Category Archives: Science in the News

Should you buy a Hydrogen or electric car for the environment?

Posted on February 9, 2015 by | Leave a comment

If you are looking to buy a new car and want to protect the environment, you have two exciting new choices to power your car: Hydrogen fuel cell and battery electric. they are both considered as “green” and can save you money in the long run. So which one should you buy?

Fuel cell car. Source: Wikipedia

Fuel cell car. Source: Wikipedia

What is hydrogen fuel cell car?

There are several types of fuel cell cars but they all work in similarly. It has a cathode, anode and electrolyte that allow electrons to pass through. It works like your AAA batteries except it uses hydrogen as fuel. It has no emission and the only byproduct is water that you can drink! (If you are really thirsty)

Electric car. Source: Wikipedia

Electric car. Source: Wikipedia

What is battery electric car?

Battery electric cars usually use battery Lithium ion battery to store the electricity. The first electric car was invented 130 years ago but it wasn’t until recently that we have technology to mass produce these vehicles. Like hydrogen fuel cell cars, it has no emission so they don’t produce any pollution at the tailpipe.

Hydrogen fuel cell vs Battery efficiency comparison. Source: Wikipedia

Hydrogen fuel cell vs Battery efficiency comparison. Source: Wikipedia

Green comparison

According to a study by Stephen and James Eaves of Arizona State University, battery electric cars are much more efficient than Hydrogen fuel cell cars. To supply 60kWh to a hydrogen fuel cell car, 202 kWh has to be produced from power plants, while only 79 kWh is needed for battery electric cars. The main reason is that the Li-ion battery has a 94% efficiency, while hydrogen fuel cell has only 54%. The findings is similar from another study by Tesla motor (see picture above).

On the other hand, producing Hydrogen is very energy intensive. The most common method is called steam-methane reformation, it involves mixing natural gas with high temperature steam to produce Hydrogen, Carbon Monoxide (toxic) and Carbon Dioxide (greenhouse gas), while the electricity for electric cars can come entirely from renewable sources. For example, according to Tesla Motors, all of their super chargers will be supplied by solar power.

All in all, Hydrogen is only a means to store energy instead of a energy source. Considering the low efficiency and the use a nonrenewable natural gas, electric battery cars seems to be a better choice for your next car.

Yiu Leung Wong

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Posted in Issues in Science, Science in the News

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Eating your mucous: a defence mechanism?

Posted on February 2, 2015 by | 2 comments

 

 

Mucous-ingestion:source flickr commons

Mucous-ingestion by this man, although disgusting,may actually be aiding his immune system. Image by imgarcade. Source: Google Image

 

 

As much as everyone would like to hide it, you have all picked your nose at one point or another in your life. And each time, you’ve probably been reminded of how disgusting and unhygienic the act is. Some people even take this behaviour to the next level, proceeding to ingest the hidden treasures. Could ingesting the contents of your nose actually be the opposite of what your mother has told you? Even, healthy?

Professor Napper at the University of Saskatchewan hypothesizes that eating the pathogen-containing mucous from the nose can actually produce an effect similar to that of a vaccine. The mucous and the hairs in the nose are a part of the innate immune response, which is essentially the first line of defence against invading pathogens. When you ingest the mucous, you’re ingesting all of these pathogens, some of which are potentially very dangerous if they enter into your bloodstream. Once ingested, these pathogens skip the bloodstream and make their way to the gastrointestinal tract where they teach our immune system to defend, such as a vaccine would. Professor Napper’s work is still in the beginning stages and no formal study has been conducted.

S.aureus, common pathogen in nose: source Google commons

S.aureus is a common pathogen in the nose that may be ingested and induce an immune response. Raeky. Source: Wikipedia

On the other hand, Dr Bischinger’s work, which is summarized in this article , describes the mechanism with which the immune system is boosted. He believed that  the pathogens that you introduce from the nose to the body, similar to those of vaccines, are already weakened. He suggested that there are bacteria-killing properties in the mucous of the nose that kill and weaken most of the bacteria, allowing it to be easily contained by our immune system. This mechanism  produces antibodies that our body desperately needs when the full-strength pathogens enter the body.

Moreover, parallels could be drawn from this to that of mothers who kiss their babies in the hopes of boosting their child’s immune system.  In the same way, pathogens that the baby is exposed to are weakened by the mother and then passed on to the baby, producing long-lasting immunity.

