After an eight-month pause for upgrades, the DIII-D National Fusion Facility has reopened for research.

The improvements to the laboratory, which is located at the General Atomics campus, bring the world a little closer to fulfilling the decades-long promise of fusion technology, which would offer nearly limitless clean energy resources.

DIII-D, pronounced “D Three D,” is a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility, where researchers from more than dozens of academic and governmental institutions explore issues related to fusion technology.

“The upgrades made to DIII-D over the last eight months provide us with exciting new capabilities and key enhancements to existing systems for studying fusion energy,” said DIII-D Director Richard Buttery in a statement.

“Our scientists will be able to use our upgraded systems and diagnostics to answer key questions on commercial industry–relevant technology, materials, and operations, as well as continue our support of ITER and advancement of foundational scientific understanding.”

The facility has been offline since last July in order to install new diagnostic instruments, further capabilities for heating plasmas and driving the current that supports the fusion reaction, and build up the system that removes exhaust heat and impurities from the tokamak, a torus-shaped room that confines plasmas using magnetic fields.

DIII-D is the largest tokamak in the nation.

A new $21 million gift from San Diego-based biotech leader and philanthropist Aiiso Yufeng “Jeff” Li and his wife, DongDong “Doreen” Li, honors unique efforts at the University of California San Diego to link chemical and nano engineering more strongly — in education and research.

The department that houses UC San Diego’s chemical and nano engineers will be named the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering.

This gift is one-half of two independent milestones for the nano engineers and chemical engineers at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

First, to reflect the department’s longstanding efforts to link its existing strengths in chemical and nanoengineering more strategically, the engineering terminology in the department name has changed from “NanoEngineering” to “Chemical and Nano Engineering.”

Second, these longstanding efforts at UC San Diego to better link chemical engineering and nano engineering inspired Li, a nanoengineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, and his wife and their family, to pledge $21 million to the Jacobs School of Engineering. 

The Li family’s gift will support education and research initiatives aimed at strengthening the ties between the two fundamentally complementary disciplines of chemical engineering and nano engineering within the department. The largest two research focus areas within the department are nanomaterials for human health and nanomaterials for sustainable energy.

“UC San Diego is proud to be at the forefront of engineering innovation, and the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering is a testament to our commitment to pushing boundaries and driving progress,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla.

“By combining these two fields, we are poised to unlock new discoveries that will improve lives and transform industries. We are deeply grateful to Jeff and Doreen for their visionary support, which will accelerate our pursuit of breakthroughs and cement UC San Diego’s position as a global leader in engineering education and research.”

Li is the founder and chief strategy officer of CorDx, a global biotech company and leader in the inventing and manufacturing of in vitro diagnostics.

“I am inspired by the department’s vision to unite the disciplines of chemical engineering and nano engineering more fully, with the ultimate goal of benefiting humanity,” said Li. “A large part of our success at CorDx can be traced back to our desire and ability to integrate nano-scale science and engineering with chemical engineering. I believe this convergence of nano-scale engineering and chemical engineering represents a bright future for manufacturing in the U.S.”

In 2007, UC San Diego created the Department of NanoEngineering, which brought together new degree programs and emerging research efforts in nanoengineering with existing degree programs and research efforts in chemical engineering.

This initiative was driven by the fact that nanotechnology had become an important academic subject in terms of education and research. Also, a wide range of industries expressed growing nanotechnology workforce needs.

Aiming to bridge the gap between nanoscale discovery and scalable production and manufacturing, the university integrated its chemical engineering degree programs and research into the nanoengineering department. 

Over the next 17 years, this visionary plan has enhanced the translation of nanoscale research into a wide range of practical applications. 

Since that time, the department has made significant strides through interdisciplinary research that links experts from diverse fields, including chemical engineering, nanoengineering, materials science, biomedical engineering, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, and more. 

UC San Diego researchers have been awarded a $5.6 million grant through the Coast-to-Coast Consortium to further efforts with the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, it was announced Monday.

The program collects a wide range of biosamples, survey responses, physical measurements, electronic health records and data from wearable devices to create a larger genomic database, giving biomedical researchers a greater pool of knowledge to draw from.

