Lucidity Issue 9

NLCS Jeju's Official STEM Magazine | Issue 9 2024

lucidity

SCIENCE AND PEOPLE

Science about the people, science by the people, science against the people, science for the people.

Corralled Corals What coral bleaching heralds about the future of our warming planet

Maxwell’s Equations The formulae behind the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism

Vegetable Oil An alternative to fossil fuels from the aisles of the grocery store

nlcslucidity.com 2024 Issue 9

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read. ­—William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

Editors-in-Chief Chandler Geumbee Ahn Minwoo Jeong

Designer Chandler Geumbee Ahn

Link Teachers Ms. Kym Prichard Mrs. Shayna Coughlan

Special Thanks To Ms. Helen Lock

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4 Climate Change, Coral Reefs, and Extinction Siwool Um 18 Bioluminescent Ja-Hyun Koo 22 Fatal Attraction Chloe Daeun Lee

10 Bus Cards to Antennae: How Do Maxwell’s Equations Influence Our Lives?

Sunjae Choi

25 Pepper Benjamin Soowhan Jun 28 Giants of the Deep Aiden Jaebaek Lee

34 Why We Should All Be Crabs Jayden Junseok Lee 36 Vegetable Oil Angela Kyurim Kim

44 A Step Towards Divinity Jay Jaehee Kim

40 What is e and Euler’s Identity?

Aiden Bumgyu Kim

48 The Drug of False Hopes Reina Jiyin Choi 51 Ready Player Bug? Louisa Yunseo Kim

52 What’s Wrong with Eating Humans?

Jennifer Jaewon Kang 54 Why is There No News About Cloning?

Andy Sooho Cho

60 Maths, Fraud, and Money: The Panama Papers and Graph Databases Alex Seungyong Yang

58 The Rodentine Key to Anti-Ageing Sharon Seo-Yun Jung

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 3

Climate Change, Coral Reefs, and Extinction

By Siwool Um ’28 4 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

WARMING WARNING

Recently, extinction rates have increased up to 1000 times, but this time it is not caused by glaciation or a meteor.

THERE HAVE BEEN FIVE MASS EXTINCTIONS SINCE

the start of life. Scientists are predicting a high risk of a sixth mass extinction. Shocking as it sounds, the cause of it is humans. During the years of the 21st century, despite our developments and efforts towards a carbon-free community, we still need to reduce emission and are unclear about how we can effectively reduce the effects to slow down climate change. We still have huge problems that block us from keeping ourselves ‘alive’. Ocean acidification, coral bleaching, sea level rise are terms that you have probably heard in other articles. These are all challenges humanity has yet to overcome to maintain the global stability of life. However, it seems like we are not urged, not encouraged to solve this problem. The majority of people do not think that climate change would affect their lives. They do not think that we are in danger. However, the changes are already starting to reveal themselves. There is an increase in annual tropical depressions, increased intensities of natural disasters, and more intense weather. This is not an easy problem to solve. Currently, we have just identified the problem and are on our way to working towards our solution, with only a slight inkling of how to do so. So, for our future, could we stop the possible sixth extinction?

I WOULD HONESTLY say that humans have historically been brutal and savage, and at times downright horrible. We have managed to create bombs that can wipe entire cities to practically nothing. And the United States has already used 2 of them to kill humans.

Adolf Hitler, the infamous angry moustache man, promoted the massacre of around 16 million people1.

And some say that up to 80 million people died dur1 (O’Neil, 2022) 16 million people is over a fourth of South Korea’s population, to put into perspective.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 5

WARMING WARNING ing the Second World War. Genocide and war aside, we have reduced countless species to unsustainable numbers, endangered them, and put many others to extinction. Humans effectively wiped white rhinos off of the planet. There were only 2 white rhinos left in the year 2018. Fortunately, that number is now at around 18,000 according to the World Wildlife Fund, all thanks to the huge efforts for the recovery of the rhinos. However, this is sadly not true for other species. Estimates vary, but humans have driven approximately 1 million species into extinction 2, accidentally having created a disaster while trying to improve their lives. Another iconic example of an endangered species is the polar bear. As greenhouse gases send infrared light, or heat, down to Earth, and only a fraction of it is emitted back out to space, countless problematic things have occurred. But it hasn’t always been like this. The reason why so many species succeeded in not ceasing to exist is because of the Earth’s rather stable climate3.

CORALS ARE ANIMALS, NOT PLANTS Major glaciations, like the various different ice ages that have occurred, naturally wiped out many species to death. As you may have already known, carbon dioxide is one of the major gases that are causing this ‘greenhouse effect’4 along with the less well known, but notably mentionable gases: methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. The problem with the Earth warming by 1 and a half degrees celsius is that the warming increases exponentially. The permafrost5, containing high levels of methane, is melting, which will warm the Earth more, and subsequently melt more of the permafrost, continuing the cycle. The consumption of cows contributes to a major factor of human emissions, and nitrous oxide can also be emitted from agriculture. Ozone6 is occasionally formed by pollutants reacting with the atmosphere, and also contributes to the warming of the Earth. Even road making contributes to around 10% of annual emissions7, almost equivalent to the emissions of aeroplanes, so using electric cars doesn’t really help out. Since most of the energy we consume comes from coal power plants anyways, using electricity is also contributing. Long story short, humans can’t stop emitting these chemicals, and the Earth is warming in consequence. Now you might ask, “but what does this all have to do with 2 (Rafferty, 2022) Yes, 1 million. Very saddening.

3 And an awful lot of other reasons.

4 Which has little to do with how greenhouses work, really.

5 Nowadays, these grounds are NOT frozen permanently.

6 Despite being a harmful greenhouse gas, above the atmosphere, it also acts as a shield to protect the Earth from radiation from the sun. Sadly, this also is being destroyed further by none other than humans, because of the use of CFC gases, or chlorofluorocarbons often used in sprays. You could say that ozone is a gas with two faces.

7 (Dettmer, 2021) check Kurzgesagt on YouTube for more information.

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corals? I saw the word ‘coral’ in the title.”

Now that is a very interesting question. Yes, fellow reader, this in fact does have a lot to do with corals. Hence why I will explain. As mentioned in countless different articles, the ocean absorbs much of the heat; that figure is around 90%8. When things get hotter, or the particles move around more ‘violently’, the overall volume of the thing increases. This logic can be applied to our oceans rising.

So it is not only that the polar ice caps melting is causing sea level rise, but actually most of it is caused by the increase in heat. So yes, the 1.5 degrees does make a huge difference. Our oceans are ‘rising’ at a rate of around 3.6 millimetres9 a year already and are likely to increase annually as the Earth warms. But the oceans absorb more than just heat. It also happens to absorb around 30% of our carbon dioxide emissions. The problem with this is that the extra carbon dioxide causes the oceans to become slightly more acidic. This phe8 (NASA, 2023); (NOAA, 2021).

9 (EPA, 2022).

going to get to the corals?’. We will get to the corals later. Marine creatures with shells are normally situated at or near the bottom of the food chain, which makes them essential for the whole ecosystem of the seas to function. Since ocean acidification is happening globally, this will likely affect countless species and threaten them. So now this brings us to the corals that you may or may not have been waiting to hear about.

CORALS ARE MADE of polyps, an animal10, with an exoskeleton of calcium carbonate. Yes, calcium carbonate. As mentioned above, calcium carbonate dissolves in acidic solutions. Which has exposed corals, one of the most important marine ecosystems that sustains life for a third of all species in the ocean, to great danger from ocean acidification. Polyps are also already threatened by global warming, since they are very sensitive to light level and temperature. When temperatures get too high, the corals release their zooxanthellae, causing them to turn white. Without the algae, the coral loses its source of food, becoming vulnerable to disease, and possibly death. This is not good11. Bleached corals can recover12, but they are also being slowly disintegrated by the acidic ocean.

According to the NOAA, there has been a major coral bleaching event in 2005, when warm waters expanded southwards, causing half of the United States’ Caribbean coral reefs to bleach. Further events may possibly make the corals die out en masse, causing a huge loss of area for habitat, and possible extinction of species.

Problems are also starting to show up near Jeju Island, causing difficulties for the native female divers, the Haenyeo. According to an interview of the 녹색연 합, or Green Korea United, over 80% of the species inhabiting the intertidal areas have disappeared.

Experts are saying that Jeju’s oceans have reached a point of an irrecoverable status. Soon enough the ocean around Jeju will change into a subtropical climate much like Okinawa due to rapid climate change and the quick desertification of the sea. Species of seaweed crucial for the local divers are disappearing, and invasive species found in subtropical oceans are increasing in count each year, which brings us back to the very first question. nomenon, often referred to as ‘ocean acidification’, is another important topic for us to discuss in this article.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION is already impacting many marine sea creatures, especially ones who rely on their outer shells. But why?

Carbon dioxide, water, and carbonate ions, all commonly found in our oceans, from bicarbonate ions, which overall increase the ocean’s pH value. The shells, mostly made of calcium carbonate, while usually having a low solubility in neutral pH waters, are changed to dissolve more easily in more acidic solutions. Now, I see you saying, ‘sure, the sea snails would suffer, but what will that have to do with other bad things? And when are you

Soft corals at the Cairns aquarium in Cairns City, Australia. Image courtesy of David Clode on Unsplash.

COULD WE PREVENT this global climate disaster from happening? Yes, no, and maybe. All of them above. If we utilised geoengineering, most likely using stratospheric aerosol injection13, there might be a chance. Taking inspiration from the ash clouds of the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 in the Philippines, stratospheric aerosol injection uses sulphur dioxide particles to drop temperatures. Other forms of geoengineering could also work, like increasing the albedo, or light reflectance of the surface of the Earth.

Already 29% of light coming from the sun is already 10 Yes, corals are animals, not plants.

11 You know that when scientists say that ‘it’s not good’, what they actually mean is that ‘we’re doomed’.

12 With some luck.

13 Which is just a fancy term for ‘shooting particles high up in the sky’.

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Macro footage of corals by David Clode on Unsplash.

Colors are unaltered.

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WARMING WARNING reflected by mostly ice and snow14. Painting buildings white may not sound like it would solve the problem, but if a large portion of the globe has increased albedo, It may help reduce the amount of heat getting trapped, which in turn will lower the temperature.

Another proposal is direct carbon capture, which, like its name suggests, is capturing carbon from the atmosphere. However, one downside of it is the price tag. Like all renewable energy solutions, direct carbon capture is pretty expensive and needs more research to develop. Lastly, there is a proposal to put up gigantic mirrors or sunshades in space to completely block solar radiation from entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

So far, this sounds like it won’t come anytime soon.

Geoengineering aside, there are still multiple ways to counter climate change.

UNLIKELY THAT WE WILL BE ABLE TO STOP IT The only problem is that humans might be a little bit slow on the ‘acting’ to stop climate change. Despite the huge investments into renewable energy and a less carbon reliant society, still most of the energy generated is from coal power plants. Individual actions can still help; the more the people are participating on a global scale, the more significant of an impact. However, looking at rates of warming and our current state of efforts to stop climate change, it is very unlikely that we will be able to stop it. There is still an ongoing debate on whether or not climate change will be resolved, but as you might have noticed from the footnotes, the overall tone, details included in this article, I personally believe on the more pessimistic side of ‘No, we won’t be able to stop climate change’. I also believe that the best solution to fix it is to let the world know about climate change.

As long as people are aware, they will, eventually, realise that climate change is an issue that needs some fixing. Another personal opinion regarding global warming is that people are not sure yet if climate change really will affect them, because we have not ‘progressed’ enough through the ‘stages of climate change’ and it is likely that climate change is affecting a slight portion of the population. Climate change is a very sophisticated topic including multiple different links to other topics, therefore, making it difficult to predict the outcomes.

TO CONCLUDE everything that has been said into much simpler words, climate change may ruin us, or we could stop it before it ruins us. Sadly, I do not think there are any solutions currently that are very plausible, but research and development are being done. Humanity might just save itself from the hole it has dug itself into. You may never know. Let us end on a slightly more positive note15.

14 (Dettmer, 2020).

15 There has been a lot of not very good news, I do realise that.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 9

ELECTRICITY

BUS C∂RDS TO ∂NTΣNN∂Σ: HOW DO M∂XWΣLL’S EQU∂TIONS INFLUΣNCΣ OUR LIVΣS?

By Sunjae Choi ’27

WHAT DO WE USE EVERY DAY? WE RIDE CARS, RIDE

buses, charge our phones and do much more using electricity. We already know that this mechanical stuff is complicated in physics, and uses a ton of weird equations. To build an electrical machine, an electric circuit is needed in order to work on the electrical algorithm and the device’s performance.

However, regarding the circuit, let’s think about the basis: the electrons. The charge, movement, and fields created by electrons are the central ideas that power modern devices. Maxwell’s Equations of Electromagnetism explain in detail about the basis of electrodynamics. Furthermore, they can expand their scope to astrophysics and the basic principle of special relativity. These equations treat two things: an electric field and a magnetic field. After reading this article, you will be able to understand the relationship between the two important fields and how this relates to our everyday lives.

Fig. 1. Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

The above four equations are all grouped together as the Maxwell Equations of Electromagnetism. At first glance, there is so much data flowing through.

Unfamiliar symbols and constants may confuse you. However, to understand these equations, we only need to know one premise: the nabla operator.

Even though we need to learn what a vector field is, it is fairly simple so don’t worry.

FIRST, WHAT IS a field? The definition of a field in terms of physics is describing a quantity an object will experience at a given location. A location in this context means a coordinate, which you’ll be familiar with: x, y and z. There are two kinds of fields: scalar fields and vector fields. A vector, as you know, is a quantity that has both magnitude and direction, while a scalar quantity only has magnitude. Tem10 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

perature is an example of a scalar field. Let’s have a scalar field T describe the temperature at a given position vector relative to the origin: (Ri + Sj + Tk). In this case, you can just interpret i, j, k as x, y, z and the R, S, T would represent a certain value for each axis. We can describe this scalar field T as follows:

If your reader is standing in a position vector of 3i + 4j + 5k, the temperature of that position would be 9 + 4/5 + 25 = 174/5K. Therefore, scalar fields describe the scalar quantity of a given coordinate.

THEN, WHAT DOES a vector field represent? Simple—a vector quantity. To represent a vector quantity, we need to use i, j, k. These are the n components of a vector. As I’ve already mentioned, i, j, and k respectively represent the x, y, and z components. To give an example, Ŵ is a vector field that describes both wind speed and direction. As we know, a coordinate will have its own vector value, and that vector value explains these two components. To describe Ŵ, we use the following:

Like the scalar field we just explored, in a position vector of 3i + 4j +5k the experiencing vector quantity will have a vector value of 4i + (7/5 + 4)j + 19k. Note that this is the vector of the experienced wind. Therefore, to find out the magnitude, we can use the Pythagorean theorem to find out the length of the vector and calculate each component according to the axis, and find the angle with respect to the origin. Like the vector field W, both the magnetic field and electric field are also vector fields. And we use B and Ê respectively to represent each field. Therefore, this field will be described as Ri + Sj + Tk to find the force vector because of the magnetic and electric field applied to a certain point. Therefore, in these equations, we now know three symbols; Ê, B, and j.

