News Archive

October 2, 2013 — A team of engineers led by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a new approach that marries computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible. The approach could be used for clinical diagnostics, stem cell characterization and other applications.

October 2, 2013 — Surgeons at UC San Diego Health System have performed the region’s first robotic gastrectomy, a potentially lifesaving procedure to remove a section of the stomach after a diagnosis of gastric cancer. Aided by a da Vinci robot, surgeons remove the diseased tissue, perform a delicate reconstruction and remove local lymph nodes for further testing.

October 2, 2013 — Most of us think of honey bees as having a bucolic, pastoral existence—flying from flower to flower to collect the nectar they then turn into honey. But while they’re capable of defending themselves with their painful stings, honey bees live in a world filled with danger in which predators seize them from the sky and wait to ambush them on flowers. Such fear drives bees to avoid food sources closely associated with predators and, interestingly, makes colonies of bees less risk-tolerant than individual bees, according to a study published in this week’s issue of the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

October 2, 2013 — Despite 50 years of recommendations from U.S. Presidents to end the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, energy policy in the United States remains focused on keeping the price of gasoline cheap today, rather than creating a plan for sustainable energy production. This political stagnation is becoming all the more consequential as our energy use and production continue to detrimentally affect our economy, food supplies, national security and climate.

October 2, 2013 — New research led by an electrical engineer at the University of California, San Diego is aimed at improving lithium-ion batteries through possible new electrode architectures with precise nano-scale designs. The researchers created nanowires that block diffusion of lithium (Li) across their silicon surface and promote layer-by-layer axial lithiation of the nanowire’s germanium core.

October 1, 2013 — A study led by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and recently published online by Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, indicates that women of Mexican descent may not fit that profile. In fact, results suggest that women of Mexican descent with more children and those who breastfeed are more likely to be diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.

September 30, 2013 — A team from UC San Diego is launching a new course on the Coursera online learning network that breaks ground on several fronts.

September 26, 2013 — A consortium of the five University of California medical campuses at UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC San Francisco has been designated a Center for Accelerated Innovations by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The designation recognizes the University of California’s potential to translate its leading-edge discoveries into innovative products that benefit patients.

September 26, 2013 — Species living in rain forest fragments could be far more likely to disappear than previously assumed, according to an international team of scientists that included biologists at the University of California, San Diego.

September 26, 2013 — Three research organizations at the University of California, San Diego, have been awarded a multi-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to build an end-to-end cyberinfrastructure to perform real-time data-driven assessment, simulation, prediction, and visualization of wildfire behavior.