Science Guru Oct 2013 Web

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SCIENCE GURUMountain View High School Science Magazine

October 2013

Edwin Hubble and theBig Debate in Astronomy

by Carter Fox

Humans and Fun DNA

by Jasmine Deng

Mind Reading: Its easy if yourethe one who writes the material

by Kelyn Wood

Te latest and hottest news about science

rom all around the world! We publish

an issue every month; copies can be

ound in Dr. Tornburgs room and

issues are posted on our blog.

Higgs Boson: Physicists Win Nobel Prize In PhysicsUC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale Scientists

win Nobel Prize in Medicine

Nobel Prize for Chemistry takes it into cyber-space: USC, Stanford, Harvard, Strasburg

wo theoretical physicists who suggested thatan invisible ocean o energy suffusing space isresponsible or the mass and diversity o theparticles in the universe won the Nobel Prize inPhysics on the morning o October 8, 2013.

Continued page 11

Club Arena Day Pictured: Kiana Nouri (right,ounder and president, Science Guru) and RohunSaxena (lef, treasurer)

Science Guru club meets every Friday at lunch in 120, Dr. Tornburgs room

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Ah . . . These Brilliant Chemists!Kiana Nouri

T

associated with LouisVuittons and Rolexes, but chemists have created akematerials that are much cheaper than and even much

superior to the original.Continued page 11


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M M VHigh School students: I gotso excited a ew days ago

when I heard the scientists whorecently discovered the Higgsboson particle were the winnerso the Physics Nobel prize.

Tis magazine is called Sci-ence Guru,but it is about morethan science. It is about knowl-

edge. It is about acts and discov-eries in math, physics, chemistryand even technology. Most im-portant o all, it is about how ourknowledge is used or humanity.

It is about how discoveringthe Higgs boson is about our pastand our uture. Te discovery isjust a act but its effect on hu-manity is here to stay. When youread this article, do not think thatit is not a science-related piece owriting. Science is the tool here.What science is used or is whatmatters.

Tis past summer I took auniversity-level advanced EnglishWriting and Critical Tinkingclass. It was a lie-changing expe-rience. I was exposed to brilliantand gifed writers and philoso-

phers, who inspired me to writethe below piece:

. . . Te real value o a realeducation, which has almost noth-ing to do with knowledge, and ev-erything to do with simple aware-ness; awareness o what is so realand essential, so hidden in plainsight all around us . . . all the time,proclaimed the late David Fos-ter Wallace, in a commencementspeech he gave in 2005. Foster

Wallace was one o the best writerso this generation. His argument isjust awless; it is unsurpassed. Tereal value o a real education is tolive sentient, mindul; in the adultworld day in and day out. Youreducation is the job o a lietime.

Our natural deault setting,hard-wired into our circuitboards at birth, is . . . the auto-matic way that we experience theboring, rustrating, crowded partso lie when we are operatingon the automatic, unconsciousbelie that we are the centre othe world, and that our immedi-ate needs and eelings are whatshould determine the worldspriorities.

Our natural deault setting is

drifing through lie but not livingit, instead letting it pass by mind-lessly. Our eyes are open, our earsare open, but we are not aware o

the depth o our surroundings; weclearly do not see and we loudlydo not hear.

We drive, go to school, pass byclassmates, eat, sleep, just or thesake o going to school withoutpaying attention to classmates,with arrogance, ocusing just onour classes, our homework, ourtests and our grades. By deault

we are all about me and me andme, as Wallace puts it. We are onme autopilot.

Being on lie autopilot e-ectuates boredom, routine, pettyrustration and misery, but wecan take control. We can adjustour natural deault setting, asDFW put it, and become well ad-justed. We can exercise awarenessthrough the point o view o oth-ers. We can observe through thedeep lenses o them, not me andlove and compassion and, ore-most, truth.We can stop beingsel-absorbed. Just as what DFWsaid in the same speech, we muststart with reedom o mind.

Freedom itsel is an expansiveword. Our lie is a rat race to gainreedom, have reedom, want

reedom, and achieve reedom reedom o mind about comort,wealth or personal liberty. AsDFW notes: these reedoms are

The Real Value of Your Real Education

Letter From the Editor Kiana Nouri

Tere are these two young sh swimming along and they happen to meet an older sh swimming the otherway, who nods at them and says Morning, boys. Hows the water? And the two young sh swim on or a bit,and then eventually one o them looks over at the other and goes What is water?

