People Trying to Reduce Air Pollution Might Be Inhaling Even More Pollution

the Atlantic | December 26, 2012

Well, how's this for a kick in the Pearl Izumi thermal tights: Bicycling to work might help reduce your carbon footprint, but may also be terrible for your heath.That's the frustrating word from a team of scientists at the University of California, San Diego, who are testing out the crowdsourcing of air-pollution monitoring. The researchers gave smartphones that sense pollution to 30 study participants, and then tracked their environmental data feeds for a month. Full Story

DEVICE PUTS AIR QUALITY TESTING WITHIN REACH

U~T San Diego | December 24, 2012

Checking whether the air you?re breathing is dirty is likely to become yet another thing you can do with a cellphone.The University of California San Diego has developed CitiSense, an experimental tool that detects and measures a handful of pollutants and wirelessly sends the readings to Android phones. Full Story

Building the Environmental Big Picture from Personal Air-Quality Monitors

Spectrum IEEE | December 21, 2012

Okay, that may be taking it a bit far. But it is undeniably true that expanding knowledge often uncovers the bad along with the good.Case in point: the San Diego-based developers of mobile, Web-linked environmental sensors found in a pilot study that ?The people who are doing the most to reduce emissions, by biking or taking the bus, were the people who experienced the highest levels of exposure to pollutants.? Full Story

Portable sensor lets users monitor air pollution on their smartphone

Gizmag | December 19, 2012

Air quality is one of those things that many of us should be more concerned about, but aren?t. According to some people, this is because we?re not easily able to know how clean the air around us really is ? we just assume it?s ?clean enough.? Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have set out to change that. They?re developing a compact, portable air pollution sensor that communicates with the user?s smartphone... Full Story

Study: Infant Formula Causes Cell Death Where Breast Milk Does Not

the Atlantic | December 11, 2012

PROBLEM: An often fatal intestinal disease, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) disproportionally targets premature infants -- particularly those that are given formula instead of being breastfed. While the correlation between formula and NEC has long been known, the causation remains elusive. Full Story

Infant Formula Causes Cell Death Where Breast Milk Does Not

the Atlantic | December 11, 2012

An often fatal intestinal disease, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) disproportionally targets premature infants -- particularly those that are given formula instead of being breastfed. While the correlation between formula and NEC has long been known, the causation remains elusive. Full Story

Formula 'may contribute' to intestinal condition in premature infants

Dairy Reporter | December 11, 2012

Premature infants fed formula are more likely to develop necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) - a sever, often fatal intestinal condition - then those who are breast-fed, a US study has found. Full Story

Sensors with a smile: The smart 'tattoo' that can measure how tired you are

Daily Mail | December 7, 2012

Medical sensors concealed within temporary tattoos could be used by coaches to fine-tune their athletes' training, a new study claims.Researchers at University of California San Diego invented the sensor, which comes in a thin flexible transfer adorned with a cheerful smiley-face design. Full Story

Tattoo-based medical sensor puts a happy face on detecting metabolic problems

Gizmag | December 5, 2012

Next time you see an adult with a stick-on tattoo, don?t laugh ? that person might have a metabolic problem, or they could be a high-performing athlete who?s getting their training schedule fine-tuned. No, really. A team lead by Dr. Joseph Wang at the University of California, San Diego, has created a thin, flexible metabolic sensor that is applied to the skin ... and it takes the form of a smiley-face tattoo. Full Story

UC San Diego Engineers Try To Redesign Heart Pump

KPBS | November 13, 2012

The Berlin Heart is an external pump for children who have a malfunctioning heart. It buys kids some time for either their heart to recover, or until a donated organ is found. The device can be a lifesaver, but it has some serious flaws. Mechanical engineers at UC San Diego are trying to come up with a better design. Full Story

Reflective Pavement May Heat Nearby Buildings

KPBS | November 12, 2012

Light reflective pavements may be good at keeping heat from soaking into a city's landscape, but they may also have an unwanted impacts on nearby buildings. It works, but UC San Diego researcher Jan Kleissl said the so-called cooler pavement also has an unintended impact. Full Story

New Reflective Pavements Increase Building Temperatures and Electricity Bills

Green Optimistic | November 9, 2012

According to the authors, the new materials lower the temperature of the place where they are used. Jan Kleissl, one of the researchers and a professor of environmental engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, states that the benefits of reflective pavements should be studied further. Full Story

Pavements Created To Fight Climate Change May Increase Energy Consumption For Surrounding Buildings

Red Orbit | November 8, 2012

A push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate. Full Story

Cool pavements, warm buildings, rising electricity bills

Science Codex | November 8, 2012

push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate. Full Story

UCSD cuts science majors to manage growth

U~T San Diego | November 6, 2012

New figures show the University of California San Diego successfully managed to reduce the number of undergraduates majoring in biology, a field that was so over-subscribed that many students struggled to get all of the classes they needed.The campus says that 3,781 undergraduates were majoring in biology in October 2012, down from 5,294 in October 2008. Full Story

Hear NASA talk about rover's wild Mars landing

U~T San Diego | November 1, 2012

Schratz will relive the thrill of the landing on Friday, Nov. 2, when he gives a public talk at noon at the new Structural and Materials Engineering building at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering. The talk is free, but get there early. A lot of students are likely to turn out. Full Story

San Diego's drone industry doubles in size

U~T San Diego | October 31, 2012

The size of San Diego County?s unmanned aerial vehicle industry doubled over the past five years and could double again as UAVs are increasingly used for everything from spying on suspected terrorists abroad to monitoring the U.S.-Mexico border, says a National University System report released Wednesday. Full Story

You're being stalked by cyber criminals

U~T San Diego | October 28, 2012

You're being stalked.Cyber criminals are forever looking for ways to hack businesses, government and personal computers in hopes of stealing valuable information, or to make you spend money to fix the damage they've done by infecting machines with a virus. Full Story

Gleaning Clues on Sunny Days From the Clouds

New York Times.com | October 23, 2012

CARLOS F. COIMBRA knew from the outset that he would have to crack the code of clouds. As an engineering professor new to the University of California's campus in Merced, he led a successful drive to get 15 percent of the school's power from an array of solar panels. But clouds, wandering and capricious, had foiled his efforts on two occasions by casting sudden shadows, forcing the school to rely on conventional power instead. To neutralize the clouds, he would have to track them. Full Story

Researchers launch innovative, hands-on online tool for science education

Phys.Org | October 22, 2012

"While modern biology is inundated with computation, biology students at U.S. universities are taught neither programming nor bioinformatics and as a result are unprepared for the challenges that await them in their own discipline," said Pavel Pevzner, a computer science professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Full Story

