Birch Aquarium Welcomes Baby Blue Penguin
The first baby blue penguin egg has hatched at Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, marking a milestone in the aquarium’s penguin conservation efforts.
Birch announced last week that the egg hatched on Recent Year’s Day at the aquarium’s Penguin Care and Conservation Center.
The chick has been growing steadily on a diet of “fish milkshakes” and compact pieces of fish. It will soon graduate to whole fish, according to the aquarium.
The chick will remain hidden for the first few crucial months of its development.
The birch tree opened Exhibition of little blue penguins from the Beyster family in July 2022, making the aquarium the only one west of the Rocky Mountains home to the smallest penguin species.
The little blue tits, which typically measure less than a foot high and weigh about 3 pounds, are native to Recent Zealand and Australia.
Salk Institute Professor Receives Benjamin Franklin Medal
Joanne Chory, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, has been selected by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to receive the Benjamin Franklin Medal for achievement in plant science.
At the Franklin Institute’s awards ceremony in April, she will receive a 14-karat gold medal and an honorarium of $10,000.
The patient joined the ranks of Franklin Prize-winning scientists and engineers, including Nikola Tesla, Maria and Pierre Curie, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Jane Goodall.
Chory has spent more than 30 years using Arabidopsis thaliana, a compact flowering mustard plant, as a model for plant growth. She uses molecular genetics to study how plants change their size, shape, and form to optimize growth and photosynthesis in specific environments. She pioneered the application of molecular genetics to plant biology and has transformed our understanding of photosynthesis.
Her research currently focuses on better understanding how the natural ability of plants to capture and store carbon can be optimised to sluggish climate change.
The patient also received the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize 2020, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences 2018, and the Gruber Genetics Prize 2018.
Salk Names Recent Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla has named Jan Karlseder its novel senior vice president and chief science officer, effective Feb. 1.
Karlseder is a professor in the Laboratory of Molecular and Cell Biology at Salk University, director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Research in the Biology of Aging, and the Donald and Darlene Shiley Chair in Aging Research.
His selection was the result of an international search conducted by recruitment firm Spencer Stuart and an internal committee that assessed a gigantic group of candidates over the past 10 months.
As CSO, Karlseder will retain his faculty and research laboratory positions while working with Salk Institute President Gerald Joyce to develop and implement the institute’s overall science strategy and oversee operations, including grantmaking, basic science facilities, and animal resources teams.
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters to Open Espresso and Pizza Restaurant
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters plans to open its tenth coffee shop in delayed spring or early summer at La Jolla Village Drive and Villa La Jolla Drive.
There’s one key difference at this location: In addition to coffee and espresso, it will serve Neapolitan-style pizza from a wood-fired oven. The menu is still being developed, according to Bird Rock owner Jeff Taylor.
The café is part of a public-private investment on the University of California campus that will be shared with UC San Diego Health, UCSD School of Medicine and UCSD Extension. according to UC San Diego. It will have four parking spaces with seating, a 1,000-square-foot terrace with seating and about 1,500 square feet of interior space.
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters opened locations in 2022 in Encinitas and on the UCSD campus in La Jolla. Others are in Little Italy, Bressi Ranch, Bay Park, Del Mar, Point Loma and the flagship Bird Rock.
The company has recently also introduced an espresso catering van to the market and Espresso Medic from San Diegocoffee and espresso machine service. —San Diego Union-Tribune and La Jolla Airy
La Jolla High School team places in top ten at Caltech Math Meet
Six La Jolla High School students representing the Viking Math Team placed 10th out of 40 teams at the recent Caltech Math Meet in Pasadena. La Jolla High last competed in 2019, when the team placed 17th.
The Caltech Math Meet is a high school team competition organized by students from the California Institute of Technology. The competition aims to encourage students to take an interest in mathematics and create a community of problem solvers, according to the organizers.
La Jolla Kiwanis Club Donates $12,000 to La Jolla High School
This Kiwanis Club of La Jolla awarded a $12,000 grant to La Jolla High School to be used for scholarships for graduating Class of 2024. The club’s foundation will award a total of $52,000 to eight local schools this year.
The club awards approximately $200,000 annually to nonprofit institutions and organizations. Funds are raised primarily through the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla Half Marathon.
University of California, San Diego, is working on using artificial intelligence to detect sepsis.
Sepsis is a fatal response to infection that can cause uncontrolled inflammation and a cascade of organ damage. estimated kill at least 350,000 Americans a year.
A team of researchers and physicians at UC San Diego Health worked to see if artificial intelligence could assist diagnose sepsis early.
In Recent paperThe group says its internally developed system, called “COMPOSER,” a machine learning model trained on more than 100,000 digital records of sepsis patients, could assist reduce mortality rates.
Every hour, COMPOSER analyzes the electronic health records of UCSD emergency room patients, examining myriad factors such as prescribed medications and recently collected vital statistics to try to predict who — based on previous mass collection of medical records — might be experiencing early stages of sepsis.
According to Dr. Gabriel Wardi, a specialist in emergency medicine and sepsis and one of the paper’s co-authors, the real value of the learning algorithm lies in the gray area between sepsis and the many other conditions that can mimic it.
UCSD researchers investigate role of cells in obesity
The number of people considered obese by health authorities has almost tripled since 1975, and while lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise play an essential role in the development and progression of obesity, scientists have concluded that obesity is also linked to internal metabolic abnormalities.
Scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shed novel lightweight on how obesity affects mitochondria – extremely essential structures in our cells responsible for energy production.
In a study published on January 29 Nature’s metabolismResearchers report that when mice were fed a high-fat diet, the mitochondria in their fat cells broke down into smaller mitochondria with reduced fat-burning capacity. The researchers also found that this process was controlled by a single gene.
Deleting the gene in mice protected them from excessive weight gain, even when they ate the same high-fat diet as other mice, the study found.
LJCPA meeting postponed to February 22
The La Jolla Community Planning Association regular meeting scheduled for February 1 has been canceled due to inclement weather and rescheduled for 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 22. The meeting will be held at a novel location, the La Jolla Community Center at 6811 La Jolla Blvd.
Find out more at lajollacpa.org.
A bill to make it easier to build bike lanes passes state Senate
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear’s (D-Encinitas) bill to improve cyclist safety and access in coastal areas by facilitating the construction of bike lanes passed the Senate on Jan. 29.
Senate Bill No. 689 states that a novel traffic study, which can be exorbitant and time-consuming, is not necessary to obtain a coastal development permit or Local Coastal Program amendment when a local government converts an existing motor vehicle lane to a dedicated bicycle lane. It also states that if the novel lane requires an LCP amendment, it qualifies for a “no adverse impact” process when the executive director of the California Coastal Commission determines it is warranted.
“This is good governance legislation, quite simply,” Blakespear, whose District 38 includes La Jolla, said in a statement. “SB 689 removes unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to building bike lanes in coastal areas, which helps communities more quickly improve traffic safety, protect cyclists and encourage climate-friendly transportation.”
La Jolla Country Day features author TC Boyle
La Jolla Country Day School hosted “An Afternoon with Literary Legend TC Boyle” on January 23 as part of its ongoing lecture series.
Boyle is the author of more than 30 books of fiction and more than 150 low stories, and has received several literary awards. His books include World’s End, The Road to Wellville, and The Tortilla Curtain, which have been translated into more than two dozen languages.
— Prepared by the La Jolla Airy team ◆
