University of California, San Diego
A team of network security experts in San Diego, Eureka and Berkeley, Calif., has determined that the computer worm that attacked and hobbled the global Internet 11 days ago was the fastest computer worm ever recorded. In a technical paper released today, the experts report that the speed and nature of the Sapphire worm, also called Slammer, represent significant and worrisome milestones in the evolution of computer worms. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego and its San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), Eureka-based Silicon Defense, the University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, found that the Sapphire worm doubled its numbers every 8.5 seconds during the explosive first minute of its attack.
Although the oceans cover 70 percent of the planet's surface, much of their biomedical potential has gone largely unexplored. Until now. A group of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have for the first time shown that sediments in the deep ocean are a significant biomedical resource for microbes that produce antibiotic molecules. In a series of two papers, a group led by William Fenical, director of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine (CMBB) at Scripps Institution, has reported the discovery of a novel group of bacteria found to produce molecules with potential in the treatment of infectious diseases and cancer.
Researchers have determined the molecular machinery that triggers normal cardiac muscle growth and survival, and have linked defects in this complex to an inherited form of human cardiomyopathy, a type of heart failure where an enlarged heart loses its ability to pump blood. Published in the December 27, 2002 issue of the journal Cell, the study also identifies a subset of German cardiomyopathy patients with a specific gene mutation that disrupts the heart muscle's normal stretch activity. This mutation has apparently been passed down through several generations of Northern Europeans.
The culmination of hundreds of research dives, scientific analysis, and high-tech mapping software has led to a fundamentally new approach for designing networks of marine reserves. An effort led by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and reported in the Dec. 6 issue of Science, could become a powerful new method for decision makers charged with developing marine reserves and a forerunner for similar efforts around the world.
An expert in computational biology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) estimates that it took many more evolutionary genome rearrangements than previously thought -- both large and small -- to account for differences in the human and mouse genomes. The findings are included in two landmark papers announced today.
You learn a lot analyzing dung. Sampling specimens from wild African elephants, UC San Diego researchers have found the continent is home to three distinct types of Proboscidia, not two. Apparently the distinction in the past was between savanna and forest elephants. Now it turns out a third, genetically distinct species has evolved that swings both ways.
THOMPSON SAYS FOOD SUPPLY VULNERABLE TO ATTACK
The number of U.S. food inspectors has risen over the last year, but Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said the nation is still vulnerable to an attack on its food supply. It was clear even before Sept. 11 that the Food and Drug Administration's inspection system had big holes, the Associated Press reports, with 150 inspectors together examining less than one percent of the nation's food. After last fall, Congress opened the purse strings enough to hire 750 additional inspectors, and new technology has made some inspections faster. But Thompson said danger remains. "I still believe that is the area we are subject to a terrorist attack in the future and one that could cause problems." In perhaps the most shocking part of Thompson's coments, he blamed the previously low number of inspectors on a vindictive Congress that punished the agency for former FDA Commissioner David Kessler's efforts to regulate the tobacco industry.
Meanwhile...
DUST-SIZED CHIPS TO COMBAT BIOTERRORISM
Silicon chips the size of dust particles that can quickly detect biological and chemical agents have been developed by University of California, San Diego scientists. As reported by HealthScoutNews, the versatile chips can identify substances that can be dissolved in drinking water or sprayed into the air during a bioterrorist attack. "The idea is that you can have something that's as small as a piece of dust with some intelligence built into it, so that it could be inconspicuously stuck to paint on a wall or to the side of a truck or dispersed into a cloud of gas," UCSD researcher Michael Sailor said. Each chip is barcoded, and can be read using a laser detector to see what if any reaction has occurred. "When the dust recognizes what kinds of chemicals or biological agents are present, that information can be read ... to tell us if the cloud that's coming toward us is filled with anthrax bacteria or if the tank of drinking water into which we've sprinkled the dust is toxic," Sailor said.