THEN, WHAT DOES the inverted triangle sign in front of the field mean? This is called the nabla or dell operator. The dot or cross after the dell operator describes how the operator is used. If a dot is next to nabla, we call it the divergent of or div. Since it is next to a vector field, we can understand a divergence of the vector field. If a cross is next to nabla, we call it the curl of the vector field. Now we know about vector fields, what would the divergence and curl of a vector field mean?

First, nabla is a type of column matrix operator with three components according to the vector components. Since it is an operator, the value of each component is not a number.

stand what actually getting the value of. These curly ds in the equation is just an operator used in partial differential calculus, and it represents a small change in --- of n’. So to find out what this is, we are differentiating the vector field in terms of x, y, and z. Even though this seems troubling, just think of this as a difference according to the ith axis.

Moving away from the nabla operator, let’s talk about the divergence of a vector field. In simple terms, divergence is the average difference between how many vectors went into a shape and went out of a shape. Therefore, in a two-dimensional space, this divergence would relate to area; in a three-dimensional space, it would relate to volume. Let’s go back to our definition. We need to consider three things: change in the number of vectors, according to the nth axis, and the amount of nth axis that the vectors pass through.

Let’s think about a two-dimensional vector field F(x,y) = (3x)i + yj. To divide between the nth axis’s components, we need to set the vector component of this equation as Ai + Bj respectively. To first consider the x component of the vector field, we need to first deal with A, our x-axis vector component. In order to deal with the change between the amount of vector according to x value, we will differentiate this vector component according to x. Furthermore, this change in value needs to be counted for an amount of ∆y. The div of a two-dimensional vector field according to the x-axis is written as: According to the y axis, we can simply swap the variables to match our knowledge.

Since these two values represent each axis, to find the average of an area, we need to add these two and divide the sum by its area, resulting a very simple equation.

We can always think of the dot product of two column vectors with values of nabla and the vector field. If we are dealing with three-dimensional volume then the vector field equation will have another element corresponding to the vector component of the z axis. Since the div operator changes a vector field into a scalar field of the amount of vector, we will add each element in the vector. There is a very special identity we can use in this case. We can identify if an object is located in a source, sink, or it’s in path. Let us visually understand what that means. The vector field F(x,y,z) has an equation of: If we view this vector field with respect to the x and y axis, we see this weird shape:

Fig. 2. The nabla operator in a vector form.

Since the vector field is represented in a similar way to a column vector, we can use vector multiplication to under-

Fig. 3. Possible positions in a vector field.

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ELECTRICITY In this weird shape, we can find two patterns where first, vectors pointing at a point, and second, vectors pointing outward at a point. Let there be a circle at each point. Then what would be the diversion of each circle? In the first shape, the difference in the amount of vector in and out will be 0.

Visually, you can see this. We write this with the equation of Δ.F=0. Then how about the second diagram? To just mention, in a vector field, if the vector is going out of a point, we call this positive. Then the second diagram accordingly has a value of Δ.F>0. This is when an object is located in a source.

Oppositely the third diagram shows a Δ.F<0 which means a sink.

This is about the divergence of a vector field. I feel this is quite intuitive since visually represented diagrams can explain this very well. However, curl on the other hand can be unintuitive. This converts a vector field into another vector field. The vector field that curl creates is the amount/direction of rotation.

LET ME ASK a basic question: what creates a rotation?

When a force is applied with a distance from the centre of the mass, like an object accelerating, angular acceleration occurs. And the quantity of this rotation is called torque. We write this with a greek letter τ. This quantity is determined using two equations. First is τ = F × d. We aren’t very interested in this one. Another equation involves acceleration which causes a rotation. τ = I × α, where I is the moment of inertia and alpha represents the angular acceleration. We will use this later after we know the definition of curl.

Curl is an operation which, when applied to a vector field, quantifies the circulation of that field. Think of a plate floating on a stream. For each place on a stream, the direction and magnitude of the water’s velocity will differ. This suggests that the stream is a vector field. Lets think this is a 1-dimensional stream where only + and - exist in direction.

Let the arrows that is touching the object, the force acting on this plate. The red arrow will represent the amount of torque added to the object, which will be a vector quantity. Like this, we need to calculate the change in force (the net force) of an axis and compare it with three axes. Then we will obtain a vector value to explain everything we need. This will be the one that we needed for calculating the curl.

Unlike the div, we are going to calculate a very big vector and reduce it in a vector field. We always start with a vector field F(x,y,z) = Ri + Sj + Tk. However, I’ll re-establish R, S, I, our vector components into Fx, Fy, Fz. Then let’s look at this matter in terms of components. Let’s first talk about the x component. Since there are three pairs of two axes, which are (x,y), (y,z) and (x,z). Obviously, we need to calculate the net force given in each pair of axes.

There are two ways to interpret this in two ways. Since it’s a ‘cross’ between two vectors, we can find the cross product between two vectors. One of the two vectors is an operator, so we can find the determinant of a huge matrix and find the final vector.

The cross-product of two vectors can be noted as a 3x3 matrix determinant.

And if we write in terms of nabla and the force field, we can write it as:

Now, the only thing that we have left is to calculate it. It is very simple to just memorise the outcome of this vector x vector matrix. The outcome is a vector:

This is the visual representation of a cross product which results in the same as the previous result.

Fig. 4. The net rotation of the disk viewed from the top.

Curl is used when the nabla operator is written with a cross next to a vector field. We can see this in the third and fourth of Maxwell’s equations. Now we can understand: the equations will work on the rotation of an object on an electric field/magnetic field. Before we start our calculations, let’s remind ourselves what nabla is as an operator.

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This is not really intuitive, right? This was all related to the cross-product of vectors and getting the outcome manually using math. Then in the real contextual world, what would happen? Instead of our dish problem, let’s think about a cube floating on a stream.

For a three-dimensional object, there are three types of rotation; roll, pitch, and yaw, each representing the rotation of the x, y, and z axis accordingly. Therefore, in order to find

the net rotation, we need to first find out the rotation for each axis. To be precise, I’ll use the word angular velocity which just means rotation. As you know, like normal velocity, rotation is a vector quantity with clockwise and anticlockwise directions. There are three planes to consider: xy, yz, and xz. Let’s start with the xy plane. The angular velocity depends on the change in force that is acting on an axis. Therefore, in order to find out the difference, we will once again use our curly ds and vector component in order to find the rotation of the x-axis. However, we need to find the rotation of the plane, not only an axis. Therefore, similarly, we will take the difference of the y axis’s vector component and subtract it from the previous answer. Then our yaw (xy plane’s rotation) will be noted in this equation:

total divergence of the object. Look at the first diagram. According to each point of the diagram, the divergence differs a lot. Therefore, we use differentiation to find the divergence of each point. I think the diagrams explain very much of the first equation. In the given electric field, the charged particle is the source. And as shape 1 covers the source, and in other words, positively charged. Therefore, you can see it has no equal amount of vectors going in and out. On the other hand, the second diagram has a seemingly equal amount of vectors going in and out, and you can observe that it isn’t charged.

As we know, divergence depends on the object’s charge, so it is quite intuitive to think and see what will happen. Furthermore, the E0. which is called the permittivity in a vacuum, calculates how much electrical energy or field it can store.

For now, you can understand this as a constant.

Then if we collect all the vector components from the axes, we will end up with the same equation of :

Therefore, taking the curl of a vector field produces a vector. This vector represents the rotation of the object. Using the right-hand rule, the rotation will have an anti-clockwise rotation with a pivot of that vector. Furthermore, it will have an angular velocity of the magnitude of the vector.

Fig. 5. Visual representation of an object in an electric field.

NOW, WE HAVE a full understanding of the vector field, the dell operator, div, curl and all the math that we need.

Let’s get into the physics part and the equations themselves.

Without further explanation, let’s look at the first equation; Gauss’s law. Let’s review the equation again. Nabla, dot, E is equal to rho (the p thing) over E0. With our background knowledge, we can fully understand the left side of the equation. Nabla and a dot mean the divergence of the vector field.

Since E is written next to it, we can understand this as ‘the divergence on an electric field is equal to.’ We are referring to the three-dimensional shape’s divergence in an electric field. Then, what does the right side of the equation refer to?

Positive would mean that it is a source of the electric field; negative would mean the opposite. This equation can find its exact value. Furthermore, the source of an electric field means a positive charge and the negative the opposite. Let’s now get into the symbols one by one.

THE FIRST SYMBOL that we are going to look at is the rho. It looks like a curly p and it is in the numerator. This symbol, in physics, is usually used to note the density of an object. Since we are in an electric field, we will name this the average charge density. For example, in a two-dimensional electric field, if an object has an area of A and a charge of C. Then the charge density of an object will be C/A. This will work the same in a 3d shape with C/V. Let’s look at Figure 5. In the first diagram, the object covers the electric field’s source. Let’s let this source has a charge of +1C. So, if the shape has an area of 3m2, the average charge density of the object will be 1/3C/m2. Then how about a point on an object? We use average charge density in order to find out the

One other equation that looks similar to the first is the second of Gauss’s Laws of Magnetism. However, it looks much simpler and instead of an electric field, it has a capital B sign to denote a magnetic field. As we all know, the nabla operator with a dot means the divergence of, and the lefthand side of the equation will mean ‘the divergence of the magnetic field is’. Unlike the first equation, we can find out that it doesn’t have any variables or a constant—it is only 0.

Why? This equation will certainly mean the divergence of a magnetic field in any part will be equal to 0. Unlike the electric field, the magnetic field doesn’t have a source or a sink.

Look at Figure 6. We can see the vectors are circulating from a point and returning to a point. This results, in any point of the field, the divergence will be 0. This also creates a very important fact: there are no natural magnetic monopoles, where it is a source or a sink in the field.

Fig. 6. Different positions in a magnetic field.

Then, where are these weird equations used? Obviously in the field of electromagnetism. One example of our daily usage of Gauss’s law of electromagnetism are antennae. AnIssue 9 2024, Science and People 13

ELECTRICITY tennae can be found in most wireless devices, ranging from your AirPods to everyday wifi transmitters.

Gauss’s law is used in antennae to determine the electric and magnetic fields that are produced by an antenna when transmits or receives electromagnetic waves. Particularly, the law is used to calculate the electric field strength at any point in space around the antenna. When an antenna transmits, it produces an oscillating electric current that flows through the antenna’s structure. This current creates an oscillating magnetic field around the antenna. Gauss’s law is used to calculate the electric field strength produced by this oscillating magnetic field around the antenna. Similarly, when an antenna is receiving, it intercepts an incoming electromagnetic wave, which produces an oscillating electric field at the antenna’s terminals. Gauss’s law is used to calculate the current induced in the antenna by this oscillating electric field, which is then used to extract the information carried by the electromagnetic wave.

Furthermore, in astrophysics, there is an equation called Gauss’s law of gravity, which similarly deals with the divergence of the gravitational field. Gauss’s law of magnetism is crucial for calculating the interaction of two charged particles in a vacuum or magnetic fields of planetary objects.

NOW LET’S LOOK at the remaining two equations: Faraday’s law and the Maxwell—Ampere law. These two laws look much more complicated than the previous two. However, look at the left-hand side of the equations. They are all talking about the curl of the electric and magnetic field.

The one thing that you need to know to understand these equations is this: both the electric field and the magnetic fields induce the other fields vertically, therefore creating a vertically propagating wave of electromagnetic fields. These equations are talking about how each field can induce the other according to the difference made over time.

The third rule is called Maxwell-Faraday’s law. It is a developed version of Faraday’s law of induction in terms curl of the electric field. Let’s look at what induction is in terms of physics after understanding the equation. The left-hand side of the equation represents ‘the curl of an object on the electric field is equal to’. On the right-hand side, we are able to see the bold B, denoting the magnetic field, and some curly ds. For understanding, let’s let the magnetic field’s equation as B(x,y,z) = Ri + Sj + Tk. To write the equation differently, we can separate the curly d part and the field part.

differentiating the magnetic field. Therefore, we are finding the instantaneous curl of the electric field. If we use delta instead of ds, it means the average change. In this case, we will differentiate each component of the magnetic field vector R, S, and T in terms of time. As you can see in the diagram, the change in the vector of a point is found using differentiation.

The equation suggests that this will result in the curl of the electric field. What does this mean?

BEFORE WE EXPLORE the induction part, there is a very important fact we need to establish. This equation concerns the ‘change’ of the magnetic field inducing a rotating electric field around it. Therefore, if the field doesn’t change, no electric field is induced: movement of a magnet or physical change in the magnetic vector field is essential (the equation can change, or the change can be noted as a function in terms of time). What do you think the word ‘curl of the electric field around it’ actually means? In this equation, unlike in Gauss’s law, there is no rho in order to specify ‘the divergence of a specific object on an electric field.’ In this case, we should understand the equation differently. This means there is a rotation and change in vector in a very small amount on an object on the electric field induced. This furthermore suggests two things. The first is that there are no sinks or sources created in the field. This is because the induced fields, like the magnetic field, circulate instead of moving towards something. To visualize what is happening, look at the following diagram. The induced electric fields are like doughnuts around the vector representing the ‘change in the magnetic field’.

Fig. 7. Different electric fields induced by increasing and decreasing magnetic fields.

Now let’s look at how this equation can be effective in physics and in our real life. Do you remember that Maxwell-Faraday’s Law was developed from Faraday’s law of induction?

Then let’s start with that equation, which looks fairly similar to the previous equation. There are, however, two important differences: the left-hand side and the phi symbol with curly ds. The left-hand side is noted with the symbol epsilon. This means the EMF, or the induced voltage to the current.

According to the distributive law, we will take the curly d part to every component of the vector field.

As we know that the curl of a vector results in a vector, we can find the rotation of a point on the electric field in terms of the change in a magnetic field. Do you remember that the curly d means ‘change of’? In this case, we are finding the change in the magnetic field according to the change in time.

If this change in time is small or sudden enough, we call this 14 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

Before we look more deeply at the equation, we need to understand a phenomenon called electrostatic induction.

The relevant experiment needs a magnet, a circuit with a solenoid and a voltameter. When we slowly put the magnet inside the solenoid, the voltmeter suddenly moves and points to a certain positive value. As you stop the magnet inside the solenoid, the voltmeter returns to 0. Then, as you again pull

your magnet out of the solenoid, the voltmeter shows a negative value. You’re looking at an important idea here—that voltage is created or induced when the magnet is moving.

This can be written differently like this: as the magnetic field created by the magnet changes, an electric field is induced by the change and creates a voltage in the circuit. Furthermore, the electric field that touches the solenoid or the circuit affects the voltage, not a random movement.

plants, nuclear power plants, wind turbines and hydroelectric power plants. The common mechanism in all of them is to use some kind of method to rotate the turbine. The electricity created is then sent to your homes by wires running under or over the streets.

Fig. 9. The voltage obtained for different rotation.

Fig. 8. Visual representation of the experiment with a magnet, solenoid and a voltmeter.