David F. Wallace, American novelist

Continued next page


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petty. He does not want us to . . .have reedom o all to be lords oour tiny skull-sized kingdoms,alone at the center o all creation.

Te real reedom o mind ishaving the reedom to choosewhat to think about and, mostimportantly, choosing how tothink about it. Choosing to think

about the compassionate visionversus the miserable vision. Tisis what enables our mind. Tis isthe ultimate reedom.

DFW reiterates: Tat is realreedom. Tat is being educated,and understanding how to think.Te alternative is unconscious-ness, the deault setting, the ratrace, the constant gnawing senseo having had, and lost, some in-nite thing. Tat is the educationhe is talking about.

Te real value o real educa-tion is about this awareness andabout awareness o what is realand essential. Tis is the job o alietime; it is a mountain to climb.We should whisper to our headand heart that real education ismore than knowledge and grades.

It is about how to use our logic.We should live a lie o qual-

ity in touching others, qualityin making our marks on others,

quality in ullling others wishesmore than our own.

As my grandmother says: atthe end all o us end up underdirt, without anything we used tohave or did not have. We can doit step by step, moment by mo-ment, thought by thought, byte bybyte and word by word, as long aswe practice Tis is water . . . Tis

is water.

My ellow MVHS school-mates: the piece you just read isan example o how you can craveboth science and literature at thesame time.

Please do not misunder-stand my writing here. I am analmost-5.0 GPA senior here atMVHS. I love learning and I ama rm believer in learning. How-ever, I also believe that we needto go deeper than just absorbingknowledge and getting excellentgrades. We have to understandthat the real value o a real edu-cation goes beyond just gettinglled with inormation. It is alsoabout being human and caringwhile we are doing and doing. As

DFW puts it about the two teen-age sh:Tis is water . . .this is water.

Kiana Nouri is the ounder, presi-dent, and editor-in-chie o ScienceGuru Blog, Magazine, and Club.Tis issue o Science Guruis cre-ated, edited, and published by her.

The Real Value of Your Real Education

Letter From the Editor Kiana Nouri

Continued rom previous page


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T H S has been exploring the cosmos since

April o 1990. Tis extraordinary instrument has explained several phenom-ena and continues to amaze us with its photos. What makes this telescope

even more interesting is the man or whom it is named.Edwin Hubble was born in 1889 in the state o Missouri. As a child he ell in

love with astronomy, and while still in high school wrote an article on Mars. Oneo his teachers, Miss Grote, noticed his rising ascination with astronomy. Shepredicted Hubble would be the most brilliant man o his generation.

Afer high school, Hubble studied at Wheaton College, where he dreamed oreceiving a scholarship to a major university. Tat dream came true at his gradu-ation, when the superintendent o Wheaton College awarded Hubble a scholar-

ship to the University o Chicago.Hubbles plan to study astronomy was headed in the right direction until hisather, John Hubble, insisted that he pursue a law degree with the goal o bring-ing a steady income to their amily. o please his ather, Hubble studied law,but he also completed enough courses in physics to keep his dream alive. WhenJohn Hubble passed away on January 19, 1913, Edwin Hubble once again set outto pursue that dream.

o bring money to his amily, Hubble became a high-school teacher. Aferputting his amily in a strong position nancially, he used his connections at the

Continued next page

Edwin Hubble and theBig Debate in Astronomy

Carter Fox is anew member ofScience Guruthis year. Tis ishis rst contri-bution to ScienceGuru Magazine.

CarterFox


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University o Chicago and eventu-ally graduated with a Ph.D.

o be a proessional astrono-mer, Hubble needed to acquirea research post at an observa-tory with the most technologi-cally advanced telescopes. Tebest place to be was the MountWilson observatory, equippedwith a sixty-inch telescope andalmost-completed hundred-inchtelescope. Hubble had great po-tential and was offered a job at the

observatory. However, Britain hadjust entered World War I. Hubblehad spent lots o time in Britainand elt obligated to deend thatcountry.

Afer three years Hubblereturned to Mount Wilson. Hesoon became a major gure at theobservatory and went on to makeone o the greatest discoveries inthe history o astronomy.

