate for Research.”