Science & Technology

UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) has established a new robotics engineering major under its department of computer engineering. ?Students were able to start enrolling in the major less than a month ago, and at least 11 incoming first-years have declared this major, in addition to the 44 current students that have also declared robotics. ?”I would certainly love to see it help student recruitment rate, and get more students excited about coming to UCSC – they’ll see that we have a broader range of engineering programs,” said Richard Hughey, professor of computer engineering and biomolecular engineering at UCSC.

People lie. Those who are gifted purveyors of deceit use their skills to gain advantage in business, political and social situations.

Imagine this: a doctor says to a cancer patient that a gene in their body is responsible for their leukemia. Now imagine that the doctor tells the patient that the gene can be suppressed, but that suppressing the gene could cause liver cancer.

Most of us are familiar with the mental breakdown of the HAL 9000 computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The fictional HAL ran the daily operations of a spaceship, including life-support, until he decided humans were unnecessary.

Science writer David Quammen once wrote, “Biology has great potential as vulgar entertainment.”

Chris Martin, a fourth-year graduate student at UC Davis, waded into a lake in 100-degree weather. Though the water was only two feet deep, he had to wear a full-body wet suit to avoid the pain of stinging algae.

Apple surpassed Google as the most valuable company in the world. A Millward-Brown study reported that Apple made an 84 percent increase in brand value. Apple is now worth $153 billion; meanwhile, the now second-place Google is worth $111 billion.

Annahita K. Sarcon, a fourth-year graduate student at UC Davis School of Medicine, was recently awarded a Fulbright Award to conduct cardiac stem cell research in Pamplona, Spain.

“Okay, class, make your bibliography in [insert confusing format].”

Seven months after a voicebox transplant at the UC Davis Medical Center (UCDMC) allowed a patient to speak on her own for the first time in over a decade, the patient is recovering and voicebox transplant requests are increasing.

There are all kinds of threats on the internet, but recent high-profile security breaches, such as the one that has crippled Sony’s Playstation Network for the past few weeks, can have devastating effects.

In 1803, 20 orphans boarded a ship in Spain. Though all of them looked healthy, one of them developed pustules eight days later. The pustules soon developed into scabs.