Let’s look at the equation’s right-hand side. The Φ represents the magnetic flux of the circuit—in other words, the amount of magnetic field the solenoid is experiencing. The exact equation for the magnetic flux is BAcosθ, where B is the magnitude of the magnetic field, A is the area the field is covering and the theta is the angle between the vectors and the object. Like before, we are finding the change in magnetic flux over the change in time. Then, what does the N at the front represent? N stands for how many loops or coils are in the solenoid. Because voltage created is proportional to the number of loops when a solenoid is used, we need to multiply N by the previous product. Lastly, the - is multiplied because going in creates + voltage and going out creates - voltage. This phenomenon is called Lenz’s law, and describes the resistance between an object and the electric field created.

Maxwell-Faraday’s law and Faraday’s law of induction are used in a wide range of subjects in physics. This includes generators, NFCs, and many other mechanics that involve the usage of light or electromagnetic waves.

LET’S FIRST LOOK at the generator and how it uses Faraday’s law of induction in order to create electricity. As we now know, change in a magnetic field can be measured with a circuit creating electricity. Since electricity is produced when magnetic flux changes, the change doesn’t need to be confined to the magnetic field but can occur with the area or the angle. The ‘angle’ is what the generator uses to create electricity. Let’s imagine that there is a straight magnetic field with a magnitude of 5mT, and that a rectangular board with an area of 5m2 is rotating in between two magnets. If we calculate the magnetic flux of this board over time, it will show an oscillation between 25 to -25. Imagine what will happen if we connect a circuit to the rotating board. With a voltmeter and by using differentiation (converting the delta sign to curly ds), we can draw a similar-looking graph that calculates the instantaneous voltage produced at a given time. When the graph reaches 0, no electricity is made. Furthermore, the + and - obtained is the direction of the flow of the circuit the actual scalar value of the voltage. If we connect a ring to the end of the board, it will create an AC circuit with an alternating current. Therefore, in order to create electricity, there is only one thing to do: spin the board.

There are many types of generators, such as thermal power

NFCs and bus cards both use the principles of electromagnetic induction. Bus cards carry a very flat solenoid that is connected to a microchip. Bus card readers create a very strong electromagnetic field. As the solenoid of the card passes through the field of the reader, electricity is created and activates the circuit, allowing the microchip to do the work of purchasing or making a record of payment. This method is used for almost every noncontact purchase, meaning your mobile phone also contains this circuit in its back in order to proceed with Samsung Pay.

Fig. 10. Induced magnetic field through a coil.

Now, though, there’s a question in my head. How does the bus card reader create a magnetic field? If you look at Figure 10, you can see that the field is created from a solenoid. Do you remember a relevant practical you may have performed in Year 8? If there was a voltage flowing through a solenoid, the solenoid then worked like a magnet: an electromagnet was born. I remember drawing a graph of how many iron clips we could hold up with different voltages. From that experiment, we can draw the conclusion that the voltage and the magnitude of magnetism is proportional. Then doesn’t that mean that the solenoid or the electromagnet has created a magnetic field? That’s correct, and our fourth equation, the Maxwell-Ampere law, will explain why this is so.

THE RIGHT-HAND side of this equation contains much more information than the three previous equations. However, each component by itself is not that complicated. Let’s Issue 9 2024, Science and People 15

ELECTRICITY start with the left side. The nabla operator with an x next to a bold B obviously means ‘the curl of the magnetic field is equal to’. We are now well-trained enough to know that the magnetic field that the equation is referring to is the circulating magnetic field induced by the electrical current or the electric field. Let’s now look at the components of the righthand side one by one. The first term consists of a greek letter with an 0 and a j. As we know, j is a symbol used to note the y component of a vector. Therefore, this means that we need to add the following amount to the y component of the final vector. The 0 is called the permeability of free space, a measure of the amount of resistance encountered when forming a magnetic field in a classical vacuum. The existence of this term is very important because this term is always at a constant valence even when the second term is equal to 0.

The next term consists of a multiplication of 1/c2 with the derivative of the electric field given according to time. 1/c2 is a constant where c2 is the square of the speed of light. Once again we will rearrange it like this:

The school door in the 3rd floor of the Sixth Form building is an example. The lock works with an electromagnet, which remains magnetic while the door is locked but becomes demagnetised once the card is tagged by disconnecting the circuit with a switch. This is a very convenient magnet because we can turn its magnetic characteristics on and off.

This property makes it useful to use in separating magnetic objects from others, especially when dealing with recycling or chemical separation.

This will be the expanded version of the 2nd term. Adding the first term, this will look like the following:

This will be the equation obtained when we expand the right-hand side: a vector that represents the rotation or circulation of the magnetic field induced by the electric field.

Similar to the magnetic field, a flow of electricity inducts a doughnut-like magnetic field around its trajectory. Because a curl vector represents an anticlockwise rotation with a vertical point of a vector, the electric field will work as a point and create a circulating magnetic field. One difference between Faraday’s law and Ampere’s law is again the valence of the term 0j. This means that Faraday’s law 100 per cent relies on the change in the magnetic field, while Ampere’s Law does not need a change in an electric field. This means just a steady flow of electric current or just a steady electric field will induce a circulating magnetic field with a curl vector of 0i + 0j + 0z.

Fig. 12. Magnetic field induced by a solenoid.

An important fact derived from the third and fourth equations is that a single steady electric field can create an almost infinite amount of self-sufficient magnetic and electric fields linked together like a chain. A characteristic that we can see in this propelling chain of fields is that the two fields are arranged vertically to one another. This chain can be visualised in the form of the wave, with an oscillating transverse wave of two fields. This is quite fantastic because this wave is the only wave that doesn’t need a medium to oscillate. This wave is called an electromagnetic wave which includes visible light, x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, and microwaves and has a range of characteristics and usages according to its frequency. Furthermore, since it doesn’t need a medium, it moves with the maximum speed in the world: the speed of light.

With these four equations, humanity was able to achieve an advanced technology involving electricity, and even expanded their areas of knowledge into astrophysics and special relativity. These equations are significant in that they represent not only the field of electrodynamics but the fundamentals upon which classic mechanics have been built.

Works Cited

Fig. 11. A magnetic field induced by a current.

AS I SAID earlier, there are many uses of this equation in the real-world context. A great example is electromagnets.

There are so many examples of electromagnets in real life.

16 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

angeloyeo.github.io. (n.d.). 벡터장의 발산(divergence) - 공돌이의 수학정리노 트. [online] Available at: https://angeloyeo.github.io/2019/08/25/divergence. html [Accessed 5 Mar. 2023]. angeloyeo.github.io. (n.d.). 벡터장의 회전(curl) - 공돌이의 수학정리노트. [online] Available at: https://angeloyeo.github.io/2019/08/25/curl.html [Accessed 5 Mar. 2023].

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Maxwell’s equations. [online] Wikipedia.

Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations.

Halliday, D., Resnick, R. and Walker, J. (2014). Principles of physics. Singapore: Wiley.

Richard Phillips Feynman, Leighton, R.B., Matthew Linzee Sands and Basic Books (2011). The Feynman lectures on physics. Vol. 2, Mainly electromagnetism and matter. New York: Basic Book, A Member Of The Perseus Books Group.

As global temperatures rise due to climate change, viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers could reawaken and become cause for the next pandemic. Image credit Deborah Diem on Unsplash.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 17

NEON-GREEN PLANET

18 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

THE OUTBREAK OF COVID-19 HAS CAUSED AN INSTANT ACCELERATION OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, OR INDUSTRY 4.0.

THE REALISATION OF INDUSTRY 4.0 IS PREDICTED TO

create a life where reality and virtual reality, or VR, are combined using artificial intelligence. Using artificial intelligence to communicate, however, will require an extremely fast information-processing capacity. A large amount of energy usage, exceeding current capacities, will automatically follow, making energy shortage one of the most urgent problems of the 21st century.

In September of 2022, the super typhoon Hinnamnor struck South Korea, leaving devastation of urban areas with more than 14,000 people leaving their homes and costing the South Korean economy 1.21 billion dollars in damage. However, unlike previous typhoons, Hinnamnor was regarded to be an abnormal natural phenomenon owing to the fact that it occurred above 25 degrees north latitude. Haedong Kim, a professor of geo-environmental studies, has not only nominated climate change as the driving factor of this disaster, but also predicted that Hinamnor is merely the start of a total catastrophe. What are the causes of these abnormal typhoons, and what could be the resolution for future generations?

LOOKING BACK in history, our society has developed modern social civilization on the basis of fossil fuel, yet the excessive usage of it after the second industrial revolution resulted in global warming, the greatest catastrophe of mankind. Furthermore, the amount of fossil fuels is limited and it is estimated that oil, coal, and natural gas will be depleted in 46, 122, and 64 years respectively. In accordance with the limitations, many countries have used nuclear power generation as an alternative. Unfortunately, the introduction of nuclear power generation was no exception, causing environmental pollution and mutations in living organisms inhabiting nearby nuclear power plants.

Take the example of an octopus with 32 legs discovered in the Southern Sea of South Korea, owing to the effect of coolant discharge in Japan (Lee, 2021). Another example is Russia’s Chernobyl disaster and Fukushima nuclear disaster, which ended up taking away around 6,000 lives in total. These incidents have demonstrated that, at this stage, humans are unable to handle such technology. If

traditional energy generation methods are unstable and humanity cannot maintain civilization without solving energy problems in the future, what course of action should we take? Indeed, some nations in the world are devoting a vast majority of their focus to developing renewable energy as a countermeasure to resolve energy problems. However, this article will propose a solution that comes in a different form of ‘energy efficiency’, leading to a new world.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY refers to the use of less energy to perform the same task or produce the same result. In reality, when it comes to converting energy into a form that humans use in daily lives, a large amount of energy is lost to the surroundings. For instance, in the case of fluorescent light, around 95% of energy is lost through thermal energy; even LEDs, which are known as being energy-efficient, lose 85% of their initial value. As can be seen in such ridiculous numerical values, increasing the efficiency of energy will contribute significantly to permanent energy management.

Then, the question is “Is there a way to reduce the power lost in all light emitting devices by using existing technology?” As a response, there is recent research on cold-lighted or bioluminescent creatures which are capable of converting natural chemical energy into light energy, which draws high attention and anticipation from the public.

BIOLUMINESCENCE refers to light being produced by a chemical reaction within a living organism. Currently, research on bioluminescent creatures has been attracting significant attention as their luminous efficiency reaches up to 90% (Singh, 2018). This is achieved by a chemical reaction within a particular organ in the organism and unlike artificial light, no thermal energy generated within this process is lost. This is technically the reason why people named it ‘cold light’.

To expand, bioluminescence creatures can be found in terrestrial organisms (e.g. light-emitting mushrooms, specific bacteria, and fireflies), but they are more commonly found in marine life. Common examples include fish, jellyfish, crustaceans, and cephalopods.

The principle behind bioluminescence is quite simple where a substance called luciferin glows as it is oxidized to oxy-luciferin. This reaction involves the use of a luminescent enzyme called luciferase and co-factors such as calcium (Ca+) or magnesium (Mg2+), which are one of the main components of seawater. Considering this, it is natural for ¾ of sea life creatures to be bioluminescent (Langley, 2019), being able to generate their own light.

To add on, it should be noted that although the molecular structure of luciferin varies depending on the type of bioluminescent creature, the basic principle of generating lights by undertaking oxidation remains always the same regardless of any living organisms. As can be seen in Fig. 1., a firefly and a Renilla reniformis (sea creature) share similarity having an alike chemical formula for emitting light of their own.

IN 2017, Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of chemical engineering at MIT, created a plant that shines in the dark based on a technology called plant nano-biological engineering. This process involved inserting special nanoparticles mainly composed of the luminescent enzyme luciferase into a water cress. The treated plant was able to emit faint light for around four hours. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop plants that can shine bright Issue 9 2024, Science and People 19

NEON-GREEN PLANET enough to illuminate the entire working environment, even looking forward to substituting streetlights with developed luminescent plants.

“The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp—a lamp that you don’t have to plug in. The light is ultimately powered by the energy metabolism of the plant itself,” says Strano, the senior author of the study (Trafton, 2017). Lighting, which accounts for about 20 percent of worldwide energy consumption, seemed like a logical next target. “Plants can self-repair, they have their own energy, and they are already adapted to the outdoor environment,” says Strano. The MIT team packaged each of these three components into a different type of nanoparticle carrier.

The nanoparticles are all made of materials that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies as “generally regarded as safe,” helping each component get to the right part of the plant (Trafton, 2017). They also prevent the components from reaching concentrations that could be toxic to the plants.

CURRENTLY, THE optimized light emission time is 3.5 hours, and the amount of light emitted by a 10 cm watercress plant is only one-thousandth of the amount required for reading (Trafton, 2017). Despite these drawbacks, it is anticipated that the intensity and duration of light can be enhanced by optimizing the concentration of enzymes and the emission rate of light. Moreover, if a simple technique for applying nanoparticles to the leaves of plants can be

20 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

Fig. 1. Comparison of bioluminescent molecules between different cold-light organisms.

developed, it is predicted that a breakthrough in replacing all indirect light sources around us (e.g. streetlights) with plants could be achieved. Furthermore, research is underway to create a plant that can naturally turn off its own light depending on environmental conditions, such as changes in sunlight: a process of injecting luciferase inhibitors.

ANOTHER BIOLUMINESCENT plant was featured in ‘Science Advances’ on September 8th, 2021. A research team at MIT developed a plant that is capable of glowing in the dark by absorbing light from the sun or LEDs. This research received a lot of public recognition since such plants, with the presence of special nanoparticles, can shine for 50 minutes while only requiring a 10-second charge. The definition of charging in this context refers to the amount of time being exposed to sunlight or LED light.

To help you understand this astonishing improvement, the new light-emitting plants can now produce light that is approximately 10 times brighter than the first generation of light-emitting plants developed earlier in 2017. Professor Strano stated, “I wanted to create a luminescent plant with particles that could absorb and store some of the light and gradually release it.” The new nanoparticles used strontium aluminate, which is an inorganic compound made up of atoms of strontium, aluminum, and oxygen.

Strontium aluminate is a fluorescent substance that can emit light by absorbing visible and UV light. The absorption of energy through solar light or human light source allows self-irradiation in the dark, even under conditions where an additional energy supply is not available. To prevent damage to the plants, the research team coated the strontium aluminate with silica and injected it into the stomata, the air passage of the plant. This method involves accumulating nanoparticles, only hundreds of nanometers in diameter, thin between cells forming the mesophyll through the stomata pores. The research team attempted the same procedure on various plants of different sizes, including basil, watercress, taro, tobacco trees, and daisies.

On the whole, nanoparticles in all five species absorbed sunlight and LED lights and subsequently further accumulated them in the form of photons, slowly emitting them conversely.

On average, plants exposed to LED light for about 10 seconds emitted light for up to an hour and particularly emit-

ted bright light for the first five minutes. The plant was capable of consistently recharging if it was exposed to sunlight for at least two weeks and surprisingly, the plant was able to undertake photosynthesis as normal after the injection of nanoparticles.

