Communicating Science (2012w210)

Biofuels. Good or Bad?

Posted on March 17, 2013 by derekrejto | Leave a comment

As an answer to the increasing oil prices, energy conservation and concerns regarding global warming, biofuels have been considered a plausible alternative to other energy sources. Biofuels consist of a variety of fuels, which have been derived from biomass, earth’s renewable biological resources. Through some reading online, I believe that biofuel is as an environmentally harmful resource for three main reasons. Whether it be because the fact that food prices will increase with a decrease in crops…or because there will be an actual increase in global warming…or because of the inability for crops to keep up with the demand of biofuel-materials…I feel that biofuels need to reconsidered as an alternative for our everyday energy uses.

Biofuels work at Argonne by Argonne National Laboratory via Flickr Creative Commons

First, biofuel is produced from plant oils and from edible crops, which means that we have to make the choice between food and oil. Scientists studying this issue have realized that food prices have and will continue to increase with an increasing demand for biofuel. The increase in demand for a production of biofuels, in particular biofuels from maize and sugarcane, has had a numerous implications on grain supply-and-demand systems around the world. And because of the need for specifically maize (corn crops), which is extremely profitable to grow, an increasing amount of farmers who previously grew wheat and rice are now switching over to maize crops thus decreasing the availability of wheat and rice.

corn by tricky via Flickr Creative Commons

Second, in order to produce biofuel, the clearing of natural ecosystems for these crops will actually increase global warming contrary to common belief. This is due to the fact that carbon dioxide is produced when you clear natural grasslands and other land areas to create farmland for biofuels. The conversion of native habitats to cropland for biofuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as this is due to burning or microbial decomposition of organic carbon that is stored in the biomass of the earth. Basically, until the carbon debt is repaid, biofuels from converted lands will actually have greater green house gas emission than the fossil fuels they are displacing.

Clear cutting land for cultivation by Lon&Queta via Flickr Creative Commons

Last but not least, the current crops we are producing cannot keep up with the demand of bio-materials needed for producing biofuel. Farmers struggle to keep up with the demand for biofuel crops, as this demand shifts up demand for staple crops. In other words, the biofuel demand is so high, that farmers cannot maintain their main crops, staple crops, and as a result these main crops also end up being in high demand.

It seems as though biofuel will only increase food prices, increase global warming and cause farmers to be faced with an inability for their crops to keep up with the demand of biofuel-materials. With these main points in mind, I ask you to reconsider the use of biofuels in our society and question whether they are not only beneficial to us humans, but also beneficial to the earth we live and rely on.

-Derek Rejto

Whoa, I just had déjà vu

Posted on March 17, 2013 by danh | Leave a comment

At some point in your life, you probably experienced a weird sensation where you felt like you have been in the same situation before, although that may not necessarily be the case. This phenomenon that causes us to believe we are psychic is called déjà vu, a term that is familiar to many of us. But do any of us actually know how it occurs? We are accustomed to using this term in our everyday lives that we seem to forget its relevance to the scientific world.

Déjà vu. Author: Chief-Slaya via DeviantART.

Déjà vu is a French term that translates to “already seen”. Some people have gone to the extreme with this definition by suggesting that the sensation arises from memories of your past life. Clearly, this is not very realistic since we cannot prove if we existed for more than one generation. Therefore, more scientific explanations have been suggested to discover the truth behind déjà vu.

Our brains are tremendously efficient in what they do. For example, only bits and pieces of a memory like smell or sound is enough to trigger the brain to replay that moment in your head. A study has shown that if you experience something that closely resembles the sensations you felt in the past, your brain will retrieve that memory and leave you with a sense of familiarity. Of course, this still doesn’t explain why we sometimes live through familiar, but novel experiences.

Stages of memory (treat working memory as short-term memory). Author: Nheise via en.wikibooks.

Another theory suggests that déjà vu is a result of erroneous translation by the brain. New information is constantly being added and erased from our short-term memory, where deleted memories become new if experienced again. Through a mechanism that is not well known, the information is re-routed to be stored in our long-term memory. Therefore, when you experience something new, your brain misinterprets it as an event that has occurred in the past.

