Category Archives: Science Communication

Failure to Communicate

Posted on October 19, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Introduction 

Right now communicating science to the general public is more important than ever, and we are failing. Less than 50% of Americans say they would receive a vaccine for COVID-19. This shows the eroding trust that the public has for their once highly esteemed scientist. This is the result of breakdowns in the scientific method that have led to conflicting information being shared with the public.

Mask  Wearing

Perhaps the most notable slip up was the controversy surrounding masks.  While recommended now, it was not until April 3rd, three months into the pandemic, that the CDC began recommending the general public to wear a mask. This was in direct conflict with their earlier statements that only healthcare workers needed masks.  Scientists rushed conclusions that could not be properly verified before being shared with the public. The public demanded answers from a process that can take years, in a matter of weeks. By caving in to public demand, the CDC and World Health Organization were inevitably set up for failure as the pandemic progressed and more data was collected leading to new developments. Tweets from the U.S surgeon general like this

Tweet by Surgeon General Feb 29

only serve to fuel distrust when compared with tweets he makes a few months later.

Tweet by Surgeon General June 14

 

I do not fault scientists for changing their opinion as new data became available, but I do fault (some) scientists for stating their answers with confidence when the proper research and review had not been conducted.

 

Treatment

Image: flickr

Scientists have been under enormous pressure to find treatments for COVID-19 that can reduce mortality and infection rate. This has created haste in the scientific method and has allowed some treatments to receive emergency authorization from the FDA such as remdesivir. Even these emergency authorizations are accompanied by randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials that assure treatments are safe. These methods for testing were not present in the study of Hydroxychloroquine that led to its eventual emergency authorization.  The original study involved only 26 patients treated with Hydroxychloroquine that were compared to 16 untreated patients at a different hospital. Later studies conducted on Hydroxychloroquine would question its effectiveness as a treatment for COVID-19 and thus the scientific process was able to correct itself and the FDA revoked the use of Hydroxychloroquine. However, the public once again lost its trust in doctors. This opened the door to rumors and conspiracy theories to dominate the public view. In a pandemic where time is everything the spread of misinformation costs lives

By allowing leniency in the scientific method, we have opened the flood gates to all types of information being thrust onto the pedestal once reserved for the conclusion from the scientific method. Your uncle’s Facebook post about the healing power of Clorox bleach carries as much weight as the cutting edge research on COVID-19. Scientists have lost credibility with the public. This is not the first time this has happened, but it may be the most damaging.

 

Dylan Chambers

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Posted in Issues in Science, Science Communication, Science Communicators, Science in the News, Statistics, Uncategorized

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COVID-19 and Alcohol Use: Why Managing Your Alcohol Consumption is Crucial During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted on October 13, 2020 by | Leave a comment

The Now

COVID-19 has taken the world by storm, forcing whole countries to shut down and people to self-isolate. Whilst self-isolation and the shutdowns are effective methods of preventing the spread of COVID-19, they also have their collateral effects. A recent report published by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction found that 25% of Canadians (aged 35-54) are drinking more while at home during the COVID-19 pandemic because of either boredom, stress, and/or lack of a regular schedule.

Image: Nanos/Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction

A similar increase was seen in Australia where there was an increase of around 30% in alcohol bought compared to last year. Alcohol while being a great way to relax also has many negative effects that in a time such as the COVID-19 pandemic can result in some very dangerous situations.

The Truth 

One misconception about alcohol that has been debunked by the World Health Organization (WHO) was that drinking alcohol can provide you extra immunity against the COVID-19 disease.

Image: WHO/Europe /Twitter

In contrast, a study concluded that alcohol might increase one’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 disease. Alcohol consumption has a documented role in disrupting one’s immune system. It can do so by disrupting physical, chemical, and cellular responses that are apart of the body’s first line of defense. Furthermore, alcohol can impair t-cell recruitment which means there is a lower number of total white blood cells that can go out and destroy the invaders, this results in a weaker immune system. This can be dangerous especially with COVID-19 looming as a strong immune system can help fight off COVID-19 with ease but with a weak one COVID-19 becomes a much greater threat.

From this, it can be understood that limiting the number of alcoholic drinks that you intake to a low-to-moderate amount will be beneficial for you.

