This Week's Sci-light!

Feel like moving?  Well there might be a destination.  The adventure to get there might be something similar to the marine turned Avatar in the movie bearing that same name.  Then again, perhaps we'll figure out how to travel "Star Trek style."  Beam me up, Scotty!

An artist's impression of a sunrise on Kepler 62f. The two outer planets of the Kepler 62 system may lie in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface. 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Welcome to Kepler 62f.  (That's as good a name as "earth!")  How did this world get it's name--from the NASA Kepler space craft that discovered it.  I should actually say "them" as there are 5 planets circling this star that is somewhat dimmer than our sun.  Kepler 62f is special because it is one of two planets that seem made of rock and may have oceans.  Intrigued?  Read Dennis Overbye's  story "Two Promising Planets to Live, 1,200 Light-Years from Earth" in the New York Times.

There's history here, too.  Johannes Kepler born in 1571 to a poor family in Weil der Stadt, Württemberg.  He was a sickly child but his intelligence earned him a scholarship to attend University of Tübingen where he was delighted with the work of Copernicus.  The history and NASA connection you can read.   Eventually and recently, Kepler met Einstein by showing gravity bending as an extremely dense dwarf star crosses in front of a red star. 

By the way, my job is not to explain all of this to you--simply to wet your apetite for it.  History meets science meets science fiction today.  So, here's the personal question:  Where are you going?  The universe is an expansive place with concepts smaller and larger than the mind can grasp or imagine.  But isn't it fun to learn more and keep trying! 

This Week's Sci-light

Photo courtesy of IBA_Hamburg

Buildings are going green in a completely new way. The first algae powered building has been constructed in Germany. It is named the Bio Intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House and was designed by Splitterwerk Architects, Arup and Strategic Science Consultants. The algae, taken from the nearby Elbe River, is inside of 129 large louvers that are fixed onto the southeast and southwest building facades, and are there for heating and cooling purposes.

The rectangular louvers are tanks that house the algae as well as a water solution that provides the algae with the proper nutrients. The louvers help shade the building during the summer to keep it cool, and the biogas from the algae is burned and used for heating purposes. It took three years to design and about five million to construct. The hopes for the BIQ House are for it to serve as a precedent for different types of energy efficient buildings that can be relatively cost effective. For more information on the specifics of how the BIQ House operates, visit Phys Org and IBA_Hamburg. 

This Week's Sci-light

In recent aquatic news, a coral reef in Australia that was damaged in 1998 has been discovered to be able to self re-generate. It was previously thought that reefs needed assistance from other reefs to be able to heal properly. Australian Institute of Marine Science researcher James Glimour found in his study that with the right water quality and no human impact, coral reefs are able to recover from damage and be as healthy as they were previous to the damage.

The damage was produced by unusually warmer water, which caused the reef to cast out the organisms that provide it with food and nutrients. After a while, it was able to grow and reproduce in order to re-create the well functioning reef it used to be. Read the full article at NBC News .

In other news, a 3-year-old sea lion named Ronan was taught how to dance and keep the beat to various songs. The mammal’s ability to keep the rhythm clues scientists in on the capabilities of different species. For more information go to Discovery. This adorable video is sure to make anyone smile.  

Don't take it from me!

Any of you who have been reading this blog for a while know that many topics encourage students to not only study about science, but to go further and do science. 

Jose Araujo from Cerritos Community College did just that.  He applied for a paid, eight-week Summer Research Internship in Solar Energy--a program offered by USC Dornsife professors Richard Brutchey, Stephen Bradforth and Mark Thompson.  Mentored by Priscilla Antunez, a National Science Foundation Fellow, Jose had an experience that transformed his career. 

Read his story and, like I said, "Don't take it from me!"

                                                             (Picture:  Jose Araujo and Priscilla Antunez in the lab.  Photo credit Richard Brutchey)

This week's Sci-lights

It's spring break at USC, but the main artery of campus is lined with tables and umbrellas and lines upon lines of students.  Why?  Each of the students, dressed in their most impressive interviewing attire is waiting to speak to representatives from companies that are offering jobs or internships.  They are hoping for that face-to-face advantage and trying to say of be something memorable.

Today's Sci-light is going to focus on science but with a networking twist.  Our science highlights come from the web page or YouTube channel of local universities and cover research by university professors.  I just picked a couple of things that caught my eye.

Capturing CO2, an interview with Omar Yaghi

First up is Omar Yaghi from UCLA's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  In his research, he is focusing on the development of new compounds called metal organic frameworks or MOFs.  In short a MOF is formed from inorganic and organic units.  The structure of the compound creates storage spaces for carbon dioxide and you can see those spaces in the molecular model in the picture to the left.  I know you're curious so to learn more, watch the full interview on YouTube.

Photo courtesy of The Lancet

The next research story is from USC.  Yes, I know I chose arch rivals.  Believe it or not, there are many faculty and staff who went to school in one place and are working in the other.  :)  Now onto the science!  An article by Suzanne Wu called, Lessons from Mummy, reports on the work of Professor Caleb Finch looking for clogged arteries in 137 mummies.  In case you're curious about why this is relevant work, atherosclerosis vascular disease is the leading cause of death in the developed world.  Curiously, the hunting and gathering days of humans were not kinder to the human body as in every population studied, artery plaque was found.  More facts are revealed in the article, so let the curious discover.

I said initially, that I had a networking twist on these Sci-lights and here it is.  Have you ever thought of looking at University research as a mechanism of expanding your understanding of research questions that could be asked?  In these two examples we have a classic cross-disciplinary approach to solving modern day problems.  Mummies informing us about our bodies and inorganic and organic chemistry getting together to assist in solving an environmental problem.

The point--use University websites to find out what professors are researching.  Why?  So that you can first see the breadth of research possibilities and then so that you can follow up with an email to the professor who is doing something you find amazing. 

This Week's Sci-light

Do you ever wish you could read minds? Scientists have figured out a way to tell whom someone is thinking about through brain scans.  Recently, they have figured out how to decode, from the brain, images like recalled memories or a certain number people have just viewed. Nathan Spreng is a Cornell University cognitive neuroscientist that, along with his colleagues, wanted to figure out if it was possible to create an image based off the information in people’s brains. 

Spreng and his team held an experiment in which they told the volunteers the personalities and names of fictitious people. The volunteers were asked to imagine those people and the brain scans showed lots of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. The findings of the experiment suggest the medial prefrontal cortex is used to decipher and create personalities for people. These findings could help us uncover more secrets to how the brain works. For the full article go to Business Insider.

This week's Sci-light

        One things bees and humans have in common: we both like caffeine. Citrus flowers naturally have caffeine in their nectar and use it to keep their bee customers coming back for more. Seeing as bees visit so many flowers a day, it’s difficult to remember the location of certain flowers. A new study lead by Geraldine Wright, a Newcastle University neuroethologist, shows that caffeine boosts the bees’ memory and helps them remember the flower’s scent so they can later return for the java-like nectar.

        Plants produce caffeine because they use it as a defense mechanism to ward off insects with the bitter taste. The study measured the amount of caffeine in three species of the Coffea plant as well as four species of the citrus plant and they all contained caffeine. They also measured caffeine’s effect on the bees’ memory. They conducted an exercise and found that three times as many bees remembered a scent paired with caffeine twenty-four hours later, and twice as many remembered the scent three days later.

        In a way, bees get the better end of the deal when it comes to caffeine. We get an energy boost and a crash a few hours later, while they get a memory boost that can last for up to three days. For the full article go to Science.NBCNews. For more information go to National Geographic.