SCIENCE GURU

Mountain View High School Science Magazine

Club Arena Day Pictured: Kiana Nouri (right,
founder and president, Science Guru) and Rohun Saxena (left, treasurer)

October 2013
The latest and hottest news about science from all around the world! We publish an issue every month; copies can be found in Dr. Thornburgs room and issues are posted on our blog.

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

Ah . . . These Brilliant Chemists!

Kiana Nouri

he fake label has been associated with Louis Vuittons and Rolexes, but chemists have created fake materials that are much cheaper than and even much superior to the original.
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Higgs Boson: Physicists Win Nobel Prize In Physics

UC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale Scientists win Nobel Prize in Medicine Nobel Prize for Chemistry takes it into cyberspace: USC, Stanford, Harvard, Strasburg Two theoretical physicists who suggested that an invisible ocean of energy suffusing space is responsible for the mass and diversity of the particles in the universe won the Nobel Prize in Physics on the morning of October 8, 2013.
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Edwin Hubble and the Big Debate in Astronomy

by Carter Fox

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Mind Reading: Its easy if youre the one who writes the material
by Kelyn Wood

Humans and Fun DNA

by Jasmine Deng

Letter From the Editor

Kiana Nouri

The Real Value of Your Real Education

y fellow Mountain View High School students: I got so excited a few days ago when I heard the scientists who recently discovered the Higgs boson particle were the winners of the Physics Nobel prize. This magazine is called Science Guru, but it is about more than science. It is about knowledge. It is about facts and discoveries in math, physics, chemistry and even technology. Most important of all, it is about how our knowledge is used for humanity. It is about how discovering the Higgs boson is about our past and our future. The discovery is just a fact but its effect on humanity is here to stay. When you read this article, do not think that it is not a science-related piece of writing. Science is the tool here. What science is used for is what matters. This past summer I took a university-level advanced English Writing and Critical Thinking class. It was a life-changing experience. I was exposed to brilliant and gifted writers and philosophers, who inspired me to write the below piece:

...The real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us ... all the time, proclaimed the late David Foster Wallace, in a commencement speech he gave in 2005. Foster Wallace was one of the best writers of this generation. His argument is just flawless; it is unsurpassed. The real value of a real education is to live sentient, mindful; in the adult world day in and day out. Your education is the job of a lifetime. Our natural default setting, hard-wired into our circuit boards at birth, is ... the automatic way that we experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of life when we are operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that we are the centre of the world, and that our immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the worlds priorities. Our natural default setting is drifting through life but not living it, instead letting it pass by mindlessly. Our eyes are open, our ears are open, but we are not aware of

the depth of our surroundings; we clearly do not see and we loudly do not hear. We drive, go to school, pass by classmates, eat, sleep, just for the sake of going to school without paying attention to classmates, with arrogance, focusing just on our classes, our homework, our tests and our grades. By default we are all about me and me and me, as Wallace puts it. We are on me autopilot. Being on life autopilot effectuates boredom, routine, petty frustration and misery, but we can take control. We can adjust our natural default setting, as DFW put it, and become well adjusted. We can exercise awareness through the point of view of others. We can observe through the deep lenses of them, not me and love and compassion and, foremost, truth. We can stop being self-absorbed. Just as what DFW said in the same speech, we must start with freedom of mind. Freedom itself is an expansive word. Our life is a rat race to gain freedom, have freedom, want freedom, and achieve freedom freedom of mind about comfort, wealth or personal liberty. As DFW notes: these freedoms are
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There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says Morning, boys. Hows the water? And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes What is water? David F. Wallace, American novelist

