Issue 3

Elements The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

Monkeys!

Alternative Fuels: Biodiesel and Ethanol

The Future of Sex Student Research: Math Fusion

CSI: Mars Issue 3, Spring 2007

Elements: The Scientific Magazine  

Credits

Editor-in-Chief: Megan Dill-McFarland Managing Editor: Nick Kiest Content Editor: Wren Williams Copy Editors: Megan Dill-McFarland & Wren Williams Staff Photographers: Matt Loewen & Nick Kiest Layout: Megan Dill-McFarland, Emily Hoke, Nick Kiest, Matt Loewen, Wren Williams Image Editing: Nick Kiest Faculty Advisor: Mark Martin Front Cover Photo: Nick Kiest & Matt Loewen Back Cover Photo: Matt Loewen & Paul Wicks Table of Contents Photo: Nick Kiest & Matt Loewen

Letter From The Editor

W

elcome back to Elements, the Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound.

There are a lot of new names along with the old this semester helping this issue continue our mission to bring science outside of Thompson to the entirety of campus. Our founder and first Editor-in-Chief, Marissa Jones, is abroad in Costa Rica this semester, but I have been happy to finish out my college years by filling in for her until she can pull herself away Elements would like to thank ASUPS and the from the sun and the bugs.

Acknowledgments:

Math/Computer Science Department for their This term it seems that the greater world has a generous donations. lot to say about science. From the new HPV vacWe would also like to thank the following organizations and individuals: Office of the President and the Admissions Office for purchasing our magazine; the ASUPS Media Board and the Trail for loaning us the computers and software we need; Paul Weber for helping create the cover photo; Mark Martin for advising and support; Curt and Debbie Kiest for intense copy editing.

Thank you, Wikipedia, for being a font of knowledge and fact checker, and Wikimedia our font of imagery.

Contact & Publishing: e-mail: elements@ups.edu

web:Â http://clubs.ups.edu/clubs/elements mail: ASUPS - Elements, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N

cine to mapping dark matter, there is a lot that we have brought to you from outside the campus.

Most of the science is in its infancy, and could greatly affect our lives and planet. It is full of new ideas and techniques that someday soon we may be hearing more about. So, take a look and see what the future could be bringing.

Quite a bit has also been happening on-campus, as usual. Research continues and both students and faculty are helping to advance their fields. Our climate is being monitored, branches of mathematics joined and our own place as college students in science explained and vindicated.

Clearly, a lot is going on, and we are excited to share it.

From near and far, this issue is full of a variety of new research and ideas. In keeping with the Published by Consolidated Press: 600 S. Spokane St., Seattle, diversity of global and local topics, our patron elWA 98134. ement for this issue is water. Flowing around and throughout the world, water mixes and moves, and brings everything together. It comes in many Due to a layout error, the authors of two forms and always seems a little different, but ularticles in the last issue of Elements (Vol. 2) timately water, like our stories this issue, encompasses everything.

Warner St. #1017, Tacoma, WA 98416

Corrections:

were omitted. The Science of Music was written

by Keaton Wilson, and Redistricting Utopia was Sincerely, written by Walker Lindley and Randy Bentson. Megan Dill-McFarland

Find an article interesting or infuriating?

Want to see Elements investigate something?

Let us know, or join the Elements team and share what you know with others.

of the University of Puget Sound

Table of Contents

Spinning Water and Fluorescing Rocks

4

CSI: The Red Planet

6

Phayre’s Leaf Monkeys in Thailand

8

Matt Loewen

Megan Dill-McFarland Keaton Wilson

Learning Professional Techniques in the Lab

11

Alternative Fuels: Biodiesel and Ethanol

12

The Chemistry of Climate Change

14

The Future of Sex

16

Determinants and the Matching Polynomial

20

A Shot at Life in the Dark

22

How to Save the World from Human Papillomavirus

24

The Immortality of Turtles and Tortoises

26

Saving the Rainforest, One Note at a Time

28

One Time in Lab...

29

Elements Quiz: What physical constant are you?

30

Jay Colingham

Kirsten Duncan Emily Hoke

Wren Williams Asa Scherer

Matt Lonsdale

Stephanie Bauman Anne Pew

Wren Williams

Elements: The Scientific Magazine  

Science in Contex t

Spinning Water and Fluorescing Rocks The science behind the front and back covers M at t L o e w en

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hen presented with the task of illustrating water for this issue of Elements, I immediately recalled a demonstration from University Physics with Professor Paul Weber. Not only was this a visually pleasing demo, but it also demonstrated laws of circular motion, properties of water, and as I later discovered, practical applications of science.

The demo originally consisted of a large round bowl filled with water and spun up with a small handheld motor. The spinning water moved to the outside of the bowl and actually formed a parabolic curve.

When I approached Weber about photographing this demo for Elements, he gladly accepted. He was actually already working with Al Vallecorsa, a staff science support engineer, on designing a better setup for the demo, because the old design had too many inconsistencies to create a truly perfect parabola.

The new design for the model has a modified centrifuge to spin the water. Vallecorsa removed the test tube rack and instead installed a flat plate. We also used a rheostat (variable resistor) which alters the voltage going to the centrifuge so that we could vary the spinning rate. In the final photo, we supplied 21 volts that spun the table at an estimated 360 rpm. The result is the nearly perfect parabola on the front cover.

While setting up for the photo of this demonstration, Weber explained some of the properties that it illustrates. Theoretically, a floating object on the surface of this parabola would stay on the side. We tried this, but unfortunately the object quickly dropped to the bottom of the parabola. In order to make this work, we would have had to shield against the wind over the parabolic surface. Weber has seen this demo successfully done by spinning a rectangular enclosure. A slice of the parabolic shape is formed by spinning this thin rectangular enclosure that also blocks the surface wind, allowing objects to float where they are on the sides of the parabola.

We were able to see this suspension property, however, when we dropped food coloring into the water. Food coloring would stay in the region that it was dropped into for several minutes until inconsistencies in the bowl caused the color to disperse. This is clearly evident on the front cover photo.

Weber also explained that the spinning properties of water illustrated here are used industrially to make the large mirrors needed for giant telescopes. At the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, mirrors over eight meters in diameter are created in large spinning apparatuses. These are essentially large ovens filled with glass, spun up to seven to eight rpm and heated until the glass melts.1 It then forms into the perfectly shaped parabola desired in mirrors. This parabolic shape has the property of reflecting

Matt Loewen and Paul Wicks

of the University of Puget Sound

What appear to be ordinary rocks in normal light can be quite extraordinary when exposed to UV.

While spinning it, we also got to see how the water reacts to the acceleration. Since the liquid is not directly connected to the edge of the bowl, there is a noticeable lag time between spinning and the formation of the parabola in the water. At first the outside of the water begins spinning, and this slowly spreads to the middle. The result is a flat-bottomed parabola after we first spin the table. This process can be seen in the photo sequence below.

To take the front photo, we added food coloring so the shape of the water could be clearly seen. We used rather simple lighting techniques, shining 600 and 250 watt halogen work lights purchased from Home Depot. A shutter speed of 1/400 second was used in order to freeze the spinning motion.

The back cover photo really deserves a more detailed explanation than can be made here. It shows several rocks from the Geology Department’s mineral collection under ultraviolet light. Certain properties of these rocks cause incoming photons in the ultraviolet wavelength to be absorbed and re-emitted as lower wavelength visible light.

This property is present in fluorescent lights and even some organisms, such as scorpions. Rock hunters searching for these rocks have to be careful not to pick up a living fluorescent scorpion! To take this much less dangerous photo we used a 30 second exposure while a UV lamp was moved over all of the samples.

1.

Wehinger, P. and P. Van Duyne. Steward Observatory SOML Mirror Lab Techniques [Internet]. University of Arizona [modified 2007 April 7; cited 2007 April 7].

Available from: http://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/TECH. php?navi=cast

Nick Kiest and Matt Loewen

the nearly parallel light of distant astronomical objects to a single point. The same shape is used in car headlights to reflect bulb light into parallel beams that pierce into the distance.

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

CSI: The Red Planet M D -M F ega n

ill

c a rl a nd

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hile scientists debate about whether life existed or water ever consistently flowed on Mars, there is one aspect that both sides agree on: it is all about the past. Today Mars is, aside from possibly a microbe or two, completely dead. The planet has essentially become a windswept dust ball. If Mars is the planet most similar to Earth and started out with nearly the same building blocks, why then did our sister planet come to such a quick demise, a fate so different from our own?

forces involved in planetary formation cause the core of a planet to be very hot in the beginning. It should come as no surprise that Mars also started out hot and active.1 The composition of the core and its size, however, likely caused this active phase to be very brief.

As a result, Mars and its core may have essentially burned itself out much sooner and cooled off. 2 The effect that such a cooling core would have on a planet is profound. A cooling core means less heat convecting up to the surface and less volcanic activity. Less convection would naturally decrease the surface temperature of the planet. Lower volcanic activity has a less obvious, but more important effect, on the temperature of the planet. Fewer volcanic eruptions mean less dust and carbon dioxide thrown into the atmosphere, which would cause a decrease of greenhouse gases and result in a colder planet overall.

Mars, prior to its death — wet and inviting!

The answer comes down to heat. Mars is significantly colder than Earth – too cold for water to flow. The question amongst scientists is why. Mars could not have started out so cold, because there is physical evidence that water once flowed on the surface. At some point it must have been as warm as Earth, and the greenhouse process probably enabled this. Something then caused the planet to cool enough to prevent CO2 from existing in a gaseous form. Two very different theories explain what happened to the planet, and they have contrary implications for Mars’ future.

The Asteroid Pleads no Contest Mars’ life may not have ended due to natural causes, but instead been cut short by an outside influence. An astral body may have plunged the planet into an ice age from which it could not recover. It is not known what exactly triggered this change, but it must have been something large impacting the planet such as an asteroid or comet(s). The

NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

NASA, GSFC

Eventually Mars may have cooled below the freezing point of water (0 ˚ C), and finally below the freezing point of carbon dioxide (-79 ˚ C). At that point, the atmosphere would literally freeze, and thereby prevent the greenhouse effect from being able to warm the planet up again. Mars may have literally frozen to death, because it could not maintain heat.

