Category: Fall 2021

Myth or Science: The Health Benefits of Tea By Pei ChenThe aroma of tea, cultivated for thousands of years, rode the wind from the East to the West. Today, tea is among the most popular beverages in the world (Hayat et al., 2015). Other than the refreshment and energy it provides, there may be some…

Profit & Pandemic: Inequitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines By Sinead de Cleir After over a year of social isolation and unimaginable loss, COVID-19 vaccines provide a path to normal. Despite this, access to vaccinations remains inequitable, prolonging this global health crisis. Although countries have poured public funding into rapid vaccine development, vaccine patents fall under…

Engineering Atoms: How Material Chemists are Catalyzing Hydrogen Fuel By Bryan Kim The simplest chemical molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms, otherwise known as the hydrogen molecule. However, despite this deceptive simplicity, hydrogen stores a significant amount of chemical energy and possesses great potential to transition society’s energy sources from fossil fuels to carbon-neutral, alternative…

A New Nuclear Warhead in the Works. Its Target: Cancer By Rebecca Hebert When people see or hear the word “nuclear,” it often invokes distrust and fear due to its association with war. Consequently, we often label advancements in nuclear science as  dangerous. But, nuclear technology is much more than just weapons and disaster—it can save…

Telomeres in Space By Katherine De Lange In human imagination, life is commonly represented as threads woven together by fate, degrading as one ages. This representation might reveal some truth. Life expectancy and risk of disease is, in fact, associated with threads—our telomeres, which cap the ends of human chromosomes. Some researchers study telomeres to understand…

PALMS: Reducing the Toxicity of GPT-3 By Xavier Yin GPT-3 has a problem: toxicity. OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is a deep learning neural network—an artificial neural network that emulates a brain. Fundamentally, it looks for patterns in human language, and, based on these patterns, generates a response to a prompt or task. Think…

A Novel Way to Treat Multidrug-Resistant Diseases By Eunice Tsang We see labels like “antibacterial,” “antimicrobial,” and “antibiotics” so often in soaps, detergents, and medications. These antiseptics protect us from harmful viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. However, microorganisms have the ability to change their genetic make-up and pass down their genes to the next generation, allowing…