Tag Archives: discovery

Plastics: Why They Are Bad, and a New Plant-Based Solution!

Posted on March 29, 2021 by | 4 comments

From water bottles to cigarette butts to straws, plastic has become an important asset to many of the products and appliances that we use today. However, with the huge influence that plastic has on the manufacturing industry, comes the potential destruction of the environment. Luckily, a study conducted by Mecking and others discusses the invention of a new plant-based plastic that can potentially fix this problem!

why are plastics bad?

Most of the plastics that are used today are manufactured from petroleum, which is a fossil fuel that is formed when dead organisms are broken down throughout millions of years. Then, petroleum is converted into a type of material that is unrecognizable by the organisms that normally break down products like petroleum. This results in plastics that decompose very slowly, or do not decompose at all. These plastics tend to accumulate and end up in landfills and incinerators, or even worse, dumped into the environment.

“Plastic Ocean” by Kevin Krejci is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

what about recycling?

There are two types of plastics that need to be addressed. The first type is thermoset plastics. These are plastics that are not recyclable. The second type is thermoplastics. These are plastics that can be melted into smaller parts and re-formed into different plastics. This is the process that we call mechanical recycling. However, every time these plastics are recycled, their quality starts to decrease. In fact, a piece of plastic can only be recycled 2-3 times before it reaches a point where it can no longer be used!

plant-based plastic to the rescue

A solution to this imperfect recycling procedure is to utilize a new recycling method known as chemical recycling. This is a process that breaks down plastics at the molecular level, which can then be used to create other materials without a decrease in quality.

Check out the video above by CNBC for more information on chemical recycling!

 

In Feb 2021, a paper was released in Nature by Mecking and others, discussing the invention of a new plant-based type of plastic. Rather than using fossil fuels such as petroleum, this type of plastic is composed of plant oils. This plastic can utilize chemical recycling at a much more efficient rate than what is originally possible.

Normally, chemical recycling of fossil-fuel-composed plastics requires a lot of energy; temperatures above 600 degrees Celsius are required and only 10% of the plastic can be utilized for other materials. In comparison, their new plant-based plastic only needs to heat to around 250 degrees Celsius and can utilize up to 96% of the original material!

Stefan Mecking, the lead author of the study, acknowledged in an interview in the Academic Times, that their new plastic would have a hard time competing with the cheap cost of ethylene. Hopefully, with further refinement, Mecking and his team will be able to lower the price point of their plastic to a level that is suitable for the plastic industry.

– Aaron Yoon

4 Comments

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

Tagged , , , , ,

Stress in Allergy Alleviation

Posted on March 28, 2021 by | 4 comments

For most people, springtime means plenty of fresh air, pretty blooming flowers, and beautiful colours; however, for the other 30% of the population (including myself), springtime means runny noses, watery eyes, constant sneezing, and itchy skin among many other symptoms – those affected by seasonal allergens like pollen are far too familiar with some of these. If only there was something effective and cost-efficient that could help alleviate our allergies.

Common Allergy Symptoms
Credit: Bioresonance, bioresonance.com

With allergy season approaching just around the corner, usually at the start of spring, some of us may have already started experiencing these symptoms. Those with seasonal allergy, or allergic rhinitis (hay fever), have probably tried many strategies to help manage their symptoms. Some opt for over-the-counter medications, while others opt for lifestyle changes like tightening cleaning regimens, replacing air filters, or even avoiding outdoor activities where airborne allergens are more common. Although these strategies may work for some, they are costly and take up excess time.

Treating your Seasonal Allergies
Credit: Beaumont, beaumont.com

How does an allergic reaction happen?

Before we start to understand why a new allergy-alleviating strategy might work, we need to first explore how seasonal allergens actually cause an allergic response.

seasonal allergiesExamples of Seasonal Allergens
Credit: HealthJade, healthjade.net

Let’s take tree pollen as an example. During springtime, trees will start to release their pollen as airborne particles. Sometimes, these particles enter through our nose, and our body incorrectly tags them as dangerous foreign substances. Our first reaction would be to sneeze in an attempt to rid the nasal cavity of these particles. The tree pollen can also stimulate mast cells, our body’s defending cells, to release a compound called histamine that travels through our body to various sites. Histamine is responsible for causing runny noses, watery eyes, and all the other symptoms of seasonal allergy. Essentially, pollen allergy is our body overreacting to these airborne foreign substance. The entire process is drawn in more detail below (0–1:45 min).

