News Archive

December 2, 2015 — Wine, beer and yogurt are produced when microorganisms convert sugar into alcohol, gases or acids. But this process of fermentation—which is used by bacteria, fungi and other fast-growing cells to generate energy in the absence of oxygen—is a much less efficient way of generating energy for cells than aerobic respiration. So why do many organisms use this seemingly wasteful strategy to generate energy instead of aerobic respiration, even when oxygen is readily available?

November 25, 2015 — UC San Diego Launches CORE A set of best practices will guide Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and researchers in the design and review of studies that use social media, self-tracking devices and other mobile technologies.to Foster Ethical Research Using Personal Health Data

November 23, 2015 — Using a groundbreaking gene editing technique, biologists at UC San Diego, working in collaboration with biologists at UC Irvine, have created a strain of mosquitoes capable of rapidly introducing malaria-blocking genes into a mosquito population through its progeny, ultimately eliminating the insects’ ability to transmit the disease to humans.

November 17, 2015 — The San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, is a recipient of this year’s HPCwire and Editors’ Choice Awards for its new Comet supercomputer that entered production earlier this year as a result of a National Science Foundation grant worth nearly $24 million including hardware and operating funds.

November 12, 2015 — Just six months after coming online, Comet, the new petascale supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, is already blazing new paths of discovery, thanks in part to its role as a primary resource for an assortment of science gateways that provide scientists across many research domains with easy access to its computing power.

November 5, 2015 — The recently formed Office of Innovation & Commercialization (OIC), a division of the Office of Research Affairs, is announcing the Open-Flow Innovation program, a new business-friendly approach to rapidly license technologies to new start-up companies.

November 5, 2015 — The Healthy Aging Initiative (HAI), a campus-wide effort to investigate and address the diverse challenges and needs of the nation’s aging population, has announced its inaugural research and education seed grants to seven University of California, San Diego faculty members

October 21, 2015 — Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that bacteria—often viewed as lowly, solitary creatures—are actually quite sophisticated in their social interactions and communicate with one another through similar electrical signaling mechanisms as neurons in the human brain. In a study published in this week’s advance online publication of Nature, the scientists detail the manner by which bacteria living in communities communicate with one another electrically through proteins called “ion channels.”

October 20, 2015 — A UC San Diego study of the underground “architecture” of harvester ant nests has found that the more connected the chambers an ant colony builds near the surface entrance, the faster the ants are able to collect nearby sources of food. The reason is simple: Increased connectivity among chambers leads to more social interactions among the ants within the nest. So when one group of ants within a colony—comprised of individuals working toward a common goal—finds a particularly good source of food, it’s able to more quickly communicate that finding to the rest of the colony.

October 20, 2015 — Cisplatin is part of the chemotherapy treatment programs for many of the most common types of cancer. This important drug has now been shown to play an unexpected role in blocking one of the pathways most commonly involved in driving the growth of cancers, according to a recent study by researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) as well as the university’s Moores Cancer Center and Department of Neurosciences.