Q: So, Great Hemlock, you have been in this forest for a while, tell me what it was like back when you were a seedling. A: Ooh, that was 300 years ago, let me think. I remember looking up to see if I could locate my parents. There were many trees that shaded me from the sun, but none that I recognized. Now that I am older and have seedlings of my own, I know that when they are ready, hemlock seeds fly away on the wind and parents never know what becomes of their offspring. I think it is…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From textbook
ORGANIC FOODS – HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE OR JUST ANOTHER FAD?
As more and more organic foods are appearing on the shelves of our grocery stores and are gaining publicity in mass media, one cannot help but wonder what the big deal is with the presence of the little green “organic” sticker. The word being passed around is that organic foods are “healthier” and “safer” for the consumer than foods produced by conventional farming. And the fear of consuming pesticides, in particular, is a catalyst in the trend towards choosing organic foods. However, there is limited scientific evidence to support the perception that organic foods are safer and more nutritious to…
THE PERCEPTION OF SCIENTISTS
Scientists have an image problem. Just ask any fifth-grader. Chances are, they’ll probably tell you that a scientist is Caucasian, male, can be found wearing a lab coat, and leads a lonely laboratory existence [1]. Perhaps he has eccentric character traits or odd-looking hair [2]. That’s some fairly discouraging news, but hey, what do kids know? The perceptions of adults are what really matter, right? Sadly, it seems that this stereotype is also held by many high-school students, college students, adults [3], and even scientists themselves [2]. A bad image hurts scientists on many levels. Administrators allocating research funding may…
SEX AND SMARTS: UNDER-REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AMONG SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING FACULTY
I am in the process of becoming a scientist. A female scientist. I didn’t think that my gender was relevant to my career aspirations. I have plenty of female company (and competition) as an undergraduate science student at UBC. The ratio of women to men in my classes must be close enough to 50/50 that I have never noticed a gender imbalance (nevermind an advantage in heterosexual dating odds for women in my discipline.) Ditto for the distribution of intimidatingly-smart students; the prof-stumping questions come from women just as often as from men. I have worked in research labs that…
CREEPING INTO YOUR HEAD – A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO MICROGLIA
Know anyone with a brain? Know anyone with a problem with their brain? If you answered yes or no to either or both of those questions, you need to know about microglia. More importantly, however, you need to know about them in order to alleviate my distress. It’s a sucking burden to over and over have it come out at the grocery store that I am a microgliologist and to have no one know what I just said. Not ever. Always just a cocking of the head and a stifled pursing of the lips. So, what are microglia? They are…
BIOFUELS AND THE PROSPECT OF CONVERTING PLANT FIBRES INTO GASOLINE USING ENZYMES
Today, there is a significant interest in alternatives to fossil fuels. This has arisen given the increasing public concern over the environment as well as the general scientific consensus on the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions. Consequently, any realization of a renewable energy source that is an effective alternative to gasoline and diesel would prove significant. Plant material is a renewable energy source. Trees, shrubs and herbs grow all over the world, and in climates such as the tropics, even all year round. Via photosynthesis they convert CO2 and sunlight into lignocellulose – lignocellulose is the bulk material of…
THE SHAKING PALSY: A REVIEW OF PARKINSON’S DISEASE
A brief history What do Muhammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, Pierre Trudeau and Mao Tse Tung all have in common? They are, or have been, public faces of a debilitating disorder known as Parkinson’s disease (or “PD”). PD affects millions of people worldwide and is present in about 1% of the total global population, with an increase in prevalence (2-3%) in those above 50-70 years of age. It equally affects people from different ethnicities and socio-economic status, but it is more common in men than in women (Samii 2004) The first scientist to formally describe the disease was the British…
PATHOGEN VIRULENCE: THE EVOLUTION OF SICKNESS
Pathogens are disease-causing microorganisms whose negative effect on their host’s fitness can vary not only between host species, genotypes, and individuals but even between ecological circumstances and subpopulations (Dybdahl and Storfer, 2003). This reduction of host fitness, a highly sensitive characteristic dependent on numerous variables, is known as pathogenic virulence, and remains a topic of heated interest in health science and evolutionary biology today. What factors dictate the extent of damage a pathogen will inflict on its host? Because the long-term persistence of a pathogenic species is inextricably entwined with host survival, the answer to this question is complicated, and…
THE ANTI-VACCINE DISEASE: RANT OR REASON?
In a recent bacterial pathogenesis lecture, my class was shown a short video on whooping cough, a sometimes-fatal childhood disease caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis. Children no older than 2 years old were unable to breathe, taking desperate breaths in between painful coughing fits, mucus covering their faces. We had been studying the creation of ideal vaccines with the pertussis vaccine as an example. After the video, our professor mentioned in passing that an outbreak of whooping cough had occurred in Britain due to parents opting not to vaccinate their children because of a possible but rare link between…