Last week, archeologists from Boston University discovered fire, in a manner of speaking. Professors Francesco Berna and Paul Goldberg published research stating they found evidence of man-made fire that, at one million years old, is the oldest one found to date.

Goldberg is a professor of archeology and geoarchaeology and Berna is a research assistant professor of archeology. The two professors were part of a team led by Michael Chazan of the University of Toronto. They were collecting sediment samples in a cave in Wonderwerk, South Africa, when they came across a discovery: the sediments contained traces of burned animal bones and ash.

This meant that early on in our evolutionary history, in our homo erectus period, humans had control of fire.

It is something that was hypothesized, but never certain. Previous evidence indicated that man-made fire was much, much more recent—hundreds of thousands of years more recent. Some evidence put the oldest manmade fires around 800,000 years ago in Gesher Benot Ya`aqov, Israel. There have been other, similarly older sites where evidence of fire was clear, but evidence was not as secure as it was in Wonderwerk.

“The problem with the other sites is that most all of them are open air sites, so it’s very hard to rule out the role of a wildfire burning on top of human remains or carcasses left there,” Berna said. “Our site, Wonderwerk, is a cave, and is a very well protected environment, and so we know that there is no wildfire coming in. It’s related to human activities.”

What made Goldberg and Berna’s study difference was their emphasis on context. Goldberg and Berna work out of the Labratory of MicroStratigraphy in the College of Arts and Sciences. They bring in samples of sediment and scrutinize them right in the lab. What their techniques give them is valuable context. In simplest terms, they carefully collect sediment from the sites, bring it back to the laboratory and look it over.

“The way we work in the lab is we collect a sample of in-tact sediments form the cave, a block the size of a brick, let’s say, a little smaller than a brick. We carefully wrapped it up in toilet paper…and we bring it to the lab and…essentially turn it into a rock, and we slice it once it’s hardened, and mount it on a glass slide,” Goldberg said. “So, once we do that, we can look at the material… under the microscope as if it were a piece of the cave brought back to the laboratory.”

Graphic by Evan Caughey.

That’s how they stumbled upon their discovery. They did not go into the caves looking for evidence of fire (not exactly) and were really just looking to reconstruct the history of the cave using samples. But in terms of history to uncover, moving back the discovery of fire hundreds of thousands of years is fairly substantial, because wrangling control over the destructive and useful fire was a major moment in early human history.

“The control of fire has a biological significance, has an evolutionary significance,” said Berna. “It’s like…humans became humans because they weren’t afraid of fire, they knew how to use fire, and they knew how to cook their food, and so that gave them a huge advantage in terms of energy saving, time saving, and allowed the cultural evolution to rapidly evolve and become what we have now.”

The discovery gives support to one controversial hypothesis about early humans, the cooked food hypothesis of Richard Wrangham. The professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University believed that our ancestor homo erectus was already on a cooked food diet.

“And this is a big, big claim, that very few people believe in terms of archeology,” said Berna. “Because it’s only based on biological evidence and anatomical evidence and not in archeology.”

But now the archeological and geological evidence is present. The cooking of food, Wrangham’s research says, contributed to brain growth and smaller jaws, both important evolutionary differences between homo erectus and homo sapien. The theory remains controversial in multiple scientific communities, but with the contribution of Goldberg and Berna’s discovery, it remains food for thought.

The archeologists also both emphasized the importance of their methods above all else. The team was studying sediments and packaged them for study in the laboratory. Rather than bringing the artifacts to the lab, they brought the whole cave without having to lose any of the contextual information.

“Until people start looking at these sediments as artifacts, if you will, there’s a lot of information that’s being either thrown over the side of the site or just ignored that’s just a gold mine of information,” Goldberg said.

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The Boston Regional FIRST Robotics Competition brought high school teams from the New England area and beyond together to compete in a weekend of friendly robot competition. From March 22 – 24, over 50 teams brought their robots to Agganis Arena to participate and show off their robot’s basketball scoring skills. While only a few teams were able to walk away from the competition with awards, the FIRST Robotics Competition proved to be a rewarding experience for all who were involved.

The arena was ready for battle as the hosts welcomed teams to the competition.

FIRST, which stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,” is an organization that hopes to help students discover how interesting and rewarding the lives of engineers and scientists can be. FIRST’s goal is to “inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people.” One of the ways it does this is by hosting several science and technology related competitions each year, including FIRST Lego League, FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics Competition. It seems like FIRST is succeeding at this goal, as students who participate in FIRST are significantly more likely to attend college and twice as likely to major in science and engineering. The organization also gives out more than $15 million dollars in scholarships each year to students in the program to help them continue their pursuit of science in college. The FIRST Robotics Competition 2012 (FRC) involved some 60,000 high-school students, 2,400 teams and 53 regional events and will culminate in April with the Championship in St. Louis, Missouri.

