Molecular biology professor Suresh Subramani was appointed UCSD’s newest Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs on March 17.

Researchers have developed nanoparticles to increase survival rates after losing a large amount of blood. These can be used to improve trauma care for mass casualties in natural disasters and injured soldiers in the battlefield.

Stem cell researcher Wilda Helen left the United States for Indonesia on the morning of Feb. 27, the last day she was allowed to legally remain in the country.

A stem cell researcher who was ordered to leave the United States on Feb. 5 may once again be obligated to return to Indonesia by Feb. 27, as UCSD has refused to schedule an arbitration hearing in the next two weeks.

Two demonstrators demanded visiting speakers of the “Mexico Moving Forward” conference honor the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abductions. The treaty ensures prompt return of children abducted from their home country.

Molecular biology professor Milton Saier is seeking a neutral third party to mediate what he believes was the unfair and sudden closure of his lab due to personnel issues. Saier’s lab was closed by the biological sciences division, citing safety violations, over winter break.

Wilda Helen, a postdoctoral researcher who was fired last month, has been granted last-minute permission to stay in the United States until Feb. 27 to complete the appeal process for her termination.

“Twenty-two days is better than zero days, so we’re excited to have extra time,” UAW 5810 representative Scott Clifthorne said. “The question now is whether the university will engage in a good faith effort to expedite the grievance process and reach a settlement where we can sit down and actually appeal Wilda’s termination before she has to leave again and then get a decision back from an arbitrator before she has to leave again.”

United Auto Workers 5810 President Xiaoqing Cao agreed.

“The timeframe is tight, but if every party has a good faith, we can work this out for sure,” Cao said. “We do have enough time if we want to go through arbitration, [but] hopefully they can resolve the issue in the given time we have right now.”

On Feb. 4, representatives from UAW 5810 received a letter from Rep. Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista), who said the Department of Homeland Security will allow Helen to stay.

“We actually got help from a congressman, Bob Filner, [who] talked to Homeland Security and then Homeland Security allowed her to stay until Feb. 27,” Cao said.

If Helen had not received more time to appeal her termination, she would have had to leave on Saturday, Feb. 5 to return to Indonesia.

“I understand how much stress she has been through in the past month,” Cao said. “It’s been a huge burden.”

Helen was fired on Jan. 6 from professor Adam Engler’s stem cell and bioengineering laboratory, where she worked for two years earning $43,000 annually. The reason has not been disclosed, since the termination is currently under investigation.

Helen then filed an appeal for her termination under the terms of the union’s collective bargaining agreement, which has allowed both U.S. and international postdoctoral researchers the right to appeal since summer 2010.

“The university is adhering to the terms of the collective bargaining agreement mutually agreed upon by UAW union members and UC,” UCSD spokesperson Christine Clark said in a statement. “The university has provided options for Dr. Helen to participate in her appeal. The matter involving Dr. Helen is a personnel issue and the university cannot discuss personnel issues.”

The UCSD Labor Relations Office deleted Helen’s record in the Federal Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, giving her 30 days to leave the country or else remain illegally.

As a result of her dismissal, Helen’s J-1 visa — a non-immigrant visa issued to visitors participating in programs promoting cultural exchange — would be invalidated.

Helen was not notified of her deleted record until Jan. 25, according to Clifthorne. She received a 10-day notice to leave the country.

A group of about 20 researchers, union members, teaching assistants, faculty members and students gathered at the Chancellor’s Complex on Feb. 4, the day before Helen was scheduled to leave, to request enough time to complete her appeal process.

According to Helen, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said she spoke with UCSD’s Labor Relations Office and the university attorney.

“The university did not help,” Cao said. “They stayed where they were from the beginning where they terminated Dr. Helen.”

The group stayed outside the Chancellor’s office for about five hours before leaving.

“The Chancellor didn’t give any response to UAW and myself after we met the Chancellor,” Helen said.

Two days before, a group of 50 supporters gathered at the Chancellor’s Complex but did not receive a response.

Helen needed one more year to complete her three-year postdoctoral program at UCSD.

According to Clifthorne, 40 to 60 percent of the 6,000 postdoctoral researchers in the UC system are from other countries.

“I also feel that, because we have a union, we can work out with the university and resolve this issue,” Cao said. “It will be good for the university because there are so many postdocs involved in this union.”

At the Feb. 4 gathering, when asked about future plans if she had to leave the country the next day, Helen said she was taking the process one step at a time.

“I just need to face what is happening right now,” Helen said.

If she had not received the concession, Helen said, UAW would have kept working for her while she was out of the country.

Readers can contact Regina Ip at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Invisibility might not be the exclusive realm of “Harry Potter” characters anymore. Researchers are currently looking at how marine animals use camouflage to hide from predators so they can one day apply it to artificial technologies.

With a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and Office of Naval Research, scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography — along with Duke University’s biology department and UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute — are studying how squids and octopuses use light-sensitive cells to camouflage themselves in different ocean conditions, like sea floors and coral reefs.

Even while moving, a cuttlefish can change its colors to match its surroundings. The octopus can use muscles under its skin to imitate external textures and blend in.

