Breakthrough

BREAKTHROUGH The Ramaz Science Publication May 2016

IN THIS ISSUE Gravitational Waves The Superman Memory Crystal Climate Consensus And more!

Table of Contents How to Surf the Amazon

by Gabriel Klapholz ‘17 Pg. 3 NASA, Art, and Poetry

by Tamar Sidi ‘17 Pg. 4 Mosquitoes and Gene Drive

by Ariel Attias ‘18 Pg. 5 Gravitational Waves

by Jonah Sobel ‘17 Pg. 6 Diversity Increases Productivity

by David Grinberg ‘19 Pg. 8 The Superman Memory Crystal

by Abigail Huebner ‘18 Pg. 9 The Earth May Sprin Faster as Glaciers Melt

by Daniel Jaspan ‘17 Pg. 10 Climate Consensus

by Oriya Romano ‘17 Pg. 11 Garbage-Loving Storks Refuse to Migrate

by Gabriel Klapholz ‘17 Pg. 12 Arsenic from Chile Copper Mines Reaches Antarctica

by Daniel Jaspan ‘17 Pg. 13

How to Surf the Amazon

As the river that carries the largest volume of water, comprising approximately 20% of all freshwater discharge into the oceans, the Amazon has always been a core element of South American life. Aside from its incredible wildlife, astounding length, and deep ecological significance within its region, the Amazon also has an interesting feature – the locals can surf on it. How could a river provide room for individuals to surf? The answer lies in a wave called Pororoca, meaning the great roar.

Pororoca is a tidal bore, a wave that flows in from the ocean and spreads to many rivers worldwide. After reaching the Amazon River from the Atlantic Ocean, the wave moves up the river “on a path of destruction.” The locals predict the wave’s arrival, as it can be heard up to an hour before it appears, and move their boats and animals away from the river’s edge. A group of people, however, called bore riders, try to surf the wave rather than avoiding it. The wave travels for miles, allowing these surfers to have a long substantial ride.

The local legend dictates that three naughty children cause the wave as a practical joke on the surrounding population. The truth, however, is that the tidal bore results from the force of gravity. During new and full moons, water flows into the Amazon from the Atlantic rather than flowing out. The phenomenon results from the difference in tide – the river’s tide remains relatively shallow as the ocean’s tide is high, thus causing a wave to propagate up the river. As the Amazon and the Atlantic clash, the river’s flow reverses and a wave moves upstream with surprising strength.

A Pororoca occurs most intensely during the equinoxes in September and March, when the Earth, the sun, and the moon all align. The collective gravitational pull of the three celestial bodies causes ocean tides to reach their maximum height. On March 23, when the full moon is out, the Pororoca is bound to be significant. Indeed, in 2003, Serginho Laus, a Pororoca-riding aficionado, broke records in his 33.25-minute long ride of 6.3 miles. Laus was on the Araguari River, a river in the Brazilian Amazon basin.

Surfing the large waves can be very dangerous. The waves can be compared to tsunamis, as they carry huge amounts of force. Additionally, the waves carry the surfers along a hazardous path in a jungle filled with “jaguars, crocodiles, snakes, piranhas, parasites, and tropical diseases.” “You can’t go alone,” said Laus. “You need to have a crew, with boat pilots and locals that know the way of the river,” he maintained.

Aside from surfing the waves, the Brazilians also organize festivals to celebrate the coming of the Pororoca. The most famous of these celebrations is in São Domingos do Capim in Para State. The date of this year’s Pororoca remains unannounced, but when it comes, the surfers will surely go out to greet it.

Gabriel Klapholz ‘17 Works Cited Klein, Joanna. “This Week Surfers Will Ride a Wave in the Amazon.” The New York Times.

The New York Times, 14 Mar. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

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NASA, Art, and Poetry

NASA has found a way to have art and poetry exist outside the boundaries of time and space. They plan to save the public’s work, expressing how they see exploration, on a chip and to then store in a spacecraft.

“Space exploration is an inherently creative activity,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a statement. “We are inviting the world to join us on this great adventure by placing their artwork on the OSIRISREx spacecraft, where it will stay in space for millennia.”