Robots targeted the reflective targets on the baskets to make shot after shot.

This year’s game, called Rebound Rumble, was an amped up version of basketball. Robot teams were grouped into alliances of three which competed together to score as many baskets as they could. There were basketballs scattered around the court and hoops of varying heights with reflective targets to help the robots find them. Teams took a variety of different strategies in trying to help their team score the most points. Some robots played defense and went to the other side of the court to take the balls away from the opponents team. Other robots gathered up several basketballs at once before moving towards the basket for a close shot. Still others used catapult launchers to throw baskets from a distance. At the end of the allotted time, teams got extra points if they could balance their robots on the balance beam bridges in the middle of the court. This way, even the underdog teams could score points at the last minute.

After qualification rounds were over, each of the leading teams were able to chose two ally teams to continue into the final round with them. A qualification round favorite, the team called Miss Daisy from Wissahickon High School in Pennsylvannia chose the Pink Team from Rockledge High School and Cocoa Beach High School in Florida and the BU FIRST team from the Boston University Academy to join them on their path towards victory. After several close calls and a heated final battle, Ms. Daisy, the Pink Team, and the BU FIRST team won the final round and went home with a regional victory. The teams will continue on to compete in the Championship event later this month.

BU FIRST's Robot, Overclocked, takes to the court with its teammates Miss Daisy and the Pink Team.

FIRST Competitions aren’t all about winning, however. Jeff Stout, 2012 head coach of the BU FIRST team, said that it’s not just “by building and competing” that FIRST hopes to inspire and recognize excellence, “but also by doing outreach to further and advance the mission of science and engineering.” It was this dedication to outreach that helped the BU FIRST team to win the Boston Regional Chairman’s Award, the highest honor given at FIRST events. This is the second year in a row that the team has won the Chairman’s Award, which recognizes teams who embody the spirit of the FIRST competition.

BU FIRST Team is made up of students that attend the BU Academy with a variety of different interests and skill sets. Not all students are just involved in technology, said Stout. Some are more interested in the outreach and work on marketing and preparing the team’s website, for example. Participating in FIRST gives many students the opportunity to learn about engineering. It’s also an opportunity to learn about leadership that students “couldn’t get from doing a science fair project.”

The record for the competition, three robots all balanced on the same beam at once.

Being affiliated with an institution like Boston University is “pretty invaluable” to the BU FIRST Team, says Stout. According to Stout, there are three reasons that the teams “tight relationship” with Boston University is important for the team. First, Boston University is the main source of mentors for the team. Each FIRST team needs mentors to help the students to design and build the robots. Many of the mentors for the BU FIRST team are graduate and undergraduate students from BU’s College of Engineering who help the students plan their robots and use the equipment needed to build them. Boston University is also important to the team because it is their biggest sponsor. BU’s financial support is a big part of what allows the team to participate in FIRST events. Finally, the Technology Innovation Scholars (TIS) within the College of Engineering help the team with outreach. The Technology Innovation Scholars go out to K-12 schools to excite students about engineering. Not only do the the Technology Innovation Scholars help mentor the students, the BU FIRST team also makes their robot available for TIS events at elementary schools in the Boston area.

With their first regional win, another Chairman’s Award and the help of BU, the 2012 season for the BU FIRST team is shaping up to be one of their most successful yet. As the main sponsor of the Boston Regional FIRST Robotics Competition, Boston University is committed to the goal of advancing science and engineering in young people. Even outside the competition, Boston University students continue to mentor and help BU Academy students build their robots to compete in the FIRST Competition.

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Psychology, biostatistics, and anthropology experts conducted a study to see if a link exists between the size of the orbital prefrontal cortex (a region in the frontal lobe of the human brain) and the ability to maintain multiple friendships. What they found, if proven to be true, is startling.

MRI of the brain. | Photo courtesy of NASA via Wikimedia Commons.

The study was part of the British Academy Centenary “Lucy to Language” project. The scientists who conducted this research collaborated despite working at separate universities around England and Scotland. They conducted their testing on 42 subjects, both male and female, ranging from 18 to 47 years of age. The wide range of ages helped ensure that the data they collected would not be based on just one group of people, such as college students. Each subject was asked to list the number of people they had interacted with socially in the previous week. This data was then compared to MRI scans of each person’s brain to see if there was any correlation between the two measures.

The study goes on to state that areas of the temporal lobe may also affect the number of friendships a person can have, but that the researchers chose to focus on the orbital prefrontal cortex to cut down on the number of variables in the experiment.

Their findings suggest that the larger someone’s orbital prefrontal cortex is, the more friendships he or she will be able to maintain. This seems like a far-fetched assertion, but the researchers concluded that it was not the size of the orbital prefrontal cortex, but rather the more advanced cognitive skills that come along with a larger cortex that directly determine the number a friendships a person can have.