It was even possible to extract and reuse 60% of nanoparticles that were already injected into another plant. The research team raised public attention, noting that “[t]his is a big step toward plant-based lighting” (Trafton, 2021). To expand, this study is an important step in using renewable energy from plants as lighting. Currently, they are working on combining the luciferase particles used in the 2017 study with the photo phosphor particles. And it is hoped that this will create plants that can generate brighter light for a long time.

FROM NOW on, the energy problem within our society will become more and more imperative. As a matter of fact, our society must devote energy production along with efficient administration of energy; there are numerous resources that humans fail to recognize. Combining the two appalling truths— humans only explored and charted 5% of the ocean (UNESCO) and around ¾ of sea-creatures are bioluminescent—humans might be able to find a resolution to the energy shortage in nature. In this period, not only thorough research and development based on love for nature and humanity, but also creative ideas that blur the boundaries of each area of science technologies are required to save our society. Generating artificial energy through re-

Bioluminescent corals at the Cairns aquarium in Cairns City, Australia. Image and cover image courtesy of David Clode on Unsplash.

newable energy development is indeed important, but utilizing energy obtained through nature would be more prominent. In the future, it will be possible to utilize eco-friendly and efficient energy, with the revitalization of plants that photosynthesize during the day and glow at night without the presence of electricity.

Works Cited “바다에 오로라가? 빛나는 바다, 해양발광생물.” 네이버 블로그 | 해 양수산부 공식 블로그, m.blog.naver.com/koreamof/222485839010.

“Bioluminescence - an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics.” Www. sciencedirect.com, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/bioluminescence.

Gordiichuk, Pavlo, et al. ``Augmenting the Living Plant Mesophyll into a Photonic Capacitor.” Science Advances, vol. 7, no. 37, 10 Sept. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe9733.

---. “Augmenting the Living Plant Mesophyll into a Photonic Capacitor.” Science Advances, vol. 7, no. 37, 10 Sept. 2021, https:// doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe9733. “한국순환학회, 인아랑, 순환법칙, 사상물리학/화학 : 네이버 블로 그.” Blog.naver.com, blog.naver.com/applepop/222486414608.

Accessed 8 Mar. 2023.

“Luminous Efficacy - an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics.” Www. sciencedirect.com, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/luminous-efficacy. 세계일보. “설마 그 영향? 한국선 다리 32개 달린 문어…일본은 “돌연 변이” 참개구리.” 세계일보, 23 June 2021, www.segye.com/newsView/20210623517822. Accessed 8 Mar. 2023.

“The next Generation of Glowing Plants.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, news.mit.edu/2021/glowing-plants-nanoparticles-0917.

Trafton, Anne. “Engineers Create Plants That Glow.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 12 Dec. 2017, news.mit.edu/2017/engineers-create-nanobion-

ic-plants-that-glow-1213.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 21

The longest water slide in the world in Escape Theme Park of Penang, Malaysia.

22 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

TINY WORLD

Could these chlorinated waters harbour a miniature Jaws?

By Chloe Daeun Lee ’26

A

FTER ALL THE DREADED MOCK EXAMS, THE ANNU-

als, and the school year, comes the one thing you have been waiting for: summer vacation. Lasting for a whole two months, it is the time when you no longer have to suffer from the uncomfortable chairs in the science department or remember to pack your lanyard every night. But the feeling of elation doesn’t last long, as the humid temperatures of Jeju soon engulf you. Tired from the everlasting heat, you decide to book a trip to a water park with your friends to finally socialise and relish the feeling of the revitalising water on your skin. However, could you be risking your brain to be eaten by a unicellular killing amoeba, residing peacefully in the seemingly clean waters of the swimming pool?

THE STORY starts with a 10 year old girl named Lily Avon. It was Labor Day weekend when she and her parents went on a family trip to a nearby river to swim. After spending quality time with her family and splashing the crystal-clear water playfully, she returned home. The next day, Lily packed her bags, ate breakfast, and left her home to go to school. But throughout the day, she started to feel unwell. Her head started throbbing, and her throat started to itch with each swallow, feeling like she was gulping sand. Lily decided to call her parents, and left school early to visit a nearby hospital. The doctor assumed that the symptoms were that of a common cold; it was getting cold in September and there were lots of children who were becoming the hosts of various viruses going around the school. After receiving some minor medicine, Lily returned home to rest.

Two days later, she woke up unresponsive.

Lily’s parents found her lying on the ground with her eyes wide open and her mouth agape. But no words came out of her mouth when they called. She was hastily taken to the emergency room. The doctor then asked Lily’s parents if Lily had recently gone swimming. Her parents then thought about the family trip the previous weekend. The doctor then diagnosed her with PAM. Issue 9 2024, Science and People 23

TINY WORLD Naegleria fowleri, colloquially known as the “brain-eating amoeba”, is quite common in fresh bodies of water such as rivers and lakes and unclean swimming pools. In very rare cases, they are found in water supplies or beaches. But how exactly does N. fowleri cause PAM, and does it mean that we should never touch bodies of water again?

PAM might sound like a friendly word, sounding similar to our rice-thief SPAM. But what it does to you isn’t quite close to being “friendly”; it eats your brain. PAM stands for Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis, which is a brain infection caused by N. fowleri.

PAM is extremely rare, and being rare means that there is not much of a cure. PAM has a fatality rate of over 90%, with only 5 documented cases of survival since it was ever discovered.

Nobody enjoys being in the shivery cold and it’s the same for N. fowleri. N. fowleri loves warm spaces, and do you know a warm mammal that likes to jump in the water during summer? Humans! Humans have a body temperature of around 36.5 degrees celsius, a perfect temperature to attract unwelcome visitors including the N. fowleri. Each drop of freshwater has about a million different bacteria inside, but they are mostly harmless. However, N. fowleri is different. Let’s return to the story of Lily, and wind back to when N. fowleri first entered Lily’s nose.

WHEN THE freshwater containing N. fowleri splashed into Lily’s nose, the amoeba wasn’t interested in staying. It fed on other bacteria, and it ventured deeper into her nasal cavity. One thing N. fowleri has expertise in is how to get under the radar of our body’s tight immune system security. Inside Lily’s nasal cavity is mucous, which is full of chemicals that stun pathogens and other unwelcome guests to prevent them from entering the body. N. fowleri isn’t so bothered about it and calmly passes through. Soon, it finds something that intrigues it—Lily’s nerve cells. Our noses are filled with olfactory nerve cells that pick up molecules and transfer information to our olfactory bulb, which then exchanges information with other nerve cells to “communicate” with each other and carry out small tasks. One of the chemicals needed for this is called acetylcholine. Through a stroke of bad evolutionary luck, N. fowleri has receptors that recognize acetylcholine. Acetylcholine attracts N. fowleri like bright light does bugs. Sensing the acetylcholine, N. fowleri enters through the tissues in Lily’s nose, following the chemical’s path. Neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, sense the presence of N. fowleri and attempts to kill it, but the N. fowleri is much larger and stronger than the neutrophil, so isn’t seriously harmed. N. fowleri continues to follow Lily’s olfactory nerves to its final 24 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

CYST STAGE

Not yet infective, the cyst lives in the water.

TROPHOZOITE STAGE

Now infective, the trophozoites replicate by promitosis, a process of binary fission during which mitosis occurs inside the nucleus and the nuclear membrane remains intact.

destination: the brain.

To N. fowleri, the brain is comparable to the sanctuary of eden. Full of acetylcholine, the brain cells are helpless victims that the N. fowleri is ready to devour. The amoeba multiplies in Lily’s brain and develops about a dozen suckers like an octopus to keep up with the feeding frenzy. Alerted by this massacre, Lily’s immune system responds by sending even more neutrophils and all of the resources available to Lily’s brain to fight back against the amoeba. However, the amoeba releases harmful chemicals and suicide-cells (cells that explode to kill pathogens), which damage brain cells along with the N. fowleri. A high fever develops but it is no good for the body. In fact it is even worse, since the N. fowleri thrive in warmer environments. As the battle escalates, blood and other fluids start to flow faster into the brain towards the inflammation, causing Lily’s brain to swell. Because the brain cannot expand due to the hard skull, it compresses instead, putting on pressure on the brain’s stem which controls important functions such as breathing. After a few days, Lily dies.

DOES THIS mean that all of the swimming fun is a shortcut to your doomed misery?

Thankfully, the answer is “no”. Since 1987, there have only been 381 cases of known N. fowleri infections in humans, making it much more likely to drown to your death than to contract N. fowleri. To add on, for the amoeba to enter your olfactory nerves, water must be pushed up into your nose very deeply, and you cannot contract N. fowleri from drinking, touching, or peeing in the water. Additionally, properly disinfected water has an extremely low chance of containing N. fowleri, which means that most public pools, water parks, and your water supply is free of the amoeba.

You don’t need to worry about contracting N. fowleri, and you can enjoy your summer holiday to its fullest! There’s a less than 2% chance that you are going to become a home for the brain-eating amoeba, and it will never be you who contracts it. Or maybe you will… but only if you are very unlucky.

Works Cited

FLAGELLATED STAGE

When water goes up the nose and into the upper respiratory tract, the amoeba will spread along the olfactory nerve through the cribriform plate into the brain.

General Information | Naegleria fowleri

By Year: 2023 URL: https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/general.html# Texas girl dies after contracting brain-eating amoeba while swimming

By Morgan Winsor Container: ABC News Publisher: ABC News Year: 2019 URL: https://abcnews. go.com/US/texas-girl-fights-life-contractingbrain-eating-amoeba/story?id=65635421 The Most Horrible Parasite: Brain Eating Amoeba

By In Container: YouTube Year: 2022 URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OPg-ksxZ4Y&t=501s&ab_channel=Kurzges-

agt%E2%80%93InaNutshell

NOVELLA A Story in Installments

by Benjamin Soowhan Jun ’27 For Chandler, Ms. Prichard, and the Lucity Team Pepper will be published across following issues of Lucidity magazine.

R

1 A Delivery

OSA, A CROOKED, OLD WOMAN, SAT

in an equally crooked and old rocking chair, covered in feathering, fluffy blankets. Her room was generally dusty but comfortable. Time had gradually worn her skin into pale, papery parchment, inscribing the story of a lifetime on her wrinkled face along the smile lines that littered the edge of her eyes, the calluses on her hands, formed by years of repetitive housework, her limbs knobbly and miniature. She swung back and forth very slowly—the chair made a small squeaking noise each time she swung back, but Rosa seemingly wasn’t bothered by that.

She was frowning at an ancient television, struggling to take in the stream of unintelligible information that was coming through.

She didn’t understand exactly what the show was about, and all the people were talking too quickly.

There was a simple, dusty wooden frame on top of the television. It had, in fact, collected years’ worth of dust, and the fading picture inside was almost entirely concealed in fuzzy grey. It was a picture of an old manhis crinkled eyes were warm and seemed to be gazing through the decaying paper and dusty glass, at the old woman. She didn’t seem to notice.

Rosa abruptly stopped rocking and hobbled out of her chair with considerable vigour for a woman her age. Leaving the television on, she shuffled towards the kitchen.

The kitchen smelled strongly of tomato sauce—that was pretty much all she ever cooked. In fact, it was pretty much all she ever had to eat. She had a stove, which lit up with actual fire, purring quietly and producing tiny blue flames that formed a ring when a small plastic knob was turned. Such stoves were very uncommon now- most people used edible 3D printers instead. She didn’t like those printers. Their voices were too artificially cheerful—and she found it disturbing when they randomly started talking to her. She had tried conversing with one, but its replies were strangely inhuman, and talking to it made her even more conscious of her solitary lifestyle. Kay, her daughter, had once tried to get her to use one of those-

but she secretly unplugged it and dumped it in a cellar where it would never be seen again. She liked her sturdy stove better and was not going to give it up anytime soon.

It didn’t take long for the stove to start bubbling with a wonderful, orange broth.

Rosa stood next to the battered pot, stirring the sauce steadily, not once letting her grip on the soup spoon loosen. Her mind was wandering, recalling memories of Zoe, her granddaughter. Rosa could barely recall the last time Kay had brought her over- the visits were often too short—but her laughter was still rang clear and bright in Rosa’s mind.

A metallic ring jerked Rosa out of her trance. It was the doorbell. Abandoning the soup, Rosa hurried over to the door. Kay said she would bring Zoe over sometimeshe had an important business meeting, and couldn’t look after her. Could she have decided to come early?

Alas, the visitor was just the deliveryman.

“Mrs Craig?” the oversized and somewhat awkward wheeled machine asked in the monotonous voice of cheap transport robots.

“Yes?” Rosa replied.

“This is a delivery from Kay Brooks.” the robot said. After a pause, it produced a huge, poorly packed cardboard box with “Pepper 2.0” written on it in fancy letters.

The box was moved indoors at a painstaking speed, but Rosa didn’t mind things being slow. It just meant that she would have a better chance of grasping what was happening. The robot dragged the box into a room.

Rosa followed. The robot unpacked the box, revealing a large, round, plastic humanoid figure with ‘PEPPER’ written across its chest. A black disk was produced from the bottom of the box, which had a long cord attached to it, which the robot plugged into one of the sockets. Once this was done, the robot wheeled itself out of the house and left without ever acknowledging Rosa or saying goodbye. Rosa waved anyway.

Muttering under her breath about how rude the transport robot had been, Rosa went for a closer look at the newcomer. It looked a lot like one of the dolls she used to Issue 9 2024, Science and People 25

NOVELLA have as a young girl- with large eyes and a round body. Suddenly, the robot’s eyes lit up, startling Rosa. It slowly rotated its head until its blank eyes met Rosa’s.

“Your Pepper is not up to date,” said the robot. “For best performance, update Pepper to the most recent version.

Would you like to—” “No,” Rosa said flatly. She was used to this kind of dialogue from the printers- their suggestions were never to be accepted.

“Are you sure? For best performance-” “No!” Rosa said, slightly annoyed.

The figure was quiet for a moment, then went limp. This made Rosa feel a little guilty for offending the robot, but she wasn’t about to show it. A small red circle appeared on the left side of its chest, with “5% charged” written in the centre.

Rosa returned to her rocking chair, having completely forgotten about her soup, and went back to staring at the television. The programme had changed, but Rosa hardly noticed. It was some time before it dawned on her that the soup would have been spoiled by now. She hurried over to the kitchen, to be greeted by the sight of the robot stirring the soup. It looked down at Rosa and smiled. This was a surprise—the robot actually smiled. Rosa never knew that robots could smile—but she wasn’t about to show that, either.

“You are just on time,” said the robot. “The soup is finished.”

Rosa walked up to the pot- the soup appeared to be in surprisingly good condition.

“Who are you?” Rosa asked, half-expecting the robot to ramble out nonsense about its module and terms of service.

Instead, the robot peered down at the tiny lady and said, “My name’s Pepper.”

Rosa looked at Pepper suspiciously but decided to taste the soup first. Pepper looked expectant (somehow, it managed to look expectant. Rosa never knew that robots could do that either). Rosa took a sip—and couldn’t help a smile spreading across her face.

“Bravo, Pepper,” she said, clapping Pepper on his shoulder.

Pepper smiled.

“What’s your name?” Pepper asked. Rosa stared hard into the robot’s eyes, squinting slightly. She paused, then decided that she liked this robot.

