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Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have created a device that uses sunlight to transform harmful CO2 gas into fuel that could replace all the gasoline used in transportation. Clifford Kubiak, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Aaron Sathrum have developed a prototype device that can capture energy from the sun, convert it to electrical energy and “split” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen. The amazing process produces CO (carbon monoxide) which can be processed by bacterial fermentation to produce ethanol, and massive amounts industrial chemicals used to produce plastics. By splitting CO2 you can save...

Physicists at the University of California, San Diego have for the first time observed the spontaneous production of coherence within "excitons," the bound pairs of electrons and holes that enable semiconductors to function as novel electronic devices. Scientists working in the emerging field of nanotechnology, which is finding commercial applications for ultra-small material objects, believe that this newly discovered property could eventually help the development of novel computing devices and provide them with new insights into the quirky quantum properties of matter. Details of the new finding appear in a paper published in the November 3 issue of the journal...

Step onto a college campus these days and you might hear the remark, “That's so gay.” For many students, the words seem like a harmless way to poke fun at something. But for University of California San Diego senior Peper Anan, it's a personal attack on her sexual identity. Anan, who considers herself bisexual, says she hears the sentence about once a month and always tries to educate the person about how offensive it is. It's this sort of comment that she hopes will disappear with the creation of UCSD's first permanent Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center. The center...

Designed to create controversyCourts, school boards and public opinion have made evolution a hot topic By Bruce Lieberman UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER February 16, 2006 UC San Diego biologist Ajit Varki doesn't want to debate evolution. Doing that, he said, would make people think there's something to debate. For him, rejecting evolution is like trying to understand chemistry without the Periodic Table of the Elements or arguing that Earth is flat. “Everybody can have their own view of faith and origins and so on,” Varki said. “But when it comes to science, you've got to deal with facts.” Although researchers such...

SAN DIEGO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared at the University of California Board of Regents meeting at UCSD Wednesday morning to tout his proposed freeze of student fee increases at the state's public colleges and universities. In an appearance on the La Jolla campus, the governor praised the UC system as a "crown jewel" and asked its regents to help him get the Legislature to support his proposed state budget. Schwarzenegger has proposed canceling a hefty fee increase that had been scheduled to take effect this year at University of California and California State University campuses, largely because economic growth...

About 30 UC San Diego admissions readers crowded around eight tables, debating the merits of a fat stack of college applications. It was their second day of training for what may be the most important decision in the young lives of thousands of college applicants. And it all came down to agreeing on the number of points to award each one. One lesson became clear quickly: There is plenty of gray in a system designed in black and white. [...] And then come the essays. Not a writing test The essay is not measured for its literary merit, intellectual expression...

Pornography has returned to the airwaves of a UCSD student-run television station, despite a student leaders' vote earlier this week to ban nudity and sex. In a broadcast late Thursday night, Koala TV host and UCSD senior Steve York replayed footage of himself engaging in sex with an adult-film actress. This time, however, he retaliated against the student council members who are trying to limit his content. The actress' face was covered by the superimposed image of a student senator who was vocal in her support for the nudity and sex ban. York, 22, has said the episode is a...

San Diego Councilwoman Donna Frye and former Police Chief Jerry Sanders will face questioners under the sponsorship of California Common Cause in a two-hour forum on September 30 hosted by the University of California, San Diego. Co-sponsor of the event is the League of Women Voters of San Diego and the entire proceeding will be televised by UCSD-TV in a production to be repeated numerous times right up to election day, November 8. The debate at UCSD marks the first major engagement between the two candidates of the final election season. A focus of the forum will be the reform...

Jef Raskin, the human-computer interface expert largely credited with beginning the Macintosh project for Apple Computer, died Saturday at age 61. Raskin, the author of The Humane Interface, died of cancer, according to a man who answered the telephone Sunday at Raskin's Pacifica, Calif., home. Raskin joined Apple in January 1978 as employee No. 31, but left the company in 1982 amid a well-documented dispute with Steve Jobs. The Macintosh was launched in 1984. Reskin was an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a visiting scholar at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1970s when...

UCSD Jizzlam criticism inconsistent by Dustin Frelich Published: DUSTINet, June 13, 2003 Two months ago an on-campus publication at the University of California, San Diego, ran a picture of a dead fetus with the head of Jesus superimposed above the torso captioned "Close but no cigar: One of Mary's early attempts at a [M]essiah." Last week they published an issue entitled "Jizzlam, An Entertainment Magazine for the Islamic Man." The issue poked fun at the Islamic religion in crude ways, depicting bombs as sex toys and burkas as sexual garments. Any way you look at it, both issues were very...

"The future of tomorrow depends on the development of the human capital today. In order to enhance that capital, investments must be made in people, not just monetary contributions to academic institutions." -- Michael Robertson THE ROBERTSON EDUCATION EMPOWERMENT FOUNDATION “The average college student is leaving college with more than $20,000 in loan and credit card debt. Education Investments will provide these students with a much needed, new source of funding that doesn’t leave them in a financial straitjacket upon graduation.” -- Michael Robertson Michael Robertson, Chairman and chief executive officer of Lindows.com and founder of MP3.com, has established a...

Author and UCSD professor Quincy Troupe has resigned as the state's first official poet laureate after admitting that he lied on his résumé about having a college degree. "I deeply regret my ill-advised decision to include inaccurate information on my curriculum vitae," Troupe said in a statement released by Gov. Gray Davis' office last night. "While I attended Grambling College, I never earned a college degree." Quincy Troupe Troupe, 62, has been a professor of creative writing and Caribbean literature at UCSD since 1991. He could not be reached for comment last night. The discrepancy was discovered during a routine...