Letter From the Editor

Kiana Nouri

The Real Value of Your Real Education

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petty. He does not want us to ... have freedom of all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. The real freedom of mind is having the freedom to choose what to think about and, most importantly, choosing how to think about it. Choosing to think about the compassionate vision versus the miserable vision. This is what enables our mind. This is the ultimate freedom. DFW reiterates: That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing. That is the education he is talking about. The real value of real education is about this awareness and about awareness of what is real and essential. This is the job of a lifetime; it is a mountain to climb. We should whisper to our head and heart that real education is more than knowledge and grades. It is about how to use our logic. We should live a life of quality in touching others, quality in making our marks on others,

quality in fulfilling others wishes more than our own. As my grandmother says: at the end all of us end up under dirt, without anything we used to have or did not have. We can do it step by step, moment by moment, thought by thought, byte by byte and word by word, as long as we practice This is water ... This is water. My fellow MVHS schoolmates: the piece you just read is an example of how you can crave both science and literature at the same time. Please do not misunderstand my writing here. I am an almost-5.0 GPA senior here at MVHS. I love learning and I am a firm believer in learning. However, I also believe that we need to go deeper than just absorbing knowledge and getting excellent grades. We have to understand that the real value of a real education goes beyond just getting filled with information. It is also about being human and caring while we are doing and doing. As DFW puts it about the two teenage fish: This is water ... this is water.

Kiana Nouri is the founder, president, and editor-in-chief of Science Guru Blog, Magazine, and Club. This issue of Science Guru is created, edited, and published by her.

Carter Fox

Edwin Hubble and the Big Debate in Astronomy

T
Carter Fox is a new member of Science Guru this year. This is his first contribution to Science Guru Magazine.

he famous Hubble Space Telescope has been exploring the cosmos since April of 1990. This extraordinary instrument has explained several phenomena and continues to amaze us with its photos. What makes this telescope even more interesting is the man for whom it is named. Edwin Hubble was born in 1889 in the state of Missouri. As a child he fell in love with astronomy, and while still in high school wrote an article on Mars. One of his teachers, Miss Grote, noticed his rising fascination with astronomy. She predicted Hubble would be the most brilliant man of his generation. After high school, Hubble studied at Wheaton College, where he dreamed of receiving a scholarship to a major university. That dream came true at his graduation, when the superintendent of Wheaton College awarded Hubble a scholarship to the University of Chicago. Hubbles plan to study astronomy was headed in the right direction until his father, John Hubble, insisted that he pursue a law degree with the goal of bringing a steady income to their family. To please his father, Hubble studied law, but he also completed enough courses in physics to keep his dream alive. When John Hubble passed away on January 19, 1913, Edwin Hubble once again set out to pursue that dream. To bring money to his family, Hubble became a high-school teacher. After putting his family in a strong position financially, he used his connections at the
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Edwin Hubble
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Carter Fox
He figured it was either a nova (the death of a star) or a photographic glitch. The next night, the last of Hubbles observing run, he pointed the scope at the Andromeda Nebula again. This time he added five minutes to the exposure, taking away the possibility of a photographic glitch. After developing the photo, the speck was still there along with two more possible novae. He marked each possible nova with an N (as seen in the photo below). This discovery is important because Cepheid variable stars are very predictable, which means they can be used to estimate distances. Hubble could use the Cephid he discovered to figure out how far away the Andromeda Nebula is. The Milky Way was known to be roughly 100,000 light years across, so if the Andromeda Nebula was farther away, it would be out of our galaxy. Hubble continued to track the Cepheid and determined its absolute brightness and apparent brightness. By comparing these he was able to determine the distance. The result was astonishing! The Andromeda Nebula appeared to be approximately 900,000 light years from Earth. That is way beyond the reach of the Milky Way, meaning it was not apart of our galaxy. The Andromeda Nebula became classified as the Andromeda Galaxy and the great debate was over. Several other nebulae soon became classified as galaxies. Hubble had proved our galaxy is Hubble compared his image not alone in the universe. to other photos of the AndromHubbles results were officially eda Nebula. He found that two announced at the 1924 meeting of of the possible novae were in fact the American Association for Adnew novae. This was great news, vancement in Science. He shared but even better news followed. a prize of 1,000 dollars with The third candidate was not a Lumuel Cleveland, a biologist, for nova, but a Cepheid variable star. most exceptional paper. This star had been visible on only Edwin Hubble settled the a few of the earlier plates, indicat- greatest debate in the history of ing its variability. astronomy and did not stop there. Hubble had made the greatest He went on to make several other discovery of his career. He crossed groundbreaking discoveries, ultiout his N and victoriously wrote mately becoming one of the greatVAR! (for variable). est astronomers who ever lived.

