Category: 2021

Photochemistry: How Photons Fuel and Fracture the World By Noah Bussell For many, light is an abstract entity—intangible, and seemingly lacking any physical might. Sure, it allows us to marvel at the night-time flickering of the Manhattan skyline or to save the good times as photographs, but these novelties aside, it is reasonable at first glance…

Why the Great Lakes Aren’t Getting Better By Rebecca Hebert In California you often hear about drought, water conservation, and fires. The problem with water is the lack of it. However, in the United States midwest they don’t have fires or droughts or anything that seems like they should be worried about their water. However, the…

The Incomplete Nature of Math By Mark Ortega Mathematics has been studied globally for millennia. Mathematicians have always held the intuition that math is an ideally whole and complete system. Plato, for example, proposed that mathematical concepts originate from a perfect and divine reality distinct from the world he experienced. An implication of this view is…

Myth or Science: The Health Benefits of Tea By Pei ChenThe aroma of tea, cultivated for thousands of years, rode the wind from the East to the West. Today, tea is among the most popular beverages in the world (Hayat et al., 2015). Other than the refreshment and energy it provides, there may be some…

Profit & Pandemic: Inequitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines By Sinead de Cleir After over a year of social isolation and unimaginable loss, COVID-19 vaccines provide a path to normal. Despite this, access to vaccinations remains inequitable, prolonging this global health crisis. Although countries have poured public funding into rapid vaccine development, vaccine patents fall under…

Engineering Atoms: How Material Chemists are Catalyzing Hydrogen Fuel By Bryan Kim The simplest chemical molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms, otherwise known as the hydrogen molecule. However, despite this deceptive simplicity, hydrogen stores a significant amount of chemical energy and possesses great potential to transition society’s energy sources from fossil fuels to carbon-neutral, alternative…

A New Nuclear Warhead in the Works. Its Target: Cancer By Rebecca Hebert When people see or hear the word “nuclear,” it often invokes distrust and fear due to its association with war. Consequently, we often label advancements in nuclear science as  dangerous. But, nuclear technology is much more than just weapons and disaster—it can save…

Telomeres in Space By Katherine De Lange In human imagination, life is commonly represented as threads woven together by fate, degrading as one ages. This representation might reveal some truth. Life expectancy and risk of disease is, in fact, associated with threads—our telomeres, which cap the ends of human chromosomes. Some researchers study telomeres to understand…

PALMS: Reducing the Toxicity of GPT-3 By Xavier Yin GPT-3 has a problem: toxicity. OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is a deep learning neural network—an artificial neural network that emulates a brain. Fundamentally, it looks for patterns in human language, and, based on these patterns, generates a response to a prompt or task. Think…

A Novel Way to Treat Multidrug-Resistant Diseases By Eunice Tsang We see labels like “antibacterial,” “antimicrobial,” and “antibiotics” so often in soaps, detergents, and medications. These antiseptics protect us from harmful viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. However, microorganisms have the ability to change their genetic make-up and pass down their genes to the next generation, allowing…