Monday’s award follows the program recently returning personalized health-related DNA results to more than 100,000 participants. The funding is intended to help the researchers increase the number and engagement level of participants in the program and data collection and retention.

“This research grant from the NIH to expand the All of Us Program is a testament to the power of collaboration and our commitment to advancing health equity through innovative research,” said Dr. Steven R. Garfin, interim dean of UCSD School of Medicine. “The data collected through the All of Us research program has the ability to drive discoveries that will benefit diverse populations across the globe, and we’re proud to be a part of this effort.”

According to the university, returning results to participants involves examining a specific set of genes that are associated with certain serious health conditions, such as hereditary cancers and heart disease. Through this process, the program observed 32,500 DNA variants. More than 7,000 of these variants had never been observed among people who had previously had genetic testing.

“The All of Us Program provides an unprecedented opportunity to include diverse populations in large-scale genomic research,” said Dr. Amy Sitapati, interim chief of the Division of Biomedical Informatics at UCSD School of Medicine and the principal investigator for the grant. “By including individuals from historically underrepresented communities, we can uncover insights into genetic variations that may have been overlooked in the past, ultimately leading to more equitable health care for all.

“What’s most exciting is the NIH’s commitment to sharing data, including genetic results, with participants,” she said. “This engagement empowers community researchers to not only join, but also participate as researchers themselves.”

Since it was established, the All of Us team at UCSD has enrolled more than 12,500 local participants in the program, 86% of which come from communities “traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research.”

The team at UC San Diego enrolls participants in San Diego County and Imperial County, including El Centro and Calexico, in collaboration with El Centro Regional Medical Center.

To learn more or enroll, visit AllofUsUCSD.org.

–City News Service

California’s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion. 

The new estimate for the Delta tunnel project — which would transform the massive water system that sends Northern California water south to farms and cities — is $4 billion higher than a 2020 estimate, largely because of inflation.

Included is almost $1.2 billion to offset local harms and environmental damage, such as impacts on salmon and rare fish that state officials have called “potentially significant.”

The goal of the project is to collect and deliver more water to two-thirds of California’s population and 750,000 acres of farmland during wet periods, shore up supplies against the threats of climate change and protect the system from earthquakes.

But environmental groups and many Delta residents have long warned that the tunnel could put the imperiled Delta ecosystem at even greater risk, sapping freshwater flows needed for fish, farms and communities in the region. 

The tunnel has been the focus of intense debate in California for more than 60 years. It’s the epicenter of water wars that have pitted Delta locals, environmentalists, tribes and the fishing industry against state officials and water agencies that supply cities and farms, mostly in Southern California.

The new report from the state Department of Water Resources comes as state water regulators weigh competing rescue plans for a region they have described as “in crisis” and in the midst of an “ecosystem collapse.” 

Gov. Gavin Newsom backs the proposed project, calling it his “number one climate resilience program” and saying he hopes to get it permitted before he leaves office. The 45-mile tunnel would transport water from the Sacramento River around the Delta to a reservoir near Livermore, the first stop on the 444-mile California Aqueduct.

The new estimate and report will help water suppliers in Southern California, the Central Coast and the Bay Area weigh whether it’s cost effective for them to buy the tunnel’s water. The state would issue revenue bonds to fund the project, then suppliers would have to pay back the costs. 

Water agencies, such as the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, are expected to have all of the information they need to decide by the end of 2026, said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, which operates the state’s massive water system.

“The questions are how can this project be implemented, what kind of assurances can we have in the resilience it provides to the Delta and our water supply future, and at what price?” Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, said in a statement. He said the cost estimate  “brings us closer to understanding that equation.” 

Building the tunnel could take until at least 2044, with construction expected to start around 2029 and last roughly 15 years. 

Had the tunnel been in place this year, it could have funneled 909,000 additional acre-feet of water south from intakes in the north Delta, according to state water officials. That’s nearly enough water to fill Folsom Lake, and could supply more than 9.5 million people for a year. 

