(Synthesis Post) Physics and Biology- What do they have in common?

By Dan O., Cameron O., Guangyao Q., Mine G.

Through the course of our blog, we’ve posted on both biological and physical topics. Some of these topics were interesting and we felt that they would appeal to the reader’s interests. Others were posted because they were a relevant and current breakthrough within our field and we aimed to provide current information and our own thoughts. Even when the blog consisted of biology and physics majors, we strived to update our blog with connections between the two whenever possible, and in the process, found that physics and biology had much larger and deeper links than anyone would have ever believed.

Biology is known as the science of living organisms, and considered to be a field that is involved in our lives the most. It started changing lives centuries ago and still helps us understand the life within the organisms better. When it comes to the applications of biology, one may see a lot of different fields such as criminology, physics, chemistry and so on. Giving an example, genetics, which is a subfield of biology that studies the genes, plays an important role to understand genetic disorders, predict what disorder a person might be likely to develop in the future, and find genes to treat certain disorders in living organisms. As it is mentioned on our post, “Significance of Human Genetics: Laron Syndrome” by Mine G., studies show that a disorder might be a possible key to throw cancer and diabetes out of our world. Another application of biology that we will explain now might sound very futuristic, however, scientists are persistent to succeed. Cloning! Cloning is probably one of the most interesting and phenomenon that biology is involved in. Even though scientists managed to clone even mammal cells, such as the sheep Dolly, further studies of cloning are still ongoing. Biology has enlightened many mysterious cases for humans to live a better life, and biological studies will keep going as long as living organisms exist on the world.

As we learn more about the world around us and how it works, we as humans are always trying to find ways to make it better the same goes for biology. One example of how biology is being improved can be found in an article written by Cameron O. called “Plants Fighting Viruses”. To quickly sum up the article, it briefly goes over information found at Indiana University, that describes the results of switching a gene within the plant. First the plants are chemically modified so they can grow and glow under UV light, letting us visually see how this gene change causes the plant to go from fighting bacteria within itself to being able to fight of specific viruses within itself. After the study was done the biological scientists at Indiana University were shocked to learn that this plant unexpectedly changed from only being able to protect itself from the bacteria to being able to defend also against a specific type of virus. This can be implemented over the crop growing economy so if a virus spreads among crops throughout the country, they may be able to find a gene to switch or add that can protect the crops from being destroyed. This can be wonderful on the economy of crop growing agriculture and the farmers who work so hard to bring food to the world. Biology can be seen anywhere we go, and when we travel we look for it. People and animals throughout time migrate to places with things like sustainable resources, and are always looking for ways to take what they have and make more of it. We are connected to biology and will always depend on it, so finding ways for things like crops to be more secure is always something to push for.

Biology has done many things within the world, but it is not the only major to have its breakthroughs. Physics has allowed us to unlock secrets of our universe that were hidden before. One major secret that was unlocked was dark matter, which was outlined within the blog post “What’s so dark about dark matter” by Dan O, in which we presented that dark matter was found recently to be 27% of our universe, while dark energy is approximately 68% of our universe. The finding of dark matter and energy encapsulates physics very well because while dark matter is a breakthrough all on its own, a great amount about it is still unknown such as its properties or uses. We see that dark matter is a description of how the field of physics operates, using three distinct ideas. We will always learn and discover new things. The things we understand about these will grow over time. The things we don’t understand will always be larger.

There are tons of applications of physics in daily life. For instance, GPS is required for modern daily life. People need it to find a closest way to the restaurant; People need it to get the direction to shopping malls. GPS is vital and supported by multiple satellites. Both of general theory of relativity and special theory of relativity are applied in GPS. Due to the effect of the special theory of relativity, the surrounding time of a high-speed object goes slowly.  Follow general theory of relativity, the surrounding time of a satellite is also effected by the strong gravity, which comes from Earth. These errors are revised every second. Without revising correct time of a satellite, the surrounding time of a satellite will be 38𝓾s faster than the time in equator every day. 38𝓾s* speed of light= 11.4 km. A satellite, which was not revised every second, had errors, which were 11.4 km every day. Then, GPS was useless cause it located people in wrong places. If you were locating yourself by using smart phones, you would be located in someway, which was at least 11.4 km far away from your place, and, properly, would be located in a lake. DNA is a cornerstone for modern biology. DNA can be understood as a hard-drive, which saves all the data of human beings’ body. How did scientists find such an important thing? They used physics. By applying the diffraction of X-rays, scientists found out the double helix structure of DNA. Then, they had the conclusion that there are only four possible kinds of elements in each arm of double helix structure, which can be also seen as codes of heredity. Since that, human beings have the ability to unravel codes of heredity. There are still a lot of applications of physics. As we’ve mentioned, many of them changes have changed the world already.

