CLOSE
Tags Posts tagged with "scientists"

scientists

by -
0 275
Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Six degrees of separation could help us all.

We are only six people away from anyone in the world.

We probably don’t have to go that far to find people who live throughout the United States.

That means we have friends, relatives, professional colleagues, former classmates and others who can make a difference.

New Yorkers likely have the support of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand when it comes to critical funding for the National Institutes of Health and for the National Science Foundation, whose financial support is under severe threat from the current budget the senate is considering and that the house has already passed.

Cuts in these areas will have critical and irreversible consequences for us, our children, our families and our future.

The money that goes into science has paid enormous dividends over the decades. The United States is able to outcompete many other nations because it has attracted the world’s best researchers to cutting edge areas.

These people drive the future of innovation, provide medical expertise that saves lives, and start companies that provide numerous high paying jobs around the country.

Cutting back means retreating from the world stage, enabling other nations to develop treatments and cures for diseases that might cost us much more money or become less accessible to those who weren’t in on the ground floor.

It also will hurt our economy, as patents and processes lead to profits elsewhere.

Shutting off the valve of innovation will turn fertile fields of scientific exploration and innovation into barren deserts.

This is where those six degrees comes in. New Yorkers probably don’t need to urge our senators to commit to scientific budgets. But senators from other states, hoping to remain in favor with their party and to act in a unified way, might not be as comfortable supporting scientific research when they and their constituents might believe they don’t stand to gain as much from that investment in the short term. After all, not every state has leading research institutions such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University, a top-rated research institution and a downstate flagship for the SUNY system.

You remember those relatives whose politics are different from your own and who often create a scene at Thanksgiving or the holidays? Well, it’s time to talk with them, not at them. Let them know how much you, they and, an argument that’s hard to ignore, their parents and their children stand to lose if they stop investing in science.

How about that annoying guy at the company retreat who is thrilled to talk about how sad the elites are these days?

Talk to him, too. Let him know that his parent with Alzheimer’s or his uncle with a debilitating condition could one day benefit from discoveries in labs that desperately need funding.

Indeed, his own hearing or vision might depend on continued investment into research about diseases that become more prevalent as he ages.

We all benefit from these discoveries and we all lose out when we stop investing or contributing.

As for his children, they might get jobs in companies that don’t yet exist but that will form as a result of the discovery of products or processes that arise out of research.

The United States is still the only nation to send people (and it’s only men so far) to the moon, allowing them to set foot on a place other than our incredible planet.

Those moments and achievements, even decades later, inspire people to want to become astronauts, to join NASA, to provide the kind of information and research that make future missions possible.

While we don’t need funding for everything, we benefit from ongoing efforts and discoveries in direct and indirect ways. Shutting down labs, reducing internships and graduate school offerings, and stopping the process of asking questions creates headwinds for innovation, the economy and medical discoveries.

Urge those outside of New York to write to their senators, to make the kind of choices that will support and enrich the country and to prevent a one-way road to a dead end. We don’t have to agree on everything, but it’s worth the effort to encourage people to let our elected officials know that their constituents understand what’s at stake.

A senator from Mississippi might not care what you, a New Yorker, thinks, but he’s more likely to pay attention to a resident in his district. We need science whisperers in every state. We can not and will not let the NIH budget decline without a fight. Take a jog, practice yoga, meditate. Then, go talk to those relatives and encourage them to support science and the future.

by -
0 5470
Pixabay photo

By Elof Axel Carlson

Elof Axel Carlson

Scientists study nature. Nature is the world we can observe. It includes things like life, from viruses to plants and animals, and to all forms of  humanity.  It includes the earth and its continents, oceans, and atmosphere.  It includes the moon, the planets and stars and galaxies. It includes the composition of all the objects we can see, touch, taste, smell, or hear.

