NU Science Issue 11

8/2/2019 NU Science Issue 11

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NUScienceNortheastern Universitys First Science Magazine

ISSUE 11

SCIENCE GONE WRONG:

What happens when inherent

risk becomes reality?

Also Inside:

Senescence in Cancer CellsTV Shows with Science

At NEU: Professor Ferris


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Science Issue

LETTER FROM THE EDITORScience is ascinating, proound, and generally pretty amazing, particularly when things work as

expected. Sadly, we arent always so ortunate. Whether in the orm o retrospectively hilarious accidentsin Chem lab or large-scale disasters, something going wrong is an inescapable part o the scienticprocess. Oten, however, these incidents oer a silver lining by presenting an unexpected opportunityto learn or those who are paying attention. The most amous example is that o the Scottish biologistwho entered his lab one morning in 1928 to nd that the Penicillium mold that had contaminated hissamples was quite eective at killing bacteria. The biologist, o course, was Alexander Fleming, and hisundamental contribution to the development o antibiotics would completely revolutionize pharmacology,earning him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945.

In Issue Eleven, weve chosen to ocus on Science Gone Wrong, bringing you a wide assortment ooccasions when things didnt quite go as planned, rom chemical disasters to embarrassing stories romNortheastern students in lab and on co-op. The story o Alexander Fleming reminds us that mistakes area chance to learn something you may not have anticipated, as long as you look or it. It might not make upor whatever went wrong, but that also doesnt invalidate the knowledge that you gained.

As the semester draws to a close, Id like to thank all o our members or their hard work this year. Wecant wait to bring you more science news in the all!

Michael Murray

Editor-in-ChieNU Science Magazine

April 23

Sound and Semiocapitalism: Affective Labor and the Metaphysics of the Real

7:00 - 9:00pm at MIT, Wiesner Bldg. (E15-001), Lower Level, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge MA

April 24

Haute Culture: Tailoring stem cells to make us well

6:00 - 7:30pm at at Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School

April 24

The Urban Coastal Sustainability Initiative at Northeastern University

1:00 - 3:00pm in Curry Ballroom

April 25-30

Maurice Auslander Distinguished Lectures and International Conference

April 26ASI Presents speaker Adam Anderson: Part of the Monthly Speaker Series

8:00 - 9:00am

April 27

Annual Riser Lecture, Murphy Bunker

4:00 - 5:30pm at the Marine Science Center

CUTIVE BOARD

ident

West, Chemical Engineering, 2013

or-In-Chief

ael Murray, Computer Science/English, 2014

tent Editors

Ferguson, Behavioral Neuroscience, 2013ka George, Health Science, 2013Melanson, Journalism, 2014

nnon Jones, Marine Biology, 2016

f Designsa Sullivan, Graphic Design, 2013

surer

ka George, Health Science, 2013

retary

Ferguson, Behavorial Neuroscience, 2013

master

Melanson, Journalism, 2014

LCOMING OUR FIRST

FF WRITERS

Jaimeson, Chemical Engineering, 2015emming, Chemical Engineering, 2016

eally appreciate their dedication and hardor our magazine. We would also liketend a special thanks to Tara Dhingra.has been with our group since Issue 1has contributed to every issue. It hasn a pleasure working or her and we wishhe best o luck or ater graduation.

NTRIBUTING DESIGNERS

Biewald, Graphic Design, 2014an Andre, Nursing, 2015

INVOLVED!

you looking or a creative way towcase your work on campus? Dowant to boost your resume in a

thats creative, intellectual and? Become a part o NU Science!publish two issues per semester

a variety o themes in sciencetechnology and welcome our

ers to explore any appropriatec they nd interesting.

meet every Monday at0 pm in room 159 Ryder Hall.me collaborate with us!

EVENT CALENDAR OF SCIENTIFIC HAPPENINGS

APRIL 2012at Northeastern and in the Boston Area

FOR THE PHYSICIST:

Through the Wormhole, The Science Channel

Do you ever wonder about the beginning o theUniverse? String Theory? Extraterrestrial lie? Timetravel? These are just some o the topics exploredin Through the Wormhole. Narrated by none otherthan Morgan Freeman, this science channel programdelves into the deepest mysteries o existence,discussing questions that have yet to be answeredby humans.

Though the Wormhole has tracked downresearchers conducting ascinating experiments inthe areas o Astrophysics, Astrobiology, QuantumMechanics, String Theory, and more. It provides theviewer with a general background o the subjects andmakes strong use o visualizations and metaphors tohelp the viewer wrap their head around the conceptsbeing discussed.

Through the Wormhole brings together thebrightest minds and best ideas rom the very edgeso known science to reveal extraordinary truths aboutour Universe. So be sure to check it out i you see itin the channel guide, and prepare or an hour that willsend your mind spinning with possibilities that areout o this world.

FOR THE ENGINEER:How its Made, The Science Channel

Based on a brilliantly simple premise, Howits Made is a documentary-style program thatdemonstrates the production process o variouseveryday items, anything rom watches to towercranes to baseballs to tapioca pudding. Thesegments are airly quick, so in a 30-minute episodethey will usually cover 3-4 items.

Each process is shown rom beginning to end,oten ollowing a single items journey throughproduction. Every step is described in detail by thenarrator. The machinery used to manuacture some

o these items is really ingenious, and watching a rawmaterial turn into a amiliar nished product beoreyour eyes is ascinating.

FOR THE BIOLOGIST:

Planet Earth and Life, The Discovery Channel

Anyone who has not seen an episode o PlanetEarth should do so immediately. It was the rst naturedocumentary lmed entirely in high denition, andwas hailed as the denitive look at the diversity oour planet by the BBC.

The shots they captured are absolutelyincredible. Animals in their natural habitats, predator-

prey interaction in the wild, and even competitionwithin a single species. Its like i Darwin had highdenition lm equipment and a team o hundreds ounbelievably patient cameramen at his disposal. Itis both astonishing and highly educational when itcomes to ecology and wildlie.

Life, also aired on Discovery, was a ten episodenature documentary based on the same premisending rare ootage o the wildlie on our planet andbringing it to the living room. Life was narrated byOprah Winrey, while Planet Earth was narrated

by Sigourney Weaver in the US versiAttenborough when shown in the UK.

Although these two series werproduce, dont air all too requently, sets are somewhat expensive, they weamazing to watch, and certainly worth cyou havent yet seen either.

Also, be sure to check out the wo these shows, as they post additiononline. n

BY JOHN JAMIESON, CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, 20

MUST-WATCH

SCIENCE TV SHOWS


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Science Issue

Catenary Arches

agine a piece o string. I you were holding it inur two hands, you could pull the ends apart andel that the string is strong in tension. However, ipushed the two ends together, the string wouldno resistance. This is because string has nogth in compression.

So keep imagining that piece o string, hold the

ends and give it some slack, and it orms a shapeparabola. This shape is actually called a catenary.

