The San Diego Zoo is perhaps the most well known icon of our city. A favorite attraction amongst locals and tourists alike, it has the largest membership of any zoo worldwide with over half a million members. The Zoo draws people from all over the county, state, nation and even the world to marvel at its wide variety of animals and natural habitats. Its stellar reputation is well deserved, boasting over 4,000 rare and endangered animals,…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that it is awarding $348 million nationwide to encourage investigators to explore bold ideas that have the potential to catapult fields forward and speed the translation of research into improved health.   Five researchers from the University of California, San Diego have been awarded grants totaling $8.5 million for their innovative research.

The UC San Diego award winners include:

• Pioneer Award-winner…

Philosophers have argued for millennia about the duality of man, calling the dichotomy a number of names throughout history: body and soul, brain and mind, matter and spirit. At the heart of the crux lies the question of whether chemistry can possibly explain utmost human feelings such as love and heartbreak. A recent scientific study suggests that genetics could, at the very least, modulate our feelings. A team of researchers led by Naomi Eisenberger at…

What do running shoes, cosmetics, and lunar landing all have in common? They are all products of biomimicry, technologies developed from mother nature's tried and true solutions to age old design challenges.

Humans have been using nature as a model for problem solving since their tribal roots. The Alaskan Inuits learned to hunt seals by mimicking polar bears and still use this hunting method today. In the modern world, the design…

Many of the genes that regulate insulin also alter the timing of the circadian clock, a new study has found.

The biological clock was know to regulate metabolism. Now new evidence shows that metabolic processes can also alter the timing of the clock. Credit: Patera Design/UCSD Bio Sci

Although insulin responses were known to…

Salk Press Release: Anticoagulant plays unexpected role in maintaining circulatory integrity

September 01, 2009

LA JOLLA, CA—Protein S, a well-known anticoagulant protein, keeps the blood flowing in more than one way, discovered researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The protein contributes to the formation and function of healthy blood vessels.

The researchers found that mice lacking protein S suffered massive blood clots, but also had defective…

   The ocean is so incredibly vast that it retains a certain level of mystery despite the relentless advance of technology. The floor of the deep ocean is an alien place; like the terrain of mars, or the moon, most people have only viewed it through the lenses of advanced machinery and many of the creatures that make their home in the ocean are only now beginning to be catalogued. Humans once believed that unspeakable monsters roamed the vast expanses of the ocean, but the…