UCSD RESEARCH COULD YIELD A BETTER BATTERY

U~T San Diego | October 12, 2012

Rechargeable batteries could be 25 percent cheaper and recharge almost twice as quickly, thanks to a new algorithm for measuring battery charge devised by researchers at the University of California San Diego, the university said last week. Full Story

Incentive-Based Crowdsourcing May Be Answer To A Faulty Wikipedia

Red Orbit | October 11, 2012

Dr. Victor Naroditskiy and Professor Nick Jennings from the University of Southampton are working together to find a way to improve crowdsourcing and find a harmonious balance to strike between these two paradigms.Along with some help from Masdar Institute?s Professor Iyad Rahwan and Dr. Manuel Cebrian, Research Scientist at the University of California, San Diego, this team have developed some methods to both gather the best information as well as verify the information found within.. Full Story

Making crowdsourcing more reliable

Phys.Org | October 10, 2012

One of the main obstacles in crowdsourcing information gathering is reliability of collected reports. Now Dr Victor Naroditskiy and Professor Nick Jennings from the University of Southampton, together with Masdar Institute's Professor Iyad Rahwan and Dr Manuel Cebrian, Research Scientist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have developed novel methods for solving this problem through crowdsourcing. Full Story

How 3D Printers Are Reshaping Medicine

CNBC | October 10, 2012

Printing off a kidney or another human organ may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but with the advancements in 3D printing technology, the idea may not be so far-fetched. Full Story

Computer Simulations Could Lead to Better Cardiac Pump for Children With Heart Defects

Health Canal | October 9, 2012

Structural and mechanical engineers at the University of California, San Diego, are working together to create blood flow simulations that could lead to improvements in the design of a cardiac pump for children born with heart defects. They hope that the design changes will improve young patients' outcomes. Full Story

Lithium ion battery breakthrough could cut costs, researchers say

Auto News | October 9, 2012

University of California, San Diego researchers say they have developed a way to better estimate what goes on inside lithium ion batteries -- a breakthrough that could lead to lower battery costs and faster charging times for electric vehicles. Full Story

Charge an Electric Car Battery in 15 Minutes? Research May Power a Way

KCET | October 9, 2012

Recent research at UC San Diego may result in lithium-ion batteries that are cheaper and faster-charging, all through adjusting the mathematical models we use to understand how batteries work. Full Story

How to charge your battery in 15 minutes

The Australian Financial Review | October 8, 2012

The lithium-ion batteries used in mobile phones, notebook computers and electric cars could be charged twice as fast and run 25 per cent more efficiently, just by adding some smarts to the meters that measures their charge, engineers at the University of California, San Diego say. Full Story

The New Sophisticated Algorithms Will Make Future Gadgets Charge Twice As Fast

PC Tablet | October 8, 2012

To monitor the Battery Power while charging, there is a Standard Complex Algorithm that tracks the voltage and current, however includes very crude measures. According to the Researchers at the University of California San Diego, manufacturers relying on these measures leads to over-designed, over-sized batteries that weigh and cost more. Full Story

New algorithms could allow lithium-ion batteries to charge twice as fast

Gizmag | October 5, 2012

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed new algorithms that improve the efficiency of existing lithium-ion batteries and could allow them to be charged twice as fast than is currently possible. Full Story

Math Can Make Your Batteries Charge Twice as Fast

Gizmodo | October 5, 2012

Most battery advances concentrate on improving hardware, but researchers from the University of California San Diego have developed new algorithms that can cut lithium-ion battery charge times in half. Full Story

Researchers create algorithms that could help lithium-ion batteries charge two times faster

Engadget | October 4, 2012

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have devised new algorithms that could cut lithium-ion battery charge times in half, help cells run more efficiently and potentially cut production costs by 25 percent. Rather than tracking battery behavior and health with the traditional technique of monitoring current and voltage, the team's mathematical models estimate where lithium ions are within cells for more precise data. Full Story

Colleges Receive $10 Million Grant to Study Cyber Crime

U.S. News University | September 28, 2012

The National Science Foundation recently announced that it is doing its part to bolster cyber security by giving a $10 million grant to the University of California San Diego, George Mason University and the International Computer Science Institute, according to a press release. Over the course of five years, researchers from these institutions will study the human side of cyber crime, including the motivations that lead individuals to commit online attacks and the relationships among cyber crim Full Story

Cybercrime project receives $10 million from NSF

The Daily Californian (UC Berkeley student newspaper) | September 28, 2012

A project conducted by researchers from the UC Berkeley-affiliated International Computer Science Institute, UC San Diego and George Mason University has received a $10 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study social and economic issues connected to cybercrime. Full Story

EmTech Spain 2012: El MIT sitúa en España el epicentro del progreso tecnológico

MIT Tech Review in Spanish | September 27, 2012

Conocer hoy las tecnologías que cambiarán el mundo mañana?, con esta promesa, la conferencia del MIT regresa de nuevo a Europa, y el punto de encuentro es España. Una cita con las redes sociales, las últimas tecnologías biomédicas, los enfoques más prometedores en sistemas de gestión y eficiencia energética. Full Story

UC Berkeley part of $10 million NSF study of 'human element' in cybercrime

San Francisco Business Journal | September 25, 2012

Experts from the University of California and George Mason University will study the "human element" of cybercrime with the help of a $10 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Full Story

UC San Diego Wins Grant To Study How Mind Of Cybercriminal Works

KPBS | September 25, 2012

Computer scientists at UC San Diego, the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley and George Mason University will share the five-year grant to do multiple studies on cybersecurity. Full Story

Could We Soon Have Printable Blood Vessels?

Hospital Int'l | September 18, 2012

Scientists have developed a way of printing three-dimensional biocompatible structures in seconds. The team led by Nanoengineering Professor Shaochen Chen at the University of California, San Diego, created the technology capable of quickly and accurately fabricating microscale 3D structures such as blood vessels using biocompatible hydrogels. Full Story

New Technique paves the way for instant 3D-printed biological tissues

Gizmag | September 17, 2012

3D printing technologies have come a long way since their earliest incarnations as rapid product prototype makers. It's now shaping up as the next disruptive technology and in medical science, 3D printing has huge potential. The latest advance comes from University of California, San Diego Nanoengineering Professor Shaochen Chen, whose group has demonstrated the ability to print three-dimensional blood vessels in seconds. Full Story

Sci-fi's David Brin lauds new UCSD center

U~T San Diego | September 17, 2012

Popular sci-fi author David Brin, who attended UC San Diego, was among the guests celebrating the opening of the university's $83 million Structural and Materials Engineering center on Sept. 14. Here's a copy of the speech he wrote for the event. The version he delivered at the Jacobs School of Engineering was a little different, but this captures his feelings about the massive research center. Full Story