Now i you invert that shape, so it looks like a hillad o a bowl, and you swap out the string or arial that is strong in compression, or example, you have created a catenary arch. This premise,some more complex details, has been used toe some o the coolest arches and vaults in the

d.

ication of Catenary Vaults

Gaudi, a amous Spanish Catalan architect, usedechnique in a ew o his works, even beore theremodern, advanced structural analysis to explaine would start by creating a model entirely out on or string with weights then suspend it upsiden (see photo), so that it would hang in pureon. He would photograph the model and turnhoto upside down in order to see how he should

gn a structure that would act in pure compressionphoto).he design and construction o these remarkables and arches was based on some bits o stringweights, which can seem a little primitive but isally ingenious.pression

he weighted strings hang down to ully utilizetensile strength. By inverting the shape, gravityshing down on the arch, compressing it. So bycing string with a compressively strong material,

ch in compression is born.Nowadays, our structures are designed to requiretensile and compressive strength. Concrete is astandard building material, and it is very strongmpression, meaning it supports very large loadsing on it. However, concrete is weak in tension,s under a much smaller load pulling on it. Thishy we reinorce concrete structures with rebar,-reinorcing bars. But catenary arches, by design,require compressive strength, so they dont needrials like steel or tensile reinorcement, and

g a material that is only strong in compression isectly sucient.One o the cool and unusual things about this

design is that it utilizes the ull potential o the buildingmaterial. Concrete and steel construction requiresthe use o material where it isnt ully utilized. Forexample, rebar is required where there is tension, butit must be surrounded by concrete or constructionpurposes. But the strength o that concrete is beingwasted, as it isnt being engaged. With these catenaryarches, by design the bricks or tiles are completely incompression, and there isnt a surplus o material notbeing utilized. This results in more ecient structures,and there is some beauty in the simplicity o only usinga material to its ullest strength.

In a Local ContextFor an example closer to home, just wander down

to the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. Thevaulted arches in the older portion o the library weredesigned and constructed by an architect namedRaael Guastavino. This Spanish architect and his sonbrought this centuries-old catenary arch technology

rom the Mediterranean to the United States.Guastavino vaults are typically about 4 inches thick,yet hold an astonishing amount o weight, as they areused or both roo and foor systems.

Form and Function

Whats amazing about this is that it bringstogether the beauty and strength o the materialduring constructiona composition getting lost intodays design process. Today steel and concretetypically make up the structural support or a building,then a aade is draped on the outside. The supportsserve no aesthetic purpose, and the aade serves nostructural purpose. There is a disconnect between theunction and the orm o the building.

This separation is obvious when you look at how abuilding is designed. An architect designs a structure,paying attention to the aesthetics and the abstract.Then the design gets handed to an engineer, who hasto gure out how to make the design stand up.

Neither party understands the others work, andthere is little consideration o structure during designor design during structure. As the world has becomemore specialized, the separation between architectand engineer has allowed both elds to grow, and ithas limited their liability. But this was not the systemwhen Gaudi and Guastavino designed their vaults

and arches. History calls them architects, but they didthe engineering as well.

Building of the YearProessor Ochsendor has used what he learned

about Guastavino as inspiration or a special projectin South Arica. Along with Peter Rich Architects, theyhave designed and built the Interpretation Center inMapungubwe Park.

This building uses this arch design or thestructure, but its special or a ew more reasons.The tiles used in the construction o the arch weremade rom the soil that was already on-site, which wasenvironmentally responsible and cost-eective. Theyalso created jobs by training then employing localpeople living in poverty to make the tiles then build thestructure. It won the World Building o the Year at theWorld Architecture Festival Awards in 2009, or all othe above reasons, as well as or its sustainability andits relation to the landscape around it.

Greater ImplicationsThis Interpretation Center is an example o the

larger implications o this technology. Aesthetically,these vaults and the tile work are simply stunning.Environmentally, the design uses simple bricks or tiles,which can be created using local materials and labor.In terms o eciency, it uses these materials to theirull potential, which minimizes waste. Structurally, thetiles that make it beautiul are also what hold it up; it

combines the aesthetics and the structure.

Conclusion

Not everything can be an arch, but we should takeinspiration rom this elegant technology that reduceswaste by designing structures that utilize materialsmore eectively. Architects and engineers need towork more closely and realize how interconnectedtheir work is. Maybe then we can return to structuresthat are gorgeous or their structural support, ratherthan hiding it behind acades.

I you are interested in learning more, check ourwhat Proessor John A. Ochsendor and his team atMIT have done with The Guastavino Project. n

NUScience Explains:

AITLIN CANDEE, CIVIL ENGINEERING, 2014


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Science Issue

the immortal words o Ramon y Cajal, Nature hides its secrets with twoeils: making them small and colorless, invisible to the naked eye. In recentears, biomedical experts have taken new initiatives to visualize naturesets. BioInteractive at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, WEHI.TV at theer and Eliza Hall Institute o Medical Research, and BioVisions at Harvardersity are three active 3-D molecular animation divisions. Their animations are raising awareness o advances in biologically directed research.-D modeling restructures the perspective on biochemical processes rom

c to dynamic. Capturing the element o time with space-lling models isternative to taking still rames or even motion pictures using microscopy.

ured in Figure 1 using special microscopy and staining techniques is a cellergoing cell mitosis in late anaphase. Figure 2 i llustrates the S-phase o thecycle, when DNA is replicated, using 3-D computer simulation.he technology used to recreate these phenomena has applications inedical education. Medical students are trained using surgical animations.

ured in Figure 3 is an arthroscopic shoulder surgery perormed or subacromialompression. This patient model shows that shoulder spurs are compressingrotator cu tendon, limiting range o motion and causing discomort.omical recreations are useul in nearly every eld o medicine, especiallyic surgery, neurosurgery, cardiology, ophthalmology and orthopedics.ors are now using medical animations to inorm surgical patients aboutprocedures. Pictured in Figure 4 is a mitral valve repair simulation providedatients at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. The simulation outlines theedure, its best candidates, and the risk actors involved.-D imaging technology has been adapted to magnetic resonance imaging) and computed tomography (CT) to create digital representations onts tissues and organs. Cross sections o the patient on the sagittal,nal, and axial planes y-z, x-y, and x-z planes respectively are consolidatedconstruct eatures o interest, including blood vessels and bone structures,h can be viewed in 360 perspective. This can lead to more accuratenoses and more eective clinical intervention. Figure 5 shows a patientsreconstructed using CT imaging.

Pharmaceutical companies use animation technologies to illustrate drug

pathways and ecacy. Inormational models attract grant oundations that areinterested in unding innovative projects, clinical practitioners, better treatmentroutes and patients learning to make more inormed health choices. Shown inFigure 6 is the mechanism o action o a chemotherapeutic drug delivered viananoparticles.

Illustrations oten ollow important discoveries that are abstract or dicultto explain. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is one o the most commonlyused lab techniques, but it is dicult to understand without visualization. Plotso DNA amplication over time quantiy the utility o PCR, but say little about theprinciple it acts on. The mechanism or PCR, seen in Figure 7, is based on cycleso denaturing by heat and annealing via DNA polymerases.

I the 19th century was the age o physics, and the 20th century was theage o chemistry, then the 21st century is the age o biology. As the biologicalsciences continue to branch out, there is a higher demand in medical andbiological illustration. The Association o Medical Illustrators (AMI) has acilitatedcommunication in the biosciences since its ounding in 1945. Its membershave extensive background in medicine and the visual arts and are employed inadvertising, textbook illustration, patient education, continuing medical educationprograms , and interactive learning. Some illustrators have even introduced bio-simulation through lielike patient disease models.

Medical illustration programs are highly competitive with only ve AlliedHealth Education accredited programs in North America, each accepting ewerthan 17 students each year. Ater completing a rigorous graduate program, manypursue an AMI Board Certication to meet the highest standards o medicalillustration. Illustrators continue to integrate with new technologies and up-to-date scientic advances throughout their careers. Popularly used programs todayinclude Cinema 4D by Maxon, LightWave by NewTek, and Maya by Autodesk.