Dr. Charity Baker states “Alcohol isn’t healthy and never was”

Alcohol can not only damage the immune system, but there is also a growing concern that the sudden increase in alcohol usage during the COVID-19 pandemic may result in greater cases of alcoholism. This is a concern as it can lead to many health problems that range from mental disorders to liver/heart problems; in a family setting, this can result in domestic violence and child negligence which can develop into many other long-term problems such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The Future 

The future is dependent on what actions people decide to take now. The increase in alcohol drinking which is collateral of COVID-19 can become a problem if not addressed properly. The way to prevent an increase in alcoholism and all of the consequential problems is to lower your alcohol intake to a low-to-moderate amount, which is considered to be a maximum of 1 -2 drinks a day.  The societal and economical effects of COVID-19 are here to stay for many years. If alcohol drinking is not controlled during this COVID-19 pandemic, these effects will also persist for many more years to come.

– Harman Sandhu

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

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“Signs of Life Found in Space?!?” – A Media Misnomer

Posted on October 13, 2020 by | 1 comment

Almost every time without fail, when I find myself reading through the science section of mainstream news websites, I will inexplicably find an article with a headline like “Signs of Life Found on Venus”. To the average reader, this seems like huge news, as it’s not every day that we discover alien life. But, like many headlines today, this is far from the truth that this scientific discovery is presenting.

Photo of Venus. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL

What was actually discovered?

While it is true that recently a team of astronomers from around the globe announced the discovery of a rare molecule called phosphine in the clouds of Venus, this does not mean that life as we know it was found on Venus. This recent discovery showed that in the higher atmosphere of Venus, there were detections of molecules of phosphine, about a rate of about twenty phosphine molecules in a sample of a billion molecules in the atmosphere. The reason this is interesting is that phosphine (PH3) is an element that is mainly produced on earth by chemical reductions of phosphate in decaying organic matter such as bacteria. 

This discovery showed that somehow, there are chemical signs of decaying organic matter on Venus despite its harsh acidic atmosphere and high planetary temperatures. Here is a scientist from the Royal Astronomical Society detailing the findings in full:

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What is the media getting wrong?

Even though scientists are extremely excited about this discovery, it’s not because they have certainly found life outside of our planet. Rather, scientists are excited about this discovery because it raises a lot of questions about how phosphine got to where it is on Venus. This is an important scientific discovery because it opens doors to new areas of research that can be done on determining where the phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere comes from.

The fact that there is this huge piece of evidence that goes against what we know regarding phosphine and conditions for life to exist is a huge stepping stone towards learning more about both subjects.

So what other explanations are there?

There are lots of alternative explanations for where this phosphine could have come from besides organic life. For example, it’s possible that there is some unknown chemical process occurring on Venus that is creating these phosphine molecules. Or maybe it is, in fact, the case that these phosphine molecules are created by some sort of life. Even after extensive scientific review, astronomers are still unsure of where these molecules are coming from. So, unfortunately, we will not know the truth about these molecules’ origin until we go out and discover it for ourselves.

Until we have real, solid, scientific proof that the phosphine molecules we are discovering in our solar system (along with any other biomarkers) are actually being created by alien life forms, don’t believe any headlines you see reading “Signs of Life Found In Space!”, as they really should read “Potential Biomarker Molecules Found in the Upper Atmosphere of Venus”.

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Your Posture Impacts More Than You Think

Posted on October 12, 2020 by | 1 comment

“Hey, sit up straight!” “Stop slouching!” Growing up, I’m sure we have all been scolded by our parents at the dinner table for having poor posture, without realizing why it was such an issue. Even though comments like these tend to get on our nerves from time to time, we aren’t reminded of our posture for no reason.

Ever since lockdown was declared due to COVID-19, the majority of university students have slowly adapted to the routine of working from home, as we now spend an abundant amount of time in front of screens, and developing excessive sedentary behaviour. This increased exposure to digital device usage serves as hazardous beginning stages for the development of poor posture and health risks.

What Is Posture and What Does Good Posture Look Like?

Posture is based on the body’s positioning and alignment in conjunction with the force of gravity. Whenever we are sitting, standing or lying down, gravity plays a vital role in exerting force on our joints, ligaments and muscles.

To indicate good posture when sitting at a desk or your personal work environment, your chair should be adjusted appropriately so that your feet rest flat on the floor and knees bent naturally. If you spend an adequate amount of time sitting in front of a computer screen, your monitor should be positioned at eye level or slightly below eye level to decrease strain on the neck.

Demonstrates the requirements for achieving correct sitting posture
Photo by Sophia, Jack
Source: bestchairlist.com

Long-Term Health Risk Factors

While not everyone is fortunate enough to have a dedicated and ergonomically friendly workstation, this leaves many working from sofas, beds, and chairs with a lack of proper support. As a result, some of the most common yet vital long-term health factors are at risk.

