The Tech Digest (Vol. 1, Issue 1, January 2021)

Nobel Prize Winners

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Nuclear Powered Artificial Sun

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Development of Crispr-Cas9

THE TECH SCIENCE DIGEST Vol. 1 Issue 1 January 2021 BTHS SNHS

2020 The greatest innovations and breakthroughs of this year

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3: Nobel Prize Winners of 2020

6: Neanderthal DNA found in Africans

7/8: Chemistry Innovations

9: Protein origins 9: K9 Chemistry

4: Biolgical Innovations

5: Mitochondrial DNA found in Blood

10: UV Lights and COVID

5: New Organ Discovered

10: Reshuffling the Periodic Table 6: Xenobots?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS (cntd.)

15: Earth Science Innovations

11/12: Physics/Astro Innovations

13: Ghostly Circles?

16: Chinese Submursible and New Frog Fossil

13: China's Artificial Sun

16: Dunes in the sky 17: Environmental Science Innovations

14: Accidental Success in the Lab 18: Going Home and Restoring an Ecosysteml

14: New Earth-Sized World Found 18: COVID Reducing CO2 emissions

19-21: Games 22: Events

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And the winners are...

work on the development of Crispr-Cas9, a method for genome editing.

In literature, the award was for Louise GlĂźck, for her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

The Peace prize was awarded to the World Food program this year, for their efforts to combat a surge in global hunger amid the coronavirus

2020 was a tough year for everyone, but

pandemic.

for these winners, 2020 marked the moment they reached success and won a peace

And finally, the prize in Economic Science was

prize.

awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson,

The award for physics was awarded to

for their improvements in auction theory and

Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and

inventions of new auction

Andrea Ghez for their discoveries of the

formats.

universe, including work on black holes.

The award for chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A.

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Doudna, shown in the image above, for their

ON THE NEXT PAGE Biological Innovations of 2020

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MITOCHONDRIAL DNA FOUND IN BLOOD When learning about the mitochondria in high school, your teachers would tell you all about the mitochondria and its importance as an organelle in a cell. However, recently, scientists have discovered that mitochondria can be found in the blood, outside of the cell. Previously, the only knowledge of mitochondria being present outside of a cell is when a cell releases organelles due to damage, but never entire functioning mitochondria.

The findings were thanks to oncologist Alain Thierry, who researches the development of cancer at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Him and his team were studying mitochondrial DNA without the presence of a cell to find a possible lead in cancer studies. Instead, him and his team accidentally stumbled upon a shocking discovery!

NEW ORGAN DISCOVERED

The human body is full of many different surprises. Finding new parts of the body isn't common, so this discovery is definitely an amazing find.

Wouter Vogel, a radiation oncologist, accidentally stumbled upon this when he was probing for damage to salivary glands after radiotherapy for cancer.

Why did nobody find this previously you may ask. Well, Vogel used a technique never used before for detecting cells in salivary glands. He combined positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT), which uses a tracer that binds to a prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA). This method is normally only used to detect prostate cancer, but in turn discovered an entirely different thing.

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XENOBOTS?

The word xenobot would make the average reader think of the future. However, it is more present-day than you think.

Xenobots are programmable organisms, their creation revealed in January of 2020.

Their name comes from the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis, which is the supplier for all their cells. These little guys have been designed to walk, swim, push pellets, carry payloads and work together to move debris to neat piles. Even better, they can survive for weeks without food and even heal themselves.

Someday, these tiny bots can solve big problems. The team in charge of their production hinted at what may happen in the future. They could possibly collect ocean microplastics, deliver drugs to a tumor, and even possibly scrape plaque from the walls of our arteries. With this amazing invention, there's no telling what might happen in the future.

NEANDERTHAL DNA FOUND IN AFRICANS The origins of our ancestry have never been 100% accurate, but finding Neanderthal DNA in Africans questions the story of where Neanderthals interbreeded.

Interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans were believed to occur in Eurasia, reflecting in the 50+ megabases of Neanderthal DNA found in the genomes of modern Eurasians.

However, according to an analysis published in January of 2020, modern Africans have 17 megabases, not as much as Eurasians, but a lot larger than statistics previously claimed, which was 0.

This discovery questions what we know about Neanderthals, further increasing the grey area as to where they interbreeded.

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CHEM

innova

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ISTRY tions

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PROTEIN ORIGINS Researchers at Rutgers recently discovered what the earliest proteins looked like 3.5 to 2.5 billion years ago, and this can mean more than what's on the surface.

"We think life was built from small building blocks and emerged like a Lego set to make cells and more complex organisms like us," said Paul G. Falkowski, part of the team.

