This Week's Sci-light

"Nature is far more imaginative than we are." 

Stamatios M. Krimigis, scientist at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Image obtained from NASA 2002 shows one of twin Voyager spacecrafts, launched in 1977.

  "We were planning, and it really paid off."

Dr. Edward C. Stone, NASA 

These quotes seemingly contradict each other and yet are offered by fellow scientists following a 35-year project into our solar system and hoping the beyond. 

Voyager spacecrafts (there were two) were launched in 1977 to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.  Today, both crafts are still going with key instruments on board still functional.  Voyager 1 traveling at 38,000 miles per hour is reaching the outermost boundaries of the solar system, the last frontier for the empire of our Sun (heliosphere), as called by NY Times writer Kenneth Chang in his article Going, Going, Still Going?  Voyager 1 at Solar System's Edge.

Scientists expected that two things would happen once the Voyager 1 reached the heliopause, the actual boundary of the solar system.  First they anticipated that the solar wind would cease--a stream of charged particles blown out by the sun.  The second sign of the solar system's edge would be a shift in the magnetic field.

As I was reading the story told by the data sent back from Voyager 1, I realized two things--how much we know and how much we are surprised by what we didn't know.  To think that scientists from the 1970's could have built instruments to survive in space for 35 years and counting, far longer than they anticipated, is amazing.  Those instruments are collecting data that we are using to expand our understanding.  And as the article explains, those instruments are recording data that we never anticipated.  

So, both quotes by the scientists involved in various parts of this process are descriptive of the process of science and, in a larger sense, the process of life.  Planning and amazement are all part of the act of living.  

Perhaps Albert Einstein said it best, 

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination."

 

This Week's Sci-light

Photo courtesy of Don Arnold

If you've been following this blog, you may wonder if I'm becoming obsessed with glowing green.  If you're confused, scroll down to last week's Sci-light and you'll understand.  I'm not going to ask you what you see.  I'll just tell you instead--this is a neuron actively engaged in making memories.

Let's consider the picture.  The large yellow and green sphere is a brain cell called a neuron.  From it you see branches stretching out called dendrites.  Signals pass between neurons by electrochemicals that pass between the dendrites at junctions called synapses.  So what are the small bright spots?  They are the synapses that excite as electrochemical signals pass between the dendrites.  What Drs. Arnold and Roberts observe is the change of those spots that indicate how "synaptic structures in the brain have been altered by the new data," according to author Robert Perkins.

Scientists Don Arnold and Richard Roberts at the University of Southern California have been researching how memories form in our brains using mice as model organisms.  Robert Perkins author of "Memories Illuminated", describes how "the team has engineered microscopic probes that light up synapses in a living neuron in real time by attaching fluorescent markers onto synaptic proteins."  This process doesn't inhibit the cell's ability to function; it does enable the scientist to observe the physical changes in the brain.


The article goes on to talk about how the proteins that fluoresce are selected and used as well as the implications of this research for the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative. 

This Sci-light is almost a memory and I can now imagine my synapses firing away and altering the synaptic structures of my brain.  What about yours?  My guess is that you, too, are restructuring.  After all, you're Sci-Curious!
 

This Week's Sci-light

THAR SHE GLOWS

Ryoko Ando and Atsushi Miyawaki

I started with this picture by by Dr. Ando and Dr. Miyawaki to get you curious.  What is this?  In some ways it looks like a beetle to me--those kind that have brown colored stripes on their body and show up when you're playing in the dirt.  Of course, it's not.  Rather, pictured is a transverse section of a muscle in a fresh water eel with a activated protein that is glowing green.

Let me explain.  In the article, "An eel's glow could illuminate liver disease," Rachel Ehrenberg describes the discovery of the scientists working for the RIKEN research institute in Japan.  They were trying to understand the mechanism that turned on the protein in the eel and it's importance.  

Let's switch gears for a minute.  When hemoglobin in human red blood cells breaks down it produces bilirubin.  Perhaps you've had a blood test done where this was measured and was reported to you along with your cholesterol, triglycerides, and potassium levels.  What you may not have understood is that bilirubin levels indicate liver function.  Why?  It's part of the liver's job to keep those levels in normal ranges.  

What scientists at the RIKEN research institute discovered was bilirubin had the ability to turn on the protein causing the eel to glow.  While the application to human health is still a ways off, it's not hard to imagine a use for this protein to indicate an increase of bilirubin in a blood sample. 

Before you click on the link to the article to understand more about this discovery and perhaps even read the scholarly article linked to the bottom of the webpage, I want to focus your attention on the cross over from fundamental questions (what turns on the protein) to applied science (liver functioning).  For this to take place, scientists from different disciplines collaborate.  

One more thing before you go, in looking for today's Sci-light, I stumbled across an NIH sponsored site called, "Team Science Toolkit."  The opening paragraph of What is Team Science states, "Team science is a collaborative effort to address a scientific challenge that leverages the strengths and expertise of professionals trained in different fields. Although traditional single-investigator driven approaches are ideal for many scientific endeavors, coordinated teams of investigators with diverse skills and knowledge may be especially helpful for studies of complex social problems with multiple causes."

Learning across disciplines and working collaboratively is the path of many scientists.  Don't you want to be a part of the team?

This Week's Sci-light

I must confess, this week's Sci-light made me do a double take.  Gold as a delivery mechanism for medicine or as the article put it 'drug-delivery vehicle?'  I'm curious.

