SCIENCE GURU

Editor-in-Chief: Kiana Nouri

Dec 2013 Jan 2014

The latest and hottest news about science from all around the world! We publish an issue every month; copies can be found in Dr. Thornburgs room and issues are posted on our blog.

Mountain View High School Science Magazine

Science Guru club meets every Friday at lunch in 120, Dr. Thornburgs room

Left to right Avni Singhal, Rohun Saxena, Kiana Nouri, Varsha Suresh Kumar, Dr. Thornburg

Biocomputers
Pratik Mulpury

Science News & Facts

Kiana Nouri
Sorry Albert! New Physics Challenges Albert Einstein Einsteins relativity theory may not be accurate. Strange signals picked up from black holes and distant supernovae suggest theres more to space-time than Einstein believed. Einstein envisaged space-time as a perfectly smooth surface warped by the mass of stars, planets, and galaxies to produce gravity. Now signals from a variety of celestial objects are hinting at something different. If the observations are confirmed and they are controversial they suggest that the landscape of reality is altogether more rugged than Einstein thought. That would mean his isnt the last word on space-time or gravity and would change fundamentally our perception of the universe.
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magine growing a computer just like clones in a bio lab we might see in a sci-fi movie. This may not be as far out in the future as we may think. Today, computers are made of semiconductors that are used to carry out computations, while computers made of living parts have existed solely in the realm of science fiction; only limited research has been conducted in the field.
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Long Live . . . Us
by Jasmine Deng

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Comet Investigation
by Carter Fox

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Did You Know Your Face Is Made Up of Junk?

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Hypothetical Dark Energy and Invisible Dark Matter

by Varsha Kumar

by Jasmine Deng

Letter From the Editor

Kiana Nouri
On the other hand, if we analyze our lives periodically, we can observe that it is not achievements such as education or money that are the aims of our lives. My aim is to utilize education to contribute to living a meaningful life. For me that means being able to increase my knowledge. I gain knowledge to live a stimulating and fulfilling existence. I plan to share this stimulating life, spread knowledge when I can, and give financially what I can. So, if there is a shortage of the happiness element in your blood chemistry and gene activity, is there another secret to happiness? Absolutely. Live an analyzed life that, rather than indulging materialistic cravings, thrives in the freedom of living a meaningful life. Kiana Nouri is the founder, president, and editor-in-chief of Science Guru Blog, Magazine, and Club. This issue of Science Guru is created, edited, and published by her.

The Scientific Basis of Happiness: Gene Activity and Blood Chemistry

s there a DNA or chemical element in your blood responsible for happiness? According to UCLA scientists, ancient philosophers and modern psychologists, there isand the secret to happiness is quite trivial. If in fact that is true, what are these basic components? What does happiness mean to each of us and how can we fulfill this pursuit of happiness? The art and science of happiness has been researched and analyzed for centuries. Alain de Botton, the British philosopher, discusses this in his Epicurus on Happiness video. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus claimed that friends, freedom, and an analyzed life are the key ingredients of a happy life. In fact, present-day psychologists are researching certain positive emotions and causes of happiness, such as freedom and friends. Some of these key emotions are gratitude, serenity, joy, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has done research in this area. She has demonstrated that positive emotions affect our health. She has developed a theory called Broaden and Build, through which she describes how positive emotions broaden our lives and how resilience is fueled by positive emotions. Fredricksons research concludes: ratio of three to one positive emotions to negative emotions is the point at which people tend to flourish and thrive. As another example, according to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, 50% of our happiness is set by our genes, 10% by life circumstances beyond our control, and 40% by our own actions. Now that we know the formula, we need to substitute the values that correspond to each of our lives. In my specific case, my family represents the Epicurean friends. Financial freedom, political freedom, and the freedom to live a meaningful life are my purpose, but achieving it is not trivial. One key tool I can use to help me is acquiring an education. By going to university, I can learn about my interests, my passion, and what I can do best in life as a professional. I can achieve financial freedom and live a fulfilling life. Getting a degree is an excellent goal; since I gain knowledge that I can give. As a junior in high school I started my own very small technology startup, and I am still working on it. I still plan to continue my education in technology and science and utilize it to start more ventures. This provides me with financial freedom and opens my hand into giving more to others, so they can get their opportunities in life. The third ingredient of Epicurean life, the analyzed life, is what I need to work on, in the process of achieving a life with freedom. Epicurus taught us that we look in the wrong places for the pursuit of happinessfor example, a spending spree using a credit card.