The team focused on two protein folds that are most likely to be the structures in early metabolism. These proteins are ferredoxin, that binds iron-sulfur compounds, and a "Rossman" fold, which binds nucleotides. They believe that these must fit in the evolution of life.

ON THE NEXT PAGE

UV fighting

Physics/Astro

Covid?

Innovations

K9 CHEMISTRY

So what can this information do?

Surprisingly, this can be a chemical signal or an indicator to find life in other planets. If these are detected at the earliest form, the evolution of these life forms can be predicted.

Trained dogs are incredible at detecting explosives and narcotics, but training them with real hazardous substances is very inconvenient and can be dangerous.

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To solve this problem, scientists developed a jello-like material called polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS for short.

This material absorbs odors and releases them slowly over time. It is enclosed in a container with said narcotic of explosive for a few weeks until it absorbs the odors, making it safe to use for our furry friends.

Scientists can even control how much vapor the PDMS absorbs, helpful to create safe training aids for potent substances like fentanyl, and easily detonated explosives like TATP and HMTD.

UV LIGHTS AND COVID COVID-19, a fairly new pandemic, hit the world like a storm, leaving us with little to none methods to mitigate it. However, some University of Mexico researches found a possible breakthrough to manage the virus, and possibly new ones.

The team revealed in their paper that the combination of certain polymers and oligomers, when combined with UV light, can possibly almost completely kill the coronavirus. Eva Chi, part of the team, claims this mix will reduce the concentration of the virus by five orders of magnitude. In the dark, our antimicrobial materials 'dock' with the virus, and then on irradiation, they activate oxygen. It is this active, excited state of oxygen that starts the chain of reactions that inactivate the virus." Chi says.

Scientists Zahed Allahyari and Artem Oganov from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow proposed reshuffling the periodic table, instead following a single linear sequence by assigning a Mendeleev Number to each element.

RESUFFLING THE PERIODIC TABLE

In their research paper, titled "Nonempirical Definition of the Mendeleev Numbers: Organizing the Chemical Space," they explained that their proposal will help "map the properties of materials" and predict the properties of binary compounds that are not yet been synthesized.

They explained that elements have four important chemical properties, atomic radius, electronegativity, valence and polarisability. The last two are very similar, so one of them should be enough in defining the chemical property of the element, so they propose arranging the elements only based on their radius and electrongativity

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PHYSICS/ASTRONOMY INNOVATIONS

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GHOSTLY CIRCLES? Scientist Anna Kapinska gave a presentation recently showing interesting objects she had found using radio astronomical data. The one most mysterious was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, appearing like a smoke ring. As the team searched through the rest of the data, they found more of these mysterious circles, and decided to call them "odd radio circles" or ORCs for short. However, the question still remains on what they actually are.

They can rule out what it isn't, though. They can't be supernova remnants, clouds of debris left behind when a star explodes because they are too far away. They can't be radio galaxies or Einstein rings either. It will be very difficult to discover what these rings are, but the team believes their eureka moment will come.

Recently, China successfully powered up its "artificial sun" nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, making history in nuclear power research.

This sun is called the HL-2m Tokamak reactor, China's largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental device. The building of this contraption is for hopes of creating a powerful clean energy source. It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, which is ten times hotter than the core of the sun.

The People's Daily said that "The development of nuclear fusion energy is not only a way to solve China's strategic energy needs, but also has great significance for the future sustainable development of China's energy and national economy," This innovation is also very expensive, estimated at $22.5 billion.

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CHINA'S ARTIFICIAL SUN

ACCIDENTAL SUCCESS IN THE LAB

NEW EARTH-SIZED WORLD FOUND

An amazing breakthrough occurred because of an accident, an accident the team will always remember. This breakthrough is so impressive because it solved a problem that stood for more than half a century.

Nasa's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has recently discovered its first Earth-size planet, where liquid might be on the surface, due to the range of distances from a star, deeming it a habitable zone.

This breakthrough involved the nucleus, the team was finally able to control the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields.

But what can this do? According to Professor of Quantum Engineering Andrea Morello, "This discovery means that we now have a pathway to build quantum computers using single-atom spins without the need for any oscillating magnetic field for their operation. Moreover, we can use these nuclei as exquisitely precise sensors of electric and magnetic fields, or to answer fundamental questions in quantum science."

Scientists have named it TOI 700 d, a small, cool M dwarf star located a bit over 100 light years away in the southern constellation Dorado. It is roughly 40% of the Sun's mass, and about half it's surface temperature.

Scientists observed that when starlight passes through a planet’s atmosphere, it interacts with molecules like carbon dioxide and nitrogen to produce distinct signals, called spectral lines. This planet is a bit different than Earth, but could be a future home for us.