Nature simply took its course on the Red Planet and led it to the planetary equivalent of a quick death.

Death Due to Natural Causes The very composition of Mars may have predestined it to become the dead planet we know today. Mars is smaller than Earth — about half the size, but more importantly, Mars is much less massive, only one-tenth the mass of Earth. This means that the core of Mars has a vastly different composition than that of Earth. It is this difference, some scientists maintain, that caused Mars to die while Earth lived. The

A picture of the deceased.

of the University of Puget Sound

which theory proves correct, it may be possible that Mars could reclaim its warm past, and become more hospitable for human settlement.

NASA, JPL, MSSS

If Mars simply followed the evolution its original creation laid out for it, then Mars is probably dead forever. A cold core is hard, if not impossible, to restart, and the level of volcanic activity the theory would require to keep the greenhouse process going would make Mars too volatile and dangerous for humans to ever make a large permanent settlement.

Lyot Crater: the smoking gun? reason that Mars could die from a large impact is that such an impact can destroy the existing atmosphere. 3 In a different way, Mars achieves the same result by impact that it does by a cooling core — the greenhouse process no longer works. Without the protection of the greenhouse gases, the planet is destined to freeze.

Naturally, an asteroid impact would leave proof on the surface, and some scientists maintain that proof is found in the Lyot impact basin. This crater has a two hundred kilometer outer diameter, and a double ring form indicative of a severe impact.4 Such a large impact would destroy much of the atmosphere and ultimately put an end to the greenhouse process on the planet. Further support of this sequence of events is that geologically, the greenhouse effect seems to have ceased on Mars at about the same time as the Lyot impact.5 Without such outside aid, Mars might not have ever changed climates.

If it was an asteroid that froze Mars, then it may be possible to return Mars to its previous state. This would probably require melting the poles to return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and then letting the planet warm back up. It might take multiple generations, but Mars would once again be warm and relatively inviting. The asteroid theory also does not require extensive volcanic activity for the greenhouse process to be sustained, making the planet even more appealing than it would be if the cooling core theory were accurate.

In our best-case scenario, Mars could become perfectly habitable with flowing water and moderate temperatures.

Until one theory is proven over the other, however, it is impossible to know for sure if Martian colonization can ever occur.

Unfortunately, proving either theory will most likely require trying to reignite the greenhouse process on Mars or to restart the core of the planet. Both projects would be difficult and expensive, so unless there becomes a pressing reason to warm up Mars, we may never know what cooled it in the first place or if Mars is, in fact, permanently dead.

1.

Does it Really Matter?

Mars has attained stability in its currently uninhabitable incarnation, but whether it could have ever really remained in its previous hospitable state is questionable. The Red Planet has spent much of its history cold and dead, which would seem to indicate that the planet has trouble maintaining its warmer, active state. Essentially, the greenhouse process is too easily overset. Without the carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect ends and the planet enters its cold state. Regardless of how it gets to the cold state, it would seem that Mars was doomed to get there. It is just too easy to kill Mars due to the delicacy of its heating system.

2.

3.

4.

What Happens Now While scientists may agree that Mars was once semi-hospitable, the different claims about Mars’ cause of death greatly alter the possibilities for the planet’s future. Depending on

5.

Spohn, Tilman, Mario H. Acuña, Doris Breuer, Matthew Golomber, Ronald Greeley, Alexander Halliday, Ernst Hauber, Ralf Jaumann, and Frank Sohl. Geophysical Constraints of the Evolution of Mars. Space Science Reviews 2001 Apr; 96(1): 231-262. In SpringerLink [database on the internet]. Springer; c2007 [cited 2007 Mar 16]. [31 pg.]. Available from: http:// springerlink.metapress.com.

Sheehan, William, and Stephen James O’Meara. Mars: the Lure of the Red Planet. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001. 106 pg.

Hunten, Donald M. Atmospheric Evolution of the Terrestrial Planets. Science 1993 Feb; 259(5097): 915920. In Jstor [database on the internet]. Jstor; c2007 [cited 2007 Mar 16]. [6 pg.]. Available from: http:// www.jstor.org.

Brandenburg, J. E. The New Mars Synthesis: A New Concept of Mars Geo-Chemical History. AIP Conference Proceedings. 2005; 746: 1199-1205. In Academic Search Premier [database on the internet]. EBSCO Industries, Inc; c2007 [cited 2007 Mar 16]. [7 pg.]

Available from: http:// web.ebscohost.com.

Brandenburg, John E. and Monica Rix Paxson. Dead Mars, Dying Earth. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1999. 311 pg.

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Research Repor t

Phayre’s Leaf Monkeys in Thailand Research abroad with Erin McCullough K e at on W il s on

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esearch is a very gratifying aspect of a scientist’s work. To carefully observe the world around us in order to increase our understanding is one of the hallmarks of science. For science students at UPS, learning the tools and methodology of research is a major goal.

Fortunately, UPS offers a variety of options on campus for extended learning. Summer research grants are available, and many professors welcome the involvement of students in their research. During their time at UPS, students can acquire a foundation of knowledge and the skills needed to advance in the research field of their choice.

A year ago Erin McCullough was just such a student. Getting ready to graduate, she wanted to find a research opportunity in an area of personal interest before attending graduate school. After exploring many options, she was offered the opportunity to work with primates at Thailand’s Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary, and jumped at the chance. We interviewed Erin by e-mail, asking her about her research and how she got to where she is now.

Elements: What makes your monkeys so special as a field of study?

Elements: So what specifically are you researching?

What do you record when observing the monkeys?

Erin McCullough: We follow them from the time they wake up, until they go to bed. Every 30 minutes, we take a GPS point to keep track of their ranging activity, and every 30 minutes we take a group scan and record the general activity of all of the monkeys that we

Elements: What is it like to be living in the jungle?

Erin McCullough: It’s a forest more than a jungle, although in some places there are so many climbers that you have to crawl over or through that it does feel jungle-esque. And sometimes when the juveniles play, they swing on the vines, which I think of as more jungle-like than forest-like. But technically speaking, our study site is dry evergreen forest, with patches of dry diptercarp forest and bamboo forest.

Unfortunately for us researchers, there is no food that is really suitable for humans. I have tried all of the fruits that the monkeys eat (thinking that maybe if they’re gorging themselves on this stuff, it might be tasty), and it’s all unpalatable. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a folivore (leaf eater). The fruits are all really sour or really bitter. The leaf monkeys wouldn’t be able to eat sweet fruit, because the excess sugar would kill the microbes in the monkeys’ gut.

Right now the monkeys are eating lots of flower buds (genus names: Schefflera, Dalbergia, Erythrina) and young leaves (Afzelia), because it’s the dry season, and most of the trees have nothing but flower buds or leaf buds and young leaves. There are still some seed pods (Bauhinia, Acacia, Milletia), which they love! Imagine snow peas with a really thick, tough outer skin (I don’t know the real term for that, husk?). The monkeys will spend hours in these climbers snapping open the pods and eating the seeds inside. In September, October and November, they were eating Quercus fruits (acorns) and forest jackfruit. In December they ate figs. And in July and August they ate bamboo shoots (which was always fun because it means that they’re only a few feet off Erin McCullough settling in for some research abroad. the ground for most of the Keaton Wilson

Erin McCullough: The Phayre’s leaf monkey (Trachypithecus phayrei) is not well studied, which I think is a good reason to study any species. Also the leaf monkeys are unique in that it is the females that emigrate from their birth group. More often in primate groups, it is the males that disperse.

can identify (feeding on leaves, foraging for young fruit, inactive resting, inactive monitoring, grooming another monkey, traveling, etc.). And whenever we see agonistic (combative) behavior (chasing, slapping, displacements, etc.) or sexual behavior (mountings, copulations, female presenting, etc.), we record it.

day). And sometimes they come down to the ground to eat soil. Every day they eat some leaves (usually a few here and there while they’re traveling), but they definitely eat much more than just leaves.

Keaton Wilson

of the University of Puget Sound

In the rainy season, it was WET. Most of the creeks flooded.

The trails were treacherous, because they were so muddy and slick. During and after the big rain spells, the monkeys would just huddle in the trees, cold and miserable, and we would huddle on the ground in our ponchos, also cold and miserable. During the rainy season the monkeys didn’t have to come down to the ground to drink because there was plenty of water up in the trees.

Now that it’s the dry season (And yes, it is dry! — the forest is parched.), the monkeys usually come down to the ground once a day to drink in a small puddle or creek. They’re very cautious when they come to the ground, and if anything falls (like a stick or a tree) or if there is any loud sound, they all scurry back into the trees. Unfortunately for the monkeys, the puddles and creeks are filled with tadpoles and disgusting, stagnant water. Not exactly a refreshing drink.

Elements: Do you get a chance to see other wildlife?

There are supposedly eight primate species in our sanctuary: Phayre’s leaf monkeys, silvered langurs (which nobody has ever seen), rhesus macaques, stump-tailed macaques, Assamese macaques, pig-tailed macaques, white-handed gibbons, and slow loris. Where we live, there are lots of deer and our two tame jackals, but I’ve never seen deer or jackals in the field site. There are elephants and gaurs (Asian bison) and bears and wild pigs and cobras and pythons. I’ve seen all of them in the sanctuary except the cobras and the bears (and frankly, I don’t really need to).

There are also lots of chickens in the forest, which are extremely loud and annoying. And they do a good job of scaring us when they make a racket as we walk in to meet the monkeys in the morning (in the dark.)

Elements: Are you associated with someone else doing research, or working on your own study?

Erin McCullough: Both, actually! I collect data for the project and for my own independent study.

For the project, we (the field assistants and the rangers) record ranging and general activity, and any sexual or agonistic behavior that we observe.

For my independent project, I record bite rates and foraging costs (as distance traveled within a feeding tree) of adult monkeys during a feeding bout. The goal of my study is to determine whether the monkeys compete for depletable resources. (And just to be clear, I’m talking about scramble competition rather than contest competition.)