Jasmine Deng

Long Live . . . Us

Qing Shi Huang Di, the first Chinese emperor

Jasmine has been an active member of our club for two years now. She is the community coordinator for Science Guru.

he idea of immortality has been around for a very, very long time. Many people in myth and legend are claimed to be immortal more specifically, gods and goddesses, or very holy figures, in some religions. The quest for immortality has been (one can say) immortal throughout the ages as well. Around 200 bc, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, desperately sought an elixir of life that supposedly would grant him immortality. This elixir of life mainly consisted of mercury pills, which today are known to be, unfortunately, poisonous. At least he is immortal in our memory in teaching us that the path to immortality is not paved with mercury. In the early 1800s, Leonard Live-Forever Jones claimed to be immortal. According to Jones, death occurred because of immorality (not to be confused with immortality), and with prayer and fasting death could be avoided. He is, needless to say, not alive today. Of course, with improved medicine and technology, weve greatly elongated human life spans, for which many people are grateful. We have not quite guaranteed immortality, but we can now grow lumps of liver, brain, some bits of the heart, and retinal cells. So it appears stem cell research is paying off. However, we can grow only the differentiated cells, meaning that we can grow the specific lung cells, heart cells, and nerve cells, but they grow two-dimensionally, meaning that they grow to become totally flat, stuck on a petri dish. The issue is that we happen to be three-dimensional organisms, with threedimensional hearts and brains and organs. We can and have made gel scaffolds to get around this, but these are fairly effective only for small parts of organs, not the complete one. But with the pace of technology, it is quite reasonable that we should perfect this within a few decades.
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Carter Fox

Comet Investigation

Carter Fox is a new member of Science Guru this year.

his past year, Comet ISON made a stunning journey through the inner solar system. This extraordinary comet amazed astronomers around the world as it made a daring encounter with the sun. Scientists and amateur astronomers watched ISON closely. If ISON survived, it would reach a magnitude visible to the naked eyebut, sadly, the suns intense heat and gravity broke apart this icy rock from the early solar system. Comet ISONs journey started nearly a light year from the sun, at the very edge of our solar system. There lies an immense cloud of icy planetesimals called the Oort Cloud. Occasionally, some of these icy pieces of rock are slung across the solar system towards the sun by the effect of solar gravity. Comet ISON journeyed among these planetesimals until it was pulled away and slung into the inner solar system. ISON was three to four miles across and its tail extended over 57,000 miles into space. Its moment of truth with the sun came on Thanksgiving Day. In the images above, the sun is blocked to show the comet moving towards it. ISON fought the sun, but soon was disintegrated by its extreme heat and gravity. However, something later appeared coming out from the opposite side of the sun, as seen in the second image.
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Comet Investigation
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Carter Fox
discovered surprising compounds in the capsule such as olivine, a mix of iron and magnesium. Comets are extraordinary objects from the far reaches of our solar system that continue to impress astronomers with their beauty and complexity. The Stardust and Rosetta missions and study of comet ISON help scientists around the world unravel the mysteries of the early solar system. Watch this animation to see how Rosetta will deploy its lander and what will happen as it descends to the surface: http://www.space. com/24090-european-spacecraftto-land-on-comet-in- 2014animation.html

Scientists cheered, thinking ISON had survived its close encounter with the sun. Unfortunately, these dreams died when the remains were found not to be a comet, but simply a small amount of leftover rock and pebbles that survived the encounter with the sun. Comets have always fascinated humans, and ISON is surely not the only comet we have investigated. Right now the Rosetta spacecraft is on its way to comet 67P, a comet around two and a half miles wide controlled by Jupiters gravity. Rosetta will attempt to orbit the comet and to send a lander down to the surface.

