News Archive - Environment

Evolutionary Stalling: Researchers Explore the Boundaries of Natural Selection

What are the boundaries of natural selection? Research published in PNAS shows that even natural selection has a tough time optimizing performance simultaneously across multiple components of the cell. They call the concept "evolutionary stalling."

Indigenous Property Rights Protect the Amazon Rainforest

One way to cut back on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest – and help in the global fight against climate change – is to grant more of Brazil’s indigenous communities full property rights to tribal lands. This policy focus is suggested by the findings of a new PNAS study.

SDSC’s ‘Comet’ Supercomputer Used to Simulate Environmental Changes in Chesapeake Bay

Researchers recently used Comet at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego to examine impacts of both regional and global changes affecting the Chesapeake Bay.

New fabrication method brings single-crystal perovskite devices closer to viability

Nanoengineers at UC San Diego developed a new method to fabricate perovskites as single-crystal thin films, which are more efficient for use in solar cells and optical devices than the current state-of-the-art polycrystalline forms of the material.

Rare Glassy Metal Discovered During Quest to Improve Battery Performance

Materials scientists studying battery recharging fundamentals made an astonishing discovery that could open the door to better batteries, faster catalysts and other materials science leaps.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Partners with NOAA for Unmanned Systems Research

NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego are partnering to improve how unmanned systems (UxS) are used to collect important ocean observations and augment NOAA’s operational capabilities.https://www.noaa.

Novel ‘On-off’ Switch Discovered in Plant Defenses

Researchers investigating the ways that plants protect themselves—from insects to pathogens—have discovered an “on-off” switch that controls plant defensive mechanisms. The finding lays the groundwork for improved plant disease resistance and food stability.