Junkyard Derby Prep

Below is an email that gives an inside look at Junkyard Derby, one of the great Jacobs School of Engineering annual events.

If you've never participated in the Junkyard Derby before, I can assure you that 15 seconds is a VERY long time, especially when other teams get all the best junk you wanted.

Dear Derby Junkies,

If you have done so already, thank you for registering for the 2011 Junkyard Derby. If you haven't done so yet, go do it now! Don't miss the biggest and funnest engineering event of the year. 

As a friendly reminder, all payments and registrations are due May 6th.

Junk Collections:

Do you want a head start at grabbing junk? 2 easy steps:

1. Attend 3 out of the 4 Saturday Junk Collections. The dates for the Junk Collections coming up are April 30th, May 7th, and May 14th, 2PM-5PM in Regents Parking Lot P705. You must help out at the Junk Collection for at least an hour each in order to be counted toward the head start. Make sure you sign in and out for your team.
2. A 15-second head start in grabbing junk, and DECaF points if you sign in for your org.

If you've never participated in the Junkyard Derby before, I can assure you that 15 seconds is a VERY long time, especially when other teams get all the best junk you wanted. 

Also, it is very important for as many teams as possible to attend these junk collections. The junk we collect in the upcoming weekends is all the junk YOU guys will get to use at the Derby. So the more people that go collect junk, the more and "better quality" junk you will get for your cars. 

How to build a Derby car:

Never participated in Junkyard Derby before? Worried about the seemingly insurmountable task of using power tools for some hands-on engineering? TESC has got you covered.

Come to the TESC GBM on May 4th at 7:30 PM in EBU2-584 (room subject to change).

Hope to see you at the Junk Collection tomorrow!

--

GreenDroid Research in MIT Technology Review

Research led by computer science professors Michael Taylor and Steven Swanson is covered in Technology Review today by Tom Simonite.

The first paragraph from the Technology Review GreenDroid project is below:

A processor etched with circuits tailored to the most widely used apps on Android phones could help extend the devices' battery life. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have created software that scans the operating system and a collection of the most popular apps and then generates a processor design tailored to their demands. The result can be 11 times more efficient than today's typical general-purpose smart-phone chip, says Michael Taylor, who leads the GreenDroid project with colleague Steven Swanson.

The Jacobs School covered this work back in August when the UC San Diego computer scientists presented at HotChips 2010.

The first two paragraphs of the Jacobs School of Engineering GreenDroid story are below:

A new smartphone chip prototype under development at the University of California, San Diego will improve smartphone efficiency by making use of “dark silicon” – the underused transistors in modern microprocessors. On August 23, UC San Diego computer scientists presented GreenDroid, the new smartphone chip prototype at the HotChips symposium in Palo Alto, CA.


Dark silicon refers to the huge swaths of silicon transistors on today’s chips that are underused because there is not enough power to utilize all the transistors at the same time. The new GreenDroid chip prototype from computer scientists at UC San Diego will deliver improved performance through specialized processors fashioned from dark silicon. These processors are designed to run heavily used chunks of code, called “hot code,” in Google’s Android smartphone platform.

Microrockets Take Off / NanoEngineering Research from UC San Diego

The paper on nanomotors that selectively pick up cancer cells is highlight this week in C&EN (Chemical & Engineering News).

Nanoengineers Joseph Wang and Liangfang Zhang of the University of California, San Diego, and coworkers show that tube-shaped microrockets functionalized with antibodies can cruise through human blood serum.

Video Caption (see below): In the first section of the video,  you can see the microrocket (black) selectively collect a pancreatic cancer cell. (The cell has a specific outside surface marker that the microrocket attaches to.) In the following three sections of the video, the microrocket is unable to collect the cancer cell, either because the rocket has not been modified, or because the cells do not express the right outside surface marker. 




Video Caption (see below): In this 8-second video, a microrocket transports a pancreatic cancer cell in buffer solution and in human serum.

ECE Day is Friday (where ECE = Electrical and Computer Engineering)

ECE Day is Friday April 29 and it is free.

What is ECE Day?

On Friday, Apr 29, 2011, Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the ECE & CSE National Honor Society Chapter at UCSD, will be hosting an Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Day for the UCSD Jacobs School community this year.

The main goal of ECE Day is to educate students about ECE in industry and academia. Representatives from the industry are invited to present real world applications that motivate and empower students pursuing a degree in ECE, while encouraging non-majors to broaden their understanding of the field. Graduate students and professors will also be invited to share their research. Students will then have the opportunity to converse with both professional engineers and academic researchers to gain valuable insight into the field.

Prizes and swags will be raffled off throughout the day. Undergraduates will have a shot at competing for the grand prize at the Design Competition.

Big thanks to our corporate sponsors, graduate student volunteers, faculty, and our Jacobs School partners. We appreciate your help in making this inaugural event a success.

Bernhard Palsson Elected to American Academy of Microbiology

UC San Diego bioengineering professor Bernhard Palsson has been elected to fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. Palsson, along with 77 other new fellows, was elected in recognition of his scientific achievement and original contributions to the advancement of microbiology. (See the full list of Fellows here.)

Palsson’s current research at UC San Diego focuses on the reconstruction of genome-scale biochemical reaction networks; the development of mathematical analysis procedures for genome-scale models; and the experimental verification of genome-scale models with current emphasis on cellular metabolism and transcriptional regulation in E. coli and Yeast. You can read more about Palsson and his team on the Systems Biology Reseach Group site. 

Read a recent press release on research coming out of the Palsson lab: “Metabolism Models may Explain Why Alzheimer's Disease Kills Some Neuron Types First”.

There are more than 2,000 fellows representing all subspecialties of microbiology, including basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry, and government service. For more information on the American Academy of Microbiology click here.  

Palsson was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006.

The Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego is consistently ranked in the top 2 or 3 bioengineering departments in the nation. 

Science360 Radio stream

NSF has launched the Science360 Radio stream, which you can access via Science360.gov, the Science360 News Service

Jacobs School of Rock / Call for Bands

Jacobs School of Rock is coming. The call for bands closes on April 30. Learn more on the Jacobs School of Rock Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/JacobsSchoolOfRock?sk=info

Check out the Jacobs School of Rock video from 2009.