Here is a video that contains some additional facts about déjà vu:

Youtube user: Vsauce

Although not much is known about déjà vu yet, we can be sure to say that you are neither unusual nor a wizard. So for the time being, just try to appreciate the one bizarre thing that happens in your ordinary life.

-Daniel(Sanggi) Hong

The man whose brain has been penetrated by iron bar

Posted on March 17, 2013 by stella | Leave a comment

We all know that brain is one of the most important human organs. Now imagine someone whose brain has been penetrated by a 1.1 m long iron bar weighting 6 kg …OUCH!! That sounds horrible!

This unfortunate man is named Phineas Gage. Gage used to be a normal railroad worker, but one day at work in 1848 he made a mistake with his explosives which shot an iron bar towards his head. The iron bar entered his left cheek and pierced through his brain and exited through his skull. With an injury this gruesome and severe you probably think that there is no way he’d survive. That was what people around him thought too: they prepared a coffin for Gage. But amazingly, he survived this terrible accident. In fact, most of his intellectual functions were quite normal because most of his brain was actually undamaged. The primary site of injury was his prefrontal cortex, which resulted in drastic personality change in Gage.

Phineas Gage skull via Wikipedia Commons from uploader Roy Baty

Prefrontal cortex is in the anterior part of the brain. Different parts of the brain have different functions and this particular portion of the brain is important for planning, attention, and behaving appropriately in society. Because of damage to the prefrontal cortex, Gage changed to a different person. Before the injury Gage was hardworking, responsible, and popular among his co-workers. After the injury, however, he was stubborn, impatient, violent, and non-compliant. He lacked self-control and even molested children!Because of his obnoxious personality after the injury, people felt he was “no longer Gage”

Here is a video account of Gage’s story:

from youtube user Jpick311

Gage’s story is a great tragedy but it provided strong evidence that prefrontal cortex of the brain is involved in personality and contributed a lot to brain research.

-Stella Meng

The Truth about the 5-Second Rule

Posted on March 16, 2013 by christinewong | 5 comments

I’m sure everyone has used this rule to eat that chocolate bar that you have been saving all day that has just fallen to the ground. The rule states that if you picked up the dropped piece of food quick enough, it will be safe to eat. But how quickly do you have to pick it up for it to still be safe? Or is it something we say that allows us to save that chocolate bar that has just landed on the floor?

5-Second Rule! Image via Wikimedia Commons Greg William’s WikiWorld.

The first person to study this rule was a high-school intern at the University of Illinois Jillian Clarke in 2003. She surprising found that approximately 50% of men and 70% of women followed the 5-second rule. She conducted an experiment by dropping gummy bears and cookies on tiles contaminated with E.coli. Sure enough after 5 seconds, all the food was contaminated with bacteria.

This raises the question: Is that enough bacteria to make us sick? This leads us to a study done by Dawson and his colleagues, in the Journal of Microbiology at Clemson University. They chose the bacteria salmonella. Bread and bologna were dropped onto salmonella-soaked tiles for 5 seconds and for 1 minute. Bacteria adhered to the food immediately. After 5 seconds, the bread and bologna collected 150 to 8,000 bacteria! After 1 minute, the number of bacteria was 10 times greater. When you take into consideration that only 10 strains of salmonella are needed to make you sick, you may want to reconsider putting that food back into your mouth.

Salmonella. Image via Wikimedia Commons, Rocky Mountain Laboratories.

Believers of the 5-second rule say, “The acid in my stomach and saliva is strong enough to kill bacteria!” This is false. Many viruses and bacteria actually thrive and survive in low pH environments. Many harmful bacteria can survive long enough in the human body to get into the intestine to infect it. If dropping a piece a bread can lead to 150 to 8,000 bacteria clinging to it, why don’t we get sick more often? The answer is our immune system. Our immune system is constantly working to fight these bacteria and viruses, preventing us from getting sick all the time.

