My Science School

Rain, Rain, sulphur rain!

Volcanoes are mean they devastate a large area whenever they erupt. But the after-effects can sometimes be useful, like reducing the effects of global warming, at least momentarily. A few scientists have actually suggested an artificial volcano as the solution for soaring temperatures around the world. It's not a fake volcano that they have in mind, thankfully. However, the idea is equally odd - releasing sulphuric acid into the atmosphere with the help of jet planes. It's not clear how dangerous this could be and opponents believe it would be like trying to spray perfume on a skunk!

Lighting up the moon

We're all aware that we have been overusing electricity, day and night. A few experts believe that a really bright moon is all that we need to make us switch off the lights at night. This does sound awesome especially since everyone around the world can benefit from it. But the good scientists have not discussed how they plan to light up the moon. Or for that matter if the cost involved in this project could put all the countries in permanent debt.

Just making a mountain or two

Arid, dry countries in the Middle East lack one thing that prevents them from enjoying good rainfall - a mountain. Mountains help in the formation of clouds and stimulate rain. A team of scientists believe that a man made mountain is all that is needed to tackle this problem - easy peasy! But there's just one small issue: where do you get all the raw materials to build one?

A unique way to beat the heat

With so many suggestions to tackle global warming and the sun's scorching heat, a suggestion from a team of Scottish scientists really takes the cake! A dust cloud can effectively block the sun's heat for some time and lower global temperature. And the best way to get the quantity of dust we need for this project is to capture an asteroid and bring it close enough to do the trick. Of course, one must make sure to blast it quickly, before it starts descending towards the Earth!

Dedicated to world peace

Solving world problems and addressing climate change can be accomplished by doing one simple thing. Just fuse all the continents on Earth into one gigantic super continent! According to Jonathan Keats, an experimental philosopher, this seemingly tough task can be achieved by tweaking the planet's tectonic plates using the latest geoengineering methods. Keats seems serious about this idea, because he's established a political tectonics lab that specializes in political geoengineering. Of course, we're working under the assumption that coming closer together will solve all our tensions!

Let's protect our glaciers

Glaciers are one of the biggest sources of fresh water, but unfortunately they've been melting at an alarming rate. If this continues, many coastal cities would get submerged in a matter of decades. A glaciologist suggests wrapping up the glaciers with huge reflective blankets. That could create a new market for mass manufacture of blankets too, right? That's two benefits from one idea.

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The Syfy network and game developer Trion Worlds have debuted Defiance, a story that unfolds simultaneously on a TV show and in an online gaming world. For the first time, gamers have a chance to impact a show by playing an MMORPG. Defiance takes place on Earth 33 years in the future, after an alien war.

The show characters live in St Louis while the in-game characters live in San Francisco. In the first season, there are choreographed interactions between the show and the videogame, e.g., show characters might dictate gamers' missions: a doctor in St Louis might ask a team in San Francisco to find a medical device. In future seasons, gamers' decisions would influence the show, creating a new cross-media storyline.

Instead, Syfy is the one trying to tap a new money vein. Multiplayer online games can be lucrative, with gamers not only paying to play but buying virtual goods within the game. "Rift," the first title Trion made, generated revenue of $100 million within its first 10 months. But these sprawling online games, in which an unlimited number of people can play in one world at once, demand a lot of time from players. Most only commit to a few titles at a time. It's tough for new entries to hit critical mass.

The companies at first agreed to split a budget of $25 million for a game designed for personal computers. But the development schedule ballooned and the game budget nearly tripled as advancing technology made it possible to create versions for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

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Franklin P. Mall, M.D., was the first professor of anatomy at Johns Hopkins. Sabin attributed much of her early success in medicine to the mentorship provided by Mall, who became Sabin's mentor, advocate, and intellectual role model while she was his student. He encouraged her pursuit of “pure” (rather than applied) science, and suggested projects that would help establish her research reputation.

Much of The Florence R. Sabin Collection consists of correspondence from 1903 to 1941 between Sabin and Mabel (Glover) Mall, Franklin’s wife. The correspondence “reveals the close friendship Sabin enjoyed with the Mall family and provides a glimpse of the early years at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the work of the Anatomical Laboratory.”

While at Johns Hopkins, Sabin did important work on the origins of the lymphatic system, demonstrating that its structures were formed from the embryo’s veins rather than from other tissues (as other researchers believed at the time). She also perfected the technique of supravital staining, allowing her to investigate the origins of blood cells, blood vessels, and connective tissue.

While at the Rockefeller Institute, Sabin established the Department of Cellular Studies. She led research on the pathology of tuberculosis as part of a consortium of researchers working with the Medical Research Committee of the National Tuberculosis Association. During her thirteen years at Rockefeller, Sabin made major contributions to the understanding of tuberculosis, most notably for her discovery of the origin and processes of immune system responses to various chemical fractions isolated from the tuberculosis bacteria. Sabin remained at the Rockefeller Institute until her retirement in 1938.