The researchers labelled these skills as “mentalising” and have concluded that they are essential for maintaining multiple friendships. This means that someone who has a larger frontal lobe will be able to read social cues better and will, as a result, be able to balance more personal interactions.

The major question that now has to be addressed, however, is whether the study’s findings will hold up to academic scrutiny. Tori Smeglin (CAS ’14), believes that the study draws believable conclusions, “Oh, that’s definitely a possibility. [The prefrontal cortex's] greatest job is executive decision making. The choices we make effect how we interact with others, so I would not be surprised if there was a positive correlation between the two.”

Others are not so quick to believe the scientists’ conclusions. Marc Howard, a psychology professor at BU, commented that—although the scope of the study was not in his realm of expertise—he is “not aware of any evidence that the size of the brain correlates meaningfully with any measurable cognitive or social function.” Professor Howard went on to say that he “would be shocked if there is such a relationship.”

With all these conflicting opinions, only time and more research will provide conclusive evidence as to whether the study’s findings are valid. Either way, the work of the “Lucy to Language” project has provided us with much food for thought.

The original study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which can be found here.

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Students race to build their carbon nanotube models at SANT's building competition. | Photo by Ashley Hansberry.

This past Friday marked the end of E-Week 2012, an annual event put on by the College of Engineering with the hopes of “encouraging interaction and communication amongst engineering students, faculty, alumni and industry.” This year’s E-Week featured lectures, trivia events, building contests, and competitions sponsored by different engineering-related groups on campus. The two-week event concluded with a carbon nanotube building contest sponsored by BU’s Students for the Advancement of Nanotechnology (SANT).

Marshmallows and pretzel sticks make perfect building materials. | Photo by Ashley Hansberry.

While it easily could have been boring or overly technical, the event, called “Size Matters,” proved to be engineering fun as students and members of SANT gathered together in the Photonics Center to talk about nanotechnology. The fun really began when the building competition started and students tried to build carbon nanotube models out of pretzels and marshmallows. Using the food to make hexagon-shaped rings that were supposed to model the hexane rings in real nanotube technology, students raced to make the biggest nanotube. While small size certainly matters in nanotechnology, large size was the goal of this competition. SANT hosted the lighthearted event in hopes of getting students interested in their group and nanotechnology as well.

The winning team holds up their nanotube model for judging. | Photo by Ashley Hansberry.

“BU is big on nanotechnology, but not many undergraduates know about that,” said SANT treasurer Kimaya Agarwal. Agarwal said that BU’s Nanotechnology labs are doing some important research in the up and coming field, but that too few students know about the research opportunities available to them through the laboratory.  As a club, SANT hopes to change that and get more students interested and involved with the growing nanotechnology community at BU and around Boston.  President Kyle Barrett was happy to see so many students come out to the event and to see that E-Week was doing its job in bringing in such a big turnout.  The College of Engineering doesn’t give student groups many opportunities to interact, said Barrett, but E-Week gives groups and students alike the opportunity to get together to share common interests and advance the cause of engineering at BU.

SANT’s carbon nanotube building contest certainly embodied the spirit of E-Week. “Size Matters” was a fun event in a welcoming environment, yet was still serious about student involvement in the engineering community. Great job, guys!

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Could be we colonizing the Moon come 2020? | Photo courtesy of NASA/Dennis M. Davidson

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stirred up an odd controversy last week after announcing his plans for a lunar base. “By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the Moon,” he said to an audience in Florida shortly before the primary.

This latest scientific proposal, between his casual insistence that he would serve two terms and the sheer grandiosity of suggesting a Moon colony in such a rough economy, outshines even Gingrich’s previous scientific plans in media radar. Every critic, from fellow candidate Mitt Romney to comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, have jumped on the opportunity to ridicule Gingrich’s plans.

It certainly sounds crazy, but there might be a hint of possibility to Gingrich’s plan. Returning to the Moon is closer to reality than fantasy. In fact, building an outpost on the Moon was a U.S. plan until about three years ago. At its center, the idea is possible, but expensive.

The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the cost. The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) estimates that developing a small, four-person lunar base would cost $35 billion, not including the rocket needed to transport the lunar lander. After the station were established, the CSIS estimates another $7.35 billion a year for maintenance, which is over a third of NASA’s current budget. Especially with NASA’s recent budget cuts, no one is sure whether they will be able to afford these costs years down the road.

Gingrich is full of grand ideas, but are they realistic? | Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Cost aside, having people permanently stationed on the Moon isn’t complete science fiction. While 2020 might be a stretch, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) program could be ready to take people to space by the mid 2020s. After all, six crew members, three of them American, are currently on the now-finished International Space Station. With the help of international cooperation, the six trained astronauts and engineers are conducting groundbreaking research and experiments on the station.