Some researchers argue that leaves are an undepletable food resource, so the leaf monkeys should not compete for food. But as I said earlier, the monkeys eat lots more than

Erin tracked troupe members like this one during her study.

just leaves, and young leaves and fruit and flowers might be a depletable resource. If they do compete for these resources, then we expect to see a decrease in bite rate and an increase in foraging cost (distance traveled) from the beginning to the end of a foraging bout. (I haven’t analyzed my data yet, but so far, I’m not sure if that is the case.)

Elements: What are the groups of monkeys like together and in their interactions and sociability?

Erin McCullough: We follow four groups of monkeys, which are all habituated to humans and therefore relatively easy to follow. (Although the fourth group is still in the process of being habituated, so there are a few monkeys that are still rather shy, and will run away into a different tree if they see one of us watching them.) Every monkey has a different shape to its crest, tail, muzzle, and belly pattern, and we have drawn pictures of all of the monkeys in the four habituated groups.

The hardest part of the research, by far, is identifying the individuals. Some of the monkeys are really easy. For example, the tail of one male makes a perfect hook. Or one of the females has “rock star hair” and a bald spot in the middle of her forehead. I find it easiest to identify the monkeys by looking at their muzzles, but often we can’t really see the face. If they’re sleeping, usually we can only see a back and the tail, and because lots of the tails look very similar, identifying the monkeys can be a bit tricky.

When the infants are born, they are bright orange, but as they get older, they develop the gray fur of the adults.

Most of the infants are born from October-December, and it’s very easy to spot the bright orange monkeys and hear their high pitched crying. Also, when the infants are getting weaned, they put up quite a crying fit with their mother.

Even the leaf monkeys throw temper tantrums.

10 10

Keaton Wilson

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

A foraging Phayre’s leaf monkey in the forests of Thailand.

I’ll be honest. The leaf monkeys are pretty lazy. They wake up with the sun, eat some, travel some, eat some more, take a nap, travel, nap, eat... and then go to bed with the sun. The theory is that because they’re leaf eaters, they need lots of time resting to digest their food, so much of the day is spent resting, either sleeping or grooming each other. This is why it’s so exciting when they DO something, like come down to drink, or play, or eat soil. Or when they encounter another group, in which case there is lots of chasing and barking and slapping and fighting among the males.

Although occasionally the adult females participate in the intergroup encounters, it’s the duty of the males to protect the group. And although the leaf monkeys are generally calm and lazy, the fights can get brutal. One of the males lost one of his eyes in a fight, and one of the sub-adult males had a huge gash on his shoulder that lasted for months.

There is falling out of trees, and there can be blood.

Elements: How did you initially find out about research opportunities like this?

Erin McCullough: I knew that I wanted to go to grad school in animal behavior, and I knew when I graduated that I didn’t want to go to grad school right away. So I searched for research positions with animalbehavior.org, and found this field assistant position.

Elements: What did UPS do to prepare you for this kind of work?

Erin McCullough: My animal behavior course helped teach me how to observe and record animal behavior. I got practice taking scan samples during our study of the red wolves at

Pt. Defiance, and although it’s much different taking a scan sample of 30 monkeys rather than two wolves, the concept is the same.

But I’ve never worked with primates before, and learning to identify them just takes time.

Elements: So what are your plans after you get back?

Erin McCullough: Well, for the first time know what I’m doing next year, except for school and writing up a manuscript on tion (or lack of feeding competition) in monkeys.

in my life, I don’t applying for grad feeding competithe Phayre’s leaf

Elements: Thank you so much, it was good to speak with you! Hopefully your last months in Thailand will be full of great data!

Erin McCullough: Thank you. Me too!

Erin, like many other graduates of UPS, was in the position to do amazing research, and also gain an experience in another country and culture that she will remember for the rest of her life. You can find out more about the work Erin is doing in Thailand and about the Phayre’s Leaf Monkey at http://www.sunysb.edu/anthro/BorriesKoenig/Home.html.

Phayre’s leaf monkey factoid: There are three different types of recorded monkey calls: 1. “Loud Call” - a high pitched roar.

2. “ Whoo Call ” - a soft warning call emitted at the sound of a predator.

3. “Cheng-Kong Call ” - A two phased honking call that brings the group together.

11

of the University of Puget Sound

Learning Professional Techniques in the Lab Molecular Biology and your wallet

J ay C olingh a m

M

any students complete a lab course wondering whether the skills they learned will ever be applicable outside of a university setting. Skills such as micropipetting and microscopy, which are taught in beginning science classes, become standard procedures among upper division courses. Additionally, students are taught to multi-task, completing multiple procedures within a single lab period. These skills are useful in all fields of scientific work, but students are rarely told the applications of the work they are performing. To provide meaning beyond the grade for the time spent in lab, Elements will look at one science laboratory experiment and explain its significance in a career setting.

cal applications for HIV immunizations or other methods to prevent the spread of this disease. Even diseases such as cancer and Huntington’s disease can be combated through this method of cellular control.

Relevant Lab Work In lab, students apply knowledge of how RNAi works in order to become familiar with research processes. Students promote interference with a gene of their choice as they look through the genome of C. elegans. Over the course of the semester the students work to extract viral RNA and infect their living worms before blocking its expression. Professor Mary Rose Lamb said, “I chose to work with [C. elegans] for this class because they present easy ways of doing RNAi work. That is, you can either soak the worms or feed the worms a vector that will deliver RNAi. If we worked with a mammalian system, delivery would be much more complicated.”2 Matt Loewen

Science in Contex t

Career Applications

Lamb also explained that a pharmaceutical drug development process “can take 10-15 years to bring a drug to market.” With as many as 50 hours of lab experience a semester, students are trained enough to work a position on a lab bench and with more specific training are even caAn Introduction to RNAi pable of being cited in a published scientific journal as a participant in RNAi is the focus of lab for Mosuch research. It is quite possible to lecular Biology students. The acrobecome very strong in one technique nym stands for a system known as and work as a technician, focusing on “RNA-mediated interference,” which Ever wonder why you’re really in lab? your specialization. 2 Lamb noted that, is primarily used among both cell classes, prokaryotes and eukary“If you want a more realistic view of otes (such as humans), as a means of fighting off viral a research career, whether in academia or industry, choose infiltration. DNA, our genetic material, is an instruction set to do research with a faculty member and plan on spending for making proteins, which have a myriad of functions within more than one afternoon a week on the project.”2 our bodies. To make proteins, mRNA is made from our DNA. A strand of mRNA is essentially a code that contains all the With this type of experience, molecular biology work is very information necessary for the creation of a protein.1 Viruses similar to research work performed by graduate students also contain RNA, which it uses to ‘trick’ the host cell into and professionals in a research atmosphere. Contributions from the simple procedures used in an undergraduate biolreplicating, resulting in a viral infection. ogy lab could lead to cures for AIDS, cancer, and HuntingThe cell can mistake this code for its own mRNA and begin ton’s Disease.1 In the end, all that time spent in lab might to use its information to create viral proteins. In cases where not be for nothing if you can ever imagine yourself doing the viral RNA is double-stranded, the cell enzymatically cuts lab work for money. After all, the skills you are learning the viral mRNA into small pieces and compares it to its own now might be preparing you for research opportunities or RNA. The small pieces that have been identified as foreign a long-term job. to the cell are then used to find and bind to other foreign 1. NOVA Science NOW [Homepage on the Internet]. RNAi; pieces of RNA, which the cell then cuts as well.1 In the end, 2005 [cited 2007 Feb 28]. Available from http://www. the proteins coded for within the viral RNA are never crepbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/ ated within the host cell. Doctors Andrew Fire and Craig 2. Rose M. L. RNAi Elements Article [electronic mail on Mello won the Nobel Prize in 2006 for their discovery of the Internet]. Message to: Jay Colingham. 2007 Feb RNA-mediated interference within the nematode Caenorhab26, 10:19 am [cited 2007 Feb 28]. [about 3 screens]. ditis elegans. 2 The RNAi process has many potential medi-

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

Alternative Fuels: Biodiesel and Ethanol K irs t en D unc a n

B

Wikimedia Commons

y now everyone has probably heard of the United States’ “addiction to oil” and our heavy dependence on foreign oil as a security issue. Thanks to Al Gore, we have also heard of the effects of global warming on the Earth, caused by the accumulation of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. No matter on which side of the political spectrum you fall, alternative fuels are the answer to our problems.

Two of the most researched and most promising are biodiesel and ethanol. These fuels are good candidates to replace gasoline for two reasons: First, they are domestically produced. Second, they are significantly lower in greenhouse gas emissions than the fuels we use today.

Biodiesel is made from vegetable oils, either used or new. The oils are combined with alcohol in an esterification process which results in fatty acid methyl esters.

The other product in this reaction is glycerol — a substance used in cosmetics and other common products.1 Esterification gives high yields of glycerol, and when used with a catalyst, requires very little energy to initiate the process. The two main sources of the vegetable oil used during esterification are recycled cooking oil and soybean oil.

support the demand of the entire population would require massive amounts of soybeans or vegetable oil, much more than we currently produce. It would take up large amounts of our farmland which now grows feedstock for animals and food for us. There have also been reports put out by a few scientists stating that the energy it costs to make biodiesel is greater than the energy produced, though there is still debate about whether or not this is true. Another issue with the use of biodiesel is in the chemical composition. The temperature at which biodiesel congeals varies, but some congeal at temperatures as high as 4.4˚ C . 2 Although there are anti-gelling agents that can be used, they are still being tested and the environmental impact of these additives has not been released. Research is constantly being done on biodiesel, and people are looking for solutions to these problems so that this fuel can be viable in the market in the next few years.