After finding a safe landing spot, Rosetta will launch its lander to the surface of the comet. The lander is equipped with harpoons that will be released to tether itself to the surface, preventing it from bouncing back into space. Once on the surface it will drill and heat samples to investigate organic molecules and their construction. The Stardust spacecraft has already rendezvoused with a comet and safely returned home a sample capsule. On January 2, 2004, Stardust swung past comet Wild 2 and attempted to pick up particles from the comet. Afterward, the spacecrafts sample-return capsule landed in the Utah desert on January 15, 2006. Scientists

Long Live . . . Us
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Jasmine Deng
(Luckily, skin is a two-dimensional organ.) While few probably are in desperate need of a skin transplant, this can aid healing, possibly saving patients lives, and prevent scarring. According to the National Kidney Foundation, as of June 21, 2013, there were 118,617 people waiting for lifesaving organ transplants in the US. Of those, 96,645 were waiting for kidney transplants. Soon we may be able to grow kidneys in labs and transplant them into the human body. This isnt just limited to kidneys we could grow eyes, hearts, lungs, and other organs and tissues. No doubt the road to immortality still has a long way left to

Already, we can print skin on 3D printers just from taking some of the patients skin and isolating individual skin cells, then growing them and printing skin, as if from a regular inkjet printer.

A skin printer go. But were getting closer to in in continuing stem cell research, and someday, we may all become a society composed of immortal individuals like a society of vampires and the undead. Now, most people can live to eighty or even reach their centennial. But will we reach immortality? Only time will tell.

The scaffold for a kidney

Science News and Facts

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Kiana Nouri
faster, which has worked in New York and Boston. Cities have used it for the electricity grid and it is being used in wireless networks. Now scientists are applying the paradox to any network, including working on curing cancer by using this paradox on networks in the human body. A drug for perfect pitch Do you think you could have been Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony maestro, but missed the opportunity to start in early childhood? A mood-stabilising drug can help you achieve perfect pitch the ability to identify any note you hear without inferring it from a reference note. Since this is a skill that usually is acquired only early in life, the discovery is the first evidence that it may be possible to revert the human brain to a childlike state, enabling us to treat disorders and unlock skills that are difficult, if not impossible, to acquire beyond a certain age.
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In quantum theory, nothing is static or certain. Particles and energy can fluctuate and pop in and out of existence on the briefest of time scales. Many theories of quantum gravity the yearnedfor theories of everything that will unify our descriptions of space-time and gravity with quantum mechanics suggest something similar is true of space-time: instead of a smooth continuum, it is a turbulent quantum foam with no clearly defined surface. Einsteins undulating landscape becomes more like a choppy seascape through which particles and radiation must fight their way. Lower-energy light with its longer wavelengths would be akin to an ocean liner, gliding through the foamy quantum sea largely undisturbed. Light of higher energy and shorter wavelengths, on the other hand, would be more like a small dinghy battling through the waves. Want an A+ in your Chem-AP re-test? Drink a double espresso for breakfast! Coffee has long been a friend of students working through the night, but it does more than just keep us awake. A study provides the first convincing evidence that caffeine enhances long-term memory in people provided the dose is right. The effects mirror similar results seen in honeybees; a boost to memory from caffeineladen nectar may help bees return to certain plants. Researchers strongly

suspected that caffeine enhances memory, but studies that tried to show this in people werent conclusive, as any apparent benefits in memory could have been due to increased attention, a known benefit of caffeine. Studies in animals such as rats, meanwhile, suggested that it enhances memory consolidation the process of strengthening memories between acquiring them and retrieving them which should affect long-term memory. Bench your best player to win the series Dropping one route can boost a networks overall performance by emphasizing better options. According to the emerging science of networks, there are good reasons why some systems perform better in seemingly disadvantageous conditions. Its just a natural property of certain kinds of networks, although a paradoxical one called Braesss paradox. The best implementation is to close roads to get everyone home

