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5.13.13 Tech Radar
"Would you want an electronic tattoo that could read your mind?"
There's a time in most of our lives when we surrender to an overwhelming need to be part of the zeitgeist and get a painful, nondescript, instantly regrettable tattoo. There's also a subsequent time when you have three fifths of a second to lie to your mum about what that 'Māori looking smudge' is on the back of your neck. Now, thanks to researchers at the University of California, you'll have the completely believable response of 'it's a brain-reading, wireless, electronic temporary

5.12.13 ABC News
"Flexible Armor: Mysterious Seahorse Astounds Scientists"
The curious seahorse, a tiny fish that swims in a vertical position and looks a lot like a miniature horse, has astounded researchers by its ability to withstand crushing forces that would destroy nearly every other living creature. And it just may help the researchers borrow from the world of biology to solve some really tough problems in the world of engineering. The seahorse is the latest in a growing list of organisms in the relatively new field of biomimetics.

5.12.13 Gizmodo
"The Tiny Seahorse's Tail Could Help Create A New Type of Armor"
According to engineers at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering, the Hippocampus could one day lead to the creation of a robot that can mimic the seahorse's tail for use in hostile situations while withstanding incredible amounts of pressure. Or maybe some next level armature. "The tail is the seahorse's lifeline, because it allows the animal to anchor itself to corals or seaweed and hide from predators," said Michael Porter, a Ph.D. student in materials science at the Jacobs School

5.9.13 Wired
"Why Even Google Will Embrace Cellphone Chips in the Data Center"
Jason Mars is a rarity. He's an outsider with regular access to Google's data centers.Mars is a professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego, and about five years ago, during a conference for computer science researchers, he met a Googler named Robert Hundt. Among so many other things, Hundt is responsible for a set of tools that track the performance of Google's massive computing facilities - widely regarded as the most advanced on the internet

5.9.13 Space Daily
"Seahorse's Armor Gives Engineers Insight Into Robotics Designs"
The tail of a seahorse can be compressed to about half its size before permanent damage occurs, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. The tail's exceptional flexibility is due to its structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other. Researchers are hoping to use a similar structure to create a flexible robotic arm equipped with muscles made out of polymer, which could be used in medical devices, underwater exploration

5.8.13 MSN News
"Sea horse tails inspire robot armor, medical devices"
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, who studied sea horse tails think the tails' natural armor could inspire future robotics. heir study, in Acta Biomaterialia, looked at the bony, agile plates of a sea horse's tail. "Upon compression, the overlapping bony plates slide past each other, allowing the tail to be compressed to nearly 50 percent its original length before any permanent damage occurs," the study says.

5.7.13 U~T San Diego
"FOSTERING RESEARCH"
There's so much innovation happening in San Diego, including new ways to treat HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease, as well as programs that offer free medical care to Tijuana's poor. Encinitas resident Sandra A. Brown oversees many of those projects. As the vice chancellor for research at UC San Diego, she helps scholars and scientists earn grants, set up their research and put those discoveries out in the real world.

5.7.13 Discovery
"Seahorse Tails Inspire Robotic Armor"
he seahorse -- whimsical-looking creature of fairytale and myth - is now providing bio-engineers with the inspiration to build a rugged robot arm that could one day rescue sailors who have fallen overboard, grasp medical tools or load equipment in outer space. That's because it turns out that the seahorse's tail is super-strong. Its overlapping armored plates can be squeezed more than 50 percent without damaging the nerves underneath, according to new research at the UC San Diego.

5.6.13 Smithsonian
"Seahorses Inspire New Armor Designs"
If you had to pick the toughest animal in the sea, you'd probably go for the great white shark. Or maybe the giant squid. You probably wouldn't pick the seahorse - a delicate, awkward little creature that clings to the seafloor. But the seahorse is exactly where armor designers are looking for new insights into building robots.