Mother kissing the baby: source Google commons

Mother kissing the baby in the hopes that she can provide the baby with weakened pathogens that can be more easily handled by the baby’s weak immune system. Image by Vera Kratochvil. Source Google Image

In conclusion, although pending actual scientific studies, I think that this just might be the natural immunity boost that we all need. However, I don’t think we are ready as a society to start picking away at our noses whenever we please!

 

-Gurtaj Mahil

 

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News, Uncategorized

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Sacrificing Marketability For Clear Communication

Posted on February 2, 2015 by | 2 comments

A report by CTV highlighted that there may be an association between caffeine and an improvement in Parkinson’s severity ratings (based on the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale) for Parkinson’s patients. Although I originally found this story two years ago, I still remember it today. The funny thing is that this is not because of its content, but because of the way it was presented and communicated.

When they first mentioned in the report that this study was performed on only 61 patients who had Parkinson’s, I thought, “That’s an awfully small sample size, how reliable can these data even be?”  I remember being angry because I had seen one too many reports in the news that talked about miracle cures that household items can provide to devastating diseases without mentioning the limitations of the studies that were used to make these claims.

I thought this report was no exception. However, as I read further along the report, I was pleasantly surprised. In the second half of the report, it blatantly stated that authors of the study noted that:

“The number of patients they studied was small, and the length of their study was short. They say it’s also possible that the effects of caffeine may lessen over time.”

It wasn’t required for the report to mention this, but I appreciated that they did. When health studies like this one are presented in the media as being totally conclusive, it may lead people to replace professional medical care with the remedies presented in the news reports which can be detrimental to their health.

I sincerely enjoyed this report because it guided the reader by laying out for them what the implications of this study were and what they weren’t, which I find is rare for news reports. It sacrificed marketability for truth and this was further exemplified by the title of the report which was:

“Caffeine could help some Parkinson’s symptoms.”

Although the title didn’t make any extraordinary claims and was not as catchy as some I have heard in the past, I appreciated its honesty and how it didn’t extrapolate from the results of the study.

Further along, the report mentioned how more investigation was required until the suggestion to add caffeine into the treatment for Parkinson’s could be made. Since this report, a study on rats (2014) has shown promising results that there may be a correlation between caffeine consumption and a decrease in the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

The only negative thing I found in this report was the picture they included which is attached below.

Article Photo

Source: CTVNews.ca Credit to: Nathan Denette

I frankly found that it added nothing to the article and was rather distracting. Furthermore, it diverted attention away from the implications of the study.

To further illustrate why clear communication of science is important, below is a video that emphasizes why knowing what type of study is performed can affect the way one should interpret the results.

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Credit: CurrentMedicine.TV from Youtube

– Shikha Walia

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Posted in Science Communication, Science in the News, Uncategorized

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Is Data Privacy an Illusion?

Posted on February 2, 2015 by | 2 comments

Credit card data is not as private as it seems. In fact, you can be identified by just four transactions, three if prices are included finds a new study.

credit cards source: Sean MacEntee through Flickr

Even ‘anonymised’ credit card metadata can be used to identify you
Source: Sean MacEntee through Flickr

Researchers at MIT studied the ‘anonymised’ metadata where names and other personal information like account numbers were scrubbed. The data was provided by an unnamed bank in an undisclosed country and the researchers looked at the credit card transactions of 1.1 million people over 3 months.

Instagram Logo Source: Flickr

Instagram can be used to identify people based on their purchases.
Source: Flickr

Each transaction was linked to a store and timestamped with the date of purchase. With just these two pieces of information about 90% of people could be re-identified using 4 transactions. After identifying the unique purchasing pattern of a person their real identity can be easily found through publicly available information such as social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.

Furthermore, if data like price of the purchase was included that increased the chance of identifying a unique purchasing pattern by 20%. They also found that women were more easily re-identifiable than men, although it is not known why.

These findings are the latest in a string of studies telling us that we expose ourselves more than we think we do. For example, Uber published their findings where they calculated the likelihood that their weekend riders were going to visit prostitutes based on local crime reports.  Additionally, a group of researchers from Cambridge University found that your pattern of “likes” on Facebook is better at assessing your personality than your closest friends.

There is a lucrative secondary market for these large datasets. They provide a wealth of personal data for large companies that can then use it to create sophisticated marketing campaigns that target a specific demographic. In fact, data mining was used extensively by Obama to win the 2012 election.

