misciwriters Neuroscience, Uncategorized

Introverts & Extroverts: It’s Not as Simple as Shy or Outgoing (Part 1)

Author: Ellyn Schinke

Editors: Whit Froehlich, Nayiri Kaissarian, and Irene Park

Seemingly every Friday night, I’m curled up on my couch with a glass of wine and a good movie. Yet, it amazes me how many people scoff or flat-out laugh when I tell them that I’m an introvert. I am! In social situations, my mood can change very suddenly. It’s as if my social batteries have run out, flipping my social switch from on to off. Such changes are confusing for my friends, which might be based on the big misconception surrounding introversion and extroversion in society.

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misciwriters Ecology, Public health

GMOs: Unjustified Fear or Actual Danger? (Part 1)

Author: Irene Park

Editors: Brittany Dixon, Theresa Mau, Alisha John, and Scott Barolo

gmo1
Figure 1: A “Non-GMO Project Verified” product label

It seems like “Non-GMO Project Verified” labels have been popping up on more and more food packages. GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are on the public’s mind, and food manufacturers, restaurants, and the government are reacting.

For example, the restaurant chain Chipotle recently promised to ban genetically modified ingredients, naming three main reasons: the long-term health effects of consuming GMOs are unknown; GMOs harm the environment; and GMOs do not meet the restaurant’s standard of “high-quality” food.

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misciwriters Public health, Research

How Your Electronic Health Records Could Help Biomedical Research

Author: Brooke Wolford

Editors: Jimmy Brancho, Shweta Ramdas, Bryan Moyers

Think back to the last time you visited your primary care physician. Was the health care provider using a laptop or tablet to take notes and update your health information? In many doctors’ offices across the country your health records have gone digital. In addition to their exciting potential to help doctors’ offices reduce human error and better serve patients, electronic health records (EHRs) also make available a new source of “big data” for researchers.

EHRs are patient-specific digital records your health care provider maintains. The information in your EHR helps your doctor efficiently track your health over time and helps researchers learn more about diseases, which ultimately improves the clinical care your doctor provides to you and other patients. Believe it or not, EHRs from patients like you and me have already helped researchers make discoveries that improve health care for everyone!

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misciwriters Biology, Public health

Rabid: How to Beat a Gold-Medal Virus

Author: Shannon Wright

Editors: Ellyn Schinke, Jessica Cote, Alisha John

What is the most deadly virus in the world? The answer may surprise you. If we consider case fatality rate (the number of people infected who die from the virus if left untreated), it’s not Smallpox (20-60%), or even the Ebola virus (~50%), but rather, a common mammal-targeting virus you almost certainly have heard of: rabies. With no known cure, this infamous virus has a 100% fatality rate – certainly worthy of a gold-medal if we were giving out medals for how deadly viruses are.

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misciwriters Astrophysics, Physics, Technology

NASA’s Juno mission: Unlocking secrets about Jupiter and ourselves

Author: Irene Park

Editors: Ada Hagan, Alisha John, Shweta Ramdas, Scott Barolo

On July 4th 2016, NASA announced that the spacecraft Juno arrived at Jupiter after traveling two billion miles over five years. Juno was designed to investigate the origin of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet.

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misciwriters genetics

It’s all in the family! But how? The biology of inheritance Part 2

Author: Shweta Ramdas

Editors: Molly Kozminsky, Christina Vallianatos, Bryan Moyers

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last five years, you have definitely come across headlines to the tune of “Researchers Find Gene for X”, where X can be anything from happiness, to political affiliation, to your preference for cilantro. There are quite a few people who respond to these studies with “but surely that’s not genetic!” I work on the genetics of psychiatric disorders and have fielded this question from most people with whom I discuss my research: “Isn’t something like depression just caused by things that happen to you or your upbringing? Why do we place the blame on genetics instead?”

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misciwriters Microbiology, Research, science behind the scenes, Technology

In silico biology: How math and computer science teach us about life

Author: Hayley Warsinske

Editors: Molly Kozminsky, Ellyn Schinke, Irene Park

We live in a world of science and technology. Biomedical research helps improve our lives everyday by providing us with vital information about everything from hygiene to Alzheimer’s disease. Computers provide us with access to wealth of information on any subject in an instant and expedite many of our daily activities. Often these two worlds overlap and computers are also used to provide scientists with information about our own health and survival to facilitate biomedical research.

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misciwriters Biology, evolution, genetics

What the octopus genome can tell us

Author: Shweta Ramdas

Editors: Irene Park, Ada Hagan, Alisha John

The team at MiSciWriters certainly finds cephalopods fascinating, and we aren’t alone. Last year, the octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) was added to the growing list of organisms whose genome sequence is known.

Octopuses belong to a class of organisms called cephalopods, which literally means ‘head-feet’ (members of the cephalopod family have a head and tentacles or arms). These tentacles enable the creatures to do some very clever maneuvering, such as escaping their aquariums to eat crabs outside their tanks. It’s no surprise then that these are the most intelligent amongst invertebrates and now new information about the octopus genome can tell us more about these fascinating creatures.

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misciwriters Biology, Microbiology, Public health

Superbugs and a new school year: How you can help slow antibiotic resistance

Author: Carrie Johnson

Editors: Ada Hagan, Irene Park

Whether you have heard about it or not, antibiotic resistance is a growing threat that affects us all.

For generations, we have benefited from antibiotics to fight bacterial infections that would otherwise threaten our lives.  Unfortunately, the effectiveness of antibiotics is increasingly at risk.  Bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics already have already taken a significant toll and the severity of the problem is only growing.  In the United States, it already costs us over 23,000 lives and an estimated $55 billion each year.

As we head into a new school year and the colder winter months when illness risks seem to rise, the timing couldn’t be better to remind you that everyone (yes, you!) plays a role in combating this growing problem of antibiotic resistance. But first we need to understand the basics of this problem, including the three major factors at play.

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misciwriters Research, science behind the scenes

Science behind the scenes: The costs and payoffs of science

By: Bryan Moyers

Edited by:  David Mertz, Shweta Ramdas, Scott Barolo, Kevin Boehnke

Why haven’t we cured cancer?  Physicians have known about cancer for over 5000 years, and the United States spends nearly $5 billion per year on cancer research.  But there’s still no cure.  Also, where is our clean, renewable energy?  We can’t even catch half the energy in sunlight, and solar panels don’t come cheap!  Why don’t we have a moon colony yet or a male birth control pill?

In the U.S., science funding comes from many sources, including the taxpayers.  As an example, half a percent of the federal budget goes to fund NASA, before considering all of the money that goes to the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the National Institutes of Health and other federal science organizations.  It is reasonable that publicly-funded science should provide some benefit for the public, but it seems like there’s a lot of scientific research out there that’s not giving us the technologies and discoveries we want and need.   So why do we throw money at projects that don’t seem to deliver?

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