First, look at this picture.  These are gold nanoparticles.  To refresh, nanoparticles are 10^-9 in size.  Another way of saying it--there are 1,000,000 nanometers in 1 millimeter.  What's this size in the natural world?  The width of a strand of DNA is 2.5 nanometers according to The International Society for Optical Engineering. (link downloads a poster) 

http://inhabitat.com/researchers-shine-light-on-gold-nanoparticles-to-produce-electricity/

But let's get back to the concept of 'drug-delivery vehicles.'  A team of scientists from the Institut Laue-Langevin in France, the University of Chicago in the US and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization have been working on how gold nanoparticles affect the cell membrane and possible biomedical applications. 

What have they discovered?  Author Belle Dume tells us in her article, "Positive or negative?  Nanoparticle surface charge affects cell membrane interactions" that "positively charged particles can penetrate deep into cell membranes while negatively charged particles do not enter the cell wall at all, but instead prevent it breaking down under certain conditions."  That means that positively charged gold nanoparticles can get inside the cell membrane--the cell's powerful line of defense. -->

Curious?  Good!  That's what this blog is suppose to encourage.  Click the link and learn more. 

Just a closing thought.  What we understand about our world takes us both to macro level and the micro level of discovery.  Where do you want to discover!?! 

This week's Sci-Light

Some of you as readers of this blog are considering careers in STEM fields.  Maybe you're interested in biology or ecology, or perhaps others think in terms of applied medical science or engineering.  My guess is that you're long term goals are 10 years down the road at most.  Allow me to introduce you to a researcher who has been asking questions and making discoveries since the 1950s.  She's  a pioneer, in many ways, who changed the way we think about the brain and neurophysiology.

Photo credit:  Owen Egan

Dr. Brenda Milner's work with a patient known for years as H.M. changed the view that the brain functioned as a whole and recognized the importance and roles of different regions of the brain.  H.M., now known to be Henry G. Molaison, suffered from amnesia after a brain surgery to treat epilepsy.  He could not form new memories, so although Dr. Milner worked with him for decades, she would have to reintroduce herself daily.  Mr. Molaison died at the age of 82, but Dr. Milner, almost 95, continues her work still taking post-doctoral researchers. 

While her research is remarkable, it is the remarks at the end of the article by Claudia Dreifus called "Still Charting Memory's Depths" that provide the context for the work.  Ms. Dreifus asked, "Did you like him?" to which Dr. Milner replied, "We all loved H.M. Yet it was very strange, psychologically, because when he died we all felt as if we’d lost a friend. And this is funny because one thinks of friendship as a bilateral thing. He didn’t recognize us or know us, and we felt we’d lost a friend."

For more about Dr. Brenda Milner, visit The Great Canadian Psychology Website.  Some of the simple tests that H.M. was given are posted there under Dr. Milner's links. 

For those still forming their own career goals, remember that research is asking questions.  The answers to those questions may take you to places you've never imagined.  Dr. Milner's took us all there.

This Week's Sci-light

Andrea Hill/istock

Elephants are large but gentle and intelligent creatures.  Have you ever wondered how they communicate with each other? Biologist and conservationist Joyce Poole and husband Petter Granli have begun to decipher their sophisticated sign language. Poole and Granli founded a charity called ElephantVoices, which advocates research and conservation of elephants in Africa. While aiding pachyderms in Africa, they thought it would be helpful to pick up on their mannerisms, and turn that into solid information about how they interact.

They created a sort of catalogue of the different elephant gestures and behaviors so that the information could be readily available to everyone.  The database includes different categories: attentive, aggressive, ambivalent, defensive, social integration, mother-offspring, sexual, play and death. Through their observing they have matched certain gestures and movements with emotions.  Ear spreading translates into aggression, sniffing signifies attentiveness, a group advance shows defensiveness and caressing demonstrates loving and comforting usually between a mother and her offspring. Read the whole article at NationalGeographic to learn more about how elephants have a sense of humor, how they deal with death and more.

This week's Sci-Light

A culture of dreams...

I was scanning the internet for today's sci-light and found the story of Bertrand Piccard and the solar plane he conceived of and partnered with André Broschberg of the Swiss Institute of Technology to build.  Read all about the plane powered by 12,000 photovoltaic cells in Diane Cardwell's NY Times article Cross-Country Solar Plane Expedition Set for Takeoff. 

Photo credit:  Jim Wilson/The New York Times

It wasn't the description of the plane, the expedition or the applications that struck me although they were fascinating.  It was the culture that Mr. Piccard described in his home as a child.  His grandfather, Auguste Piccard, was a physicist and friends with Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.  He designed a capsule for a balloon allowing he and a partner to be the first to fly into the stratosphere.  Father Jacques Ernest-Jean Piccard traveled with US Navy Lt. Don Walsh almost 7 miles in a pressurized bathyscaphe called Trieste to the deepest point on Earth--Challenger Deep of the Marianas Trench.

Son/grandson Bertrand Piccard said this in the article, "I thought this [incredible things] was the normal way to live and I was very disappointed to see that there are a lot of people who are afraid of the unknown, afraid of the doubts, afraid of the question marks."

Perhaps you're feeling that way--not knowing your next step, not getting what you wanted for the summer, unsure of how to find a job or where to even begin looking.  If so, this article is for you.  Life is not a series of knowns; it is a series of unknowns.  It is in the adventure of living--the highs of success and the depths of dispair and everything in between--that we actually experience the fullness of living.

Take a deep breath.  Don't try and map out the next year, the next month, the next day.  Live in this one.  Think about what you enjoy and find a way to experience it today.  Be open to the opportunities that come and grab them.  Study hard.  Learn much.  Do your work.  Explore your dreams.  Do what is to be done.  Live. 

For me, that means I write a blog...

...what is your culture of dreams.