Technology & Engineering

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The Latest

High Vinculin Levels Help Keep Aging Fruit Fly Hearts Young

A new discovery in how heart muscles maintain their shape in fruit flies sheds light on the crucial relationship between cardiac function, metabolism, and longevity. Researchers from the University of California San Diego discovered that maintaining high levels of the protein vinculin—which sticks heart muscle cells to one another—confers health benefits to fruit flies. Their work shows that fruit flies bred to produce 50 percent more vinculin enjoyed better cardiovascular health and lived a third of their average life span longer.

What’s Causing the Voltage Fade in Lithium-rich NMC Cathode Materials?

Researchers led by a University of California San Diego team have published work in the journal Nature Energy that explains what’s causing the performance-reducing “voltage fade” that currently plagues a promising class of cathode materials called Lithium-rich NMC (nickel magnesium cobalt) layered oxides.

Physicists Practice ‘Spin Control’ to Improve Information Processing

Currently, information-processing tools like computers and cell phones rely on electron charge to operate. A team of UC San Diego physicists, however, seek alternative systems of faster, more energy-efficient signal processing. They do this by using “excitons,” electrically neutral quasiparticles that exist in insulators, semiconductors and in some liquids. And their latest study of excitonic spin dynamics shows functional promise for our future devices.

UC San Diego Partners with Warner Bros. to Celebrate Iconic Film at Comic-Con

Fifty years ago, the film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote it with futurist Arthur C. Clarke, changed the world. The groundbreaking cinematic revolution offered a visionary view of the future and of humankind’s place in the cosmos. The film inspired numerous changes in science, technology and art—demonstrating the lasting impact of its ingenuity and artistry.

UC San Diego’s ‘Proof-of-Concept’ Awards Move Campus Health Innovations to Market

Nine teams of UC San Diego students, faculty and other researchers who have developed novel innovations that could improve various aspects of health care, have been awarded proof-of-concept awards designed to help bring their campus inventions to commercial use.

Scientists ID Protein Exploited by Virus Ravaging West Africa

New research has uncovered a protein that enables the replication of arenaviruses, lethal pathogens spreading in West Africa. The research identified DDX3 as a key factor through its unexpected ability to dismantle normal human immune system defenses. The study may pave the way to new therapeutic treatments for arenaviruses and hemorrhagic fever.