There’s a far stretch, however, between a four-to-six person outpost and what Gingrich is proposing. He isn’t aiming for something modest. He’s talking of a permanent colony, where people could live and travel. Once the Moon reaches 13,000 people, he said, it could apply for statehood. This is where Gingrich’s idea becomes most unrealistic. If the cost of a four-person Moon base is unattainable, it’s completely unlikely that we could sustain anything close to a colony. A Moon base is a long term commitment that will need constant funding and attention, regardless of the political environment on Earth. Especially with the economy in a tumultuous state, it’s hard to believe that the US could continually devote their attention towards the Moon while people on Earth are less than happy.

In the end, it’s not the technology that’s at issue. Funded by private companies or by multinational efforts, we could have people stationed on the moon by sometime in the 2020s (or even on their way to Mars if the SLS program is a success). A 13,000 person moon colony, though, is currently out of the question. NASA’s budget cuts have left many less than hopeful about the United States’ stake in space, so it’s refreshing to see Gingrich pushing for exploration. He’ll have to think of another way to get people excited about space, however, because this Moon plan is simply too grandiose to become a reality within his two term limit.

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Before 2011 comes to an end, it’s worthwhile to look back on this year’s most important discoveries and what they mean for the future of astronomy. There have been too many discoveries to cover them all, but here’s a look at some of the more interesting (and comprehensible):

This vein of gypsum on Mars could be evidence that water once ran there. | Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU

Water on Mars

Was there ever liquid water on Mars? This is a hotly contested question in the popular science world. In December, the mystery was one step closer to being solved: the Opportunity Rover uncovered what Steve Squyres, the lead researcher for the rover, says is the most “bullet-proof evidence” from the rover’s mission thus far.

Previous potential evidence was found in surface particles that could have been blown in from anywhere. This time, the rover found a line of gypsum in the red planet’s bedrock, suggesting the mineral was created there on Mars. Gypsum, a mineral created when water flows through rock, doesn’t require a highly acidic environment like previously found minerals do, suggesting the water on Mars could have been much more gentle than scientists thought.

If the mineral is confirmed to be gypsum, it would be “the single most powerful evidence for liquid water” on the planet. The Opportunity Rover has been traveling years longer than its original 90 day mission, and scientists eagerly wait for the confirmation of the mineral’s origin in hopes of finally knowing if there was once liquid water on Mars.

Giant Alien Worlds

Earlier this month, eighteen new super-massive gas giants were found orbiting stars even bigger than our own Sun. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have been searching the sky looking for stars more than one and a half times the size of the sun and picking out the ones that wobble, a phenomenon often caused by the pull of orbiting planets. In their search, they found eighteen new Jupiter-sized planets, increasing the number of known planets orbiting supermassive stars by 50%.

According to current theories of planetary formation, planets are the product of small particles in the dusty disk around a newly-formed star. More and more tiny particles clump together until the planet is formed, like how a snowball is made. If this theory is correct, then larger stars with larger disks should result in larger planets—something that this discovery seems t0 support.

As John Johnson from the discovery team at Cal Tech said, scientists are thrilled to “see all these converging lines of evidence pointing toward one class of formation mechanisms.” A better understanding of general planet formation thanks to planets like these can help scientists move towards an understanding of how our own solar system formed. Scientists are puzzled, however, about why these new planets travel in circular orbits, rather than the usually found elliptical ones.

While their discovery was a success for the current theory of planet formation, there are still unresolved questions to be answered before scientists can determine how this and other solar systems were formed.

Birth of a New Planet

An artist rendition of the dusty ring around the star T Cha. | Image courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada.

Kepler Program and Discovering New Exoplanets

An artist's rendition of the potentially habitable exoplanet, Kepler 22b. | Image courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.

The Kepler Program is possibly one of the most exciting programs in recent history. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, launched in March 2009, is on a mission to find Earth-like planets in the habitable area, or “Goldilocks Zone,” of stars they orbit. Before Kepler’s more recent finds, there were only  a few known and possibly-habitable exoplanets.

But as of this month, the telescope has found over 2,000 new candidates! First studied in 2009, Gliese 581d was thought to be the first potentially habitable exoplanet. It was recently concluded that the exoplanet could support liquid water, but its 5.6-times-Earth size makes habitability unlikely.

Then, in August of this year, HD 85512b was found and concluded to be another enticing possibility, especially because it is only 36 light years from Earth despite being super-Earth size. Thanks to the Kepler program,  the number of known exoplanets is growing rapidly. Of the thousands of potential candidates, 48 seem to be in the habitable zone of the stars they orbit.

The most exciting of these finds is Kepler 22b.