Board-certied illustrators are also required to meet continuing educationunits to maintain their certication. The earning potential or medical illustratorsranges widely based on the eld, talent, entrepreneurialism o the individual.However, the competitive nature o the work and high demand in the privateand industrial sectors suggests that medical illustration will grow in the age obiology. n

ARAZ ARASTU, BIOCHEMISTRY, 2015


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Science Issue 10

Hopeully, just about everyone is amiliar withthe scientic method: you orm a question,make observations, orm a hypothesis, test it,

over the data looking or meaningul results, andat as needed. While there are several variations,ng and explaining trends in inormation orms thes o scientic research. Finding such a trend, ose, may lead to sharing it with the world, eitherugh publication or presentation, which is wherevisualization comes in.

Data visualization is a broad term, covering thehical display o abstract inormation, whethernalysis or conveying some idea. That denitionrs things as standard as a line graph, as well asding the growing eld o inographics, or evenniques more artistic in nature. The advantage ovisualization is clear, since almost any graphical

esentation o inormation is more comprehensibleeople than a plain list o numbers. Some arguehighlighting a trend in data through graphicalns will tend to bias any audience towards theors conclusion. This argument is valid, making

it critical or those working on data visualization tostrive or neutral ormatting.

Inographics have become very popular in recentyears, with publications such as Wired Magazine,Scientic American and many others increasing thenumber o these designs that they use. They providea way to present data that is inormative, easy tounderstand and visually appealing to readers. Asuccessul inographic will oten display inormationin more than one orm, combining graphs, diagrams,

fowcharts and almost anything else to teach thereader. They can cover topics that are serious,like those in scientic publications, or even morehumorous subject matters; the popular webcomicXKCD (xkcd.com) oten eatures actually accurateinographics on topics such as gravity wells, radiationdosages, or sizes on a logarithmic scale, with jokesinterspersed throughout. The versatility aorded toinographics by the sheer range o subject matterand orms available to them perectly explains theirswelling popularity in recent years.

Data visualization is more than just inographics.

It allows or new and creative ways o organizingand sharing inormation through visually stunningrepresentations. Jer Thorp is an artist and educatorwith a background in genetics who createsimpressive pieces that incorporate elements oboth science and art. Described as an artist whosemedium is data, he uses fexible sotware andalgorithms to gather large amounts o inormationand present it in a visually appealing orm. His workis extremely popular, appearing in the New York

Times, Popular Science, and Wired, where he is acontributing editor or the UK edition. He views hiswork as a response to the overwhelming quantitieso inormation that people encounter today. Thorpsvision is to instead present ideas in a coherent andbeautiul way, without being any less inormative.

One challenge that designers such as Thorp aceis balancing the accuracy o their pieces with boththeir aesthetic quality and their ability to convey thedesired inormation. Unortunately, nearly all orms ographic data visualization carry the inherent risk omisrepresentation. Designers have to be extremelyprecise in deciding what range o inormation toselect, as well as how much data to include andhow to group it. While these decisions may seemairly innocuous, i they are not ully considered (ormade rom a biased perspective with the intentionto deliberately mislead), a single aulty decision cancompletely reverse the meaning o even simple-seeming bar graphs. Thorps sotware is designedto be incredibly fuid, allowing the user to make quickyet drastic changes to the piece while still workingwith the same underlying data, simultaneouslydemonstrating the problem and creating his ownsolution to it.

Data visualization is an essential component ohow we share inormation, scientic or otherwise,and it is becoming even more important as timegoes on. Thorp has correctly identied the problemo our internet age: We are subject to inormation

overload as a result o constantly having access toenormous amounts o inormation at any time. Hisinstructive and elegant solution oers us a rereshingchange o pace in the way in which we receiveour inormation.n

Data Visualization:Making Sense of What You See

MICHAEL MURRAY, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGLISH, 2014

Photo courtesy of Randall Munroe, xkcd.com

Photo courtesy of Randall Munroe, xkcd.com

Photo courtesy of Jer Thorp, blprnt.com


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U Science Issue 10

Science is hard to do. Ask any organic chemistry, physics, anatomy, orbiology student. Every time someone enters a lab, theres a fearsomeand catastrophic potential to break everyone and everything around

him or her. Thankfully, that sort of thing doesnt happen often. But whenit does, hilarity often ensues. So you dont have to wander around askingscience majors their most embarrassing moments, with a blanket ofstrict anonymity, we at NU Science Magazine have collected some of

the best tales here.

Im currently on co-op at the Child DevelopmentUnit at UMass Boston. We have a variety o memorystudies in place right now assessing at what ageinants begin to remember their mothers rom dayto day. When I began my co-op, I walked into ourlab suite one day and thought it was unny that thisvery old man was working in the suite next door.He had come through the door and was knockingon someones door with his cane. I mentioned itto one o the other researchers, and she told methat it was T. Berry Brazelton. Our chie o research,Dr. Edward Tronick, has worked directly with him,including producing publications. Every psychologymajor learns about the Neonatal BehavioralAssessment Scale in Developmental Psychology,but I didnt recognize him at all! When I mentionedhis name to my mom, she laughed and said that sheactually ollowed his principles and books when shewas pregnant with me.

I spent my rst six-month co-op working in anacute psychiatric unit in a psychiatric hospital.One aspect o the job was to perorm 15 minutechecks on the patients to ensure their saety onthe unit. When you have a large group o patientswith dierent levels o psychosis, you never knowwhat youre going to get. More oten than I wouldever want to recall, upon entering a patients roomthey would be, to phrase it delicately, engaged inan intimate moment with themselves. Because othe various mental illnesses with varying degrees oseverities, people had dierent levels o awarenessand inhibition, or rather non-inhibition. Uponentering said situation, 1 o 4 things would occur.

1. The person would quickly and dramaticallythrust themselves under their covers andpretend that they were actually sleeping thewhole time. Convincing? Not so.

2. The person would pull a deer in theheadlights. They did not move or coverup, but merely roze mid-act and stared atyou, making you ar more embarrassed anduncomortable than they were.

3. They would unalteringly carry on.4. In some crude way or another, you would

receive an invitation to join in the un.

While my job did provide me with wonderulexperience in the eld, it also let me with someexperiences that I easily could have gone without.

I was on coop and I had to use a Bunsenburner and a beaker o ethanol to put myorceps in. We keep them in ethanol, andthen sterilize them with the fame. First, I spiltthe ethanol in the little beaker all over thetable and all over my gloves. Im like, Ill dealwith that later because I have lters sittingthere in the open air, and they need to be inpetri dishes so they arent contaminated. Idecided that rst Id deal with the lters, and thenId deal with the ethanol. So, with my hands coatedin ethanol, I picked up the tweezers (that are alsocoated in ethanol) and put them in the fame. Theentire setup burst into fame, including my hand,which I luckily had a glove on, so it wasnt burned. Iobviously was startled by my hand catching on re,so I dropped the tweezers into the pool o ethanol,and proceeded to stare at it or at least our or veseconds beore reacting. I just took the buer waterthat I was using to run my samples and poured it onthe fame. I told my boss the next day, and I guessother co-ops have done that beore too.

One day I was working in a labin collaboration with my co-op. I wbecause I was planning to go oaternoon, during a break between thI rarely work with hazardous chemicbecause we mostly deal with protespectrometry. That day I had to make mass spectrometer, which involved aamount o 99% trifuoroacetic acid (was in the hood pipetting the TFA, I the bottle, and it splashed out o the pants. I watched as the TFA sizzled oThat is when it set in what had actuaI looked down at my pants and wdisintegrating beore my eyes. I heshout, Get under the water! I stripmy underwear and literally ran and jthe sink shaking. All o the women in to stare at me (I mean, I was basicthe guys cleaned up the TFA. Since

burn, I had to remain under the wate15 minutes beore I could leave the laMarino to take a ull shower. I let theburn on my arm and inner thigh. It bein the lab that i anyone angered thethat I had been working with, he woNot only will I never live the burn dowalways remembered as the undergrastrip down to his underwear mid-lab.