Science News and Facts

Kiana Nouri

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From bilingualism to sporting prowess, many abilities rely on neural circuits that are laid down by our early experiences. Until the age of seven or so, the brain goes through several critical periods during which it can be changed radically by the environment. During these times, the brain is said to have increased plasticity. Takao Hensch, professor of neurology at Harvard University, has conducted research on mice and found that certain drugs can be used to kick in the brains plasticity machinery. He used valproate a drug used to treat bipolar disorder to cure amblyopia in adult mice. Hensch and Dr. Allan Young of Londons King college used Valproate to make adults able to have perfect pitch, and it worked. Their next experiment inviolves using this drug to cure autism. This time next year, we might be wearing computers on our heads! Already a hit with early adopters, the much-hyped Google Glass headset will be released to the public in 2014. And in response to feedback from those testers, it is likely to boast a few extra features. For starters, developers are keen to incorporate eye-tracking

so that the device can overlay information on top of objects or areas that the wearer is gazing at. That could boost the headsets ability to deliver ultra-personal, targeted advertising. Glass could also get tricked out with gesture recognition, which would allow users to control it just by waving their hands. The Explorer program to test early versions of Glass has already given rise to a slew of potentially game-changing applications. For example, it has allowed surgeons to transmit their view of an operation to medical students elsewhere, and helped people watch what they eat literally as a way of managing diabetes. Critics say the headsets camera will destroy privacy, and its distracting screen could ruin social interaction. But if Glass and several competing products launch next year as expected, millions of people could become hooked. That will definitely to change the way we look at the world.

New electric conductor: stanene Move over, graphene. The oneatom-thick form of carbon, famed for its conductive abilities, may soon have a rival in the form of stanene, a single layer of tin atoms. Though it doesnt yet exist, calculations suggest that stanene from the Latin for tin, stannum might conduct electricity with 100 per cent efficiency, leading to low-power computer chips.

Earths fraternal twin discovered Astronomers have discovered an exo-planet with the same mass as Earth. The planet, called KOI-314c, is sixty per cent larger than Earth and is thought to be more gas than rock so it is unlikely to be conducive to life. Its unusual properties challenge assumptions that any Earth-mass planet would have an Earth-like composition. (Portions printed from New Scientist.)

Varsha Kumar

Did You Know That Your Face Is Made Up of Junk?

Varsha has been vice president and a very active member of Science Guru since it was started.

nd by that I mean junk DNA. Junk DNA is DNA that does not code for proteins, but rather has a function for protein that we have yet to fully understand. Geneticists have realized that only a small number of genes influences your face shape, which results in variation. Other factors that influences your face shape are distant acting enhancers. Axel Visel from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory believes that these enhancers influence variation when it comes to face shape. These face enhancers are part of the non-coding DNA (hence where the name junk DNA came from) that influences our face shape. Visel wanted to visualize how these enhancers influenced face shape during development. With the help of his colleagues, he used a technique called optical projection tomography, which allowed him to create a 3D model of a developing mouse embryo to show where and how the enhancers influence face shape. To see the effect the enhancers had, the scientists engineered mice to lack one of the 120 enhancers involved in face structure. After eight weeks, the scientists compared the mice skulls to the control group. The experiment revealed that deleting an enhancer had effects on face structure, such as making the mices face longer. So why is this important? Knowing the genome for face shape will allow scientists to study variants and use that information to identify variants on a smaller level. If youre interested on this topic, check out this link! http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24462-your-face-may-have-been-sculptedby-junk-dna.html#.UsRn_mRDvFg