While physics and biology have both had breakthroughs within their own fields, the two majors have more connections than people may realize. One application is referenced within the blog post “Nearsightedness and its potential causes” by Cameron O,  where we explained a general description of near sightedness and how new technology has forced our eyesight to change. Things such as using things such as phone and computer screens at a close range and spending more time indoors are some explanations as to why this problem has began to grow over the past few years and is expected it increase further as we become more dependent on the use of everyday technology. The ways that biology and physics can be seen connecting within this topic is that when we look at TV or video games, it trains our eye to look at things that are closer, changing the shape of our eye. This change in shape means that the light coming into our eyes intersects before the focal point, causing things that are far away to appear blurrier than things closer to us. This process is fixed through either glasses or contacts, which refract the light coming out of one’s eye to make it look more normal, or laser eye surgery, which physically changes the shape of the eye so that light intersects at the focal point.

Coming to an end of the post, we want to remind our readers once again, putting physics and biology in completely different categorizes would not be the case anymore. The world has been changing by day and lots of scientific fields are likely to work cooperatively in today’s world. Scientists have created new technologies that both physics and biology could contribute as we mentioned above. Finding these connections are never easy, however, scientists are not going to give up on solving mystery behind physical biology. Now tell us, do you believe physical biology could make the difference?

Images: https://www.fivesquid.com/41817/check-mark-and-correct-a-piece-of-maths-biology-chemistry-or-physics-work

http://allsciencetutor.com/tutoring-services/physics-tutor/

Prompt Post #4: Comparing Scholarly Articles to Blogs

By Cameron O.

               Being interested in the field of biology as well as posting weekly blogs, I want to get my information from somewhere reliable, but somewhere that I can efficiently go to and find information to bring to you. Looking at my choices, there are a few options, I can look at blogs such as ScienceDaily, or I can go deeper into information by using scholarly articles and experiments. Today I will be bringing my research to you, hopefully showing you the aspects of each as well as some of the pros and cons behind them.

                For starters we will look at a blog, something that is summed up as being quick to read, many short paragraphs, photos, and most importantly, they tend to have a tone that is more "fun". They give information in small bite sized pieces which make it easy for their viewers to get the information they are interested in. One good example of a blog is ScienceDaily. This is one that I go to almost everyday to catch up on any new information that may have significance within the biological field. This is also the site that I tend to go to when looking for information that I may want to share with you guys, my viewers. Another good example that we will be comparing to a scholarly article is BioMedCentral (BMC), another blog that I view more than others. Looking at BMC and an article linked prior, lets focus on how they present themselves. The blog post opens up with a summary to let us figure out if this is the information we would like to learn about. Then the blog continues with an image of an adorable eye catching pug. They organize the blog in a way that splits it into a few separate sections, each with a bold title all including more bite sized paragraphs. In general there is never a wall of text that is not broken into smaller paragraphs with an image thrown in as well. Finally, the last thing to note about a blog is the tone at which it addresses its audience. They seem to be friends with you, terming things in an easy to understand way, nothing in blogs tend to be so complicated that you need to be an expert to even understand what they are trying to tell you. Now that we have a good feel of how a blog works and how they tend to be designed let us compare it to a scholarly article.

               The scholarly article that I want to look at today is a quick article that looks at the evolution of dogs and compares them to their ancestors, wolves. The article is titled: The Origin of Dogs: Running With the Wolves. This article is made up of a wall of text that seems to be more official than the blog we looked at earlier. I was only able to view the first page of the article, but seeing that we are already on page 1647, I can tell that this one would be a long read. They use evidence as well as the studies to find this information that they have pooled together to create the article. the audience who will read this are very interested in the subject, and they most likely have experience talking about the evolutionary process of dogs and their history.

               The main points to get out of this are that scholarly articles are for a more professional reader, while blogs can be generalized and brought to a much wider view or people. Blogs tend to be quicker to read, as well as broken up into bite sized pieces with photos in them to help separate the information and keep readers interested.

