Helix Lux Fall 2017

Lux

a Helix mini Winter, 2017-18

Milton Academy’s Science Journal

Milton,

Editorial

December, 2017

You’re busy. We know that between the essays, research papers, and reports galore, you don’t have the opportunity to read about science out in the world.

By introducing Helix Leaflet, a smaller installment of publications, we want to keep you updated on the latest STEM headlines while featuring our science faculty and other aspects of our community.

As always, we meet in Pritzker 106 on Tuesdays from 3:00 to 3:30. If you’re ever inspired to talk or write about anything STEM-related that fascinates you, we’d love to have you stop by.

Regards, The 2017-18 Helix Board

Helix Board 2017-18 Editors-in-Chief: Max Hui and Kevin Lu Managing Editor: Christine Flatley Senior Editors: Patrick Huang and Catherine Gallori Layout Editor: Emma James Page 2

In this issue

4 6 7 8 9 10 12

article on AlphaGo Zero

by Jeffrey Cao and Patrick Huang mini-Q&A with Ms. Hunt, science teaching fellow mini-Q&A with Ms. Pedersen, science teaching fellow article on OLED Displays

by Max Hui Nobel Prize Winners, 2017 article on CRISPR+Cancer

by Catherine Gallori 2017 Science Timeline

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AlphaGo Zero

Improving Artificial Intelligence

by Jeffrey Cao and Patrick Huang Results for AlphaGo Zero, an updated algorithm from a set of artificial intelligence (AI) known for beating the world’s best Go players, was released by Google on October 19, 2017. But what is Go, and what makes this new iteration groundbreaking?

Go is a two-player strategy board game, in which players place down black and white pieces, or “stones,” with the objective of gaining as much territory as possible. (1) “Territory” is defined by the amount of the game board (19x19) surrounded

by a player’s pieces; territory can be gained or secured by capturing an opponent’s pieces.

(1) There are an estimated 2.082 × 10170 legal positions, the arrangements of black and white stones allowed by the rules, a number greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe! (2) In recent years, Google has been developing artificially intelligent algorithms, under the name AlphaGo, designed to learn and play Go against human players. (3) AlphaGo is built using a form of AI called a neural network, a model which attempts to loosely mimic the biological neurons of animals.

The network learns by comparing its predicted output with the correct output (generated by humans), and it improves itself by adjusting its algorithm according to

deviation between the predicted and correct outputs. These networks “learn” certain functions when you give it the correct data beforehand, such as data collected from the Go games of human Go players; this method is called supervised training.

The first AlphaGo versions were trained on the data of human Go grandmasters, optimizing their networks to produce results similar to the human dataset. However, flaws still arose: earlier versions of AlphaGo both won and lost when playing against top-ranking humans.

Last month, Google released its newest version of this technology: AlphaGo Zero. Unlike its predecessor AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero has learned to play

Go completely from scratch.

While AlphaGo benefited from training in matches against human players, AlphaGo Zero only played against itself. This new self-reinforcing algorithm allowed AlphaGo Zero to not only learn advanced Go strategies but also use moves that even professionals have not seen before. In fact, AlphaGo Zero has demonstrated its superiority by beating AlphaGo in a hundred games.

AlphaGo Zero has a set a new benchmark for the capabilities of self-learning AI algorithms.

These findings show us that the field of artificial intelligence is reaching new heights and has a great potential for future applications.

AlphaGo’ Logo, source: DeepMind Technologies

Works Cited: (1) https://gogameguru.com/what-is-go/ (2) https://senseis.xmp.net/?NumberOfPossibleGoGames (3) https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/ (4) https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/ (5) https://www.nature.com/uidfinder/10.1038/nature24270

AlphaGo’s board game layout, source: Top500

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Ms. Gabrielle Hunt

B.S. in Chemical Engineering, Northeastern Univesity What made you want to be a science teacher?

sector, publish high level academic research at Harvard School of Public Health, and undertake While studying at Northeastern groundbreaking protein therapy I began volunteering with an organization called Science Club research for the pharmaceutifor Girls, an organization dedicat- cal giant, Pfizer. I also love the cross-section of ethics and scied to providing supplementary ence/engineering, which lead science education to students in me to participate in an immerBoston that come from undersive study abroad experience in represented communities. Their Germany, France, Belgium and mission of increasing representhe Netherlands, where I was able tation of women in STEM fields to explore the interplay between and bolstering enthusiasm and ethics, science, law, and education confidence in their students resonated strongly within me. Later What do you do in your free in my college career, in order to time? further explore my interest in I like to read all kinds of books,higher education, I volunteered at Lawrence high school. Many of meet up for tea with friends, the students I worked with came and bake- nothing is better than chemistry you can eat. from an English as a second language program and their deterHow has teaching at Milton mination, persistence, and honest been thus far? personalities both challenged and inspired me to continue pursuing Teaching is definitely different in some ways from the research further teaching opportunities.

I was doing before, but as a Which fields in science have you Penn student I am still pursuing research in my classroom, just explored? instead of on chemicals, I am While I was studying at Northeastern I partook in undergradu- researching the human mind and its ability to learn- which is aweate research in electro-chemistry and fuel cells, and accomplished some! I have really enjoyed teachthree “co-op” six-month working ing my students here at Milton, their passion for and commitment experiences which allowed me to learning is infectious. to explore the biotech startup

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Ms. Rachel Pedersen

B.S. in Physics and Philosophy, Bates College M.S. in Physics, Brown University What made you want to be a science teacher?

In this country, we have witnessed a decisive rejection of empiricism and logic as paths to wisdom, and it has had and continues to have fairly serious consequences. I understand science teaching as a way to endow future generations with a deep appreciation for logic, empiricism, and the pure beauty of the natural world.

