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New technology lets researchers visualize the evolution of antibiotic resistance

Antibiotics are powerful drugs used to treat bacterial infections. Recently, however, a growing number of bacterial infections have developed resistance to many commonly used antibiotics. In fact, the World Health Organization has pegged antibiotic resistance as one of the world’s biggest threats to global health! Bacteria acquire antibiotic resistance by changing in a way that reduces drug effectiveness. In a recent article, a research team … Continue reading New technology lets researchers visualize the evolution of antibiotic resistance

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When Food Fights Back: Exploring Salmonella’s journey through the body

Over 1 million people in the United States get food poisoning from Salmonella bacteria each year – that’s almost one out of every 300 Americans! You might have heard that this bacteria enters our bodies when we eat contaminated foods, but what happens after? In this talk, we’ll answer this question by exploring the ins and outs of a typical Salmonella infection – from a … Continue reading When Food Fights Back: Exploring Salmonella’s journey through the body

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Foldit players beat scientists in determining a protein’s shape

Eight years ago, a team at the University of Washington developed Foldit, a protein folding game that pits gamers against scientists and computer algorithms. Proteins, which are made up of a string of building blocks, called amino acids, form much of the core machinery of cells. When immersed in water, protein chains adopt a variety of shapes that enable them to perform their cellular roles. … Continue reading Foldit players beat scientists in determining a protein’s shape

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Dawn of a New Era: Detecting wrinkles in spacetime

Presented by Ashley Villar and Tansu Daylan The detection of gravitational waves has crowned a decades-long experimental endeavor in physics, confirming the major prediction of Einstein’s general theory of gravity. For the first time physicists are able to detect the wrinkles of spacetime produced by colliding stars and black holes. We will discuss the history of gravitational wave detectors and the physics behind these fascinating … Continue reading Dawn of a New Era: Detecting wrinkles in spacetime

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Marine Memorial Established Off New England Coast

President Obama has recently established the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off of the coast of New England. The monument is the first in the Atlantic Ocean and measures in at 4,913 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut. This move comes a month after President Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii by 442,781 square miles. Christopher Horvat explains that … Continue reading Marine Memorial Established Off New England Coast

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HIV: Still America’s Most Wanted

by Rose Filoramo figures by Daniel Utter A Report that Changed History On June 5th, 1981, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a medical report documenting something peculiar: within the span of one year, five previously healthy men from Los Angeles were all diagnosed with an incredibly rare lung infection. Scientists and health professionals were baffled. The infection normally only affected people … Continue reading HIV: Still America’s Most Wanted

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Quantum Data Locking: A Faster Way to Securely Send Data

In 1948, Claude Shannon proved that information could be securely encrypted and transmitted given a single-use, randomly generated key. As long as the key – commonly referred to as a ‘one-time pad’ – is used only once, and is equal in length to the message it is encrypting, the message would be impossible to crack. Quantum data locking presents a new, more efficient means of … Continue reading Quantum Data Locking: A Faster Way to Securely Send Data

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Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered Around Nearest Star

A new planet with the potential of sustaining life was discovered by astronomers at Queen Mary University Of London orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun – 4.2 light years away. Using small wobbles in the trajectory of Proxima Centauri caused by the orbit of this planet, dubbed ‘Proxima b,’ the astronomers calculated that the planet is one third more massive than earth, … Continue reading Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered Around Nearest Star

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Discovery of a Dark Matter Galaxy

Last week, astronomers announced the discovery of a galaxy that is almost entirely comprised of dark matter. At first glance, the galaxy, Dragonfly 44, is roughly the same size as the Milky Way, but only contains 1 percent as many stars. Naively, one would expect this galaxy to be torn apart by its surroundings in the Coma Cluster. However, Dragonfly 44 is composed of 99.99% … Continue reading Discovery of a Dark Matter Galaxy

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How the Quest for Gravitational Waves Pushes the Boundaries of Quantum Optics

by Michael Goldman figures by Michael Gerhardt LIGO’s observation of gravitational waves was perhaps the most stunning physics discovery of the past several years. Two black holes, each 20 to 30 times as massive as the sun, collided in an event of unimaginable violence and shook the very fabric of the space around them. About 1.4 billion years later, in February of this year, the … Continue reading How the Quest for Gravitational Waves Pushes the Boundaries of Quantum Optics

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