Category Archives: Science Communication

Stress Not…

Posted on October 6, 2018 by | 1 comment

Nowadays, it is very common to hear phrases like “I’m stressed out ” or “I don’t know if I can handle the stress”. However, the prevalence of stress in our society should not be accepted due to the negative impact that stress can have on people’s health.

Stress  is an organism’s response to any environmental or physical factor that is perceived as threatening harm ,

Pathway for Cortisol release in response to stress. Source: Top 10 Home Remedies

where the body experiences biochemical changes such as the release of hormones to prepare the system to confront danger or avoid it . Although, some amount of stress can be expected in any healthy individual, prolonged  stress has become a damaging condition in modern environment.  

According to Statistics Canada, in 2014 about 73% of adults between 20 and 64-years-old suffer from some level of stress. These findings, are indicative of increasing stress levels that could have long-term consequences on people’s health.

Source: Canadian Community Health Survey, 2014.
In 2014, 23% of Canadians reported that most days were “quite a bit” or “extremely stressful”. Additionally, females were more likely to report that most days were “quite a bit” or “extremely stressful”

According to the review Human behaviour: A cooperative instinct , stress in small doses enables people to adapt faster to unexpected changes in environmental conditions. Likewise, the presence of danger triggers a response called “fight-or-flight” where the body defenses increases: adrenalin secretion increases, blood flow to the brain and muscles increases. Nevertheless, the experience of being overwhelmed and in constant stress causes damage to health, decrease in productivity and life quality. 

What is the link between stress and the immune system?

According to the article published by GM Lewitus and M Schwartz, cells from the immune and nervous system interact together during stress episodes to secrete memory cells that will help people cope with stress-situations in the future. In other words, this mechanism is used by your body to protect you from possible danger. 

What are the causes of stress? 

When encountering a stressful situation, cortisol is released, it maintains bodily functions consistent. However, when stress is present for an extended period of time, high levels of cortisol inhibit some immune responses causing more susceptibility to infections and does not control properly inflammatory responses.

What are the effects of stress?

Some of the effects include: problems with the digestive and reproductive systems, increase the risk of heart attack  and stroke. In addition, a review article shows that stress can even rewire the brain, leaving people more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.

 The skin condition know as psoriasis appears to be linked to constant stress periods rather than medication or diet reasons. Researchers suggest that psoriasis is caused by the regulation of cortisol becoming dysfunctional leading to poor control of inflammatory responses causing this condition.

Therefore, being aware of the negative consequences that stress has on people’s health, will allow to reduce its prevalence in society.  

Effects of stress on the body Source: Live Love Fruit.

Mariana Paspuel

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

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Echolocation: How Two Seemingly Polar-Opposite Creatures Developed the Same Highly Specialized Skill

Posted on October 1, 2018 by | Leave a comment

Have you ever been walking through your house in the middle of the night with all the lights off, searching for a glass of water, but you feel an intense pain running through your body as you stub your toe on the counter? This would never happen if humans had echolocation: the ability to map out the area ahead of you by using reflections from high-pitched sonar signals.

Animal Echolocation
Credit: WikiMedia

Echolocation is an ability that is primarily used by dolphins and bats. This raises the question, why is it that dolphins: hairless mammals which live in the ocean, happen to have the same specialized ability as bats: which are furry, nocturnal, and flying critters?

Dolphins utilise a unique organ called the melon to send out high frequency clicks. They have a large depression in their skull to make space for this organ, allowing them to produce bisonar for orientation. Beyond this, echolocation gives dolphins an idea on the object’s shape and size, although it is not quite understood by scientists exactly how this happens.

Bisonar by cetaceans
Credit: Wikimedia

Bats dominantly use a method of echolocation called laryngeal echolocation, which is characterized by the production of very short wavelength sounds from their larynx. The connection between their stylohyal bone and tympanic bone enables the bat to neurally register and separate outgoing and incoming ultrasonic waves. They have evolved to differentiate between the pulses they produce and the echoes that they receive back.

Ventral view of the Florida Freetail bat, highlighting the tympanic and stylohal bones. Credit: Pacific Lutheran University Natural History 

This skill could potentially be relevant for humans today, as researchers are using this skill to test human echolocation in blind people. It has been revealed that some blind people were able to independently develop a type of echolocation, by utilising sound, they are able to map out the space they are in and develop an image of it for themselves. Some researchers are studying this ability, attempting to make it accessible for all who might need it.

