Statistics and the Social Causes of Obesity
— Obesity is one of the major health issues facing America today. Affecting over one third of all Americans, obesity-related conditions are estimated to cost over $150 billion and cause the premature deaths of an estimated 300,000 people each year. Obesity prevention efforts generate lots of press, whether it be Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlawing the sale of large, sugary beverages in New York City or Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign. Given the stakes, it makes sense that people are searching for effective ways to prevent obesity. Continue reading Statistics and the Social Causes of Obesity
Mind control: mapping motivation with light
— It has been estimated that around 20 percent of people suffer from major depression. In addition to symptoms such as persistent negative feelings, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating, depression can be marked by a debilitating lack of motivation. Unfortunately, very little is known about the biological causes of depression, much less how it affects motivation. In a paper recently published in Nature, however, Professor Karl Deisseroth and his team have begun unraveling the dynamics behind motivation—and the lack thereof experienced in people with depression. Continue reading Mind control: mapping motivation with light
Fatty acid-rich fish stocks: a sixth extinction crisis
— We’ve all heard news reports about the benefits of eating fish, and replacing some red meat meals with fish as an alternative source of protein. Fish contains a lot of minerals, including iodine and selenium, which are beneficial for the human body. Most fish species are lean and therefore fit perfectly in a healthy diet. Fattier fish species, such as salmon, offer other benefits: they are full of unsaturated omega-3 fatty acids, which are important for optimal functioning of cells and organs, and for good development of the central nervous system. Unfortunately, these important health benefits are leading to increased demand for these species, which now threatens global aquatic biodiversity. Continue reading Fatty acid-rich fish stocks: a sixth extinction crisis
Wound Healing and the Immune System
— You’re walking on the sidewalk and you come across a patch of ice. You don’t see it coming, so you lose your balance and fall hard on the ground with your elbow bearing the brunt of the impact. Although you get right back up, a tremendous bleeding scrape on your elbow remains – an unwanted “souvenir” from the dastardly ice patch. With, some quick first-aid, you patch the wound to prevent infection, and about two to three weeks later you forget about the scrape as it resolves itself. A puzzling question from this common scenario is how does this wound (or any wound for that matter) heal? The answer is that it involves a complex process that is not completely understood. This process coordinates numerous types of cells (originating from various locations in the body) to affect the healing response. In this article we’ll delve a little deeper into what’s known about this amazing process, focusing specifically on skin and how the immune system is involved in wound sterilization and tissue repair. Continue reading Wound Healing and the Immune System
Encouraging Sustainable Energy in the Developing World
Societies will always need energy to develop and function; how this energy is generated and delivered will determine whether we can achieve a sustainable future. Today, approximately 40% of the world’s population, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, don’t have access to modern sources of energy, instead relying on old-fashioned biomass burning, such as the use of firewood, charcoal, or animal waste, which leads to … Continue reading Encouraging Sustainable Energy in the Developing World
Counting Spots: How Clean Are The Tar Sands?
— Measuring, or what Richard Feynman called “quantitative observation” in his Lectures on Physics, is one of the defining features of science. Some scientists, most notably Steven Hawking, even believe that science is nothing but measuring – if something can’t be measured it isn’t science. But measuring is also fraught with surprising practical, philosophical, and political implications – and even important social consequences – as demonstrated by a recent study of the Alberta tar sands. Continue reading Counting Spots: How Clean Are The Tar Sands?
The Dawn of Homo Sapiens: Our Family Tree Grows Messier Still
— To unearth the secrets of our human origins, scientists are delving deep into the prehistoric record to find the last common ancestor of great apes and humans, while simultaneously looking in more recent history to define when and where modern humans (modern in terms of anatomy and behavior) first appeared. This endeavor, which has traditionally entailed years of painstaking digging for fossils and archaeological relics in often far-flung places, has lately received a welcome boost from the advent of novel genetic tools that enable the reconstruction of complete human genomes (a genome being the complete set of genetic material contained in an organism). Newly published work in the journals Nature and Science describing novel human fossils and genomes have now added to our small but growing appreciation of the complexity of our common evolutionary ancestries. Continue reading The Dawn of Homo Sapiens: Our Family Tree Grows Messier Still
Spinning electricity out of thin, moving air
The sun’s beaming rays heat the Earth, but not evenly. Many attributes of the Earth – such as its atmosphere, topography, bodies of water, and rotation – contribute to uneven heat distributions, which create air movement, or wind []. Windmills use wind-generated kinetic motion to perform useful work, such as pumping water or grinding grains, whereas wind turbines use it to generate electricity []. Wind … Continue reading Spinning electricity out of thin, moving air
Electric Vehicles and Hybrids: Where are we now?
As President Eisenhower said, our “transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear—United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.” (Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Feb 22, 1955). The automobile became a household staple and a powerful symbol of our industrialized economy, such that cars are now intimately intertwined with our lives. As we move into the … Continue reading Electric Vehicles and Hybrids: Where are we now?
Why We Need Sustainable Energy
The degree to which we use energy has far-reaching consequences. For example, the simple act of driving to work uses fuel that is ultimately tied to both international conflict and global climate change. The success of modern civilization is fundamentally linked to our ability to harness energy, primarily in the form of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. As shown in Figure 1, … Continue reading Why We Need Sustainable Energy