Why Do Some People Have Seasonal Allergies (0–1:45min)
Credit: Eleanor Nelson TedEd, youtube.com

So what can I do to relieve my symptoms?

New research shows that decreasing allergy symptoms may be as simple as decreasing our stress. Dr. Yamanaka-Takaichi at the Osaka City University has found that during times of stress, there is an increase in the size and number of mast cells – the same cells that produce histamine during our allergic reactions. When we are stressed, our body releases CRH, a stress hormone that promotes our mast cell to multiply. An increase in mast cells directly correlates to an increase in histamine, and leads to stronger allergic reactions.

What this means for us is that de-stressing can actual help alleviate some of our allergy symptoms. Although it may not completely rid us of our allergies, it has shown to decrease the severity of allergic reactions in some patients.

Like Dr. Yamanaka-Takaichi says, next time your allergies act up, remember

“Relieve your stress, relieve your allergies.”

~William Lee

4 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Combating Antibiotic Resistance with “Nanoparticles”

Posted on March 15, 2021 by | 2 comments

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest public health challenges of our time.” But what is antibiotic resistance? How is it affecting our lives? and How can we use nanoparticles to fight it?

Antibiotic Resistance Crisis:

Antibiotics are powerful medications that are widely used for the treatment of infections caused by bacteria. However, taking antibiotics too often or for the wrong purpose caused bacteria to evolve various antibiotic resistance mechanisms.
Some bacteria have developed resistance to nearly all the antibiotic treatments available and can cause serious fatal diseases that were once easily treatable with antibiotics.

Without the invention of new strategies to counteract drug-resistant infections, they are likely to kill more than 10 million people each year by 2050. This is more than the number of  people currently dying from cancer.

Ongoing studies are analyzing the ways nanoparticles (small particles ranging between 1 to 100 nanometres in size) can be used to defeat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The size of nanoparticles and their flexible antibacterial properties make them a favorable solution to this problem since they can be used to not only deliver antibiotics but also to fight bacteria themselves.

The following video explains what nanoparticles are, how they are produced, and how they can enter and kill the bacterial cells:

YouTube Preview Image

Source: TCTTPC YouTube

Nanoparticles as Antibiotic Carriers:

According to this study conducted by Zhang and his colleague in late 2020, some nanoparticles can penetrate into the bacterial cells while carrying and protecting the antibiotic agents. These nanoparticles —developed using materials such as metals and chitosan (a type of fiber)— can save the antibiotic from chemicals released by bacteria that can otherwise destroy them.

 Chitosan nanoparticle possesses a positive charge making it able to attach to bacterial cells that have a negative charge on their membrane (outer layer of the cell). Source: ResearchGate

Nanoparticles as Antibiotic Drugs: 

Nanoparticles can also defeat bacteria directly using mechanisms such as the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS are unstable molecules that can easily react with other biomolecules (DNA, protein, etc.) in a cell, disrupt them, and cause cell death.

Silver nanoparticles (SNPs), for instance, can destroy the bacterial membrane and interact with interior components of the bacterium by releasing silver ions that can generate ROS inside the cell. Indeed, severe cellular damages in 5 different types of bacteria were reported when treated with SNPs.

Effect of Nanoparticles on Bacteria

E.coli (a type of bacteria) (left) is severely damaged when treated with a  silver nanoparticle (right). Source: pubs.acs.org

Nanoparticles appear to be a promising solution to address the problem
of antibiotic resistance; however, the main factor that limits their application in treatments is that researchers often face side-effects related to nanoparticle toxicity when interacted with biological systems like human cells. For instance, the ROS generated by a high dose of SNPs can damage the human cell components.

New strategies are being investigated to direct the target of nanoparticles to bacterial cells only and reduce their toxicity in order to develop safe and efficient antibacterial nanoparticles.

