Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Sustainability Talk Tomorrow

THE GREENOVATION FORUM: SENSING AND SUSTAINABILITY

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at the CALIT2 Auditorium at Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego

Reception: 4:00 PM
Program: 4:30 PM

As we reach the beginning of December, there are looming signs that the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen will not reach an agreement. What lies ahead and how can we reach an agreement to stem the growth in emissions?

Join the Greenovation forum at UC San Diego to learn about a more sustainable approach to sustainability. We will discuss how sensor technology can help achieve sustainability at lower cost. The San Diego region is home to a number of promising sensor companies. Come and join the discussion about how sensor research and commercialization can pave the way for a more sustainable future!

The program will feature the following speakers:

Professor Larry Smarr, Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) and computer science professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Shimon Gersten, Chief Technology Officer, Talon Communications

Professor Jan Kleissl, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department

Professor Vish Krishnan, Rady School of Management

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. For more information and to RSVP, visit http://ssi.ucsd.edu/greenovation.

Systems Biology and Insulin Resistance


Researchers from the University of California, San Diego recently offered the sharpest-yet picture of how core biochemical pathways in skeletal muscle cells and fat cells are altered in people who suffer from insulin resistance—a primary defect in type 2 diabetes and obesity. Taking a systems biology approach, the bioengineers and medical researchers also determined how a common class of drugs for treating insulin resistance—TZDs—alter these same core pathways. This led the team to uncover previously unknown effects of TZDs and insights that could lead to improved drug therapies for insulin resistance.

The team—led by investigators from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and School of Medicine—recently published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“When you are insulin resistant, your metabolism suffers. If you take a TZD for your insulin resistance, will the drug fix the dysfunction in muscle and fat tissues? Will these changes be functionally related to drug efficacy? These are some of the questions we addressed in our new study,” say UC San Diego faculty members Dr. Shankar Subramaniam and Dr. Dorothy Sears, co-corresponding authors of the new paper. The collaborative project involved Dr. Subramaniam’s Bioinformatics and Systems Biology laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering, Dr. Sears and her colleagues in the Department of Medicine, and Pfizer, Inc.