Credit : WIMLF 

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Florence Rena Sabin, American anatomist and investigator of the lymphatic system who was considered to be one of the leading women scientists of the United States.

Sabin was educated in Denver, Colorado, and in Vermont and graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts, in 1893. After teaching in Denver and at Smith to earn tuition money, she entered the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1896. While a student she demonstrated a particular gift for laboratory work; her model of the brain stem of a newborn infant was widely reproduced for use as a teaching model in medical schools. After graduation in 1900 she interned at Johns Hopkins Hospital for a year and then returned to the medical school to conduct research under a fellowship awarded by the Baltimore Association for the Advancement of University Education of Women. In 1901 she published An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain, which became a popular medical text. In 1902, when Johns Hopkins finally abandoned its policy of not appointing women to its medical faculty, Sabin was named an assistant in anatomy, and she became in 1917 the school’s first female full professor.

For a number of years Sabin’s research centred on the lymphatic system, and her demonstration that lymphatic vessels develop from a special layer of cells in certain fetal veins, rather than, as prevailing theory held, from intercellular spaces, established her as a researcher of the first rank. She then turned to the study of blood, blood vessels, and blood cells and made numerous discoveries regarding their origin and development. In 1924 she was elected president of the American Association of Anatomists, and in 1925 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences; in both cases she was the first woman to be so honoured.

Credit :  Britannica 

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Florence Rena Sabin was an American anatomist who contributed to research in the lymphatic system, blood vessels and cells, and tuberculosis. She was the first woman to be elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences; to become a full professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the president of the American Association of Anatomists. She was considered to be one of the leading women scientists of her time. Florence Rena Sabin was born in 1871 in Colorado. Florence's mother died from puerperal fever (sepsis), when she was just seven. She was brought up by her grandparents and uncle, who instilled a love for Nature in Florence.

Throughout her childhood, Florence wanted to become a pianist but her experience at Vermont Academy made her shift her focus to science. She began her career as a teacher in Denver and at Smith College, in Massachusetts. This helped her save for the tuition money to enter the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore.

In 1896, she became one of 14 women in a class of 45 students at Johns Hopkins Medical School. At Hopkins, Sabin studied anatomy under mentor Franklin Paine Mall.

On brain structure

Following graduation, Sabin obtained an internship at Hopkins. Sabin worked on mapping the anatomical presentation of neonatal brain structure. In 1901, she published An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain, which became a popular medical text. In 1917, she became the school's first female full professor, teaching embryology and histology in the Department of Anatomy.

For many years, Sabin's research focussed on the lymphatic system. She disproved a prevailing theory by demonstrating that lymphatic vessels develop from a special layer of cells in certain fetal veins, rather than from intercellular spaces. She then turned to the study of blood, blood vessels, and blood cells and made numerous discoveries regarding their origin and development.

In 1925, she joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and conducted research on the pathology and immunology of tuberculosis. She played a key role in legislating Colorado's public health program after the end of World War II and also fought for the rights of women scientists and doctors.

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Shoemaker’s achievements went far beyond this discovery. Between 1980 and 1994, as a member of the Palomar Asteroid and Comet Survey (PACS), she found 32 comets, plus more than 400 asteroids. Although PACS’s objective was to find asteroids or comets that could pose a threat to civilization, the discovery of Shoemaker–Levy 9 completely overshadowed that aim. The interest generated by the comet’s impacts with Jupiter was almost as spectacular as the collisions themselves. For the first time, people the world over grappled with questions about what transpires when comets strike planets, and how these impacts might offer an insight into the origins of life on Earth.

Each observation began by loading a 15-centimetre disc of film into a plateholder, mounting it into the telescope, and exposing the film for 8 minutes. It would then be placed in a light-tight box, and a new film inserted. Our nights would be divided into sets of four, sometimes five, fields; we then repeated each exposure. At our most efficient, the time between the end of one exposure and the start of the next was as little as 90 seconds. Our nights would be divided into observations of four, sometimes five, fields of the sky; we then repeated each exposure. It was during one of these routine sessions that we recorded the two ‘discovery’ images of Shoemaker–Levy 9. When Brian G. Marsden at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated that the comet was on a collision course with Jupiter, Gene thought: “In my lifetime, I am going to witness a cosmic impact.” Carolyn thought: “I am going to lose one of my comets.”

One consequence of these observations is that, since 1994, cosmic impacts have been taken seriously, and more programmes around the world are looking for comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. Other lines of research are pursuing the idea that life on Earth might have been seeded by simple organic molecules arriving from space on comets. And, parenthetically, the ‘giggle factor’ — the offhand reaction of journalists and laypeople to the idea of objects from space hitting Earth — has dissipated completely.

