Thomas A. Fudge

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Articles

Native American technology and cures: gifts of the land and its plants

3 days ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

When I met William Pink he was wearing a grey hoodie and a crushed hat that was lined with small pins. He held a stick with a string attached to the far end, and the string held a row of wooden rings. “This is an acorn ring game,” he said. “These are the acorn caps from the interior white oak. And the idea of the game is to catch the rings.”He tossed the row upward and a ring came down, impaled on his stick. “Got one,” he said.
San Diego scientists offer nonopioid relief to chronic pain sufferers

1 week ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

About 10 years ago, Ana Moreno was a PhD student at UC San Diego when she had a free Sunday night and did what some serious students do. She started reading science papers. “I came across a paper that talked about these people in Pakistan, street performers, who could walk on fire and do different performances with no pain whatsoever," Moreno said.
Burying power lines: Progress made and a long way to go

2 weeks ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

On Friday volunteers and City of San Diego work crews planted trees in Colina del Sol Park and along nearby streets for Arbor Day. This week also marked another milestone in the beautification of San Diego’s right of ways. The community of Bay Park saw the city complete its undergrounding of power lines. The month before, the Rolando neighborhood was finished. Power lines and poles that remain a common site are a historic architecture that nobody wants to preserve.
A partnership with fungus could make plants less reliant on fertilizer

3 weeks ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

Plant biologist Lena Mueller emerges from a brightly-lit room in a Salk Institute lab, holding a small plant rooted in a very small container of soil. “This is our little legume that we work with and it looks very sad here because we don’t give it a lot of nutrients because we want it to interact with the fungus,” Mueller said. But when fungus and plant interact, that’s when the plant gets a lot happier.
Commission says we need a ‘molecular moonshot’ to boost bioengineering

1 month ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

A bipartisan federal commission has called the engineering of biological systems the next transformative leap for human potential. This includes discovering new medicines, creating hardy, fruitful plants and manufacturing products based on organic structures. But the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology said in its new report that the government’s approach to research lacks coordination and needs better leadership.
Growing plants with the power to heal

1 month ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

Ephedra. Artemisia. Yerba santa. Opium poppy. A lot of well-known drugs start with roots in the ground. The San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas is leading an effort to make curative plants even better by exploring their genomes. The Medicinal Plants Initiative began three years ago by the botanic garden. During that time, their collection of medicinal plants has quadrupled, according to Benjamin Naman, director of medicinal plants research.
South Bay campground to reopen despite pollution concerns

1 month ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

A campground at the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park is set to reopen as planned on Tuesday after being closed for more than a year, despite a push by a local union to keep it closed. The SEIU Local 221, which represents park rangers, argued the area was so polluted it posed a danger to the health of people using the park or working there. The campground is home to a cluster of yurts that offer a temporary home to visiting campers.
Discover the fascinating world of dung beetles

1 month ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

Our most familiar image of the dung beetle shows one of them rolling a finely shaped ball of dung to a hiding place where it digs a hole and lays its eggs. Along with the dung ball rollers, there are the “dwellers” that move into a dung pile and set up housekeeping. “And there’s a third group that are called tunnelers. And they tunnel underneath cow pats, and create little brood chambers in these tunnels.
San Diego hosts career fair for Promise Zone residents

1 month ago | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

Employers ranging from SeaWorld to the military arrived Tuesday morning at the Balboa Park Club to make a pitch for their chosen careers. Young people, ages 16 to 24, were also invited from San Diego’s Promise Zone to hear their pitches. The Promise Zone ranges from Barrio Logan to Encanto, and it’s a federally defined area of historic underinvestment. “There are 22 Promise Zones throughout the country. They are urban, rural and tribal.
General Atomics sees an end to the long road toward nuclear fusion

Jan 30, 2025 | kpbs.org | Thomas A. Fudge |Tom Fudge

In October last year the control room at General Atomics had something to celebrate. A room full of scientists stood by their computers, took cell phone photos and cheered as their nuclear reactor generated “plasma shot” number 200,000. Each plasma shot is an experimental fusion of hydrogen atoms you smash together to generate the heat that’s needed to produce energy.