UC San Diego Baseball Honored
With First Pitch at Padres Game
Cheers rose from a crowd of more than 17,000 as Triton shortstop Vance Albitz, surrounded by his teammates, threw the ceremonial first pitch during a Padres game at PETCO Park last week. It was the biggest crowd Albitz had ever faced during a game—and it felt pretty good, he said. “It was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” the shortstop said in a phone interview two days after the game. More

UC San Diego Named to President Obama’s
Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction
UC San Diego has been named to the 2009 President's Community Service Honor Roll with distinction for the contributions its students make to local, national and global communities on issues ranging from poverty to homelessness and environmental justice. This is the first year the university is on the Distinction List. More

Bees, Biology and Chemistry: Bringing
Graduate Level Research to High School Classrooms
More than a dozen high school students donning protective suits were trying to find out if pollinators prefer introduced plants like the Indian Hawthorn over native plants like the Monkey Flower. They are working under the direction of Megan Eckles, an ecology doctoral student in UC San Diego’s Division of Biological Sciences. She is a Fellow in UCSD’s Socrates program, which provides fellowships to UCSD graduate students to work with local teachers to teach students about scientific discovery and motivate them to pursue scientific careers. More

New Docs Linked to Death Spike in July
Study suggests inexperienced medical staff make fatal medication errors
Are new medical residents a threat to patient health? According to sociology professor David Phillips and his student Gwendolyn Barker from UC San Diego, fatal medication errors peak in July in counties with teaching hospitals, which coincides with the yearly influx of new medical residents who are given increased responsibility for patient care. More

Newly Discovered Kinase Regulates Cytoskeleton,
May Hold Key to How Cancer Cells Spread
UCSD scientists have identified a previously unknown kinase that regulates cell proliferation, shape and migration, and may play a major role in the progression or metastasis of cancer cells. The research will be published in the May 31 online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More

Faulty Gene Stops Cell ‘Antennae’ From Transmitting
An international group of researchers has identified the genetic cause of an inherited condition that causes severe fetal abnormalities. The work, co-led by geneticists at the UCSD Institute for Genomic Medicine, together with colleagues from institutes and universities in Paris, Rome and England, should allow couples at risk of conceiving babies with the profoundly disabling Meckel-Gruber and Joubert syndromes to be identified beforehand through genetic screening. More