Will We Ever Find a Microplastics Alternative?
A microplastics alternative is much in demand due to the harmful impact these tiny plastic particles have on the environment and human health.
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Phendo: Understanding Endometriosis
In 2016, Noémie Elhadad and her lab at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center created the Phendo, or “phenotyping endometriosis,” app, to better understand and identify symptoms of endometriosis. Endometriosis is a painful condition that causes overgrowth of the endometrium, or inner lining of the uterus, such that it grows outside the uterus and into other places in the body. Their goal is to fill in the gaps of knowledge about how individuals experience the disease on a day-to-day basis. The app invites anyone over the age of 13 who has…
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What is a Computer?
Here at Science Connected, we tip our hats to our Sophie Shrand, our favorite science comedian! The Season 2 Finale of the hit series Science with Sophie is all about COMPUTERS! Sophie asks, “what IS a computer?” and answers with bananas because…reasons. Join Sophie to dive into binary, hardware, computers vs. humans, and more. Plus, meet Sophie’s newest character who, by total chance, is here just in time for The Matrix 20th anniversary. Can you believe that the original Matrix movie is 20 years old this year? We can’t. Seriously.…
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Emerging Battery Tech for Energy Industry
By Emily Folk, @EmilySFolk Advances in battery technology are transforming one of the most promising movements in the modern energy industry: the push toward renewable energy power solutions. Solar, wind, geothermal, and even hydro energy sources have a lot to offer besides near-limitless energy generation. They are clean in the sense that they have little to no impact on the surrounding environment, and they are generally inexpensive to produce under the right conditions. The problem with most renewable energy sources is that they tend to come with a glaring limitation.…
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How to Drink Coffee in Space
Many of us remember being in a school assembly when an astronaut came to speak. The question on every kid’s mind (and teacher’s mind too, let’s be honest) was, “How do you go to the bathroom in space?” But what about other important things involving liquids in space? As it happens, there is a lot of research surrounding the behavior of fluids in zero gravity, such as how to drink coffee in space. In this video, our friend Dr. Joe Hanson from It’s OK to Be Smart explains why this…
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The Impact of Developing Biofuels on Travel Emissions
By Emily Folk (@EmilySFolk) Approximately 29 percent of the energy the US consumes is for transportation, and about 92 percent of US transportation is fueled by petroleum products. As a result, transportation is the sector that produces the most greenhouse gas emissions in the US. With the threat of climate change and other environmental challenges looming, we need to find a way to reduce emissions from the transportation sector. Biofuels are one potential solution. What Are Biofuels? Biofuel is fuel made from organic matter known as biomass. This organic matter…
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Ultrafast Camera Freezes Time
By Kate Stone (@GotScienceOrg) A new camera technology is making it possible to see extremely fast phenomena, even light, in slow motion. Called T-CUP, the world’s fastest camera can capture ten trillion (10 exp 13) frames per second. To put that into perspective, high-speed cameras capture around 250 to 1,000 frames per second. Let’s think about that for a moment. [tweetthis]The fastest camera is billions of times faster than a typical high-speed camera. #cameras #technology[/tweetthis] CUP stands for compressed ultrafast photography. The operative word here is ultrafast. This new camera…
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How Some Words Get Forgetted
Get ready for a dive into linguistic history! Our friend Dr. Joe Hanson from It’s Okay to Be Smart (PBS Digital Studios) goes full science nerd on the English language–and irregular verbs. Why are irregular verbs so common in English? Where do they come from? English is a confusing language for many reasons. But the irregular verbs might be the most confusing part. Why is “told” the past tense of “tell” but “smold” isn’t the past tense of “smell”? It turns out that the study of irregular verbs can teach…
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Citizen Science Games Mix Design with Discovery
By Shayna Keyles @shaynakeyles Citizen science is a collaborative scientific process in which scientists and members of the greater public both participate. This happens in many ways: scientists design an experiment for the greater public to complete, for example, or scientists and the public work side by side to accomplish a goal. (For a detailed introduction to citizen science, read our white paper, “Citizen Science: A Tool for Conservation.”) At GotScience Magazine, we’ve looked at a wide range of citizen science projects, from using crowdsourcing to track auroras to using…
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What the Tech Industry Can Teach Academia
OPINION By Sami Benchekroun Without taking risks and challenging the status quo, the majority of the world’s biggest scientific breakthroughs would not have been possible. That’s why it’s all the more surprising that academia itself is often reluctant to embrace new ways of working and sharing results. Scientists work on their research in secrecy for months or years and then wait an average of 100 days from the moment they submit their paper until it is published in a journal. Early-stage findings are hidden, failures are rarely shared, and the…
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