Another alternative fuel which utilizes domestically grown crops is ethanol. Corn, wheat, and barley can be used to produce ethanol.1 The production of ethanol takes a few more steps, but is relatively easy and has been in practice

There are, however, some issues that must be addressed before we make the switch. Producing enough biodiesel to

Wikimedia Commons

Since it is made from domestic products, biodiesel is already a better choice than oil if your main concern Behold, biodiesel! is reducing foreign dependence. Soybean farms span the Midwestern and Eastern United States. Soybean farmers would benefit from the use of soybean oil in biodiesel, and it would greatly improve the overall economy of the United States. The greenhouse gas emissions from cars that run on biodiesel are significantly lower than cars that run on conventional fuels. Biodiesel can be used in any car with a conventional diesel engine, which is unfortunately uncommon in the United States, and can be stored in the same fuel tanks being used at gas stations now. Other than that, no new technology or infrastructure is required to convert to biodiesel.

Corn, one of the materials used in alternative fuels.

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of the University of Puget Sound

Wikimedia Commons

for years. First, the grain is ground into a powder, added to water and amylase, and heated to liquefy the meal.

Then another enzyme, glucoamylase, is added to change the liquid into sugars so that they can ferment. In order to ferment the sugar, yeast is added and allowed to convert the sugar to ethanol and carbon dioxide in a period of about 48 hours. After a few more processes of distillation, dehydration, and denaturation (so that it is no longer fit for human consumption) the ethanol can be used for fuel. The co-products of these reactions are grain used for feedstock, and CO2 gas.

Wikimedia Commons

Like biodiesel, ethanol also reduces carbon emissions of vehicles, because it has more oxygen than the current fuel, which makes it burn cleaner and more efficiently. But what about the carbon dioxide produced with the ethanol? Although many producers claim that the CO2 is compressed and sold to other companies such as carbonated beverage makers, can it really all be reused? There are no clear answers, but the CO2 that is being emitted during and after

The environmentalist’s DeLorean: a hydrogen car. production is most likely minimal compared to what vehicles currently emit. The overall impact of cars switching to ethanol should be great enough that the small emission will be of no concern.

Most of the cars driven today would need to be altered in order to use 100% ethanol, but fuel-flexible vehicles (FFVs) are currently on the market and use E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. This blend still burns cleaner and greatly reduces the amount of CO2 emitted, but petroleum fuel is still partially used. The current infrastructure at gas stations could hold ethanol as long as the tanks are cleaned and the nozzles are replaced with harder metals. 3 There is a sector of farmland being specified for the cultivation of fuel crops, and other, non-food crops are being researched and starting to be used in the ethanol market.

The use of ethanol in our country would improve the economy, produce jobs, and give life to our agricultural sector.

But, reliance on only ethanol would be difficult because it would require a large amount of crop, and therefore land, just like biodiesel.

Soybeans, another possible source of biofuels.

So, if both biodiesel and ethanol cannot support our entire demand for fuel in the United States, what are our options?

We cannot continue to depend on oil, and bio-products cannot be produced in high enough quantity, but what about electricity? The electric car has already been developed, and was put on the market for a few years in the late 1990’s before they were all recalled for unspecified reasons.

The best compromise would be a biodiesel, or ethanol, and electric hybrid. These are already being developed, but are not yet on the market. These cars would have no mileage restrictions, because the car could switch to biodiesel when the battery runs low.

In an environmentally responsible world, people would drive electric/biodiesel hybrids, and all the electricity would come from wind and solar power. Until then, there are other things we can do. Most public transportation, especially in Seattle, is fueled by biodiesel already. There are also alternative transportation modes such as riding bikes or walking places, especially places nearby. And, if it is completely necessary to drive, try carpooling.

1.

2.

3.

United States Department of Energy. Alternative Fuels [internet]. Alternative Fuels Data Center [homepage on the internet] [Modified 2006 Dec 4; cited 2007 Feb 27] Available from: http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/ altfuel/altfuels.html Addison, Keith. Biodiesel in Winter [internet]. Journey to the Future [homepage on the internet] [Modified 2007 Jan 17; cited 2007 Feb 27] Available from: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_winter.html American Coalition for Ethanol [homepage on the internet]. Sioux Falls (SD): ACE. [Cited on 2007 Feb 27].

Available from: http://www.ethanol.org

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine  

Science in Contex t

The Chemistry of Climate Change Are snowmobiles good for Yellowstone?

E mily H ok e

he recent political and media focus on climate change has been due to the multitude of scientific studies, which give evidence to our effect on this Earth. Whether it is images of smokestacks polluting our atmosphere or native species slowly becoming extinct, the effect of mankind on this world is clearly evident. The research of Dan Burgard, Assistant Professor in Analytical Chemistry, investigated human emissions in Yellowstone National Park.

A combustion reaction of carbon-hydrogen chains found in petrochemical products releases the energy stored in fuel.

Ideal stoichiometric combustion is the perfect condition for the maximum energy to be used from the fuel and the waste product to be CO2. If less air enters the system then the combustion reaction will be less efficient and a more prominent product is CO. The exhaust products of vehicles are ratios of CO and CO2 that can be measured in the ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (shorter and longer wavelengths than the visible range). Using UV and IR spectroscopy, the molecules can be qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed.

Burgard, in his first year at UPS, is already making a large impact on the campus and Tacoma area. After teaching high school chemistry in Colorado for six years, Burgard returned to the University of Denver to pursue a career in environmental consulting, a concern that has always been close to the outdoors enthusiast and avid bicyclist.

Instead of pursuing consulting, Burgard learned of ongoing study of emissions in Yellowstone by his advisor Donald Stedman and realized that it was the perfect research for him. He moved to the Tacoma area not a week after achieving his PhD In Yellowstone, the natural world meets the tourist economy head-on. from the University of Denver and started teaching chemistry at UPS the following week.

This earlier research was in the winter of 1998-1999, when the team at the University of Denver mounted snowmobiles and a snowcoach with a remote sensing device. The emissions recorded were carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (NOx ) and hydrocarbons (HC). In February 2005, Burgard and others from the University of Denver compiled new data and compared it with a remote sensing device (RSD) and portable emission monitoring system (PEMS) (on snowcoaches and snowmobiles) with the previous data. The air-pollution emissions from off-road recreational vehicles in National Parks has long been recorded and monitored. As visits to the National Park increased in the 1990s, animal and environmental activists filed lawsuits for the prohibition of snowmobiles in the park. The main tar-

To collect the emission data, Burgard and others developed a RSD to take measurements of moving vehicles. The fuel efficiency automobile test (FEAT) can take active readings of emissions of vehicles, as they would regularly drive. Combining evidence with the FEAT were measurements with a PEMS fixed onto the exhaust system of the snowmobiles and snowcoaches. This procedure had previously never been done on snow transportation, especially in -28.8 Ëš C temperatures on account of tubes in the machines freezing.

Gary A. Bishop

T

gets for such criticism were older models of snowmobiles (2-stroke) and snowcoaches.

After altering the machine with adaptive tubes for the Yellowstone winter, Burgard and his team fitted nine snowcoaches with the PEMS. The PEMS was able to collect data from the snowcoaches to obtain more than 34 hours or 500 miles of data. The snowcoaches were tested for CO, CO2, NOx, O2, HC and particulate matter. The diesel conversion van showed lower emissions of CO and HCs than other snowcoaches, although the NOx emissions were the highest of the group. Snowcoaches which are often nothing more than a 15-passenger van with construction-vehicle style trends on them, are designed to emit within federal regulations when on the road with wheels. But when in heavy snow their fuel efficiency falls short, because the on-board computer is not

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of the University of Puget Sound

NPS: R. G. Johnson

equipped to manage these heavy loads and goes “offcycle.”

Therefore, when snowcoaches are forced to operate in off-cycle conditions due to extreme snow or heavier load, there is an increase in emissions.

Data showed that the snowcoaches were operating in this higher emission state for 20-29% of their excursions.

NPS: R. Robinson

Burgard simultaneously collected CO, HC, and NOx emisSnowmobile tracks crisscross the park in winter due to numerous tours. sions on 4-stroke snowmobiles. In comparison to the 1999 data, the 4-stroke incorrect and the emissions were found to be dependent snowmobiles showed a 60% reduction of CO and a 95% upon the age and type of snowcoach. Snowcoach emissions reduction in HCs. A snowmobile was fitted with a PEMS to are dependant upon the conditions in which the vehicles compare the slower speed FEAT emissions with variable en are driving — in heavy snow conditions due to the off-cycle route emissions. The PEMS data was conclusive with the effect, there could be as much as a five-fold increase in new data from the FEAT. emissions. Through this evidence it was clear that the newer, 4-stroke snowmobiles and newer or recently upgraded The conclusion of Burgard and others was that with the snowcoaches were beneficial and crucial to the future vitalintroduction of the now mandatory 4-stroke snowmobiles, ity of the park. the emissions of CO, HCs and CO2 has dropped dramatically. In an emissions per passenger comparison between As a visiting assistant professor, Burgard was and is not snowcoaches and snowmobiles, the previous thought that expected to conduct his own research but he plans on using snowcoaches were always cleaner was determined to be the remote sensing technology that he helped create to test vehicles in the Pacific Northwest. In the Puget Sound area, pushes were made from the EPA and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency to reduce and clean up diesel emissions on municipal vehicles and school buses by retrofitting their emission control systems with newer technologies. Burgard is finalizing a project to use the technology of the RSD from Yellowstone to test the efficiency of the retrofitted school buses. He plans to conduct the research this coming summer after the completion of the retrofitted school buses and hopefully be able to make an impact in only the short time that he has been here.

Snowmobiles line up to refuel in the park.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

The Future of Sex Using genetics to break gender barriers W ren W illi a ms

L

ike all other mammals, humans can only reproduce sexually. While this means that we are capable of creating genetically diverse descendants, it also leaves us with no other options should something go amiss with our sex cells.

For couples in which one person is infertile, sperm or egg donors must be found for them to have children, and the child can only be related to one parent. Same-sex couples either go a similar route or adopt, which gives them a child who is completely unrelated to either parent.

Other members of the animal kingdom have alternate means to create offspring — for example, nematodes can either reproduce sexually or self-fertilize and create a younger generation of genetically identical young.