NEW TECHNICAL BUILDING CALLED FUTURE OF UCSD

U~T San Diego | September 15, 2012

UC San Diego on Friday dedicated an $83 million engineering center where scientists will do things as different as designing safer aircraft and testing medical devices that can be implanted in the human body.The 183,000-square-foot Structural and Materials Engineering (SME) Building ?is the future of the university,? said Pradeep Khosla, the new chancellor of the University of California San Diego. Full Story

Biological Tissues from a Printer

Genetic Engineering News | September 14, 2012

A stereolithography technology that allows the rapid creation of three dimensional (3D) biological structures out of biocompatible hydrogels and cells... Developed by nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego, the new technique, known as dynamic optical projection stereolithography (DOPsL), effectively allows complex nanostructures such as blood vessels or potentially new heart tissue, for example, to be printed out of biocompatible materials in just seconds. Full Story

Focusing on Composites and Aviation Safety

Aerospace Manufacturing and Design | September 13, 2012

The University of California, San Diego, has become the home of a major facility dedicated to studying all aspects of full-scale composite material aircraft structures, located in the new Structural and Materials Engineering building.The Composite Aviation Safety Center will allow engineers to design and manufacture test specimens representing aircraft parts made from composite materials? for example, fuselage sections, landing gear and wings. Full Story

UC-San Diego Program Focuses on Designing Medical Devices

California Healthline | September 13, 2012

UC-San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering is enrolling its second class for its Master of Advanced Study Program in Medical Device Engineering. The multidisciplinary curriculum has been developed specifically for working engineers who have at least two years of job experience, with the goal of preparing students for a career in the medical device industry, one of San Diego's fastest-growing technology sectors.Read more: http://www.californiahealthline.org/features/2012/uc-san-diego-program-f Full Story

UC San Diego Program Focuses on Designing Medical Devices

California Healthline | September 13, 2012

UC-San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering is enrolling its second class for its Master of Advanced Study Program in Medical Device Engineering. The multidisciplinary curriculum has been developed specifically for working engineers who have at least two years of job experience, with the goal of preparing students for a career in the medical device industry, one of San Diego's fastest-growing technology sectors. Full Story

New UCSD Center To Test Aircraft Parts

KPBS | September 12, 2012

The Composites Aviation Safety Center will help researchers test new materials on a scale that they can not right now. It is all designed to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the materials being used to build today's aircraft.The center on the UC San Diego campus will allow scientists to test large aircraft components like wings, fuselage parts and landing gear. Full Story

Computer Simulations Could Lead to Better Cardiac Pump

Product Design & Development | September 11, 2012

Structural and mechanical engineers at the University of California, San Diego, are working together to create blood flow simulations that could lead to improvements in the design of a cardiac pump for children born with heart defects. They hope that the design changes will improve young patients' outcomes. Full Story

Computer simulations could lead to better cardiac pump for children with heart defects

Medical Express | September 10, 2012

Structural and mechanical engineers at the University of California, San Diego, are working together to create blood flow simulations that could lead to improvements in the design of a cardiac pump for children born with heart defects. They hope that the design changes will improve young patients' outcomes. Full Story

New Building on Front Page of UT-San Diego

UT-San Diego | September 10, 2012

Gary Robbins wrote a UT-San Diego cover story on the new Structural and Materials Engineering building. Full Story

Big Jobs Go to Loyal Proteins

Science News | August 31, 2012

Science News wrote a nice story that explains the importance of a recent paper in Science from the Bernhard Palsson lab. Full Story

Arapaima vs. Piranha

So. Cal. Public Radio | August 16, 2012

Meet mechanical engineer Marc Meyers. He went to Brazil and caught an arapaima. During Brazil's wet season, forming lakes where piranhas and arapaimas comfortably coexist. But in the dry season? The lakes shrink--and piranhas' appetites grow.Yet they still don't attack arapaimas. Meyers wondered why. In his lab at the University of California, San Diego, he ran some tests. He mounted piranha teeth and arapaima scales in a vice-like machine. When he pressed the two together hard ... Snap! Full Story

Scientists Use Biomaterials to Improve Heart Function

Voice of America | August 12, 2012

Scientists say hearts may someday be repaired using biomaterials and miniscule fibers smaller than a human hair. Heart attack followed by heart failure is a leading cause of death, particularly in the West. According to experts, nearly a million Americans suffer a heart attack, or mycardial infarction (MI), each year, and a half million more experience more than one heart attack. Full Story

VMware acquires Big Data analytics tool Log Insight

Computer World | August 12, 2012

VMware has snapped up Big Data analytics tool Log Insight, a product of Pattern Insight. Pattern Insight stated that the team and technology will make a move to VMware headquarters. Spiros Xanthos, CEO and co-founder of Pattern Insight, said in a blogpost: "Ever since we started Pattern Insight, our vision has been to change how people search, mine and analyse their vast amounts of IT and engineering data. Full Story

Scaffolding props up failing hearts

ScienceNews.org | August 8, 2012

An ailing heart is a place of cell death and decay. But injecting the cardiac tissue with a gelatinous mix of proteins and nanofibers creates a healing environment that promotes cell growth and repair. Experiments with pigs show that the gel?s nanofibers provide scaffolding that optimizes heart reconstruction, scientists from Taiwan and the University of California, San Francisco report in the Aug. 8 Science Translational Medicine. Full Story

A Menacing Facebook-Google Mashup

Technology Review | August 7, 2012

A team from the University of California, San Diego, used application programming interfaces (APIs) from Google and Facebook to create a system that would let a person browse the Web in anonymity. The researchers, who will present the work at this week's Usenix Security Conference in Bellevue, Washington, say such a service could potentially allow cyber crooks to cover their tracks. Full Story

Researchers unlock secret of the rare twinned rainbow

RD Mag | August 7, 2012

Scientists have yet to fully unravel the mysteries of rainbows, but a group of researchers from Disney Research, Zürich, University of California, San Diego, Universidad de Zaragoza, and Horley, UK, have used simulations of these natural wonders to unlock the secret to a rare optical phenomenon known as the twinned rainbow. Full Story

New UCSD Chancellor Hopes To Raise Endowment Into The Billions

KPBS.org | August 2, 2012

UC San Diego's eighth chancellor Pradeep Khosla looked on as future engineering students built and tested containers to protect tomatoes dropped from a big yellow balloon, 125 feet in the air.It was Khosla's first morning on the job at the La Jolla campus. The former dean of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering takes over from Marye Anne Fox, who stepped down to return to her roots as a chemistry professor. She will remain at UCSD. Full Story

Dr. Gert Lanckriet, University of California San Diego - Audio Search Engines

The Academic Minute, WAMC Northeast Public Radio | August 1, 2012

Prof Gert Lanckriet explains how game-powered machine learning is being used to teach computers to classify music and will eventually lead to a search engine for music. Full Story

