By Kurt Ger As I opened up Zoom to get to my interview with Dr. Berea, I felt nervous. The brief hour I’d spent looking her up beforehand to get an idea of what I could ask had returned entirely too many answers. A PhD in economics, another in computational social sciences, winning a Keck Futures Initiative grant as a postdoc, her research published in six places and supported by institutions across the United States, data scientist and AI mentor […]
Read more
by Emily Harari You’re driving and you pull up behind a car at a red light. The light switches to green, but the car sits unmoved. What do you do? Instinctively, you reach for the horn, and, after a quick blaring of sound, the car in front of you moves. You’ve just conducted a scientific experiment. You observed the car not moving, but didn’t know why, so you assumed the driver ahead of you wasn’t paying attention to the road. […]
Read more
By Elisabeth Lee How did life as we know it begin? What makes the cells in our bodies different from the cells in the wood in something like a desk? These are questions that excite scientists and non-scientists alike. For scientists like Dr. Natalie Grefenstette, these are the questions that drive her research and for others, such questions can be a conduit of interest into a field that may not be familiar to them. As an undergraduate student myself, I […]
Read more
Submitted by Büsra Elkatmis to fulfill the ethics in science requirement for the Young Scientist Program at BMSIS. What are stem cells? Cells are the smallest known building blocks of living organisms. All of the cells in the human body have different functions. For example, white blood cells fight infection in the body while red blood cells carry oxygen, and heart muscle cells make the heart beat while neurons are used to transmit signals through the body and for the functions of […]
Read more
by Emily Harari Every 4th of July, many Americans turn their gaze to the night sky. From a pop of color and a quick clap like thunder, fireworks unveil themselves. In addition to gunpowder, a lesser known ingredient called perchlorates are responsible for the mesmerizing explosions. Perchlorates are salts containing an ion called perchlorate – a chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms. These salts can serve as oxidants for fireworks and explosives, but also can be toxic to living […]
Read more
By Elisabeth Lee When you enter any field as a professional, the doubt and discouragement from others is inevitable. Whether it comes from friends, critics, or colleagues, the dissuasion can be difficult to endure. Dr. Rakesh Mogul, however, has proven to be a successful professor and researcher at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona despite the naysayers he encountered throughout his career. Today, Mogul has been interviewed on German Public Radio, has had articles written about him in Forbes and […]
Read more
Submitted by Pernelle Chan to fulfill the ethics in science requirement for the Young Scientist Program at BMSIS. Introduction/Overview With the rapid evolution of both technology and science, researchers and experts in a vast number of fields have been looking to create innovative, biological technologies that can benefit society (or to make a profit). One of the key realms of this innovation lies in the rising popularity of the field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is the creation or engineering of organisms. […]
Read more
By Anurup Mohanty Mining projects often require a lot of equipment, capital, and work-force. When we mine using conventional methods there can be a number of environmental concerns associated with it. Soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, formation of sink-holes, contamination of surface and groundwater are just to name a few. Moreover, mining poses threat to miners’ health, the tiny particles inside a mine can cause severe respiratory diseases. Biomining is a method that employs microorganisms to extract metals from ores. […]
Read more
By Emily Harari Dr. Daniel Angerhausen is an astrophysicist and astrobiologist at ETH Zürich. Ask him what the oldest question of humankind is and he’ll immediately jump to life on other planets: Are we alone, or are other planets outside our solar system similarly habitable? But Angerhausen doubles back: “That’s also a bit exaggerated. Maybe the oldest question is, ‘Can I eat this?’ But I really think [habitability] is one of the biggest scientific questions and also one that is […]
Read more
By Sarah Treadwell It is estimated that for humans to have first reached Australia approximately 65,000 years ago, they would have had to travel across vast bodies of open water. Much is unknown about how exactly they achieved this. Archaeologists and historians credit this as one of the first, remarkable achievements made by humans. While admirable today, their courage could also be described as reckless. When these early humans set sail, they took incalculable risks. They had to weather the […]
Read more