It was about a month into my rst co-op, and Iwas just getting to know the ropes. Because it wasmy rst co-op, I elt extra pressure to do a goodjob and prove mysel. I was approached by one othe engineers and asked to sit in the lab while an

automated test ran on a uel cell stack. Just to makesure nothing goes wrong, and come grab me whenit nishes. No problem, right? About 20 minutesinto the test the stack started sparking and caughton re. I jumped out o my chair and quickly pressedstop on the test stand and searched or the brightred E-stop button to cut o the power, which wasnot so conveniently located on the wall outside thelab. Ater the button was pressed, the sparkingstopped. Apparently this was the ailure mode theengineer was looking or, without giving me anyprior warning or even a heads-up. Since then, I havebeen no stranger to the red E-stop button when itlooks like something is about to go wrong.

In my chemistry class, we were working witha chemical that produced a mildly poisonous gas,and the teacher warned us not to smell it directly.I knew my lab partner didnt pay much attention,preerring to let me do the experiments whilehe recorded data. So, with the noble intent ogathering qualitative data, I told my lab partner tosmell it. Instead o wating it or staying at a distance,

he put it to his ace and directly inhaled. He spentthe next twenty minutes coughing and dry-heavingout o the window.

I was in the reshman chemistry lab a ewmonths ago, and I had a test tube suspended overboiling water. As I was unscrewing the test tube,it slipped through my ngers and into the boilingwater. As it hit the bottom o the beaker, the beakershattered, covering my desk in both broken glassand boiling water. My T.A. and proessor were lessthan pleased.

BY SHANNON JONES, MARINE BIOLOGY, 2016


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U Science Issue 10

On the night o December 2, 1984 a runawayreaction at the Union Carbide India Limitedpesticide plant in Bhopal, India, caused

hyl isocyanate (MIC) to be released into the airspread into the city. Over 200,000 peopleweresed to MIC and the documented death count3,787 with estimates or the total death count tover 10,000. This chemical spill is thought to beo the most devastating in history. Union Carbide,rimary share holder, was held responsible or the

dent. They settled with the Indian government470 million, eventually causing the company toankrupt. It was eventually purchased by Dowmical.

MIC is an intermediate in the production o Sevin,mmon pesticide used in the 1980s. The runawaytion was caused by water entering a tankaining approximately 40 metric tons o MIC. Asult, a highly exothermic reaction occurred whichto a sharp increase in temperature and pressuren the storage tank. The pressure relie valve onank unctioned as it was designed, however alle downstream mitigation measures were out oce or on standby or months prior. This caused

MIC to be released into the atmosphere withouting through the caustic scrubbing tower or thetower.I these two pieces o equipment werelled at the time, the eects o the runawaytion would not have been nearly as severe.is unclear how the water entered the tank; two

ibilities were proposed but both seem unlikely.rst proposal was that water rom a cleaningon the other side o the plant leaked into theage tank through a leaky valve. Proessionals

deemed this conspicuous because the cleaningline was on the opposite side o the plant and atremendous amount o pressure head was requiredto move over 500kg o water through a leaky valve.This explanation does not seem to hold up withinthe time rame o the accident. The second proposalwas made by Union Carbide which claims sabotage.Carbide claims that the water was added to the tankpurposeully and the pressure gauge was removedto cause the accident. This would have involved avery intimate knowledge o the piping system to beable to disassemble and reassemble the equipment.Additionally, the website Carbide has dedicated tothis accident, claims that all o the process and saetycontrols were in place and would have preventedthis type o leak rom happening. At this point, noindividual was held responsible or the accident, buta eud arose between the Indian Government andthe Management o Union Carbide on who to blame.

Ater the incident in Bhopal, environmentalawareness greatly increased in India with theEnvironment Protection Act, which passed in 1986,and the ormation o the Ministry o Environmentand Forests (MoEF). With the large increase inindustrialization, with an average GDP growth rateo approximately 8%, MoEF works harder to reduceindustrial pollution than ever. Additionally DuPont,looking to build a plastic plant in Goa, Indiawithminimal regulations, was denied entry. Protests bythe people in Goa caused the deal to all through. The

people o Goa were aware o the disaster i n Bhopaland did not want DuPont to move their plant withoutincreased regulation. In 1986, US Congress passedthe Emergency Planning Community Right to Know

Act (EPCRA). This law required local governmentsto have plans in place, in the event o a chemicalspill, re, or explosion. This was a tremendous steporward in saety regulations because in the eventthat an accident similar to Bhopal were to happenagain, local governments would be much moreprepared with evacuation routes and clean up plans.

Changes were made internationally and locally inresponse to the tragedy in Bhopal, and regulationsor manuacturing process saety are stricter. It isimportant to be aware o disasters like this so theyare not repeated. Additionally, awareness o thepossible consequences o actions when working withhazardous materials is crucial. Saety should alwaysbe a number one priority and i a saety concern isapparent it should be reported to a supervisor. Hada worker at the plant in Bhopal put more pressureon the management to x the scrubber and the faretower, the magnitude o this disaster could havebeen greatly decreased. n

Learning from the Past look back at one o the worst chemicalisasters in history and the resultinghanges in process saety

Close to Home:A Common Feline VirusCould Affect Human Behavior

As it turns out, there might actually be somescientic validity to the term crazy catlady. Toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease

transmitted primarily through cat eces, has alwaysbeen recognized as a dangerous parasite or unbornbabies and people who are immunocompromised.

However, it was always thought to be harmless tohealthy individuals. Recent research now suggeststhat the disease might actually be causing mentaland behavioral changes in individuals previouslyconsidered asymptomatic.

Most outdoor cats are inected with a protozoanparasite known as Toxoplasma gondii that usesboth elines and rodents to complete its liecycle.In cats, the primary hosts, the parasite is in thesexual phase o its lie cycle. In the asexual phaseo its liecycle, T. gondiiuses rodents as secondaryhosts. Cats contract the disease again ater eatingan inected rodent. This is how T. gondiipropogatesand spreads. The parasite is also capable oinecting birds, other mammals, and humans asdead-end hosts.

Humans can contract toxoplasmosis by eatingraw or undercooked meat, or by handling cat ecescontaining the parasitic oocytes - cysts containinga zygote ormed by the T. gondii. Though cats onlyexcrete the oocytes or a ew weeks o their lie, andusually only when they are very young, the oocytescan survive in the environment or up to a year,and any hand to mouth interaction ater coming incontact with the oocytes can lead to contraction.It is estimated that about a third o the worldspopulation o humans carry the parasite.

Women are discouraged rom cleaning the litterbox during pregnancy, as toxoplasmosis is known tocause brain damage in unborn children. People whoare severely immunocompromised, such as thoseliving with HIV/AIDS, or recent organ transplantrecipients are also susceptible to symptoms otoxoplasmosis including skin lesions, eye damage,and brain damage. Until recently, it was believedthat healthy, immunocompetent individuals hadnothing to worry about. Once inside, Toxoplasmagondiiwould simply orm small, harmless cysts inmuscle and nervous tissue, causing no symptomsor damage. New studies, however, suggest thatoocytes that take up residence in the brain mightbe causing behavioral changes, even in people whoappear otherwise entirely asymptomatic.