It will take about seven years for OSIRIS-REx to hit the target asteroid, Bennu, and return a sample to earth to be studied. After it is studied for about a year, NASA will wait for Bennu to come close to earth so the spacecraft can easily return (which will also take about a year.) NASA leaves the asteroid in early 2021 and will return to earth in late 2023.

At the end of the mission, only the artwork will be left in space and the sample capsule will fall back to earth.

“The spacecraft itself will remain in space in a safe orbit around the sun, and without the weathering effects of the atmosphere, it has the potential to exist for thousands of years,” says Eric Mortan. If you would like to submit artwork or writing head over to http://www. asteroidmission.org/WeTheExplorers/!

Works Cited

Tamar Sidi ‘17

Northon, Karen. “NASA Invites Public to Send Artwork to an Asteroid.” NASA. NASA, 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

Image above of OSIRIS=REx taken from NASA’s website.

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Mosquitoes and the Gene Drive

You feel a tiny prick on your arm. Days later, you may have a fever, joint pain, night sweats, or severe fatigue. Each year, mosquitoes kill at least 1,000,000 people. Diseases such as Dengue, Yellow Fever, Malaria, and West Nile Virus affect 700 million people annually. As mosquitoes evolve and gain more resistance towards the conventional chemical solutions, more drastic measures are needed.

Scientists have discovered a new and controversial way to end mosquito-caused deaths. How? Genetic engineering. By changing the DNA of the insects, we can rid ourselves of illnesses once and for all. British biotech firm Oxitec inserts a gene into Aedes aegypti. The gene codes for a protein that immediately kills the mosquitoes. To make the process effective, the lab gives the (male) mosquitoes a tetracycline antidote. These mosquitoes are then released into the wild, where they mate with other mosquitoes. Their progeny, who inherit the gene, die before maturity. The one difficulty is the fact that mosquitoes must be repeatedly released. Biologist Nikolai Windbichlerand his Imperial College teams have invented a method dubbed X-Shredder. Instead of a ‘poison,’ the males are outfitted with a transgene (a naturally transferred gene) that cuts up the X chromosome.

When a male mates with a female, the sperm only contains one sex cell, X or Y. Because the X chromosomes are destroyed, all offspring will be males. As the process goes on, less and less of the population will be female, and the species will theoretically go extinct. Using a new technology named CRISPR-Cas9 ensures that the transgene will be passed on to all mosquitoes, not just half. Remember, because of traditional inheritance, only half of the males will have the gene (A). When CRISPR-Cas9 is inserted however, the original gene (a) is transformed, so that (Aa) becomes (AA). As diseases are increasingly resistant, we must look for more ingenious ways to suppress them.

Without CRISPR-Cas9

With CRISPR-Cas9

Works Cited Begley, Sharon. “Why FBI and the Pentagon Are Afraid of Gene Drives.” STAT. STAT, 12 Nov. 2015. Web. 04 May 2016.

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Wheelwright, Jeff. “Genetically Modifying Mosquitoes to Eliminate Disease.” Discover Magazine. Discover Magazine, 02 Apr. 2015. Web. 04 May 2016.

Gravitational Waves

On February 11th, 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the discovery of gravitational waves. How did they possibly manage to observe them? Essentially, with lasers; the team set up two lasers miles apart (protected by a tunnel so that they wouldn’t get a false reading) and pointed them at each other to observe their interference pattern. If there was a shift in the pattern, they could analyze that shift and obtain a glut of data (the lasers were clearly highly calibrated). The waves recorded by LIGO were analyzed to have been emitted by the collision of a pair of black holes violently colliding (thus sending waves, or ripples, through space).

Einstein predicted this phenomenon in 1916, shortly before black holes were first characterized by Karl Schwarzschild in his solution of Einstein’s General Relativity, and long before they were understood to be actual regions of space-time as we know them today.

