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New wave sanitation
By Nicole Xu In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most commonly proposed safety precautions is to wash your hands thoroughly. This is true for many other diseases as well. The CDC states that proper hand hygiene can prevent 1 out of 3 children who get diarrheal diseases and 1 out…
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The unique journey of finding a cure for HIV
By Nicole Xu HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is a tedious, lifelong disease. It spreads through bodily fluids and attacks the immune system, specifically the T cells, so that the body can no longer protect itself from other infections. There is no official cure for HIV, but treatment usually involves a continuous prescription of…
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Skincare: how much should we really care?
By Stephanie Jue Skincare has become all the rage –– Vogue skincare routines plaster YouTube homepages and bottles of similarly-branded products advertising the same age-reducing effects line the shelves of local stores. It seems like brands are always coming up with more and more permutations of the same ingredients you might religiously rub into your…
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Organic batteries: an unexpected potential renewable energy source
By Daniel Cui Imagine Tesla car company’s incredible renewable and sustainable energy capabilities jammed into a battery that’s smaller than the width of a single strand of your hair. This is exactly what the Liang Li and other researchers at the Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences have been trying to achieve, albeit in…
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A new partnership: deep learning and the path to Alzheimer’s diagnostic medicine
By Liane Albarghouthi Nowadays, you can unlock your phone just by glancing at the screen thanks to cutting-edge facial recognition biometrics. Just as infrared lights in your iPhone scan your face to unlock your phone or authorize tasks, scientists have echoed this concept into technology that can further our understanding of one of humanity’s most…
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Skyrmions: the next step for quantum computing?
by Meera Aravinth Quantum computing and ‘spin-tronics’ have been increasingly viewed as the next step in the world of computing, as the need for memory storage and computational power is limited by space constraints. A magnetic phenomenon known as a skyrmion is a potential path forward to devices that store information bits on electron…
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The powerhouse of Alzheimer’s
by Anjali Sadarangani Heart health. Exercise. Inflammation. All of these research areas have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease and claim to lead to the cure for this devastating disease, yet there is still no feasible treatment option for patients. In fact, Alzheimer’s numbers have been continuously increasing. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, currently 5.8…
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The price of discovery
by Ethan Ward Hawaii is almost universally seen as a tropical paradise, but it has much more than its natural beauty to offer. Native Hawaiians who continue to follow the traditional religion see their islands as a manifestation of divinity on Earth. Astronomers, on the other hand, see it as the gateway to the…
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Biodegradable plastic…promising, but not yet a solution for plastic pollution
by Tiffany Liang Plastics are undeniably useful…and undeniably bad for the environment. While many environmentally-conscious people have made the switch to cotton bags and metal straws, other substances have a difficult time competing with the convenience, cost-effectiveness, and versatility of plastics. Biodegradable plastics offer a promising compromise: they have all the useful characteristics of plastics…
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Mind-reading: a superhero power potentially unlocked by neuroscience
by Stephanie Jue We live in a world where only fiction encapsulates the wonders of mind-reading, but now that prospect seems more feasible than ever –– that is, if mind-reading is the comprehension of the human brain on a neural or otherwise quantifiable level. Indeed, studies have shown that it is possible to roughly…