A team of scientists from UC San Diego and two other universities has received a five year, $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to unravel the fundamental properties of melanins, a family of natural pigments found in skin, hair, eyes and even the plumage of brightly colored birds.
Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet’s red soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would just need to apply pressure to compact the soil—the equivalent of a blow from a hammer. These are the findings of a study published in Nature Scientific Reports on April 27, 2017. The study was authored by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and funded by NASA.
An estimated 70 billion pounds of food is wasted in the U.S. each year, yet recent statistics show that 42.2 million Americans live in food insecure households, including 13.1 million children. So how do we get nutritious food that would go into the trash to individuals and families who need it most? The answer is food sustainability, which was the center of one of the dynamic Earth Month events held on campus April 18.
Zero waste by 2020—that’s one of the goals of the UC Office of the President’s Sustainability Practices Policy for all UC campuses. Several students at UC San Diego’s Student Sustainability Collective (SSC) are working to make that a reality.
On April 22, tens of thousands of people around the world — scientists and non-scientists alike — marched through the streets of Washington, D.C., San Diego and more than 600 other cities to celebrate science and encourage environmental protection, science literacy, evidenced-based policies and strong federal research funding. Hundreds of UC San Diego community members took part around the world, some even “marching” underwater and on a research vessel off the coast of San Diego.
As point person for San Diego’s Cleantech Initiative, UC San Diego alumnus Jacques Chirazi has steered city’s strides in sustainability
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