In simple terms, the theory of general relativity states that the universe can be thought of as a sort of fabric and that different objects in our universe have different impressions on this “fabric.” It is best understood through visualization: Picture a picnic blanket stretched out and hovering in space; if you dropped a bowling ball and a marble on it, they would each make different sized dents in the blanket, as the bowling ball is heavier than the marble (this is a depiction of gravity). Now think of Earth as the marble and the Sun as the bowling ball. If you were to place the bowling ball in the middle of the blanket and then drop the marble alongside it, the marble would start rolling around the bowling ball due to the impression it has made in the blanket. This is how Einstein imagined gravity—objects with more mass have more of an impression in this “fabric” of space-time, they pull in, so to say, objects with smaller mass. Now imagine dropping two, super heavy bowling balls on the blanket. They would roll towards each other with so much force that the blanket would bounce around; you might imagine that the force of them colliding would emit waves through the blanket. This is what we would equate with gravitational waves. What causes these so-called “gravitational waves”? You take super dense and supermassive entities, such as a quasar or a black hole, and you shake them really fast so that they “stir up” the fabric of space.

Developed from 1900 through the 1920s by many physicists including Max Planck and Albert Einstein, Quantum Mechanics is a fundamental branch of physics that seeks to describe the behavior of subatomic particles. One of the main concepts of quantum mechanics is that there is wave-particle duality, which means that the properties of any particle in the universe can be described as the properties of a wave (and vice-versa). A well-known example is that of light; light particles, or photons, are described to travel in waves.

According to general relativity and recent discoveries, gravity can be understood to have a wave property. According to quantum mechanics, anything that can be described to have a wave property can be understood to behave as particles as well. This theoretical and yet-to-be-observed particle is often referred to as a graviton. So, the existence of gravitational waves implies the existence of the graviton. Now, it is no longer a matter of whether or not it exists, but rather a matter of when we discover it.

This graviton would propel our understanding of the universe—and quite possibly help complete the “Theory of Everything,” a hypothetical equation that would be able to explain and link together every physical aspect of the universe. The reason why theoretical astrophysicists haven’t been able to complete it is that they still don’t know how to integrate gravity with the three other fundamental forces of the universe (strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces); a field of study referred to as “quantum gravity” is entirely devoted to gaining this understanding.

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With this discovery of gravity waves—implying the existence of the graviton—we are ten steps closer to solving not only that problem, but to jump-starting a new age in physics and in knowledge itself.

No wonder physicists are referring to this time period as “The Golden Age” of physics. Whatever knowledge might come out of this, it promises to be groundbreaking and very, very exciting.

Jonah Sobel ‘17 Works Cited Overbye, Dennis. “Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 Feb. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

“About the General Theory of Relativity after 100 Years.” Albany Daily Star Gazette. Warren Daily Science, n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.

“Quantum Mechanics.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.

Pruitt, Sarah. “Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves, Just Like Einstein Predicted.” History.com.

A&E Television Networks, 09 Mar. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

Image below of gravitational waves taken from the MIT News website.

Diversity Increases Productivity

There is more innovative productivity within socially diverse groups, rather than homogeneous groups. Individuals brought into a diverse group of people are forced to prepare better, anticipate different points of view and ideas, and reach a unanimous agreement with more grief.

The many negatives of working in a socially diverse group appear to outweigh the positives. There can be discomfort, rougher interactions, lack of trust, greater perceived interpersonal conflict, lower communication, less cohesion, more concern about disrespect, along with many other problems. Although, if you want to have an organization or a team that is capable of having more success; you need diversity. Diversity boosts creativity, as well as increases better decision-making and problem-solving.

People who are different regarding race, gender and many other things bring exceptional information and experiences concerning the task at hand, rather than a group that consists of people from the same background and race. Researchers found that companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial gains when women were part of the top leadership ranks. It is not just gender that brings these benefits; race has also been a critical factor. Diversity also leads to higher-quality scientific research.

Diversity has a connection to better performance for groups that seek innovation and new ideas. When individuals hear resistance from someone who is different from them, it provokes more thought then when it comes from someone who is more similar to them. Adding social diversity to a group forces people to expect differences from the people in their group, and it forces individuals to change their normal behavior. Those who work in these type of groups work harder both cognitively and socially. As much as these people may hate diverse groups, the hard work usually leads to better outcomes.

