Science & Environment

Moderate Levels of ‘Free Radicals’ Found Beneficial to Healing Wounds

Long assumed to be destructive to tissues and cells, “free radicals” generated by the cell’s mitochondria—the energy producing structures in the cell—are actually beneficial to healing wounds. That’s the conclusion of biologists at UC San Diego who discovered that “reactive oxygen species”—chemically reactive molecules containing oxygen, such as peroxides, commonly referred to as free radicals—are necessary for the proper healing of skin wounds in the laboratory roundworm C. elegans.

Students, Faculty Celebrate Women in Computing

Nearly 40 students from the University of California, San Diego – most of them affiliated with the university’s chapter of Women in Computing – attended the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing Oct. 8-10 in Phoenix, AZ. For two of the undergraduates majoring in computer science, it was also an opportunity to showcase research projects in the area of sketch recognition.

Big Data Sharing for Better Health

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have been awarded a $9.2 million grant to help modernize and transform how researchers share, use, find and cite biomedical datasets.

NIH Awards New National Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge

Computer science, engineering, statistical and biomedical researchers from 11 universities will spend the next four years developing innovative tools to make it easier to gather, analyze and interpret health data generated by mobile and wearable sensors. The Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) team, led by University of Memphis computer scientist Santosh Kumar, will receive $10.8 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop novel big-data solutions for reliably quantifying physical, biological, behavioral, social, and environmental factors that contribute to health and disease risk.

Researchers Unfold New Details About a Powerful Protein

Using X-rays and neutron beams, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, University of Utah and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have teased out new information about Protein Kinase A (PKA), a ubiquitous master switch that helps regulate fundamental cellular functions like energy consumption and interactions with hormones, neurotransmitters and drugs.

Pharmaceutical Companies to Share Data for Drug Design via New UC San Diego-Led Resource

Pharmaceutical companies will collaborate with researchers at the University of California, San Diego to provide previously unreleased proprietary data for drug discovery through a new $3.7 million effort funded by the National Institutes for Health. The project, which is led by UC San Diego principal investigators Rommie Amaro, Victoria Feher and Dr. Michael K. Gilson, includes a major subcontract to Rutgers University, directed by Dr. Stephen K. Burley of the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank.