Blasting aboard space shuttle Challenger in 1983 to become the first American woman—and at age 32, the youngest American in space—the late Sally Ride captured the nation’s imagination by breaking barriers. Her legacy also includes inspiring generations of students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) through Sally Ride Science, a science education company she co-founded in 2001
“Innovation can be defined as bringing together people with ideas that meet a need in society or the marketplace,” says Paul Roben, associate vice chancellor for research at UC San Diego and head of the newly created Office of Innovation and Commercialization (OIC).
Virtual reality has become a lightning rod, with opinions split on the substance and relevance of its future applications. UC San Diego’s recent “Future of Virtual Reality” conference demonstrated that this technology has far-reaching potential—not only in the realm of gaming, but in fields like archaeology and medicine as well.
Donald Walter Wilkie, director of the Scripps Aquarium-Museum from 1965-1993 and founding director of the Stephen Birch Aquarium-Museum (now known as Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego), died on October 5, 2015, in San Diego. He was 84 years old.
Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that bacteria—often viewed as lowly, solitary creatures—are actually quite sophisticated in their social interactions and communicate with one another through similar electrical signaling mechanisms as neurons in the human brain. In a study published in this week’s advance online publication of Nature, the scientists detail the manner by which bacteria living in communities communicate with one another electrically through proteins called “ion channels.”
A UC San Diego study of the underground “architecture” of harvester ant nests has found that the more connected the chambers an ant colony builds near the surface entrance, the faster the ants are able to collect nearby sources of food. The reason is simple: Increased connectivity among chambers leads to more social interactions among the ants within the nest. So when one group of ants within a colony—comprised of individuals working toward a common goal—finds a particularly good source of food, it’s able to more quickly communicate that finding to the rest of the colony.
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