UCLA nursing program

The UC Board of Regents voted Nov. 16 to approve a 2006-07 budget proposal that adds $5.2 million for new bachelor's and entry-level master's degree programs at the UCLA School of Nursing. UCLA will offer the only undergraduate nursing program in the UC system.

With new admissions to begin in fall 2006, the program changes will swell the total number of nursing students enrolled at UCLA from the current 300 to 624 by 2010. The nursing school also plans to hire 22 new faculty and five new staff in the next three years.

California ranks No. 49 out of 50 for its nurse-to-population ratio.

UC, GE collaborate

UCSF on Nov. 28 announced a collaboration with GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), to develop new technology for clinical use that tracks real-time changes in tissue metabolism with unprecedented sensitivity.

The collaboration will focus on developing new magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and spectroscopy techniques that are expected to enable earlier diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases tailored to individual patients.

The pre-clinical and clinical studies will be carried out at the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, or QB3, headquartered at UCSF's Mission Bay campus.

Interdisciplinary Irvine

With an eye toward preparing a new generation of biomedical researchers, UC Irvine is creating the first interdisciplinary Ph.D. program that integrates training across five of its schools: biological sciences, engineering, information and computer sciences, medicine, and physical sciences.

The program will be launched with support from a three-year, $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The award was one of ten identical grants issued nationwide by HHMI to initiate fundamental changes in the way scientists are trained. All grants are to be used toward developing innovative graduate education programs designed to produce a cadre of scientists able to work across disciplinary lines, and with the knowledge and skills to conduct research at the interface between the biomedical, physical and computational sciences.

Los Alamos lab

The National Nuclear Security Administration announced Nov. 22 that a decision on the future management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory will not be made on Dec. 1, as previously announced, but that the delay will not be lengthy.