“R

2 Rosa

OSA,” SHE SAID, LETTING THE TIP OF HER LIPS

twitch up a bit. The old lady abruptly turned around and started walking away. When Pepper didn’t follow, she turned around and beckoned him (for Rosa had decided that Pepper was a ‘he’ rather than an ‘it’) over. “If you’re going to help, I might as well teach you,” Rosa said.

Pepper obediently followed the old lady.

Rosa showed Pepper where the eggs and the flour were.

She then showed him how to make and knead dough, how to cut it into even threads, how long to let it dry, how to cook it, and everything about pasta she had acquired over the years of solitary cooking. Pepper listened intently and learnt quickly. Rosa realised that Pepper could be much more helpful than she thought.

It didn’t take long before Rosa dished the pasta out on her favourite plates, some of them chipped slightly, most bearing 26 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

marks of age, but all polished to the point where they shone.

She doubtfully offered Pepper some, which he politely refused.

“No thank you—I cannot eat food,” he said.

Instead, Pepper sat across from her on a stool as Rosa sat on her rocking chair to eat the pasta and listened to her talking about old memories of when Zoe was a baby. Rosa hadn’t talked like this to anyone for a long time- she was alone in the house for the majority of the day. Pepper was a great listener- he leaned in, smiled at the appropriate moments, and made all the right comments.

After a while, there came a moment when Rosa had exhausted her stash of memories, and a comfortable silence settled between them, interrupted by the occasional clink of cutlery. Pepper entertained himself by looking around the room.

“Who is that?” Pepper asked, pointing at the old photo on top of the television.

Rosa looked up at the photo. Her smile faded slightly. She didn’t respond for a while.

“Michael,” Rosa said at last. “My husband.”

Pepper glanced at Rosa expectantly. “Left me seven years ago,” Rosa continued, setting her fork down on her half-eaten pasta. “And I’ve been living here alone ever since.”

It took Pepper a moment to register this information- then he made an appropriate response of lowering his gaze and looking generally sad.

“I am sorry,” Pepper said.

“No.” Rosa said flatly. “Don’t be. I thank you, actually.”

Rosa looked back at the picture, more firmly than before. “It’s better once I say it out loud.”

Pepper retired to the room where he was unboxed for the night. He could not plug himself in, as the sockets were far higher than they usually were in modern apartments. Besides, the sockets themselves were ancient, with three tiny slits placed on awkward angles. Pepper’s clumsy fingers, designed for less delicate tasks, were unable to fit the pieces of metal in the right place.

Rosa helped Pepper connect to the socket. The circle on his chest had ‘20%’ written on it now, and a small thunderbolt icon appeared next to it, indicating that Pepper was being charged. Bidding him goodnight, Rosa retreated to her own bedroom and almost immediately drifted off to a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

3 Pepper

R

OSA WOKE TO THE SOUND OF PEPPER DOING THE

dishes. The clock in her bedroom had long stopped working, but Rosa knew that it was early in the morning. She got off the bed and went through her normal morning routine of brushing her teeth and washing her face (with her own hands, using an ancient bar of soap that was about as hard as flint and never seemed to wear away). She was

greeted by the sight of Pepper drying the last of the dishes with a towel and placing it on top of a very neat stack of practically polished plates.

After making groggy monosyllabic greetings to the busy robot, which were met with cheerful remarks, Rosa returned to her rocking chair, and was about to begin another session of rocking and staring at the television (which was off.

Rosa would sometimes sit and stare at the television without turning it on—that didn’t really make much of a difference), when there came a loud clattering sound, and a meek “oh dear,” from Pepper.

“What was that?” Rosa more closely shouted than asked.

“Nothing,” said Pepper, sounding somewhat shaken. Rosa heaved herself out of her chair and walked into the kitchen.

Pepper was brooding over a pile of plates, some of which were broken. Pepper had already managed to re-stack some of the plates into a pile, carefully fitting the shards together in an attempt to restore the plates to their former glory. Rosa shot a disdainful glance at Pepper, but the sight of his bulk crouching over plates that looked like a child’s playthings in his hands, trying to pick off broken pieces was too amusing for her to keep frowning. Rosa led a very troubled Pepper to the cellar, where the broomsticks were, and showed him how to clean the shards up, how to make sure there weren’t any pieces that escaped their search, and how to take the plates and make sure that they didn’t have any last pieces remaining on them. And for the first time in years, Rosa tried to hide a grin as Pepper trailed behind her timidly, trying to see if she was upset.

Days passed like this—Pepper became increasingly skilful at housework, and Rosa spent a growing portion of her day with Pepper. Pepper moved a small stool next to Rosa’s rocking chair, where he could explain the television shows to Rosa. Rosa would often laugh at Pepper’s comments about the characters. It was Wednesday when Rosa received the call.

Pepper was the one who got to the phone first, and handed it over to Rosa saying that it was Kay. “Hello?” Rosa said eagerly.

“Hi, Mom- mind if I just stop by and drop Zoe? I’m kind of in a rush somewhere.” Kay’s voice, which sounded metallic coming from the telephone, rattled the words out with such speed that Rosa had trouble catching everything she said.

Rosa barely had time to respond before Kay hung up for a business meeting. Rosa replaced the phone on the table, and told Pepper that Kay was going to drop Zoe by. Pepper seemed pleased that he would be seeing Zoe. It didn’t take long for Kay to arrive. Rosa could hardly recognise Zoe. First of all she was far taller than Rosa remembered, and she was wearing clothes that were painful to look at, splattered with shapes and colours jumbled together in a haphazard mess. Kay was in a slightly casual version of a suit and was wearing thick spectacles that Rosa had never seen before.

“If you want to stop by for pasta, I have some ready-” Rosa started as Kay began to herd Zoe into the house, through the battered door. Kay smiled the kind of smile that was closer to a squint and almost seemed condescending.

“Sorry, the meeting’s going to be in an hour, and I can’t be late.”

Rosa was about to protest, but even as she said this, Kay was slowly drifting away from her, and soon turned back completely and whizzed away on her hoverboard, making a soft whirring sound. She didn’t look back.

Rosa waved anyway.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 27

GIAN 28 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

S

of the

DEEP WHALES

What do humans know about Earth’s most fascinating sea creature?

By Aiden Jaebaek Lee ’28

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 29

WHALES

WE HAVE KNOWN WHALES TO BE HIGHLY SOCIABLE CREA-

tures. Scientists have researched humpback whales, which are known to be particularly highly socialised. Humpbacks are animals that may be even more socialised than we humans ever comprehended. And all this begins with communication. Humpbacks use vocalisations that travel over 10,000 miles in the ocean. They communicate in sound frequencies between 30 Hertz (Hz) to about 8,000 Hz (8 kHz). Humans can only hear part of the humpback’s songs.

We aren’t able to hear the lowest of the whale frequencies.

Humans can only hear low frequency sounds starting at about 100 Hz. Currently, researchers use tools like satellite tracking, aerial surveys, sightings, and listening for humpback vocalisations by dropping individual underwater microphones (hydrophones) to track whales. However, when these skills were not developed, scientists used Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) to listen to the humpback’s songs.

DAS involves scientists listening to whales using existing underwater fibre optic cables that lay on the ocean floor.

A laser pulse is sent from a shore station through a fibre optic cable by an interrogator. The fibre has evenly spaced nodes on it, called defects. Underwater sounds cause the defects in the fibre to be slightly displaced, which delays the backscatter (the signal back to the interrogator), which then interprets the time delay as a strain on the fibre. That in turn can be interpreted as acoustic data, enabling scientists to map the distinctive melodies of the humpback.

CLICKS ARE BELIEVED to be used for navigation and identifying physical surroundings. When sound waves from clicks bounce off of an object, they return to the whale, allowing the whale to identify the shape of the object. Clicks can even help to differentiate between friendly creatures and predators. For example, sperm whales have

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WHALES

an advanced way of clicking, enabled by its hypertrophied nose. The sperm whale’s large nose—so distinctive that its species name­, macrocephalus, means “large head”—generates high-pitched clicks for long-range travel, also known as echolocation. The clicks bounce off underwater objects and can detect the objects’ size, shape and distance from the whale. This can help sperm whales find big predators.

However, it remains a conundrum how this curiously shaped apex predator catches its prey. Clicks have also been observed during social interactions, suggesting they may also have a communicative function.

Whistles and pulsed calls are used during social activities.

Pulsed calls are more frequent and sound like squeaks, screams, and squawks to the human ear. Differing vocal “dialects” have been found to exist between different pods 32 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

within the same whale population. This is most likely so that whales can differentiate between whales within their pods and strangers.

HIGHLY SOCIABLE CREATURES WHALES ALSO USE their tails and fins to make loud slapping noises on the surface of the water to communicate nonverbally. The sound can be heard for hundreds of metres below the ocean surface because sound waves travel faster in water than air. Sounds may be a warning sign

of aggression or a tool to scare schools of fish together, making them easier meals.

Whales sometimes splash their tails on the surface of the water with aggression. Particularly big tail splashes like these are typically exhibitions of fury and stress, but in some cases they can also show excitement.

Whales’ ranging calls are believed to be used for navigation, identifying physical surroundings, and communicating. They use calls to talk and show emotions just like humankind. Whales show happiness, aggression, anger and many other emotions using different vocal pitches and social activities. Whales can be known to

Humpback whales can use their powerful tail fins to launch themselves out of the water. This is called breaching.

While many other whale species breach, humpback whales seem to do so more frequently.

have the most advanced communications out of all animal species living on planet Earth.

Works Cited North, Journey. “Humpback Whale Migration.” Journey North, https://journeynorth.org/tm/hwhale/SingingHumpback.html.

GmbH, AP Sensing. “Das / DVS (Distributed Acoustic / Vibration Sensing).” AP Sensing, https://www.apsensing.com/technology/ distributed-acoustic-sensing-das-dvs.

“Whales, Dolphins and Sound.” DCCEEW, https://www.dcceew. gov.au/environment/marine/marine-species/cetaceans/whaledolphins-sound.

Whale Facts. “How Do Whales Communicate?” Whale Facts, 21 July 2016, https://www.whalefacts.org/how-do-whales-communicate/.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 33

A compelling case for Homo Crustacea

By Jayden Junseok Lee ’27

34 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

OF CRABS AND MEN

T

THERE IS ONLY ONE STEP, AND IT IS CRAB.

Hello everyone, before we dive into the world of crustaceans and crab carcasses, I would like to ask you a question: Are you currently a crab? If the answer is yes, please do kindly remove yourself from this text, as this article contains material and vocabulary that may be offensive to any crustacean reading this (Including but not limited to: Butter, Maryland, crabby, and the use of the word “crabby” in various crab-related puns). Now, even if you are not currently a crab, today, I will be showing you why that may not be the case for much longer.

START Hermit Crab Peasant Crab Farmer Crab Merchant Crab Nobleman Crab King Crab

I’M SURE YOU’VE all eaten a crustacean at least once in your lifetime. Whether it be with butter, with lemon, or maybe both, you might have noticed that some crabs have different shaped shells that don’t look like the shape of a “conventional” crab. That’s because not all crab-looking crustaceans are “true” crabs.

But I’m sure all of you are thinking: “What are true crabs?” and also “Why are you making subjectively based assumptions about what I’m currently thinking?”. Well, I’m glad you asked. (“I didn’t”).

A lot of the crabs we know and love often aren’t what we call True Crabs™. True Crabs, often known as Brachyura, are a group of crustaceans with very short, almost invisible

tails, and small abdomens. All true crabs have a pair of pincers and 4 pairs of legs, totalling 10 appendages. One example of a fake crab is the well known King Crab, which has only 8 appendages and a misleading name.

The king crab is actually a descendant of a type of hermit crab, which is quite a big step up in the crab hierarchy.

NOT ALL CRAB-LOOKING CRUSTACEANS ARE TRUE CRABS The same goes for all hermit crabs. While they might have “crab” in their name, one thing they also have is a roof over their head, which isn’t the case for true crabs (and also 150 million of the global population*). Although hermit crabs do have 10 legs like true crabs, the problem is that they have much softer exoskeletons than the ones of their crustacean brethren. This may be good for fitting into new homes, but not very good for surviving outside of them.

Although the hairy stone crab might look like something that’s come from the depths of Satan’s fiery realm of eternal damnation, it’s actually very slow and feeds only on small oysters and clams. The only reason it looks like hellspawn is because it needs that hair to camouflage itself against the rocks. The biologists call this carcinization as well, but to be completely honest, I’m not really surprised that this one isn’t a true crab.

BUT WHY DOES this happen? Well, most zoologists think that there’s a hidden evolutionary advantage to this crab shape due to the fact that many of these crustaceans live in a similar environment of pressure, food, and temperature. This pressures them into turning into the best shape for these environments, which turns out to be the crab.

We don’t really know yet why this crustacean form is the ultimate form of oceanic life currently, and it probably isn’t. There really is no final or ultimate form of evolution, just like there’s never been a final season of Grey’s Anatomy. It just keeps evolving and changing, just like how our environment changes all around us. And as much as I hate to end on a very sentimental and morally sound note, maybe there is something that we can take away from these decapods, and that is that we can always change for the better. *Chamie, Joseph (2017-07-13). “As Cities Grow, So do the Numbers of Homeless”. Yale University.

Archived from the original on 2017-07-21.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 35

GOING GREEN

VEGETABLE

OIL

THE KEY TO CLEAN FUEL JUST MAY COME FROM YOUR KITCHEN PANTRY

BY ANGELA KYURIM KIM ’26

A SUPERMARKET AISLE OF CONDIMENTS IN KYIV, UKRAINE (VOLKOVA, 2018)

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Issue 9 2024, Science and People 37

GOING GREEN

In the movie Back to the Future, Doc Brown whisks Marty away using a car that runs on banana peels and leftover beer.

ORDINARY PEOPLE MIGHT NOT HAVE TAKEN THIS SCENE

seriously 30 years ago, but now there are people that actually use vegetable oil in their own cars. Some even have a contract with a restaurant to pick up the vegetable oil weekly and put it into their car, which is mutually beneficial as the restaurant can get free cleaning service and the car owners can get free and environmentally friendly oil. Vegetable oil can be used in diesel cars if it is slightly modified, and that modification is convenient enough that normal people can do it by themselves. It is surprisingly effective, renewable, and thus more environmentally sustainable than gasoline or typical diesel. One of the most dire problems in the 21st century is global warming: Earth is becoming sicker as technology gets better. While it is hard to prioritize one thing over another, converting to vegetable oil might become the first step in solving this big dilemma, as it is undeniable that gasoline cars contribute a great deal to climate change.

Vegetable oil is a rising source of fuel in cars with diesel engines. There are two types: pure plant oil (PPO) and straight vegetable oil (SVO). Either can be used in diesel engines with a few modifications to ensure that the engine doesn’t get clogged. There are a few ways of preventing cloggings. First, we could mix the vegetable oil with some conventional fuels such as petroleum diesel. This may decrease the level of viscosity of the fuel in the engine and lessen the clogging problem, but wouldn’t thoroughly get rid of it. An alternative is a two-tank system that uses petroleum diesel only when starting and shutting down the engine, allowing you to run on less viscous vegetable oil.