Studies on mice with toxoplasmosis in the

last decade show clear behavioral eects othe parasite. These include a reduced ability torespond to danger, running towards cats instead o

away, and even being attracted to the scent o caturine. In terms o evolution, this behavioral controlmechanism benets both the cat and parasite, asearless and oblivious mice make or easy prey. Thisallows T. gondiito cycle back into the primary elinehosts where it can reproduce and thrive.

Research recently done in Prague by scientistJaroslav Flegr now suggests that T. gondiimightcause similar behavioral changes in humans.According to his work, it is likely that toxoplasmosiscan trigger schizophrenia in those predisposedto it. There may also be a correlation betweentoxoplasmosis and other mental and behavioral

disorders. Similarly, he ound a stronto suicide rate.

Flegr went even urther, and observchanges in even the healthiest men amen, toxoplasmosis caused subjectintroverted and likely to ignore rules.

them suspicious, yet unusually oblivioopinions o them. In women, the oppoand they became more outgoing, rutrusting, and very conscious about Much like the lab mice, humans alsoearul, and slower to respond to similar to mice, humans inected withless put o by the scent o cat urine.

Tests or the presence o toxoplasmelines, but are not particularly useunot reveal when the animal was expostill shedding the parasite. Because unclear what exactly a diagnosis otoxoplasmosis could mean, and becnot yet a way to remove oocytes rohuman tests or toxoplasmosis are eq

So how can one prevent being igondii? There is no surere preventiokeeping cats indoors rather than outdostart. Also, neither humans nor elineraw or undercooked meat. Finally, thwashing ater cleaning the litter box ormeat can go a long way.

As o now, it is unclear how behavioral eects o toxoplasmosis reresult o the current research more snow on board with the data relating tto mental disorders, behavioral csuicides. I the patterns noticed by other leading researchers continue, will likely be the creation o a T. Gonlivestock and house cats. In the meyou see your local crazy cat lady surrotwenty eline riends, remember that tmight be to blame. n

RAD WEST, CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, 2013

BY LAUREN HITCHINGS, BIOLOGY, 2014


9/13

U Science Issue 10

The worlds population is estimated near 7 billionpeople. With more people born everyday a greaterstress is put upon the precious resources we

nd on. Energy, electricity, heat, uel, and gas areurces in high demand. Electricity is manuactureda number o sources such as coal power plants,

ear power plants and renewable resources. Theng o coal produces energy and renewableurces convert the suns rays or the winds power intoble energy. But how much is known about nucleargy? The issue o nuclear power is on the top o

cal agendas and is a serious issue to environmentalcates who stress the risks o radioactive particlesits carcinogenic eects. Most current are thestating eects that result when a nuclear poweraces a meltdown. The three major catastrophes

stand out when mentioning a nuclear disaster areThree Mile Island disaster, the Chernobyl disaster,most recently the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.he possibility o destruction is what makes nuclear

power so controversial. Nuclear power plants havebeen in operation or decades and with only a ewmajor meltdowns it is considered a greener alternativeto burning ossil uels. With 439 nuclear power plantsoperating in 31 countries throughout the world, its timeto take an in depth look at what nuclear energy really isand ask the question: is it sae?

Ater the discovery that radioactive elements suchas radium and uranium released vast amounts o energy,scientists began work on harnessing that energy. Theyound that through a process called ssion, that energy

could be utilized. Nuclear ssion is the process osplitting an atoms nucleus into smaller nuclei resultingin a release o large amounts o energy.

The discovery o nuclear ssion and atomic sciencecame on the cusp o World War II and began theworlds arms race or most advanced nuclear weaponry.The rst man-made reactor was part o the ManhattanProject, which built large reactors to utilize plutoniumand enriched uranium to use in the rst ever nuclear

weapons. Those weapons evolved into atomic bombs,which were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Scientists saw the potential or atomic energy andater World War II research and experiments continuedin the hopes that nuclear power would be used or good.By 1954 the USSR boasted the worlds rst nuclearpower plant to generate electricity ro a power grid.England ollowed soon ater with the rst commercialnuclear power plant and in 1957 the ShippingportReactor was the rst nuclear generator to be operationalin the U.S.

While nuclear power plants continued to rise innumber, concerns grew over the health and saety onuclear energy. The scientic community expressedconcerns about nuclear accidents, nuclear prolieration,nuclear terrorism, radioactive waste disposal, andthe high cost o nuclear power plants. By the 1970snuclear power became an issue o major public interestwith anti-nuclear activists demonstrating and protestingin France and Germany. It wasnt until the rst nuclear

disaster struck that construction o nuclear power plantshalted in many countries. The accidents that occur romnuclear power plants are ar outnumbered compared tonumber o accidents that occur rom energy productionrom coal burning. However, nuclear accidents haveincredibly devastating eects to people, animals, andthe environment as well having the highest economiccost repair. The incredibly devastating eects thata nuclear disaster can cause are ar-reaching. Thedisasters that occurred at the Three Mile Island powerplant, the Chernobyl power plant and the FukushimaDaiichi power plant had eects that reached political,economical, cultural and global platorms.

On March 28th, 1979 the U.S. experienced theworst accident in the nations power plant history. Whenhe Three Mile Island power plant in Dauphin County,Pennsylvania experienced a nuclear meltdown, amountso radioactive gases and elements were released into theenvironment. The meltdown started at 4 a.m. when the

pumps eeding the lters suddenly stopped and moreailures resulted when a bypass valve wouldnt open.With no fow o water to the main eedwater pumps thesteam generators couldnt produce steam and stoppedworking. The reactor went into emergency shut down.A pressure relie valve opened when excess pressurebuilt up in an auxiliary tank but the valve didnt closeater the pressure was released. Much needed coolantwater escaped quickly adding to the meltdown crisis.A general emergency was declared and local agencieswere contacted. With many systems deaulting,workers took manual readings rom the thermocouplesand sampled the loop water. Seven hours ater thedeclared emergency new water was pumped into theprimary cooling loop. Ater sixteen hours all primaryloops were running and the temperature in the corereactor nally began to all. However, the troubles werenot over. Part o the core had melted and a hydrogenbubble had ormed in the dome o the pressure vessel.I the bubble burst, a hydrogen explosion could resultin a massive breach o the vessel, leaking radioactivematerial into the area. Over the next week, steam andhydrogen were directly vented into the atmosphere andthe plants had controversially dumped 400,000 gallonso waste directly into the Susquehanna River. Voluntaryevacuations were ordered within a 20-mile radius addingto the panic o the disaster.

In the end the crises was brought under control butthe unit was too badly damaged to continue operations.Cleanup o the reactor started in August 1979 andended in December 1993, 14 years later with clean-up

costs totaling $1 billion dollars. Although the Three MileIsland accident was dangerous and cause the state andcountry to panic, no serious or dangerous outcomesarose. Despite the gases poured into the atmosphere,most o them turned out harmless with very littleradiological contamination reported in the surroundingareas o the plant.

The Three Mile Island accident was a signicantturning point in the global development o nuclear power.

The development o nuclear power plants in the U.S.drastically decreased and the argument against nuclearenergy gained some steam. It wasn't until the much moredevastating Chernobyl disaster that the strong decreasein nuclear power was observed globally.

The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26th,1986 and the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, parto the USSR at the time. The plant bordered Belarusand the Dnepie River. Chernobyl is considered to be theworst nuclear power plant disaster in history. Thousandso evacuees remained displaced today; thousands moreare dead or dying o radiation related diseases and anentire orest turned red and died ater direct exposure toradiation that the disaster created.

