Illustration by Britt Fossum

In the March issue of The Blue and White—on-campus and online now—now, Britt Fossum, CC ’16, tells us about some crazy desert science stuff Columbia used to be into.

“The strange part was the rationale for construction in the first place,” admits Dr. Nicholas Christie-Blick of Columbia’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, describing the glassy geodesic domes in Oracle, Arizona that rise out of the desert like something from a science fiction dream. Originally, the center—named Biosphere 2 after Biosphere 1 (the Earth)—was used for environmental research. The original experiments aimed to examine how humans interact with ecology by “enclosing” teams inside the domes for up to two years. The mission’s novel combination of field work and Survivor-style reality show was beset by invasive ants, illness, and allegations of pseudoscience, as it emerged that the researchers could not survive without outside interference. (more…)

Science!

While we in America celebrate the signing of some yellowed document, physicists around the globe are engaging in a less nationalistic, but equally historic celebration: the elusive Higgs Boson, the “missing piece” in our current understanding of the subatomic world, has been confirmed to five standard deviations of significance. This discovery was made using the most expensive scientific apparatus in human history: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Despite the overwhelming statistical likelihood of the LHC’s discovery, ever-skeptical scientists still wonder whether the observed particle displays all of the characteristics of the Higgs as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. If it does, this discovery will definitively confirm over fifty years of theoretical development; if it doesn’t, it will alert physicists to the existence of particles beyond those described by the Standard Model, paving the way for a new era in fundamental physics (and more expensive experiments).

If you’re not into grilling in Central Park, it’s something to celebrate alone, in front of your computer.

Illustration by Chantal Stein, CC '13

Renowned theoretical astrophysicist Janna Levin has mastered the art of simplifying the overwhelmingly complicated into something tangible. She wakes up every morning looking to explain the mysteries of the universe, which, she tells us, has a great soundtrack. While holding the position of Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard, Levin’s research interests include the early universe, chaos theory, and black holes. In her free time, Levin writes fiction; her novel A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines was a runner up for the Hemingway award and brought home the Bingham Fellowship. She recently found some time to chat with Senior Editor Anna Bahr about splattering stars, avoiding the role of the anomalous “woman of science,” and making Star Trek a reality. Read this and more in the April issue of The Blue & White.

The Blue & White: For those of us whose knowledge of physics doesn’t extend past Bill Nye, Can you talk, in a general sense, about your research involving the early universe, chaos theory, black holes, etc.?

Janna Levin: I’ve been most interested in the idea that two black holes can orbit each other. So, just like we orbit the sun, there are situations where you had two stars have long lives together and at the end of their lives collapsed to become black holes. It’s the death state of these two stars. It’s very likely that there are many pairs of black holes that are absolutely invisible to us. They don’t emit light, they don’t reflect light. You’re never going to point a telescope to a bare black hole and be able to say something about them; we could point one right at a black hole and just not see it. We can use telescopes in other ways, like, you can see a black hole tear up a neighboring star; that’s a very violent event and you can see the light from the star being torn apart—the star literally splatters on the black hole. A lot of people have been trying to measure gravitational waves [around the black] holes. When black holes orbit around each other, the shape of space actually starts to wobble around them. The fabric of space starts to squeeze and stress. The waves moves outward, just like water waves would. There are waves passing through us right now that are squeezing and stretching us slightly. It’s happening because a billion years those two black holes orbiting each other collided. And when they collided, the result was so energetic—that wave was so strong—that it traveled for a billion years and right now is uselessly passing through us and we don’t notice it. If I measure this changing shape, it’s literally like measuring the beats of a drum.

B&W: You’re telling me that the universe makes audible music?

Read on for the sounds of the cosmos and of course, Star Trek

Making progress.

BunsenBwog had been stowed away in the metaphorical chemistry stock room over winter break, but science doesn’t take a holiday. Instead, Columbia’s tireless teams of professors and (let’s be honest) mostly graduate students have been toiling away during the winter months, presumably synthesizing the most chemically pure hot chocolate you’ve ever tasted. In reality though they were up to some cool stuff, and you can look forward to left brain correspondent Zach Kagan’s roundup every Saturday:

• Dr. Kleiman’s group at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health found a connection between epilepsy medication and the development of cataracts.  Antiepileptic drugs alterthe way glutamate receptor proteins operate in the brain, but it turns out that the eye’s lens has similar glutamate receptors that are also affected. Not to be outdone, the Medical Center also had a pioneering discovery which challenges accepted knowledge about esophageal cancer. Barrett’s esophagus- which is a pretty gross disease despite sounding like a west coast sandwich shop- is strongly connected to esophageal cancer. It was believed that Barrett’s esophagus was caused by the lower esophagus, but new research using very unlucky genetically altered mice reveals it’s actually caused by stem cells frenzied up by all sorts of acidic fluids. Medicine is icky.

