News Archive

February 8, 2019 — Combining the biomolecules DNA and RNA, UC San Diego’s Thomas Hermann and his graduate students Alba Monferrer and Douglas Zhang created robust modules that facilitate the self-assembly of polygonal nanoshapes—really tiny triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons measured at the nanometer scale.

January 30, 2019 — Organic compounds from perfume, food, fabrics and soaps coat indoor surfaces. The film commonly found in our homes can impact the air we breathe and our health. Yet the details of how these compounds interact microscopically with indoor surfaces are not fully known. Researchers are learning more.

November 9, 2018 — An organic chemist who specializes in synthesis, catalysis and developing experimental methods, Valerie Schmidt, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego, recently published an article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society outlining her team’s work on developing a new, low-cost method for chemical syntheses involving the use of ammonia.

November 7, 2018 — After eight years of study, a team of researchers from the University of California San Diego and Johns Hopkins University published new findings about how to read the body’s histone code in the Nov. 7 issue of Science Advances. The findings answer a key question in the dynamic research area of epigenetics—adding chemical tags to DNA and histone proteins to alter cell functions without changing DNA sequence. Understanding the fundamental principles of how epigenetic information is transduced in the cell eventually could lead to developing new drugs for fighting diseases like cancer.

October 16, 2018 — A consortium of nine University of California (UC), including UC San Diego, and 15 California State University (CSU) campuses recently received a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to dramatically increase diversity in physics and astronomy through the Cal-Bridge program. Launched four years ago, Cal-Bridge creates a pathway for underrepresented minority (URM) students from multiple CSU campuses to attend PhD programs in physics and astronomy at UCs across the state. The new NSF grant allows Cal-Bridge to expand from about a dozen URM scholars per year, to as many as 50 statewide, who will benefit from substantial financial support, research opportunities and various workshops.

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.