After the impacts, Carolyn resumed her search with PACS, along with her husband and me. Although the programme concluded at the end of December 1994, the team continued the work with two smaller Schmidt cameras at the Jarnac Observatory in Arizona. Gene was killed in a car accident in Australia in 1997. Carolyn bravely continued her work after that.

Credit : Nature 

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Carolyn Shoemaker never set out to be a scientist. But after her three children were grown, she wanted something new to do. So at the age of 51, she started a second career and became a world-renowned astronomer. Carolyn – along with her husband Gene Shoemaker and their colleague David Levy – co-discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on March 24, 1993. It was the first comet observed to be orbiting a planet – in this case, Jupiter – rather than the Sun. Jupiter's tidal forces tore the comet apart and, eventually, the fragments collided with Jupiter between July 16 and June 22, 1994.

While comet Shoemaker-Levy’s 9’s impact with Jupiter was dramatic, it was more than just a cosmic show. It gave scientists new insights into comets – and into Jupiter. The impact also was a wake-up call for scientists: If the comet had hit Earth instead of Jupiter, it could have created a global disaster. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 helped lead to the creation of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Carolyn Shoemaker also discovered or co-discovered dozens of other comets and hundreds of asteroids. She shared the story of how she became a scientist with NASA/JPL media producer Leslie Mullen in an interview on July 22, 2019. This tribute is based largely on that interview, and the podcast episode in which the interview was featured.

Credit : NASA Solar System Exploration 

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Carolyn Shoemaker is an American astronomer who once held the record for the most comet discoveries. By 1994, Carolyn had 32 comet discoveries to her credit, the prominent among them was the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.Carolyn Shoemaker was born in Gallup, New Mexico in 1929. Carolyn studied history, political science, and English literature. She married Eugene Shoemaker, a geologist who was also interested in astronomy, in 1951. Her interest in astronomy and geology began only after her marriage. At the age of 51, after her children had grown up and moved out, Carolyn began helping her husband search for asteroids and comets, at California Institute of Technology, California, and the Palomar Observatory, San Diego, California. She was lauded for her exceptional eye for detail in discovering objects in near-Earth space.

Despite her relative inexperience and lack of a science degree, in 1980, Carolyn became a visiting scientist with the astrogeology branch of the United States Geological Survey Both Carolyn and Gene were on the staff of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff Arizona

Between the 1980s and the 1990s, Shoemaker used images taken by telescopes at the Palomar Observatory to find objects which moved against the background of fixed stars Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker teamed with astronomer David H. Levy, and identified a fragmented comet orbiting Jupiter on March 24, 1993. It was named Shoemaker-Levy 9. Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart in July 1992 and collided with Jupiter in July 1994. It was a significant event and much-followed by scientists and enthusiasts on Earth as it provided the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. In 1997, Gene Shoemaker died in an accident. Carolyn, who survived with severe injuries, continued to work at the Lowell Observatory post recovery. As of 2002, Shoemaker had been credited with discovering or co-discovering 32 comets and over 800 asteroids. The Hildian asteroid 4446 Carolyn, discovered by colleague Edward Bowell at Lowell Observatory in 1985, was named in her honour.

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In 1908, as the head of the pathology department at the Imperial Wilhelminen Hospital in Vienna, Landsteiner showed that polio is a viral disease. Together with his assistant Erwin Popper, Landsteiner conducted an autopsy of a boy who had died of polio. To determine whether bacteria or a different agent had caused the polio, Landsteiner collected some of the boy's spinal fluid and strained it through a filter fine enough to trap bacteria. He then cultured this filtered particles and found that no bacteria grew there. To determine if the infected spinal fluid material was infectious, Landsteiner injected it into rabbits, mice, and guinea pigs, but none of the animals became sick. Landsteiner and Popper injected the filtered spinal fluid into two Old World rhesus monkeys (http://eol.org/pages/327960/overviewMacaca mulatta), and they found that both died within two weeks. Landsteiner performed autopsies on the rhesus monkeys that revealed spinal cord lesions like those observed in human polio victims. Because Landsteiner and Popper had eliminated bacteria as a potential cause of the infection earlier in the experiment, they concluded that a virus must have caused the infection. Landsteiner proposed that it could be possible to create a polio vaccine. However, it took forty-seven years until Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed and successfully administered the polio vaccine in 1952.

During World War I, Landsteiner performed blood transfusions on many injured soldiers. In 1916 and at the age of forty-eight, Landsteiner met and married Leopoldine Helene Wlatso. A year later, they had to their only child, Ernst. Because of economic difficulties in post-war Austria, Landsteiner and his family moved to Netherlands in 1919. Landsteiner soon obtained a job at the Catholic R.K. Hospital in The Hauge, Netherlands, performing routine tests on urine and blood. During his stay in the Netherlands, he published twelve papers about immune responses triggered by changes in small fat or sugar molecules.