At the time there was a greatdebate going on in the astronomyworld. Many astronomers be-lieved the Milky Way Galaxy wasthe only galaxy in the universeand all nebulae are contained init. Others thought the Milky Waywas one o many galaxies in theuniverse.

In October o 1923 Hubble

had been at Mt. Wilson or ouryears. On the second to lastnight o an observing run duringthat month, the viewing condi-tions were very poor, but Hubblemanaged to take a orty-minuteexposure o the Andromeda Neb-ula. Afer developing the photoHubble noticed a new speck inthe top right corner o the image.

He gured it was either a nova(the death o a star) or a photo-graphic glitch.

Te next night, the last oHubbles observing run, he point-ed the scope at the AndromedaNebula again. Tis time he addedve minutes to the exposure,taking away the possibility o aphotographic glitch. Afer devel-oping the photo, the speck wasstill there along with two morepossible novae. He marked eachpossible nova with an N (as

seen in the photo below).

Hubble compared his imageto other photos o the Androm-eda Nebula. He ound that twoo the possible novae were in actnew novae. Tis was great news,

but even better news ollowed.Te third candidate was not anova, but a Cepheid variable star.Tis star had been visible on onlya ew o the earlier plates, indicat-ing its variability.

Hubble had made the greatestdiscovery o his career. He crossedout his N and victoriously wroteVAR! (or variable).

Tis discovery is importantbecause Cepheid variable starsare very predictable, which meansthey can be used to estimatedistances. Hubble could use theCephid he discovered to gureout how ar away the AndromedaNebula is. Te Milky Way wasknown to be roughly 100,000 lightyears across, so i the AndromedaNebula was arther away, it wouldbe out o our galaxy.

Hubble continued to trackthe Cepheid and determined its

absolute brightness and apparentbrightness. By comparing these hewas able to determine the dis-tance. Te result was astonishing!

Te Andromeda Nebulaappeared to be approximately900,000 light years rom Earth.Tat is way beyond the reacho the Milky Way, meaning itwas not apart o our galaxy. TeAndromeda Nebula became

classied as the AndromedaGalaxy and the great debate wasover. Several other nebulae soonbecame classied as galaxies.Hubble had proved our galaxy isnot alone in the universe.

Hubbles results were offi ciallyannounced at the 1924 meeting othe American Association or Ad-vancement in Science. He shared

a prize o 1,000 dollars withLumuel Cleveland, a biologist, ormost exceptional paper.

Edwin Hubble settled thegreatest debate in the history oastronomy and did not stop there.He went on to make several othergroundbreaking discoveries, ulti-mately becoming one o the great-est astronomers who ever lived.

Edwin Hubble Carter Fox



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Medicine

Longtime rivals Stanord and UCBerkeley are sharing the glory othe worlds grandest prize, earnedor their discoveries about liessmallest package.

For solving the mystery o the

cells inner transit system, scien-tists Tomas Sdho o Stanordand Randy Schekman o UCBerkeley were awarded the 2013Nobel Prize in Medicine on Mon-day, along with James Rothmanrom Yale University.

,

,

.

Te trio, each reaching simi-lar insights rom different angles,revealed how a tiny cell organizesand ships the hormones, antibod-ies and enzymes that make liepossible.

Te scientists insights, laudedby the fy-member Nobel As-sembly on Monday morning, haveled directly to treatments and vac-cines, as well as improved under-standing o the biological basis odiseases such as Parkinsons andAlzheimers. Tey will share the

$1.25 million prize.In Monday news conerences,Sdho o Menlo Park and Schek-man o El Cerrito rejoiced at thenews, but also retted over thecurrent state o science researchand education in America.

Mondays news adds to the al-ready lengthy list o Nobel laure-ates at both prestigious Bay Areacampuses. Seven living Nobelistswork at Berkeley, and anotherourteen are deceased. Stanordlists ninetten current Nobel laure-ates, but when visiting proessors

are included, the tally jumps totwenty-eight. (Portions copied rom theSan Jose Mercury News.)

Nobel Prize Winners Kiana Nouri

UC Berkeley Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology

for Freshmen, Winner of Medicine Nobel Prize

Randy W. Schekman, proessor at UC Berkeley



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A

to change or even read the memories oa human. However, it is possible to do the ormer with mice.

