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.
It was emotional. It was inspirational. It was moving. The University of California San Diego held its All Campus Commencement today, celebrating the graduation of approximately 7,500 graduates from the university.
A team led by researchers at UC San Diego’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and SDSC has used machine learning techniques to develop models for simulations of water with “unprecedented accuracy.” Published online in The Journal of Chemical Physics, the research demonstrates how popular ML techniques can be used to construct predictive molecular models based on quantum mechanical reference data.
For the second year in a row, the London-based Times Higher Education ranked UC San Diego the world’s number one research university founded during the “golden age” of higher education development, in the two decades between 1945 and 1967—when higher education was characterized by rapid university expansion and increasing investment in research.
To begin to understand the field of plasmonics, picture the rich colors of stained glass windows in Gothic cathedrals; or, the pixelation of a digital photo on a laptop screen. In some way, shape or form these are plasmons on display. Basically, plasmons are traveling waves of rippling electrons that can be excited in plasmas, metals or semiconductors. They lie at the heart of plasmonics. In such systems, plasmons bunch up and spread out as a group, enhancing and manipulating electromagnetic energy and concentrating optical energy beyond the diffraction limit of light. But much of this energy in common materials is quickly lost, or dissipated, as heat. And, while plasmons have found commercial applications in chemical sensors (e.g., common drug-store pregnancy tests), they have not been applied more widely or ambitiously because of high dissipation, which has frustrated scientists—until now.
The race is on between new antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria—and scientists are challenged to keep up. By 2050, according to a Wellcome Trust study, deaths from deadly infections will be more common than cancer deaths. Scientists report that currently antimicrobial resistance causes 23,000 deaths annually in the U.S.; 700,000 deaths worldwide. Better methods to treat bacterial infections are urgently needed. So researchers, including a University of California San Diego professor, are gaining ground by demonstrating the first example of an effective gene therapy for deadly bacterial infections.