Audio Search Engines

The Academic Minute, Inside Higher Ed | August 1, 2012

Prof Gert Lanckriet explains how game-powered machine learning is being used to teach computers to classify music and will eventually lead to a search engine for music. Full Story

UCSD's new chancellor, Pradeep Khosla, starts first day

KUSI News | August 1, 2012

UC San Diego's eighth chancellor is scheduled to start work at the La Jolla campus Wednesday, with a long list of events on the schedule.Pradeep Khosla, 55, was the dean of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering when he was tapped to succeed Marye Anne Fox, who is stepping down to return to her roots as a chemistry professor. The 64-year-old Fox will remain at UCSD. Full Story

UCSD tomato drop a hit

U~T San Diego | August 1, 2012

Incoming freshmen at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering competed Wednesday to see who could do the best job of wrapping a tomato in a package and dropping it from a balloon without causing significant damage. The competition was part of a team building exercise for the students. Each of the eight teams involved was given the same materials -- things like Styrofoam cups, toothpicks and cotton -- then given a short period to wrap them any way they saw fit. Full Story

New UC San Diego chancellor focused on fundraising

U~T San Diego | August 1, 2012

It was just his first day on the job, but UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla already knows what he wants to do.Khosla takes the helm at one of the nation?s top research universities as California continues to struggle with a budget crisis, facing annual shortfalls in the billions of dollars that officials say threaten to undermine higher education.So his immediate priority is to bring in money ? to boost the university?s endowment fund and find ways to lessen the sting of funding cuts. Full Story

Asteroid named after UC San Diego professor

U~T San Diego | July 31, 2012

An asteroid located about 225 million miles from Earth has been named in honor of Y.C. Fung, an emeritus professor at UC San Diego who is often called the "father of biomechanics." The designation was made by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the body responsible for naming such objects as planets, stars and asteroids. IAU also is the organization that downgraded Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006. Full Story

Scientists find protein affects psoriasis and wound care

La Jolla Light | June 29, 2012

Psoriasis is an autoimmune disorder of out-of-control skin cell proliferation. For hard-to-heal wounds, the problem is just the opposite: Restorative skin cells don?t grow well or fast enough. An international team of scientists, led by the UC San Diego School of Medicine, report on a molecule that may lead to new treatments for both conditions. Full Story

UCSD helps create revolutionary camera

Fox 5 San Diego.com | June 25, 2012

University of California San Diego researchers are collaborating, developing the Aware 2 camera system?s front lens. The Aware 2 is the size of a night table and designed to instantaneously take giant pictures with enough detail and resolution to help monitor wild life, brush fires, and major sporting venues like Qualcomm Stadium. Full Story

Forget megapixels! How a gigapixel camera captures images FIVE times better than the human eye in astonishing detail

Daily Mail | June 22, 2012

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a picture taken with a gigapixel camera must be worth millions. Full Story

UCSD camera lens can see everyone in a stadium

U~T San Diego | June 21, 2012

UC San Diego has helped create the lens for a large experimental camera that researcher Joseph Ford says could "take a snapshot of a football stadium that's clear enough to let you recognize every single person in the stadium." Full Story

New gigapixel camera may revolutionize photography, surveillance

LA Times | June 20, 2012

Say cheese: Engineers have created a new camera with the capability of capturing over a gigapixel of data, a resolution that is significantly better than normal human vision. Pixels represent individual points of data in an image, so the more pixels in a single image, the more details can be resolved within that image. The average retail camera currently captures only about 8 to 10 megapixels. Full Story

Nanoplasmonics Drives Technique for Next-Gen Lenses

photonics.com | June 14, 2012

A new technique that enables metallic cube-shaped nanocrystals to spontaneously self-assemble into larger, complex materials could pave the way for the next generation of antennas and lenses.The metal nanocrystals developed at the University of California, San Diego, similar to tiny bricks or Tetris blocks, can spontaneously organize themselves into larger-scale structures with precise orientations relative to one another. Full Story

Silver Nanocubes for Next Generation Antennas and Lenses

Imaging & Microscopy | June 14, 2012

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering have developed a technique that enables silver nanocubes to self-assemble into larger-scale structures for use in new optical chemical and biological sensors, and optical circuitry. Full Story

Crowdsource for truly unique musical experiences

The Aggie | May 23, 2012

Our technological prowess is increasing every day, but the machines we use are still limited by the knowledge that the designers put into them. Researchers have started experimenting with a branch of computer science called ?machine learning,? where computers can learn and adapt. The name evokes sinister Terminator imagery, but researchers at UC San Diego have been using machine learning to develop the most advanced music search engine ever created. Full Story

UCSD Conducts Seismic Test

10News.com | May 18, 2012

UC San Diego researchers conducted a seismic test in an effort to find out if vital buildings such as hospitals can hold up during strong earthquakes. Full Story

Cubic teams with UCSD on transit technology research

U~T San Diego | May 15, 2012

The transportation arm of San Diego defense contractor Cubic Corp. will fund research at the University of California San Diego?s Jacobs School of Engineering on travel technologies for cities.Cubic Transportation Systems makes fare gates and electronic payment infrastructure for mass transits agencies worldwide. It will contribute $500,000 over five years to UCSD to fund research done by faculty, students and Cubic Transportation staff. Full Story

UC San Diego quake test jolts 75-foot tower

U~T San Diego | May 15, 2012

UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering ran the last of a series of large simulated earthquakes on Tuesday, jolting a five story structure in a test that simulated the 7.9 quake that hit Denali, Alaska in 2002. Engineers simulated Denali because the event produced the sort of ground motion expected to occur during a similar event in Southern and Central California. Full Story

PREGNANT-MONITOR IDEA AT UCSD GETS FUNDING

U~T San Diego | May 15, 2012

A University of California San Diego Bioengineer, Todd Coleman, who believes it may be possible to use tattoo-like electronic devices to monitor the vital signs of pregnant women will receive $100,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to explore the idea. Full Story

UCSD video shows value of quake 'shock absorbers'

U~T San Diego | May 14, 2012

The series of strong earthquake simulations that UC San Diego has been running on a five-story building at Scripps Ranch shows clear evidence that shock absorbers can greatly limit the amount of shaking that occurs inside such structures. Full Story

Pregnancy monitor tattooed on tummy

Pune Mirror | May 11, 2012

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego have created a device that will change the way doctors monitor uterine contractions, foetal heart rate, maternal heart rate and body temperature in pregnant women. Full Story

New approach to advance quality of pregnancy monitoring

News Medical | May 10, 2012

The University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bioengineering Professor Todd Coleman, in collaboration with Materials Science and Engineering Professor John A. Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled "Epidermal Electronics for Continuous Pregnancy Mon Full Story

