Matter Magazine Winter 2015 by Pradyumn Dayal

MATTERMAGAZINE.ORG

WINTER 2016 SUPPLEMENT

EXETER’S SCIENCE MAGAZINE

RELATIVITY THE CENTENNIAL A supermassive black hole shoots out high energy X-Rays. NASA

THE PROS AND CONS OF MEDICINAL MERIJUANA

A NEW GENE THERAPY

ISSUE NO. 1

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses.“ Henry Ford

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Winter 2016 4

Who is Elon Musk?

CRISPR Gene Therapy

The up-and-coming electric car startup, Tesla Motors, is quickly gaining speed; just one man started it all.

After 30 years, a revolutionary genetics treatment is finally confirmed, but its ethical implications are under fire.

By Aum Bhuva

By Connie Cai and Leila Connolly

The Mystery of Mary Jane

Just how beneficial is medicinal marijuana? Do we even know enough to say? By April Murphy and Gavin Hickey

A Centenarian’s Birthday

Einstien revolutionized how scientists see the universe with his theory of relativity. This year is its 100th birthday. By George Turer

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dear Readers, Welcome to the first issue of Matter Magazine 2015-16, Exeter’s only student-run publication devoted to

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Matter Magazine was founded in 2009, and our goal

since then has been to make STEM relevant and accessible for the Exeter community. Matter Magazine has gone through a lot of changes in these past years, but we have stayed true to the founding goals of our

club — to spread science and technology across campus. We hope that, with every issue, we bring ideas,

research, and inspiration to the minds of our fellow Exonians. After two and a half years of exclusively online articles, we’re back in print, and we hope you enjoy Matter in the blustery New England winter.

In this issue, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of general relativity, discuss recent discoveries in gene

therapy and medical research, question the ethics of medical marijuana, and debate the future of Elon Musk and Tesla Motors. If you’re interested in writing for Matter, we’d love to have you on our team. We meet

Sundays at 1:30 in the Seabrooke Room of Elm Street Dining Hall, or you can email us at ccai@exeter.edu or

Pranay Vemulamada

pvemulamada@exeter.edu to sign up for articles and to be added to our mailing list. And don’t forget to check out our website at mattermagazine.org! Without further ado, we present to you the first issue of Matter Magazine 2015-16. Peace ‘n’ love,

Connie and Pranay

Editors-in-Chief Connie Cai and Pranay Vemulamada

Art Director & Product Design Greg Miller

Publisher Pradyumn Dayal

Managing Editors Michelle Bosche and Philip Kuhn

Web Director Abhijay Bhatnagar

Advisor Sean Campbell

Section Editors Ivy Tran and Georgia Forbes

Business Board Maya Kim

Donors Morgan Sze, Mei Mei Mimi Ong, Evina Fung, and May Tan

Connie Cai

Elon Musk His story. His empire.

orn in 1971, Elon Musk spent most of his early life in South Africa. He did not fit in well in South Africa, and in 1989, moved to Canada and then into the US as part of a college transfer with the University of Pennsylvania. After dropping out of a PhD program at Stanford, Musk first noticed the acceleration in internet industries. Today, decades later, he has invested in automotive, aerospace, solar energy, energy storage, satellite, highspeed ground transportation, and multi-planetary expansion businesses. One of the many companies that contributes to Musk’s $12.5 billion net-worth is Tesla Motors. Its mission, as stated on its website, is “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.” It goes on to state that their first model, the Tesla Roadster, was made as a high end sports car because any new technology will initially be expensive. Furthermore, as a startup, they would gain more traction selling a high end car to high profile buyers than a mid range car. However, Elon Musk main-

tains that the eventual goal of the company is to provide the masses an affordable and completely electric car. In an interview with TEDTalks, he explains his business model well stating, “Whenever you’ve got really new technology, it generally takes about three major versions in order to make it a compelling mass-market product.” The Model S seems to be the second step towards that compelling mass-market product. It is projected that within the next five years, we will see an affordable electric car, priced at around $30,000, exit the Tesla factory. What does that mean to the average consumer in America? This new Tesla model is not likely to replace giants like the Prius or Camry on the road, but it will work towards creating a more sustainable-energy-centered economy. A few years ago, electric cars were introduced and lauded as a brilliant idea. They were said to be the direction of the future, but no inventor took the initiative to design such a vehicle. Musk was the first to actually put that into action with Tesla, making it the first successful motor car startup since Chrysler in 1925 (and the first ever successful electric car startup).