Unfortunately, the human body and the human sex cell simply cannot work any other way.

Self-Love: Parthenogenesis and You The first alternative to sexual reproduction is quite possibly at once the most amusing and least practical work-around.

Most people have made jokes about cloning themselves, but science is showing it may actually be possible in a genuine biological sense (at least for women). In 2001, scientists managed to force a human egg cell to begin to divide and produce a zygote without first being fertilized.1 For the animal kingdom as a whole, this process, called “parthenogenesis” (from the Greek for “virgin birth”), is not unusual. This is how nematodes produce non-sexually, but it is not something humans are capable of without genetic alterations. And, not surprisingly, such manipulation can be tricky.

Wikimedia Commons

For scientists chemically triggering parthenogenesis in the lab, the most difficult aspect is timing — gametic cells carry Or so we thought. Reonly half the information cent genetic research is of the producing parent, The future of sex holds the most promise for the egg. making people wonder if as is normal for those we mammals are far less who reproduce sexually. limited in our reproductive options than previously believed. This means that making a typical egg cell divide would creTaken from a purely scientific standpoint, the new possibili- ate an embryo with only half the information it needs to ties are fascinating, and in theory could provide infertile or develop normally. homosexual couples an alternative to adoption or surrogate parentage — a child related to both parents.

Luckily, if an egg is triggered before it has undergone its final meiotic division, it still has all the genetic information Currently, there are at least four ways geneticists can work of its mother. Women are born with all the eggs they will around the human body’s programming to create modified ever produce already created, but not fully formed. Technisex cells, or even sex cells from tissues found elsewhere in cally speaking, their sex cells have been arrested, and so the body. Regrettably, due to the nature of the Y-chromo- are still immature. some and the way male sex cells are produced, many of these theories are currently not applicable for men.

To get an ovum from the initial cell, two divisions are necessary. The first divides the original cell, called the “primary But before you start crowing too loudly, ladies, keep some- oocyte” in half. Each of the resultant secondary oocytes thing in mind — all these new methods of reproduction still carry all of the mother’s genetic material (but only one will require pregnancy to bring the fetus to term. become a viable egg). The process of ovulation causes the

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of the University of Puget Sound

Kaguya was created by injecting one egg into another.

Same-Sex Love I: Egg Fusion

Wikimedia Commons

Matt Loewen

In short, if you really want a little replica running around, the groundwork has been laid to make that possible. Unfortunately for you men out there, this technique has not been done with sperm cells. While women produce all their primary oocytes before they are born and trigger their maturation one at a time, men are constantly creating fresh sperm over the course of their lives. This would make it rather difficult to track down a male sex cell that had not yet divided. And, if that were accomplished, it may still be necessary to halt the division of the cell manually. For these reasons, it is unlikely this will ever be a viable option for men.

Wikimedia Commons

secondary oocyte to divide again, and halves the initial genetic information found within the new cell. This is why all work on embryonic cloning is being done with immature ova — they still contain a full set of chromosomes, and are thus capable of producing an embryo with the proper amount of genetic information needed to survive. After being chemically activated, the cell could theoretically be transplanted into the mother, and the child clone be carried to term normally.

The second alternative to sexual reproduction is similar in nature to cloning, but devoid of any narcissistic implications. For ladies who would rather have a more traditional sort of child but still want to leave men out of the process, another method of gamete combination has been developed. Remember from earlier that parthenogenesis requires a full set of chromosomes to create a viable embryo. Luckily, that genetic information does not necessarily have to come from just one mother.

In 2004 a team of scientists from the Tokyo University of Agriculture created 598 mouse eggs that contained the genetic information of two female mice and triggered their growth. Two made it to term. The first was “sacrificed” and her genetic makeup studied to determine exactly how the two mice eggs had fused. The second, dubbed “Kaguya” (a reference to Japanese myth) has lived a normal mousy life and gone on to reproduce normally with male mice. 2, 3 While the low success rate may be a little disheartening, the fact that it worked at all opens the way for plenty of research to refine the process.

The largest hurdle to overcome for this method of recombination is the issue of genetic “imprinting.” In simplest terms, this means that the cells created by the fusion of two sex cells can identify one set of chromosomes as maternal and one set as paternal, and uses the genes accordingly.4 To get a cell that was created from two cells of the same sex to begin dividing is impossible if both also have the same “tagging.” This is why one of Kaguya’s mothers was from a family of mice that had been genetically altered to have genes with genetic imprinting similar to that of a male.

In lab, DNA can be altered to remove genetic “imprinting.”

Once the genetic imprinting problem had been corrected, all scientists needed to do in order to trigger parthenogenesis was suppress a gene. Since humans are coded to reproduce sexually, it is necessary to remove the gene that controls embryonic cell division. With that gene out of the picture,

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NPS: R. Robinson Wikimedia Commons

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Experimental results suggest mice created through the fusion of two parent eggs can reproduce normally with males.

Matt Loewen

the egg will theoretically develop on its own. In mice, this gene is called H19. By blocking its expression, another gene’s activity is increased. This gene, called igf 2, manufactures proteins necessary for regulating growth in developing embryos. 2,3

Once the genetic work is done, all that is left is to take genetic material from one egg and inject it into another egg. The final result is a developing embryo that expresses some characteristics from each of the eggs, just as would an embryo created through fertilization. Unlike sexual reproduction, the offspring are guaranteed to be female, but unlike cloning, they carry half the genes of each parent.

Again, this process will not work for men. Male sperm cells have much less cytoplasm than egg cells, which would give the developing embryo much less to work with. Though two male donors would have the ability to create both male and female offspring, it would be necessary to check chromosomes before combination. Potentially, both parents of this union could donate a Y chromosome, which would create a fetus that is neither male nor female, and thus unlikely to survive to term.

That does not mean this method is any more practical for human females, however. Kaguya’s paternal mother was euthanized in infancy and her immature eggs harvested to provide the genetic material to fertilize the maternal egg.

This was done to further reduce any problems caused by genetic imprinting — the embryos had not yet undergone enough change to be sexually distinguishable DNA. 3 As the process works now, this would of course be impossible for use in humans. If more precise methods are found to work around genetic imprinting, however, it may become more than just a theory.

Same-Sex Love II: The Male-Egg There is another way to alter egg cells that is actually more relevant to males than females. Dr. Calum MacKellar of Scotland has theorized that transplanting the nucleus of a sperm cell into an egg which has had its nucleus removed would result in a “male-egg” that could then be viably fertilized by a sperm.5 This process of enucleating eggs and placing a new egg nucleus inside has already been studied, because of the potential applications in alleviating mitochondrial diseases, and is actually how Dolly the sheep was cloned. But, as of yet no actual scientific work has been done using male genetic material.

The theory is sound. If a male couple found a surrogate mother to donate an egg for enucleation and carry the fertilized product to term, they could have a child that belonged to both of them genetically. This process has an advantage over parthenogenic methods because a sperm would fertilize the hybrid egg just like in sexual reproduction. When sperm touches the surface of an egg cell, this sends a cue to the egg to begin development. This is why parthenogenesis must be triggered for the other two processes discussed above. 6 Luckily, in this case no such genetic alterations are needed. And, if done carefully, either male or female offspring could be produced from this fusion. Of course, this is assuming the issue with genetic imprinting can be overcome — remember how much effort it took for Kaguya’s mothers.

Love Overcoming All Obstacles The final alternative to classical sexual reproduction has nothing to do initially with sex cells. Using this method, it

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of the University of Puget Sound

The problem again lies with genetic imprinting. As seen with Kaguya, it is difficult to get genes to express normally in a developing embryo without sexual reproduction. Since these sperm and egg cells were engineered, there is a good chance that though they may look like a normal sex cell, they do not contain all the necessary information to create a normal embryo. It will require a good deal of study to figure out exactly what causes stem cells to differentiate into sex cells before scientists will be reliably able to recreate the process in a lab.

Despite these cautions, the scientists running the studies remain hopeful because the benefits of this type of work span a massive scope of interests. As mentioned earlier, an infertile adult could theoretically have gametes containing his or her own genetic material made so a donor is no longer necessary. The work could also be done on “adult” stem cells which are found within the organs of adult humans, although the research with mice was performed with embryonic cells.

Wikimedia Commons

may be possible to create sperm from the tissues of an infertile adult man, or eggs from an infertile adult woman.

For mice, both sperm and egg cells have been made from stem cells in the lab. The engineered sperm were able to induce fertilization in a normal egg cell, though none of the fertilized eggs developed into an embryo.7 In the case of the engineered eggs, they appeared to undergo parthenogenesis and divide on their own. 8 This was not quite what they were expecting, and work is currently being done to explain why. In both cases the scientists running the studies agreed that much work needs to be done before viable mouse offspring could be produced.

Mouse embryonic stem cells were used to create sex cells. ized with its own sperm? You may wonder who in the world would ever do that, but many people are concerned and mistrustful of just how far science will go in the name of information.

As with any other genetic research, there will always be dispute, and until a consensus is reached, it is very unlikely any of these practices will ever be put to human use. For some, that is a relief, and others, a major disappointment.

Despite all this grey area, one thing is certain — by learning how to make viable offspring through nonsexual means, we discover a great deal about the genetics behind how we mammals reproduce.

1.

The Politics of Genetic Science All of this research with stem cells and genetic manipulation is of course fraught with ethical questions. Currently, the majority of the work is being done with mice, which has kept the controversy largely limited to animal rights. Even if we can begin to create mice pups from single-sex parents reliably and prove beyond a doubt that they are just as healthy as those made through good old-fashioned sex, there is no guarantee that this sort of research will ever be approved for use on human gametes.

While all scientists agree that we are a long way off from even thinking about these types of non-sexual reproduction for humans, that does not mean the research being performed is not socially charged. With the ability to create human Kaguyas, research into these processes often becomes inseparable from personal beliefs concerning homosexuality in the eyes if the public. In fact, the MacKellar who states the creation of hybrid eggs is possible said so while speaking out against the process because he believes we first need to seriously consider the societal implications.

