Feature

Nov

2022

Reaching net zero: A challenging but necessary journey

Boston Globe’s Studio B for Phillip Morris International, November 4 2022.

For decades warnings about climate change have said that humans need to lower how much carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. Now, the goal is net zero.

The idea of net zero is to limit how much the Earth warms to under 2 degrees Celsius. If this isn’t achieved, Earth’s systems may be disrupted to the point that the effects of climate change would be beyond control.

To meet this goal, net zero emissions needs to be achieved by the middle of the century, according to Ed Rubin, professor emeritus of environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “That doesn’t mean that we have to stop making carbon dioxide and turn everything off. But if we continue to emit carbon dioxide, we have to identify ways of taking it out of the air.” Read More >

Oct

2021

A Short Story

UCSC Inquiry magazine, October 14 2021

The Nobel Prize weighs about six ounces, but it feels much heavier if you’re female. Only 23 women—about 3 percent of the total—have won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. One of these select few is distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology Carol Greider, UC Santa Cruz’s first Nobel laureate.

Feeling the weight, Greider has wielded her influence as a laureate to advocate for increased diversity in the research community, working to help ensure women and other scientists from historically disadvantaged groups are free from discrimination and harassment. To this end, throughout her long career, she has spoken out, signed letters, authored op-eds, and joined working groups, in addition to serving as a committed mentor to many students. Read More >

Sep

2021

Reading Genomes: The Key to Life and to Thwarting Death

Simons Foundation, September 30, 2021.

In a hospital in Wuhan, China, a 41-year-old man struggles to breathe. He came in on December 26, 2019, with a fever and flu-like symptoms, but doctors can’t figure out what’s ailing him. Several other people at his workplace, an indoor seafood market, are also sick.

His doctors run tests for influenza and other infections, but the results come back negative. Next, they collect a sample from his lungs by flooding his airway with a sterile saline solution, then suctioning out the fluid. Read More >

Aug

2021

Colds and Other Common Respiratory Diseases Might Surge as Kids Return to School

Science News, August 12 2021.

As U.S. schools resume in-person learning this fall, parents and administrators may have to deal with more outbreaks of colds and other seasonal respiratory illnesses than usual. If so, these outbreaks aren’t likely to be especially dangerous for school-age children, but could be problematic for traditionally more vulnerable younger siblings or elderly relatives, experts say. And because the symptoms of these illnesses often mirror those of COVID-19, it could make having kids back in the classroom — and keeping them there — that much more challenging. Read More >

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Apr

2021

Coronavirus Variants—Will New mRNA Vaccines Meet the Challenge?

Engineering, April 18 2021.

On 24 February 2021, a month after announcing the project, the biotechnology company Moderna (Cambridge, MA, USA) sent samples to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the updated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine booster it had created and manufactured to address the B.1.351 variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), first reported in South Africa [1]. The hope is that such quick updates to authorized vaccines will provide—if and as needed—protection against the rapidly spreading new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that have shown troubling signs suggesting immune evasion [2].

These vaccines and boosters highlight the unique advantages of the new, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based vaccine development platform. Both Moderna and the partnership of Pfizer (New York City, NY, USA) and BioNTech (Mainz, Germany) tapped this novel technology to create and deliver COVID-19 vaccines in an unprecedented matter of months—in contrast to the typical timetable of years [3]. Now, the technology’s speed and flexibility may prove doubly valuable by helping to meet the challenge of a swiftly evolving virus. Read More >

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Feb

2021

COVID-19 Precautions may be Reducing Cases of Flu and Other Respiratory Infections

Science News, February 2 2021.

Heading into the dead of winter, doctors and scientists have noticed something odd: Missing cases of non-COVID-19 respiratory illnesses, specifically flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

“We’re seeing very low numbers of both of these infections, even now, while we’re in the peak season,” says Rachel Baker, an epidemiologist at Princeton University. “We really should be seeing cases go up.”

Instead, positive flu tests reported in December are a little less than one one-hundredth of all of those tallied in December 2019, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RSV’s drop in reported cases — to one two-hundredth of those a year earlier — is even bigger. Read More >

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Dec

2020

Metabolic Health & Menopause: What is the Link Between Sugar and Hot Flashes?

Levels Blog, December 2 2020.

A rolling heat spreads uncontrollably over your skin. Your heart beats faster. Your skin flushes hot and red, you start sweating through your clothes, and you feel confused, irritable. A hot flash has taken over your body, and all you want to do is find somewhere cool to wait it out.

Almost 80% of people undergoing natural menopause have hot flashes, and about 30% report frequent or severe symptoms. These are called vasomotor episodes (because they’re related to constriction and dilation of the blood vessels) and researchers attribute them to ovarian changes in early menopause that cause spikes and dips in how much estrogen the body produces. So what is the relationship between blood sugar and hot flashes, and does elevated blood sugar cause hot flashes? Read More >

Oct

2010

How & Why to Write a Bacterial Opera for the Ig Nobel Awards

Discover, October 12 2010.

Marc Abrahams enjoys writing operas, but until a few years ago had never even been to one. Abrahams is the editor and co-creator of the Annals of Improbable Research, the science humor magazine that gave birth to the Ig Nobel awards, a marvelous celebration of quirky but intelligent scientific breakthroughs.

For the last 15 years Abrahams has been tasked with writing a scientific opera for the ceremony. This year’s theme was bacteria, so naturally Abrahams wrote an opera about the bacteria living on a woman’s tooth, and their (eventually tragic) efforts to escape. The video of this year’s Ig Nobel ceremony is below (skip to the following times to view the four acts of the bacterial opera: Act I at 54:30, Act II at 1:07:20, Act III at 1:29:10, and Act IV at 1:52:00). Discoblog talked with Abrahams to get the scoop on the bacterial-opera-writing business. Read More >

Oct

2010

Biotech on the Bayou

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

Running from patient to patient while fielding calls from reporters, investors, biotech CEOs, and medical engineers, William Kethman isn’t your typical medical student. The calls are coming because of his second job: moonlighting as a medical device and biotech inventor in the thick of New Orleans’s burgeoning biotechnology economy.

With a jumpstart from Tulane University’s bioengineering innovation course, which teaches students how to shape their ideas into medical devices that can make a difference, Kethman and his partners have turned their undergraduate school project—an improved umbilical clamp they call the SafeSnip—into a brand new biotech medical devices company, known as NOvate Medical Technologies. Read More >

Oct

2010

The One True Path?

The Scientist magazine, October 2010.

Endocrinologist Kevin Niswender and neuroscientist Aurelio Galli hadn’t really kept in contact since they parted ways after beginning their respective careers at Vanderbilt University in the 1990s. But about 10 years ago, Niswender, who went to medical school at Vanderbilt, and Galli, who did a postdoc there, both landed faculty positions back at the Nashville, Tennessee, university. They rekindled their friendship and often discussed their research during convivial family dinners.

Niswender, who studies diabetes and metabolism, and Galli, who specializes in the neurobiology of addiction, had never collaborated scientifically. They can’t remember the exact moment they decided to do so, but gradually they realized that some of their research interests overlapped. The pair discussed a number of clinical hints that diabetes and mood disorders are related: Defects of the insulin pathway run in families with schizophrenia, diabetics are more likely to be depressed, and insulin signaling somehow affects dopamine levels in the brain. Read More >