5.6.13 Gizmag
"Seahorse tails may hold key to flexible robotic tentacles"
The meaning of the word biomimicry is being devalued and inflated, to the point that any technology or design with the vaguest resemblance to something in the natural world tends to have the word unthinkingly applied to it. PR people in the automotive and architectural fields are now particularly fond of the word. So it's refreshing to be able to report on some research that has taken a detailed look at a natural phenomenon, the armor of a seahorse

4.26.13 Wall Street Journal
"Week in Ideas column by Daniel Akst. Saved by Tiny Sponges"
Engineers at the University of California have invented a new way to clean the blood of toxins from bacteria and venom. Video courtesy of the Jacobs School Communications Team.

4.26.13 U~T San Diego
"UCSD SEEKING BIG PART IN BRAIN RESEARCH PROJECT"
With an intensity rarely seen on campus, scientists at UC San Diego are racing to figure out the roles they might play in President Barack Obama's proposed BRAIN Initiative. They hope to position the school to compete for tens of million of dollars in research money.

4.25.13 IEEE Spectrum
"Nanosponges soak up antibiotic resistant bacteria and toxins"
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a nanoparticle that mimics a human blood cell so that it can circulate through our bloodstream soaking up bacterial infections and toxins. These so-called 'nanosponges' are expected to be particularly effective in treating bacterial infections that have developed an immunity to antibiotic treatments-and also for treating venoms from snake bites.

4.21.13 Gizmag
"Inching SkySweeper robot provides cheap way to inspect power lines"
If you look up at a power line in a few years and see something skittering along the wires, it (hopefully) won't be a mutant crab monster, but a powerline inspection robot costing less than US$1,000. A prototype of such a robot, called SkySweeper, was presented this month at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering's Research Expo. The robot was built with off-the-shelf electronics and plastic parts printed on an inexpensive 3D printer.

4.18.13 UCSD Guardian
"UCSD Engineers invent nanosponges to absorb toxins"
This toxin-independent treatment would allow doctors and hospitals to carry out one general treatment rather than multiple toxin-specific treatments. "This is a new way to remove toxins from the bloodstream," Liangfang Zhang, a nanoengineering professor at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, said in a press release on April 14. "Instead of creating specific treatments for individual toxins, we are developing a platform that can neutralize toxins caused by a wide range of pathogens."

4.17.13 Ziptrials Medical News
"Nanosponges to remove toxins from bloodstream"
A team of engineers from the University of California, San Diego are currently testing new technology designed to rid the bloodstream of dangerous toxins. Researchers say it's capable of targeting antibiotic-resistant bacteria and E. coli, as well as toxins from poisonous snakes and bees. At the center of the research is something called a nanosponge, which absorbs these dangerous pore-forming toxins.

4.17.13 Medical News Today
"Nanosponge mops up MRSA Toxin in Bloodstream"
Scientists in the US have developed tiny sponges made from nanoparticles disguised as red blood cells that can soak up a broad range of dangerous toxins in the blood, such as from bacteria like MRSA and E. coli, and even snake and bee venom. They suggest their technology, which so far has been shown to work in mice, offers a new way to remove toxins caused by a wide range of pathogens.

4.17.13 PopSci
"Nanosponges in your blood Could Soak up Infactions and Poison"
A newly invented "nanosponge," sheathed in armor made of red blood cells, can safely remove a wide range of toxins from the bloodstream. Scientists at the University of California-San Diego inoculated some mice with their nanosponge, and then gave the animals otherwise lethal doses of a toxin--and the mice survived. This is especially interesting because a nanosponge can work on entire classes of toxins.

4.17.13 Science Omega
"Absorbing toxins with nanosponges in disguise"
Nanoengineers from Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have developed a means of safely removing from the bloodstream many of the toxins released by bacterial infections and venomous animal bites. The so-called 'nanosponges' are 3,000 times smaller than a red blood cell and are capable of effectively soaking up the pore-forming toxins produced by poisonous snakes and bees and pathogens such as E. coli and MRSA.

4.15.13 Daily Tech
"New Nanosponges Help Fight Infection, Animal Poison"
Bit by a snake? Nanosponges might soon be what the doctor orders.A large variety of animal venoms share a class of dangerous compounds called pore-forming toxins. Bee stings, the bites of some venomous snakes, and even the drug-resistant "super-bug" MRSA (an infectious bacteria) all contain chemicals of this class, which can cause death in mammals in sufficient doses. The toxins puncture cell membranes causing an influx of ions and cell death.

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