The total benefits of the project — calculated at around $38 billion — far outweigh the costs, according to the report, with every dollar spent expected to reap $2.20 in benefits. “In other words, doing nothing is more expensive,” said David Sunding, a UC Berkeley emeritus professor of environmental economics who led the cost-benefit analysis.

Sunding said water deliveries from the tunnel would cost about $1,325 per acre-foot — less than the average cost for water generated by desalination, recycling and stormwater capture. 

Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a global water think-tank, said he has serious concerns about the analysis and whether it accounts for the real costs of construction and water treatment and distribution. He called for “far more and better” economic and environmental assessments. 

“This project gets more expensive every single time a new version is proposed, and this type of project has never been brought to completion under budget,” he said. “Water conservation and efficiency improvements are far cheaper than the Delta project.” 

One major benefit to a tunnel, Sunding said, is earthquake preparedness for the state’s water delivery system, which is crossed by the major Hayward and San Andreas faults. A catastrophic earthquake that crumbles levees could interrupt water deliveries for nearly seven months and degrade water quality for almost another year. Sunding said the tunnel would, ideally, allow water deliveries to continue in some form after quakes, or at least protect water quality.

The tunnel could also increase water exports from the Sacramento River when pumping from the south Delta is limited to protect threatened and endangered species, Nemeth said. Thousands of threatened steelhead trout and endangered winter-run Chinook salmon have died this year from the pumping, according to state and federal estimates.

But conservationists warn that a tunnel wouldn’t reduce the risk to fish: The existing pumps would still be operational — posing a continued threat to protected species. Environmental groups and fishing organizations have sued over the project, saying adding the tunnel would further reduce freshwater flows — increasing salt levels and harmful algal blooms, and harming native fish. 

Tribes and environmental justice organizations also oppose the state’s application for a change in water rights to build and operate the tunnel. “The injurious impacts of mismanagement in the Bay-Delta can no longer be endured by Tribes and Delta communities,” Malissa Tayaba, vice chair of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, said in a statement. 

Jon Rosenfield, science director of San Francisco Baykeeper, called it “just the latest version of a plain old water grab.” 

The state’s own environmental analysis warned two years ago that the tunnel could harm endangered and threatened fish, including the Delta smelt, winter-run chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Changes to flows at the intakes or downstream, for instance, could reduce migration, damage habitat and expose salmon and other native fish to more predators. 

The analysis calls for thousands of acres of wetland restoration to offset the “potentially significant impacts” — projects that critics say have historically been slow and inefficient in California. 

The Delta watershed supports about 80% of the state’s commercial salmon fishery, which was cancelled this year for the second time in a row because of plummeting populations. 

“What better way to address declining salmon populations than by draining their homes?” Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said in a recent statement. “Bravo, Governor, for turning healthy rivers and estuaries into a punchline that harms tens of thousands of families, businesses and employees across California and Oregon.”

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

The San Diego City Council has approved a plan to add hundreds of new electric vehicle chargers to parking lots of public spaces such as libraries and recreation centers throughout the city within the next two years.

A 2023 state law requires installation of EV chargers at all new construction locations. San Diego’s agreement goes even further, including older and historically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The city council awarded a contract to True Upside Consulting for installation and maintenance of the charging stations. Under the terms of the contract, True Upside will pay the City for the use of the public property and will own and operate all the chargers on City parking lots.

“This innovative public-private partnership will help deliver more EV charging stations to San Diegans across the city,” Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement.

“The agreement exemplifies our commitment to advancing our Climate Action Plan and ensuring that electric vehicle charging is accessible and feasible for our residents.”

After chargers are installed at libraries and rec centers, the next phase of contruction will include city beaches, parks and open spaces, municipal office buildings, and police and fire stations.

San Diego’s scientists are showing up for climate change.

NASA has selected four proposals for concept studies to provide detailed information about the planet’s oceans, atmosphere, land, and ice, and provide new layers of details about how climate affects them.

Of those four proposals, two are led by scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The investigations are part of the agency’s new Earth System Explorers Program, which is designed to enable high-quality, detailed investigations to focus on previously identified key targets. This set of missions will prioritize observing greenhouse gases.