Overall, someone who wants a productive, diverse, and a hard working group has to expect dissent from group members. If the group leader can control the emotions of the group members, then the manager can concentrate the group’s focus on the task at hand. There are many negatives to diverse groups, but with the right people, the good outweighs the bad.

David Grinberg ‘19 Works Cited Phillips, Katherine W. “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter.” Scientific American. Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 04 May 2016.

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Image on left taken from the Mashable website.

The Superman Memory Crystal

360 terabytes is a lot. And 13.8 billion years is an unfathomable amount of time. But not unfathomable for the Optoelectronics Research Center (the ORC) at the University of Southampton. Their Superman Memory Crystal, named after the memory crystals in “Superman,” can store 360 terabytes of information on a small piece of glass for almost 14 billion years!

It can survive up to 374 degrees Fahrenheit for billions of years, and nearly infinitely at room temperature, and is stable at up to 1,832 degrees Farhenheit.

The Superman Memory Crystal stores this information by etching the data into the glass with a laser, enabling it to be scanned in 5D. The file is scanned, and then written in three layers of nanostructured dots, each one millionth of a meter apart. This crystal could potentially store the things we are creating now for longer than the human race will be around.

The files already stored on this include the Magna Carta, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the King James Bible, and Newton’s Opticks.

As amazing as this crystal is, it’s not done yet. Rokas Drevinskas, a member of the Physical Optics Group at Southampton University, explained that “our next goal is to increase the speed of writing and develop a microscope-free read-out drive. We are developing the technology similar to what is used for reading conventional CD/DVDs and introducing the additional two dimensions.” Additionally, the group hopes that after more work, the crystal will be available on the mass market in a few more years. Not too far in the future, this amazing new memory crystal will hopefully be available for people to purchase.

Abigail Huebner ‘18 Works Cited Huebler, Kevin. “This Crystal Stores Nearly 14B Years of Data.” CNBC. CNBC, 20 Feb. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

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Pappas, Stephanie. “’Superman Memory Crystal’ Could Store Data for 13.8 Billion Years.”

LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

The Earth May Spin Faster As Glaciers Melt

Due to the effects of global warming today, the earth may have some major shifts in its rotation. The melting ice may make earth spin faster which would shift the axis on which the planet spins.

An effect of this shift would be a change in sunset times. This is because the length of Earth’s day depends on the speed at which the planet rotates on its axis. Consequently, if there is a shift on the axis, then the length of the day will change.

In general, the sun’s and moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth is slowing the planet’s rate of spin. However, there are other factors that can speed up how fast the Earth whirls. Research shows that melting glaciers triggered by global warming cause a significant amount of sea-rise in the world. In theory, rising sea levels should also shift the Earth’s axis and increase the rate at which the Earth spins. Additionally, when polar ice caps melt, there is less weight on the underlying rock which rebounds upward. Inevitably this makes the poles less flat causing the Earth to be more round. This change in shape causes the Earth to tilt and spin more quickly.

In previous studies in history, many researches could not find the evidence that the melting of glaciers causes a shift in the Earth’s rotation. This issue is known as “Munk’s Enigma.” (Named after oceanographer Walter Munk.)Yet new studies have solved this issue confirming that global warming does indeed affect the earth’s rotation and speed at which it spins.

This confirmation only illustrates the effect we have on the earth. While we do not realize these small shifts in the Earth’s speed because of its minor effect on us now, this can have a major impact on the climate for the rest of time. Moreover, a shift in the Earth’s axis is not the only effect. With global temperature rising drastically, we are hurting the Earth’s animal-life that survives on the cold.

Daniel Jaspan ‘17 Works Cited Choi, Charles. “Earth May Spin Faster as Glaciers Melt: DNews.” DNews. Livescience, 14 Dec. 2015. Web. 04 May 2016.

Image above taken from the iD News Discovery website.