According to NASA scientists, Kepler 22b is “a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin.” The planet’s surface temperature is a comfortable 72 degrees, its 290-day year is similar in length to our own and it is about the same distance from its star as Earth is from the Sun. At 2.4 times the size of Earth, it is possible that Kepler 22b is a little too massive to support life at its surface, but scientists are still hopeful. Until further investigation, scientists can only speculate about what the surface might look like. And at 600 light years away, it is still far beyond our reach. Even though it’s not perfect, the discovery of something that looks so promising is bringing scientists one small step closer to understanding if there’s life anywhere else in the Universe.

In addition to these major discoveries, there are many more that are just as important for the future of astronomy that aren’t mentioned here. Whole books could be written about just the discoveries made by NASA this month, let alone other scientists throughout the year. Here’s a few more of the more interesting ones that are changing the way we perceive our Universe.

Super Massive Black Holes

Astronomers at UC Berkeley have found a black hole that is 9.7 billion times the mass of our Sun and another that is as big, if not bigger. They are unsure how these black holes, far into old age, got so big, and hope to understand more about black hole formation as they continue their research.

Hanny’s Voorwerp

The orange spot within the green cloud shows evidence of star birth. | Photo courtesy of NASA, ESA, W. Keel (U. of Alabama) and the Galaxy Zoo Team.

The mystery of the giant odd-looking cloud discovered in 2007 has finally begun to unravel. Named Hanny’s voorwerp (“voorwerp” is Dutch for “object”), this cloud is bigger than the entire Milky Way galaxy and was called “one of the strangest space objects ever seen” by the American Astronomical Society.

In January of this year, when the Hubble Telescope sent back the clearest picture yet, scientists discovered that the cloud isn’t just inactive gas. Rather, the side of the cloud closest to the neighboring galaxy shows evidence of ongoing star formation. The new pictures not only help to solve one of the most recent great mysteries of the Universe; they also allow a rare look into the birth of stars.

The Coldest Star Yet

Scientists at the University of Hawaii have found a small star with surface temperatures of around 206 degrees Fahrenheit (97 °C), much colder than any star seen before. They also have their eyes on another star that might have temperatures as low as 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Both stars are brown dwarfs and are blurring the distinction between stars and planets. As gas-giant planets are found with temperatures much higher than these cool stars, scientists are being pushed to understand just where to draw the line between brown dwarf stars and massive gas-giant planets.

This galaxy gives a good idea of what our own galaxy might look like from the outside. | Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA.

Milky Way Twin

Scientists have discovered a galaxy 30 million light years away from Earth, NGC 6744, looking quite a bit like our own. The view of this galaxy, says ESO press officer Richard Hook, “is close to the one we could see … if we had the technology to escape the Milky Way.” Although twice the size of the Milky Way, this galaxy gives scientists and casual observers alike an idea of what our galaxy might look like if we could see it from outside.

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Throughout the years, research on cell therapies has rarely found success. Experiments using stem cell therapy to treat spinal injuries as well as some trials involving fetal cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease have yielded no positive results. Only until recent years has it been proven that the human brain produces new neurons throughout the lifetime. Some evidence has shown that these new neurons are occasionally integrated into existing neural circuits and actually enhance brain function. This evidence led scientists to postulate that this could be done using transplanted cells as well.

Obesity prone mice were used to test a special fetal stem cell therapy. | Photo courtesy of Bigplankton via Wikimedia Commons

The Harvard University scientists extracted healthy neurons from mouse embryos (the hypothalamus to be exact) and transplanted those neurons into the same region of the brain in obesity prone mice.  These mice lack the receptor for leptin, a hormone that regulates metabolism and body weight, and therefore they are prone to being diabetic and obese. The transplanted neurons were labeled with a green fluorescent protein to track them in the neural circuit. The results were quite promising, as the transplanted neurons were able to integrate efficiently into the existing neural circuit and develop into mature neurons that responded to leptin. At the end of the experiment, the treated mice weighed 30% less than mice that had not received a transplant. This suggested that the transplanted neurons actually fixed the damaged neural circuit.

Though the experiment was not directed towards treating human obesity, the success of the experiment gave scientists a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of cell therapies. These results further prove the possibility that key areas of the mammalian brain can be repaired using transplanted neurons to treat nervous system diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, and other nervous system diseases. In response to the question of reconstructing the entire circuitry of the brain itself, one of the scientists responded, “In these cases, can we rebuild circuitry in the mammalian brain? I suspect that we can.”

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Over 15,000 African children in 7 African countries are participating in the trial. Among 6,000 children ages 5-17 months old, it reported a 47% reduction in malarial cases within a year. While this marks a great public health achievement, other vaccine researchers have identified several concerns on the results that, they point out, are still preliminary.