In fact, there are two-tank conversion kits that are most widely used and most recommended around the world.

38 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

Two-Tank Conversion As can be inferred from its name, to run a car with a two-tank system, there should be an additional tank for the vegetable oil installed in the car. The essential goal here is to heat the fuel, so installations of tee fitting, hoses, and connectors are needed to circulate heat and keep the fuel hot from the tank to the engine.

Furthermore, valves and switches are needed to ensure that the beginning and the end of the engine running is done by diesel fuel instead of vegetable oil. The start with diesel fuel will heat up the engine effectively and provide the optimum condition in which vegetable oil can work, and at the end, it will cleanse the vents and filter in the car from any leftover vegetable oil that might remain. This prevents potential clogging due to vegetable oil, especially on cold days when it could easily solidify.

A GAS STATION IN AIX-LES-BAINES. IT IS ONE OF MORE THAN 11,100 SUCH STATIONS THAT ARE OPERATIONAL IN FRANCE. (CLÉMENT, 2021)

How To? To operate a vehicle with a two-tank system, you must initially start the vehicle on diesel fuel that is in one tank until the engine and the vegetable oil are warmed up. After about five to ten minutes, you may switch the vehicle to run on vegetable oil until it needs to be shut down. When it is switched to diesel fuel at the end, the vegetable oil in the fuel lines would be purged and the unused oil would flow back into the tank that stores vegetable oil.

This conversion kit is readily available globally, and can be installed by an individual with minimal mechanical abilities. Before purchasing the conversion kit, it is a good idea to check if your diesel can be converted, as there are

drum or compromise with a restaurant for the used vegetable oil. Oil from restaurants is adequate but there may be more work needed to make it thoroughly usable, as many of them most likely have food particles in it. This is generally not recommended because getting rid of small food particles that don’t get picked up by filtration is an arduous task, and oil that possibly contains water could seriously damage the engine. However, if you do want to get your oil supply from restaurants, it might be a good idea to go to Japanese or Chinese restaurants because their way of cooking provides the cleanest leftover oil.

Pros and Cons The most compelling component of vegetable oil is that it is a renewable source of energy that is abundantly available in the world and also doesn’t pollute the earth as much as petrol or diesel engines do, as they don’t contain sulfur.

In fact, harmful emissions are reduced to up to 60% if you use vegetable oil, compared to petro-diesel. They can also be produced locally, even in your household, reducing the dependence on foreign oil for some countries and allowing citizens to be liberated from the constantly fluctuating oil prices.

On the other hand, many people are discouraged from using vegetable oil in their cars because of the cost involved in the modification of the engine, which ranges from $1000 to $3000. Furthermore, even when the necessary precautions are taken, vegetable oil can negatively impact the performance of the engine, which has caused some users to complain about the difficulties. The use of vegetable oil is only used by a small group of people that eagerly promotes the preservation of the environment. Because of the relatively undeveloped technology and low demand, it seems unlikely that this fuel will be provided commercially.

This means that there would be no infrastructure such as gas stations that offer vegetable oil when you are traveling long distance.

Ideally, more people should strive to make use of vegetable oil to benefit local businesses and the environment.

However, it is undeniable that there are a few significant drawbacks that prevent the majority from using it. Therefore, it would be most effective if well-known or public organizations could advocate for the use of vegetable oil and call for more research and extensive studies to improve the quality of vegetable oil in diesel cars. While it is unrealistic to convert all cars to use vegetable oil, just persuading a few people from each town will make a difference.

Works Cited

few exceptions where the vegetable oil is incompatible with the engine. For example, vehicles with rubber seals are not recommended, as vegetable oil dissolves rubber. Fortunately, diesel cars that are made relatively recently don’t have rubber seals.

After the car is set up, the next step is to secure a reliable source of vegetable oil, whether you purchase a 55-gallon

Chiras, D. (2011) Green Transportation Basics: Vegetable Oil Conversion – Mother Earth News, Mother Earth News – The Original Guide To Living Wisely. Available at: https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-transportation/fuel-efficiency/vegetable-oil-fuel-ze0z11zkon (Accessed: October 30, 2022).

Grabianowski, E. and Hall-Geisler, K. (2008) Can you really use vegetable oil to fuel your car?, HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks. Available at: https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-consumption/vegetable-oil-fuel.htm (Accessed: October 9, 2022).

Mlblevins (2021) Pros and cons of vegetable oil as fuel, Help Save Nature.

Available at: https://helpsavenature.com/pros-cons-of-vegetable-oil-asfuel (Accessed: October 30, 2022).

Parr, S. (2006) Vegetable Oil Two Tank Conversion, REUKcouk. The Chipfatflyer. Available at: http://www.reuk.co.uk/wordpress/biomass/vegetable-oil-two-tank-conversion/ (Accessed: October 30, 2022).

Straight vegetable oil as a diesel fuel? - energy (no date). US Department of Energy. Available at: https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/straight_ vegetable_oil_as_diesel_fuel.pdf (Accessed: October 30, 2022).

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 39

CALCULUS

40 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2023

What is and Euler’s Identity?

By Aiden Bumgyu Kim ’28

ULER’S IDENTITY IS PROBABLY THE MOST FA-

mous equation in mathematics. It’s famous because of its specialty that the two most important irrational numbers, е and π, form a very neat integer with i, -1. Many people are familiar with π and i, but not really with e. However, e is the most important number in mathematics, regardless of the field. As we go deeper inside about e and learn how it makes mathematicians’ life easier, you will experience being fascinated by a number. If you just simply know a very basic concept of differentiation, you’re set to read what I’m about to discuss.

So, what exactly is e? If we express e in equation, it is:

which means that if we multiply a number that is infinitely close to 1 by itself infinite times…Knock it off. This is not what we want, right? Let’s start with why we have e and derive the result above step-by-step.

Why do we have e? e is an initial letter of ‘exponent’. As we can know from the origin of its name, we have e to make differentiation (and summation) of the exponential function more convenient. e is also a base of the exponential function, ex, which is the derivative of itself.

Let’s first prove the fact that the exponential function with a base of e is the derivative of itself. The derivative of ex will be:

Issue 9 2023, nlcslucidity.com 41

CALCULUS

If we simplify, this becomes:

E Euler

Since we want this to be ex,

and

Therefore, we can power both sides to 1/h and prove: Euler

Wow, we just drew out e’s numerical definition, how nice.

However, this is not it. How could this help us to differentiate/ summate exponential functions? From the proof above, we found out that simplification of the exponential function kx will give:

E Leonhard Euler Swiss mathematician who gave the current definition of the constant e, the base of the natural logarithm, now known as Euler's number

Then we’ll substitute kh - 1 with any variable. Let’s just say it’s a. h k will then be +1 and we will be able to define h again as logk(a + 1).

This allows us to rewrite the formula above to:

Here, can be replaced with , because will make kh equal to 0 and we want a + 1 to be kh + 1, which is 1. So the formula changes to:

And this, again, changes to:

T Taylor

And the denominator is processed to:

42 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2023

T

Euler’s Formula eix = cos x + isin x is a formula that closes the gap between exponential functions and trigonometric functions and also between real numbers and imaginary numbers. Euler’s formula is quite straightforward when we use the concept of the Taylor series. It’s not a hard concept (if we know how to differentiate), but since explaining it could make this writing longer, let’s try to prove Euler’s formula without it. To prove that eix = cos x + isin x, we can just simply prove that f(x) = e-ix(cos x + isin x) is always 1. Let’s differentiate f(x) to see if it’s a constant function. The derivative will be:

Taylor

Seems very familiar, right? Yes, the denominator is logk(e)! And by this, we can find the formula kx · loge(k), derivative of exponential function kx (clapping noises). Since this is super important and often used, we call loge the natural logarithm, or ln.

Now we know the basic concepts of e. Let me show you some fascinating facts related to what we’ve seen. I’ll introduce… Euler’s formula!

Brook Taylor English mathematician best known for inventing integration by parts and the celebrated formula now known as Taylor's expansion.

f'(x) = -ie-ix(cos x + isin x) + e-ix(-sin x + icos x) = 0 Colin Maclaurin Scottish mathematician who contributed to geometry and algebra. The Maclaurin series, a special case of the Taylor series, is named after him.

Since the derivative of this function is 0, the function f(x) is a constant function. Next, we can just put a random number in x.

Since 0 makes our life easier in maths, we’ll substitute 0 for x.

Now it’s quite obvious that f(x) will always have a value of 1, yay!

Here, you might want to argue that this solution basically proceeded while knowing the result already and therefore this can’t be the inducement of the formula while it can be the proof. Well, as mentioned above, we need to know about Taylor Series or Maclaurin Series, which will basically just make this article’s length insane. So let’s just acknowledge that there’s an existing inducement of the formula and skip being so uncomfortable. After this, we can now see something very interesting (as it is already).

M Maclaurin

eix = cos x + isin x We’ve seen this kind of thing before, right? Yes, it looks very similar, even overlaps with eiπ = -1. Just substitute π for x and then you’ll get this equation.

Now we’ve just learned about the most beautiful mathematical equation in the world. Just take a look at the equation again. Isn’t it fascinating? Mathematics is not a difficult nor boring subject.

Studying genuine mathematics is rather interesting, enchanting, and mostly, FUN. Maclaurin

M

the bigness of cannon is skilful, but i have seen death’s clever enormous voice which hides in a fragility of poppies. . . .

L i say that sometimes on these long talkative animals are laid fists of huger silence.

I have seen all the silence filled with vivid noiseless boys at Roupy i have seen between barrages,

G

G

W

L

G

W

a poem by e. e. cummings

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German polymath who, independent of contemporary Isaac Newton, developed the present-day notion for the differential and integral calculus.

G

[the bigness of cannon]

the night utter ripe unspeaking girls.

Issue 9 2023, nlcslucidity.com 43

44 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

TOWER OF BABEL

A STEP TOWARDS

DIVINITY

Hydras, mole rats, and lobsters.

What unnatural keyholes of immortality do they fit through?

By Jay Jaehee Kim ’27

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 45

TOWER OF BABEL

W WHAT IS THE DEFINING CHARACTER-

istic of a divine entity? Omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience? Considering the many deities of various mythologies, the quality of being immortal is ubiquitous, to the point where a god is not truly a god without it. These ever-living beings enjoy the gift of endless life, unconstrained by the leash of death that most organisms are bound by.

Humans have endeavoured to gain immortality themselves, but failed to do so on multiple occasions. Humans are sentenced to death the moment they are conceived, and thus are physically incapable of becoming immortal.

But…What if that wasn’t the case? Certain organisms do have the ability to live eternal lives, stubbornly refusing to leave the world until they are killed by their natural predators or perish from disease. An example that will be familiar to all would be the common lobster. These crustaceans can repair damaged DNA thanks to an enzyme they secrete in the various cells of their body, enabling them to regenerate lost

youth indefinitely (Berthold, 2018).

So, could humans become immortal too? We, humans, are a species far superior than the bottom-feeding species of crustaceans. If immortality could be achieved by mere lobsters, humans could as well. Being able to live forever, indulging in the luxuries provided by infinite time that were impossible before the achievement of immortality, sounds like a life anyone would want.

By now you would be asking if it is possible to actualize this dream of becoming immortal. All the answers will be unveiled in this article.

What animals have achieved immortality?

As mentioned earlier, certain species of animals have achieved the state of immortality. Lobsters are only one of the few that have. The Hydra, for one, is another species that has attained immortality.

Now, when I say “the Hydra”, it is not the great mythical serpent of Greek legends so famous for its battle with Hercules. Rather, it is a small freshwater organism. Despite the implication of its name, the hydra is tiny; most specimens are shorter than 20 millimetres. It did get its name for a legitimate reason, though. When it was first discovered, scientists observed that when a bodily protrusion was severed, it would regenerate (Fujisawa, 2003). This attribute was what gave it its name.

Along with its regenerative properties, hydras also don’t age. Unless external factors are involved, hydra specimens never perish in labo, living

for indefinite periods of time. Outside of the lab, though, hydra are liable to predation from other organisms and starvation and thus can die (Pester, 2021).

OMNIPRESENCE, OMNIPOTENCE, OMNISCIENCE

The hydra’s unusual ability to regenerate parts of its body makes the creatures biologically immortal.

46 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

Scientists, for years, have been trying to locate the source of the hydra’s almost mystic powers, and have recently identified more than 27,000 genetic factors which contribute to the extreme regenerative abilities of hydras. Of those factors, the longevity of their stem cells is a primary reason. Stem cells are enormously versatile cells which are capable of transforming into any cell in an organism’s body. All multicellular organisms require stem cells to exist. Usually, in humans, stem cells are finite and

these animals for 30+ years, and has observed the rodents’ mystical powers herself. Her studies showed that naked mole rats have very active DNA repair which reduces deterioration with age (Kupferschmidt, 2018).

But because of how the majority of the animals at the lab were removed before reaching the age of 15, some say that the data is insufficient and not credible. This argument is valid in point, as the information gathered by Buffenstein is not enough to draw conclusions just yet.

Naked mole rats rarely get cancer, are resistant to some types of pain, and can survive up to 18 minutes without oxygen. Adult naked mole rats have a daily chance of dying of about one in 10,000.

(Kupperschmidt, 2018)

lose their properties after an extended amount of time. The hydra possess these cells as well, but unlike other species such as us, their stem cells can regenerate themselves forever. So, if we, humans, were to achieve biological immortality, it would be through the extension of our stem cells longevity, right? Not quite. The discoverer of hydra’s lack of ageing, David Martínez, said that the same type of rejuvenation as hydras would be impossible for us (Weisberger, 2021). According to him, unlike humans, complex organs are absent in hydras, meaning that it is more difficult for humans to constantly regenerate lost or damaged organs and tissue. Additionally, he stated

that humans cannot discard old cells easily like hydras and gave neurons as examples, saying that if the human body were to rid itself of ageing cells we would not be able to remember anything.

Then, are there any other animals we could research in order to achieve immortality? Well, there is the naked mole rat.

A mammal with closer genetic ties to the human race than the hydra, the naked mole rat is a hideous creature native to the African continent and is capable of living for over 15 years.

Now, to many readers, this may seem insignificant. Understandable as, compared to the lifespan of humans, 15 years is meagre in amount. However, by rodent standards, naked mole rats’ lifetimes are 4 times that of the average rat. This, coupled with the fact that their mortality rate does not increase as they age, is the reason why they may be the key to unlocking the secret to immortality. Scientist Rochelle Buffenstein has collected data on

Biological immortality is impossible—at least, for the moment Biological immortality for the time being appears impossible to achieve.

Even though many animals are immortal, humans are not one of them.

The disparity between humans and hydras is too great to overcome and thus invalidates methods utilised by hydras for humans. Implementation of methods used by naked mole rats to live for relatively extensive lengths of time in humans is prevented by lack of research and information. Technological limitations also prohibit the acquisition of immortality.

With time, some of these impediments could be removed. However, for the time being, it seems as though the thrones of gods are still out of our reach, an insurmountable wall obstructing our path. Slowly but surely, I believe humankind will be able to climb over it, reaching the thrones of the gods—if our species doesn’t go extinct before that.