University of Chicago and eventually graduated with a Ph.D. To be a professional astronomer, Hubble needed to acquire a research post at an observatory with the most technologically advanced telescopes. The best place to be was the Mount Wilson observatory, equipped with a sixty-inch telescope and almost-completed hundred-inch telescope. Hubble had great potential and was offered a job at the observatory. However, Britain had just entered World War I. Hubble had spent lots of time in Britain and felt obligated to defend that country. After three years Hubble returned to Mount Wilson. He soon became a major figure at the observatory and went on to make one of the greatest discoveries in the history of astronomy. At the time there was a great debate going on in the astronomy world. Many astronomers believed the Milky Way Galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe and all nebulae are contained in it. Others thought the Milky Way was one of many galaxies in the universe. In October of 1923 Hubble had been at Mt. Wilson for four years. On the second to last night of an observing run during that month, the viewing conditions were very poor, but Hubble managed to take a forty-minute exposure of the Andromeda Nebula. After developing the photo Hubble noticed a new speck in the top right corner of the image.

Nobel Prize Winners

Chemistry While your high school chemistry class probably involved chucking a few substances in a test tube and stirring, modern experiments often are carried out with the help of software. This years winners of the chemistry Nobel Prize made that possible by developing ways to simulate reactions using both classical and quantum physics. It was a feat that has helped researchers to understand everything from how enzymes react with drugs to how catalysts clean exhaust fumes. The prize is shared by Martin Karplus of Harvard University and the University of Strasbourg in France, Michael Levitt of Stanford University and Arieh Warshel of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It recognizes work they did in the 1970s on chemical computer models. As Staffan Normark of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences put it this morning, This years prize is about taking the chemical experiment to cyberspace. Chemists can use either classical or quantum physics to describe molecules, with the two methods offering different levels of understanding. Classical computer models can simulate the position of atoms within molecules and scale up well to large molecules. But classical theories do not include descriptions of molecules energy states, which is vital for simulating reactions. By contrast, software that uses the equations of quantum physics can simulate reactions in fine detail but requires vast amounts of computing power to describe every electron and atomic nucleus, which limits the models to small molecules with just a few atoms. In 1972 Warshel and Karplus were the first to develop software to simulate the electrons involved in a reaction using quantum physics, while sticking to classical models for other parts of the molecule. By focusing their computational power on the part of a molecule that is most relevant to a reaction, the pair were able to crack larger molecules than previously possible. But the software was limited to handling molecules with mirror symmetry. In 1976, Levitt and Warshel worked to extend the technique, creating the first computer model of a reacting enzyme, the proteins that control chemical reactions within the body. Now chemists could simulate any molecule they wished, allowing dry runs of experiments before getting messy in the lab. What we developed was a way [for] a computer to take the structure of a protein and ... eventually understand how exactly it does what it does, Warshel said during the prize announcement. You can use it to design drugs, or in my case, to satisfy your curiosity.

Kiana Nouri
Physics Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and Franois Englert of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, have won this years Nobel prize in physics for developing the theory of how particles acquire mass. The announcement in Stockholm, Sweden, came after a short delay, perhaps because the Nobel committee was conducting its own Higgs hunt. While the Higgs boson gets all the glory, it is the Higgs field that gets particle physicists excited. It interacts with each of the fundamental particles in different ways, giving them mass. For instance, the W and Z bosons experience the Higgs field as a thick treacle, making them some of the heaviest fundamental particles while the photon doesnt feel its influence at all and so is massless. The Higgs boson is a quantum ripple in the field, the existence of which proves that the field exists. Englert and his late colleague Robert Brout were the first to describe how this field might operate, but it was Peter Higgs who first predicted the particle that bears his name. The Nobel committee awarded them the prize for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles.
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Nobel Prize Winners

Kiana Nouri

UC Berkeley Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology for Freshmen, Winner of Medicine Nobel Prize
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Medicine Longtime rivals Stanford and UC Berkeley are sharing the glory of the worlds grandest prize, earned for their discoveries about lifes smallest package. For solving the mystery of the cells inner transit system, scientists Thomas Sdhof of Stanford and Randy Schekman of UC Berkeley were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday, along with James Rothman from Yale University.