Gates Foundation Supports Brain-Reading Temporary Tattoo, Gives $100 Million to Encourage Innovation in Global Health and Development Research

Neurogadget.com | May 9, 2012

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to announce more than 100 cutting-edge global health grants to fund projects ranging from unmanned drones to deliver vaccines to using temporary tattoos to monitor pregnant women in remote areas. For Todd Coleman, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, the Gates grant is an opportunity to take an idea he had already been working on and aim it toward global health. Full Story

Gates Foundation experiments with global health

Seattle Times | May 8, 2012

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to announce more than 100 cutting-edge global health grants to fund projects ranging from unmanned drones to deliver vaccines to using temporary tattoos to monitor pregnant women in remote areas. In an announcement Wednesday, the foundation will name scientists from around the world, but mostly in the United States, who will be getting $100,000 Grand Challenges Exploration grants to see if their highly speculative ideas have potential to save lives in th Full Story

Engineers Launch Artificial Quakes at 'Hospital' BBC News

BBC News | May 7, 2012

Engineers in California have unleashed high-intensity artificial earthquakes on a five-storey building packed with medical equipment. Full Story

Cubic Transportation / Jacobs School Research Partnership

San Diego Metro Magazine | May 7, 2012

A description of the new research partnership between Cubic Transportation and the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego appeared in the San Diego Metro Magazine. Full Story

Game-powered machine learning: could make searching for music online easier

Gizmag.com | May 7, 2012

When it comes to online music, we really are spoilt for choice. So spoilt it can make uncovering new music to match our tastes or finding a track when we don?t know the artist or song title, a hit and miss affair. Engineers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have developed a new approach called ?game-powered machine learning? that they claim is just as accurate as other methods, but is cheaper and has the potential to let users search every song on the web using a text search. Full Story

Preparing for the big one

NBC Nightly News | April 18, 2012

Scientists use the largest ?shake table? in the U.S. (at UC San Diego) to replicate big earthquakes, gathering valuable data that demonstrate how earthquakes affect buildings. NBC?s Miguel Almaguer reports. Full Story

With Man-made Quakes, Engineers Test Lifesaving Technologies

CBS News | April 18, 2012

Chile was shaken by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake Monday night. It was one of 13 powerful quakes around the world so far this month. Structural engineers and researchers at the University of California have begun tests to determine what would happen when a series of massive earthquakes strikes a large medical building. Over the next two weeks, they will be shaking an 80-foot-high building. Full Story

Quake Test Could Prompt Ways to Shore Up Hospitals

ABC News | April 18, 2012

What happens when a series of massive earthquakes hits a five-story medical facility with an intensive care unit, operating room and elevator?Structural engineers at the University of California, San Diego, began tests Tuesday to find out.Over the next two weeks, they will repeatedly rock an 80-foot-high building erected on a giant shake table as part of a $5 million experiment funded by government agencies, foundations and others. Full Story

With Man-made Quakes, Engineers Test Lifesaving Technologies

CBS News | April 18, 2012

Structural engineers and researchers at the University of California have begun tests to determine what would happen when a series of massive earthquakes strikes a large medical building. Over the next two weeks, they will be shaking an 80-foot-high building. It's hard to tell from the outside, but on Monday the five-story building experienced an 8.8 earthquake, moving just inches in each direction. Full Story

In California Quake Researchers, Boring is the Hoped-for Result

The New York Times | April 18, 2012

It was billed as one of the most ambitious earthquake simulations ever attempted. Engineers constructed a five-story building ? complete with an operating room, an elevator, a kitchen loaded with glassware and a heavy air-conditioning unit perched on the roof ? and placed it atop a platform known as a shake table on the outskirts of San Diego. Observers were issued hard hats and a strict set of safety instructions. Full Story

California Earthquake Test Looks for Ways to Shore Up Hospitals

Huffington Post | April 18, 2012

What happens when a series of massive earthquakes hits a five-story medical facility with an intensive care unit, operating room and elevator? Structural engineers at the University of California, San Diego, hope to find out by repeatedly shaking such a building over the next two weeks as part of a $5 million experiment funded by government agencies, foundations and others. The experiment starts Tuesday. Full Story

UCSD Shaking Table Rattles Building

KPBS | April 18, 2012

The shaking table began moaning as the machine reproduced an 8.8 magnitude quake, like the one that ravaged Chile. Moving a fully equipped five story building that weighs millions of pounds is no small feat. Engineers can reproduce the force and impact of a killer earthquake on simulations run by computers. For months, they have been building this structure on a shaking table, because computer simulations don't compare to shaking a building in real life. Full Story

Researchers shake five-story building to find ways to shore up quake-hit hospitals

The Washington Post | April 18, 2012

What happens when a series of massive earthquakes hits a five-story medical facility with an intensive care unit, operating room and elevator? Structural engineers at the University of California, San Diego, began tests Tuesday to find out. Over the next two weeks, they will repeatedly rock an 80-foot-high building erected on a giant shake table as part of a $5 million experiment funded by government agencies, foundations and others. Full Story

Scientists to rock $5million building in earthquake test

Daily Mail, UK | April 18, 2012

It looks like an ordinary hospital, complete with patient beds, surgical suites and even an intensive care unit. But, this five storey, $5m hospital in San Diego will never admit a patient - and is designed to be tested to destruction. Built on a special ?shaking? platform to replicate the effects of an earthquake, it contains 500 sensors and more than 70 cameras. Full Story

Quake tests looks for ways to shore up hospitalsCalif. engineers to rock 5-story building in huge quake test

USA Today | April 18, 2012

Engineers in California plan to violently shake a five-story building outfitted with hundreds of sensors and cameras this week in one of the bigggest ever studies of how earthquakes affect buildings, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. The test is being conducted Tuesday at UC San Diego's School of Engineering facility in Scripps Ranch. It involves a 1.4 million-pound building that has been placed on top of the country's biggest shake table, which can simulate the motions of earthquakes. Full Story

Bioengineering Professor's Treatment for Shock Under Study

San Diego Business Journal | March 14, 2012

A 200-patient phase 2 clinical pilot study will be initiated this month to test the efficacy and safety of a new use, and method of administering, an enzyme inhibitor for critically ill patients developed by UC San Diego bioengineering Professor Geert Schmid-Schönbein. Full Story

TRIALS BEGIN ON THERAPY TO TREAT SEPTIC SHOCK

U~T San Diego | March 13, 2012

InflammaGen Therapeutics of San Diego is beginning Phase 2 clinical testing of Shok-Pak, a device and drug designed to treat patients in intensive care units who develop sepsis and septic shock. The treatment, which will be tested on 200 critically ill patients, also can be used on people suffering from postoperative complications and new-onset gastrointestinal bleeding. The treatment is largely based on research by Geert Schmid-Schönbein, a bioengineer at University of California San Diego. Full Story

