News Archive

August 15, 2018 — On July 17, a NOAA-funded team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the University of Delaware discovered the missing 75-foot stern section of USS Abner Read, which sank in 1943 in 290 feet of water off Kiska, one of Alaska's Aleutian islands. Aug. 18 marks the 75th anniversary of the sinking that cost 71 sailors their lives.

August 14, 2018 — A prestigious new ranking has listed the University of California San Diego 15th among the world’s best universities for its award-winning faculty and alumni, as well as producing high-impact and prolific research. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) released its new report of the best universities today, also naming UC San Diego 13th among U.S. colleges and fourth, among the country’s public universities.

August 5, 2018 — New research in climate science indicates that extreme events, such as heat waves, the collapse of major ice sheets, and mass extinctions are becoming dramatically more probable. Though cuts in rising emissions appear unlikely with the stalled 2015 Paris agreement, University of California San Diego scientists argue that new developments present an opportunity to shift the politics around climate change. For the first time, scientists can make a strong case that no one is exempt from the extreme and immediate risks posed by a warming world.

June 18, 2018 — A graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and colleagues from NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered the world’s first known manta ray nursery. Located in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas at NOAA’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, the juvenile manta ray habitat is the first of its kind to be described in a scientific study.

June 13, 2018 — Neglected tropical diseases are a group of chronic and disabling parasitic infections that primarily affect poor and underserved communities. These diseases affect more than 1 billion people globally, yet are rarely the target of new drug discovery efforts. Leveraging its strengths in molecular biology, clinical research and pharmaceutical sciences, the University of California San Diego has now launched a new Center for Anti-Parasitic Drug Discovery and Development to address this unmet need in global health.

May 24, 2018 — Researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Arizona State University found that if a car is parked in the sun on a summer day, the interior temperature can reach 116 degrees F. and the dashboard may exceed 165 degrees F. in approximately one hour — the time it can take for a young child trapped in a car to suffer fatal injuries.

May 23, 2018 — A B-24 D-1 bomber associated with 11 American servicemen missing in action from World War II was recently found and documented in Hansa Bay off Papua New Guinea by Project Recover—a collaborative team of marine scientists, archaeologists and volunteers who have combined efforts to locate aircraft associated with MIAs from WWII.

April 4, 2018 — Researchers including Greg Rouse, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, selected Scripps founding benefactor Ellen Browning Scripps as the namesake of a newly described millimeter-long marine worm found in La Jolla. The team described the species Trilobodrilus ellenscrippsae in the European Journal of Taxonomy issue released April 3.

February 12, 2018 — Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego are using underwater microphones to interpret and characterize the calls of blue whales swimming through Southern California’s oceans, revealing new insights into the behavior of these endangered marine mammals.

February 5, 2018 — The Sun might emit less radiation by mid-century, giving planet Earth a chance to warm a bit more slowly but not halt the trend of human-induced climate change. The cooldown would be the result of what scientists call a grand minimum, a periodic event during which the Sun’s magnetism diminishes, sunspots form infrequently, and less ultraviolet radiation makes it to the surface of the planet. Scientists believe that the event is triggered at irregular intervals by random fluctuations related to the Sun’s magnetic field. A team of scientists led by research physicist Dan Lubin at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego has created for the first time an estimate of how much dimmer the Sun should be when the next minimum takes place.