Contrary to what you may think – or perhaps remember from school – “O Chem”, or organic chemistry, is really deceptively simple in principle, and The Scripps Research Institute’s Keary Engle takes you on a thorough exploration of how the initial simplicity of “O Chem” can be exploited to great use in drug discovery. From…

How could Buczacz, the European town that was home to Jews, Poles and Ukrainians for hundreds of years, be turned into a community of genocide in the early 1940’s? Using eyewitness reports, documents, and memoirs from that period, historian Omer Bartov answers this question in chilling detail as he describes how the Nazis recruited the…

There are more than 7000 rare disorders affecting more than 30 million Americans. Only half have a known cause. Hudson Freeze, PhD, Professor of Glycobiology & Director of the Human Genetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute examines how we should treat these disorders as well a new ones that will be discovered…

When then-President-elect Trump took a phone call from the leader of Taiwan in December, he threatened to upend the “One China” policy that has been in place since the Nixon administration. That breach of protocol alarmed many, including the authors of a widely circulated new report by China specialists Susan Shirk of UC San Diego…

Demand for gill rakers for use in alternative medicine has put the oceanic manta ray (Manta birostris) population at risk. With their extremely low reproductive rates, large scale and even small artisanal fisheries may lead to population decline and perhaps local extinctions. Understanding the basic ecology and population dynamics of the species is a prerequisite…

“When should your robot rat you out, and when should it not?” asks Albert (“Al”) P. Pisano, Professor and Dean, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Robotics are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our daily lives – from wearable sensors to intelligent vehicles. Many of these innovations will aid in more independent…

In the United States, there are over 37 million injury-related visits to the emergency room every year. One out of three people will suffer a traumatic injury during their lifetime. Providing state-of-the-art trauma care to a community requires coordinated systems of emergency medicine physicians, trauma surgeons and their hospitals and centers. But it is clearly…

“And here I stand. Judge, my masters.” – Falstaff, Henry IV Part 1 Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, grew out the composer’s desire to write a comic opera (his first in 50 years) and his reverence for Shakespeare, upon whose work Verdi had previously based two of his operas, Macbeth and Otello. When Verdi expressed…

One thing most can agree on right now – people are paying attention to politics. Whether it’s marching or writing or donating (or all 3!), Americans are engaged in ways not seen in decades. But as opposing sides become more combative, what is the path to a consensus on solutions? Messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio explains…

With the explosion in techniques to explore the human brain at every scale has come a deeper understanding of fundamental human characteristics. We are also able to see impairments and dysfunction as well as pathways by which we may ultimately be able to treat and cure such conditions. This series explores the latest from the…