Earlier this year, HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) research-

ers at MI were able to plant a memory o a room over a currently existingmemory in a mouse.

Inside the brain, there are a countless number o neurons that transmit in-ormation between parts o the brain. Figuring out how these neutrons interre-late and store memory could help cure human mental disorders. o nd whichneurons are in charge o which memories, scientists use optogenetics, whichconsists o using ber optics to control a neuron by shining light on it.

In this experiment, scientists attached tiny ber optics to the hippocampus,the region in the brain where memory is stored, in each o several mice, thenexposed the mice to a blank cage. Te hippocampus o each mouse stored the

memories o the room in the neurons to which the ber optics were attached.Te scientists placed the mice in a different-looking room and, afer a coupleo seconds, shocked them with electric current. Te mouses hippocampusstored these memories too. Finally, the scientists moved the mice back to theoriginal room and turned on the ber optic lights attached to the neurons thatstored the memories o the two rooms.

Instead o exploring the room, like they did the rst time, the mice stood ab-solutely still, evidently earul o getting shocked like in the second room, eventhough they had never been shocked in the rst room.

Continued page 10

Mind Reading:Its easy when youre the one

who writes the material

Kelyn is asecond-yearmember ofScience GuruClub and acontributingwriter to ourmagazine.

KelynWood


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E. I AP, you know what it is, and i youreplanning to take it, you eventually will. It is the study o external actors oDNA in humans or, more simply, how some genes are turned on and off.

Its making some very important impacts in science, especially medicine, asgenes are becoming more and more important in how a person is treated. We

now can sequence our own genomes through numerous startup companies,like 23 and me, which also is raising moral issues. (Have you ever seen GA-ACA?) Most importantly, by impacting medicine, it is impacting us.

Have you ever wondered why one identical twin in a pair may contract adisease such as cancer while the other twin is unscathed? Tey have the samegenetic code, afer all. But genetics isnt just the DNA sequence; it involves epi-genetics as well.

Part o what makes epigenetics so important is that we nally are able to seegenes and to sequence them. We can look at the location o a specic gene andthe epigenetics affecting that gene. It probably wont reach the level o GAA-

CA,where you can, in essence, choose what kind o child you want eye color?Hair color? What about the personality? but it probably wont all all thatshort. We may be approaching our own kind o warped brave new world.

Epigenetics also is a huge actor in our genes, almost as important as whatgenes we actually have, because epigenetics determines which genes are ex-pressed. Children with obese athers have epigenetic abnormalities on the IGF2gene, important in etal growth and development, compared to children withathers o normal weight. Scientists can begin to unravel all the mysteries o thehuman genome, which makes us who we theoretically are.

Continued next page

Humans and Fun DNA

Jasmine hasbeen an activemember of ourclub for twoyears now. She isthe communitycoordinator forScience Guru.

JasmineDeng

Red and green show different epigenetic tags in olderidentical twins (right); younger identical twins have

more similar epigenetics (lef, shown in yellow).


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Because the room-two memo-ries were activated along with theroom-one memories, the mouseincorrectly remembered gettingshocked in the rst room.

Tus, scientists were able toalter a memory o a small animalby ashing light on a select ewneurons. (Yes, 30,000 neuronsis a very small raction o all the

cells in the brain.) It remainsunknown, however, exactly howmany neurons are required tomake a memory.

Te researchers are now work-ing on how memories changewhen male and emale mice areput together, with the idea thatpositive encounters can altermemories as well as negative ones.

Dont get too excited or mindreading, though. Human mindsare much more complex than theminds o mice, and this experi-ment was only able to combine asense o pain with a visual imageo a room. Were still a long wayoff rom being able to adeptly (oreven prociently) reshape, re-place, or destroy memories.

Effects on the epigeneticso parents can be transerred tochildren rat children and ratgrandchildren are more prone toasthma when the rat dad and ratmom are given nicotine. Cocaineresistance, too, can be inherited

(though it isnt wise to test thislittle gem o science knowledge).We even can have methyl maps owhats in our brains and as methylmaps change over time. Methyl is

an epigenetic tag.Because o epigenetics, sci-

entists now can develop drugs tocombat melanoma, cystic brosis,and rare genetic disorders. Temedicines arent perect, and theyare not always effective, but its ahuge step rom able to do nothing

to help. Because o epigenetics, weknow the placement o epigeneticmarks that cause disease. Andbecause o that, we can treat whatonce were incurable diseases.