“The animals use camouflage because they obviously don’t want the predators to see them and eat them,” Scripps professor Dariusz Stramski said. “If there is an octopus swimming over the bottom of the ocean ... it can quite easily quickly adjust its colors and reflections from its skin that’s almost impossible to distinguish it from the area over which this animal is sitting.”

Squids and octopuses can expand or contract their muscles, using chromatophoric cells to produce pigments that change the color and texture of their skins. They also release pigments at different rates and patterns to adjust how fast they camouflage.

Now in their second year of research, the scientists will focus on the animals’ abilities to avoid detection based on color, reflection and bioluminescence. They will look at how different ocean depths affect animal camouflage behavior and the animals’ ability to perceive when they should assume their camouflage.

The researchers use a Holodeck — a tank surrounded by six screens that recreate different light conditions of the ocean — and an Omnicam to observe how two species of squid and one octopus species behave.

Stramski’s team will develop new optical instruments to measure the speed, distance and intensity of light and to determine what colors are emitted underwater.

“My team provides expertise in measurements and characterization of underwater lights,” Stramski said. “To understand how animals camouflage themselves, we have to have a good understanding of how light works in water and how animals perceive it.”

“If we can understand the mechanisms that animals use to camouflage themselves or become invisible in the natural world, then potentially this understanding can provide us with some guidance on how to create artificial technologies that can lead to camouflage,” Stramski said.

Readers can contact Regina Ip at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Barbara Cano, a Revelle College senior majoring in physiology and neuroscience, died Sunday, Jan. 30, in a collision on her way to work as a nanny.

“We’re in total shock...total shock,” Cano’s aunt Rosita Olmstead said.

Cano was traveling southbound on Interstate 15 and took the State Route 56/Ted Williams Parkway exit, where she was initially in the right lane taking State Route 56.

According to the California Highway Patrol collision report, Cano veered left for an unknown reason and traveled across the off-ramp into a dirt area causing her to go airborne. The vehicle then traveled over the dirt area and onto I-15, where the vehicle collided with another.

The individuals in the other vehicle, a 41-year-old female driver and a 10-year-old female passenger, survived.

“As her father, I watched my daughter Barbara grow from a teenager into a beautiful, responsible young adult,” Nicolas Cano said in an e-mail. “As the cliché goes, ‘the good die young,’ and Barbara’s journey has ended. In spirit of Barbara, live each day to the fullest for life is not to be taken for granted.”

Cano attended Mission Hills High School in San Marcos, moving there her junior year in order to live with her mother.
Dallas Patterson, a high school friend who was her date to junior prom and on the swim team with her, commented on Cano’s personality.

“The biggest thing that you always noticed about her was how friendly, smart and hardworking she was,” Patterson said. “She was really intelligent, really ambitious [and] really motivated. She really knew what her goals were [and] what she wanted to be, which was pretty unusual for most of the people I knew back then.”

For her senior year, Cano returned to her hometown to attend Los Lunas High School in New Mexico. Cano then enrolled at UCSD, where she was scheduled to graduate this June.

“Barbara went to San Diego to attend UCSD to pursue her dream of becoming a neurosurgeon,” Cano’s father said. “While there, she made many friends and there were countless experiences, I heard of many.”

Patterson commented on her career goals. “She seemed to be the only one who knew where she was going,” Patterson said. “When I first met her, she always knew she wanted to be a doctor. She always talked about it. She was very, very studious [and] very hardworking.”

Cano was a member of UCSD’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority for two years.

UCSD alumnus Krystle Vega was one of Cano’s sorority sisters and a close friend with whom Cano spoke with on the phone every day.

“I am beyond grateful to have had Barbara as such a huge part of my life for the past four years,” Vega said in an e-mail. “I am honored to have such a warm, loving, fun and selfless best friend that would do anything to make the people she loved happy.”

Volunteer Services Manager Susan Vandendriesse said Cano was a volunteer for Scripps Memorial Hospital-La Jolla since last summer.

“She was a dedicated volunteer who was very supportive of our staff and patients,” Vandendriesse said. “All of our volunteers are a big part of our staff here and I think she was pursuing a career in medicine and will be missed by all of the people that she worked with or volunteered with here.”

Cano’s family in New Mexico will be holding a memorial and funeral service for her. A date has not yet been set.

“We don’t know anything yet because they’re supposed to bring her body home and they haven’t released her yet,” Olmstead said. “We still don’t know anything as far as when services will be.”

Olmstead and Patterson said there will be a memorial service for her in San Diego as well, but the date has not been determined. Cano is survived by a brother, her mother Julie Reger and father Nicolas Cano.

“She lived each day, taking none for granted, as some of the journal entries I have come across express [that] ‘there were no bad days,’ Cano’s father said. “Enjoy your lives, follow your dreams, and as my baby girl believed in life and death, make this place a little better having lived.”

Readers can contact Regina Ip at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Students held separate protests on Feb. 2 to bring light to two events: the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the possible deportation of UCSD bioengineering researcher Wilda Helen.