Discovery Could Help Stem Infections of Parasitic Roundworms
Working with researchers in China, biologists at UC San Diego have discovered how a Chinese drug effective in killing parasitic roundworms works. Their discovery of the drug’s biological mechanism provides important new information about how to combat parasitic roundworms, which infect more than a billion people in tropical regions and are one of the leading causes of debilitation in underdeveloped countries. More

New Radiation Oncology Building Adds
Clinic Space, Technology to Moores Cancer Center
The Moores UCSD Cancer Center and the UC San Diego Medical Center have opened a new radiation oncology building on the La Jolla medical center campus that expands clinic and office space, while adding to the program’s advanced imaging and treatment technologies. It also offers technology to make radiation therapy more readily available for children who need it. More

Computer Scientists Take Over Electronic
Voting Machine with New Programming Technique
Computer scientists demonstrated that criminals could hack an electronic voting machine and steal votes using a malicious programming approach that had not been invented when the voting machine was designed. The team of scientists from University of California, San Diego, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University employed “return-oriented programming” to force a Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine to turn against itself and steal votes. More

Mutations in Gene Linked to Ciliopathies
An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have discovered a connection between mutations in the INPP5E gene and ciliopathies. Their findings, which may lead to new therapies for these diseases, will appear in the online edition of Nature Genetics on August 9. More

Extinction Runs in the Family
Global calamities like the one that doomed most dinosaurs forever alter the varieties of life found on Earth. But new research shows that it doesn’t take a catastrophe to end entire lineages. An analysis of 200 million years of history for marine clams found that vulnerability to extinction runs in evolutionary families, even when the losses result from ongoing, background rates of extinction. More

UC San Diego Named ‘Tree Campus USA University’
By Arbor Day Foundation for Second Year
UC San Diego’s dedication to campus forestry management and environmental stewardship was cited by the national Arbor Day Foundation in naming the campus as a 2009 “Tree Campus USA University” for the second consecutive year. More

San Diego Supercomputer Center Launches ‘Triton Resource’
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, today officially launched the Triton Resource, an integrated, data-intensive computing system primarily designed to support UC San Diego and UC researchers. More

Finding the Right Connection after Spinal Cord Injury
In a major step in spinal cord injury research, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have demonstrated that regenerating axons can be guided to their correct targets and re-form connections after spinal cord injury. Their findings are published in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience. More

UC San Diego Receives $11 Million in Incentives for Renewable Energy
The California Center for Sustainable Energy in San Diego announced today that the University of California, San Diego will receive $11 million in incentives from California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program for the installation of an innovative fuel cell energy generation and storage system. This is the largest amount ever awarded by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for a renewable energy project and is the nation’s first advanced energy storage project to receive state incentive funds. More

How the Pathology of Parkinson’s Disease Spreads
Accumulation of the synaptic protein α-synuclein, resulting in the formation of aggregates called Lewy bodies in the brain, is a hallmark of Parkinson’s and other related neurodegenerative diseases. This pathology appears to spread throughout the brain as the disease progresses. Now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, have described how this mechanism works. More

Cheat-Resistant 3D iPhone Game Relies on Score-Checking Replays
Aliens are stealing your beloved sheep and you’ve got to stop them. That’s the premise for TowerMadness, a new 3D iPhone game that is one of the most cheat-resistant iPhone games available, according to its three developers, all with ties to the University of California, San Diego. More

UC San Diego Installs High-Efficiency Sun-Tracking Solar Panels
The University of California, San Diego has begun producing electricity with newly installed solar panels made by Concentrix Solar that automatically track the sun as it crosses the daytime sky and concentrate sunlight onto hundreds of electricity-producing solar cells, each smaller than a shirt button. More

Consulting with Clouds: A Clear Role in Climate Change
The role of clouds in climate change has been a major question for decades. As the earth warms under increasing greenhouse gases, it is not known whether clouds will dissipate, letting in more of the sun’s heat energy and making the earth warm even faster, or whether cloud cover will increase, blocking the sun’s rays and actually slowing down global warming. More