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.
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.
UC San Diego announced its first eight proof-of-concept awards to advance university inventions to commercial impact. Funded through the new “Accelerating Innovations to Market (AIM)” program, these milestone-driven projects are designed to de-risk early-stage technologies.
Biologists at UC San Diego have provided the first evidence that a widely used pesticide can significantly impair the ability of otherwise healthy honey bees to fly. The study, which employed a specially constructed bee “flight mill,” raises concerns about how pesticides affect the honey bees’ capacity to pollinate and long-term effects on the health of honey bee colonies.
Nanoengineering professor Liangfang Zhang at the University of California San Diego has been selected as the U.S. nominee for the APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE). Zhang won the nomination for his revolutionary work in the field of nanomedicine, which focuses on nanomaterials for medical applications.
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