Works Cited Berthold, E., (2018) ‘The Animals That Can Live Forever.’, Available at www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/ animals-can-live-forever. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.

“Hydra” Britannica, 20 Sept. 2020, www. britannica.com/animal/Hydra-hydrozoan-genus. (Accessed 12 Feb. 2023).

Kupferschmidt, K., (2018) ‘Naked mole rats defy the biological law of Aging’ Available at https://www.science.org/ content/article/naked-mole-rats-defy-biological-law-aging (Accessed: February 14, 2023).

Weisberger, M. (2021) “Here’s the Secret to How “Immortal” Hydras Regrow Severed Heads.” Available at www.livescience.com/ how-hydras-regrow-heads-map.

(Accessed 11 Feb. 2023).

Pester, P. (2021) “Will Humans Ever Be Immortal?” Available at www.livescience. com/could-humans-be-immortal#:~:text=%22It. (Accessed 11 Feb. 2023).

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 47

COVID-19

THE DRUG OF FALSE HOPES THEY HOPED. THEY BELIEVED. IVERMECTIN LOOKED LIKE THE SOLUTION.

BY REINA JIYIN CHOI ’27

48 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2023

JEFFERY SMITH, AN ORDINARY MAN WHO LIVES IN WESTCHESTER TOWN-

ship, Ohio, started to lose his ability to taste or smell. Later on, he even had difficulty breathing. Eventually, Jeffery Smith was diagnosed with COVID-19. 6 days later, he was quarantined at the local hospital. In August, he was put on a ventilator. Julie Smith, Jeffery’s wife, was always together with her husband. Jeffery’s condition worsened, and Julie became desperate to save her husband. This is when she discovered the existence of the wonder drug, ivermectin, and an article about other COVID patients’ miraculous recovery after using the drug. She strongly believed that ivermectin will also help Jeffery’s recovery. Millions of individuals worldwide were in Julie’s shoes at the same moment. They were wishing that ivermectin could cure their loved ones.

As the pandemic raged through the globe in early 2020, demand for medical equipment to cure COVID caused shortages of key medications such as anaesthetics and painkillers. To make matters worse, there weren’t any FDA-approved treatments or preventative measures for COVID. The situation in ICUs worsened by the day, and millions of patients in hospitals writhed in pain. This was when doctors like Pierre Kory started to search for alternatives. Pierre Kory is a critical care physician who was working in the ICU at a hospital in Wisconsin. As he watched his patients suffer in such agony, Kory thought about different drugs and wanted to find one that could help the patients. While he was searching for the drug, ivermectin caught his attention. Ivermectin was originally a medication for treating parasitic diseases including onchocerciasis, helminthiases, and scabies, and was called a “wonder drug” since it has the ability to treat a wide range of parasitic diseases. The more Kory looked into ivermectin, the more fascinating it became. Kory found various past lab studies about ivermectin— studies that showed that ivermectin might kill viruses inside human bodies or even studies that said ivermectin can destroy coronavirus.

AFTER READING THE Australiaian study that claimed ivermectin could destroy coronavirus, Kory started to scrutinize the drug. In November 2020, a paper written by Ahmed Elgazzar and 5 other people, came out from Egypt. The study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of ivermectin in treating mild or moderate and severe COVID-19 infections. The result of the study was very positive and reached the conclusion of the early addition of ivermectin to standard care is a very effective drug for COVID-19 patients

(Elgazzar et al., 2020). “Elgazzar was like this really powerful result. It looked really good because it was randomized. It was relatively large and it had this massive magnitude of mortality”, said Kory in a podcast (ScienceVs, 2022). After Kory encountered the paper, he also conducted many trials that showed positive results of using ivermectin as COVID-19 treatment (Kory et al., 2021).

When ivermectin started to become more commonly used by doctors for COVID-19, a game changer entered the debate; an argument against ivermectin’s efficacy. The person behind this game-changing argument was Jack Lawrence, a biomedical science student from St George’s University in the United Kingdom, who was then pursuing a master’s degree (Lawrence, 2022).

One day, Lawrence received an assignment from his lecturer to critique the Elgazzar paper. At the time, the Elgazzar paper was significant since it was mentioned in a number of ivermectin review papers and contributed to support of the idea that ivermectin was effective in treating COVID. However, Lawrence was astonished when he first read the paper. The paper was very poorly written, often making errors in grammar or syntax. But as Lawrence read through the paper, he noticed that some fragments were perfectly phrased—in fact, the contrast of quality between the rest of the article and its better fragments made it difficult to believe that they were written by the same person. So, Lawrence started to feel suspicious about this highly-rated paper and began to search deeper into it.

First, Lawrence put some sentences into Google and found out that the well-written sentences from the Elgazzar paper were directly plagiarised. The paper’s entire introduction had been copied from elsewhere.

However, not all of the sentences were exactly word-to-word copied. Some words in the sentences were changed into synonyms like they had been paraphrased with a thesaurus. For example, in the Elgazzar paper, SARS, the severe acute respiratory syndrome, was called the ‘extreme intense respiratory syndrome’, which doesn’t make sense since it is the name of a disease.

(Lawrence et al., 2022) Lawrence described the feeling and thoughts of his discovery in a podcast: “I just cannot believe what I’ve just found. This is like the most insane thing. And then I was like, the problem is like, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

That’s my logic. So I was like, OK, so I mean, plagiarism is bad. More important— is the data legit?” In order to answer that question, Lawrence searched for the raw data of the suspicious paper (ScienceVs, 2022).

Lawrence compared the raw data and the Issue 9 2023, nlcslucidity.com 49

COVID-19 study held by Elgazzar. The first thing he looked at was the people who had mild COVID at the start of the study. In the Elgazzar paper, it said four people who had mild COVID at the start of the study and didn’t get ivermectin died by the end of the trial (Elgazzar et al., 2020). However, the raw data showed something different from the study. The raw data said none of the patients died no matter whether they got ivermectin or not (Lawrence et al., 2022). This implied that the paper that was in the limelight was not just plagiarised, but was blatantly feeding false ideas to its readers.

When Lawrence found a great fraud in the Elgazzar paper, he reached out for some help. A group of people who had been interested in research fraud since before the pandemic joined in order to get to bottom of this mysterious paper. When the team zoomed in on the people who had severe COVID in the study, they noticed that all of the patients seemed to have died on the exact same three dates and they kept repeating. The team eventually realized that the data of a whole block of patients had the same details and had been copied and pasted again and again! Every single detail of the patients were the same; like symptoms, patient initials, and even typos. But the thing that was more shocking than anything else was that the death date of some patients was before the study has even started. The people who had written the Elgazzar paper and conducted the study recruited dead people instead of starting the study with live patients (ibid.). Their discovery soon became the most significant evidence to prove the medical fraud of the great Elgazzar paper.

So, what happened? Lawrence and the team emailed the server that had posted the pre-print of the Elgazzar paper, stating their concerns and the supporting, evidence, requesting that they take the paper down from their servers. Within a few days, the paper was withdrawn from the server. Professor Elgazzar was repeatedly reached out to by the media, but he never responded, making it difficult to determine the motivation behind this wholly incorrect study. Lawrence himself couldn’t believe what had happened. “[T]his was meant to be like a paper for the university and then suddenly it’s turned into like a major international story. You know, like whatever was going to happen was going to be big (ScienceVs, 2022).”

ALTHOUGH THE STUDY “Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic” from Professor Elgazzar and his team was invalid, this doesn’t mean that ivermectin isn’t effective at all for COVID-19 patients. There are still studies that support ivermectin’s efficiency. However, ivermectin is no longer a miraculous drug that magically cures COVID-19 since the remaining studies don’t have the powerful and dramatic results that Elgazzar’s had. Several other studies which also showed the dramatic effect of ivermectin on COVID-19 were also revealed to have serious numerical errors (Goodman, 2021).

The greatest concern with this fake miraculous drug and the following studies is that some patients may avidly believe in it and choose not to receive vaccinations. Patients are likely to believe that the ivermectin that is prescribed by their doctors is effective, and the doctors may also believe this because of highly regarded yet fraudulent studies. Patients’ wrong belief in ivermectin can make them refuse to get vaccinated since they could think they wouldn’t get affected by COVID-19 anymore since they got ivermectin. Whether intentionally created or not, inaccurate COVID-19-related studies impact millions of people, cause confusion, and prevent them from acting in time to save their loved ones from COVID-19.

Works Cited Commissioner, O.of the (2020) Coronavirus (COVID-19) update: Daily Roundup March 30, 2020, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA. Available at: https:// www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-daily-roundup-march-30-2020 (Accessed: March 1, 2023).

Elgazzar, A. et al. (2020) Efficacy and safety of ivermectin for treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 pandemic, Home. Available at: https://www.researchsquare.com/ article/rs-100956/v3 (Accessed: February 22, 2023).

Goodman, R.S.& J. (2021) Ivermectin: How false science created a covid ‘miracle’ drug, BBC News. BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58170809 (Accessed: March 6, 2023).

50 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2023

“AND THEN I WAS LIKE, THE PROBLEM IS WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S FIRE.” —Jack Lawrence, first discoverer of Elgazzar’s fraud

Husband of wife who sued to demand ivermectin has died of covid-19 (2021) The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media.

Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/americas/covid-ivermectin-jeffrey-smith-died-b1932238.html (Accessed: March 6, 2023).

Kory, P. et al. (2021) Review of the emerging evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ivermectin in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19, American journal of therapeutics. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Available at: https://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/ (Accessed: February 22, 2023).

Lawrence, J. (2022) Jack Lawrence, author at GRFTR News, Grftr News. Available at: https:// grftr.news/author/jacklawrence/ (Accessed: February 22, 2023).

Lawrence, J. et al. (2022) Why was a major study on ivermectin for COVID-19 just retracted?, Grftr News. Available at: https://grftr.news/whywas-a-major-study-on-ivermectin-for-covid-19just-retracted/ (Accessed: March 5, 2023).

Vs, S. (2022) Ivermectin: The story of a wonder drug: Science vs, Gimlet. Gimlet. Available at: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/ z3ha7ko/ivermectin-the-story-of-a-wonder-drug (Accessed: February 15, 2023).

GAMING

READY PLAYER

BUG?

would drag the character down.

After applying those forces and programming, the character has everything it needed to move, but it has to interact with numerous objects in the game. We can make objects collide with each other by applying ‘bounding volume’ to them (Serrano, 2016).

By Louisa Yunseo Kim ’26

D

O YOU LIKE PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES? WHAT KIND

do you enjoy? Whatever game it is, I bet it would be your favourite thing to do when bored. But have you ever seen something weird while you are playing? Something like…

Fig. 2. Bounding volumes of collisions (Serrano, 2016)

As a result of applying these boundaries to objects, the game can detect the ‘collision’ between two objects when the distance between them is less than the sum of their radius (CoreofIdea, 2023).

What you can notice here is that the program is not recognising the objects colliding, but assumes it. So sometimes, this system can’t detect the collision when objects are overlapping. Luckily, game developers can predict most of those overlapping objects and fix them. However, when the objects are acting in an ‘unexpected’ way such as objects spawning inside the object, or the overlapping area of the object increasing more than expected, the true nightmare starts. The collision-detecting system that separates the objects and the force that keeps objects stuck together act at the same time, creating a number of bugs.

Fig. 1. Hilarious FIFA15 bug (Critical Hit Gaming, 2014)

A giant football player running around in a weird posture?

It is really hilarious to see these kinds of glitches. Sometimes glitches are just funny, but sometimes they are severe enough to interrupt your gameplay. Even worse, you might even lose the game! So you’ll wonder why those bugs occur during an intense fight with virtual enemies. Bugs especially related physical objects, the main cause of it is mainly a malfunction of the game physics engine. As soon as you learn how the game physics engine works, you’ll probably admire game developers and thank them.

TO MAKE A SINGLE object move, there are many steps to go in a physics engine. We have to apply ‘forces’ to our character. We want our character to be moving, following the law of gravity, acceleration, as well as inertia, but we don’t want it to accelerate forever at the speed of light, right?

We have to give a speed limit to the character, just like cars have speed limitations. Then, to make it more realistic, we can customisecustomize and apply friction to the surface. It could be smooth as glass, or sticky as mud. Now the character is walking around and running at human speed on the ground, but there is something missing. It’s jump! The game without the jump key would be so dull. Adding an upward force while the player is pressing a certain key would make the character jump, and then the gravity that we applied

Fig. 3. Fallout 4 bug door (Critical Hit Gaming, 2014)

Then you might wonder why the game doesn’t just make objects collide when the objects touch each other, instead of giving them volumes and calculating their radius. This is because games can’t apply all real-life physics to the system.

There are a lot of laws to apply, and our poor computer won’t be able to process them. Game developers can fix those bugs as the players discover and report them. However, there is still a limitation of the technology, so if you find any bugs during your game, don’t be so mad. Unless you were on a ranked or competitive game!

Works Cited Serrano, H. (2016) “How does a Physics engine work? An Overview”, found on https://www.haroldserrano.com/blog/how-a-physics-engine-works-an-overview; Accessed on: 20 January 2023.

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 51

CANNIBALISM

What’s Wrong with Eating Humans?

“I

WOULD LIKE A MEDIUM RARE HUMAN

rib steak with a side of minced garlic.”

How bizarre would it be to hear someone order this in a restaurant? Humans tend to feel aversion to cannibalism. This is because we “know” and have been “educated” that cannibalism is ethically wrong. However, there is more than just ethics as to why Homo sapiens should refuse to eat human meat. It is science.

Surprisingly, there is a highly scientific and efficiency-oriented mindset behind why human beings have started to abandon cannibalism.

CONSIDER SYMPTOMS which begin with headaches, joint pain, and slight tremors in the hand. Then consider a patient finding difficulty in walking or talking and the tremor spreading throughout their body. The intensity of these symptoms increases gradually but at a concerning rate. After all these stages come the most horrific, gruesome symptom: laughter. Victims begin to suddenly burst into uncontrollable tears or laughter, without any provocation. At the very last stage, the patients, who have lost muscle control and cannot get up or eat, go through an inevitable death.

This is kuru, a disease that has thrust the Fore people of Papua New Guinea into fear for over a century. Since 1957 kuru has caused more than 2,700 deaths (Alpers, 2005).

The cause for this horrific disease was not a scourge of god or the devil. It was cannibalism.

Fores practised transumption, a ritual of eating deceased relatives. The eaten body parts included the brains of the people who died from kuru and these brains would have contained prions. Normal prions are commonly found on the surface of many cells, unharmful for humans. However, once they become abnormal and turn into deadly misfolded proteins, they form spongy holes in your brain which cause

Yes, it’s against the law and all that.

But why shouldn’t we eat human flesh?

BY JENNIFER JAEWON KANG ’26 prion diseases. They survive in extreme temperatures, even in the cooking environment during transumption. In other words, cannibalism would have been the true reason behind kuru. This provides evidence for the dangers of eating human beings (Mahat and D. Asuncion, 2022).