“This selection demonstrates our world renowned leadership in earth observation and satellite remote sensing,” said UCSD chancellor Pradeep Khosla in a statement.

“Through our longstanding institutional commitment to understanding and protecting the planet, UC San Diego is advancing new discoveries, developing policy recommendations and creating solutions for climate change that will benefit all of humanity.”

The two UCSD-led teams are helmed by Scripps glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker and Scripps physical oceanographer Sarah Gille, both of whom have been involved in prior NASA satellite missions.

As finalists, their teams will each receive $5 million to conduct a one-year mission concept study. After the study period, NASA will choose two proposals for satellites to launch in 2030 and 2032, with a budget of $310 million for each chosen investigation. 

More information about NASA’s Earth Systems Explorer program can be found here.

The monthly average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere measured at Mauna Loa Observatory in March showed a record 12-month increase, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography announced Wednesday.

Located 11,135 feet above sea level on the Big Island of Hawaii, the observatory conducts the official measurements for the Keeling Curve, which has tracked the increase in carbon dioxide levels since 1958.

“We sadly continue to break records in the CO2 rise rate,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 program at Scripps. “The ultimate reason is continued global growth in the consumption of fossil fuels.”

Keeling is the son of Charles Keeling, began the measurements and received the National Science Medal from President George W. Bush for his groundbreaking climate work.

The reading at the observatory in March was 4.7 parts per million higher than that recorded in March 2023. The previous record jump was 4.1 parts per million from June 2015 to June 2016, when strong El Niño conditions influenced global weather patterns.

The current level of over 426 parts per million is over a third higher than when measurements began 65 years ago.

Scientists are concerned about the increase in CO2 because it is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

“This recent surge shows how far we still need to go to stabilize the climate system,” said Keeling. “Stabilization will require that CO2 levels start to fall. Instead, CO2 is rising faster than ever.”

The Department of Homeland Security is piloting artificial intelligence to train officers who review applicants for refugee status in the United States, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Tuesday.

The work addresses what Mayorkas said is “labor-intensive” instruction that typically involves senior personnel. In this pilot, he said, DHS is training machines to act like refugees so officers can practice interviewing them.

“Refugee applicants, given the trauma that they have endured, are reticent to be forthcoming in describing that trauma,” he said. “So we’re teaching the machine to be reticent as well” and to adopt other “characteristics” of applicants.

The remarks, made on the sidelines of the security-focused RSA Conference in San Francisco, elaborate on AI initiatives that DHS announced earlier this year. The department has said it planned to develop an interactive app to supplement its training of immigration officers, drawing on so-called generative AI that creates novel content based on past data.

Specifically, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within DHS, would build an AI program that tailored training materials to officers’ needs and prepare them to make more accurate decisions, the department said.

AI will not make immigration decisions themselves, DHS told Reuters. The AI will know country-specific conditions and other information to help officers, Mayorkas said.

The pilot adds to the many tests in industry and government seeking to reduce costs and improve performance through AI, particularly after ChatGPT’s viral launch in 2022. Such experimentation has not been without problems, including issues with translation, incorrect timeframes and pronouns.

Among more “advanced” deployments of AI, Mayorkas said the department has worked to spot anomalies when commercial trucks and passenger vehicles make border crossings. The goal, he said, is to help the department detect smuggling attempts for bringing fentanyl and other contraband into the United States.

California’s vital groundwater reserves grew by a record 8.7 million acre-feet — twice the volume of giant Shasta Lake — in the official water year ended Sept. 30, the Department of Water Resources reported this week.

It’s the first time since 2019 that groundwater reserves have increased, another indication that record rains have helped the state emerge from a long-term drought.

Massive rainfall allowed the state to pump less water from the ground, while basins were recharged with 4.1 million acre-feet from runoff.

“California is invested in preparing for weather extremes by maximizing the wet years to store as much water as possible in preparation for the dry years,” said Paul Gosselin, deputy director of sustainable water management at the DWR.