Biocomputers
Continued from page 1 Recent research by a team at Stanford has shown that biocomputing may be the next frontier for computers. This group of researchers was led by Drew Endy, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford. They turned the bacteria E. coli into a computer that performed the most basic functions of computers logic, data storage, and data transmission. Furthermore, they demonstrated the ability to do this in all types of living cells. Similar things have been accomplished by other researchers, but this research set itself apart with the transcriptor, which is their equivalent of a transistor in a normal computer. It is able to turn a small amount of information into a large amount of information by creating a change in the flow of RNA polymerase, an enzyme that produces RNA similar to how normal transistors create a change through creating a small change in voltage. Despite the transcriptor being the most unique part of this biocomputer, there are several other components of constructed by the Stanford researchers. In a computer memory is stored in a base-two numerical system (ones and zeroes) that the computer then interprets. The biocomputer created by the researchers at Stanford operates on a similar protocol. The researchers used the interactions between two enzymes created by the E. coli to flip the direction of DNA sequence end to end and to flip it back again. (There are enzymes in other microbes that interact similarly.) As Endy put it, If you are reading along a particular section of DNA and it reads one way, we can arbitrarily label that section a zero. If it reads the opposite way, we can call that orientation a one. Due to the two enzymes being produced by the microbe and not another microbe, the data that is stored can be controlled by the biocomputer itself. Moreover, the data is extremely easy to read; the microbe is engineered in such a way that the DNA sections, when put under ultraviolet light, shine in different colors for the two directions of the DNA sequence. All it takes to read the data is the simple action of shining ultraviolet light on the microbes. What is the use of this data if it cannot be shared? The biocomputer solves this problem by making the data go viral. Using a virus called M13, which lives a symbiotic lifestyle in bacteria, the researches have created a biological internet. When M13 inhabits bacteria, it broadcasts its genome to other cells. These other cells do not have to be bacteria and can be any type of cell. The researches took advantage of this unique attribute of M13 by engineering the microbe computer to switch the package with the M13s genome with the microbes genome. This makes the M13 send the microbes DNA in place of the M13s DNA, which gives the biocomputer the ability to send to any cell the genetic code containing the data of the computer. This ability to send genetic code allows researchers to make modifications to many cells at the same time. In addition to all of this, the biocomputers created by the researchers can perform logic like a normal computer. The biocomputer contains genetic gates that open and close to control an enzyme that travels along a DNA strand. This is based on the same core concept that a normal computer has, with its silicon gates that open and close to control the flow of electrons. Using the Boolean logic system, commonly used in computing, there are two outputs: true and false. If the output is true, electrons flow. If the outputs is false, electrons do not flow. In computing there are several logic gates that operate the electron flow, such as the and gate, which gives an output of true if both inputs are true (true is represented by a one and false is represented by a zero) or the or gate which gives an output of true when when one of the two inputs or both of the inputs are true. The biocomputer mimics Boolean logic with both these gates and all the other major gates in computing. If the output is true the enzyme flows, and if the output is false the enzyme does not flow.

Pratik Mulpury
All biological organisms have the ability to self-replicate and self-assemble into functional components. The economic benefit of biocomputers lies in thr potential of all biologically derived systems to self-replicate and self-assemble, given appropriate conditions. For instance, all of the necessary proteins for a certain biochemical pathway, which could be modified to serve as a biocomputer, could be synthesized many times over inside a biological cell from a single DNA molecule, which could itself be replicated many times over. This characteristic of biological molecules could make their production highly efficient and relatively inexpensive. In comparison, electronic computers require manual production, biocomputers could be produced in large quantities from cultures, without machinery needed to assemble them and reducing impact on our environment. As one would expect, the potential effect the biocomputer can have on our world is immense. One day we might see engineers using the biological computer to program cancer cells to stop their destructive growth or to program a group of microbes to produce insulin when sugar is detected. The possibilities are endless. Sadly, there are still some flaws with the biocomputer due to technical issues resulting from differences caused by divergent evolution and the technology is many years off from human use. Yet, even small amounts of computing using this technology can have a profound effect on our world.

Pratik Mulpury is a new member this year. Drew Endys Youtube channel, with a video about biocomputers: https://www.youtube.com/user/ chthonicphage/feed

Jasmine Deng

Hypothetical Dark Energy and Invisible Dark Matter

What our universe consists of

Our accelerating universe

D
Jasmine has been an active member of our club for two years now. She is the community coordinator for Science Guru.