What does it not include? Scientists call that aspect of our experience the supernatural. What is the supernatural?  It includes a belief in gods, souls, ghosts, spirits, devils, angels, saints, witches, goblins, trolls, leprechauns, and mythical beasts like unicorns, or snakes that speak intelligible language we can understand, or a host of imagined possibilities such as a fountain of youth, turning other metals into gold, devising perpetual motion machines, pills that can convert water into gasoline, or using the ground powder of rhinoceros horns to cure impotence in middle aged men. 

It also includes pseudo-sciences such as astrology, alchemy, palmistry, mind-reading, telekinesis, and other forms of extrasensory perception. The list is long, and scientists would strike off some of the supernatural if carefully controlled experiments are done to demonstrate them. Unfortunately, that has not occurred. 

Magicians are often allied with scientists in exposing the tricks other magicians and charlatans use to fool inexperienced or gullible people. Science has more mysteries to solve and does not need supernatural unproven claims to compete for an interpretation of the universe. Science uses reason, gathering of information or data, proposals of theories, testing of theories, instruments to amplify or supplement our senses, and experimentation to test predictions of theories. 

The supernatural depends on faith. It raises some difficulties. Whose gods are valid and whose have been demoted to myths? Is Zeus still alive? Is Osiris still alive? Is Gilgamesh still alive? Of our current deities, is Jesus an aspect of a Trinitarian deity or is he a human prophet who founded a new religion? If the Old Testament deity called Jehovah, Lord, or God is monotheistic, and if He is also the God of the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, is He the same God that Christians pray to and call Jesus?  

As these questions and concerns sink in, note that scientists exclude the numerous ways supernatural beings (represented in human or other forms of life) are accepted.  The supernatural events and things are accepted through faith. Science is universal and demands testable and repeatable evidence. It does not matter what country one lives in; water will consist of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. It will behave the same wherever it is studied and exists as a gas, liquid, or solid, depending on temperature and pressure. 

Science is very strict about the evidence needed for demonstrating something to science. Those who practice supernatural beliefs do so out of faith. There is no one universal supernatural system all people would agree to. But all people on earth will be convinced that striking a match to dry paper at room temperature, in breathable air, will ignite the paper and reduce it to ashes and release carbon dioxide into the air.

Elof Axel Carlson is a distinguished teaching professor emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University.

by -
0 1642
Felix Hoppe-Seyler

By Elof Axel Carlson

Elof Axel Carlson

I enjoy doing history of science because I learn so much when delving into the past. If I am reading about cell theory and the types of tissues there are, I remember the course in microscopic techniques I took as an undergraduate at NYU.

I did not know then that the microtome to cut slices of tissue for making slides was first introduced by Johannes Purkinje. I did not know that growing bacteria on agar plates or slants in test tubes to obtain pure cultures was first done by Robert Koch. I did not know that the word “mutation,” as a change in heredity, was first introduced by Hugo de Vries. Similarly, I did not know that Bernhard Tollens first showed carbohydrates were composed of sugars.

It was William Cheselden who first demonstrated that the role of saliva was to break down food for digestion. I did not know the chemical notation for representing molecules, like CO2 being carbon dioxide was invented by Jöns Berzelius. I did not know the first person to show that oxygen binds to hemoglobin was Felix Hoppe-Seyler. But I did know that Albrecht Kossel was the first to isolate and name the nitrogenous biases of nucleic acid and he called them adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine and uracil. 

I did not know ringworm was shown to be a fungal parasite by Johann Schönlein. He also changed the name “consumption” to “tuberculosis” and made a third contribution: He was the first science professor to teach in his native tongue, German, instead of Latin to his students. It was Rudolf Leuckart who worked out the nematode parasite causing trichinosis in pork, and his work led to compulsory meat inspection in most industrial countries. The first phylogenetic tree for evolutionary history of plants or animals was constructed by Ernst Haeckel (that I did know).

Even the nouns I use as a scientist have known origins: Tissue was first introduced by Marie François Xavier Bichat at the time of the French Revolution (his 20 different tissues became the four basic tissues I learned as an undergraduate).

