Light can trigger coordinated, wavelike motions of atoms in atom-thin layers of crystal, scientists have shown. The waves, called phonon polaritons, are far shorter than light waves and can be "tuned" to particular frequencies and amplitudes by varying the number of layers of crystal, they report in the early online edition of Science March 7.
Painter and sculptor Ernest Silva, professor emeritus of visual arts at UC San Diego, died on Feb. 24. He was 65. Silva joined the faculty in 1979 and retired in 2013.
Sneha Jayaprakash, a sophomore at UC San Diego, is passionate about two things: computer science and social change. As part of the 2013 Microsoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change contest, she developed a winning proposal for a mobile app to engage students with volunteerism and social issues—and received a prize of $2,500 to get the project going. Now, with an additional $10,000 awarded by the Microsoft Imagine Fund last month, Jayaprakash is getting the opportunity to turn her idea into a successful startup.
After all the work they put into the online course they inaugurated in the fall, Pavel Pevzner, a professor of computer science and engineering, and instructors Phillip Compeau and Nikolay Vyahhi have concrete evidence that it was a success even beyond the impressive number of people who signed up for the course – more than 30,000 in all.
A year ago the Explorers Club recognized director James Cameron with its coveted Explorers Medal during its annual dinner in New York City. The organization honored the famed director not for movie making but for his historic dive to the deepest point on the planet, an expedition in which Cameron relied heavily on the scientific and engineering expertise at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
The new collaborative research agreement between Human Longevity Inc. (HLI) and the University of California, San Diego, announced today, represents a significant and necessary step in efforts to research and translate the potential of the human genome into novel and real treatments and therapies able to change and improve the human condition.