The nuclear disaster started early that morning whena system test was being conducted. During the test anunexpected surge o energy caused operators to attemptan emergency shut down which would reduce the outputo energy. The shutdown was never completed because

an even stronger power surge occurred. This surge ledto a rupture in the reactors vessel causing a series ocatastrophic explosions in the plants core reactors.The most damaging explosion struck when the graphitemoderator caught re resulting in highly radioactivesmoke billowing rom the plant. The smoke dispersedinto the atmosphere, driting over orests, towns, cities,and into other European countries. Most operatorswithin the core died within 48 hours rom acute radiationpoisoning or radiation poisoning. The pollution spreadacross 80,000 square miles with radioactive rainreaching as ar as Ireland. The most aected areasincluded Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Areas o Europethat recorded elevated exposure to radiation includedSweden, Finland, Austria, Norway, Bulgaria, Switzerland,and even others in lower concentrations. The Chernobyldisaster was reported only ater operators at a nuclearplant in Sweden detected incredibly high amounts oradiation and set o alarms orcing Ukrainian operatorsto admit and accident had occurred.

The disaster in Chernobyl ranked a number 7: majoraccident on the International Nuclear Event scale. Theexplosions at the Chernobyl power plant released 400times more radioactive materials than the atomic bombon Hiroshima. The blame o the Chernobyl disaster wasattributed to many dierent ailures: ailure o protocol,saety regulations, appropriate response and action.Many blamed the operators or complacency andignorance, lack o training, unpreparedness and humanerror.

While the total cost o the disaster is dicult to

estimate, the amount Belarus has had to pay to recoverand decontaminate the country is close to $235billion dollars. In December o 2000 the last o therunning reactors at the power plant in Chernobyl wasdeactivated, ocially decommissioning the power plant.

The eects o Chernobyl reached countries indierent ways. In 1988, Italy decided to phase out allo its nuclear power plants while countries like Japancontinued its endeavors into nuclear power. A much

needed resource or its increasing populthe world hoped to never again witnmeltdown again, disaster struck in 2suered not just a natural disaster but a well.

On March 11th, 2011 an earthquakthe northeast coast o Japan that measuRichter scale. The tremendous earthqa tsunami that enguled entire towns. Twas in the hundreds immediately with hmissing. While Japanese citizens were rimmediate destruction rom the tsunamoperators at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclewere struggling with a dierent disaster.

When the earthquake struck the reaccelerations exceeded the plants mcausing an automatic shut down o Unwithin the plant. Electricity, the normal soor the plant stopped ater the reactor s

on-site diesel generators began powercooling systems. Fukushimas sea waeet so when the tsunamis 45-oot wavthe power plant; the basement foodedemergency diesel generators. The thrmeltdown approached and the plant wadisaster. Authorities were alerted and thordered that seawater be pumped into thto cool the reactors. Over the weeksre truck equipment was used to pumpplant while systems were being repairestabilized unction over the course o thweeks, it took months or the Fukushima repair and regain control. By Decemberprime minister, Yoshihiko Noda declared tregained control over the reactors, endinin Japan.

Proponents o nuclear power argusustainable resource that has ewer carPeople in avor o nuclear power contend tno greenhouse gases and is a viablethe burning o ossil uel or energy. Opcontend that the threats o nuclear epeoples lives, the environment, and storage, transportation and the environo uranium mining. Scientists, politicianremain divided on the issue o nuclear eo its harmul eects yet immense eBut Nuclear energy isnt the only optioresources are at our ngertips. I more tiwent into developing better ways to harne

renewable resources like the sun, wind, dangers o nuclear power might not even

When ossil uel burning goes win pollution, possible death, and costsproblem. When nuclear power goes wrothe possible death o thousands, masso the areas surrounding it, and billionrepair. One thing is or certain: while nucontainable, it is not sae. n

ATE BARRAL, HEALTH SCIENCES, 2015

NUCLEAR ENERGY

GONE WRONG:What happens when a nuclear disaster strikes


10/13

A Pioneer in Neuro-Imaging:

Craig Ferris

U Science Issue 10

Cancer is one o the most dicult illnesses totreat. Various organizations undraise millionso dollars each year to spend on researching

and nding a cure. About 1,638,910 people will bediagnosed with cancer in 2012, and about 577,190Americans will die o cancer this year, accordingto the American Cancer Society. To add to this,

scientists have uncovered a new act thats even moredepressing: Cancer cells do not die.Cancer cells are, by denition, cells that multiply

irregularly and uncontrollably ast. What also makescancer so virulent is the act that, unlike a majorityo cells, cancer cells live indenitely, bypassing thenatural process called senescence that causes cellsto age.

Senescence is the biological aging o cells incertain organisms, which occurs ater that organismreaches maturity. The process, though non-existentin some animals, is common in humans and othermammals. At the cellular level, senescence occurswhen a cell loses its ability to divide and multiply.General senescence at the organism level maniestsitsel most plainly in aging in humans, or example,health issues grow more common among elderlypeople. It makes sense that as an organisms cellsstart to die, so does the organism.

According to a study published in the Jan. 19 issueo the open-access journal PLoS ComputationalBiology, cellular senescence can occur spontaneouslyin melanoma cancer cells. However, that senescencecannot stop the spread o cancer. Senescence occursin cells that do not determine the spread o melanomacancer. Instead, melanoma cancer stem cells that donot undergo senescence continue the spread o themelanoma.

The study was a collaboration between CaterinaA. M. La Porta, a University o Milano cancer biologist,and physicists Steano Zapperi, rom the National

Research Council o Italy, and James Sethna, romCornell University. The three observed melanomacells natural evolution, tracking the amount osenescent cells. They ound that, ater about threemonths, most melanoma cells growth had stoppeddue to senescence, but the melanoma cells did notcompletely stop growing. Eventually the level osenescent cells declined to about the original level,indicating that while most cells may grow senescent,the melanoma stem cells preserve the growth o thecancer.

The three mathematically modeled the growth

o melanoma cancer and allowed or the existenceo melanoma cancer stem cells, a somewhatcontroversial subject within the scientic community.Their results indirectly conrmed the existence omelanoma skin cancer stem cells, shaking up thescientic community a little bit.

Besides its contentious conrmation o the

existence o melanoma cancer stem cells, this study isground-breaking in a way that has broken the hearts omany scientists who are searching or eective cancertreatments. Based on the results o the PLoS study,a possible treatment or cancer has been almostcompletely ruled out.

Drug- or medically-induced senescence in cancercells was initially thought to be a possible cancertreatment. In a 2005 Nature journal article, orinstance, scientists showed interest in using medicallyinduced senescence as a treatment orlymphomas and possibly other typeso cancer. The article sourced variousstudies that ound cell senescencecould block the development olymphoma and prostate cancerand could keep certain potentiallycancerous moles dormant or years.

Its only six years later, but thathopeul oray into research is nowlooking bleak. The authors o thePLoS study recommend targetingmelanoma cancer stem cells withdrug- and medically-induced cellularsenescence. The cancer stem cells

are really the only ones that are aectesenescence to stop the spread o a cnarrowing down what cells need to bescientists have also come across a prostem cells are the cancer cells most resinduced senescence.