Annual malaria mortality rates in the past century. | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that malaria infects 191-311 million people and kills 708,000-1,003,000 of them, the majority of which are African children. Children suffer the burden of the disease because their immune systems are still developing.

The vaccine has been in development for over 30 years because of the disease’s complexities: the malaria species are multi-stage parasites capable of evolutionary change, which makes it difficult for scientists to develop an effective vaccine. These multiple stages mean that a vaccine would only induce immune responses specific to each stage, so any one parasite that eludes the response would be enough to avoid the vaccine-induced protection.

Also, complete immunity from malaria is rare. Vaccines for many bacterial and viral infections only need one natural infection to induce long-lasting immunity. But even after several malaria infections, a vaccine is unable to mimic immunity that should be obtained from natural infection. These difficulties have not stopped malaria experts from trying to find treatments for malaria cases around the world.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) does list preventative measures such as insecticide-treated nets, vector control, and indoor residual spraying proven to be highly effective in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, malaria-ridden Sub-Saharan Africa would not respond to precautionary tools because of the high transmission rates. Additionally, there has been massive resistance efforts to the practical use of DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, prompting alternative non-insecticide-based mosquito control measures. These led to the need for the development of a vaccine that would work in conjunction with existing treatments to eradicate malaria.

An ad about malaria protection using incesticide during the WWII era. | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The production of effective malaria vaccines has lacked progress in the past, but the new pilot vaccine reveals positive results. RTS,S would be given to children at the same time as other routine immunizations. This would make distribution more accessible.

The vaccine acts more by reducing the rate of new infections, rather than combating current infection. And as mentioned, it was somewhat effective in the trials: the total number of clinical episodes of malaria was reduced to 55%. But despite this, the clinical trial has undergone much scrutiny.

By the end of 2014, the trial will be completed and all results may be assessed. But the decision to publish partial data attracted criticism from leading vaccine researchers. Interim data is usually only reported to regulatory authorities, and the premature publishing brings into question the results’ validity especially with “less than half the efficacy results available,” writes Nicholas White, a malaria researcher in Bangkok.

Also, Stephen Hoffman, chief executive of a rival vaccine effort based in Maryland, mentions that the publication fails to report data on children aged 6-12 weeks, which was the stated target group of the trial. The 47% reduction in severe malaria, combined with available data on the younger age group, brings the new efficacy down to 35%. This low efficacy rate would represent a negligible benefit to the younger age group and fall short of the 50% protective efficacy rate mandated by the WHO in 2006 to win approval.

A third issue lies in the vaccine’s long-term protection. The 47% reduction was reported in just a year’s time span. Researchers will not be able to identify the length of time in which the vaccine protects against malaria until all data has been compiled.

In a live chat with two leading malaria experts–Laurence Slutsker and Vasee Moorthy from WHO– the question of the vaccine’s partial protection was brought up. They said that the vaccine should work in tandem with current control measures to bring morbidity and mortality rates to zero.

In response to a question about potential side-effects, they responded that, “to date, the vaccine has had an acceptable safety and tolerability profile.” A higher rate of meningitis in vaccinated children compared to controls did not arouse serious concern because it was statistically insignificant. The length of time between vaccination and disease onset also suggested no relation between the two events. However, the vaccine will continue to be monitored for adverse effects over the rest of the trial.

Regardless of the trial’s criticisms, the global implications of the first-generation vaccine are remarkable and provides a stepping-stone not only for malaria control, but global health as well. RTS,S marks the first vaccine to consistently provide a significant protective effect against a parasite on a large-scale setting.GSK promises to provide the vaccine at an affordable price, just 5% above the cost of production. Excess profit would be reinvested into developing  the next malaria vaccine.

While researchers did hope for a higher malarial reduction rate than 50%, the vaccine alone has the potential to prevent millions of malaria cases in children. With the powerful combination of the vaccine and current malaria control measures, there is hope. Controlling malaria would help many developing nations’ economies for which the disease accounts for 40% of medical costs.

The RTS,S vaccine is not perfect, but it shows much promise as a first step. If given regulatory approval, this would be the first human vaccine against a parasitic disease. With full results expected in 2014, public health authorities patiently await the announcement of what could be the first effective vaccine against malaria, the second leading cause of death from infectious diseases in Africa.

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Catherine Espaillat stands beside a slide of the various phases of dust disks. | Photo courtesy of Liishi Durbin

This Monday, the Institute for Astrophysical Research welcomed Catherine Espaillat, a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She presented a lecture in room 502 in the College of Arts and Sciences, open to students and researchers alike. Her talk delved into some of the facets of her research in the field of protoplanetary disks of gas and dust, which form during the collapse of a star’s natal, molecular cloud.

