Monthly Archives: October 2017

Although bacteria are unicellular and may be freely swimming in water or crawling on sediments, in many environments they live in clumps called biofilms. Biofilms are groups of bacteria that grow on a surface and huddle together by sticky carbohydrates that they produce. Similar to how emperor penguins pack tightly to escape wind and conserve warmth, or football players congregate around the coach, biofilms protect bacteria from environmental stresses and predators. Studying the architecture of biofilms and the microbial interactions within them is important for understanding what makes cells coordinate activities together, which is of interest for many practical applications. In the medical field, for example, this knowledge helps understand why many infections are more resistant to treatment when pathogens form biofilms in the host’s tissues. The way the biofilm looks and the way bacteria are positioned within the biofilm will depend on the conditions around them. One particular type…

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Did newspapers in wartime get more discolored due to being accessed more frequently? This long-held belief is exactly what Professor Tim Wess of the Charles Sturt University in Australia set out to test, armed with nothing but a smartphone. In addition to testing the hypothesis, the researcher sought to establish whether data obtained from only a smartphone can be used to test a scientific hypothesis, and thus open the possibility of engaging citizens in data collection for the conservation of cultural heritage using the simplest tool available to them: their smartphones. Our cell phones have many times the computing power of what was on the Moon lander. Combined with the convenience of high speed internet, rapid app development, and cloud computing, a new concept has emerged called citizen science that allows the public to contribute to data collection for research projects. All you need is your smartphone with a few basic…

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Food allergies are more prevalent than ever. Chances are, you, your friend, family member, or co-worker has a food allergy, or knows someone who does. Most allergic reactions result in itchy or watery eyes, skin rashes, or upset stomachs that can be remedied with antihistamines. Anaphylaxis is the most extreme and serious reaction to allergens, where shortness of breath, throat or tongue swelling, vomiting, and even death can occur. Multiple doses of epinephrine and a hospital visit are typically required to remedy this adverse reaction. Peanut and tree nut allergies are the most common cause of food allergy-related deaths in the USA and around the world. Researchers have studied food allergies for decades in attempt to understand how humans develop them in the search to find a cure. A recent review of the literature explains what we currently know about nut allergies and where to go from here. For the…

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130 million years ago, two neutron stars spiraled into one another resulting in an enormous explosion that sent ripples barrelling through the universe. These ripples finally came ripping through the Earth on August 17, 2017 and were detected by LIGO/Virgo as a gravitational wave gently squeezing our planet. LIGO/Virgo is a collaboration between three research stations each housing a laser interferometer. LIGO detectors are located in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA while Virgo is located in Cascina, Italy. Neutron stars are the mass of the sun, packed so densely and tightly that they are the size of a city. Their collision sent fireworks through the universe. LIGO/Virgo announced on October 16 that their gravitational wave interferometers witnessed the final 100 seconds of the inspiral and collision of these stars. The observation of the collision confirms Einstein’s theories which predicted gravitational waves as part of general relativity. However, the details of…

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Creativity is no small task. We do our best to cultivate and cherish the imagination of young children, and struggle to maintain those senses as we get older. But what exactly is creativity? Can its rules be written down? Is there an algorithm for it? Can we teach a computer to be creative? As the maturing field of artificial intelligence blossoms, this philosophical question just might be answered. To be clear, artificial intelligence doesn’t mean that Terminators roam the streets. In a more narrow sense, it is the science, engineering, and arguably the art, of teaching computers how to learn patterns. Most researchers attempt to solve this problem by trying to copy how a human learns and translating that into computer code. Generally, a person learns by seeing many examples of something. A baby might see many cars and eventually learn to associate a specific pattern of wheels and windows…

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Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is a chronic neural disease which slowly degrades the nervous system. Millions of people worldwide are affected by this disease, in particular those 65 and older. The disease may start a decade before the signs are evident, with a display of early symptoms such as difficulty in remembering recent events. The disease progresses towards problems with language, disorientation, mood swings, and not managing self care, which can lead to withdrawal from family and society. Gradually, bodily functions are lost, which ultimately results in death. As the disease progresses, affected people increasingly rely on others for assistance, often placing a burden on the caregiver, which may last years. In developed countries, AD is one of the most psychologically, socially and financially costly diseases. The Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention and Health Care reported that around 47 million people have dementia worldwide, and is projected to triple by 2050.…

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Astronomers have uncovered a supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in the middle of nowhere. This nearly record-breaking supermassive black hole is in the center of a small galaxy cluster, which is a small town by universe standards. At the center of a given galaxy, there resides a supermassive black hole. To be considered a supermassive black hole, a black hole must be at least hundreds of thousands times heavier than our sun. There is a relationship between the size of the galaxy and the size of its supermassive black hole in its center – very large galaxies will have very large supermassive black holes. Until now. The current record holding supermassive black hole tips the scale at 21 billion suns and it lies at the center of the crowded Coma galaxy which has over 1000 galaxies. But, Dr. Jens Thomas and Dr. Chung-Pei Ma have discovered a new…

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1.76 billion light years away, two black holes smashed into one another, bearing one huge black hole the size of 53 suns. The explosion from this merger created enormous distortions in spacetime, known as gravitational waves. These gravitational ripples have been flying through the universe, and finally visited Earth. The gravitational waves, theorized by Einstein, were detected by LIGO and Advanced Virgo, which made it the first triple detection of a gravitational wave in history. LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory is a set of two detectors one located in Livingston, Louisiana and the other in Hanford, Washington. Advanced Virgo is brand new gravitational wave detector, which came online on August 1, 2017 and is located in Pisa, Italy. All three of the instruments detected the event on August 14, 2017 at 10:30 UTC. First, the Livingston detector saw the distortion, then an 8000th of a second later, the…

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