So how is it that dolphins and bats have developed these extremely similar skills? Clearly, there is the fact that because dolphins hunt in murky ocean waters, and bats hunt late at night in the dark. Thus they both had to have evolved some method to cope with the darkness, but why was it that they developed the same method of echolocation independently? A team of scientists were trying to answer this question, and a paper in Science Advances announced that there exist genetic characteristics that could have helped dolphins and bats both develop this skill.

This international group of scientists searched through the genomes of each animal, searching side by side for any similarities in amino acid sequences. They found that bats and dolphins share amino acids linked to proteins involved in the development of a very specific set of fast-twitch muscles. These were the muscles that drive the “terminal buzz”, or the rapid high frequency calls that bats and dolphins both make when hunting.

Figure showing sudden increase in high frequency calls in a bat
Credit: The Gall Lab

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Sound clip of terminal buzz – the terminal buzz is the last pulses of an echolocation call sequence: and will speed up at the end because the bat is getting closer to the object it is interested in.
Credit: The Gall Lab

This similarity in amino acid sequence may be a part of what helped these two very different animals develop the same skill, but there is still plenty to uncover about the specifics of how dolphins and bats developed echolocation independently. However, we are much closer to uncovering this mystery than in the past.

Jin Kyu Lee

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Integrating Peptides into RNA-World

Integrating Peptides into RNA-World

The RNA-World

Over 4 billion years ago, the molecular precursors to life showed up in the inhospitable soup of chemicals that we can barely recognize as Earth. The identity of these first molecular precursors is a schismatic “the chicken or the egg” debate, splitting people between groups that support molecules that carry information and ones with enzymatic activity.

If only a family of molecules could both have enzymatic activity and contain genetic information. Thus we enter the “RNA-world”, RNAs are molecules with its unique properties of having enzymatic activities and contain genetic information, it is the perfect molecule to self-replicate and mutate to pave the way for peptide and DNA to take over each role more effectively. This was the widely accepted theory since the 1960’s and remain relatively unchallenged until recently.

File:Geological time spiral.png

The timeline of the biodiversity of Earth, it all started with a few molecules. Image Credit: United States Geological Survey

The Problems of RNA-World

An article in Biosystems and another in Molecular Biology and Evolution, showed why a peptide-RNA complex world view is better than RNA-world hypothesis at explaining what the primordial molecular precursors would look like.

The researchers, Charles Carter from the University of North Carolina and Peter Wills from University of Auckland, from the articles approached the subject from two angles. First, from the perspective of enzymatic activity, although RNA show enzymatic activity but RNA does not react well to change like proteins. As a result, in the environment 4 billion years ago when the sea was cooling rapidly, the only way enzymatic activity could have survived was through proteins.

The other problem was genetic information, because at the beginning there were no genes or genetic codes. The changes and mutations in RNA would only be reflected in its abilities as an enzyme. An RNA only world cannot explain how and why the changes in RNA would lead to the creation of a genetic code with the purpose to create proteins. Thus, leaving a gap between the RNA world to the protein and DNA world.

The Peptide-RNA World

They proposed that a peptide-RNA complex, with the peptides that contain enzyme activity and RNA for genetic information, would fill the gap that the RNA-world cannot explain. This relationship would directly explain how mutations in RNA would affect enzymatic activity in protein, and why it needs to create better proteins to protect itself from a wider variety of situations. Furthermore, the addition of proteins explain how the first molecular precursors could survive in the ever-changing climate of the relatively new Earth.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Protein_mosaic.jpg

A protein mosaic, providing an insight on the complexity of proteins. Image Credit: Astrojan

When the proteins and RNA were joined together at the start of life, the mechanisms for construction through transcription, translation, and replication must have co-evolved. With this concept in mind, the researchers found commonalities between compounds similar to evolution from a common ancestor. Thus, with these concepts in mind, when looking at molecules we can find an evolutionary chain to see how molecules developed to be what it is today and also why they developed this way.

Finally, to answer the “chicken and the egg” debate, it is likely to be both like an Oyako-Don (mother-child bowl), a Japanese dish that harmonize chicken and eggs. Life as we know it was likely developed through a combined effort of RNA and proteins.

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Posted on September 24, 2018 by in Biological Sciences, Science Communication

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Are we putting ourselves at risk by driving without that extra hour of sleep?

Posted on September 24, 2018 by | Leave a comment

It’s no secret! We have all had those days when “I’m so tired” is the only piece of conversation we can contribute. But has being tired ever stopped you from driving your car? Recently, there has been an increase in research showing fatigue to be a major contributing factor in motor vehicle accidents. According to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the USA, there was 4,121 fatal crashes between 2011 and 2015 involving drowsy driving. This has led researchers to explore the idea of establishing methods for discouraging people from driving while in a lethargic state and for catching them in the act.

