Category Archives: Science

Antibiotic Research

anti-microbial ‘grammar’ posits new language of healing

“In the last 40 years, there have been only two new classes of antibiotic drugs discovered and brought to the market,” said graduate student Christopher Loose, lead author of a paper on the work that appears in the Oct. 19 issue of Nature. “There is an incredible need to come up with new medicines.”
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focusing their attention on antimicrobial peptides, or short strings of amino acids. Such peptides are naturally found in multicellular organisms, where they play a role in defense against infectious bacteria.

See previous post on the paucity of new antibiotic discoveries

More Great Webcasts: Nanotech and more

ScienceLive video archive from Cambridge University Science Productions. Videos include:

Viruses as nanomachines by Peter Stockley
Powering nanodevices with biomolecular motors by Amir Khan
Ice Cream, Chocolate, and Einstein by Chris Clarke
Communicating Science by Brian Trench and David Dickson
So many experiments, live in the studio! by Paul McCrory

Great stuff, another example of universities providing open access content 🙂

Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online – The University of Cambridge has done a much better job of use the web effectively than some others: Classic Botanical Illustrations Presented Poorly. The site includes 50,000 pages and 40,000 images (publications and handwritten manuscripts), including, of course, Origin of Species. Fantastic stuff.

String Theory is Not Dead

The Universe on a String by Brian Greene (author of The The Elegant Universe).

String theory offers a new perspective on matter’s fundamental constituents. Once viewed as point-like dots of virtually no size, particles in string theory are minuscule, vibrating, string-like filaments. And much as different vibrations of a violin string produce different musical notes, different vibrations of the theory’s strings produce different kinds of particles. An electron is a tiny string vibrating in one pattern, a quark is a string vibrating in a different pattern. Particles like the photon that convey nature’s forces in the quantum realm are strings vibrating in yet other patterns.
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Without the exact equations, our ability to describe these attributes with precision is limited, but the theory gives enough direction for the Large Hadron Collider, a gigantic particle accelerator now being built in Geneva and scheduled to begin full operation in 2008, to search for supporting evidence by the end of the decade.

Science and Engineering Internships for Summer 2007

Office of Naval Research Science & Engineering Apprentice Program (SEAP)

SEAP provides competitive research internships to approximately 250 high school students each year. Participating students spend eight weeks during the summer doing research at Department of Navy laboratories.

Requirements:

* High school students who have completed at least Grade 9. A graduating senior is eligible to apply.
* Must be 16 years of age for most laboratories
* Applicants must be US citizens and participation by Permanent Resident Aliens is limited.
* The application deadline is February 17, 2006.
Continue reading →

Inside Live Red Blood Cells

Technique reveals inner lives of red blood cells:

For the first time, researchers at MIT can see every vibration of a cell membrane, using a technique that could one day allow scientists to create three-dimensional images of the inner workings of living cells.
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Soon, the researchers hope to extend their view beyond the cell membrane into the cell, to create images of what is happening inside living cells — including how cells communicate with each other and what causes them to become cancerous.

“One of our goals is create 3D tomographic images of the internal structure of a cell,” said Michael Feld, MIT professor of physics and director of the Spectroscopy Lab. “The beauty is that with this technique, you can study dynamical processes in living cells in real time.”

Example of what that will look like: The Inner Life of a Cell – Animation – ok actually that level of detail may still be fairly far away 🙂

MIT Faculty Study Recommends Significant Undergraduate Education Changes

A 2 year study by faculty provides recommendations for undergraduate education at MIT.

HigherEd article – When Knowledge Overtakes a Core:

Updating the traditional core of science subjects, giving students more choices and more hands-on science. The shift would end MIT’s long-standing practice of having all students take six common science courses — a change that institute officials say is necessary because the explosion of scientific knowledge has made it impossible to cover all basics in any introductory sequence.
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MIT’s reforms, if adopted, would represent the most significant overhaul of its curriculum in decades. The changes could be influential far beyond Cambridge, given the institute’s prominence in science and engineering education.

I think making science and engineering more hands on is a good thing.

Science Fair Project on Bacterial Growth on Packaged Salads

Recently we have all seen quite a few stories on – Tainted spinach: All bacteria may not come out in the wash. Last year a high school student did her science projected on the problem. Hillel Academy student first tested spinach for science fair by Stacey Dresner

“Last year I heard some rumors going around about how some people were getting sick and scientists thought that the illness was coming from these convenient packaged salads,” explained Kaili, now a ninth grader at the Hebrew High School of New England in West Hartford. “This caught my attention and I decided that I wanted to look more into the issue for my science fair project.”
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In her project, “Quantitative Analysis of Bacterial Growth on Packaged Salads and Effect on Antibiotic Resistance and Nutrient Content,” Kaili investigated several varieties of bagged salad greens.

She tested the bagged greens for bacteria content, and found “extensive growth of bacteria within 24 hours in the fresh “unwashed” samples.”

“I found the highest percents of bacteria in dark, leafy varieties such as spinach and Mediterranean” showing “a correlation between high levels of iron and high levels of bacteria.”

She washed the samples using different cleaning techniques n cleaning with sterile water, cooking with boiling water for five minutes, and using commercial cleaning rinse n water with a pinch of bleach. The only method that killed most of the bacteria was the commercial rinse. The others did not really inhibit bacterial growth.

NSF $76 million for Science and Technology Centers

NSF Awards $76 million for 2006 Science and Technology Centers to spur interdisciplinary research.

Centers offer the research and engineering community an effective mechanism to undertake long-term scientific and technological research and education activities, to explore better and more effective ways to educate students and to develop mechanisms to ensure the timely transition of research and education advances into service in society.
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Each center receives roughly $19 million dollars over 5 years, and if approved, receives an additional 5 years of support following a thorough evaluation.

Centers include: Layered Polymeric Systems at Case Western Reserve University and Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes at Colorado State University.

Why the Frogs Are Dying

photo of blue poison frog

Why the Frogs Are Dying by Mac Margolis (photo is of a Blue Poison Frog):

A study by 75 scientists published earlier this year in the journal Nature estimated that two thirds of the 110 known species of harlequins throughout Central and South America have vanished. And that may be just the beginning.
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Scientists monitoring wildlife around the world are echoing Pounds’s research. Their conclusion: many more species will perish.

This article does a good job of discussing the interactions caused by global warming and the consequences to some animal species.