Human lives are growing lon-ger. In the Middle Ages, peoplewerent expected to live pastthirty-ve years old. Now it isntall that surprising to see people

live past seventy or even reachtheir centennials. With boundsin medicine and now epigeneticstaking the oreront o science,humans may start to take centen-nials as a matter o course. Whoknows how long a lie can last,now, with technology acceleratingthe way it is?

Mind Reading . . . Kelyn Wood

Epigenetics Jasmine Deng

Continued rom page 8


Te embryos o potential childrenin GAACA,all with genetics

manipulated to be perect.

We can even have methyl maps o whats in our brains and asmethyl maps change over time. Methyl is an epigenetic tag.


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A growing number o chem-ists are in the business o buildingakes. Tey actually are creatingmaterials that are much cheaperand even better than the originals.Tey are much more effectivethan the real material as well.

Paul Chiriks team at Princ-eton University is working oncreating cheap platinum romiron and cobalt. Tey bestow thesame ability on iron by attachingcarbon-based molecules to it.

Tats just what MarkusBuehlersteam has been attempt-ing. We look at natural materialslike bone, elastin proteins in theskin, spider silk and cocoons,says Buehler, a computationalchemist at Massachusetts Instituteo echnology in Cambridge. Allo these materials have propertiesthat could be useul in commer-cial products. Bones strength, or

example, could make it a handyconstruction material. Weretrying to go back to the drawingboard and say, how can we repli-cate those properties?

o get a better idea o theproperties o naturally occurringproducts, Buehlers team analyzesthe materials structures using acomputer model. We simulate

the chemistry and the motion oatoms and molecules, and use thatto extract principles about howthese materials derive their unc-tion, he says.

Buehler and his team havethen attempted to build their ownversion o the materials using a3D printer.

o recreate the properties

o human bone, the group useda combination o stiff and sofpolymers. Tese were printedin a pattern similar to that seenin our own bones. 3D printingallows us to control the structure

on the scale o micrometers, saysBuehler. Its a very different tech-nique to that used in nature, butit essentially captures the eatureso bone.

Te technology behindBuehlers development,whichwas published in June, is still verynew, and hasnt yet been appliedcommercially. A lot o this kind

o research is being done withinacademia, because were not closeenough to being able to produce aproduct, says Harwell.

Within industry, chemists cannd opportunities at small start-ups, says Harwell. Te new ideascoming out o academic researchgroups tend to be developed bysmall, private spin-off compa-

nies beore they are bought upor licensed by larger companies.Were seeing more jobs in thosesmaller companies than largerones, says Harwell.

Beore joining industry, its

worth looking into urther study,says Facundo Fernndez,analyti-cal chemist at the Georgia Insti-tute o echnology in Atlanta.Ive had many students thatgraduated with a bachelors comeback to grad school because theyrealized they needed an advanceddegree, he says. I you reallywant to make progress in the

ranks, and to be able to direct thecourse o investigations, you needa masters or a PhD.

Once youve achieved that,the opportunity or a rewardingcareer in biologically inspiredreplicas is very real.

(Portions printed rom NewScientist.)

Ah . . . These Brilliant Chemists! Kiana Nouri

Continued rom page 1

Hydroxyapatite lets you build with bone


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On-line Blog: Scienceguru18.blogspot.com

Left to Right:Avni Singhal

Rohun Saxena

Kiana Nouri

Varsha Suresh Kumar

Dr. Tornburg

Science GuruClub Officers

Kiana NouriKelyn WoodCarter Fox

Rohun SaxenaVarsha Suresh Kumar

Jasmine DengAvni Singhal

AdvisorDr. Katie Tornburg

Mountain View High School3535 ruman Avenue,Mountain View, CA 94040

FromtheEditor

DearReaders,WehopeyouhaveenjoyedourOctoberissue.Feelfreetovisitusonlineatscienceguru@blogspot.com

orjoinourweeklyclubmeetingseveryFridayatLunch,room120.

KianaNouri

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