ON THE NEXT PAGE Earth Science Innovations of 2020

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Earth Science Innovations

CHINESE SUBMERSIBLE REACHES THE DEEP In November of 2020, China livestreamed footage of its new submersible at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. This trench is a crescent-shaped depression in the Earth's crust that is deeper than Mount Everest, so not many people have visited it.

FIRST FROG FOSSIL IN ANTARTICA This frog fossil found gives new insight into the climate of Antarctica long ago.

Paleontologists discovered this in 40million-year-old sediment collected from Seymour Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The question remains on how cold it was during this time.

The first explorers visited the trench in 1960 on an expedition. After, there had been no missions since 2012.

The submersible is called Fedouzhe, which has made multiple dives before, and set a world record of 10,909 meters for manned deepsea diving.

DUNES IN THE SKY In Finland, these dune northern lights have been spotted.

This new kind of spectacle is rare, and a fait phenomenon.

They are named dunes because unlike other auroras that hang like curtains, these dunes appear as green bands running parallel to the ground and pointing toward the equator.

Researchers suspect that these dunes arise from undulations of gas in the atmosphere, or atmospheric waves. They are in regions of higher air density, where there should be more oxygen for cascading electrons to excite into glowing green, making the beautiful dunes.

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Environmental Science Innovations

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Reestablished sea grass beds providing habitat to a seahorse.

ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION

GOING HOME

Two female jaguars, Juruna and Mariua are being sent back to their homes. They were brought to the Scientific Breeding Institute NEX after their mother was killed by poachers.

They underwent medical examinations to evaluate their genetic health and overall wellbeing to ensure they could be reintroduced to he environment again.

The center also holds five adult jaguars and two cubs, who will get released soon as well.

The world's largest seagrass restoration project has finally come to a successful end. A 20 year project, researchers and volunteers spread more than 70 million eelgrass seeds over plots, on the wide expanses of salt marsh off the southern end of Virginia's Eastern shore.

The reason for this project? The seagrass in the inshore lagoons had been wiped out by disease and a hurricane in the 1930s.

“The study helps fill some large gaps in our understanding of how blue carbon can contribute to climate restoration,” says Karen McGlathery, coastal ecologist. “It’s the first to put a number on how much carbon restored meadows take out of the atmosphere and store,” for decades and potentially for centuries.

CO2 EMISSIONS DROPPED DURING COVID Stay at home orders have done more than slow down COVID-19, they have improved our air. Daily global carbon dioxide emissions dropped 17 percent. When only essential workers were allowed to commute, daily aviation activity shrank by 75 percent, surface transportation was reduced by about 50 percent, and power shrank by 15 percent.

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COVID-19 CROSSWORD

Games during COVID and upcoming events

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BEST ONLINE GAMES DURING COVID Based off of https://parade.com/1012420/ni colepajer/best-online-games/ Being at home can be a bit boring, but some online games can help you feel better, and even play with some friends.

Here are some highlights from the website: Words with Friends 2: An app that not only improves your spelling, but lets you play with family and friends!

Minecraft: A cult favorite, Minecraft has been around for ages, and keeps improving. Unleash your creativity and play Minecraft!

Sea of Thieves: Love pirates? This game is for you! Sea of Thieves is a massive online game where your goal is to find treasure.

Mario Kart Tour: A perfect combination of racing and your favorite character Mario, Mario Kart Tour puts you onto challenging courses but give you worthwile rewards.

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SNHS EVENTS VIRTUAL TRIP Learn about the trip to the Smithsonian Museum, all in the comfort of your home! On January 13th, we visited the Smithsonian National Museum of National History, exploring amazing biological artifacts, ranging from human origins to the infamous butterfly pavilion!

MOVIE NIGHT Learn all about this deadly virus with the rest of us on 1/29 at 3:30 pm. This documentary, called "Coronavirus Pandemic," takes you on a journey from the eyes of healthcare workers, government officials, and many more.

See you then!

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Executive Board President: Mariya Meleganich Vice-President: Ethan Kwok CO-Secretaries: Nitya Patel & Eric Osipov Treasurer: Hannah Gong Media Manager: Danyal Ahmad Our Committee Head(s): Magazine: Erda Eyubova Career Advancement: Brain D. & Isabella B.H. General Events: Rose D. & Srewashi M. Merch. & Fundraising: Jiaxuan J. & Upama H. Outreach: Ruby P. & Shanika P. Recognition & Ceremonies: Ada L. & Sanova H. Trips: Alivia T. Tutoring: Suzana M.

We would like to extend a special thank you to our fantastic magazine committee for their efforts!

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