Bacteria are found everywhere, even on that freshly cleaned sparkling kitchen tile. A study from the Hygiene Council shockingly found the kitchen floor near the sink has more bacteria than the trash can. One of the most shocking items that carry lots of bacteria that we use everyday is our cell-phone. Cell phones carries about 25,000 germs per square inch while toilet seats carry 344 germs per square inch. If you compare the two, the number of germs found on just one cellphone is the same number of germs that are found on 73 toilet seats!

Toilet. Image via Wikimedia Commons rfc1394.

A more in detail discussion about the truth of the 5-second rule:

YouTube Video “Is The 5-Second Rule True?” via Vsauce.

I hope this makes you rethink the 5-second rule. Maybe it is not the best idea to put that chocolate bar back into our mouths after it has touched the floor.

Hilarious Comic by Matt Melvin of Cyanide and Happiness. All rights to Cyanide and Happiness.

– Christine Wong

5 Comments

Posted in Public Engagement, Science Communication, Science in the News

Tagged 5 second rule, bacteria, Cell phones, chocolate bar, E.coli, ground, salmonella, sink, toilets

The Art of Acupuncture

Posted on March 11, 2013 by glam | 3 comments

Have you or someone you know experienced a persisting headache that didn’t go away even after taking painkillers? If you were from a Chinese family like mine, perhaps the first remedy would be the suggestion of Acupuncture: the practice of penetrating skin on certain areas of the body with needles to “heal” physical pains and ailments. For over thousands of years, the Chinese have been using this method to treat pains, allergies, paralysis, asthma and many other illnesses.

A sterile needle used in Acupuncture (lengths may vary). No drugs are introduced into the body. Source: Wikimedia Commons

As a victim of these needles, I had wondered, how could pricking one’s body with very fine needles provide relief of ailments? Could science be used to explain this treatment? First, let’s look at the basic concepts of this practice.

Qi and the Meridians

Acupuncture practitioners believe that aches and pains are a result of blockage or irregular flow of Qi (pronounced “chee”): life energy that flows throughout the body of all living things. This “Qi” flows throughout the body via pathways or Meridians, which are known to reach tissues of the skin, muscles, bones, joints and organs. Unlike the conventional needles used for giving shots, acupuncture needles are very thin and do not puncture or damage tissues. Inserting these needles in certain areas (known as pressure points) of the meridians unblock or assist the proper flow of Qi, ultimately relieving the individual of ailments.

Outline of the different meridians in the body.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Seems pretty far-fetched right? The idea of fixing the flow of “magical life energy” inside one’s body isn’t exactly convincing to scientists and especially those who hate needles. However, a large abundance of testimonials, reviews and research articles have repeatedly claimed the effectiveness of acupuncture and this in fact, has garnered the interest of many western doctors and researchers.

A Scientific Approach

In an attempt to provide a scientific explanation for the effects of acupuncture, researchers have studied the impact of needle insertions on the brain using fMRI. It was found that triggering certain pressure points decreased the activity in structures of the brain involved with pain sensation, with no negative effects on other areas of the brain.

In addition, several studies have also discovered the correspondence between pressure points and nerve bundles or muscles within the body. For example, an individual having a heart attack will experience pain running from their chest to the length of their left arm. Coincidentally, this pathway is associated with what acupuncture practitioners know as the “heart meridian”. One study finds the stimulation of this area to affect heart rate and areas of the brain associated with cardiac muscle regulation.

Although many doubts still remain about the evidence behind acupuncture treatments, interest in this practice has become increasingly popular, with more and more evidence supporting the effectiveness of these needle insertions.

Check out the video below for more information on Acupuncture

Video from user: aguinther

– Grace Lam

3 Comments

Posted in Issues in Science

Tagged Acupuncture, body, Eastern Medicine, Healing, needles, Qi

Will bananas last forever?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by younghee | 2 comments

Banana via Flickr by Gori

Bananas are one of the most popular fruits in the world. It is cheap, tasty, and nutritious.

They are very rich in nutrition. At only 110 calories per 4-ounce offering, high concentration of vitamin B6, which plays a significant role in fighting infection, is contained. Also, bananas are rich in potassium and fiber. It is known that bananas are the staple diet for half billion people in Asia and Africa.