A recent study analyzed the pain and disability situation of individuals working from home during the COVID-19 isolation process. It was discovered upon the 87 volunteers who were included in a digital media questionnaire which focused on the transition from working in offices, that 50.6% of individuals suffered from low back pain, 44.8% from shoulder pain, and 35.6% from knee pain. This demonstrates that postural stress is closely associated with poor workstation ergonomics.

Pie graph analysis of pain resulting from working at home during COVID-19 isolation
Photo by PEKYAVAS, Nihan
Source: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ijdshs/issue/56796/772675

The Influence of Posture on Daily Activities

Brian Betancourt, exercise physiologist and Dr.Jose Mena, interventional spine specialist, summarize the effects of poor posture in the neck from daily activities while elaborating on a unique piece of advice to combat poor posture.

Looking Forward 

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we work as we slowly become more susceptible to health risks from developing poor sedentary posture. During this isolation process, it’s important that we consider our posture to avoid being negatively affected in areas of our body, over the course of heavy work sessions. This will ultimately allow us to freely engage and participate in meaningful activities in the long run.

– Gordon Wu

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Science Communication

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COVID-19: Could the common cold help protect you?

Image: Mojca J / Pixabay

The common cold is never any fun to deal with, however it might also provide you with some protection from COVID-19, a recent study suggests.

Research from infectious disease experts at the University of Rochester Medical Center have also suggested that people who have had COVID-19 may be immune to it for a long time, possibly even for the rest of their lives.

What’s the foundation?

Even though the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is relatively new, it falls under a category of beta coronaviruses that cause about 15-20% of common colds.

Image: Daniel Roberts / Pixabay

When you catch a cold, your body fights against the virus through your immune system. However, as your body does this, the immune system “remembers” the virus for the future. This is so the next time that virus enters your system, your immune system will be able to fight back even faster.

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Video:  How immunity defenders work against COVID-19

The evidence

The study focused on memory B cells — immune cells that can last for decades. Since memory B cells can survive for decades, they could protect COVID-19 survivors from future infections for a long time, but further research is needed to confirm this.

Image: Ahmad Ardity / Pixabay

The researchers compared blood samples from 26 people who were recovering from mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms and 21 healthy people who had their samples collected 6-10 years ago — long before they could be exposed to COVID-19.

The study found that B cells from the immune system that attacked previous cold-causing coronaviruses seemed to also recognize the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19 as a result of memory B cells being activated.

“When we looked at blood samples from people who were recovering from COVID-19, it looked like many of them had a pre-existing pool of memory B cells that could recognize SARS-CoV-2 and rapidly produce antibodies that could attack it,” said study authour Mark Sangster.

The study authors believe this could mean that anyone who has ever been infected by a common coronavirus — which is almost everyone, may have some amount of immunity to COVID-19.

What’s for the future?

The researchers will “now we need to see if having this pool of pre-existing memory B cells correlates with milder symptoms and shorter disease course — or if it helps boost the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines,” said study co-authour David Topham.

More information

The Government of Canada has more information and resources regarding COVID-19 .

 

– Amrit Jagpal

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Posted on October 5, 2020 by in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

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Mitigating Climate Change: Carbon Capture

Posted on October 5, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Climate change is the change of weather and the rise of sea levels on the planet Earth. Climate change is an extremely relevant global issue since it can lead to flooding and extreme weather conditions which can endanger life on earth. As a result, it is of utmost importance to find solutions that can help mitigate the effects of climate change. One of the main causes of climate change is the release of excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Image: Climate Change
Source: CC0 Public Domain

A solution to climate change

One solution that scientists have proposed in order to reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is to capture carbon dioxide in the air and use the captured carbon dioxide as a source of chemical carbon for other processes. This process is known as “carbon capture and utilization” (CCU). Although the potential benefits of CCU are very promising, changing the carbon dioxide into a different form and using it in other chemical processes has been proven to be difficult, mainly due to the thermodynamic stability of carbon dioxide. Although CCU has gained major traction over the past few years, it will still require a lot of time before it can be used industrially worldwide. Scientists are currently in the process of trying to find the least costly, and most efficient means of capturing carbon emissions to reduce climate change. 