InflammaGen drug delivery weapon targets self-digestion in Phase II trial

Fierce Drug Delivery | March 13, 2012

InflammaGen is launching a Phase II pilot study of its device that delivers a treatment for self-digestion, a gross phenomenon in which the body starts essentially eating its organs after going into shock. Full Story

Tiny, Lorax-Like Trees Harvest Sun's Energy

Discovery.com | March 12, 2012

If humans are going to mimic nature's unique way of converting sunlight into energy, we're going to need to build some very extraordinary trees. Electrical engineers in California want to do just that. Their new ?nanotree? device is made from cheap, abundant materials and uses sunlight to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen atoms that can be used in fuel cells to produce energy. Full Story

San Diego?s InflammaGen Advances Therapy to Mitigate Effects of Shock

Xconomy | March 12, 2012

InflammaGen has been developing technology conceived by Geert Schmid-Schönbein, a professor of bioengineering at UC San Diego. Schmid-Schönbein suggests that powerful digestive enzymes secreted in the small intestine by the pancreas are largely responsible for ?the inflammatory cascade? of life-threatening events that can occur in cases of acute shock. These events typically build up over time, and often lead to multi-organ failure and death. Full Story

ENERGY: UCSD profs win $1.5M to study solar integration with grid

North County Times | March 8, 2012

For a day at the beach, occasional cloud cover can be annoying; for a power company getting a lot of electricity from solar power, occasional cloud cover can be cause for alarm. Profs. Jan Kleissl and Carlos Coimbra, both engineering professors at UC San Diego, will tackle the problem for the next two years thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the California Public Utilities Commission approved Thursday. Full Story

San Diego Researchers Win Money To Integrate Solar Power Into State Grid

KPBS.org | March 8, 2012

The California Public Utilities Commission is working to make solar power generation more compatible with the power grid. UC San Diego engineer Jan Kleissl and his colleague Carlos Coimbra have developed forecasting tools that could help save utilities money. That's because the power grid demands a steady flow of electricity and input from solar sources fluctuates. Full Story

Hydrogels Heal Themselves -- And Maybe Your Ulcers And Stomach Perforations

Huffington Post | March 8, 2012

They?re called hydogels: Jell-O-like materials made of networks of long-chain molecules in water. And they?re as flexible as living tissue. But hydrogels could not recover from a cut?until now. Bioengineers at U.C. San Diego have made hydrogels that are self-healing in acidic conditions. Full Story

Nanotrees harvest the sun's energy to turn water into hydrogen fuel

nanowerk.com | March 7, 2012

University of California, San Diego electrical engineers are building a forest of tiny nanowire trees in order to cleanly capture solar energy without using fossil fuels and harvest it for hydrogen fuel generation. Full Story

Smart, self-healing hydrogels act like velcro for sutures

SmartPlanet.com | March 6, 2012

For years, scientists haven?t been able to create hydrogels that can rapidly repair themselves if damaged. To create this self-healing hydrogel (pictured), a team led by Shyni Varghese from the University of California at San Diego turned to ?dangling side chain? molecules that extend like fingers on a hand, enabling them to grasp one another. Full Story

Smart, Self-Healing Hydrogels Open Far-Reaching Possibilities in Medicine, Engineering

LabManager.com | March 6, 2012

University of California, San Diego bioengineers have developed a self-healing hydrogel that binds in seconds, as easily as Velcro, and forms a bond strong enough to withstand repeated stretching. Full Story

Hydrogel could grow new heart tissue, without the need for surgery

The Express Tribune with the International Herald Tribune | March 5, 2012

As things currently stand, the body replaces that tissue with non-beating scar tissue, leaving the heart permanently weakened. However, researchers from the University of California, San Diego are reporting success in animal trials, using an injectable hydrogel. Full Story

A Shot In The Heart May Repair Damage

KPBS | March 5, 2012

The semi-solid injectable called VentriGel was developed by UC San Diego bioengineer Karen Christman, Ph.D., and her colleagues. Christman derived the gel from tissue removed from the heart muscle of a pig. ?The hydrogel goes through a cleaning process. It?s freeze-dried and put into a powder form and then liquefied so it can be easily injected into the heart,? she said. Full Story

Hydrogel acts like Velcro at molecular level

MSNBC | March 5, 2012

At some point in the future, ripped contact lenses may heal themselves, thanks to a new stretchy material that behaves like Velcro at the molecular level, bioengineers reported today. Hydrogels, such as soft contact lenses, are made of chemically cross-linked structures that contain a lot of water. "The cross-links are permanent, so you can't break and re-form them," Ameya Phadke, a graduate bioengineering student at the University of California, San Diego, explained to me Monday. Full Story

Self-healing hydrogels could help seal leakages

The Engineer | March 5, 2012

Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a self-healing hydrogel that binds in seconds, as easily as Velcro, and is strong enough to withstand repeated stretching. Full Story

Smart, Self-Healing Hydrogels Repair Themselves After Sustaining Damage

PopSci.com | March 5, 2012

The ability to heal--to repair oneself repeatedly and thus sustain damage repeatedly--is one of biology?s greatest tricks, and one that humans have been trying to replicate in synthetic materials for years. Now, bioengineers at University of California, San Diego, have done so via a hydrogel that could be something of a game-changer in disciplines like medicine and materials science. Full Story

Self-healing hydrogels open a new realm of bioengineering possibilities

ZMEScience.com | March 5, 2012

Scientists at University of California have successfully managed to engineer a new kind of hydrogels, capable of self-healing, which can bind to each other in acidic conditions within seconds, forming a strong bond that allows for repeated streathching, similar to organic tissue, like the human skin. Full Story

Smart, Self-Healing Hydrogels Open Far-Reaching Possibilities in Medicine, Engineering

Science Daily | March 5, 2012

University of California, San Diego bioengineers have developed a self-healing hydrogel that binds in seconds, as easily as Velcro, and forms a bond strong enough to withstand repeated stretching. The material has numerous potential applications, including medical sutures, targeted drug delivery, industrial sealants and self-healing plastics. Full Story

Could hackers seize control of your car?