While the fruit itself is loved as an important dietary staple, the other parts of plants are used as food, clothing, paper, and tableware.

A box made with banana paper via a company DwellSmart by Terracycle

However, we will be saying good bye to beloved bananas. It is estimated that they will be extinct in about 10 years.

What are threatening bananas?

We have been consuming almost only one type of banana: Cavendish banana, which makes up 99% of consumed bananas.

They have a critical problem. Cavendish are seedless and cannot reproduce sexually, so all plants of a single variety are grown from cuttings. Basically, they are clones of one another and equally vulnerable to diseases. Because Cavendish are genetically identical, if one member of population is attacked by bacteria, then the whole population will be killed soon.

There are three types of diseases that are threatening bananas:

Panama disease, caused by a soil fungus, which wiped out the Gros Michel variety in the 1950s
Black sigatoka, another fungal disease which has reached global epidemic proportions
Pests invading plantations and farms in central America, Africa and Asia alike.

Among the three types of disease, the most threatening type of Black sigatoka. It first appeared 20 years ago in Malaysia. At first time, it spread slowly, but not it is moving at a rapid speed.

You might be wondering why farmers don’t use pesticide to kill bacteria. It is reported that as soon as a new fungicide is used to kill bacteria, surprisingly, bacteria develop resistance. Fungicide is very ineffective against the bacteria, especially against the black sigatoka.

Another type of diseases which endangers bananas is black leaf streak disease, which is caused by fungus Mycosphaerella fijiensis.

M. fijjensis by Cecilia M. Rodriguez-Garcia via Flikr

This fungus kills banana plants by affecting leaf photosynthesis, and causes premature ripening.

banana leaf affected by bacteria via Flikr, by Cecilia M. Rodriguez-Garcia

“It starts with small flecks and spreads to the whole banana leaves – the disease can totally destroy the whole banana plant,”Stephanie Robert, a molecular virologist said.

Then what do we have to do?

At this moment, only genetic modification (GM) is solution. With the traditional techniques of selective breeding, ones with ability to resist against disease will be developed and they will be cloned.

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Uncategorized

Tagged banana, Cavendish

Chemophobia: A Natural or Synthesized Fear?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by nicoledgehring | 2 comments

When did ‘chemical’ come to mean the opposite of ‘natural’? Consider for example, caffeine isolated from cocoa beans or tea leaves versus caffeine synthesized in a laboratory. Is one better for you than the other?

In the view of the general public, substances that are ‘natural’ and those that are ‘chemical’ are seen as two different things. Natural seems to stand for something positive and pure: Things that are healthy, mild or ‘good for the environment’ whereas chemicals are often viewed as toxic, dangerous and unhealthy.

This misconception is called chemophobia: An irrational fear of chemicals and we are a chemophobic culture.

Chemophobia and Our Culture
Credit: CHEMJOBBER via Flickr Creative Commons

Have you ever had a sales assistant tell you that a product was made entirely from natural ingredients, and contained no chemicals? Most people would think this was a selling feature, but what are those natural ingredients? Is it possible they might also be chemical compounds? Surely they must be. Those ingredients had to of come from somewhere.

Our negative view of chemicals is influenced by the fact that some chemicals are used in dangerous man-made materials such as Agent Orange, DDT and napalm. Other chemicals are responsible for environmental problems like smog, air pollution and the formation of the ozone hole. That being said, chemophobics can be blind to the vast majority of chemicals they encounter everyday. Everything around us is composed of life’s building blocks: Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, all of which are chemicals. Daily essentials that we require to live are chemicals. Water and the air we breathe are composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Arsenic is a naturally occurring element, but would we label is as “100% natural” and willingly consume it? I cannot stress enough that all matter is made of chemicals.

Natural vs. Synthetic Vitamin D
Credit: Jarek Esarco, from http://ohiospecific.blogspot.ca/

It’s important to understand the misleading notion of natural versus synthetic chemicals. It may shock some of you to know that sometimes synthetic is actually safer for your health, such as synthetic melatonin supplements since those naturally derived may contain viral material. In addition, some sources of synthetic chemicals are actually good for the environment. For example, natural sources of vanilla (the vanilla bean) are quickly being depleted and synthetic versions are our first alternative. In fact synthetic chemicals are indistinguishable from the natural source. They are molecularly identical with the exact same properties, appearance, smell and taste.