“The impressive recharge numbers in 2023 are the result of hard work by the local agencies combined with dedicated efforts from the state, but we must do more to be prepared to capture and store water when the wet years come,” he said.

Some areas of the state that have experienced ground subsidence actually saw an uplift from reduced pumping and the refilling of groundwater storage.

But the DWR noted that there has been a deficit of nearly 40 million acre-feet of groundwater over the past two decades.

Groundwater is considered vital for California’s agricultural economy, and for natural ecosystems.

The Prebys Foundation announced Tuesday a $7 million program to address the diversity gap in medical research by funding the work of 14 female scientists at local universities and institutions.

“Eighty percent of postdocs are women, but only 20 percent receive funding  to run their own projects,” said Grant Oliphant, CEO of the San Diego-based foundation. “This shows us that the path to leadership in medical research is fraught with barriers.”

“Our program is designed to address that problem by empowering 14 brilliant researchers with the means to pursue cutting-edge research that promises to tackle some of the most challenging diseases facing our world today,” he said.

The program will award a two-year, $500,000 grant to each of the researchers, who Prebys said demonstrate “exceptional promise in areas critical to advancing medical science,  including liver, gastric, and pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, infectious disease, and mental health. “

Prebys partnered with the Science Philanthropy Alliance to create the grantmaking initiative, which the foundation hopes will set the standard for other organizations across the country seeking to address disparities in the research community.

The recipients of the grants are conducting research at key institutions in San Diego that are at the forefront of diversifying labs and embracing a wider array of scientific questions and methodologies.  

“These remarkable individuals, hailing from various countries such as Ukraine, the Philippines, Spain, and Kenya, highlight the diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives they bring to the field of  science,” said Elizabeth Weiss of the Science Philanthropy Alliance. “This diversity has the incredible potential to drive scientific breakthroughs that will ultimately improve health outcomes.”

The 14 researchers who will receive the grans are:

Rachel Blaser — Professor of psychology at the University of San Diego whose research could lead to methods for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dannielle Engle — Assistant professor at the Salk Institute who is working to find a way to easily and quickly diagnose pancreatic cancer.

Stephanie Fraley — Associate professor of bioengineering at UC San Diego who is identifying technologies for infectious disease detection and identification of therapeutic targets for cancer metastasis.

Mia Huang — Association professor of chemistry at Scripps Research whose work focuses on the biological functions of glycans, which effect pregnancy risks.

Xin Jin — Assistant professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research who is seeking to understand the cellular underpinnings of brain development.

Razel Bacuetes Milo — Associate Professor of nursing and health science at the University of San Diego who is a practicing family nurse practitioner studying the relationship between perceived well-being and stress among the Filipino community.

Marygorret Obonyo — Associate Professor at the UC Diego School of Medicine who is studying a pathogen called Helicobacter pylori, which is a cause of gastric cancer.

Angelica Riestra — Assistant professor of biology at San Diego State University who is focusing on pathogens that affect female reproductive health, especially Trichomonas vaginalis, which causes the disease trichomoniasis disproportionately affecting Black women.  

Erica Ollmann Saphire — President and CEO of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who is studying the molecular relationships between pathogens and their hosts and leading efforts to recruit more women of color.

Sonia Sharma — Associate professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who is studying the differences in the immune system between males and females.

Tatyana Sharpee — Professor at the Salk Institute whose potentially groundbreaking interdisciplinary research could dramatically improve our understanding of the brain.

Sujan Shresta — Professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who focuses on protecting the public against viruses such as dengue, Zika, West Nile and Powassan that manipulate human immune cells and have the potential  to cause long-term neurological issues.

Lisa Stowers — Professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research who is seeking to develop medications and therapies to treat a wide variety of brain-related  disorders, from depression to dementia.  

Daniela Valdez-Jasso — Associate professor of bioengineering UC San Diego who studies pulmonary hypertension — high blood pressure of the  lungs — which is only diagnosed by observing the damage it has already caused  to the heart and whose only “cure” is a lung transplant.

The Prebys Foundation, created by real estate entrepreneur Conrad Prebys, is the largest independent private foundation in San Diego County