CNN | March 2, 2012

When car companies begin exhibiting at mobile phone shows, it's a sign that the "connected" vehicle has truly arrived -- allowing us to take our digital lives with us as we hit the highway. But while Ford's unveiling of its latest car at Mobile World Congress -- a major cell phone industry event -- this week may have heralded a new automotive age, it also heightens fears that our technology-crammed cars could be hijacked by hackers. Full Story

Log On, Coordinate, Pose: Virtual-Closet Web Sites Revise Online Fashion Shopping

NY Times.com | February 29, 2012

A new scrapbooking and shopping site, where users can share photographs of covetable objects and experiences ? a velvet Burberry trench coat, sparkly gold nail polish, a room at the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong ? and, it is hoped, buy them. Full Story

Hydrogel could grow new heart tissue, without the need for surgery

Gizmag | February 28, 2012

Universities and scientific organizations all over the world are currently looking into ways of growing functioning heart cells on the heart, to replace the tissue that dies when a heart attack occurs. As things currently stand, the body replaces that tissue with non-beating scar tissue, leaving the heart permanently weakened. Now, however, researchers from the University of California, San Diego are reporting success in animal trials, using an injectable hydrogel. Full Story

First Nanorockets Might Shuttle Drugs, Robo-Surgeons

Wired Science | February 27, 2012

Nanoengineer Joseph Wang of the University of California, San Diego said the engines are the smallest he?s ever heard of. ?That?s the major advance here, and it?s an exciting step toward the dream of the Fantastic Voyage,? Wang said Full Story

GEL FOR HEART ATTACK VICTIMS SHOWS PROMISE

U~T San Diego | February 25, 2012

UC San Diego is reporting early success in limiting tissue damage in rats that suffer heart attacks, an advance that could lead to clinical testing in humans by the end of the year. Bioengineer Karen Christman found a way to remove heart muscle cells from the cardiac tissue of pigs and turn it into a liquid that becomes a semisolid gel when it enters the body. Full Story

UC San Diego Develops Injectable Hydrogel for Cardiac Tissue Repair

DailyTech | February 23, 2012

A new hydrogel meant to repair tissue damage after a heart attack has been developed and tested by University of California - San Diego scientists. Karen Christman, study leader and professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego, along with a team of researchers, have successfully developed an injectable hydrogel that can treat tissue damage after a heart attack. Full Story

Injectable gel could safely repair damaged heart tissue

The Engineer | February 23, 2012

Researchers from the University of California (UC) San Diego have developed an injectable hydrogel that could be an effective and safe treatment for tissue damage caused by heart attacks.Therapies such as the hydrogel would be a welcome development, explained Karen Christman, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego, since there are an estimated 785,000 new heart-attack cases in the US each year, with no established treatment for repairing damage to cardiac tissue. Full Story

UCSD Creates Gel to treat Heart Attacks

U~T San Diego | February 22, 2012

UC San Diego is reporting early success in limiting tissue damage in rats that suffer heart attacks, an advance that could lead to clinical testing in humans by the end of the year. Bioengineer Karen Christman found a way to remove heart muscle cells from the cardiac tissue of pigs and turn it into a liquid that becomes a semi-solid gel when it entered the body. Full Story

New injectable hydrogel can treat tissue damage from heart attack

Medical News | February 22, 2012

University of California, San Diego researchers have developed a new injectable hydrogel that could be an effective and safe treatment for tissue damage caused by heart attacks. Full Story

Could a Piranha-Proof Fish Help The Military?

ABC News.com | February 19, 2012

Piranhas are not known to peacefully co-exist with other creatures, but one Amazonian fish has been doing just that, leading scientists to believe its scales could hold the key to creating better military body armor. ?Piranhas will attack anything for food. If you fall in the lake in October, there is not much hope for a person,? said Marc Meyers, professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at University of California San Diego. Full Story

Zinc-Based Microrocket Motors Powered by the Stomach

medGadget | February 17, 2012

Researchers at University of California, San Diego have developed a propulsion system for navigation of small capsules through highly acidic environments without requiring any internal power source.The scientists foresee the swallowable devices powered by the zinc-based motor used for drug delivery and for sensing the internal environment for medical applications. Full Story

SSDs have a 'Bleak' Future, Researchers Say

ComputerWorld | February 16, 2012

As the circuitry of NAND flash-based, solid-state drives shrinks, performance drops precipitously -- meaning the technology could be doomed, according to new research. Speaking to about 500 attendees at the 10th Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies here this week, Laura Grupp, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, said that as NAND flash densities increase, so do issues such as read and write latency and data errors. Full Story

Are piranha-proof fish the secret to better body armor?

MSNBC.com | February 15, 2012

An ancient Amazonian fish with thick piranha-proof scales may hold the secret to building better bullet-proof body armor, puncture resistant gloves or even safety goggles and CD cases. At the University of California, San Diego, materials science professor Marc Myers has been studying the scales on the massive freshwater arapaima, which use two layers of scales to repel bites from the predatory piranha. Full Story

Piranha-Proof Fish May Build Better Body Armor

Discovery Channel News | February 15, 2012

An ancient Amazonian fish with thick piranha-proof scales may hold the secret to building better bullet-proof body armor, puncture resistant gloves or even safety goggles and CD cases. At the University of California, San Diego, materials science professor Marc Meyers has been studying the scales on the massive freshwater arapaima, which use two layers of scales to repel bites from the predatory piranha. Full Story

Piranha-Proof Fish Scales May Hold Key To Better Body Armor

Field & Stream | February 15, 2012

Walking the aisles at this year's SHOT show, a first-time attendee might have been struck at the preponderance of body armor. There was samurai-looking body armor, military-looking body armor, casual Friday-looking body armor, body armor that made you look like that "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" robot from "Lost in Space" and of course, body armor that protects you from the now-ubiquitous zombies.But, at least as far as I could tell, there was no body armor that made you look like a fish. At Full Story

Amazonian Fish Has Body Armor That Can Defeat Piranha Bites

Amazonian Fish Has Body Armor That Can Defeat Piranha Bites | February 15, 2012

Marc Meyers, a University of California, San Diego materials science professor has been studying the arapaima's scales and the effects a piranha tooth has on its strength. What his research staff found was the piranha tooth failed to puncture the scales of the fish, and often broke as it was pulled out. Meyers describes the scales as thick triangular ridges that are unique to the fish and are also flexible in that they can bend. Full Story

Fish scales may inspire body armor

CNN.com | February 13, 2012

A huge fish that is impervious to piranha attacks could become the inspiration for a new class of ultratough composite materials. ?You often find this in nature, where you have something hard on the outside, but it rides on something softer that gives it toughness,? Marc Meyers, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. Full Story

Science Piranha-proof fish offer body armour inspiration

Wired, U.K. | February 13, 2012

A massive Brazilian fish that can survive in piranha-infested lakes might have a few tips for engineers who are making flexible, impenetrable body armour. UC San Diego professor and biomimetics expert Marc Meyers got inspiration from the hardy fish during an expedition in the Amazon basin. The mechanical and aerospace engineering prof wanted to know how the Arapaima's armour worked. Full Story

What will life be like in 100 years?

