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Written by: El Hebert '24 Edited by: Ashley Nee '22 It’s hard to be an arthropod. They live fast, dangerous lives, and to strike, evade, or communicate, they need to transcend the limits of their small bodies. Yet, all around us, they defy those limits spectacularly.
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Written by Josephine Chen '24 Edited by Saradha Miriyala '23  Despite the emerging availability of vaccines for COVID-19, people are still not completely safe. Scientists have discovered several variants and mutations of SARS-Co-V-2 that are rapidly spreading in the United Kingdom and South Africa [1]. These variants have the potential to reduce the efficacy of the newly developed vaccines and the natural immune response of those who have recovered from the virus.
Written by: Jonah ‘23 Edited by: Jordan Feldman ‘24 and Chris Shin ‘24  Adapted from https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria A young boy and his friends spent a mild summer afternoon playing and swimming in a small lake. A few days later he developed a high fever, headache, and began vomiting. His parents brought him to a doctor who diagnosed him with a bacterial infection and sent him home with antibiotics. Shortly afterward, he suffered a seizure, and his concerned parents brought him to the hospital where doctors feared he may have meningitis. Worried that his condition may deteriorate rapidly as is seen in many meningitis patients, they began administering high doses of antibiotics, took a sample of his CSF (cerebrospinal fluid), and a CT scan of his head to confirm their diagnosis. [4] The sample showed signs of inflammation, but the CT scan revealed nothing diagnostic. Despite aggressive treatment his condition continued to deteriorate, and he lapsed into a coma and died two days later. Puzzled by the sudden death and ineffective treatment, an autopsy was performed to understand the unusual circumstances of his death — a reexamination of his CSF now revealed the presence of an amoeba, Naegleria Fowleri. This is the typical progression of a patient infected by this disease. [1], [9]
Written by Sarah Wornow ‘23 Edited by Geat Ramush ‘23  Stem cell therapy is an emerging field of regenerative medicine that has the potential to completely change the standard of care for major diseases. This type of therapy can be utilized in various ways, including repairing any type of diseased or damaged tissue within the body, studying how diseases affect certain tissue types (which leads to more precise drugs being developed for specific diseases), and testing newly discovered drugs in the context of the tissues they will affect [1].
Written by: Nina Mehta '22 Edited by: Neha Mukherjee '23 Never in a million years would I have thought about freezing my eggs. The horror stories that I have heard about fertility clinics losing eggs and freezers breaking down has pushed me away from ever considering this path to raising a family. Despite the high cost, many women have decided to pursue this route, in order to guarantee they will be able to have children in the future. Women also do not see children in their near future, and have decided to place their eggs in fertility clinics, extracting them only when considered ready to be a mother. As women are becoming more educated and independent, they are moving up the chain in terms of occupational status. For the past few years, technology companies have agreed to fully pay for the freezing of women’s eggs, in order to push them to continue working in the field. This has both positive and negative impacts, as women can continue to fulfil their educational and occupational aspirations, without placing their lives on hold to have children. However, I, along with others, are skeptical about the safety of these eggs and the unnatural nature of doing so.
Written by: Devin Juros ‘23 Edited by: Jason Mero ‘22  Alzheimer’s Disease is a slow progressive disease that is painful for both patients and their loved ones. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, which refers to a group of symptoms characterized by impairment of memory and reasoning. This brutal course of brain degeneration is also the sixth leading cause of death in the United States [3]. Despite the focus on Alzheimer’s research amid its rising prevalence, treatments thus far have been largely unsuccessful, leading scientists to look in more unexpected places for answers [8]. One such accelerating field focuses on the relationship between the gut microbiome, which is all of the bacteria and microorganisms living in the gastrointestinal tract, and Alzheimer’s pathology. Besides influencing the healthy functioning of your heart, liver, and muscles, could what you eat affect your brain and memories?
Written by: Alexander Pralea '24 Edited by: Ishaani Khatri '21  One need not be a statistician–although it certainly helps–to notice a trend: a rise in diagnoses of mental health conditions. A 2017 Pew Research Center Report based on representative data from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health confirms the commonly held wisdom, reporting that among adolescents aged twelve through seventeen, 20% of girls and 7% of boys had experienced an episode of major depressive disorder within the past year alone [1]. Especially startling is that these percentages represent a 59% increase from the 2007 values. So what is behind this rise? Is it merely the result of an increased emphasis on mental health care and a reduction in stigma (accompanied by a loosening in diagnostic criteria), or something far more sinister?
Written by: Courtney Lysiak '23 Edited by: Ziwen Zhou '23  As dementia patients progressively lose brain and motor function, the medical community works tirelessly to create new and improved treatments which will boost the dwindling quality of life for those suffering with the condition. A recent study conducted by nurse Jiaying Zheng, and professors Xueping Chen and Ping Yu examines patient outcomes with game-based therapies for adults with dementia, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes deterioration in memory, thinking and motor skills in around 50 million people worldwide [2]. There are around 10 million new cases every year. Dementia may begin as forgetfulness, losing track of time, or feeling lost in formerly familiar places; however, over time symptoms may become much more severe. As sufferers progress toward the late stage of the illness, they may become unaware of both time and place, unable to recognize friends and family, need assisted care for basic tasks, and experience behavioral changes including aggression. Current treatments for dementia patients are inadequate, with mainstream pharmacological options being expensive and causing serious adverse effects including nausea, vomiting, sleep issues, muscle pain, fatigue, and dizziness. Instead, non-pharmacological interventions have been hailed as the best option for dementia sufferers, specifically game interventions that exercise concentration, memory and motor reaction (key targets for rehabilitation in dementia patients).
Written by: Chris Shin '24 Edited by: Elaine Wang '24  Image 1: A diagram illustrating how individual viral particles pass through the nanopores via electrophoresis, allowing for the detection of drops in current. [1] One of the primary struggles the world faces today is a shortage of tests to detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Most recently, a group of researchers from Osaka, Japan, have proposed a new form of COVID-19 testing, one that is fundamentally based on machine learning, algorithms that improve itself without further intervention.[1] The algorithm developed has proven to detect single viruses and can distinguish the Coronavirus from other common respiratory viruses such as influenza and the adenovirus.
Written by: Gyles Ward ‘21 Edited by: Jordan Feldman ‘24  Our elders often hold the answers to life’s greatest quandaries; but can they also hold the answer to climate change? While the industrialized world races against time to find novel technological solutions to the specter of global warming, the Yao elders of Northern Vietnam have already found a natural and effective alternative, indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is a collection of traditional environmental practices developed through centuries of experiential learning and empirical evidence. In the absence of technology, a number of native communities in Northern Vietnam use Indigenous knowledge as a barrier against the brutal implications of climate change on agricultural production [1]. Could this be a strategy adopted by other agricultural economies? Can indigenous knowledge provide what contemporary science can’t; an accessible, cost effective, natural solution for developing nations?
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