Life Sticks: UCSD paper in Science this week

While Benjamin Franklin said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” a UC San Diego bioengineer has something to add to this list: “the stickiness of life.”

In a “Review” article published this week in the prestigious journal Science, Adam Engler highlighted a recurring theme in all corners of biology: life sticks. Cells need to stick together. No matter what kind of cells they are. Cells within bacteria, fungi, sponges, nematodes and humans, for example, all need to stick together; but they do not use exactly the same proteins to do the sticking together.

According to Adam Engler from UC San Diego, there is something inherent in the nature of the ever-present sticking together task that cause common form and function to emerge.

The new article connects a wide range of seemingly different disciplines, and Engler hopes publishing the study in Science will encourage more scientists to look beyond their specific disciplines and ask and answer bigger questions.

Read the full press release here:
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=834

Robert C. Cowen from the Christian Science Monitor covered the story. Check it out here.

Adam Engler lab Web page:
http://ecm.ucsd.edu/

Science Paper:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/324/5924/208

“Multiscale Modeling of Form and Function,” by Adam J. Engler from the
University of California, San Diego; Patrick O. Humbert from Peter MacCallum Cancer Center; Bernhard Wehrle-Haller from Centre Medical Universitaire; and Valerie M. Weaver from University of California, San Francisco; appears in the 10 April 2009 issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS.

Props to Calit2

Read Bruce Bigelow's Xconomy story on Calit2.

Taaz Technology Updates

Thanks to UC San Diego alumnus turned entrepreneur Satya Mallick for sending me a couple of updates on his Jacobs School spin out company, Taaz.com. Mallick started the company with computer science professor David Kriegman.

You can watch the original Taaz.com video below (part of our new video portal)



Read about Taaz.com here.

Satya informed me of two recent updates:

1. The Taaz.com virtual makeover technology is now integrated into the InStyle.com Web site. Check it out...and put yourself, or your favorite celebrity, on the cover of InStyle.

2. Now, when you are working on a virtual makeover at Taaz.com, if you find some makeup that you like, you can click "buy it" and immediately purchase the products you have just been trying out online.

Have fun with your online makeovers!

Concrete Canoe Floats off UC San Diego Campus

Savage Conficker Quote

Computer science professor Stefan Savage from the Jacobs School is quoted in a New York Times online story by John Markoff on the computer worm Conficker.

Or perhaps the Conficker botnet’s masters have something more Machiavellian in mind. One researcher, University of California at San Diego computer scientist Stefan Savage, has suggested the idea of a “Dark Google.” What if Conficker is intended to give the computer underworld the ability to search for data on all the infected computers around the globe and then sell the answers? Malware already does this on a focused basis using a variety of schemes that are referred to as “spear phishing,” in a reference to the widespread use of social engineering tricks on the Net.

Concrete Canoe Commotion

What's all the concrete commotion on campus these days?

Believe it or not, it's Concrete Canoe commotion. A team of Jacobs School undergraduates has spent the last six months designing and building a high-tech concrete canoe. On Thursday March 19, the students load up the canoe and prepare to ship it to Hawaii, for a big intercollegiate concrete canoe competition.

Watch a one-minute video. And stay tuned for a report from the Thursday concrete canoe lift off.

Andrew Chien quoted in New York Times

Andrew Chien, director of research at Intel and a former full-time faculty member at the Jacobs School of Engineering is quoted in a John Markoff New York Times piece about a bump in enrollment in computer science programs.

The computer science department at the Jacobs School is working on a variety of ways to draw a wider swath of students into computer science. The video below illustrates one such project, organized by Jacobs School computer science professors Beth Simon and Bill Griswold.