In 1923, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City, New York, offered Landsteiner a position to research immunity and allergies. Landsteiner accepted and moved with his family to the US. Most biographers report that Landsteiner's move to the US was very difficult for him. He disliked the fame that came with his status as an authority on immunology and avoided invitations to speak publicly, preferring instead to stay in his laboratory. Landsteiner became a US citizen in 1929, and he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930.

Credit : The Embryo Project

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In 1897, Landsteiner accepted a position at the Institute of Pathological Anatomy in Vienna, where he worked on cadavers. Over the next ten years he performed nearly four thousand post-mortem examinations and published over seventy-five articles on his observations. Fifty-two of these articles discuss blood chemistry. Landsteiner described the agglutination reactions that occur when blood from one individual is brought into contract with the blood of another individual. Landsteiner relegated his observation of agglutination to a footnote in a paper he wrote in 1900, but he expanded upon this observation the following year in his paper "Agglutination of Normal Human Blood."

Landsteiner observed a pattern of antigen reactions that occurred when he combined blood serum from different individuals. Landsteiner observed that antigens on the outside of blood cells differed between individuals. If blood from what he called the A or the B group was introduced into a host of the opposing group, the host body would trigger an immunological reaction. Landsteiner found that this reaction caused the invading antigen carrying blood cell to burst. Large accumulations of burst cells created clumps that could clog small blood vessels (capillaries) and perhaps cause shock or death. Initially, Landsteiner recognized three different blood types: A, B, and C. The C-blood type was later more commonly called type-O. In 1902, one of Landsteiner's students found a fourth blood type, AB, which triggered a reaction if introduced into either A or B blood. In 1930, The Health Committee of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, formally adopted the Landsteiner nomenclature (A, B, AB, and O) in his honor, the naming convention that was still used up through the first decades of the twenty-first century.

Landsteiner's blood typing system had an immediate impact on forensic and surgical sciences. In 1902, Landsteiner and Max Richter, who worked at Vienna University Institute of Forensic Medicine in Vienna, described a method of using blood evidence gathered from the scene of a crime to aid in the investigation. Using this system, scientists could determine whether a blood sample contained A-antigen, B-antigen, both A- and B-antigen, or neither antigen (type-O). If a suspect's blood had a different antigen than the sample left at the crime scene, investigators could conclude the sample could was not from that particular individual. However, roughly fifty percent of the population has O-type blood and less than five percent has AB-type blood. So, if a sample and a suspect had matching blood types, investigators could not make a positive identification. The ABO system also enabled doctors to perform safe blood transfusions. Reuben Ottenberg at the Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, New York, completed the first successful blood transfusion based on Landsteiner's blood type theory in 1907. During World War I, blood transfusions saved tens of thousands of lives. Later, the ABO blood grouping made it possible to successfully complete the first organ transplants by reducing the chance that a body rejected incompatible transplants.

Credit : The Embryo Project

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Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian American pathologist who discovered the major blood groups in 1900. His other works related to blood have made blood transfusion a safe medical practice. Karl Landsteiner was born in Vienna in 1868. Landsteiner studied medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1891. The next five years. Landsteiner worked with notable scientists such as Arthur Hantzsch, Emil Fischer and Eugen Bamberger to gain knowledge of chemistry. In 1897, he returned to the University of Vienna, where he pursued his interest in the emerging field of immunology. In 1900, Landsteiner published a paper attributing agglutination, a clumping reaction in red blood cells, to immunity. Though scientists knew about agglutination, which occurs when the blood of one person is brought into contact with that of another, the underlying mechanism of this phenomenon was not understood. Landsteiner discovered that this was due to immunological reaction that occurs when antibodies are produced by the host against donated blood cells. Landsteiner observed that antigens on the outside of blood cells differed between individuals. This led Landsteiner to identify three such antigens, which he labelled A, B, and C (later changed to O). A fourth blood type, later named AB, was identified by one of his students in 1902.

Landsteiner also found out that blood transfusion between persons with the same blood group did not lead to the destruction of blood cells. Based on his findings, the first successful blood transfusion was performed in New York in 1907. In 1930 Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of these achievements. He is, in fact, recognised as the father of transfusion medicine Landsteiner also discovered other blood factors during his career-the M. N. and P factors, which he identified in 1927 with Philip Levine, and the Rhesus (Rh) system, in 1940 with Alexander Wiener.

Discovery of Polio virus

In 1908, Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper announced that the infectious agent in polio was a virus. Landsteiner also helped identify the microorganisms responsible for syphilis.

He received the Aronson Prize in 1926. He was posthumously awarded the Lasker Award in 1946.

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