"If you have to ask, you don't want to know" - a scientist

When they aren’t whispering stories in our ear, Professors enjoy cooking up knowledge in the lab. In this weekly feature, Propugnator Scientiae Zach Kagan gives the low-down on what scientists at Columbia have been up to.

• In a new experiment neutrinos are detected to be still traveling faster than the speed of light. That’s right, the not-sure-if-trolling team of OPERA scientists from Gran Sasso, Italy have repeated their experiment and got the same results. Another Gran Sasso team have refuted the “superluminal” claims of OPERA with their own experiment. Now Bwog doesn’t know what to think, but at the very least be kind to you physics prof., that’s one hell of an existential crisis.
• Any good professor knows that if you need something done, you can get someone to do it for you. Usually that someone is a grad student, but in this case it’s bacteria! Engineering prof Scott Banta is working on creating microbes that will eat CO2 and ammonia waste and crap out sustainable biofuels. On a related note, why not honor our monocellular friends by giving a giant microbe plushie this holiday season? I hear salmonella is popular.
• If any of you southwesterners are nostalgic for the Dust Bowl era, it might be your lucky day. For everyone else, not so much, because according to Richard Seager of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Dust Bowl conditions “will become the new climatology of the American Southwest.” After conducting 19 different climate simulations, the team concluded that extreme droughts will be commonplace in the coming decades. Coulmbians from the southwest, now might be good time to move, or at least brush up on your Steinbeck.
• In past BunsenBwogs we have talked about how W. Ian. Lipkin is a stone cold pathology fightin’ badass. Well, turns out disease never sleeps and neither does Professor Lipkin. This time he’s got Kawasaki disease in his sights. Kawasaki affects young children and causes inflammation of blood vessels, but the origins of the disease are a mystery. The latest theory is that particles of dust in the wind carry the infectious agent across Asia, so Lipkin and his team are sequencing dust samples from all over Japan to find the culprit.
• If you’re from outside the tri-state area then you are well aware of the TSA and its shenanigans in the name of safety. Well, if you’re heading out on a plane back home this holiday season you better pack an extra set of lead underpants: Columbia’s Dr. David Brenner believes that X-Ray body scanners not only let TSA agents see you in the buff, but also may cause up to 300 extra cases of cancer a year.

A gratuitous laughing panda for your viewing pleasure

Ivy League schools are under fire for animal abuse in their laboratories. Try to treat the subject of your next dissection with a little more kindness, k? (SFGate)

Working Muppets of All Countries, Unite! (Slate)

Thanks to some mice, we’re one step closer to developing a vaccine against the Ebola virus.

NYPD officers are in hot water for their Facebook comments about the West Indian American Day Parade: “They called people ‘animals’ and ‘savages.’ One comment said, ‘Drop a bomb and wipe them all out.’” (NYT)

According to some fancy film formula, Gremlins is, on average, the highest-grossing, best-received holiday film since 1981. (The Atlantic)

A Chuckling Ailuropoda melanoleuca via Wikimedia Commons

Soon the world’s population will hit 7 billion! (New Yorker)
The new iPhone already ended at least one marriage. (HuffPo)
Unexpectedly large numbers of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal. (NYMag)
Dark matter is even more puzzling than we thought. (Wired)
Young eyes needed washing after porn was posted on Sesame Street’s YouTube channel. (Slate)

Upwards of two-thirds of New Yorkers support the OWS protestors. (Bloomberg)
Professor James Shapiro says Hollywood dissed Shakespeare. (NYTimes)

Books, go hit 'em

 The reading you never realized you were so behind on via Wikimedia Commons

Hey check out the science I found in this tube!

When they’re not headbanging or falling for our anecdote baiting, Columbia faculty enjoy getting dirty in the lab. Bwog takes a moment to look back on this week in science. Headlines were compiled by test-tube enthusiast Zach Kagan.

CSI is real—Columbia’s nanoscience brainboxes have created a device that can sequence DNA at the speed of a primetime crime drama. By dragging DNA through a nanopore, the individual nucleic acids create an electric potential that is analyzed by a computer. And at under $1000 dollars, it makes finding the father all that more affordable. Now if only the labs can find a way to enhance it.

What’s your poison? Chances are you didn’t say arsenic, but if you are drinking from a shallow well you might be swigging the unpopular chemical. A new Columbia study says that minerals in wells dug below 500 feet purify water from deadly arsenic, so remember to dig deep before you get your sip on.