This widespread misconception colors public perceptions of chemistry and its role in the modern world. Chemophobia may not be as direct a threat to our future as say, climate change, but it clouds public understanding of real and very important issues we face.

-Nicole Gehring

2 Comments

Posted in Issues in Science, Public Engagement, Science Communication

Tagged "all natural", Caffeine, chemical, chemophobia, health, misconceptions, natural, synthetic

Impending Doom: A World Without Antibiotics

Posted on March 11, 2013 by curtisjm | 4 comments

Imagine a world where the common cold or a cut on your finger could be potentially life threatening. Operations, transplants and even child birth could once again be deadly. This nightmarish situation might not be as far fetched as some might think. The World Health Organization warns us of such a future – one without antibiotics.

Sir Alexander Fleming‘s discovery of antibiotics was one of the single greatest contributions to medicine. He’d made the discovery of penicillin in 1945, but even then the awareness of bacterial resistance to the drug was present. Sir Alexander Fleming stated:

“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body.

Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.”

Sir Alexander Fleming.
Source: Wikimedia Commons via Calibuon

The resistance that Sir Alexander Fleming mentioned is materializing into a harsh reality of today. As bacteria become exposed to different drugs, they eventually adapt and find ways to survive, rendering the drug ineffective. The US Centers of Disease Control point out the emergence of “nightmare bacteria,” those that are capable of resisting multiple drugs, as well as a select few that are immune to all antibiotics. For the most part, as long as new and improved drugs are developed, resistance to the majority of bacteria will not be a problem. However, there has not been a discovery of a new class of antibiotics since 1980.

Scanning electron micrograph of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (gold) outside a white blood cell (blue).
Source: Wikimedia commons via NIAID/NIH

Although antibiotics are the main cause of the adaptation and development of more resistant strains of bacteria, a world without antibiotics would be far more dangerous. Antibiotics are extremely important in compensating for a suppressed immune system resulting from major surgeries or long term treatments such as chemotherapy. A future without antibiotics is surely a grim one.

Some initiatives have already been taken in order to decrease the amount of unnecessary use of antibiotics. Europe, for example, has banned the use of antibiotics to increase the growth of livestock, as it can promote resistance in bacteria. It has also been argued that antibiotics should be far more expensive, forcing people to reassess how badly they need them.

Professor Laura Piddock, from the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham, talks about the importance of using antibiotics carefully:

Source: YouTube via pharmamixvideo

The speculation of a future without antibiotics forces us to rethink our casual use of the drug. Although the description of such a situation may seem a little over exaggerated, the message should be taken seriously or dire consequences may ensue. While bacterial resistance to antibiotics is increasing, careful regulation of its use could prevent this “bacterial apocalypse” that is so vividly described.

– Curtis Ma

4 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Science Communication, Uncategorized

Tagged adaptation, antibiotics, apocalypse, bacteria, doom, immunity, mutation, nightmare bacteria, penicillin, resistance, sir alexander fleming

What do you know about “humanized mice”?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by ashkannasr | 1 comment

Ordinarily, doctors wouldn’t have much choice for a 56-year-old patient with advanced colon cancer which is one of the deadliest diagnoses, but to try chemotherapy drugs one after the other each coming with their own massive side effects or to strike the tumour with a bunch of different chemicals that appeared to be functional in previous cases. But today, doctors have a new brilliant option! And that is to try out potential treatments on mice. Scientists were able to plant human tumours in mice before; yet, there was no guarantee as to how the mice would metabolically react with the implant. That is, if the mice’s reactions would be in anyway similar to that of humans.

Mouse being injected with chemotherapy drugs, credit: Aaron, from aaronlogan.com/blog

In a new approach by Alice Chen, the Lemelsen-MIT prize winner at the University of Stanford in the U.S, young mice are engineered to lack immune systems and then receive portions of human immune system as transplants. As the mice grow older, they tend to develop a very human-like immune response system which, as a result, reacts to drugs and infectious agents just as human immune system would.

