UC Science Today

With all the new discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider, it’s hard to imagine that the particle accelerator once created quite a stir over its potential doomsday scenarios, including the creation of microscopic black holes. Particle physicist Marjorie Shapiro of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that the concern was significant enough to have a group of independent scientists review the scenarios.

"I would say most people thought it didn’t make much sense, but it's an important enough issue that you don't want to go by your gut. It’s easy to say, “Oh, come on,” but if you’re talking about the fate of the world, it’s not an appropriate way to respond. In fact, because there was so much concern in the general public, the Director General of CERN put together a blue ribbon panel of extremely well-known physicists, to really go through all the arguments and convince everybody that there was no chance that this would be the accelerator that ate the universe."

At UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, researcher Amro Hamdoun is studying the effects of environmental chemicals like flame retardants and pesticides, and trying to figure out how they get into our bodies in the first place. To do this, they’re looking to the sea urchin to better understand the role of drug transporters, which are important determinants of drug absorption, excretion and how compounds enter target organs.

"We’ve been looking at the biological properties of how these compounds interact with cells and how cells decide whether these are foreign compounds or not, and whether they can eliminate them."

By understanding this process in sea urchins, researchers hope to extend this knowledge to humans and create a rule book of sorts.

"Once you have that rule book you can then begin to design compounds around those rules. And you can even test existing compounds for their likelihood to interact with these drug transporters."

At UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, researcher Amro Hamdoun is studying the effects of environmental chemicals like flame retardants and pesticides, and trying to figure out how they get into our bodies in the first place. To do this, they’re looking to the sea urchin to better understand the role of drug transporters, which are important determinants of drug absorption, excretion and how compounds enter target organs.

"We’ve been looking at the biological properties of how these compounds interact with cells and how cells decide whether these are foreign compounds or not, and whether they can eliminate them."

By understanding this process in sea urchins, researchers hope to extend this knowledge to humans and create a rule book of sorts.

"Once you have that rule book you can then begin to design compounds around those rules. And you can even test existing compounds for their likelihood to interact with these drug transporters."

At UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, researcher Amro Hamdoun is studying the effects of environmental chemicals like flame retardants and pesticides, and trying to figure out how they get into our bodies in the first place. To do this, they’re looking to the sea urchin to better understand the role of drug transporters, which are important determinants of drug absorption, excretion and how compounds enter target organs.

"We’ve been looking at the biological properties of how these compounds interact with cells and how cells decide whether these are foreign compounds or not, and whether they can eliminate them."

By understanding this process in sea urchins, researchers hope to extend this knowledge to humans and create a rule book of sorts.

"Once you have that rule book you can then begin to design compounds around those rules. And you can even test existing compounds for their likelihood to interact with these drug transporters."

Women who are midnight snackers may want to listen up: a University of California, San Diego study has found that overnight fasting may reduce breast cancer risk. Catherine Marinac, a doctoral candidate at the Moores Cancer Center says their study measured women who fasted a little over twelve hours a night.

"We found that in general, women who fasted for longer nighttime intervals had better blood- sugar control and the effects were independent of how many calories women ate, what their body composition was, their BMI, their age and other factors that we think might influence that association."

While Marinac says larger studies are necessary, these findings do correlate with previous research with animal models – and the message she says, is a simple one.

"We think that a long nighttime fasting interval is a simple, feasible and effective strategy that could reach broad populations of women."

Using DNA samples from ancient and living Native Americans, an international team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley found that the original Americans split off into North and South America around 13,000 years ago. Computational biologist Rasmus Nielsen says that the findings support previous evidence found in the archeological record.

"The diversity in the Americas today, originated maybe around 13,000 years ago. So that's about the same time, as you get the first spread of unique Native American cultures in the American continent. If we look at the oldest divergence between different Native American populations, how old is that, that dates back to that time? So the time at which in the archeological record you see the first big spread of Native American cultures, you also get the genetic diversity dating back to that time."

Nielsen says that a single group diversified in the Americas as opposed to the idea that multiple different waves produced the diversity that we see today.

"And that explained almost all of the genetic diversity we see in Native Americans to date."

Women who are midnight snackers may want to listen up: a University of California, San Diego study has found that overnight fasting may reduce breast cancer risk. Catherine Marinac, a doctoral candidate at the Moores Cancer Center says their study measured women who fasted a little over twelve hours a night.

"We found that in general, women who fasted for longer nighttime intervals had better blood- sugar control and the effects were independent of how many calories women ate, what their body composition was, their BMI, their age and other factors that we think might influence that association."

While Marinac says larger studies are necessary, these findings do correlate with previous research with animal models – and the message she says, is a simple one.

"We think that a long nighttime fasting interval is a simple, feasible and effective strategy that could reach broad populations of women."

Using DNA samples from ancient and living Native Americans, an international team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley found that the original Americans split off into North and South America around 13,000 years ago. Computational biologist Rasmus Nielsen says that the findings support previous evidence found in the archeological record.

"The diversity in the Americas today, originated maybe around 13,000 years ago. So that's about the same time, as you get the first spread of unique Native American cultures in the American continent. If we look at the oldest divergence between different Native American populations, how old is that, that dates back to that time? So the time at which in the archeological record you see the first big spread of Native American cultures, you also get the genetic diversity dating back to that time."

Nielsen says that a single group diversified in the Americas as opposed to the idea that multiple different waves produced the diversity that we see today.

"And that explained almost all of the genetic diversity we see in Native Americans to date."

Women who are midnight snackers may want to listen up: a University of California, San Diego study has found that overnight fasting may reduce breast cancer risk. Catherine Marinac, a doctoral candidate at the Moores Cancer Center says their study measured women who fasted a little over twelve hours a night.

"We found that in general, women who fasted for longer nighttime intervals had better blood- sugar control and the effects were independent of how many calories women ate, what their body composition was, their BMI, their age and other factors that we think might influence that association."

While Marinac says larger studies are necessary, these findings do correlate with previous research with animal models – and the message she says, is a simple one.

"We think that a long nighttime fasting interval is a simple, feasible and effective strategy that could reach broad populations of women."

Using DNA samples from ancient and living Native Americans, an international team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley found that the original Americans split off into North and South America around 13,000 years ago. Computational biologist Rasmus Nielsen says that the findings support previous evidence found in the archeological record.

"The diversity in the Americas today, originated maybe around 13,000 years ago. So that's about the same time, as you get the first spread of unique Native American cultures in the American continent. If we look at the oldest divergence between different Native American populations, how old is that, that dates back to that time? So the time at which in the archeological record you see the first big spread of Native American cultures, you also get the genetic diversity dating back to that time."

Nielsen says that a single group diversified in the Americas as opposed to the idea that multiple different waves produced the diversity that we see today.

"And that explained almost all of the genetic diversity we see in Native Americans to date."