Other concerns that have been voiced deal with incest and cloning. For example, is carrying a genetic copy of yourself to term incestuous? What if a male-egg were to be fertil-

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Whitehouse, D. Scientists use ‘virgin birth’ technique.

BBC News [article on the internet]. 2001 November 26 [cited 2007 March 12]. Available from: http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science.nature/1676240/stm Rincon, P. Mice created without fathers. BBC News [article on the internet]. 2004 April 21 [cited 2007 March 12]. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science.nature/3643847.stm Trivedi, B. The end of males? Mouse made to reproduce without sperm. National Geographic [article on the internet]. 2004 April 21 [cited 2007 March 12].

Available from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2004/0421_040421_whoneedsmales.html Ferguson-Smith A, Surani MA. Imprinting and the epigenic asymmetry between parental genomes. Science 2001 August; 293(5532): 1086-1089.

MacKellar, C. Children with two genetic fathers. [letter on the internet]. European Bioethical Research [homepage on the internet].Scotland (UK). [cited 2007 March 12]. [about two pages]. Available from: http:// www.bioethics.org.uk/2_fathrs.htm Campbell, N, Reece J. Biology. 6th ed. San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings; 2002. 1247 p.

Embryo made using lab-built sperm. BBC News [article on the internet]. 2003 December 10 [cited 2007 March 12.] Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk./go/ pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/3307523.stm Hubner K, Fuhrmann G, Christenson LK et al. Derivation of oocytes from mouse embryonic stem cells.

Science 2003 May; 300(5623): 1251-1257.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine  

Research Repor t

Determinants and the Matching Polynomial A sa S cherer

M

athematics is such an abstract entity that connections often arise between different branches of the subject.

Many breakthroughs in mathematics occur when a mathematician views one type of problem through the lens of another. My summer research explored such a connection between linear algebra and graph theory.

First of all, what is graph theory? Well, interestingly enough, graph theory is the 2 1 study of graphs. But probably not the kinds of graphs you are thinking about.

In graph theory, a graph is defined as a set of vertices and a set of edges, 4 3 each edge consistFig. 1: A simple graph on 4 vertices. ing of two vertices.

G=

In visual terms, this can be thought of simply as a set of dots (vertices) and lines connecting the dots (edges.) A sample graph labeled G is shown (Fig. 1). This graph has four vertices, labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4, and five edges, (1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), and (3, 4). Notice that, if we look at any two vertices, there is either an edge connecting them or no edge connecting them. For example, vertices 1 and 2 have an edge connecting them, but 2 and 4 do not. We can utilize this binary quality to express all of the information of the graph in a simple table of 1’s and 0’s called the adjacency matrix (Fig. 2).

From this table, we can glean the same information as we could from the graph G. If we look at position (1, 2) in the matrix, there is a 1, so we know that there is an edge between vertices 1 and 2.

Similarly, we see a 0 in position (2, 4) and thus know there is no edge between vertices 2 and 4. We have thus conFig. 2: Adjacency matrix of G. structed a very powerful connection between the graph G and this matrix. Intriguingly, there is a branch of mathematics that deals with matrices called linear algebra. Thus, examining the properties of this adjacency matrix utilizing linear algebra will likely yield interesting results about the associated graph.

1

2 3

4

1 2

3 4

0

1 1 1 0

1 1 0

1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0

First, though, we must learn more about graphs. A circuit, intuitively enough, is defined as a path along edges that leads back to the same vertex it starts with. We can describe any circuit by its order, or how many vertices are involved with it. The only mildly unintuitive piece about circuits is the fact that we define a singular vertex as a circuit of order 1 and a singular edge as a circuit of order 2. We define any circuits of order 3 or higher as proper circuits.

Now we define a circuit cover. A circuit cover is a subset of a graph G constructed by removing edges only (not vertices) from G until the resulting subgraph has the following

Matching Cover Circuit cover negated by matching matrix Circuit cover still counted in determinant

Fig 3: A visual illustration of the circuit cover of G.

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of the University of Puget Sound property: that every connected (by edges) portion of the subgraph is a singular circuit. It is much easier to understand visually, so here is a visual illustration of every circuit cover of G: (Fig. 3) Note that some circuit covers include proper circuits, while some include only isolated vertices and isolated edges. The latter are called matching covers.

So matching covers are circuit covers with only circuits of order 1 or 2. The circuit covers highlighted in blue are all of G’s matching covers (Fig. 3).

Now, you might say, is there a handy way of keeping track of all of a graph’s matching covers in a convenient algebraic format? Well, I am glad you hypothetically asked! The matching polynomial does just such a thing. First, we assign variable w1 to correspond with an isolated vertex, while we assign variable w2 to correspond with an isolated edge.

Then, to calculate the term corresponding to a matching cover, we multiply together all of the w-variables corresponding with components of the cover. For example, the cover with just four isolated vertices would be expressed as w14 (Fig. 4). The matching polynomial of a graph is what 1

4

w14

2

1

3

4

w12w2

2

1

3

4

2

w22

3

Fig. 4: Some circuit covers and corresponding w-terms. we get by adding up the w-variable terms corresponding to each matching cover of the graph. So the matching polynomial of our graph G is M(G) = w14 + 5w12 w2 + 2w22.

Computing this polynomial by hand was easy enough for this fairly simple graph. It turns out that computing it for larger graphs, even using computer algorithms, becomes very complex and computationally inefficient. This is where our linear algebra connection comes in. If we take the determinant (a basic computation of linear algebra, performed on square matrices) of a slightly modified form of the adjacency matrix of a graph, we get a sum of terms that exactly correspond with the circuit covers of that graph! That is, every circuit cover effectively “contributes” a term to this determinant sum. Matching covers contribute their respec-

w1

-w21/2

w21/2 w21/2 w21/2 w1 w21/2 w21/2

-w21/2 -w21/2 w1 0 -w21/2 w1 -w21/2 0 Fig. 5: Matching matrix of G.

tive matching polynomial terms, while other circuit covers (those containing proper circuits) contribute unwanted terms (since we only wish to count the contribution of the matching covers.)

This modified adjacency matrix, formulated by Farrell and Wahid, is called the matching matrix (Fig. 5).1 This matrix is constructed in such a way that, if a graph contains no proper even circuits, the determinant of the graph’s matching matrix equals its matching polynomial. On the other hand, if the graph does contain proper even circuits, then the only unwanted terms in the determinant of its matching matrix correspond to proper even circuits. This is still quite a useful result, but is there a way to use this matrix to compute the matching polynomial of any graph? Here is where my research came in.

Due to the nature 2 1 of the determinant, there is a way to modify the matching matrix so that the determinant tracks one particular edge’s 4 3 involvement in 1/2 1/2 1/2 different types of 1 2 2 2 circuit covers. Pick 1/2 1/2 1/2 an edge in G, say 1 2 2 2 (1, 2). Now multiply 1/2 1/2 the terms in the 1 2 2 matching matrix 1/2 1/2 corresponding to 1 2 2 this edge (in slots (1, 2) and (2, 1)) Fig. 6: Marked edge and marked matrix. by i (the imaginary number) (Fig. 6). Now when we take the determinant of this new, “marked” matrix, any terms with an i in them will be ones that correspond with circuit covers with edge (1, 2) in a proper even circuit. (In this case, the circuit cover in Fig. 3 highlighted in red.) Since the only unwanted (non-matching) determinant terms arise from proper even circuits, then if we mark an edge that is contained in every proper even circuit of the graph and subtract the i-tagged terms from the determinant of the normal matching matrix, we will get the matching polynomial! So for our graph G, we are set, since there is only one proper even circuit in the graph.

w

-iw

iw w

w w

w w

-w

-w

w

-w

0

-w

0 w

Unfortunately, graphs do not generally act so nicely. It is frequently the case that there are many proper even circuits in a graph, and that they do not all share a single edge. In this case we must use the same “marking the matrix” idea, but expand it into a multiple-step algorithm. This algorithm, the main fruit of my research, is both interesting and entirely computationally inefficient. But such is math...

1.

Wahid, S. A., The Determinant of Matching Matrix in the Evaluation of the Matching Polynomial, Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications Vol. 36, pp. 62-72

22

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

A Shot at Life in the Dark M at t L onsdal e

H

umans, Earth, the Sun, even our galaxy exist in only a small portion of known space. Our galaxy is big, 80,000 to 100,000 light years across, and the universe holds many galaxies, but that is not all the universe holds.1 We cannot see a major part of our universe. What we can see, the Earth, sun, desk, computer, magazine, all of this matter is estimated to take up only 4% of the total mass and energy in our universe. 2 That is like looking at a hundred stars and only seeing four of them.

NASA, ESA, R. Massey- Caltech

Obviously there is a gap in logic at this moment. If there are supposed to be so many stars out there, where is the other 96% of the universe? The answer was recently discovered in the theory of dark matter. Only officially discovered in the 1990’s, dark matter and energy has quickly emerged in the world of physics as one of the most complex and fascinating of all fields.

how objects like black holes were inferred from distorted images. Because of the difference compared with an optical lens, it will create a ring where you expected to see a single point, or sometimes an irregular multiple image. Since Einstein finalized the equations on how this effect could be achieved, it is often called an Einstein Ring.

NASA, ESA, R. Massey- Caltech

To see something that one cannot see, different methods for detection A model of the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter in the universe. are needed. The best way to detect unseen matter is by using a force we are all used to: gravity. The simple little force that allows Recently scientists used this effect just like looking at a us all to have our coffee in the morning without a straw photo taken through a magnifying lens. If you look around is also used to detect actual matter invisible to the naked with an unknown lens at known objects, and calculate the eye. Although still considered a theory, the force of grav- distortion, you can infer the shape and properties of the ity is considered a constant in the universe, and a certain glass that makes up that lens. By using the Hubble Space amount of gravitational pull is due to two masses attraction Telescope to map a large area of the sky looking for these to each other. gravitational lensing distortions, scientists were able to detect the general three-dimensional shape of the missing Even light itself cannot escape this awesome force. If there dark matter, which is their “lens.” Their three-dimensional is enough mass, light will either be slowed trying to leave graphic gives us the first “picture” of this hidden universe. the object (gravitational red shift) or deflected. Gravitational lensing occurs when light on its way to the observer is Last year, other scientists published this composite photo deflected in its path by a massive object. This was initially of the Bullet Cluster. It was known that this cluster is made up of two galaxies that collided about 150 million years ago with spectacular releases of energy. By comparing the visible matter, primarily made of hot gases seen in the x-ray maps (pink in the photo), with total mass as determined with the gravitational lensing measurements (blue in the photo), they could actually “see” where the dark matter made up a large part of the cluster.