Women of Columbia and Barnard: do you want to make $8000? That’s what Columbia researchers are offering for the donation of human eggs to create patient-specific stem cells (research that got a shout out on last week’s BunsenBwog). This has caused a bit of a controversy as some have described the incentive system as a slippery slope that leads to selling organs. But while the bioethicists wrestle with the issue there’s time for you to put your student debt in a headlock.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure-trove of alternative energy. Columbia’s Earth Engineering Center claims that, if recycled using current technology, all the plastics thrown away annually could fuel 6 million cars or power 5.2 million homes for a whole year. Bwog has one word for you: plastics.

Don’t listen to what that guy down the hall with the Bob Marley poster says: a new study at the Mailman School claims that marijuana use doubles the chance of getting into a car accident.

Tubetouchers via wikimedia commons.

"If that's the world's smartest man, God help us." - Lucille Feynman

Yesterday, Jim Ottaviani, author of the recently released graphic novel “Feynman“, stopped by Butler as part of his book tour. He discussed Richard Feynman— his book about a sardonic Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a knack for bongos, and the appeal of graphic novels. Bwog Daily Editor and Feynman Fan Brian Wagner was in attendance.

To introduce the concept of a graphic novel based on the life of a physicist, Ottaviani began with a tour of science through pictures. A stone from over 5000 years ago illustrating how to calculate the square root of 2, a pop-up book on Euclid from the 1500s, quantitative pictures of fauna, and several other illustrations flashed onscreen. “Pictures also satisfy Moore’s Law,” Ottaviani explained. “The use of pictures in science doubles at roughly the same rate as predicted by the law… Okay, that’s not true. But the point is that science communicates with images!” the author explained to a chuckling crowd.

As for how using images in science translates to creating comics about scientists, that was explained by the vocabulary word of the evening: saccade. What are those, you non-bio majors ask? They are small, rapid eye movements made by humans as they observe something. When we “look” at a scene, our eyes do not remain fixed; rather, they jump around several dozen times per second in order to build up an accurate mental image (fun fact: the area which the human eye sees in clear focus is only the size of a coin held at arm’s length!). Thus, as Ottaviani likes to think of it, we’re making cartoons all the time out of these individual “frames”.                                         (more…)

Overheard from Dr. Evelyn Hughes during a Frontiers of Science lecture today:

“Just because physicists don’t show videos of frogs doing it, that doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about it.”

We’ll follow suit and spare you, but while we’re on the subject, we may as well introduce you fresh batch of College folk to what is almost a rite of passage. The following video was composed and performed for a Frontiers of Science homework assignment by Reni Lane CC’10 who also went on to sign with major label Custard/Universal Motown.

Bill Nye explains the rules of science

The Vagelos family is giving University of Pennsylvania a $13 million present to help the school create a new undergraduate program in energy research. As if helping students learn how to build solar powered cars isn’t enough, the program’s acronym is VIPER. Now we’re really jealous. (UPenn)

Barnard President D-Spar was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this past weekend. (PR Newswire)

Sportaneous, the startup that wants you out of Butler and onto your much-maligned feet, got their app featured in the NYTimes. Sportaneous may not have helped the Times reporter find a pick-up game, but it was responsible for some quaffle-throwing mischief on the lawns recently. (NYT)

The Tevatron, formerly the world’s largest particle collider and a symbol of America’s scientific dominance, has powered down for the last time. Now it’s up to the Europeans to discover the Universe’s secrets, so at least we know they’ll be well-fed as they do it. (Wired)

But changes in science don’t always have to benefit mankind. Nestle has unrolled a new commercial targeted at our best friend—dogs. Yes, dogs. (Reuters)

No matter what changes science throws our way, there’s always some good news. According to a group of neuroscientists, evil isn’t real. CC is gonna be so boring now. (Slate)

Your real 5th grade science teacher via Wikimedia Commons

Liquid nitrogen: it's like getting iced, but... much worse.

The physics community’s collective world was recently rocked by the latest results from CERN, with some now claiming that they have measured neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. While the discrepancy is small (only 60 nanoseconds), it could force physicists to reconsider Einstein’s theory of relativity. Columbia’s go-to physics rock star, Brain Greene, remains skeptical: “I would bet just about everything I hold dear that this won’t hold up to scrutiny.” Ouch.

One million Americans suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but researchers have yet to understand its causes. Earlier studies suggested that the condition might stem from the XMRV virus or one of the related mouse leukemia viruses. However, recent data from patient blood work finds no correlation between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome. Mailman School of Public Health Professor W. Ian Lipkin is conducting his own study, though other faculty members such as Vincent Racaniello agree that “it’s clearly time to move on.”