References: Falkner, Davy. "Pug Love: Man's Best Friend Is Getting Smaller." BioMed Central. N.p., 11 Apr. 2016. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
Morell, V. "EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY: The Origin of Dogs: Running With the Wolves." Science 276.5319 (1997): 1647-648. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.

All About Gene Therapy

by Mine G.

Human genetics has started playing an important role in human biological studies. Studies show that genes can be blocked or replaced to possibly prevent people from developing a genetic disease or reducing the negative effects of the genetic disorders. One of the most common methods for that is the gene therapy. So what does gene therapy exactly mean?

Gene therapy basically refers to the therapy that replacing damaged genes in the DNA with the new laboratory designed corrective genes to treat the possible genetic diseases. Gene therapy was first tried in 1972, but it soon became a popular method to treat the the mutated genes among the scientists.
To replace the genes in a human cell, scientists need a career(a vector) that can deliver the genes into the human body. The most common vectors are usually the viruses because they can be genetically modified to carry human DNA. After the vectors are chosen, vectors infect the patient's target cells. After the infection, the vector transfers the human gene into the target cell.
Gene therapy nowadays is studied to cure many genetic diseases such as cancer, hemofilia, sickle cell anemia, even blindness.
To give an example, in a study done by Oxford University, scientists managed to recover a disorder called Choroidemia, which causes a person to develop lack of vision and might even lead to blindness by applying the gene therapy on the patient.
Even though it is considered to be an efficient treatment for some cases, complications might occur during the gene therapy, therefore gene therapy is said to be a challenging method for most of the studies. For example, the genes has to be delievered to the right cell and be active. Scientists should make sure that it doesnt block other genes to function. Furthermore, some cases the immune system of our body could react because the vectors carrying the DNA could be considered as potentially harmful organisms. Also, most importantly, gene therapy usually is done as case studies, which could cost a lot for an individual to afford.

To find out more about gene therapy check the video below:

References: What is gene therapy? (2016, January 25). Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-gene-therapy

 Basic Process of Gene Therapy. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://www.genetherapynet.com/basic-process.html

Mandal, A. (2014, January 14). What is Gene Therapy? Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Gene-Therapy.aspx 

Images: http://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-gene-therapy

Prompt post #3: Exploring Communication

by Guangyao Q.

It was such a pleasure to have an interview with Professor Kirsten T. about her research in particle astrophysics. She used to work for ATLAS, which was the experiment of detecting and measuring proton-proton collisions. Now, Professor. Kirsten is working for the High Altitude Water Cherenkov(HAWC) and is mainly about the most extreme environments in the universe. For instance, gamma-ray bursts, pulsar, and black holes. PHY 184, which is about electromagnetism, is her class , and she is a great instructor.

"The balances of writings , which write for public, between profession and public are hard to control", Prof. Kirsten told me. First, scientists use different medias. Scientific journals publish the articles, which mainly prove for professional readers. University websites proves a way of communication with public, which mainly contain special articles. The usages of words are very different. Special articles have fewer specific-nouns and more explanations. These details are easy for public readers, who do not have background knowledges. Even special articles have some properties, which are reader-friendly, but it is still a challenge for professors to write an article for public readers.

Do researchs. Collect datas. Analysis datas. These are fundamental concepts of writing of physics field. Research is the first step of writing. All essays are based on researches. You need to design the experiments well, and then you can get the data you want. Some researches and experiments are so advanced that professors have to invent the special tools to fix the problems. Good experiments provides good datas, sometimes. Analysis datas and pick up the datas, which are needed. Set a topic after you analysis the datas. Topic needs evidences to support, and evidences come from datas. Wrong conclusions is tolerant. The collection of small steps will be a huge steps for human beings.

Thanks for reading.

Rat Scent Traps

By Cameron O.

Quickly heading over to ScienceDaily.com, I found a brand new article that discuses a way that exterminators can catch and exterminate rats. Rats without a doubt have grown over previous years bringing with them a growth in diseases and poor health conditions in buildings and public and also diminish agricultural crop yields.

The article goes briefly over how we can now “identifying and synthetically replicating the male brown rat's sex pheromone” which will lure female brown rats into traps. Through testing in lab and in the field, this way to capture the female rats has shown to work.

Gerhard Gries, professor of biological sciences and NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Multimodal Animal Communication Ecology at SFU, was quoted saying; "We're beginning to understand their pheromones (chemical attractants), we understand their sound communication and can reproduce it, and we understand their food preferences.” The article then explains that this way of capturing rats is more beneficial because it will not kill the rats captured or the animals that eat the rats, but instead gives the exterminators ways to safely deal with a rat infestation.

