News Archive

October 11, 2018 — The American Physical Society (APS) recently announced its 2018 fellowship class with a 77 percent increase in the number of women compared to last year’s class. According to the APS, this is the most women elected as fellows since tracking the number of females nominated and elected began in 2015, when just 13 percent of fellows were women.

September 25, 2018 — Like consumers investing in a pair of body-shaping jeans, the National Science Foundation (NSF) invests in basic research and people to mold the future. So, the government agency awarded more than $500,000 to the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to study, for the first time, the exploration of the electronic and magnetic behavior of one-dimensional (1D) metallic chains. In this case, these are ultra-short chains of atoms that can be fabricated using organic molecules called metallo-phthalocyanine (MPc)—flat molecules with a metal atom at the center commonly used in dyes present in the color of blue denim. The findings could lead to the development of new, smaller and faster electronic devices that can be used in computer memories, as well as to promising careers for future scientists.

September 19, 2018 — The words “fly like an eagle” are famously part of a song, but they may also be words that make some scientists scratch their heads. Especially when it comes to soaring birds like eagles, falcons and hawks, who seem to ascend to great heights over hills, canyons and mountain tops with ease. Scientists realize that upward currents of warm air assist the birds in their flight, but they don’t how the birds find and navigate these thermal plumes.

August 20, 2018 — When it comes to fundamental physics, things can get spooky. At least that’s what Albert Einstein said when describing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement—the linkage of particles in such a way that measurements performed on one particle seem to affect the other, even when separated by great distances. “Spooky action at a distance” is how Einstein described what he couldn’t explain.

August 6, 2018 — Early Earth was a hot, gaseous, dusty and dynamic planet with an atmosphere and an ocean. Then its surface cooled and stabilized enough for clouds, landmasses and early life to form about four billion years ago, during what’s called the isotopic age of rocks, or the Archean Period. Atmospheric chemical byproducts from that time traveled through the air and deposited inside the planet’s oldest rock, recording life’s earliest activities like photosynthesis and oxygen production. Sulfur isotopes can serve as tracers of atmospheric oxygen and new data collected from the present-day atmosphere in China by an international team of researchers, led by the University of California San Diego, indicate remarkable similarity to the isotopic footprint found in ancient rocks. This opens up new interpretations of the Archean Period’s sulfur isotope sedimentary signature—a proxy for the origins and evolution of atmospheric oxygen and early life on Earth.

July 23, 2018 — Like small-scale Legos clicking into place, nature autonomously puts together microscopic building blocks. Living systems are biochemical machines that excel at building and moving their parts. Just as machines need energy in some form to operate, living systems are energized by consuming “fuel”—substances or food—reliably. The human body, for example, contracts muscles by the motion of tiny nanomotors—molecular devices that convert energy at the nanoscale scale to generate movement at the macroscale. The ability to mimic nature’s self-assembly would revolutionize science’s approach to synthesizing materials that could heal, contract or reconfigure.

July 16, 2018 — Currently, information-processing tools like computers and cell phones rely on electron charge to operate. A team of UC San Diego physicists, however, seek alternative systems of faster, more energy-efficient signal processing. They do this by using “excitons,” electrically neutral quasiparticles that exist in insulators, semiconductors and in some liquids. And their latest study of excitonic spin dynamics shows functional promise for our future devices.

July 10, 2018 — The stuff the universe is made of. The origins of life. Dreams. Consciousness. Multiple universes. These are among the biggest questions in science. University of California San Diego Professor of Physics Kenneth Intriligator addresses challenging topics like these, and his theoretic efforts gained the attention of the Simons Foundation, which named him one of its 2018 Simons Investigators, announced in the July 10 edition of the “New York Times.”

July 9, 2018 — Many insects and animals have special proteins that act like car antifreeze to prevent ice from forming and spreading in their bodies amidst harsh winter temperatures. Scientists know about these antifreeze proteins (AFPs), but not so much about the mechanisms that make them work. Chemistry researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Utah, however, share new cold facts about AFP function in their July 9 article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their research results could impact a variety of industrial and natural processes, including cloud formation, as well as future scientific studies.

July 6, 2018 — Ceramides—waxy, oily lipid molecules that affect biological function like insulin resistance, gene regulation and tumor suppression—could be applied to new cancer treatments…if only scientists could study them directly in living organisms. Tackling this task with a brand of chemistry that addresses biological challenges, University of California San Diego Professor Neal Devaraj produced research results that confront the limitations of studying ceramides.