MEDICAL WEED.

nuff said.

Over the past seventeen years, states have begun to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Medical cannabis is normally used as a pain and nausea reliever, commonly prescribed to individuals with illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, acquired immune deficiency syndrome and cancer. The ages of patients prescribed cannabis range from toddlers to baby boomers. While marijuana has been legalized for medical purposes in almost half of all states, in 27 states marijuana remains a Schedule One drug. In the eyes of the Food and Drug Administration, marijuana is a dangerous narcotic. However, experts remain divided on if cannabis is as insidious as the federal government claims. In 23 states (and the District of Columbia) medical cannabis, for many, has become a gateway to healthy living. Cannabis was originally made illegal in 1937 through the Marijuana Tax Act. This was later ruled unconstitutional and Marijuana was scheduled by the Controlled Substances Act. It has allowed cancer patients relief from uncontrollable nausea and vomiting caused by radiation treatments. In some cases of patients marijuana has dramatically improved their condition, their symptoms, and their quality of life. For some individuals, medical cannabis is the only treatment that works. Cannabis is available as a prescription to treat nausea, seizures, vomiting, anorexia, chronic pain, and neurological problems. Medical pot is also commonly prescribed to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy to combat nausea and to increase appetite, which for some is the only thing that makes the treatment bearable. The American Public Journal of Health recently published a study that linked marijuana use to lower suicide rates. While in some cases medical cannabis has dramatically improved life, some experts are still wary to its side effects. “There is currently sound evidence that smoked marijuana is harmful. A past evaluation by several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use,” the FDA stated in an 2014 Inter-Agency advisory. Medical marijuana has been found to impair short term memory and cognitive skills, and currently no major group of medical experts has confirmed the safety of cannabis for medical use.The National Institute on Drug Abuse released a statement on cannabis use stating, “Early exposure to cannabinoids in adolescent rodents decreases the reactivity of brain dopamine reward centers later in

adulthood. To the extent that these findings generalize to humans, this could help explain early marijuana initiates’ increased vulnerability for drug abuse and addiction to other substances of abuse later in life that has been reported by most epidemiological studies.” While government agencies remain clearly anti-marijuana, 76% of medical professionals believe cannabis is safe for medical use. Although it has been seventeen years since medical marijuana was first legalized in a state for medical use, research remains contradictory and inconclusive. The cultivation and sale of recreational marijuana remains a felony in most states, with sentences ranging from five years to life and fines from $250,000 to $1,000,000. Being charged with the possession of marijuana can lead to incarceration for up to three years in forty six states. The future of pot seems clear, however. The medical marijuana industry is worth over $1.5 billion dollars, and is growing everyday. It is projected that in five years, that number will have increased over seven times. President Obama was recently quoted claiming the number of states who have legalized marijuana will grow exponentially in the future. Medical marijuana has the incredible potential to be prescribed to up to 33% of American citizens and while smoking marijuana remains illegal by federal law, the medical and recreational marijuana economies still continue to grow. However, as for any hot-button new drug, medical researchers remain divided on confirming the safety of this narcotic. Though almost two and a half million American citizen have a prescription to medical marijuana that forms their gateway to a healthier life, the long-term effects of pot are still largely unknown. Even as the pot economy grows, the ethics of medical marijuana remain questionable, and we must carefully weigh the benefits against the drawbacks.