This news was interesting to me because I am not someone who enjoys seeing rats get killed, but I do understand that the rats bring too much negativity and poor health conditions which in turn make me alright with handing them in this manner.

I am interested as to how these techniques will grow and develop as well as what other pests we can capture in this way.

References: Simon Fraser University. (2016, April 11). New way to smell a rat means end for rodents. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 11, 2016 from    www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160411152826.htm

 Solutions, R. (n.d.). All Posts - Rats/Mice  Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://rodentsolutioninc.com/rats-mice 

                Image: http://rodentsolutioninc.com/rats-mice

What Do Babies See

By Cameron O.

            This week I looked onto my favorite site for new medical discoveries, ScienceDaily.com, to quickly come across a video, linked here, that depicts how a Swedish company has used mathematical ways to alter photographs of parents in a way that shows what an infant’s view of them is.

            To sum up the video, the Swedish company uses a mathematical equation of how to make an image the quality that a newborn sees, they basically make it less focused and foggy. They explain this to be the way an infant views the person roughly 30 centimeters away from them. This distance was determined as the average distance mothers will cuddle or breastfeed their young newborn. The Swedish scientists also used the same formula to create an image of the same photo at distances of 60, and 120 centimeters. The image gets progressively worse as you get farther away.

            One thing intriguing to me was how even when the infants see this blurred image of their parents, they are still able to copy facial expressions almost right after birth. This makes me want to learn more about infants’ brains, eyesight, and how it changes specifically over time. This new information may be able to be used when comparing children with eyesight problems to determine how bad their symptoms may be and possibly even connect it to further studies and research.

References: "Notes From The Trenches: Diary of a Mom with a Reflux Baby." Voices from the Ville. N.p., n.d.Web. 09 Apr. 2016.

"What a Newborn Baby Sees." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2016.

Image: http://blog.kidville.com/2013/07/notes-from-the-trenches-diary-of-a-mom-with-a-reflux-baby/#.VxRJYjDhDIV

Meet Multicolored Zebrafish!

by Mine G.

Hey there! Today I am going to talk about something really interesting - and also colorful! Let me introduce you "genetically engineered" multicolored zebrafish! Even though it looks beautiful land very eye catching, there is a reason for why Duke scientists created this amazing fish. So, what is the reason beyond?

Duke University have created a multicolored zebrafish to closely watch individual cell's behaviors during the process of tissue regeneration. Scientists color marked every cell of the zebrafish with a different hue, thus let the scientist see how the skin heals itself. According to the article on DukeToday, "Before we can fully understand tissue regeneration, we need to be able to monitor what individual cells are doing.This is a cutting-edge way to visualize hundreds or thousands of cells at once in a regenerating tissue.”

This multicolor technology which the Duke scientists name Skinbow is actually referenced from a technology called Brainbow, which labeled the neurons on the brain with colors. 

The colors are embedded in the DNA of the skin cells, basically contain green, red and blue fluorescent proteins. As a result, scientists are able to see 70 different hues under a microscope.

After the coloring process, researchers started doing experiments to see how the individual cells work in cooperation with each other to heal the skin. On his inteview published in Gizmodo, Poss says, "One thing we weren’t expecting is that within a few hours of injury, cells that are spared acquire some mobility on the surface.They also expand in size, some doubling. Then there’s a quick wave of replacement—you can see new cells emerging from the layer underneath." 

Skinbow techniques is a great way to visualize cells' behavior and it is likely to give more information about tissue regeneration when it is combined with other imaging techniques. Scientists hope that it could be applied to other living organisms, even humans to keep track of how tissue regeneration occurs or how tissue reacts to new cancer treatments.

To learn more, check out the video:

References: Technicolor Zebrafish Reveal How Skin Heals. (2016 March 21). Retrieved April 11, 2016, from https://today.duke.edu/2016/03/zebrafish

 Stone, M. (2016, March 21). This Technicolor Mutant Zebrafish Is Synthetic Biology's Craziest Creation Yet. Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://gizmodo.com/this-technicolor-mutant-zebrafish-is-synthetic-biologys-1766125296 

Images: http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2016/03/zebrafish_skin_rainbow_in_duke_labs_shows_how_fish_respond_to_injury_video.html

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2081743-fish-with-rainbow-skin-shows-how-cells-move-when-skin-regrows/