Espaillat is young, but carries a bagful of accreditations. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in Astronomy. She then went on to the University of Michigan where she received her Master of Science in Astronomy in 2005 and her Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2009. The Boston University professor who presented a short introductory speech rapped out an extended list of honors. Among them is the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation’s Mellon Mays University Fellow and the Honors Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctorial Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. She speaks clearly, quickly, with fierce conviction. Her introducer described her perfectly with the way he ended his introduction: she is a member of his “Badass List.”

Digital rendition of UX Tau A, a star system that is one million years old and about 450 light-years from Earth. | Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

Her lecture revolved around the primordial protoplanetary disk of a star and its planets. These disks are composed of dust and gas, which evolve as time passes. The research she conducts focuses on what she referred to as “transitional disks” and “pre-transitional disks,” which are dust disks that have gaps and holes, possibly created by newborn planets accreting and stirring what is around them.

This lecture was definitely not your run-of-the-mill astronomy talk. As someone who hasn’t taken an astronomy class since the planetary unit of middle school science, I was completely overwhelmed by the detail, power, and enormity of her research. Her PowerPoint slides seemed to be in another language of large, complicated symbols and words; she drew conclusions from an array of diagrams and found meaning in small irregularities in intricate, multifarious graphs. Professors and researchers seemed to make up the majority of the attendees. They sat back, nodding along with her presentation, sometimes interrupting with a question. But as lost as I was, I felt the gravity of her research: she ended a section of her lecture by saying, “This will affect the way that researchers look at planet formation.”

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Upon chewing the miracle berry, formally known as Richardella dulfica, students found that apparent sour and spicy foods that touched their tongues were suddenly sweet.

The Miracle Berry. | Photo courtesy of user Hamale via Wikimedia Commons

“[The miracle berry] contains a protein called miraculin that binds to taste receptors and makes bitter things taste sweet,” Macayla Donegan, a member of MBS, said.

Students were instructed to bite down on the berry, swirl it around in their mouths for 3-4 minutes, and then taste the variety of savory and sour foods available. The palatal experience lasted different lengths of time for different people, although the typical bout of flavor confusion ended within an hour.

The miracle berry grows in West Africa, Puerto Rico, and other areas with tropical climates. Berries typically sell for 2-3 dollars each, and are available from various online suppliers. MBS members ordered over 300 berries for the “tastravaganza” event and distributed them to curious BU students.

The MBS has hosted miracle-berry centered events in the past: their first one took place in the fall of 2010. Members have also hosted brain food events to provide students with helpful nutritional tips during common times of stress.

The Mind and Brain Society serves as an intellectual outlet for students interested in all things neuroscience: members host student-lead discussions, take trips to New York City, publish “The Nerve” blog and teach topics of neuroscience at other schools.

To learn more about BU’s Mind and Brain Society, visit their blog at http://blogs.bu.edu/ombs/. 

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Earlier this month Dr. Ray Baughman and other researchers devised an experiment to hide objects from view using nanotechnology and photo-thermal deflection. More commonly termed the “mirage effect”, the idea behind this phenomenon is simple. A drastic change in temperature over a small distance bends light rays towards your eye as opposed to bouncing off the surface.

Size doesn't matter with these nanotubes. They're as strong as steel and as light as air. | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An example of this effect: when looking down a road on a hot summer day, a puddle of water can be seen in the distance. That puddle doesn’t actually exist; it is merely an illusion created by the deflected light photons, and you are actually seeing an image of the blue sky being redirected from the ground.

Researchers’ first step involved finding a material that would be able to facilitate the “mirage effect”, which they discovered with carbon nanotubes. These are microscopic cylindrical molecules that are 1/10,000 the thickness of a strand of hair, light as air, stronger than steel, and most importantly, they transmit heat quickly.

Dr. Baughman presented the irony of these carbon nanotubes when he stated that their original purpose was to see how they would work as speakers. Sheets of these nanotubes were aligned in an underwater container and heated to elevated temperatures through electrical stimulation. The heat that’s transferred to the surrounding areas generates a temperature gradient, which then causes light rays to bend away from the concealed object. Ta-da! The object has now disappeared to the naked eye.

Soon, we could all be as cool as Harry Potter! (Disclaimer: Invisibility cloak does not include wand. Or magic.) | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

As of now, scientists have only managed to create this “invisibility cloak” in an underwater setting. Yet this success has prompted an array of possibilities that include military use. The cloaking device could be used to disguise military submarines, assuming that enemy subs don’t have heat-seeking torpedoes…

Although no practical use for humans has yet been found for this cloaking device (because of the whole constantly-applied-heat thing), this experiment may lead to future technological innovations in the field of nanotechnology. The mysticism surrounding invisibility will no longer be only a part of science fiction novels, but reality. Take that, Harry Potter.

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Although construction started in 2006 and ended in 2008, the “BioLab,” as its come to be known, has not opened its facilities yet due to controversy regarding the BSL-4 lab.