By April Murphy and Gavin Hickey

8 ten useful in research, as stopping the function of a particular gene through mutations allows researchers to see the impact of that gene on cellular function. Another response mechanism to a double stranded break is that the cell can insert a new sequence into the place of the double-stranded break, allowing researchers to insert a healthy gene in the place of a mutated gene. Furthermore, as long as the guide RNA sequence matches with the DNA, the CRISPR/CAS9 mechanism can be used with many genes at once, and this multi-gene targeting ability is important for human diseases that can impact various genes at the same time.

GENETICS

CRISPR GENE THERAPY By Connie Cai and Leila Connolly

n recent years, a technique called CRISPR/CAS9, developed to efficiently and cheaply edit genes, has started to revolutionize genetic research. CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, are specific sequences in DNA that help guide DNA nucleases, proteins that can cut DNA. CAS9 is a DNA nuclease that can bind to CRISPR sequences and cut the DNA at those specific locations. The CRISPR/CAS9 mechanism was first discovered in E. Coli. bacteria in the 1980s and was confirmed in 2007.

Its original function was bacterial adaptive immunity: how bacteria responds to foreign DNA within its cell, much like how our immune system responds to foreign proteins in our body using antibodies. There are three different types of CRISPR gene modification methods. In the most common method used in bacteria, transcription and the formation of complementary RNA sequences are triggered when foreign DNA is detected in the cell. These complementary sequences of RNA to the foreign DNA can interact with the CAS9 protein, directing the nuclease to the DNA and cutting the foreign DNA at the target sequence.

Researchers have realized that this process can be manipulated to be used in many other organisms, including humans. Complementary “guide” RNA can be formed for many different gene sequences, and the RNACAS9 nuclease complex can be used to induce a break in the DNA where researchers need it. The CAS9 nuclease is unique because it induces a double-stranded break (breaks both strands of the DNA). In humans, the repair pathway that is activated after the double-strand break is error-prone, and the mutations in the new sequence often impair the function of the gene. This induced mutation is of-

CRISPR/CAS9 is a far more reliable and cheap genome editing system than previous systems. The ability to edit genes is paramount in the field of genetics, and CRISPR will help open the door for further research, with huge potential gains in terms of human disease treatment and prevention. Since this process can be used in different organisms, it can be further applied to engineer recombinant bacteria, improve plants/agriculture, create drugs for animals, and other useful applications. Although CRISPR/CAS9 certainly has many positive implications, it is still a recent system and all the wrinkles, errors, and quirks haven’t been fully ironed out. One of the major downsides is that since CRISPR lacks precise specificity, the CRISPR system can accidentally target genes that were not meant to be edited, inducing unintended mutations and gene disruptions. On the other hand, there are many ethical concerns with CRISPR and gene editing. How far is too far in terms of gene editing, and when do the harms outweigh the benefits? Recent experiments in China have used CRISPR to modify the genes of embryonic cells (albeit cells from nonviable embryos), raising concerns about the possibility of unintentional gene editing errors that end up causing more harm than

good. This idea of ‘humans playing God’ has powerful implications for the future of our society, and may come to drastically change the way humans interact with one another. Furthermore, gene editing inevitably comes with the possibility of eugenics-- editing out the “bad” genes in embryos or editing children/adults who have the bad genes. CRISPR is one of the greatest technological advancements in the genetics field to come along since the development of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), another powerful lab technique that revolutionized research. Yet with this great step forward in genetics comes new regulations and laws that must be set in place. As George Beadle, the author of The Place of Genetics in Modern Biology, wrote almost 60 years ago, “Whether we should do this [research] and, if so, how, are not questions science alone can answer. They are for society as a whole to think about.”

“

CRISPR/CAS9 is a far more reliable and cheap genome editing system...

