Science & Environment

Research

The Latest

Crowdsourcing Feature Lets iPhone Users Determine Best Time to Cross U.S. Border

Next time you drive into the United States from Mexico or Canada, you may want to open a new iPhone app and provide an eyewitness account of how long you have to wait. That ‘crowdsourced’ information will then be made instantly available to other motorists and help future border crossers to decide the best time to cross the border by car or truck. This iReport data is meshed with the data on wait times at the border from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to improve the accuracy of the wait times.

Margarita Baggett Elected President of Association of California Nurse Leaders

Margarita Baggett, MSN, BSN, RN, chief nursing officer (CNO) and interim chief operating officer (COO) for UC San Diego Health System has been elected President of the Association of California Nurse Leaders (ACNL), a prestigious statewide organization that advances the art and profession of nursing.

Paul Crutzen, Chemistry, 1995

Paul Crutzen shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with UC San Diego’s Mario Molina and the late F. Sherwood Rowland for their work discovering the damaging effect that use of fertilizers had on Earth’s protective ozone layer. He joined Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1992.

Roger Tsien, Chemistry, 2008

Four years ago, UC San Diego professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry Roger Tsien, won the Nobel Prize for chemistry (with Martin Chalfie and Osamu Shimomura) for their ground-breaking research in developing green fluorescent proteins derived from a bioluminescent jellyfish.

The Quest for a Better Electric Vehicle Battery

As the United States moves toward a switch from gas-powered to electric vehicles, one significant stumbling block remains: the massive batteries needed to run them. The devices remain fairly heavy, costly and slow to charge.

Mario J. Molina, Chemistry, 1995

Mario J. Molina’s move from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to UC San Diego in 2004 provided him with two important advantages: First, he was able to join a world-renowned group of atmospheric scientists that included Paul Crutzen, with whom he shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Second, as the only Mexican-born Nobel laureate in science and one who has become increasingly interested in developing ways to mitigate the air quality problems of major cities around the world, his move to La Jolla put him closer to a science policy center he established in Mexico City.