It’s not to say that companies are offering up their credit card metadata for sale. In fact, there are rules set by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards group to protect credit card data. However, it seems as though approval by PCI does not necessarily mean your credit card information is safe. Neiman Marcus reported that they had been approved by PCI when customer credit card information may have been compromised during an eight month period. Target was certified just two months before the epic hack of their credit card data.

15477622352_9f9deeb01c_o

iPhone 6 or 6+ users can use Apple Pay to protect their credit card data through tokenization
Source: Peter through Flickr

Now, by this time you’re thinking… do I have to stop using credit cards to protect my identity? My answer for you is no; the solution to this problem is using tokenization. This is where sensitive credit card data information is replaced by unique identification symbols that retain all the important information without compromising its security. The best part of this solution is that it’s available now in the form of Apple Pay for iPhone 6 users and Google Wallet for Android users.

check out this video highlighting the dangers of “big data” by THNKR:

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– Siana Lai

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Virtual Reality is Becoming a Reality: A clinical application of VR

Posted on February 1, 2015 by | 2 comments

March of 2014 was a memorable month when Facebook bought Oculus Rift, a virtual reality (VR) headset that lets users experience the virtual world literally in first person view. The Oculus Rift was bought for a whopping 2 billion dollars. Why? Because there are countless non-entertainment applications besides gaming and dating simulations that have been, or would be, groundbreaking in their respective fields. For instance, VR has been clinically used for decades to treat patients with phobias.

Palmer Luckey, creator of Oculus, tries on an Oculus development kit (Image: Palmer Luckey wearing Oculus Rift DK1 at SVVR 2014. Wikimedia Commons).

Conventionally, one of the popular methods of treating phobias is through an exposure therapy, otherwise known as a systematic desensitization. As the names suggest, the idea of this treatment is to expose the patient to his/her fear periodically with increasing intensity until the patient adapts and is no longer phobic.

So how exactly is VR useful in exposure therapies? Let’s imagine ourselves in the shoes of a therapist or a doctor trying to design a treatment procedure for a phobic patient.

Obviously, some phobias would be easy to recreate. For example, arachnophobia is a fear of spiders. Patients with arachnophobia would be asked to look at and touch real spiders, which are easy enough to obtain.

A hypothetical high level exposure for patients with arachnophobia (Image: Arachnophobia100. Wikimedia Commons).

On the other hand, some phobias would be difficult, economically unfavourable, or downright impossible to recreate. For example, deipnophobia is a fear of dinner parties and dinner conversations. It would be highly inconvenient for the doctors to find or throw a dinner party every week for this patient.

Therefore, designing a virtual world would open new possibilities for patients such as these. Using a VR console, patients would be able to experience any level of exposure intensities, every aspect under control by the conductor of the VR.

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(Video: Courtesy of Macquarie University)

You may be wondering ‘exactly how effective is a VR therapy?’ If you guessed that it is not as effective as a standard exposure therapy, guess again! Here is a famous research published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology which tested on patients with a fear of flight. The research team found that the patients who were treated with VR exposure had the same positive results as the patients who were treated with standard exposure as compared to those who did not receive a treatment.

Overall, I believe that the increasing availability of VR consoles such as Oculus Rift will change the game for the medical industry, at least in the psychology department. In the past, VR machines were too expensive, so only a few clinics could afford them. Now Oculus Rift is expected to be released this year for the highly affordable price range of 200-400 US dollars. Indeed, this year will be a stepping stone for the great science-fiction-esque future we have all been dreaming about.

– Sean Nam

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Life in a Petri Dish: From Skin Cells to Fertility

The number of partners facing infertility in Canada has doubled since the 1980s; it is now predicted that every one in six couples face infertility. With the numbers rising, due to factors such as obesity and substance use, this issue is becoming increasingly more common in our modern world and scientists across the globe are in a constant race to overcome it.

New research emerging from Cambridge University has provided hope in the form of a new infertility treatment. In collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Israel, researchers have come forward with a potential new form of in-vitro fertilization. Its origin? Human adult skin cells.

IVF: the insertion of sperm into a human oocyte (egg cell).

IVF: The insertion of sperm with a glass pipette into a human oocyte (egg cell). In-vitro Source: Wikimedia Commons

For the first time, scientists have been able create manmade (reproductive) primordial germ cells, known as PGCs; these cells act as predecessors and are considered the common origin of  both sperm and egg cells. PGCs arise from pre-existing adult stem cells, which is an undifferentiated cell that has the ability to develop into many different tissue types. Their ancestor-like quality that creates a common origin, allows the eventual creation of  many different cell types, such as skin and liver cells.