According to the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory’s (NEIDL) website, there are four levels of increasing containment labeled Biosafety levels 1-4 (BSL-1 to BSL-4) within the facility. BSL-1 and BSL-2 labs are considered low-level research since the agents involved are not easily transmittable through the air, yet may cause disease. BSL-3 research involves the use of biological agents indigenous to the U.S. that have proven to be fatal but have treatments.

Biosafety Level-4 Laboratory | Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

But this BSL-4 space, which makes up 16% of the facility, requires research performed on or with “dangerous/exotic agents” that have a high “individual risk” of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections that are “frequently fatal,” and which have “no vaccines or treatment,” as reported by the Center for Disease Control website.

Groups such as the Roxbury Safety Net and the STOP the BU-Bio-Terror Lab Coalition have become the leading community voices opposing the facility, which they believe would set a bad precedent. BU students and alumni have also joined the coalition. Monica Spicher (CAS’ 11), a recent graduate, created a Facebook group protesting with the coalition. “In 2005, BU students started organizing a group against the Biolab and I heard that there was a big fight against it so I made this group in conjunction with other community groups,” Monica stated. The community’s grievances include moral concerns, health concerns and distrust of the overlooking organizations—namely, BU and NIAID.

Immediately after the BioLab’s inception, neighboring communities questioned the morality of BU’s actions. The university’s decision to build the lab in a residential neighborhood raised concerns. BUMC is surrounded by South End/Roxbury, a low-income neighborhood. The community argues that BU will jeopardize the health of people who are already unable to afford healthcare. The elderly and disabled, they say, are not taken into account; moreover, a large population and transit systems could be negatively affected. For this reason, the opposition strongly rejects the presence of the BSL-4 lab, the only one located in Massachusetts. Although the morality of the BSL-4 lab is one point of contention, but it is compounded by another–the community’s distrust of the biolab’s supervising organizations, BU and NIAID.

According to the NEIDL site, there are hundreds of BSL-2 labs and about 30 BSL-3 labs in operation around Massachusetts. Normally, low-level research facilities don’t raise much public concern; however, past incidents that were unpublicized by the NEIDL caused distrust of BU and NIAID.

Last year, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in Boston released a document outlining the milestones of the BU BioLab saga. In 2004, BU violated state regulations by failing to disclose that three lab workers were infected with Tularemia. This occurred after BU was granted approval to build the BioLab from the City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts. During a meeting last year between the community and the BioLab officials, a community member cited another incident that occurred in September 2010. A Northeastern University lab technician used a vial of cyanide she had taken out of the lab to commit suicide. These incidents were not the only issues to arouse suspicion from the community.

But the BioLab’s development has hit roadblocks and red tape without help from the protesters. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (MEOEEA) requires BU to prepare a Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) in accordance with the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). These are integral for the permitting process. The FEIR’s approval was voided in 2006 on the grounds that BU did not account for “worst case scenarios” and whether or not location played into the magnitude of catastrophe that could occur. And the university’s failed risk assessment gave the community ammunition against the BioLab’s opening.

Is the BioLab cause for concern? | Illustration by Evan Caughey

This past August, BU requested a waiver to undergo lower level research (BSL-1 and BSL-2), which was received with immediate disdain. Members of the community opposed to the lab concluded that there should be no reason to surpass the risk assessment if the facility maintains efficient safety regulations. They hold their contention that the risk assessment should go on.

In an phone interview with Steven Burgay, Senior Vice President of External Relations at Boston University, he stated that there is a task force managing the process that they are going through to open the BU BioLab. The National Institute of Health (NIH)—the head organization of NIAID—created the Blue Ribbon Panel, made up of experts on infectious diseases and public health to manage the risk assessment process. Burgay reinforces NIAID’s statements that the BSL-4 lab maintains the strictest safety regulations when transporting and experimenting with these infectious agents. He says that BU completely supports the risk assessment for the BSL-4 lab, yet they want to begin work with lower-level research, as the facility has been empty since construction ended in 2008. Burgay articulates the validity of NIAID, and the opening of the BSL-1 and BSL-2 labs, which will be regulated by the Boston Public Health Commission.

For nine long years, legal battles and community opposition have postponed the opening of NEIDL. Monica Spicher and others have joined the campaign to get the Boston city council to join them. There have been several attempts at contacting Mayor Menino for an open discussion as well as several petitions sent to President Brown to which he has responded. The most recent risk assessment has been ongoing for three years, but BU is set on opening their facility as soon as possible. The opinions of BU and community opposition are set. In light of the current progress being made, there is a real possibility that the facility’s opening will become a reality. With all the difficulties that the BU BioLab has faced, the Boston community will make sure that BU and NIAID will hear about their concerns at each step of the way.

For more information, see:  http://www.bu.edu/neidl/about/. 

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