The cell theory was first promoted by Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann in 1838. It was changed to a cell doctrine (all cells arise from preceding cells) by Robert Remak and Rudolf Virchow. Most of the names I have mentioned lived in the 1700s and 1800s. We remember the names of 20th century scientists partly because they are published in textbooks. But if one studies a field and looks at old textbooks of about 100 years ago or more, lots of terms used in those past generations have disappeared. Also, the names of then recent scientists are abundant.

It is a curious honor to be a discoverer of something important and then 100 years after your death your role in it is no longer present in texts or scientific articles. Who remembers that Karl Gegenbaur first introduced the idea of homology into comparative anatomy (your hands, a bat’s wings and a horse’s forefeet are homologous because they have an embryonic common formation from an initial limb bud)?   

Scientists do science because they enjoy the opportunity to make discoveries. Very few will be remembered for centuries like Galileo, Newton or Darwin. All who have published will be dug up centuries from now by historians curious about the origins of ideas and processes of our own generation.

Elof Axel Carlson is a distinguished teaching professor emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University.

by -
0 1591

What do the signs tell us?

In Hawaii, numerous small earthquakes caused parts of Big Island to shake. Geologists, who monitor the islands regularly, warned of a pending volcanic eruption. They were right, clearing people away from lava flows.

How did they know?

It’s a combination of history and science. Researchers in the area point to specific signs that are reflections of patterns that have developed in past years. The small earthquakes, like the feel of the ground trembling as a herd of elephants is approaching in the Serengeti, suggest the movement of magma underneath the ground.

Higher volumes of lava flows could come later on, as in 1955 and 1960, say USGS scientists in the archipelago.

The science involves regular monitoring of events, looking for evidence of what’s going on below the surface. “Hopefully we’ll get smart enough that we can see [tremors] coming or at least be able to use that as a proxy for having people on the ground watching these things,” Tina Neal, scientist-in-charge at USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, explained to KHON2 News in Honolulu.

People look for signs in everything they do, hoping to learn from history and to use whatever evidence is
available to make predictions and react accordingly.

Your doctor does it during your annual physical, monitoring your blood chemistry, checking your heart and lungs, and asking basic questions about your lifestyle.

Scientists around Long Island are involved in a broad range of studies. Geneticists, for example, try to see what the sequence of base pairs might mean for you. Their information, like the data the geologists gather in
Hawaii, doesn’t indicate exactly what will happen and when, but it can suggest developments that might affect you.

Cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Stony Brook University are using tools like the gene editing system called CRISPR to see how changing the genetic code affects the course of development or the pathway for a disease. Gene editing can help localize the regions responsible for the equivalent of destructive events in our own bodies, showing where they are and what sequences cause progression.

Scientists, often working six or seven days a week, push the frontiers of our ability to make sense of
whatever signs they collect. Once they gather that information, they can use it to help create more accurate diagnoses and to develop therapies that have individualized benefits.

Indeed, not all breast cancers are the same, which means that not all treatments will have the same effect. Some cancers will respond to one type of therapy, while others will barely react to the same treatment.

Fundamental, or basic, research is critical to the understanding of translational challenges like treating
Alzheimer’s patients or curing potentially deadly fungal infections.

Indeed, most scientists who “discover” a treatment will recognize the seminal studies that helped them finish a job started years — and in some cases decades — before they developed cures. Treatments often start long before the clinical stages, when scientists want to know how or why something happens. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake can lead to unexpected and important benefits.

Outside the realm of medicine, researchers on Long Island are working on areas like understanding the climate and weather, and the effect on energy production.

Numerous scientists at SBU and Brookhaven National Laboratory study the climate, hoping to understand how one of the most problematic parts of predicting the weather — clouds — affects what could happen tomorrow or in the next decade.

The research all these scientists do helps us live longer and better lives, offering us early warnings of
developing possibilities.

Scientists not only interpret what the signs tell us, but can also help us figure out the right signs to study.

TBR News Media is your local news and entertainment website.
We provide you with the latest breaking news and information for your community.
Contact us: [email protected]

Most Viewed

©