YouTube Preview Image                                                      Video: Carbon Capture Plant in Squamish, BC

Carbon capture methods

One of the carbon capturing methods that has been showing promise in recent scientific studies, is the adsorption of carbon dioxide through the use of solid sorbents. Adsorption is the adhesion or the clinging of gas molecules onto a surface. In this case, the carbon dioxide molecules will stick to the solid surface of the sorbent, which leads to successful carbon capturing. The solid sorbents used in this method can be made of “porous carbonaceous materials, zeolites, alumina, silica, (or) metal-organic frameworks.” Adsorption of carbon dioxide can be categorized into two variations; physical and chemical adsorption. In physical adsorption, the transfer of carbon dioxide into the solid sorbent occurs due to the van der Waals interactions between the sorbent and the carbon dioxide. The issue with these physical sorbents is that they have “poor selectivity for CO2, and low CO2 adsorption capacities.” A means of improving both the carbon dioxide selectivity and the carbon dioxide adsorption capacities of these sorbents is by adding basic groups to the sorbent surface, which can strengthen its interactions with the acidic carbon dioxide. These sorbents primarily use alkalis to act as basic groups. In terms of alkali-based sorbents, scientists have been favouring the use of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate. Although carbon dioxide absorption via solid sorbents is very promising, more scientific work needs to be done to improve the adsorption capabilities of sorbents.

Another carbon capturing method that scientists have been favouring is the separation of carbon dioxide via membranes. These membranes are selectively permeable to carbon dioxide which leads to separation of carbon dioxide from other chemicals.

All in all, the development of these innovative carbon capturing mechanisms is helping to mitigate climate change and scientists are working hard to refine these techniques. 

– Yoshinao Matsubara

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication, Science in the News

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COVID-19: Environmental Impacts of the Masks

Posted on October 5, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Have you ever thought that the masks we are wearing everyday might be polluting the environment? With the rise of COVID-19 pandemic, usage of masks have become such a natural and crucial part of people’s lives. However, as production and disposal of masks increase, environmental consequences of used masks are starting to be observed.

Corona, Mask, Waste, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Pandemic

“Corona Mask Waste“, by Roksans96, licensed under Pixabay

Why are the masks being environmental threat?

Among many different types of masks currently produced, the most commonly used one are the surgical masks. High usage of surgical masks is due to safety provided by anti-droplet polypropylene filter layer of the masks. Since COVID-19 is known to be a droplet-borne disease, polypropylene filter layer became favorable feature to many individuals, especially to those working in hospitals and medical field. Given the fact the medical field workers are needed more than ever before with increasing number of infected individuals, production and disposal of surgical masks and polypropylene filter layer became inevitable.

File:Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.jpg

“Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic“, by Paladin Zhang, licensed under CC BY 2.0

The concern lies in that surgical masks are mostly disposed after a single use because of possible bacterial cross-contamination upon multiple usage. Polypropylene is not readily biodegradable, which means as its usage escalates rapidly, its disposal might end up being long-lasting environmental concern.

Impact on marine ecology

Some of the environmental issues regarding mask wastes are already observable in some parts of the world. One of the first countries to face the environmental consequences of mask litter was Hong Kong, which was one of the first countries to face COVID-19 outbreak.

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Description: Soko Island in Hong Kong polluted with COVID-19 mask waste.

Video Credit: South China Morning Post

Many of masks litters ended up in the coastal areas, where the wastes appeared to be serious threat to the marine ecology. Many marine predators might swallow mask wastes confusing the masks with their preys, and birds that live near coastal area are often entangled by disposed mask wastes.

pollution drina plastic waste free photo

“Pollution Drina Plastic Waste Free Photo“, by geraldsimon00, licensed under Pixabay

How is this issue being addressed?

After direct environmental impacts of mask wastes were observed, the need for more eco-friendly masks was highlighted. Therefore, scientists started working on development of mask materials that can replace polypropylene while keeping the strong anti-droplet effect of the filter layer.

One of the approaches were made by BioProducts Institute at the University of British Columbia. The research team attempted using wood fibers from local trees to make filter layer. Wood fibers are easily biodegradable, so even if mask litters end up in the environment, it would not be an environmental threat.

Another approach was made by Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The research team in the university used laser to induce properties of graphene on the mask. Graphene is hydrophobic, which means that it is effective in repelling droplets. Also, graphene has photothermal property, meaning it heats up under extensive exposure to sunlight. In this process, mask can be sterilized, and this antibacterial activity allows multiple reuse of masks. In this way, the amount of mask disposed will decrease significantly.

“The ideal crystalline structure of graphene is a hexagonal grid.”, by AlexanderAlUS, licesned licensed under CC BY 2.0

However, all of the scientific technologies are still in developing stages. There are still some concerns in applying them to commercial masks yet. Still, with many scientist putting efforts to overcome this issue, I believe the solution will be found soon.

– Tae Hyung Kim

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