ark energy is defined by Google as a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. Dark energy has always been a mysterious force, and its existence has always been questioned. The unknown of it is far greater than the known. We know that about seventy percent of the universe consists of dark energy and that it is distributed evenly, with constant density, throughout space, and can be detected only via gravity. However, the entire theory of dark energy is based on observation; we have never been able to directly measure dark energy nor directly analyze dark matter, the invisible mass of the universe that is thought to consist of an entirely new type of matter with entirely new types of elementary particles. The main problem leading to the hypothesis of the existence of dark energy is the fact that universe is not, in fact, expanding at a uniform rate nor, in fact, expanding at a decelerating rate. In 1929, Hubble showed that the further away a galaxy is, the more rapidly it is moving away from us. Again in 2011, the Nobel Prize winners in 2011 of physics Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Riess proved that the universe is accelerating. The discovery lent credence to the existence of dark energy and dark matter, both of which were first postulated with Hubbles discovery. Dark matter, on the other hand, was originally hypothesized by Vera Rubin to explain the speed of stars revolving around galaxies. The leading contender for explaining dark energy, of which much less is known compared to dark matter, is quantum vacuum energy an idea, tied to quantum mechanics, that even in the vacuum of space, particles are constantly
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Hypothetical Dark Energy . . .

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Jasmine Deng

Thus, we can infer the existence of matter winking in and out of even if we cant see it. existence, generating We can actuenergy. We so far have ally weigh the universe not been able to link through measuring the math of quantum light intensity of a galmechanics, dealing axy or the luminosity. with the physics of on a The more luminous a very small scale, to the galaxy, the more mass it math of general relapossesses. Another aptivity, which deal with How gravitational lensing works proach is to calculate the rotation physics on a very large scale. of a galaxys body. Variations in Most scientists stick with the phenomenon is called redshift.) velocity indicate regions of varyhypothesis that dark energy is a The higher the redshift, the longer ing gravity and therefore mass. form of vacuum energy known Of course, problem still exist. the light has been traveling and as the cosmological constant, We still dont know exactly what the farther back in time the suas its strength never varies. If so, dark matter and dark energy are. pernova occurred. Examining as a number w relating the presMost quantum field theories premany supernovas as possible can sure pushing space apart to the help scientists determine how fast dict a cosmological constant w for density of dark energy must dark energy that is more than one equal negative one. Einstein origi- galaxies are moving away from hundred orders of magnitude too nally predicted this cosmological each other. large. But so far, our conclusions There are also other ways to constant. study dark energy, albeit indirect- are that something, at least, is hapTo find out more about both ly. We can also detect dark matter pening in the ninety-five percent dark energy and dark matter, we of the universe that is dark. have to study them which is dif- through gravitational lensing Alternatives to dark energy the gravitational field of a galaxy ficult when we dont have actual involve modifying the laws of (or a cluster of galaxies) deflects samples to analyze. So far, study gravity to eliminate dark energy, passing light. The more mass methods consist of, not studying dark energy directly, but studying there is, the greater the deflection. or the idea that our galaxy and its neighborhood may what is affected by dark lie within a giant void. energy. Alternatives to dark matOne method to deterter involve changing the mines the rate of accellaws of gravity to MOND eration of the universe (Modified Newtonian caused by dark energy. It Dynamics) or possibly measures the light from a that dark matter is just specific type of supernoordinary matter that is vas (Type Ia). Each Type difficult to detect (such as Ia explosion has about the MACHOs). Above all, its same brightness, and as probably best to keep an the light travels towards open mind. Earth, it is stretched by the universes expansion to appear red. (This Possible futures of our accelerating universe

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On-line Blog:

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Coming soon to a class near you: The February 2014 issue of Science Guru! A report on the latest gadgets from the Las Vegas Electronics Show The science of college acceptance

From the Editor

Dear Readers, We hope you h ave enjoyed ou r DecemberJan uary issue. Feel free to visi t us online at scienceguru@ blogspot.com or join our weekly club mee tings every Frid ay at Lunch, room 1 20. Kiana Nouri

Kiana Nouri Rohun Saxena Varsha Suresh Kumar Jasmine Deng Avni Singhal

Science Guru Club Officers

Science Guru Club Members

Carter Fox Kelyn Wood Pratik Mulpury

Advisor

Dr. Katie Thornburg Mountain View High School 3535 Truman Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94040