? One of the more difficult aspects of treating cancer is identifying the exact location of cancerous cells. UCSD researchers have developed a technique that makes this possible. Cancer cells attack lymph nodes — the body’s filters that contain immune cells to fight infection — which are located throughout the body. Surgeons have to remove the nodes to see if the cancer has spread, but human lymph nodes measure only half a centimeter, making them difficult to remove.

More often than not, non-cancerous lymph nodes are unnecessarily removed because surgeons have no way of determining whether a node is cancerous.

The researchers at UCSD have created fluorescent molecules that allow surgeons to see where the cancer has spread in high detail. They have only tested the molecules on mice, but they expect to use this technology on humans in the foreseeable future.

? A national team of researchers led by UCSD School of Medicine investigators have discovered a developmental clock inside the brain. This discovery is an important step in understanding the timeline of child development.

The “developmental clock” shows the rates of maturation within the brain. A surprising discovery was that the maturation differences between a 3-year-old and a 20-year-old are much smaller than previously believed.

This discovery is the first composite profile of different stages in brain development between the ages of three and 20.

? Facebook statuses are easier to remember than memorable sentences from books or a stranger’s face. Doctoral alumna of UCSD’s department of Psychology and Visiting Scholar Laura Mickes headed a study that discovered that digital communications are “mind-ready.”

Chatting online is very similar to casual, in-person conversation because people, in both scenarios, use more natural, informal dialogue. Facebook statuses are one and a half times easier to remember than lines from books and two and a half times easier to remember than faces.

UCSD Psychology Professor Nicholas Christenfeld said that our language capacity did not evolve to be carefully edited and that modern technology allows us to return to our more casual and easily remembered language. The study concluded that language we generate without much thought is the easiest to remember.

? UCSD School of Medicine researchers have discovered how cells know when to eat themselves. They found a molecular mechanism called AMPK that regulates the process. The process is called autophagy and cells use it when they are infected or in need of food or nutrients.

It’s a survival mechanism that shuts down the damaged part of the system to protect the whole. Scientists now have a better idea of how autophagy works due to the UCSD research and are able to focus on working on defects in autophagy that have been associated with human disease, cell aging and cell damage.

? One way of treating diabetes type 1 and 2 is to stimulate the regeneration of new beta cells to produce insulin.

There are two ways to do so using embryonic stem cells; either through generating cells in vitro or through transplanting immature endocrine cells in mice. UCSD School of Medicine researchers worked with ViaCyte Inc. to develop new therapies for diabetes using stem cells.

They identified a key mechanism for inducting developmental proteins that will make the in vitro cell process more successful. This is important for identifying disease mechanisms in diabetes as well as helping cell therapies.