“

RELATIVITY’S 100th BIRTHDAY By George Turer

At the beginning of the 20th Century, while trying to find a way to make gravity work in his new model of the universe, Albert Einstein created a new theory which radically redefined time and space. This new theory claimed that gravity was not a force, as we are taught in Physics 210, but an attribute of the universe caused by the stretching of time and space around an object. Today, we call this Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This year, general relativity gets 100 candles on its birthday cake, and, according to the theory, that cake will cause the light from those candles to be slightly curved. The conundrum Einstein pondered while creating his new theory was this: gravitational force, as described by Isaac Newton, allows objects separated by a great distance to affect each other instantaneously, or infinitely quickly, which is (as Einstein would say) verboten by Special Relativity. Einstein needed to find a new way, separate from Newton’s, to describe what gravity actually was. His inspiration came from a thought experiment which can be described as follows: holding a ball, you are sitting in a closed box that appears to be in zero gravity. When you let go of the ball, it stays where it is. All of a sudden, the ball starts to drift towards one wall. Why could this be? Einstein found two explanations. The first explanation was that a gravitational field outside of the box, which

was stationary, was pulling its occupants towards the floor. The second explanation determined that the box and the ball had been traveling at the same velocity (like an elevator and its occupants in free fall, causing them to accelerate at the same rate) when all of a sudden the box slowed down, or accelerated in the opposite direction, causing the ball to catch up with the wall (or, when the elevator hit the ground… splat). Both of these explanations worked to prove something important to Einstein: the effects of a gravitational field are the same as those of any acceleration in a closed system. Without looking at your surroundings, you yourself can’t tell the difference between being pulled towards the earth, or moving towards the Earth because you are traveling through space faster than the Earth is. Though this may seem like an arbitrary distinction, it led to new thoughts about what happens when light enters a gravitational field. Using Einstein’s elevator analogy, light entering a gravitational field is like shooting two arrows in the elevator, one while the elevator is falling and one right before it hits the ground. The arrow shot while the elevator is falling will hit the wall directly across from it. However, the second arrow will not Robin Hood the first, but will instead hit below it, where the other arrow would have been if the elevator hadn’t stopped. If you are an observer inside the elevator while this happens, it will actually look like the arrow curved in the air. Under the analogy, the elevator hitting the ground is physically identical to the zero-gravity box entering a gravitational field, meaning that light is actually curved by a gravitational field. Furthermore, knowing that light always moved at a constant speed in a constant direction through space-time,

Einstein brilliantly concluded that since gravity curved light, gravity was a curve in space time, not a force. General relativity actually filled in a lot of holes left by Newton’s explanation. For instance, it explained mathematically why Mercury’s elliptical orbit spins about the Sun. However, its implications are far greater than that. General relativity offers new ways of understanding black holes and wormholes, which, more than just places with strong gravitational force, are actually points in the universe where space-time gets pinched or broken. It offers a way to predict how the Universe will expand and if it will continue to do so forever. Even if you aren’t interested in the structure of the entire universe, General Relativity is still relevant to you. Any technology that uses exact measurements of light over a large distance needs to correct for the curving general relativity causes. Perhaps most importantly, your GPS would consistently send you to the wrong place if it didn’t accommodate for the curvature in the radio waves

between positioning satellites. So, the next time you are sitting in Good Karma Café, which, if you are like most Exonians, you used your phone’s GPS to find, raise your milkshake to General Relativity and wish it a well-deserved happy 100th birthday.

A supermassive black hole shoots off X-rays (shown in blue), and lies at the center of this galaxy.

Stay tuned for our Spring issue! The Matter Team

Credit: NASA

Images NASA, Unsplash, Flickr, Pexels, Rachel Luo Sources YouTube, TED Conferences, WaitButWhy, Tesla Motors Pew Research Center, ProCon.org, International Business Times, Web M.D., The Bulletin, WNYC

Radio, CNN, LiveStrong, National Institute on Drug Abuse, CBS News, The Denver Post, PBS, WIRED YouTube, New England BioLabs, The Jackson Laboratory Britannica