Dale Greiner of the University of Massachusetts Medical School said: “the idea is that you can take human immune systems and put them in a mouse and make them functional, and by doing so you can manipulate them as if you were manipulating little humans without ever putting patients at risk.”

Here is a video of Alice Chen explaining how she first invented this method by transplanting human liver cells into humanized mice.

This video is from the youtube username Lemelson MIT

Already using this technique, for many cancer patients, scientists have been able to identify the correct treatment before therapeutically testing the drug on the patient. For instance, scientists at UC Davis of California have been able to develop a new drug delivery system for bladder cancer using humanized mice. In their experiment, mice were specially injected with bladder cancer cells from the patients with the disease and the new treatment method was tried out a dozen times on a number of these mice throughout the project. This way, the most reliable treatment was identified and used on human subjects.

Making Mice More Human, Credit: E. Feliciano, from sceinecenews.org

But this is not the end! Humanized mice are not only useful in cancer treatment, but in studying the effect of infectious agents such as HIV and dengue virus, and complex diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. For instance, Doctor Greiner, studies the immune system in hyperglycaemic mice in pursue of a better understanding and therefore cure for type one diabetes which is an autoimmune disease.

Although the day your family doctor will be able to grow a colony of your personal humanized mice is still years away, this is definitely a revolutionary technique to attempt at fighting diseases that we have yet to cure.

-Ashkan Nasr

1 Comment

Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

Tagged Biomedical Engineering, Cancer Treatment Research, Humanized Mice

Child born with HIV, now cured.

Posted on March 11, 2013 by abbyperehudoff | 3 comments

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University announced on March 3^rd 2013 what they say is the first documented case of a child being cured of HIV. Dr. Persaud described the case of a two-year-old child in Mississippi diagnosed with HIV at birth and immediately put on antiretroviral therapy. According to a press release from the Foundation for AIDS research:

“At 18 months, the child ceased taking antiretrovirals and was lost to follow-up. When brought back into care at 23 months, despite being off treatment for five months, the child was found to have an undetectable viral load”.

Dr. Persaud and Dr. Luzuriaga of the University of Massachusetts were awarded a grant by the Foundation for AIDS research to work with other researchers in exploring and documenting potential pediatric HIV cure cases. Dr. Johnston, the Foundation for AIDS research vice president and director of research commented by saying:

“The child’s pediatrician in Mississippi was aware of the work we were doing, and quickly notified our team as soon as this young patient’s case came to her attention…the researchers were able to mobilize immediately and perform the tests necessary to determine if this was in fact a case of a child being cured.”

After many highly sensitive tests, it was confirmed that the child was cured of HIV.

Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 (in green) budding from cultured lymphocyte. Multiple round bumps on cell surface represent sites of assembly and budding of virions, which are the complete, infective forms of a virus outside a host cell. Image via Wikimedia Commons

The only other documented case of HIV being cured to date is that of Timothy Brown. In 2006, while on treatment for HIV, Mr. Brown was diagnosed with leukemia. His physician treated his leukemia with a stem-cell transplant from a patient who was born with a genetic mutation causing immunity the HIV virus. After the transplant was complete, Mr. Brown was able to stop HIV treatment without experiencing a return of his HIV disease.

This new case points to the possibility that different populations of HIV positive people might be cured in different ways. While Mr. Brown’s case was the outcome of a complex, high-risk and expensive series of procedures, this new case appears to have been the direct result of a comparatively inexpensive course of antiretroviral therapy.

The bottom line is that John Hopkins medical researcher Dr. Deborah Persaud and her colleagues have now described the first known case of a child born with HIV, who has now been cured. The only other case of someone being cured of HIV remains that of Timothy Brown. Persaud and her colleagues say their work confirms the idea that different populations of HIV-positive people might be cured in different ways.

3 Comments

Posted in Public Engagement, Science in the News

Tagged AIDS, antiretroviral, Cure, HIV, John Hopkins