Angela Fang, a freshman at the University of California, San Diego, envisions her future as a Supreme Court Justice, making landmark decisions that will benefit society. “I’d like to become someone who leaves an impact that will last beyond my lifetime,” said Fang.

For the sixth consecutive year, the Training, Research and Education for Driving Safety (TREDS) program at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has been awarded a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to promote driving safety in older adults.

In a novel use of gene knockout technology, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine tested the same gene inserted into 90 different locations in a yeast chromosome –and discovered that while the inserted gene never altered its surrounding chromatin landscape, differences in that immediate landscape measurably affected gene activity. 

The University of California, San Diego is launching a new tradition with the first-annual Sibling Weekend, Friday, Jan. 11 through Saturday, Jan. 12. Students are invited to host their brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and family friends, ages 7-16, to share the UC San Diego student experience and participate in a variety of activities.

UC San Diego historian Mark Hanna, an authority on the rise and fall of pirates during the first British Empire, will deliver a lecture at 1 p.m. on January 16 on “Pirates in Print:  Seafaring Treasures of the Mandeville Special Collections Library.”  The lecture is free and open to the public and takes place in the Seuss Room in Geisel Library on the UC San Diego campus.

Scientists from the University of California, San Diego, national and international research centers launched a first-of-its-kind workshop series intended to bring together investigators from a wide range of scientific fields to develop a 3D Virtual Cell. Funding for the Dec. 13-14 conference was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

An international team, headed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has identified a key enzyme in the reprogramming process that promotes malignant stem cell cloning and the growth of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a cancer of the blood and marrow that experts say is increasing in prevalence.

A recent college salary report by PayScale.com ranked the University of California, San Diego the fourth best public university for its return on investment for alumni who are California residents.

An international team, led by researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has discovered that “random” mutations in the genome are not quite so random after all. Their study, to be published in the journal Cell on December 21, shows that the DNA sequence in some regions of the human genome is quite volatile and can mutate ten times more frequently than the rest of the genome. Genes that are linked to autism and a variety of other disorders have a particularly strong tendency to mutate.

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have built a small fleet of portable pollution sensors that allow users to monitor air quality in real time on their smart phones. The sensors could be particularly useful to people suffering from chronic conditions, such as asthma, who need to avoid exposure to pollutants.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that tumor cells use stress signals to subvert responding immune cells, exploiting them to actually boost conditions beneficial to cancer growth.

Given his profession’s focus on the past, it may be surprising for an archaeologist to skip a printed edition in favor of publishing a digital e-book instead, but that’s exactly what Tom Levy has done. The University of California, San Diego professor of anthropological archaeology in the Division of Social Sciences has teamed with the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) to launch “Cyber-Archaeology in the Holy Land: The Future of the Past” as a free eBook.

UC San Diego Health System is collaborating with Qualcomm Life, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to pilot the 2net Platform and Hub for remote patient monitoring.  Qualcomm Life’s innovative 2net™ technology collects patients’ clinical information from wireless medical devices and transmits it to UC San Diego Health System physicians, to supplement information already available.

A $50,000 research prize to promote active health has been awarded to James Sallis, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.  Sallis is a noted academic who is on a mission to use research to promote health, fitness, and active lifestyles.

Gain some flavorful food insights in Food for Thought: Healing Foods to Savor, authored by nutritional experts at University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center. All proceeds benefit the UCSD Healthy Eating Program.

Astronomers will begin an ambitious new project to measure light from thousands of distant galaxies this weekend. Over the next four years, they will spend 47 nights surveying the sky for signals from a time when the Universe was just 2 to 4 billion years old and the earliest galaxies were forming.

Blocking a single tiny blood vessel in the brain can harm neural tissue and even alter behavior, a new study from the University of California, San Diego has shown. But these consequences can be mitigated by a drug already in use, suggesting treatment that could slow the progress of dementia associated with cumulative damage to minuscule blood vessels that feed brain cells. The team reports their results in the December 16 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience.

Turning vast amounts of genomic data into meaningful information about the cell is the great challenge of bioinformatics, with major implications for human biology and medicine. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and colleagues have proposed a new method that creates a computational model of the cell from large networks of gene and protein interactions, discovering how genes and proteins connect to form higher-level cellular machinery.

Following six years of service as Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences and Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Tony Haymet has announced his decision to retire from his administrative duties on January 1, 2013.  He will remain a Distinguished Professor at UC San Diego.

Dr. Mana Parast, an assistant professor of pathology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has been awarded a $3 million grant to continue her research into new therapies for preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that often results in additional neonatal complications.