Which fields in science have you explored?

I have an ongoing research interest in time asymmetry and the ontology of quantum entities. In the past, I have also worked on variable stars and galaxy morphology.

What experiences lead you to science?

My path to physics was somewhat unconventional. I too attended a boarding school. After What was your favorite science months of sitting through chapel course? services that I admit I was less This question is fairly easy. My than thrilled about, I felt deeply favorite course was called “Phys- confused about human belief. Dr. ics as Metaphysics.” Essentially, Ronald Takaki then visited my the class was made up in equal school the spring of my first year, parts of physics and philosophy and posed to us this question: graduate students. Together we “How do we know that we know wrestled with the metaphysical what we know?” In the interest consequences of the various inter- of finding clarity on the origin pretations of quantum mechanof all things (as all 14 year olds ics as we tried to describe what wish to do), I quickly recognized exactly a wave function is. It is a that giving our poor chaplain the nontrivial task. evil eye through the homily was probably not the path to enlightFavorite science books? enment. Since physics asks the Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynmost fundamental questions, I man! (Richard Feynman) and recognized it as the most viable Quantum Mechanics and Experi- path toward understanding. ence (David Albert).

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OLED Displays

Nobel Prize Winners

by Max Hui

With the iPhone X, Apple has made the long-awaited shift to using OLED displays in its smartphones. But what makes OLED the technology of the future?

Current LCD-LED displays twist white light from an LED screen using liquid crystals, manipulating color and brightness (hence the name “Liquid Crystal Display”, or LCD). OLED has a special film layer made out of an organic

polymer, which can act as a color filter, thus eliminating the need for an unwieldy LCD layer. This makes OLED a very flexible technology—figuratively and physically. Depending on the manufacturing process, OLEDs can be rolled, folded, or even transparent. In fact, Apple just filed a patent for a foldable OLED smartphone, so who knows? Maybe in a couple years you’ll be able to proudly say that you use a flip phone— touchscreen OLED and all!

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for their developing cryo-electron microscopy, a technology that can provide scientists better images of biomolecules, such as proteins or viruses.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for studying a particular gene that changes biological activity in fruit flies during the night and day and illuminates the biological clock that cells with similar behavior in other organisms seem to follow.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for their contributions in detecting gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime predicted

by Einstein's theory of general relativity, with the LIGO particle accelerator.

Works Cited: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/oled.htm/printable http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/tcaw/10/i11/html/11felton.html https://gizmodo.com/why-is-oled-different-and-what-makes-it-sogreat-1654102034 http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-oleds-and-leps-work.html

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CRISPR: Treating Cancer

by Catherine Gallori

By now you may have heard of CRISPR-Cas9, the cutting edge genome-editing technology that allows scientists to cut out, replace, and even activate the expression of specific genes.

Developed from a kind of bacterial defense system, CRISPR’s precision and customizability are what make it so different from previous genome-editing technologies like retroviruses (which insert a DNA sequence at a random point in the genome) or restriction enzymes (which only cut at certain, preordained sequences). Up until now, CRISPR has been used primarily in basic research, as it enables scientists to quickly, precisely, and cheaply edit the genomes of organisms more complex than bacteria. But recently, CRISPR entered the field

of clinical medicine, albeit in an early, experimental stage.

One of the most promising new immunotherapy cancer treatments makes use of CRISPR technology. Currently used to treat so-called ‘liquid tumors’ like leukemia and lymphoma, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) t-cell therapy involves taking a patient’s own t-cells and helping them more specifically target tumor cells by modifying their genome. Typically, T-cells work to kill bacteria, viruses, and other invaders by recognizing an antigen with a receptor specific to that antigen. In CAR t-cell therapy, once a patient’s t-cells are extracted, scientists use CRISPR to change those cells’ receptors to ones that recognize antigens specific to that patient’s tumor.

When the t-cells with the new chimeric antigen receptors are reintroduced to the patient, they can better recognize tumor cells, triggering the body’s immune response, which— hopefully—kills the

tumor cells.

Though the treatment uses a patient’s own cells, it is not without risk. Cytokine Release Syndrome, likely the most concerning potential side effect, occurs when the immune system is ‘overactivated’: because most immune cells release cytokines when activated, which in turn activate more immune cells, overactivation can create a positive feedback loop, resulting in symptoms ranging in severity from fever to total organ failure. In addition, hallucinations, delirium, and aphasia (an inability to comprehend or produce language) have all been reported as serious neurotoxic side effects: scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that an increase

in the permeability of the blood brain barrier--caused by the heightened immune response-may be to blame.

Currently, CAR t-cell therapy is only approved for specific antigens in certain blood cancers, but scientists are looking to expand its applications and make it safer. The majority of tumor antigens are present inside tumor cells, where t-cells can’t reach, but researchers are looking for new antigen targets that could expand the population that would benefit from CAR therapy. CAR t cells with an ‘off switch’ are also being looked into as a possible safeguard against Cytokine Release Syndrome and the treatment’s neurotoxicity. As CAR t cell therapy evolves,

Works Cited: (1) https://www.dana-farber.org/cellular-therapies-program/car-t-celltherapy/ (2) https://www.britannica.com/science/T-cell (3) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28434148 (4) https://www.dana-farber.org/cellular-therapies-program/car-t-celltherapy/ (5) http://www.bloodjournal.org/content/124/2/188?sso-checked=true (6) http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/ early/2017/10/10/2159-8290.CD-17-0698 (7) https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells

CRISPR technology in action! source: Wikimedia

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Science, 2017 a timeline

On the front page: Photo 51 This photographed fraction of DNA was taken by Rosalind Franklin, but was plagiarized by Watson and Crick. They won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double helix structure and Franklin didn’t recive her due credit until the injustice was corrected much later.

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