Wounds heal – the cells in a body knit over a cut. When a neuron dies, the brain can rewire itself to make up for the loss. And now, new research suggests, something similar seems to happen within a human social network after the death of a friend. Published in Nature Human Behavior, the study of 15,000 anonymized networks on Facebook was led by social scientist, alumnus William Hobbs.
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the largest maritime oil spill in U.S. history. Almost seven years to the day after the start of the environmental disaster, researchers have published a price tag of the damage done to natural resources: $17.2 billion.
Somewhere in the at-risk ruins of Khirbat en-Nahas in the Faynan region of southern Jordan lie untold stories of copper mining and smelting industries from the time of David and Solomon and the Edomite kings. Stories that, until now, could only be told in words, maps and photographs. Thanks to UC San Diego engineering and archaeology students that teamed up for the world’s first cyber-archaeology hackathon, the story of King Solomon’s copper mines now exists in virtual reality.
As David Gubser started to revise his will, he began to think of the causes that meant most to him. In the wake of the hate-based shootings that occurred last year at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub with a largely gay clientele, Gubser resolved to offer support to local LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) programs. Among his plans, he established a $200,000 endowment through his estate that will support scholarships for LGBT students as well as Critical Gender Studies majors at UC San Diego.
Rock star drummer Rikki Rockett feels very lucky to be on tour with his band, Poison. A year ago, he didn’t know if he would survive tongue cancer but after participating in an immunotherapy clinical trial at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health, he was declared cancer-free in July 2016. To give back, Rockett is now asking concert-goers to join him in supporting immunotherapy at Moores Cancer Center.
By applying a novel computer algorithm to closely mimic how the brain learns, a team of researchers – with the aid of the Comet supercomputer based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego – has identified and replicated neural circuitry that resembles the way an unimpaired brain controls limb movement.
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