U~T San Diego | February 13, 2012

In 1911, Ladies Home Journal asked leading experts how the world would change over the next 100 years. Some of their forecasts were surprisingly accurate, others not. Below, you'll find samples of what they said, and forecasts about the next 100 years from three prominent San Diego scientists. We'd also like to hear your predictions. Email them to gary.robbins@utsandiego.com Full Story

Electrical Engineers Build 'No Waste'

Lab Manager | February 13, 2012

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, ?thresholdless? laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste. Full Story

Electrical Engineers Build 'No-Waste' Laser

Communications of the ACM | February 13, 2012

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste. Full Story

Gizmodo: Future soldiers could go to war wearing fish-scale armor

Gizmodo | February 11, 2012

Piranha have a well-earned reputation for being able and willing to eat just about anything in their path. One of the few exceptions is the Arapaima, a six-foot long, 300-pound Amazonian predator with bony scales capable of withstanding the toothy onslaught. Researchers are now working to adapt the Arapaima's defenses to protect our own squishy bits. Full Story

A Piranha-Proof Fish

ScienceNOW | February 10, 2012

Dip a toe into the wrong lake in the Amazon, and it may get bitten off. Here, gangs of piranhas swarm almost anything that moves. Anything, that is, except the arapaima. This humungous fish swims unchewed, even in piranha-infested lakes and rivers. A new study reveals how: The arapaima's unique scales are tough enough to deflect a piranha's razor-sharp bite. Full Story

Fish's piranha-proof scales could lead to tough, flexible body armor

gizmag | February 10, 2012

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Marc Meyers first became interested in the Arapaima on an expedition to the Amazon basin, several years ago. Now, he has an Arapaima scale-testing rig set up in his UC San Diego lab. Full Story

Piranha-proof armor inspires flexible ceramics

Smart Planet | February 9, 2012

Researchers found that the Arapaima?s scales hold the key to its success. Biomimetics professor Marc Meyers and colleagues examined how the Arapaima resists piranhas by building a machine that forcefully presses piranha teeth into Arapaima scales. After running the materials through their paces, they found that the Arapaima?s scales allow partial penetration by piranha teeth, but crack them before they puncture the underlying muscle. Full Story

Burn baby burn: Fireball engulfs fuel in space

New Scientist TV | February 8, 2012

How would you fight a fire in space? Now NASA's Flame Extinguishment Experiment (FLEX) group, lead by Forman Williams of the University of California, San Diego, is starting fires on the ISS to better understand how to deal with them in microgravity. Full Story

How A Fish?s Armor Might Help The Military

KPBS | February 8, 2012

This is the type of story you might expect to see as a low-budget monster movie - a 300-pound fish versus a school of starving piranhas. In this case, the big fish - an arapaima - always wins. Arapaimas thrive in piranha-infested waters in the Amazon. This fact inspired Marc Meyers, a professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, to research the arapaima?s armor-like scales in hopes of discovering a useful application, like better body armor for soldiers. Full Story

A Bridge Built to Sway When the Earth Shakes

New York Times | February 6, 2012

Dean Frieder Seible is quoted in a New York Times article about the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Full Story

Flame Dances on Board Space Station

Scientific American | February 6, 2012

The Flame Extinguishment Experiment, or FLEX, on board the ISS allows researchers to study zero-gravity fire--and ways to fight it. John Matson reports Full Story

How Do You Fight Fire in Space?

Space Travel | February 6, 2012

Improving fire-fighting techniques in space and getting a better understanding of fuel combustion here on Earth are the focus of a series of experiments on the International Space Station, led by a professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Full Story

Ever wonder about the far side of the moon?

U~T San Diego | February 6, 2012

Ever wonder about the far side of the moon?We'll tell you a little bit about it based on new images from NASA's Grail spacecraft, whose cameras will receive some guidance this spring from students at UC San Diego. Full Story

Breeding grounds for entrepreneurship

U~T San Diego | January 31, 2012

While he was working toward his doctorate in computer science at University of California San Diego, Kian Wi Ong had an idea that he thought had commercial potential, so he entered a contest at UC San Diego to try to win a $50,000 grant. The result: Ong and his team won a $50,000 seed funding award from the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center at UC San Diego?s Jacobs School of Engineering. They went on to form App2you. Full Story

Auto Hacking Seen as Growing Risk With Electronics Frenzy: Cars

Bloomberg Businessweek | January 31, 2012

Car thieves could exploit security weaknesses to remotely open and start a car, or a spy could listen to conversations inside a car, Stefan Savage, a University of California-San Diego computer science professor, said in a telephone interview. He co-authored a paper last year after discovering ways to hack into cars. Full Story

Hacking Cars to Keep Them Safe

Technology Review, published by MIT | January 30, 2012

Automakers got a jolt in 2010 when researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California at San Diego showed that they had successfully taken control of a car, manipulated its locks, and shut off its brakes with a script that ran on a computer plugged into the vehicle Full Story

Mind over matter Envisioning a world of thought-controlled computing

ScienceLine | January 12, 2012

This video depicts three hipster hackers hanging out in some pseudo-startup basement, casually describing the ease with which they can command Siri, the new intelligent assistant on the Apple iPhone 4s, using only their minds.At least it appeared that way. Full Story

Sense-act-treat, the nanopharmacy on a patch: Work by Nanoengineering Prof. Joe Wang featured in Chemistry World

RSC Advancing the Chemical Sciences | January 11, 2012

You injure yourself and inevitably it hurts. But instead of heading to the medicine cabinet you're already starting to feel better, as your sense-act-treat patch kicks in and releases a pain killer. That's a scenario that Joseph Wang and colleagues at the University of California-San Diego, US, are trying to turn into a reality. Full Story

A Youngster's Bright Idea Is Something New Under the Sun

The Wall Street Journal | January 5, 2012

A new way of collecting solar energy has polarized scientists around the world... Full Story

Former Mora grad named one of 2012 Siebel Scholars

Kanabec County Times | January 5, 2012

Lauren (Hruby) Jepson, a Mora native, was named one of the 2012 Siebel Scholars for her work dedicated to building a better retinal prosthesis for the visually impaired.The Siebel Scholars award will allow her to connect with topnotch researchers and entrepreneurs. Full Story

High-tech cars raise possibility of cyber attacks

Los Angeles Times | January 3, 2012

As cars and trucks have become laden with brainy devices to control a host of features, the vehicles have become increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, studies find. Full Story

Spacecraft to be used by UCSD reaches moon

U~T San Diego | January 1, 2012

NASA's twin Grail spacecraft have entered orbit around the moon, where they'll offer a unique opportunity for undergraduates at the University of California San Diego to help photograph the lunar surface, starting in March. Full Story