A Sampling of Clips for
December 8th, 2006
* UCSD faculty and staff may obtain a copy of an article by e-mailing the University Communications Office
Death by Auction
Forbes, Dec. 8 -- Want a murder weapon? You might be able to pick up something on eBay. Last year, F. Lee Cantrell, a clinical toxicologist and a professor at UCSD, published a study in the Journal of Toxicology documenting 121 Ebay auctions of poisons over a ten-month period from 2003 to 2004. Of Cantrell's documented auctions 24 involved strychnine, arsenic trioxide or other "super toxic" poisons, meaning that a dose of 5 milligrams or less, if ingested, would likely kill a human. More
Antibiotics Au Naturel
Nature, Dec. 5 -- Technologies for accessing and screening new sources of badly needed and novel antibiotics have improved dramatically during the past decade. A major institutional initiative, which UCSD launched this year, offers one possible model for furthering natural products research to the point where new molecules can be picked up by drug development companies for further development. More
2006: The Year of Climate Change
Voice of San Diego, Dec. 8 -- Within the last year, public perception of the global warming debate has been changing. Some scientists and environmentalists say historians will reflect on 2006 as the seminal year in the debate. The year the Republican governor of California agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The year that millions saw Al Gore's definitive global warming movie. The year that a heat wave killed 140 across the state. (Quotes Tim Barnett, Mike Dettinger and Richard Somerville, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD, as well as UCSD History Professor Naomi Oreskes) More
Computer Artist Works With E-mail Spam Art
KPBS, Dec. 7 -- There’s something subversive about e-mail spam in the way it evades computer filters to reach your e-mail box. But there’s something equally subversive about what Alex Dragulescu does with it once it gets to him. He turns into something beautiful. Dragulescu is a Romanian-born computer artist who manages the Experimental Game Lab at UCSD. More
Stem Cell Program President Resigns
North County Times, Dec. 7 -- The president of California's $3 billion stem cell research program gave his resignation Thursday, effective within six months. (Mentions UCSD) More
Can’t We All Get Along?
Why Files, Dec. 7 -- Can’t We All Get Along? Yes, if our genes are close enough. Otherwise, not. That's the word from a new UCSD study of the Argentine ant, an invasive pest that forms gigantic "super-colonies" in California. Since Argentine ants somehow entered the state about 100 years ago, they quickly became ant numero uno. More
UCSD Grad Wins 2006 Outstanding Student Paper Award
San Diego Daily Transcript, Dec. 7 -- David Wipf, a recent graduate of the electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. program at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, has won a 2006 Outstanding Student Paper Award at a conference for his work on human functional brain imaging. The conference is the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. More