Dispatches From the Field
One is gathering testimony from witnesses and victims of the Spanish Civil War in Madrid, the country’s capital. Another witnessed first hand the forces of nature as a typhoon struck Taiwan, where he is helping run experiments on corals. Another got to know the lives of Tanzanian women and helped empower them. Eight UC San Diego students are studying, working and volunteering abroad this summer and have agreed to share their experiences in This Week @ UCSD. Here are their stories. More

Diversity, Equality Focus
for New Team of Social Justice Ambassadors
UC San Diego is launching a new initiative to increase awareness of the importance of diversity and equality for the campus community. Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Penny Rue is leading the effort. She has brought together a team of more than 35 staff members who have been designated as allies for social justice after attending a recent Building Communities for Social Justice Practice Institute. More

Exploring the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch
Scientists from UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have embarked on a research journey into the vast and little-explored "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch." The North Pacific Ocean Gyre is roughly a thousand miles off California's coast. More

UC San Diego Team Wins Spirit Award at Pride Parade
For this year’s San Diego Pride Parade, the team assembled by the UC San Diego LGBT Resource Center decided to break down some walls—albeit foam ones—and was rewarded for it. Last month, they won The Spirit of Pride Award, as part of the parade and surrounding events. 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

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

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 UC 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

Campus Receives $11 Million
in Incentives for Renewable Energy
The California Center for Sustainable Energy in San Diego has announced that UC 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 for a renewable energy project and is the nation’s first advanced energy storage project to receive state incentive funds. 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 “Tree Campus USA University” for the second consecutive year. More

Campus Receives $3 Million
NSF Grant to Fund Science Festivals
UC San Diego has received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support the 2010 San Diego Science Festival and fund the creation and growth of Science Festivals nationwide. The grant award follows the highly successful first San Diego Science Festival, held in March and April 2009. More

Mutations in Gene Linked to Ciliopathies
An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the 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, appeared in the online edition of Nature Genetics Aug. 9. More

Pulitzer Prize-winning Composer
Receives 'Highest Honor’ Appointment
Roger Reynolds, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and professor of music at UC San Diego, has been appointed University Professor by the University of California Board of Regents. Reynolds is only the 36th UC faculty member since 1960 to be honored with the title — and the first artist. More

Sixth College Provost Wins Caltech’s Bacon Prize
Naomi Oreskes, professor of history and science studies and provost of Sixth College, has been awarded the Francis Bacon Prize in recognition of outstanding scholarship in the history of science and technology. This prize was established by the Francis Bacon Foundation at Caltech in 2003 and is awarded biennially. Oreskes is a distinguished historian of Earth science and a well-known consultant on issues concerning the environment.
More

Dissertation Fellowship Gives
UCSD Student Step Up to Find a Job
Six months ago, Patricia Davis, a single mother and doctoral candidate in UC San Diego’s department of communication, was worried that she wouldn’t be able to get a job after graduation. But, with the support of the UC President’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship Program, she recently secured a tenure-track position at Georgia State University and has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina. More