This marvelous cellular mechanism delivering cargo to the right place at the right time is so critical that errors in the machinery lead to neurological diseases, diabetes, immunological disorders and ultimately death.

Randy W. Schekman, professor at UC Berkeley The scientists insights, lauded by the fifty-member Nobel Assembly on Monday morning, have led directly to treatments and vaccines, as well as improved understanding of the biological basis of diseases such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers. They will share the $1.25 million prize. In Monday news conferences, Sdhof of Menlo Park and Schekman of El Cerrito rejoiced at the news, but also fretted over the current state of science research and education in America. Mondays news adds to the already lengthy list of Nobel laureates at both prestigious Bay Area campuses. Seven living Nobelists work at Berkeley, and another fourteen are deceased. Stanford lists ninetten current Nobel laureates, but when visiting professors are included, the tally jumps to twenty-eight. (Portions copied from the San Jose Mercury News.)

The trio, each reaching similar insights from different angles, revealed how a tiny cell organizes and ships the hormones, antibodies and enzymes that make life possible.

Kelyn Wood

Mind Reading:
Its easy when youre the one who writes the material

A
Kelyn is a second-year member of Science Guru Club and a contributing writer to our magazine.

t this point it is not possible to change or even read the memories of a human. However, it is possible to do the former with mice. Earlier this year, HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) researchers at MIT were able to plant a memory of a room over a currently existing memory in a mouse. Inside the brain, there are a countless number of neurons that transmit information between parts of the brain. Figuring out how these neutrons interrelate and store memory could help cure human mental disorders. To find which neurons are in charge of which memories, scientists use optogenetics, which consists of using fiber optics to control a neuron by shining light on it. In this experiment, scientists attached tiny fiber optics to the hippocampus, the region in the brain where memory is stored, in each of several mice, then exposed the mice to a blank cage. The hippocampus of each mouse stored the memories of the room in the neurons to which the fiber optics were attached. The scientists placed the mice in a different-looking room and, after a couple of seconds, shocked them with electric current. The mouses hippocampus stored these memories too. Finally, the scientists moved the mice back to the original room and turned on the fiber optic lights attached to the neurons that stored the memories of the two rooms. Instead of exploring the room, like they did the first time, the mice stood absolutely still, evidently fearful of getting shocked like in the second room, even though they had never been shocked in the first room.
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Jasmine Deng

Humans and Fun DNA

Red and green show different epigenetic tags in older identical twins (right); younger identical twins have more similar epigenetics (left, shown in yellow).

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

pigenetics. If youre in biology AP, you know what it is, and if youre planning to take it, you eventually will. It is the study of external factors of DNA in humans or, more simply, how some genes are turned on and off. Its making some very important impacts in science, especially medicine, as genes are becoming more and more important in how a person is treated. We now can sequence our own genomes through numerous startup companies, like 23 and me, which also is raising moral issues. (Have you ever seen GATTACA?) Most importantly, by impacting medicine, it is impacting us. Have you ever wondered why one identical twin in a pair may contract a disease such as cancer while the other twin is unscathed? They have the same genetic code, after all. But genetics isnt just the DNA sequence; it involves epigenetics as well. Part of what makes epigenetics so important is that we finally are able to see genes and to sequence them. We can look at the location of a specific gene and the epigenetics affecting that gene. It probably wont reach the level of GATTACA, where you can, in essence, choose what kind of child you want eye color? Hair color? What about the personality? but it probably wont fall all that short. We may be approaching our own kind of warped brave new world. Epigenetics also is a huge factor in our genes, almost as important as what genes we actually have, because epigenetics determines which genes are expressed. Children with obese fathers have epigenetic abnormalities on the IGF2 gene, important in fetal growth and development, compared to children with fathers of normal weight. Scientists can begin to unravel all the mysteries of the human genome, which makes us who we theoretically are.
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Mind Reading . . .
Continued from page 8

Kelyn Wood
cells in the brain.) It remains unknown, however, exactly how many neurons are required to make a memory. The researchers are now working on how memories change when male and female mice are put together, with the idea that positive encounters can alter memories as well as negative ones. Dont get too excited for mind reading, though. Human minds are much more complex than the minds of mice, and this experiment was only able to combine a sense of pain with a visual image of a room. Were still a long way off from being able to adeptly (or even proficiently) reshape, replace, or destroy memories.