Kyoto University used skin cells to create mice pups in 2012. Lab Mouse Source: Google

Kyoto University used skin cells to create mice pups in 2012.
Lab Mouse Source: Wikimedia Commons

The team of researchers, led by Hanna and Azim Surani, followed a “recipe” originating from a Stem Cell Lab at Kyoto University, who created mice pups from a female germ cell by re-programming stem cells back in 2012. Based on this, the Cambridge-Weizmann team replicated the in-vitro portion of the experiment, where they grew the cells in a sterile and controlled environment.

The team was successful in making the primordial reproductive cells from human stem cells. The key finding was a gene known as SOX17, who is responsible for directing stem cells into their specialization; this is how primordial germ cells are created. This gene can also direct stem cells into becoming the external layer of skin, therefore showing that the reprogramming of an adult tissue type, such as skin cells, could give rise to the primordial germ cells.

Current British law has banned any fertility clinics in the United Kingdom from using a manmade sperm and eggs to treat an infertile couple, due to both ethical reasons as well as safety concerns. If this law is changed, the creation of a genetically identical sperm or egg cell can be taken from a patient for use in in-vitro fertilization.

Mother and Child Source: Wikimedia Commons

Mother and Child
Mother Source: Wikimedia Commons

This discovery has laid down foundation for all future research; scientists can now compare the development of both sperm and egg cells in both healthy as well as infertile people. Representing a huge step forward in the world of stem cell biology, the researcher’s work, published in the journal Cell, may mean a change in the age at which a woman can stop having children. This breakthrough means that manmade primordial germ cells are capable of passing on an offspring’s genetic code to their own offspring, creating the fundamental bond from generation to generation.

Check out Cambridge University’s video on a similar topic, the derivation of brain cells from skin cells:

Thanks for reading!

Samantha Mee

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Posted on January 26, 2015 by in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

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Communicating Science Through Robots

Posted on January 25, 2015 by | 1 comment

In our science communication class, we talk about different strategies and mediums to ultimately help us get our message across easily. But, have you ever thought about learning science through a robot? For one company, robot teachers aid them in their mission to introduce young people to technology and to gear students towards scientific careers. Specifically, Aldebaran has developed NAO, a robot teacher that is aimed at engaging students in computer and science classes throughout elementary school to university.

NAO, a robot teacher. Source: LinuxTag Flickr

NAO is a 58-cm tall humanoid robot that can speak, sit, stand, walk and recognize speech. The robot is also programmed to speak up to 19 different languages.

The complexity of NAO’s teaching differs depending on the education level. For example, in elementary school, NAO can help teach children their multiplication tables, whereas in university, NAO can also be used to challenge students with problems in business and society.

NAO_waving

NAO, waving. Source: Anonimski Wikimedia Commons

For St. Dominic School, NAO has been a great addition to their science lab for the past year. They use the robot to teach elementary children the fundamentals of basic programming. For example, children learn to program its movements from kicking a soccer ball to waving hello. While this serves as a great introduction to high school, a teacher from the Career and Technical Education Academy believes its use in higher level education could also look great on résumés. Operating a robot is surely something that may impress certain information and communication technology companies.

An article in Channel NewsAsia suggests NAO’s mere presence engages students, especially students with autism. Autistic students have trouble with social interaction, thus the robot allows a different form of interaction with the student. It can respond perfectly just like a human, but the idea is that since students are more keen to play with robots, they are seen as more approachable than human teachers. In a recent research study, they show that children with autism were more engaged with their tasks and found them more enjoyable with a robot compared to an adult.

I found NAO to be an interesting innovation because it engages students in not only science, but communication skills in general. It provides some things that human teachers cannot such as hands-on programming and an enjoyable method of interaction for autistic students. NAO may not be a necessary tool in helping students, but it is definitely a creative and innovative option for schools that want to try something new. With a hefty price tag of $7,990, NAO is unfortunately only limited to schools that have the sufficient funds to afford it. Hopefully, the robot can be much more affordable in the future so it can be used under a broader spectrum.

Check out this video below by AldebaranRobotics, showing NAO being used in a British primary school’s class.

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-Ian Villamin

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