Driving Tired

Drowsy driving can be risky
Image Source: flickr
Photographer: Anna~Bee

 

Does being drowsy really affect me?

We can all relate to being tired every now and again, whether it is a busy week at work, a heavy class schedule, or even as a result of a sleeping disorder. What we do not always realize is the very real effects that even the smallest lack of sleep can have on our bodies. In fact, research done by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, shows that even just one or two hours of sleep less than the recommended within 24 hours, can double the risk of collision. Some of the effects of drowsiness are, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Trouble focusing
  • Heightened risk-taking
  • Impaired attention
  • Changes in mood

Accident

Fatal accidents caused by drowsy driving
Image Source: flickr
Photographer: Thomasjuh-b

 

Wait! How do you know how drowsy I am?

Now, what if I told you that police officers could test your sleep level, as they would alcohol levels, if they saw fit? Would you think twice about getting behind the wheel? This is the end goal for researchers from the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey, who were working towards developing a biomarker capable of assessing an individual’s sleep level. A study was conducted where 36 participants were subjected to a 40-hour period of sleep deprivation. During this time, researchers drew blood from participants in order to observe any changes their lack of sleep would have on the expression levels of their genes. This study resulted in a major breakthrough in the form of an algorithm, which can be used to test blood samples for sleep deprivation with 92 percent accuracy. This breakthrough not only paves the way towards a future with a test capable of checking for sleep-deficient drivers, but also emphasizes the extent of the physiological impact a lack of sleep can have on our bodies, made evident by the fact that these biomarkers are present in the subject’s blood only after a 24-hour period.

Observing driving behaviour of drowsy drivers
Posted By: Mobilegeeks.de

 

Evidently, lack of sleep can have major influences on our bodies and is a serious contributing factor to fatal car accidents. While researchers are working towards methods to help society enforce regulations on sleep level while driving, we can all do our part by being more aware of our state of well-being before taking the wheel.

 

Shadi Elmi

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Could Every Introductory Statistics Student Become A Consultant?

Posted on September 24, 2018 by | 1 comment

Many Statistics students may wonder how the methods and tests learned in class can be applied outside of class. Especially, some test statistics and p-values that confuse students seem boring and meaningless, yet their applications are rarely mentioned in most of elementary statistics courses.

Example of Statistical Test

Credit: WikiPedia

An article published recently described an experiment to turn introductory statistics students into consultants. Adam F. Childers, James Madison University found that guiding students to analyze real data from Facebook helps them learn how to use statistical methods and provide useful suggestions for local businesses and organizations. The project promotes students’ interest in different statistics methods and enhances their understanding of statistics and its value further.

Motivate Students’ Interest

The author built up a semester-long project in his introductory statistics course, which provided an opportunity for students to learn descriptive and inferential statistics by applying it to real-world Facebook data. Students were split up into different groups to cooperate with local organizations. During the project, students had the chance to understand how their organization uses Facebook, which they could use for data analysis. Thanks to the project, students were put in an active position to help companies make better decisions. It was a good motivation for students to learn to apply statistics methods, which is exactly what the whole project was mainly dependent on.

Are statistics boring?

Credit: WordPress

Better to Understand Statistics

Also, students were asked to write a report about previous findings, which was a crucial part of the project according to Adam’s article. It was aimed to enable students to understand statistics. I agree with Adam for the same reason that students need to understand and apply others’ researches in case that they encounter any potential problem in the project.

Comprehend Statistics’ Real-Life Value

Finally, students needed to show their research results to their partner organizations. It was the most exciting part of the project. If I had the chance to participate in the project, I would have been proud of presenting my findings, obtained by statistics methods based on the data acquired from Facebook, to my partner organization. I could have known how useful my suggestions were to the organization—which is meaningful because all work done in the project would help the organization to grow better in the real world rather than merely concluding a rejection of null hypothesis on paper.

YouTube Preview Image

Credit:YouTuBe

No matter the suggestions worked or not, the participating students all took their first steps to become consultants. In my opinion, the most important thing for consulting is not just doing theoretical analysis on paper and make a decent conclusion but instead, applying your findings in the real world and validating the results. There are many unmeasurable variables varying from time to time in the real world that are missing on paper. Thus, there is no better way to learn better than doing a real-world application. Not only introductory students, graduate students also need to pay attention to this problem, because after all, statistics is a powerful tool to solve issues in real life.

Hao Huang

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