News Archive

December 6, 2018 — From kryptonite for Superman to plant toxins for Poison Ivy, chemical reactions within the body’s cells can be transformative. And, when it comes to transmuting cells, UC San Diego researchers are becoming superhero-like copycats.

November 15, 2018 — To make today’s laptop computers and cell phones function as efficiently and effectively as a child’s brain requires a massive amount of power—on the scale of a nuclear reactor.

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 8, 2018 — Eugene Field’s classic children’s poem "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" tells the tale of three child-sailors fishing from a wooden-shoe boat under the stars. In the bedtime poem, the young sailors represent the sleepy facial and head movements of children on the verge of dreamland—blinking eyes and nodding heads. Similar face and head movements noticed in mammals as they breathe and rummage for food is the subject of a $15-million study supported by the National Institutes of Health.

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.

November 1, 2018 — As a scientist who observes distant galaxies and black holes both far and near, Shelley Wright noticed an important gap in space—right on the grounds of the University of California San Diego. A proponent of teaching and training students through the observation of the night sky, Wright realized that it was time the university featured its own portable planetarium.

November 1, 2018 — The Hawaiian Supreme Court ruled Oct. 30 to support the construction permit of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea. According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the telescope would be the biggest and most expensive in the Northern Hemisphere. It would also be one of three huge prospective telescopes that could transform astronomy in the 21st century. UC San Diego astrophysicist Shelley Wright is the Project Scientist for TMT’s first light instrument, IRIS.

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.