According to the USDA, 80% of Americans consume caffeine everyday. That number goes up to 90% worldwide.So we know coffee is the drink of choice for a lot of people trying to jump start their brains in the morning. Now, however, there is evidence it also increases your memory. Wahoo! Michael Yassa, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, along with a team of researcher discovered that caffeine (~200mg, about 1 strong cup of coffee per day) has a positive effect on long-term memory. This research, published in Nature Neuroscience describes how caffeine was found to enhance tested memories for up to 24 hours after the caffeine was consumed. “We’ve always known that caffeine has cognitive enhancing effects, but its particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail in humans,” said Yassa, the senior author on the paper.
This research, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and National Science Foundation may just have given us a pass to continue our national caffeine devotion in the hope of keeping memory sharp. Check out the video for a brief summary on Yassa's memory research. Enjoy your coffee and tea today. Go science!
Friday, January 10, 2014
Scientists at Stony Brook University in New York have found that the bonds that salt forms with chlorine (making table salt) are not set in stone (er salt). Instead of atoms lining up in cubic form, with each sodium forming a single chemical bond with a chlorine as they do under normal conditions, they form much more exotic structures under extreme heat and pressure. When salt was squeezed under high pressure between two diamonds and then heated with lasers, the sodium and chlorine atoms bonded in new ways. For example, a single sodium atom might attach to three chlorine atoms or five or seven. Or two sodium atoms might link up with three chlorines. This unusual bonding changes salt’s normalstructure. Its atoms form amazing shapes never before seen in table salt. Artem Organov, Ph.D., one of the Stony Brook chemists explained that the high temperature and pressure used by his team may replicate extreme conditions deep inside stars and planets. In fact, it's possible that the experiment's unusual metallic and conducting structures occur throughout the universe. Scientists have long speculated that the exchange of electrons during ionic bonding would be altered under high pressure and temperature. Instead of just attached to one atom, electrons would move from atom to atom and form shared bonds like what took place in the Stony Brook University salt experiments. New metallic bonds made it possible for sodium and chlorine atoms to share electrons in weird ways. Go science!
As another holiday season of boxing and wrapping comes to a close, it might be fun to take a look at boxes on the micro and nanometer scales for those specialized gift-wrapping occasions. At those sizes, 3D containers are too tiny to be assembled by a machine. They have to come together on their own. Seem like science fiction? Well, engineers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and mathematicians at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island have found a way for polyhedra (many-sided structures) to fold and assemble themselves. With support from the National Science Foundation, Brown University mathematician Govind Menon and Johns Hopkins University chemical and biomolecular engineer David Gracias are developing self-assembling 3-D micro and nanostructures for a number of applications, including medicine. The personalized delivery of an anticancer drug to a tumor, for example, has virtually no global side effects unlike the whole body chemotherapy treatments of today. It's like pouring salt on a slug on the sidewalk to kill it instead of spreading salt over the entire yard. Check out this video to see how the addition of heat causes 2D polyhedral nanostructures assemble into hollow 3D structures. Go science!
I love creativity in all its forms so when I came across this video on how engineers turned to origami to solve astronomical space problems (e.g., solar array design), I was hooked. Found in nature as fractals, math (specifically geometry) is complex and elegant. I love looking at the patterns of minerals, ferns, snowflakes, etc. The mirroring and patternprogression are beautiful and mesmerizing. Enter engineers looking for a way to compact a large solar array into a much smaller space (launch space is expensive). Voila! Art and engineering collide to create a functional, economic solution. Who knew the origami we all played with as kids could further space research? In my mind it just goes to show that art and science are intricately intertwined. Go science! (and art and engineering!)