– Samin Shadravan

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

Tagged , , ,

Laughter: The Mysterious Stress Reliever?

Posted on March 7, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Laughter. As human beings, it’s something that most of us are bound to experience. Whether it’s from browsing YouTube and finding a ridiculous dog fail compilation, or when your friend cracks out a joke that you just find funny for some apparent reason, the feeling of laughter is a common occurrence in our lives.

Laughter is something that we take for granted. If we find something funny, then we’re going to laugh. However, scientists to this day are unable to figure out the reasoning behind laughter. In fact, the results from the many studies that do exist out there further confirm that laughter is much more complex than we think. A recent study conducted by Dr. Zander-Schellenberg and others were able to attribute this strange phenomenon as a way to relieve stress.

 

Check out the video below by YouTube user Life Noggin, which does a great job of going over the origins of laughter.

YouTube Preview Image

 

laughter can help relieve stress?

In order to test the effects of laughter on stress in daily life experiences, Dr. Schellenberg and others collected data from 41 psychology students, 33 of which were female, from the University of Basel in real-life settings for 14 consecutive days. Through the usage of a smartphone application, a sound queue that triggered randomly throughout the day would remind participants to answer questions related to laughter, as well as any details regarding their current levels of stress and stressful events.

The results of the study were astonishing; it was found that increased laughter weakens the effects of stressful events, while also dampening certain symptoms that may arise from stress.

By investigating the effects of laughter on stress outside the laboratory, the study was able to be more closely related to real-life experiences. However, as the sample consisted of mainly female students, recreating the experiment with a sample that more closely represents the general population is something that could solidify their findings.

A photo of two people laughing, by Emanuele Spies from São Leopoldo, RS, Brasil, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

To take away from all this, think of laughter as a cheap and effective form of medicine. If, for whatever reason, you’re having a bad day, go and watch your favorite comedy show, or crack jokes with one of your friends for a quick laugh!

Here is a video by YouTube user keees121 that I recommend if you’re feeling down:

YouTube Preview Image

-Aaron Yoon

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Issues in Science, Science in the News

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Combating Antibiotic Resistance with “Nanoparticles”

Posted on February 8, 2021 by | Leave a comment

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest public health challenges of our time.” But what is antibiotic resistance? How is it affecting our lives? and How can we use nanoparticles to fight it?

Antibiotic Resistance Crisis:

Antibiotics are powerful medications that are widely used for the treatment of infections caused by bacteria by either killing them or inhibiting their reproduction. However, taking antibiotics too often or for the wrong purpose caused bacteria to evolve various antibiotic resistance mechanisms that defeat the actions of antibiotics.
Some bacteria have developed resistance to nearly all the antibiotic treatments available. Infections by these antibiotic-resistant bacteria can result in serious fatal diseases that were once easily treatable with antibiotics.

Without the invention of new strategies to counteract drug-resistant infections, they are likely to kill more than 10 million people each year by 2050. This is more than the number of  people currently dying from cancer.

Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotic Drugs, Source: phys.org

Ongoing researches are analyzing the ways nanoparticles (small particles ranging between 1 to 100 nanometres in size) can be used to defeat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The size of nanoparticles which is about 1/100 of bacteria and their flexible antibacterial properties make them a favorable solution to this problem since they can be used to not only deliver antibiotics but also to fight bacteria themselves.

Using Nanoparticles as Antibiotic Carriers:

According to this research, some nanoparticles have the ability to penetrate into the bacterial cells while carrying the antibiotic agents. They protect the carried antibiotic physically against the bacterial resistance mechanisms, for example by saving the antibiotic from bacterial released chemicals that can otherwise destroy them.

Chitosan (a type of fiber) nanoparticle can be used to deliver antibiotics to inside the bacterial cells. This nanoparticle possesses a positive charge making it able to attach to bacterial cells that have a negative charge on their membrane (outer layer of the cell). Source: ResearchGate

Using Nanoparticles as Antibiotic Drugs: 

Nanoparticles can also defeat bacteria directly by themselves using mechanisms such as the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS are unstable molecules that can easily react with other biomolecules (DNA, protein, etc.) in a cell, disrupt them, and cause cell death.

