News Archive

December 13, 2017 — On behalf of collaborators at institutions world-wide, UC San Diego recently signed a contract for the design and construction of a state-of-the-art millimeter wave telescope for the Simons Observatory. The telescope is the first of several which will be located in the high Atacama Desert of Northern Chile in 2020. At an elevation of 5,200 meters—or 17,000 feet—above sea level, it’s an ideal location to survey the universe. As part of the Simons Observatory team of researchers from 35 member institutions, UC San Diego Department of Physics’ Professor Brian Keating and Assistant Professor Kam Arnold will have access to this instrument to study Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

December 13, 2017 — How sensitive is the human sense of touch? Sensitive enough to feel the difference between surfaces that differ by just a single layer of molecules, a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has shown.

December 13, 2017 — UC San Diego Health recognized with top scores for providing high-quality care to Medicare Advantage patients by the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA), a statewide nonprofit group committed to high-value, integrated care that improves quality and affordability for patients across California and the nation.

December 12, 2017 — Computer scientists have built and successfully tested a tool designed to detect when websites are hacked by monitoring the activity of email accounts associated with them. The researchers were surprised to find that almost 1 percent of the websites they tested had suffered a data breach during their 18-month study period, regardless of how big the companies' reach and audience are.

December 11, 2017 — In remote Italian villages nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and mountains lives a group of several hundred citizens over the age of 90. Researchers at the University of Rome La Sapienza and University of California San Diego School of Medicine have identified common psychological traits in members of this group.

December 11, 2017 — Rare stem-like tumor cells play a critical role in the spread of breast cancer, but a vulnerability in the pathway that powers them offers a strategy to target these cells using existing drugs before metastatic disease occurs, report University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center researchers.

December 11, 2017 — Three computer scientists at UC San Diego -- Ravi Ramamoorthi, Alexander Vardy and Geoffrey M. Voelker -- have been elected Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's largest educational and scientific computing society.

December 11, 2017 — Researchers have developed new single-cell sequencing methods that could be used to map the cell origins of various brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. By analyzing individual nuclei of cells from adult human brains, researchers have identified 35 different subtypes of neurons and glial cells and discovered which of these subtypes are most susceptible to common risk factors for different brain diseases.

December 11, 2017 — Researchers have identified a promising new strategy to fight infections and cancer. They uncovered a novel function for a protein known as “Runx3” that is key to the development of killer T cells—immune cells important for fighting infections and cancer. The researchers believe Runx3, if properly directed, could be combined with other approaches to help T cells recognize and destroy tumor cells and enhance vaccine efficacy.

December 11, 2017 — Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found a genetic signature for delay discounting — the tendency to undervalue future rewards — that overlaps with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), smoking and weight.