SQ Online
  • January 20, 2021
  • Home
  • About
    • SQ Program
    • SQ Core Staff 2020-2021
    • Legacy
  • Submit Your Research
  • Join Us
  • Contact
  • Features
    • Featured Articles
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Student Profiles
    • Research Round Ups
  • Blogs
  • Publications
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Awards
  • Outreach
    • High School Essay Contest
    • Nutrition Games
    • ODI
    • YMCA
    • Education Resources
    • SQ Summer Camp 2020
      • Science Saturdays
  • Archive
    Archive

    The Grass is Greener

    The Science of Boredom

    The Racial Disparity in America’s Maternal Mortality

  • See all results
Latest
  • Latest
  • Oldest
  • Random

criminology

Morality and the Mind

Oliver Engel
Imagine if we could take a hardened criminal—a murderer, for example—and alter their brain in a way that would allow them to be rehabilitated and become a moral and valuable... Read More

About SQ Online

SQ Online is part of the Saltman Quarterly program, a biology student organization committed to communicating science and research. The late Dr. Paul Saltman inspired the program’s creation, and the Saltman Family continues to generously support our efforts. For more on Dr. Saltman’s legacy, read our tributes.

SQ Insider

UCSD Links

  • Biology Bulletin
  • Division of Biological Sciences
  • SQ Submission Guidelines
  • Student Engagement Opportunities in Biological Sciences
  • Student Research Showcase
  • Undergrad Research Portal

Instagram Feed

saltmanquarterly
Hi everyone! We hope your first week back in class Hi everyone! We hope your first week back in classes is going well. Just last month we shared the article “Finding a ‘True Blue’ Friend in Nature” on our website and wanted to share it here as well! “On campus at UC San Diego, blue is a bountiful color, from the clear skies and great weather to the Pacific Ocean at our beaches. But despite the seeming abundance of blue in the world around us, blue still remains fairly rare in nature’s plants and animals. Blue pigments in plants are typically unstable due to their chemical properties.” The bird on the second slide seems blue, but has no blue pigment at all! This is because they “rely on the use of structural color—tiny physical structures on the body that interfere with light to create the optical illusion of the color blue.” “By using the right mechanism and pathway, animals are able to consume, modify, and eventually incorporate those pigments into their own bodies. However, animals that consume blue plants do not exhibit this same characteristic, and don’t integrate the blue pigments from their foods into their own physiological colors.” “Although blue plants exist, the chemical instability of anthocyanin pigments make blue shades largely subject to their environments. As a result, blue anthocyanin pigments in plants might be too sensitive to pH for animals to consume them and incorporate them into their own bodies as the same shade.” Thank you to our reporter Helen Zhu, illustrator Sara Kian, and photographer Bridget Spencer for the fascinating article! If you’d like to read more on this article, or any of our other articles, please go to sqonline.ucsd.edu. Have a great week 1!
Merry Christmas everyone! We wanted to share one o Merry Christmas everyone! We wanted to share one of our featured articles from this year! Early June, we shared the article, “Petri Dish to Big Picture: How Microbes Inspire Creativity,” to talk about Agar Art, an annual competition accepting submissions by petri dish rather than canvas. "Every year, scientists and artists together embark on a quest to create paintings with a rather unorthodox material: microbes. These tiny organisms–bacteria, yeast, and more–are often invisible to our eyes in individual numbers, yet they are found almost everywhere–from the bottom of the ocean to our own tongues. “Painting” with microbes can be difficult due to their sporadic growing times and diverse life cycles. Sticky E. coli bacteria are pushed outward by the more mobile A. baylyi bacteria, forming “petal” shapes that together create a flower-shaped biofilm. This flower pattern is one example of a biofilm, which forms when one or more species of microorganism grow together. Biofilms are found everywhere–hydrothermal vents in the ocean’s depths, showers and pipes throughout our cities, and even in our large intestines and plaque on our teeth. Paying attention to the natural patterns of life can inspire new perspectives on traditional processes, like those of creating a painting or conducting a scientific experiment. " You can find this article and more on our website, sqonline.ucsd.edu. Thanks to illustrator Arya Natarajan for the cool artwork! Happy Holidays :)
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Staff Resources

Wordpress Sign-in

SQ Trello Board

  • Home
  • Blogs
  • Featured Articles
  • Publications
  • Outreach
    • High School Essay Contest
    • Nutrition Games
    • YMCA
    • ODI
  • About
    • SQ Core Staff 2019-2020
    • Awards
    • Legacy
  • Submit Your Research
  • Join Us
  • Contact
Start typing to see results or hit ESC to close
biology UC San Diego research UCSD Links blogs
See all results
Username
Password
Remember Me
Enter username or email
Cancel