I scientists can take anything aw

study, its a renement o what they neeThough cancer stem cells are highly resinduced senescence, it makes sense to eorts on just those stem cells that arunstoppable cancer growth. Rather thlooking into senescent cells or mostscientists should hone in on the root oto produce a cure. I scientists could tarstem cells with drugs to induce senemaybe they could stop the spread o ca

BY JESSICA MELANSON, JOURNALISM, 2014

Y MATT COTTLE, BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE, 2013

Proessor Craig Ferris, PhD, was an excitingedition to Northeastern University, joiningthe school upon completion o the Center or

Translational Neuro-Imaging (CTNI) about our yearsago, serving as the centers director. This lab, tuckedaway in the basement o Mugar Lie SciencesBuilding, houses state-o-the-art technology thatscans the brains o awake animals. The CTNI is the

rst lab in the country using Magnetic ResonanceImaging (MRI) and molecular imaging in this way. Itip my hat to Northeastern, says Ferris, explainingthat scanners this advanced are almost neverreally ound at academic institutions. Technologylike this exists mainly in large biotechnology andpharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Ferris is a pioneer o imaging unanesthetizedanimals. Eighteen years ago, while Ferris was workingat the University o Massachusetts Medical School,he was approached to start up a hypothesis-drivenBehavioral Neuroscience department that wouldocus on the study o mental illness. The challengeo studying mental illness is that there is no place inthe brain where it can be visually pinpointed, saysFerris. Psychiatric disorders maniest over time.Faced with nding a way to see mental illness in thebrain, Ferris led a team which developed a way toperorm neuro-imaging on awake animals, includinginventing the machinery -restraints, receptors, andsotware- which made it all possible.

When people are imaged, they are not underanesthesia, so it is ar more useul to have an animalmodel that is studied in the same way. With Ferrisstechnology, brain activation in the mentally ill canbe studied in animal models over the course o alietime, providing more insight into the developmentand progression in humans, ultimately leading toimproved therapies and drugs.

One study currently underway in the CTNI is

looking at the eects o ketamine and phencyclidine(drugs used recreationally and better known ortheir street names Special K and PCP, respectively)in the rat brain. These drugs show side eectssuch as gating blockage and produce an animalmodel that is similar to schizophrenia in humans.Studying this could lead to a better understandingo schizophrenia and more advanced ways to study,diagnose, and treat it.

Ferris and the CTNI do not only study mentaldisorders like schizophrenia and PTSD. Hisresearch extends to the neurobiological bases oneurodegenerative disorders, autism, drug addiction,and violence. Funding or his research comes rom

the National Institute o Mental Health (NIMH) andthe National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Though Ferris and his team ocus primarily on thebrain, his magnets are capable o seeing all partso the anatomy, be it a rodents or a monkeys (thesubjects upon which his research is perormed).Researchers rom all over come to use theequipment here at Northeastern to study everythingrom oncology to cardiovascular diseases.

On top o Ferriss already impressive list ocredentials, he is also president and co-ounder oInsightMR, a company specializing in the developingimaging products, and co-ounder and consultanto Ekam Imaging Inc., a company that perormsMRI on awake animals or pharmaceutical andbiotechnological companies based out o the CTNI.Ekam is the only contract research organization thatdoes imaging on awake animals.

As ar as Dr. Ferriss words o advice or thoseo us interested in his and related elds, You haveto have a passion, he says, there is a lot o delayedgratication... There are not enough people imaging.[It is] an exciting eld, and a marketable eld. Ferrisbelieves there is a huge uture or imaging studies,especially as technology is advancing. Scientistswho run experiments at CTNI can access theresults o their experiments anywhere they go viaspecially-designed sotware. Ferris is hopeul thatthis technology could be translated into a lab coursehere at Northeastern, where students could designand run their own experiments and experience thisrevolutionary technology rst hand. n

All photos courtesy of CTNI, Northeastern


11/13

U Science Issue 10

Andover, Massachusetts. You wake up. Gothrough your daily routine o work or school,and then come home to do additional

ities. Maybe go to the gym. Watch some

ision. Relax and go to bed. Repeat. While youe going through your day, did you once thinkt the lives o the people in your state? Were

aware o the act that two people in your stateto opioid overdose that day? You think: that

d never be me. I would never do drugs. Imell-to-do person, not one o them. How couldssibly have an eect on me? The act o theer is that drug abuse is a realproblem that realple suer through everyday.his past summer I did an internship at a primaryphysicians oce on the North Shore; this is

re I was rst exposed to the reality that averageple can unintentionally become addicted tocription medication. For the rst couple oks o my our-month stay at the oce, I wasonsible or amiliarizing mysel with the how

gs were run and learning how to perorm certains. This included rooming patients and takingvitals, and also going over their medicationsthem and answering any other questions thathad, prior to their meeting with the physician.e beginning, I didnt know much about thecations I was typing into the patients proles,ocet, Oxycodone, and Morphine, to name aLooking back on it now, I was so nave to thinkmostly everybody lives a normal liestyle, reeain, worry, and suering. Over time, I startedd my place at the oce and beriended somey coworkers. The physicians started to let me

ow them more requently, and started to givemore responsibilities. When I shadowed, Illy sat in the corner o the room and pretendedI wasnt even there, like a fy on the wall, just

ning careully trying to analyze and the particulararios o each patient. Over the course o the

mer, I elt a vast array o emotions ranging rompiness, anger, sadness, and angst rom my small

in the corner. There were truly some peoplesome stories I will never orget.

He was the last patient o the day, and I wasg to go home. I was craving a Starbucks icedand my nightly seven-mile run. I would have

e just about anything to leave, but the doctor

insisted that I sit in on this patients visit becausehe told me it would be a unorgettable learningexperience. I reluctantly chose to stay, and beganthe patients check-in process. I took his vitals and

briefy went over his medications. He told me heoten played tennis at a nearby country club, andthat he was going on a date with his wie downtownthat evening. The doctor entered in a ew momentsand began discussing the patients concerns andproblems. I listened intently as the patient revealedhis true identity. He had been in a horric caraccident just a ew years back, and he was still

struggling with neck and back pain. He exclaimedto the physician that he was trying his hardest togo about his daily routine, but he was reliant onPercocet to do so. He couldnt get out o bed in themorning without it. He started to tear up as he madestatements like, I want my lie back I dont wantto be a burden to my wie and children I canttake this anymore. It was a real eye opener to seea middle-aged man crying over the act that he wasreliant on prescription medication. He continuedby saying that he needed a higher dose because

the amount he was currently taking was losing itspotency. The doctor shook his head at the man andtold him that he reused to prescribe him somethingmore potent because he had never written a script

or a dose that high, and suggested that the manvisit a pain clinic. The man nally calmed down,and they discussed a ew other things prior to himleaving the oce. Once he was gone, the doctorpulled me aside to explain the situation in greaterdetail. He said that the man had been seeking helprom new doctors in hopes o getting prescribed ahigher dose o his pain medication. He told me thatthe man has built up a tolerance or the Percocetand is at the level o addiction. It wasnt his aultthat he got into an accident, it could have happenedto anybody. The manner in which his treatment wascarried out may have been fawed, but it neededto be dealt with. But, why does this happen? Whycouldnt the man just decide to stop taking themedication? What classies a person as an addict?

The human brain is made up o a networko cells, like all o the other organs in the body;however, the brain cells are commonly reerredto as neurons. What dierentiates neurons romother bodily cells is their unique structure, whichconsists o three major parts: the soma, the axon,and the dendrites. The responsibility o these cellsis to receive and transmit inormation to and romeach other, thereore producing signals, which turninto actions. In short, these cells are responsibleor human thought and actions, voluntary andinvoluntary they make up what we know as ournervous system. The cells are activated througha concentration or depletion o certain corporal

chemicals. Generally speaking, signals are receivedthrough the dendrites, processed in the soma, andcarried out through the axon and axon terminal. Thedendrites receive signals rom neurotransmittersrom axon terminals o surrounding cells, which passon the signal to the next cell, launching a dominoeect. This process is responsible or every singleaction we do! While you are reading this sentence,millions o neurons are working together to processthese words and provide them with meaning.