Recent research recorded severe cellular damage in 5 different types of bacteria when treated with silver nanoparticles. As they reported, an increase in ROS formation leads to damage to bacterial biomolecules resulting in the death of bacteria.

Effect of Nanoparticles on Bacteria

E.coli (a type of bacteria) (left) is severely damaged when treated with a special virus-like nanoparticle (right). Source: pubs.acs.org

Nanoparticles appear to be a promising solution to address the problem
of antibiotic resistance; however, the main factor that limits the use of nanoparticles in treatments is that researchers often face side-effects related to nanoparticle toxicity for living organisms. For instance, some metal nanoparticles can cause heart problems or even cancer when inhaled.

The ways through which nanoparticles can produce toxicity need to be investigated in future researches in order to develop safe and efficient antibacterial nanoparticles.

– Samin Shadravan

Leave a comment

Posted in Science in the News

Tagged , , ,

Laughter: The Mysterious Stress Reliever?

Posted on February 1, 2021 by | 1 comment

Laughter. As human beings, it’s something that most of us are bound to experience. Whether it’s from browsing YouTube and finding a ridiculous dog fail compilation, or when your friend cracks out a joke that you just find funny for some apparent reason, the feeling of laughter is a common occurrence in our lives.

Check out the video below that not only showcases the diversity of laughter between all types of race and gender but also for a quick laugh!

YouTube Preview Image

 

the mechanisms of Laughter is complex

Laughter is something that we take for granted. If we find something funny, then we’re going to laugh. However, scientists to this day are unable to home in on the exact science of the reasoning of laughter. In fact, the results from the many studies that do exist out there further confirm that laughter is much more complex than we think. As an example, one study conducted in PNAS suggests that we laugh differently depending on who it is directed to. Have you noticed that you laugh differently with your friends than with strangers? This is something that we have probably realized as well!

A photo of two people laughing, by Emanuele Spies from São Leopoldo, RS, Brasil, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

laughter can help relieve stress?

A recent study conducted by Dr. Zander-Schellenberg and others were able to attribute this strange phenomenon as a way to relieve stress. More specifically, an increased frequency of laughter was found to have a positive correlation with the ability to weaken the effects of stressful events, while also dampening certain symptoms that may arise from stress. However, it was found that the intensity of laughter did not have such a significant effect.

In order to see if the experiment applies to daily life experiences, data were collected from 41 psychology students, 33 of which were female, from the University of Basel in real-life settings for 14 consecutive days. Through the usage of a smartphone application, a sound queue that triggered randomly throughout the day would prompt participants to answer questions about both the frequency and intensity of laughter, as well as any details regarding their current levels of stress and stressful events.

By investigating the effects of laughter on stress outside the laboratory, the study was able to show greater validity towards real-life dynamics, however, Dr. Schellenberg and others suggest that future studies that replicate their findings are required in order to further test for robustness. As the sample consisted of predominantly female students, recreating the experiment with a sample that more closely represents the general population is something that could solidify their findings.

 

 

For more information about laughter, this video does a great job of not only going over the origins of laughter but also the significance of it:

YouTube Preview Image

-Aaron Yoon

 

 

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in Issues in Science, Science in the News

Tagged , , , , , , ,

A Promising Treatment in the Fight Against Microplastics

Posted on January 25, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Over the past few years, there has been a global effort by scientists to develop a treatment that is able to limit the pollution of microplastics into marine environments. Fortunately, Marthe Kiendrebeogo and her research team may have found a solution. They discovered that they were able to effectively break down a sample of microplastics through anodic oxidation. 

Now you may ask, what are microplastics?

Microplastics are pieces of plastic less than 5 mm in length. The three main sources of microplastics are the breakdown of larger plastics, cosmetics and laundry washes. All three of these sources have contaminated marine environments all over the Earth. To put this into perspective, a recent study has suggested that there are approximately 12-125 trillion microplastics floating in the oceans today. 

A collection of mainly plastic material that washed ashore. Plastics, such as a water bottle, can be degraded and become a source of microplastics.