Because the room-two memories were activated along with the room-one memories, the mouse incorrectly remembered getting shocked in the first room. Thus, scientists were able to alter a memory of a small animal by flashing light on a select few neurons. (Yes, 30,000 neurons is a very small fraction of all the

Epigenetics
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Jasmine Deng
an epigenetic tag. Because of epigenetics, scientists now can develop drugs to combat melanoma, cystic fibrosis, and rare genetic disorders. The medicines arent perfect, and they are not always effective, but its a huge step from able to do nothing to help. Because of epigenetics, we know the placement of epigenetic marks that cause disease. And because of that, we can treat what once were incurable diseases.

Effects on the epigenetics of parents can be transferred to children rat children and rat grandchildren are more prone to asthma when the rat dad and rat mom are given nicotine. Cocaine resistance, too, can be inherited (though it isnt wise to test this little gem of science knowledge). We even can have methyl maps of whats in our brains and as methyl maps change over time. Methyl is

The embryos of potential children in GATTACA, all with genetics manipulated to be perfect.

We can even have methyl maps of whats in our brains and as methyl maps change over time. Methyl is an epigenetic tag.

Human lives are growing longer. In the Middle Ages, people werent expected to live past thirty-five years old. Now it isnt all that surprising to see people live past seventy or even reach their centennials. With bounds in medicine and now epigenetics taking the forefront of science, humans may start to take centennials as a matter of course. Who knows how long a life can last, now, with technology accelerating the way it is?

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Ah . . . These Brilliant Chemists!

Continued from page 1

Kiana Nouri

A growing number of chemists are in the business of building fakes. They actually are creating materials that are much cheaper and even better than the originals. They are much more effective than the real material as well. Paul Chiriks team at Princeton University is working on creating cheap platinum from iron and cobalt. They bestow the same ability on iron by attaching carbon-based molecules to it. Thats just what Markus Buehlers team has been attempting. We look at natural materials like bone, elastin proteins in the skin, spider silk and cocoons, says Buehler, a computational chemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. All of these materials have properties that could be useful in commercial products. Bones strength, for example, could make it a handy construction material. Were trying to go back to the drawing board and say, how can we replicate those properties? To get a better idea of the properties of naturally occurring products, Buehlers team analyzes the materials structures using a computer model. We simulate the chemistry and the motion of atoms and molecules, and use that to extract principles about how these materials derive their function, he says. Buehler and his team have then attempted to build their own version of the materials using a 3D printer. To recreate the properties

Hydroxyapatite lets you build with bone of human bone, the group used a combination of stiff and soft polymers. These were printed in a pattern similar to that seen in our own bones. 3D printing allows us to control the structure on the scale of micrometers, says Buehler. Its a very different technique to that used in nature, but it essentially captures the features of bone. The technology behind Buehlers development, which was published in June, is still very new, and hasnt yet been applied commercially. A lot of this kind of research is being done within academia, because were not close enough to being able to produce a product, says Harwell. Within industry, chemists can find opportunities at small startups, says Harwell. The new ideas coming out of academic research groups tend to be developed by small, private spin-off companies before they are bought up or licensed by larger companies. Were seeing more jobs in those smaller companies than larger ones, says Harwell. Before joining industry, its worth looking into further study, says Facundo Fernndez, analytical chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Ive had many students that graduated with a bachelors come back to grad school because they realized they needed an advanced degree, he says. If you really want to make progress in the ranks, and to be able to direct the course of investigations, you need a masters or a PhD. Once youve achieved that, the opportunity for a rewarding career in biologically inspired replicas is very real. (Portions printed from New Scientist.)

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On-line Blog:

Scienceguru18.blogspot.com

Left to Right:
Avni Singhal Rohun Saxena Kiana Nouri Varsha Suresh Kumar Dr. Thornburg

From the Editor

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

Science Guru Club Officers

Kiana Nouri Kelyn Wood Carter Fox Rohun Saxena Varsha Suresh Kumar Jasmine Deng Avni Singhal

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