This system unortunately is altered in the braino an addict. When a person takes a drug, lets takean opioid or example, the molecules will attach toreceptors on the dendrites. Upon attaching, they will

send signals to the brain which tell the body to calmdown by slowing down breathing and blocking anypain. They can do this because opioids have similarmolecular structures to natural bodily opioids. For

this reason, the drugs asten onto the nerve cellsand activate them. In order or them to relieve thebody o pain, the nerve cells are lled with dopamine.When the brain experiences excess fooding o thisneurotransmitter, the body experiences a euphoricstate. This is because the role o dopamine in thebody is to reward good behavior, thereore makingpeople want to repeat the actions that lead themto having this good eeling. An addict would keeptaking a certain medication because the bodycraves this good eeling. Eventually the brain wouldrequire higher and higher doses o the drug in orderto eel good because o an increased tolerance tothe particular drug. This process is similar or drugsthat do not all into the opioid category, but thespecic neurotransmitters, drugs, and chemicalscan vary signicantly.

Eventually, a person would no longer be able tolive without blocking this pain out o their lives. Ontop o the pain they are trying to prevent, they willexperience pain rom withdrawal o their euphoricstate because the human body cannot produceenough natural opioids to stop the eeling o severepain. This would generally cause a person to wantto take more and more o a drug over a certainperiod o time. At this point, many would classiythe person as addicted. This is no laughing matter,nor something to simply look over considering thatpeople die rom overdoses on a daily basis. Thereis not a simple solution to this problem, considering

that the person cannot just live without themedication. Becoming drug ree is a long process,which takes multiple steps and an ample amounto determination and motivation. Generally, it issomething that must be done proessionally andis very dicult to do alone without help. Duringmy internship this summer, the doctor I workedwith tried to avoid prescribing opioids in the rstplace and would warn patients o their harmul,negative eects. Addiction and dependence tocertain substances are dicult and noble things toovercome. They are also extremely important to beaware o considering they aect average people, sodont ever think that will never be me. n

Narcotic Medications:How some medicine may cause addiction

ULIETTE KASSAS, BIOCHEMISTRY, 2015


12/13

Estrogen mimics, also known as xenoestro-gens, are compounds that either activate es-trogen receptors, or bind receptors and pre-

vent their activation by the estrogen that all humansproduce and require to be healthy. These chemicalsare everywhere. The most obvious ones are hormon-al birth control and hormone replacement therapy.But others include compounds ound in soy prod-ucts, pesticides, plastics, air resheners, and evenlavender oil. While there is much debate over howmuch each chemical aects our hormonal systems,they have been strongly linked to inertility, develop-mental deects, reproductive cancers, and behavioralproblems in children.

Currently, there are over 3,000 ood additivesregularly used in the United States. Few o themhave been tested or their activity on hormones. TheFDA only has toxicological data on 2,000 o them. In2008, Italian scientists used computer modeling toscan 1,500 ood additives or structural similaritiesto estrogen. They took the 13 that could theoreti-cally bind to estrogen receptors and exposed humancells to them in a petri dish. Two were ound to beestrogen mimics, meaning they bound to estrogenreceptors in living cells. Whether they would do so inthe body is still unknown. One o these, propyl gal-late, is used to prevent ats rom spoiling. It is ound

in candy, mayonnaise, shortening, dried meats, anddried milk. It is also used in cosmetics and hair prod-ucts. The other, 4-hexyl resorcinol, is used to keepshellsh rom discoloring.

Starting in 1997, studies on bisphenal A morecommonly reered to as BPA linked exposure atlevels comparable to what humans currently experi-ence to developmental deects in the reproductivesystems o animals. By 2010, enough evidence otoxicity had accumulated that Canada and the Euro-pean Union banned the use o BPA in baby bottles.Additional studies have shown that people with highlevels o BPA in their urine have a signicantly higherrate o coronary heart disease; higher levels may also

be linked to diabetes, recurrent miscarriage, erectiledisuction, and immune and liver problems. A studyin February o 2012 showed that exposure to BPAincreases insulin production, which could increasethe chance o developing diabetes.

Subsequently, a number o companies, includingNalgene, agreed to phase BPA out o their produc-tion. Other companies, such as Wal-Mart and Toys-R-Us, stopped selling baby bottles that containedBPA in the United States. However, BPA is still regu-larly ound in water bottles, tampons, receipt paper,the lining o aluminum cans, and many other plasticproducts. BPA-containing bottles are generally la-beled on the bottom with recycling codes 3 and 7.

In 2007, a study in the New England Journalo Medicine linked high exposure to lavender

and tea tree oils with prepubertal gynecomas-tia, or the abnormal development o breasts inprepubescent boys.

Estrogen mimics arent only dangerousto humans. Exposure to hormonal birth con-trol and other sources o estrogen, includingindustrial waste, negatively aects the sexualdevelopment and behavior o sh, amphibians,birds, reptiles, and invertebrates. Female snailsexposed to TBT, an ingredient in boat paint in-tended to reduce barnacles, grow penises thatblock their oviducts. Snails grown in Polyethyl-ene terephthalate (PET, recycling number 1) wa-ter bottles emptied o their original contents andrelled with resh water doubled their reproductiverates in 8 weeks. Male sh ound near reshwatersewage outputs in Englands Aire River have highrates o intersexed characteristics, less motile sperm,and high blood levels o estrogen.

O the cricket rogs collected in Illinois between1852 and 1929, the year the class o chemical or-ganochlorines (which have not yet been declaredestrogen mimics) was introduced to industrial agri-culture, less than 1% were intersexed ,meaning theyeither had eggs in their testes, or had both testesand ovaries. Between 1946 and 1959, the yearswith heaviest use o the compounds, up to 17%o rogs were intersexed. The last study, ending in1996, showed a decrease in intersexed rogs to 9%,which corresponded with a decline in the use o or-

ganochlorines.Male alligators in Floridas Lake Apopka that

were exposed to dicool, an industrial pesticide(which, again, has not ocially been classied asan estrogen mimic), have also been ound to havehigh rates o eminization, including low testosteronelevels, smaller than average penises, and testicularabnormalities. Females in the same population havehigh rates o ovarian malormation. DDT, a pesticideclosely related to dicool, was banned in the US andmany other developed countries ater being shownto cause egg shell thinning that led to the near-col-lapse o many bird populations. DDT, an anti-mosqui-to agent, has been ocially classied as an estrogen

mimic. Dicool is stillwidely used in theUnited States;DDT is stillrequent-

ly usedin devel-oping coun-tries with highrates o malaria.

Exposure to lowdoses o one estrogen mimicmight not cause any ill eects onthe human population. Unortunately, no one

is exposed to just one they come rom so manysources in our environment and ood supplies. Itwould be impossible to study the eects the dozens(i not hundreds) o hormone disruptors all interact-ing in the body. Truly, it would be impossible or aconsumer to avoid all sources o estrogen mimics.In addition, there are many chemicals that mimicother hormones, including testosterone. This cock-tail could be responsible or any number o healthaects. It will likely take many years o research, aswell as strong governmental intervention, to discoverand limit exposure to these dangerous chemicals. n

U Science Issue 1Photo courtesy of EWB Northeastern

BY CAT FERGUSON, BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE, 2013

ESTROGEN MIMICS:HOW UBIQUITOUS INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS

CAN CHANGE YOUR HORMONE SYSTEMS

Photo courtesy of Chris van Dyck, Flickr

Photo courtesy of Claire Gribbin


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