Credit: unsplash.com/john_cameron

The Effect of Microplastics on Life:

The buildup of microplastics in aquatic life through ingestion can lead to toxic (harmful) effects. These effects were studied by a different research team led by Dr. Kogel where they found the toxic effects included infertility, decreased growth rate, shorter lifespans, and internal damage. Furthermore, microplastics are known to travel up the food chain and eventually reach humans. There is currently a lack of information regarding the effects of microplastics in humans, but several studies are in progress.

YouTube Preview ImageFor those interested, Drs. Sarah Dudas and Peter Ross show the presence of microplastics in aquatic life in this video.

And now to the study:

With the background information out of the way, I’m going to explain how Marthe Kiendrebeogo and her team created a potential solution to tackle the rising issue of microplastics.

This research team found that the process of anodic oxidation breaks down microplastics efficiently. Anodic oxidation involves a lot of chemistry, but the main thing to know is that it creates hydroxyl radicals (OH-) without adding extra chemicals into the water. These hydroxyl radicals are very good at attacking and breaking down microplastics. The full mechanism is in the article for those interested. This study found that with their proposed mechanism, 58 ± 21% of microplastics broke down in 1 hour which reached approximately 80% in 3 hours. 

I think that the most significant result in this study is that 58 ± 21% of polystyrene was degraded in 1 hour because an hour is close to the time of a normal laundry cycle. A laundry cycle puts a lot of stress on clothing fabrics which leads to the release of microplastics. In fact, a recent study has estimated that 35% of microplastics in oceans can be contributed to laundry. Thus, this mechanism would be very effective at decreasing the amount of microplastic production if it was implemented into laundry machines.

The addition of this treatment into laundry machines can limit the number of microplastics released at the initial source.

Credit: unsplash.com/scottsweb

Based on the results of this study, the future of treatments for microplastics sounds more promising. Nevertheless, there still is a lot of work to be done. The next step for this promising treatment would be to test the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism on samples consisting of other microplastics. 

-Karnvir Dhillon

Leave a comment

Posted in Issues in Science, Science in the News

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Protein Folding: Solved

Posted on January 22, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Just as the turmoil of 2020 was coming to a wrap, a scientific breakthrough came about. On November 30th, AlphaFold, coming out of DeepMind, claimed to have solved the protein folding problem using artificial intelligence.

The Problem

Proteins perform the majority of work done in our cells from synthesizing DNA to getting rid of waste. Of course, the way a protein functions is largely dependent on its structure. This can include characterizations such as what parts of the protein are exposed versus tucked away. The proteomics field is dedicated to studying these, what is currently estimated to be, 80,000 to 400,000 proteins in our bodies and use two main strategies to determine their structure in the lab: X-ray crystallography and NMR. And yet, even in the midst of these complex protocols and high-tech machinery, a structure can take between a week to a few months to piece together according to UCONN Health.

The Game Changer

This is where AlphaFold sneaks into the picture. AlphaFold chose to take a different approach to this nominal problem: artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm and has improved the accuracy and efficiency of processes in almost every industry. From self-driving cars to artificial voices the possibilities are endless. 

General scheme for developing an artificial intelligence model.

Put very simply by the diagram above, artificial intelligence, more specifically machine learning, trains a computer to look for patterns within a given dataset. Once trained, this program can use the patterns it learned to make predictions of its own. In the case of AlphaFold, their model was trained off of amino acid sequences and their predetermined structures.

Just one of the many protein folding predictions generated by AlphaFold’s model.

In comparison to the time it takes in the lab, AlphaFold’s model was able to predict protein structure in a mere half an hour with an accuracy of 90% according to their statement. In fact, it has already helped an evolutionary biologist named Andrei Lupis with piecing together a protein his team has been stuck on for a decade. In an interview for nature, Lupis even said: 

“This is a game changer, this will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything”

Beyond AlphaFold

Of course, while AlphaFold may be a hot-topic, beyond protein folding, AI has also been used for a variety of tasks including interpreting MRI images, predicting climate change, or even sifting through astronomical data. The applications seem to be limitless so make sure to keep an eye out, the next breakthrough could be coming up just around the corner!

Jessica Petrochuk

 

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Issues in Science, Science in the News

Tagged , , , , ,