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Climate Consensus

Years ago, the nations of the world came together to try and limit global warming to a level that is somewhat tolerable. However, a new research study recently published led by Dr. James E. Hansen, a retired NASA climate scientist, proved that the consequences of global warming might actually be more dangerous and closer than they seem. “We’re in danger of handing young people a situation that’s out of their control” warned Dr. Hansen. Draft copies of the paper were released early last year but even as a draft it sparked much debate among climate scientists. The paper’s main claim is that by burning fossil fuel at such a prodigious pace that we do now and pouring heat trapping gasses into the atmosphere, humanity is provoking an abrupt climate shift.

The likely consequences the paper discusses include killer storms, disintegration of large parts of the polar ice sheets, and a rise in sea levels that would begin to drown the world’s coastal cities before the end of the century. Some scientists view the research paper as an explanation for the puzzling events in the Earth’s past and agree that society isn’t moving fast enough to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses. However, other scientists remain unconvinced of the assertions the authors are making.

“They conflict with the mainstream understanding of climate change to the point where the standard proof is quite high,” said Dr. Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University.

These opposing scientists target the authenticity of Dr. Hansen, the leader of the research due to Hansen being an activist. He is frequently arrested at rallies that promote recognition of the limitation of global warming. He and a young group of people even sued the government for their lack of dealing with the global warming issue as a whole and not limiting it enough. He feels it’s his moral obligation to play such an aggressive and active role beyond what most scientists do. However, his actions do open him up to the charge that his scientific research is skewed and biased.

Aside from this, Dr. Hansen actually contributes great points and brings legitimate proofs 11

to his claims. Hansen and eighteen other co-writers explain that the Earth warmed naturally 120,000 years ago to a temperature estimated only slightly higher than today’s and during this time the sea level rose 20 to 30 feet and other natural disasters occurred. In 2009, the nations agreed to limit the planetary warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level.

The Earth has already warmed by about half that amount proving that the climate appears to be destabilizing. Some scientists still claim that such a large and radical shift that Hansen speaks of are centuries away.

Dr. Hansen discusses a mechanism that can help abrupt climate shifts. The initial melting of the ice sheets will put a cap of fresh water on the surface of the ocean. This will cause a shut down or slowing of the ocean currents that redistribute heat around the planet thus the warmth will accumulate in the deeper parts of the ocean. So Dr. Hansen is explaining that one way to slow down global warming is by speeding up the melting of parts of the ice sheets that sit below sea level. This process was considered a decade ago but scientists concluded that it was unnecessary in this century.

The new paper has opened this debate up again and Hansen encourages scientist to take a more careful look using sophisticated equipment. However, it will take several years for scientists to come up with a consensus. Hansen retired in 2013 and now heads a center crafted for him at Columbia University. In 1988 he warned congress that global warming has already started and will continue rapidly. Even scientists wary of his specific claims say that his ideas must be taken seriously. Dr. Mann said “I think we ignore James Hansen at our own peril.”

Oriya Romano ‘17 Works Cited Gillis, Justin. “Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2016.

Garbage-Loving Storks Refuse to Migrate

A recent ecological study showed that the stork population in Portugal is becoming reluctant to migrate. The study claimed that the prevalence of landfills in the south-central region of the country has led to this bizarre phenomenon. Normally, the birds travel to subSaharan Africa for the winter months. The recent study, however, revealed that the storks have been remaining in Portugal to feed on endless amounts of garbage.

Earlier studies indicated that the storks made temporary stops at certain landfills as they migrated south. Still, the idea that a stork would remain in Portugal for the entire year is revolutionary, and no previous research has shown evidence of this occurrence. “Before the ’80s, there were no storks in the Iberian Peninsula in Europe during the winter,” said Aldina Franco, a conservation ecologist at the University of East Anglia in England and a significant contributor to the study. “Suddenly, we saw a few birds and then the number increased and now we have 14,000 birds in Portugal in the winter,” she said.