The blood-brain barrier makes it impossible for doctors to intravenously deliver drugs to the brain. Or at least it was impossible until Columbia professor Elisa Konofagou developed a method using short ultra sound pulses to safely open the blood-brain barrier. Konfagou believes this method will lead to treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Cue an updated Frontiers curriculum.

Graphene has already established a reputation as an incredibly versatile material, but things might just get even better—a new paper published by a large collaboration of Columbia professors and graduate students hints at an unplumbed frontier in the nitrogen doping of graphene. The embedded nitrogen atoms profoundly change the electrical properties of the graphene, albeit only in a two-atom radius, making it highly tunable and useful for electronics. That’s all well and good, but could it possibly be worth all those Girl Scout cookies?

IcyHawt image via Wikimedia Commons.

SCIENCE

Columbia scientists take no vacations!

Defying conventional medical technology, one Columbia engineer has decided to build his way out of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. The mChip, now passing its fourth year of testing, aims to deliver the diagnostic capabilities of a full-fledged lab to patients on a hundred-dollar chip. In case that’s not impressive, the lab-on-a-chip has a 100-percent detection rate for HIV in only 15 minutes testing time. The project’s team hopes to extend the chip’s superpowers to also detecting hepatitis B or C as well as the most common sexually-transmitted diseases. The team even plans to integrate the chip with satellite or cell phone equipment in order to transmit results wirelessly to doctors—though in a post-Steve Jobs world, we can only hope that all that miniaturization doesn’t get in the way of usability.

Seismologists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory briefly poked their heads into the media to help ease New Yorker’s concerns over this week’s earthquake. In addition to helping bump up the quake from a 5.8 to a 5.9, the scientists are going to use the collected data to learn more about the underlying rock. Who knows, maybe they’ll find an entire village buried beneath Central Park.

For the first time ever, Columbia neuroscientists were able to convert ordinary skin cells into functional forebrain neurons using direct reprogramming techniques. The recent achievement offers a glimmer of promise for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. While gene therapy has shown its success in treating “bubble boy” disease, we wonder if someone has tried their regeneration experiment on a familiar campus icon.

A new study by the university’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has found that teenagers who use online social networking sites are more likely to engage in drug use. The risk increases fivefold for tobacco, threefold for alcohol, and twofold for marijuana. Some even say a parallel can be drawn to another cultural phenomenon involving ironic facial hair. (Just say no, 2015ers)

Scientists via Wikimedia Commons

"I hate when petroleum-based products cover surfaces" - scientist.

• Using cutting-edge computer models, scientists at the Earth Observatory determined that the depletion of ozone over Antarctica has directly affected climate patterns as far north as the tropics. If you’re somehow still not convinced of global warming, here’s a time-lapse progressionillustrating the formation of the now 11.5 million square-mile hole. (CNN)
  
• The Times recounts the efforts of our own Ponisseril Somasundaran, chemical engineer and a leading expert in surfactants, who developed safer alternatives to the petroleum-based dispersants used in the recent oil spill. Because fighting oil with even more oil just sounds, you know, silly. (NYTimes)
• Bigshot, a pet project of the director of Columbia’s Computer Vision Laboratory, invites children to learn about the science behind digital cameras by providing them their own DIY kits. Bwog wonders how long it’ll take for a Brooklyn startup to start marketing the camera to hipsters. (NYTimes)
• Thanks to data collected from the growth rings of ancient trees, Columbia researchers have pinpointed several record droughts that may have contributed to the decline of the Mayan and Toltec civilizations. So you see, real hard science can help out its cousins in the bunkum pseudosciences anthropological sciences, after all. (InsideScience)

Wrenching image via Wikimedia.

No time to look at the camera when you're doing science

When they’re not headbanging or answering our inane questions, Columbia faculty enjoy getting dirty in the lab. Bwog takes a moment to look back on this week in science. Headlines were compiled by our Strong-Willed but Gentle- Handed Correspondent Ricky Raudales.

• A team of scientists recreated functioning enzymes that date back between one and four billion years ago, revealing, in turn, that the earth was once hotter and more acidic. Sorry 90’s retro junkies, but we’re not closer to hatching a baby Velociraptor anytime soon.
  
• When in doubt, adding more is better. Columbia neuroscientists discovered that mice with more hippocampal neurons make wiser decisions and, when combined with exercise, exhibit fewer signs of anxiety.
• Researchers at the B-school’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CERD) determined that various social factors, such as perception of the current weather affect people’s acceptance of global warming. In a less innocuous correlation, self-identifying Democrats are more likely acceptors than those who identify themselves as Republicans.
• Researchers at Columbia and Israel’s Ben Gurion University found that judges were hungry for justice. Literally. Apparently judges are less likely to grant prisoners parole if they have not eaten in a while.

Labrats via Wikimedia Commons.