Visible Matter

Dark Matter

The distribution of visible vs. dark matter in the universe.

The theory of dark matter and energy provided a possible explanation for one of the great mysteries in astrophysics.

The universe is not only expanding too rapidly, but the rate at which it is expanding is increasing, not decreasing! Based on the theory of gravity, the stars, with their mass and the

23

NASA, CXC, CfA, M. Markevitch

of the University of Puget Sound

Bullet Cluster where dark and visible matter have been pulled apart by the collision of two galaxies. distance traveled should, at this point in time, be collapsing back on themselves due to the gravitationally attractive forces between molecules of matter.

This is simply not true, but by adding dark matter to the equation makes this observable phenomenon work. All this extra mass means we should not have reached the contraction stage yet, and the universe is actually behaving as it should.

Alright, let us take stock in what we have so far. 1) Only 4% of the universe can be seen with our current technology; 2) we are getting better at detecting where dark matter is located through the use of gravity; 3) we have an expanding universe with expanding possibilities for life; and 4) the chance for life to be hidden just out of our view.

Oh, that is right; I completely forgot to mention the possibility of life. I have no doubt that there is life out there, somewhere, in the universe. The statistical odds and my faith in strange things have to make it so. I just think we are going about looking in all the wrong places. Let us explore dark matter, the part of space still unknown to us, still strange, and yet affecting our every move. How cool would

it be to have someone living in a dark matter café, reading a magazine at this very moment about how there is 4% of the universe that they cannot see and wondering if there is life on the other side.

After all, we only exist in the small portion of known space, leaving a gap of trillions of miles and a googolplex of opportunities for life to grow just out of our range of understanding. It truly is a shot in the dark to find Mr. and Mrs. Dark Matter, address: anywhere in the universe, but here we come.

If you have more questions, be sure to ask your friendly neighborhood professor as I did when writing this article.

Special thanks to Professor of Physics and Manufacturing Technology at Boise State University, Ed Lonsdale.

1.

2.

Sanders, Robert. Milky Way galaxy is warped and vibrating like a drum. UCBerkeley News 2006 Jan 9.

Available from: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/ releases/2006/01/09_warp.shtml.

Cline, David B.. “The Search for Dark Matter,” Scientific American. 2003 Mar; 288(3): 50-58.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine  

Science in Contex t

How to Save the World from Human Papillomavirus Sexually Transmitted Infections and you S t eph a nie B aum a n

C

hances are high that if you have had sex, you have been in contact with HPV, Human Papillomavirus. It is a group of over 100 strains of virus associated with epithelial cells which form skin. Over 30 of these strains are sexually transmitted, causing genital infections ranging from unnoticed harmless infections to painful genital warts, squamous cell anal cancer, and cervical cancer. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection.

There has been a lot of recent news coverage about genital HPV, its association with cervical cancer, and a new vaccine.

Approximately 99% of cervical cancers are related to HPV. Two types, HPV types 16 and 18, are responsible for 70% of these cancers. HPV can cause other terrible problems too. Around 80% of squamous cell anal cancers and 40% of cancer of the vulva are related to HPV. A vaccine has been developed that is effective against these two strains.

What you know about HPV may make a huge difference in the reduction of this often deadly cancer.1

Squamous epithelial cells are thin, flat cells that form skin.

HPV will not infect or grow in any other types of cells. Of the over 100 strains of HPV, approximately 60 occur in regular epithelial cells. Common hand or foot warts are in this category. The other forty or so types of HPV infect mucous membranes. These areas can be described as skin-

like layers that are moist and line organs or cavities. Such examples are the anus and vagina.1 Unlike many other common sexually transmitted infections, HPV cannot be treated by antibiotics, because it is a virus.

Since viruses are not living organisms, they need to infect a host organism in order to replicate. Once replicated, viruses go on to infect more cells. There is no way to eliminate a virus without killing the host cells. Prevention is the only way to protect yourself.

Transmission of HPV HPV cannot be spread through blood or other bodily fluids. Only skin-to-skin contact spreads HPV, such as direct genital contact during sex. Some cases have reported that people have contracted HPV from oral-genital and handgenital contact, but this is very uncommon. The percentage of affected individuals is alarmingly high, with approximately 50% of college women contracting HPV within four years of first having sex. Using condoms consistently can cut the risk of contracting HPV, but they can not eliminate the entire risk.1

Symptoms and Association with Cancer

Wikimedia Commons

The types of mucosal/genital HPV are separated into lowrisk and high-risk categories for association with cervical cancer. Many types of HPV show no symptoms, and often go away on their own. Other types of HPV result in genital warts (also called condyloma acuminatum), which can be itchy and painful. These types are in the lowrisk category. The two most common forms of wart causing viruses are HPV-6 and HPV11.1 There is no antiviral therapy for treating HPV. Most treatments Cervical squamous cell carcinoma, a type of cancer caused by HPV. try to destroy le-

25 Wikimedia Commons

of the University of Puget Sound

Normal squamous cells on left. HPV-infected cells on right. sion tissue while damaging as little normal tissue as possible such as using liquid nitrogen which burns off warts. 2 High-risk types of HPV do not normally show symptoms visible to the naked eye. Changes in the cells can be seen only with a Pap smear.1 Checking for the presence of HPV DNA from cells obtained in a Pap smear, is a very accurate way to identify if cervical cells contain the virus. Some examples of the high-risk types are HPV-16, HPV-18, and HPV-45. 2 Precancerous areas usually undergo a series of abnormal developmental changes over many years before they turn malignant. Most changes in cell structure resolve spontaneously and do not progress into cancer, but with increasing severity of cellular changes, there are decreased changes in spontaneous resolution. 2 Anal cancer has a lower association with HPV than cervical cancer. Many anal HPV infections occur as a result of anal intercourse. The virus is known to spread from other genital areas to the anus. A person may have infections in the cervix and anus simultaneously, but the only test to detect HPV is from a Pap smear in the cervix. There is no way to detect HPV in the anus without the presence of warts. 2

The HPV Vaccine A vaccine against four types of HPV has been developed by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. The vaccine is not therapeutic — it will not help a person with a pre-existing infection to get rid of the virus. This vaccine does not contain a killed or weakened virus like many other vaccines. Instead, some of the virus’ important proteins are contained in the vaccine.

The immune system’s response to these proteins works well enough to prevent the virus from later infecting squamous epithelial cells. 3 The vaccine protects against two types of HPV (6 and 11) which are responsible for about 90% of all genital warts.

HPV-16 and HPV-18, which account for 70% of all cervical cancers, are also protected against from the vaccine. Unfortunately, the vaccine does not protect against any other type of HPV.1 Elimination of just these four types of HPV from the population, however, would greatly decrease the number of cervical cancer cases and alleviate almost all HPV related genital warts.

The duration of effectiveness for the vaccine is currently unknown. More research is needed to determine if booster shots will be necessary to increase the length of protection

from HPV. Currently, a person is given a series of three shots in a six month period.4 The vaccine is being recommended for females between nine and twelve by the Federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. “Catch-up” vaccinations are also recommended for women between thirteen and twenty-six. Research is also being conducted to determine if women over twenty-six would benefit from the vaccine. Exposure to HPV previously can be a possible reason why the vaccine would not necessarily benefit older women. College students who have not become sexually active would be great candidates for the vaccine. Health care providers can offer more information on whether or not you could benefit from the vaccine.1

HPV in Men Men also contract HPV, and pass it on to their partners.

Many men do not have any symptoms associated with HPV, unless they contract a type that is associated with genital warts. This makes men major contributors to the spread of HPV, since they are often symptom-free and almost always unaware of their status. Combined with the fact that there is no test for men that can detect HPV, men run a great risk of contracting HPV, passing it on and experiencing severe consequences in the future. Penile and anal cancer can be caused by certain types of HPV, and there is no early detection available1 Some studies have been conducted to see if the vaccine is safe for men, and to see if their immune systems respond to the vaccine. The vaccine was proven safe, and an immune response was present, but more studies are being conducted to determine the effectiveness of the vaccine on reducing warts caused by HPV in men, and reducing transmission of HPV to partners.1

Additional Information Get informed! Enough with all the facts and figures, what can you do? Contact your health care provider or CHWS for more information on HPV and the vaccine. CHWS can order the vaccine for anyone who is interested. Check with your health insurance company to find out if they cover the cost of the vaccine. Unfortunately the student health insurance does not cover the vaccine. Prevention is the only way to eliminate the risk of HPV. Do your part by getting tested, getting the vaccine, and using protection.

1.

2.

3.

4.

American Cancer Society. Frequently Asked Questions About Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Vaccines [Internet]. [modified 2007 Jan 18; cited 2007 Feb 28].

Available from http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/ content/CRI_2_6x_FAQ_HPV_Vaccines.asp Knipe DM, Howley PM. Fields Virology. 4th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2001.

Komaroff AL. M.D. The cervical cancer vaccine. Harvard Health Letter 2006 September; 31:1-2.

National Cancer Institute. Understanding Cancer Series: HPV Vaccine [Internet]. [modified 2006 Sept. 1; cited 2007 Feb 28]. Available from http://www.cancer. gov/cancertopics/understandingcancer/HPV-vaccine

26

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

The Immortality of Turtles and Tortoises A nne P e w

Turtle fossil One out of the many intriguing facts discovered was the ability of a tortoise to practically start and stop its heart.