The storks eat everything from rotten fish to leftover chicken and hamburgers. Some birds even feed on computer parts and bits of paper, devouring everything in sight. In order to complete the study, Dr. Franco and others used rubber lassos and bird nets to restrain the storks temporarily and allow for GPS trackers to be attached to the birds’ backs. The process is more difficult than it sounds. “It’s not easy to do,” said Dr. Franco. “I couldn’t eat while I was working there because of the smell.”

Overall, the study tracked 48 storks for more than nine months, including winter. Researchers were eager to discover how far the storks would fly to eat the garbage. In some cases, the birds traveled over 30 miles. Still, however, the distance paled in comparison with the usual winter migrating distance to sub-Saharan Africa, which is thousands of miles from Portugal.

Thus, the results showed that the length of travel among the stork population that remained in Portugal was minimal.

Andrew Flack, an ornithologist from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, who did not partake in the study, claimed that the results do not prove that the birds are lazy, but rather “opportunists.” “This is very beneficial for a territorial bird like the stork,” said Flack.

“Unlike birds that leave their breeding territory during migration, [the storks] can defend and maintain their nests” as a result of not migrating, thus giving an additional reason to why the birds would want to remain in Europe for the winter months.

Dr. Franco noted that the phenomenon might end in 2018, when the European Union plans to begin closing open landfills in Portugal and relying on composting. Franco also called into question what storks will do when winter eventually comes around and they have no garbage on which to feed. He hypothesized that the storks would simply return to their natural migratory route should there be no food available.

Works Cited

Gabriel Klapholz ‘17

St, Nicholas. “Seduced by Junk Food, Storks Are Opting Not to Migrate.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

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Arsenic from Chile Copper Mines Reaches Antarctica

Although humans have been affecting the climate change in Antarctica because of global warming, we are affecting the southernmost continent in other ways as well. Reports in Chile say that there has been a discovered presence of arsenic pollution in Antarctica ice and other contaminants due to smelters and Chilean copper mines.

Scientists compared the historical data of copper production in southern countries and analyzed it with ice samples from as early as the 1880’s. They detected a spike that could not have been caused by volcanoes or other naturally-occurring arsenic emissions. Although this can cause harm to the wildlife, the arsenic levels are too low now to have major effects on the creatures in the Antarctic ecosystem.

A member of the Brazil’s Climate Center (CPC) explained that the presence of these arsenic traces is suggesting that Chileans are getting a heavy dose of toxic element. The negative effects of these toxic elements can cause cancer, skin lesions, cardiovascular disease and neurological problems. The researchers determined that the emissions from Chilean smelters stayed in the air for 10 days, long enough for it to waft across the water to the white continent.

Arsenic is indeed found in many places across the Earth and is often a source of ground water pollution. But in this case, copper smelting, which releases arsenic into the air, presents other forms of risk.

Daniel Jaspan ‘17 Works Cited Kiger, Patrick J. “Arsenic From Chile Copper Mines Reaches Antarctica: DNews.” DNews.

Oceans, 14 Dec. 2015. Web. 04 May 2016.

Image on right taken from the iD News Discovery website.

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SCIENCE WORD SEARCH See if you can find them all – the theme is “Environmentalism!”

WORD BANK Energy Environment Garbage Landfill Litter Nature Pollution Smog Solar Trash Waste Water Wind

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SCIENCE PUZZLE Complete the crossword – the theme is “Chemistry!�

KEY Across 2. the process through which a substance changes from liquid to solid 5. the center of an atom is called _________ 7. anything that has mass and occupies volume 9. a basic and indivisible unit of matter 11. positive ions are called __________ 13. defined as mass divided by volume

Down 1. unit for the measurement of time 3. the mechanical process of separating solids from fluids/liquids 4. a strong base that dissolves in water 6. the study of matter and the changes it undergoes 8. another name for NH3 10. the only metal that is in liquid form at room temperature 12. blue litmus paper turns ______ under acidic conditions

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We hope you enjoyed this issue of Breakthrough!

EDITORS Beckie Cohen ‘16 Yakira Markovich ‘16 Moselle Kleiner ‘17

FACULTY ADVISOR Ms. Lenore Brachot

BREAKTHROUGH The Ramaz Science Publication May 2016