November 29, 2001   —   Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have produced dramatic images of brain cells forming temporary and permanent connections in response to various stimuli, illustrating for the first time the structural changes between neurons in the brain that, many scientists have long believed, take place when we store short-term and long-term memories.

November 15, 2001   —   New cosmological simulations performed on a supercomputer have provided astrophysicists with the best indication to date of how the first star in the universe formed.

August 20, 2001   —   SAN DIEGO, CA-Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have mapped key cellular structures using a new method to harness the power of supercomputing. The maps may point the way to understanding how those structures perform functions such as transporting a drug like taxol to a binding site so it can do its work in treating breast cancer.

August 18, 2001   —   The DNA inside some viruses is packed so tightly that the internal pressure reaches ten times that in a champagne bottle, according to new measurements by biophysicists at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and at San Diego and the University of Minnesota.

June 1, 2001   —   Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have developed a silicon polymer "nanowire," some 2,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, that is capable of detecting trace amounts of TNT and picric acid, an explosive commonly used in terrorist bombs.

May 16, 2001   —   Five professors in the Biology and Physical Sciences Divisions at the University of California, San Diego are being recognized for their achievements. They are Kim Baldridge, Robert E. Continetti, M. Brian Maple, Ivan K. Schuller and Nicholas C. Spitzer.

April 5, 2001   —   Physicists at the University of California, San Diego who last year produced a new class of composite materials believed to reverse the behavior of many fundamental electromagnetic properties associated with materials, have experimentally verified the first of these predicted reversals.

April 3, 2001   —   Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have created novel silicon chips with miniature wells similar to those in muffin tins that allow the maintenance of fully functioning liver cells, an important advance for scientists who hope to keep liver cells alive outside of the body.