In human beings, the beating of the heart is controlled by a variety of nerve signals that start a cascade of processes which eventually lead to contractions of the heart. These pulsations are caused by involuntary muscles, meaning that humans cannot control the muscles. Unlike people, a turtle’s cardiac center is not controlled by nerve stimulations and due to this, most turtles lack a continuous heartbeat. It is still unknown if the reptiles themselves are capable of controlling the cardiac muscles at will or if the heart is still an involuntary muscle that has a different physiology.

A possible explanation as to why turtles and tortoises have their particular morphology of a closing shell is that, because of their relative slowness and their susceptibly to cold temperatures, the species had to rapidly adapt or die out. Recent studies have shown that of all the turtle fossils discovered, few show an intermediate stage in regards to the development of the shell, suggesting that the formation of this anatomical structure occurred fairly rapidly. A tortoises’ shell not only provides a virtually indestructible shelter but also a warm habitat. During periods of extreme cold, a tortoise will retreat into its shell, all but stop its

Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) heart, and hibernate until temperatures warms. By reducing the need for constant cardiac activity, its energy reserves are not depleted and can therefore sustain the reptile for a lengthy duration.

While controlling the heartbeat is all well and good, most researchers are attempting to discern why certain organ cells in turtles do not age. A plethora of studies have shown that a tortoise of 150+ years has identical cell tissue to that of a young, 20 year old tortoise. This indicates that the deteriorating process that we call old age does not occur in these organisms. In fact, most turtles die due to disease, predators, accidents, and human interference.

The reason for this anomaly remains unknown. A current theory is that the telomere length in tortoises is not reduced as much as in humans. Studies have shown that the shortening of telomeres is responsible for aging in human beings. However, when the reduction rate of human telomere length was compared to that of turtles, there was little difference between the two. Yet the length of a turtle’s telomere is significantly longer than a human’s, indicating that even though the reduction rates are the same, it still takes longer for the telomeres in a tortoise to be shortened to such an extent that death occurs.

The hope in discovering the explanation for this phenomenon is that besides learning a lot of cool, interesting facts about turtles and tortoises, the knowledge can be applied to fields such as medical research. By knowing more about the aging process and the chemical balances that are involved, we can provide a greater insight into the mechanisms and diseases that are generally induced by old age, such as Alzheimer’s. This more in-depth understanding could potentially lead to cures or at least a better prevention system than the current ones. In short, tortoises and turtles are amazing creatures that could be mankind’s stepping stone to unimaginable amounts of knowledge, and they are just really extraordinary creatures.

African spurred tortoise (Geochelone sulcata) Wikimedia Commons: Aaron Logan

Wikimedia Commons

Nowadays, tortoises and turtles have come under the scrutiny of scientific inquiry. The quest for discovering the secret to the longevity of these reptiles has prompted many experiments, ranging from the chemical concentrations in a tortoise’s brain to the components of various organ cells.

NOAA

T

ruly bizarre creatures, tortoises have always been a source of much speculation in the human world. Revered for their extraordinarily lengthy lives, these animals have become icons of worship in numerous cultures and religions.

Many societies even believe that tortoises bring or symbolize longevity in human lives.

Welcome to The Allium

Scientists do not recommend cooking with Allium radiodurans

Allium radiodurans A member of the onion family, though far less friendly than its culinary counterparts.

A. radiodurans is found in highly contaminated areas throughout North America, where it can grow underground to a size of four feet in diameter. These onions are highly volatile and will explode in response to strong vibrations, causing them to act as a sort of organic land mine. Special machinery designed by the U.S. Army has been used in the past to remove these plants from the soil, though a ban was recently placed on such activity due to rumors of their use in biochemical warfare. These concerns stem from reports of entire cities succumbing to uncontrollable secretions from the tear ducts, explosive sneezing, and a significant drop in birth rate.

The following pages are works of satire.

28

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Saving the Rainforest, One Note at a Time W ren W illi a ms

F

Learning how to play in this sort of situation would also be ideal. In the beginning, when the farmer is learning, no one will be able to hear his attempts if he is standing in the middle of his field. The plants will benefit from the attention regardless of the skill, and neighbors will benefit from the lack of noise pollution. For large families, this could also be a bonding experience — a family band would surely have a

Wikimedia Commons

or decades people from multiple countries have debated the best way to prevent deforestation of tropical rainforests.

Plans have ranged from raising money to buy out swaths of land to turn into preserves to educating local farmers about the impact of clear-cutting. These efforts, while noble, are overly complicated. The simplest answer has been right before our eyes the entire time, but no one has thought to make the connection.

growth. Thus, it should come as no surprise that a skilled musician should be able to encourage an entire crop to grow, rendering pesticides unnecessary. This process would also be more cost-effective. A decent guitar or mandolin can be purchased for a couple hundred dollars, much less than the cost of fertilizer. Even better, this is a one-time cost — supplies such as guitar picks and new strings are negligible expenses.

Wikimedia Commons

The Allium

Before

Teaching farmers about the ills of clear-cutting is all well and good, but it is simply education. What we need to do is provide them with a means to actively participate in ecologically safe practices. Since rainforest soil is generally nutrient-poor, we need to present the farmers with an easy way to aid in crop growth. The use of fertilizers could have a negative impact on the surrounding forests, not to mention such augmentation would be costly. Crop rotation is another method by which the soil can be enriched, but the payoff of this practice is seen only in the long term. To save the forests, we must give the farmers a cost-effective, quick fix that will show rapid results and continue to be effective for years on end.

The answer is quite simple. By teaching the farmers to play musical instruments, we can both improve crop growth and dramatically decrease deforestation. This may seem like an odd solution at first, but multiple studies support this method. Research has shown a correlation between positive activities such as talking, singing, reading, and plant

After

massive impact on both the growth rate of their crops and their own personal ties.

Once the players gain skill, the pride and enjoyment they receive from communing with their crops will provide good reason for them to continue. In this manner land will remain usable for decades at a time, which would put a halt to the practice of clear-cutting. It is also possible that, when seeing his land’s response to his musical prowess, the farmer himself will learn to appreciate and respect the environment.

Picture it. A man, standing alone in the center of a field, holding only a guitar. He plucks a chord, and bursts into a rousing rendition of a classic folk song, slowly strolling from row to row. As the sun beats down overhead and the plants around him busily photosynthesize, he cannot help but grin beatifically. After all, he, and he alone, is responsible for the incredible healthy growth of his crop. That would certainly be a source of happy feelings.

The Allium

One Time in Lab...

Allium has compiled a list of one-liners from science students detailing the funny, bizarre, and just downright scary things that have happened to us in lab.

There is no way we could have made some of these up. …My lab partner spilled a beaker of titrant on me, muttered “Oops!” and walked off. …We set the ceiling on fire. …I ran a DNA gel while dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. …I lit an Erlenmeyer flask on fire, handed it to my T.A., and walked out of the lab. …A construction worker fell through the ceiling. …My professor caught a math book alight with a flaming Hot Wheels car.

29 …I was blowing out a match and lit my hair on fire. …My friend got burned by liquid nitrogen when the professor dropped it. …I inhaled ether and spent the rest of the lab on the floor, giggling. …I sat in acid and burnt a hole in my pants. ...I spilled Oil of Wintergreen on myself and spent the next week feeling minty fresh. …I ran a two-hour reaction without adding any enzyme. …I was euthanizing flies, and made myself sick off the carbon dioxide. …We discovered the lab windows didn’t open when chlorine gas leaked into the lab… …I accidentally turned on the air nozzle and almost knocked my lab partner off her chair.

Nick Kiest

of the University of Puget Sound

30

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Elements Quiz W h at 1. a. b. c. d. e.

ph ysic a l c ons ta n t a re you ?

What is your major?

Humanities Social Science Natural Science Art/Music Math/Computer Science

2. It is a rare, warm day in the Pacific Northwest, what do you wear? a. Hell, no shirt today! b. Tank top and shorts c. The usual T-shirt and jeans d. My new sassy swimsuit e. Same thing as everyday; I always look good 3. a. b. c. d. e.

Favorite comfort food: Spaghetti and meatballs Chocolate Mom’s heartwarming soup Spinach salad Wiener Schnitzel

4. You are invited to the biggest block party of the year, who do you take? a. All your closest friends b. The hottest date you can lay your hands on c. Stag, you don’t need a date d. Your significant other e. Whoever you run into on the way there 5. It is the holiday shopping season, how do you shop? a. You go straight for what you need and get out b. It is a mandatory, all-day affair with your entire extended family c. You are an impulse buyer, you only take an afternoon (the day before) d. You browse and buy nothing, opting for homemade gifts e. You avoid the crowds like the plague and stick to internet shopping Total up your points to determine what physical constant you are:

5 - 9: Newtonian Gravitational Constant: You are a steady constant to all your friends and family. You generally leave a lasting impression on 6.674x10-11 m3 * kg-1 * s-2 people you get close to, but do not affect those who you do not care about.

G

10 - 13: Speed of Light: You are a quick, competitive individual that loses to no one. You jump to be involved in as many activities as you can.

So far, no one has been able to find anything beyond you.

14 - 17: Avogadro’s Number: You are a popular person who loves hanging out in a large group, but you can also get lost in the crowd. You are very useful at problem-solving and people come to you with their issues.

22 - 25: Planck’s Constant: You are a unique personality that goes against established norms. You break new ground, but are also solitary and find yourself in a classroom on weekends working on Schrödinger’s equation.

a a a a a

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18 - 21: Spring Constant: You are an innately flexible individual that can react accordingly depending on the different pressures you are under.

People like to have you around because you are predictable under stress.

30

Key: 2, c = 3, c = 1, c = 3, c = 2, c =

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  of the University of Puget Sound

Secrets to the perfect subduction

Multiple Orogenies, are you cummingtonite?

Carbon dating: Is it worth it?

10 great tips for cleaning up eruptions

Problems with intrusive dikes?

How to perfect your thrusting angle: Why low angle thrusts are better!

Find your hot spot!

ISBN 123123156-4

9 781231 231562

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