WHAT WE HAVE to know to understand diseases is that when putting zoonotic diseases (diseases that jump from animals to humans) aside, diseases are specialists. Bacteria, viruses, and fungi that cause infections have evolved and gone through countless mutations over thousands of years to thrive in a particular species. Therefore, in the majority of cases, a disease that is very good at infecting a bat would require multiple mutations to infect a person. However, when the disease is transferred from human to human, that is not the case. They can be transferred immediately, requiring less time.

The risk of getting infected from a pathogen contained in the meat is much higher when eating the same human beings, compared to animals. Why would someone risk their life for a single meal?

WHY WOULD SOMEONE RISK THEIR LIFE FOR A SINGLE MEAL?

52 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

IS HUMAN FLESH worth enough to take these risks? No. Human flesh is simply too malnutritious. Cole (2017) calculated human calories in his studies during the 1940s and 50s, which analysed the protein and fat content within

different human body parts. According to the studies, Cole was able to calculate the amount of calories one could gain from eating meaty human thighs (13,355), heart (651), and brain (2,706). Adding up, he concluded that the edible parts of the human body, excluding skeleton and nerve tissues, contained a total of 98821 calories. This suggests that an average human serving (65g) has approximately 103.6 calories. This amount of calories might seem sufficient, but compared to other animals’ flesh, it’s actually not. An average serving of pork contains 184 calories.

In other words, a cannibal would have had to hunt almost twice as many human beings to obtain the amount of nutrition that a pig can provide. During barbarous times, hunting was a huge risk. It could cause severe injuries that led to incapacitation and death. Therefore, it is likely that human beings naturally ‘abandoned’ cannibalism by learning about its risks that outweigh its nutritious values.

Works Cited Mahat, S. and D. Asuncion R.M..(2022).Kuru Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/

In 1962, a local leader in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea asks Fore men to stop the sorcery that he believes is killing women and children.

The Fore people called the strange disease kuru, which means ‘shivering’ or ‘trembling’. Kuru primarily targeted adult women and children under 8 years old.

Photograph: Courtesy of Shirley Lindenbaum

NBK559103/#article-23958.r3 Lindenbaum, S.(2009). Cannibalism, kuru and anthropology Available at: https://scholar.google.com/schol a r _ l o o k u p ? j o u r n a l = F o l i a + N e u r o p a t h o l . & t i t l e =Cannibalism,+kuru+and+anthropology&author=S.+Lindenbaum&volume=47&publication_ year=2009&pages=138-144&pmid=19618336& ‌M agazine, S. and Katz, B. (n.d.). New Study Fleshes Out the Nutritional Value of Human Meat. [online] Smithsonian Magazine. Available at: https:// www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancientcannibals-did-not-eat-humans-nutrition-study-says180962823/#:~:text=Meaty%20human%20thighs%20 have%2013%2C355. ‌Mole, B. (2017). For cannibals, here’s the caloric content of humans—it’s just meh. [online] Ars Technica.

Available at: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/ counting-calories-of-going-cannibal-on-a-paleo-diethuman-flesh-is-just-meh/#:~:text=By%20rouge%20 estimates%2C%20eating%20 all.

Alpers M.P , (2005). The epidemiology of kuru in the period 1987 to 1995. [online] Department of Health and Aged Care. Available at: https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing. nsf/Content/cda-cdi2904i.htm Cole J, (2017). Assessing the calorific significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic, Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44707‌ Issue 9 2024, Science and People 53

FOURTH ESTATE

54 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

WHY IS THERE NO NEWS ABOUT Dolly happened.

Then quietness.

What’s going on?

By Andy Sooho Cho ’26

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 55

FOURTH ESTATE

The latest news you may have heard about cloning WAS IN 1996, WHEN A SHEEP NAMED

Dolly was successfully cloned. Many people believed that this would herald a new age for science, progressing cloning technology by leaps and bounds.

They thought of the miracles that cloning could bring. Dead people, cloned and brought back to life. Your father has cancer? Just clone him! People braced for the announcement—human successfully cloned! But news about cloning stopped making headlines after Dolly. Why is there no news about cloning, nor a successful human clone?

Lack of clones, explained One of the reasons why there is little news about cloning is that there were simply no sensational breakthroughs for news companies to report on. Despite all the scientific benefits cloning has brought, especially in stem cell research, it hasn’t led to particularly exciting, news-worthy breakthroughs.

The most scientists have done in cloning other animals is to clone unsensational animals like pigs and cows. If a scientist cloned a human, or brought back woolly mammoths, it would be far more interesting for people to read about.

There are, however, more things than simply animal mundanity that have halted the potential news headlines that cloning could have brought. The first is in the way scientists cloned Dolly. Scientists cloned Dolly using a method called reproductive cloning.

Back in 1996, scientists discovered how to remove the DNA from the egg cell of a Scottish Blackface sheep. This allowed them to substitute the removed length of DNA with DNA taken from the mammary cell of a Finn Dorset 56 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

sheep. Scientists then stimulated the Scottish Blackface’s cell with an electric shock, put the cell in the uterus of another sheep, and boom! Cloning successful! This method also works for humans. But this is where the problem lies. Cloning Dolly took 227 times, for a success chance of 0.44%. That’s lower than 1%! However, there is an upside: the success chance is now around 10~20%. While it is still inefficient, it is still more than 10 times better.

The second problem with cloning is the genetic material that is available for cloning. For reproductive cloning, there needs to be at least one egg cell of the animal that is being cloned to even attempt the process. For extinct animals, like the aforementioned woolly mammoth, it would be close to impossible to actually obtain an egg cell. On the other hand, getting egg cells from species that are alive and thriving is much easier. However, while getting egg cells may be easier, there is the question of animal rights—which links to the third problem.

The third problem is on the morality of cloning. The process of reproductive cloning is not without its risks: for example, some embryos die before even being implanted. For animals, this is not much of a problem. For humans, this is a major problem. To even start researching human cloning, scientists have to find people that are willing to donate egg cells along with surrogates that are willing to carry those egg cells.

Not to mention, those surrogates will have to deal with the trauma of potential dead babies before any meaningful progress is made. Babies that survive to birth tend to die soon after birth or have abnormalities. Understandably,

this hampers the effort of scientists to obtain the material and participants necessary to attempt human cloning.

Without a large pool of donors and surrogates, scientists are unable to start experimenting.

Fourthly, there are no real reasons to actually attempt cloning humans (except for clone soldiers, maybe). And trying to revive woolly mammoths by cloning is basically impossible. The purpose of cloning humans was originally a way to achieve immortality, to revive or restore someone with their memories intact. But with the current method of reproductive cloning, a clone, if successfully born, would be a baby. Even if a new method of cloning allowed adults to be cloned directly, that clone wouldn’t have that adult’s memories; it would be an empty shell, just a big baby.

If in the future, however, scientists developed a way to transfer memories between brains, they could create a

clone of a person and transfer their memories to the new vessel. This is where philosophy comes in. Is that clone really that person? At the exact point when the clone is made, at the exact point when the clone gets its memories, it would be the same person. But as it starts living, starts to experience the world around it, the clone would not be the same. From that point on, it would be another person— one with the same base of memories, but with differing experiences.

In a nutshell Ultimately, reproductive cloning has its limitations. It is unable to bring immortality (though that could be argued) and is woefully inefficient. As it stands now, cloning does not look like it will appear on the front page of a newspaper, especially not about resurrecting extinct animals. Maybe for cloning a leg or an arm. However, in the future, more breakthroughs could

Professor Ian Wilmut, the English embryologist who led the team behind Dolly, stands beside the sheep he helped bring into the world.

Image courtesy: The Roslin Institute

be made. A different way of cloning an animal, perhaps—it’s unpredictable.

Science is about the discovery of things that we could never have imagined— ranging from the most ordinary new galaxy to the astounding immortal jellyfish. After all, humans 2000 years ago would never have dreamt of cars.

So, here’s the first pair of crossed fingers to a future of immortality.

Works Cited Ph.D. Biochemistry, George Vaniotis (2022, November 21). The evolution of animal

cloning. Labtag Blog. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://blog.labtag.com/ the-evolution-of-animal-cloning/ Quain, J. R. (2022, August 16). How cloning woolly mammoths could save the world.

The National. Retrieved February 15, 2023, from https://www.thenationalnews.com/ world/us-news/2022/08/15/how-cloningwoolly-mammoths-could-save-the-world/ 12 dead babies found in cardboard boxes after hospital ‘Sting’ - p.m. news. PM News.

(2018, September 18). Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://pmnewsnigeria. com/2018/09/18/12-dead-babies-found-incardboard-boxes-after-hospital-sting/ Weintraub, K. (2016, July 5). 20 years after Dolly the sheep led the way-where is cloning now? Scientific American. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/20-years-after-dolly-the-sheep-led-the-way-where-is-cloningnow/ Abby Tang, M. Y. H. (n.d.). The real reason we still haven’t cloned humans. Business Insider. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.com/ ethics-of-human-cloning-scientific-progress-2020-7 Issue 9 2024, Science and People 57

A

ACCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO), more than

16% of the world’s population will be 60 years old or older by 2030 (WHO, 2022). The problem of dwindling job markets and escalating healthcare taxes imposed on citizens go hand in hand with a “greying” population. The responsibility of caring for the elderly is immense in society, since their health deteriorates consistently due to the impact of the development of numerous types of cellular and molecular damage over time (Lamas, 2023; Warner, 2023). What’s scarier is the decline of physical mobility and mental acuity as diseases invade once-healthy bodies, and internal organ systems start to degenerate. When you become ill, being old may also restrict the medical treatments you can receive, decreasing your chances of survival (Nunez, 2021).

What if, though, you could reverse the ravages of ageing and treat it like any other illness?

SCIENTISTS FROM Harvard Medical School reportedly identified the root cause of ageing while successfully reviving an elderly rat, the work of which was mainly conducted by Dr. David Sinclair. Researchers gave some of the old mice an injection of Adeno-associated virus (AAVs) encoding Sox2 and Klf4 genes (OSK genes), which Sinclair’s lab previously revealed may cure loss of vision in aged rats, to test whether the epigenetic degradation was reversible. The rat was shown to

have younger kidneys, muscles, and brain tissue after receiving an injection of three genes and a combination of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) proteins.

Unlike its twin, which had white fur and weak retinas, the AAVs-treated rat also had healthy black fur and better vision (Offord, 2023).

What’s even more astounding is the team’s demonstration that ageing may also be sped up. At 20 sites throughout the genome, another group of rats’ DNA was injected with an enzyme and then repaired faithfully. Although the team repaired the rats with their whole will, it was not easy for the rats to recover completely with their changed DNA. The rats’ health declined within weeks, and their epigenetic signature started to resemble that of more aged animals. To give information of epigenetic signature, it refers to a specific pattern of chemical modifications that occur on the DNA and associated proteins within cells, which can affect gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence itself. It can provide important insights into the development and progression of various diseases, as well as the effects of different treatments and interventions (which means the rat truly got older).

Additionally, they started losing their pigment and hair, and their tissues began to exhibit signs of fragility. The researchers postulated that the ageing process was stimulated by the rats’ damaged DNA, and their experiments indicate that an animal’s age can be altered “forwards and backward at will” (Offord, 2023; The Sinclair Lab, 2023).

In essence, the finding suggests that genetic treatment might be used to address human ageing. According to the experiment’s lead conduct and also the author of the book, Lifespan: why we age - and why we don’t have to, Dr. David Sinclair, “DNA-related protein activity, not DNA mutations, causes ageing, and I believe this process is tied to DNA damage and repair systems” (Sinclair and LaPlante, 2019).

This is good news for people looking for the fountain of youth since genetic targeting, a method that modifies the location of a certain sequence in the genome and regulates the activity of DNA-based protein, may be used to stop the ageing process. Moreover, DNA therapy may be used to treat conditions that are linked to ageing, such as cardiovascular and degenerative disorders.

THIS IS GOOD NEWS FOR PEOPLE LOOKING FOR THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 58 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

ALTHOUGH TESTS on our primate relatives are now being conducted, it is still too early to say whether this anti-aging procedure will become widely accessible and affordable. In the interim, we’ll tackle diseases and wrinkles using tried-and-true medical counsel.

Smoking, sweets, and excess calorie intake need to be reduced to optimise cellular health (Brueck, 2018). Water is the fountain of youth, and we should drink up. Regular exercise helps the body receive essential nutrients and oxygen, which can delay the ageing process.

REVERSE THE RAVAGES OF AGEING It would be wise for us to build reliable health routines and habits while we wait for cutting-edge medical technology to tackle ageing caused by genes. We want to be at the peak of our physical and mental abilities starting right now, especially if immortality isn’t such a far-fetched dream anymore.

Works Cited WHO (2022) Ageing and health, World Health Organization. World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/ detail/ageing-and-health (Accessed: March 15, 2023).

Lamas, D.J. (2023) As a doctor, I see aging differently, The New York Times. Available at: https:// www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/anti-aging-science-longevity.html (Accessed: March 15, 2023).

Brueck, H. (2018) Cutting down on calories could slow the aging process, according to New Research, Business Insider. Business Insider.

Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/ how-to-slow-down-aging-with-a-reduced-caloriediet-2018-3 (Accessed: March 15, 2023).

Offord, C. (2023). Two research teams reverse signs of aging in mice. Science. Available at: https://www.science.org/content/article/tworesearch-teams-reverse-signs-aging-mice (Accessed: March 15, 2023).

The Sinclair Lab (2023). Research. The Sinclair Lab, Harvard Medical School; Available at: https://sinclair.hms.harvard.edu/research (Accessed: March 22, 2023).

Warner, B. (2023). Who wants to live forever?

The New York Times. Available at: https://www. nytimes.com/2023/01/21/business/dealbook/ demographic-crisis.html (Accessed: March 15, 2023).

Nunez, K. (2021). Why do we age, and can anything be done to stop or slow it? Healthline.

Available at: https://www.healthline.com/health/why-do-weage (Accessed: March 15, 2023).

Sinclair D. and LaPlante M.D. (2019). Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don’t Have To. Atria Books. United States.

SQUEAK

WHAT SECRETS TO LONGEVITY DO OUR FURRY RELATIVES HOLD?

BY SHARON SEO-YUN JUNG ’27

Issue 9 2024, Science and People 59

DATA SCIENCE HE WORLD IS COMPOSED

of data that has relationships and interdependencies. Connecting the detached data through indicating the relationships between them creates new values that have never existed before. There are many variations in the definition of properties for graph databases, but for the sake of simplicity and it is the most renowned property, only definition and properties by Codd will be introduced. A database model is the core abstraction of a graph database system. As proposed by Codd (1980), a database model consists of three main fundamental components: (a) a set of integrity rules, (b) a set of query operators or inference rules, and (c) a set of data structure types. Thus, based on these characteristics, a graph database is a model where data structures are modelled as graphs, appropriate integrity constraints are determined over the graph structure, and the data manipulation is conducted through graph-oriented operations also known as a graph query language (Angles, 2018).

Fig. 1. A visual representation of the Graph G

A GRAPH database is a database built to navigate relationships, and store nodes (entities of a domain) as the graph structure instead of documents or tables. A graph database starts from the basic principle of graph theory. Graph theory consists of two major components: edges and vertices (first introduced by the mathematician Julius Petersen in his 1877 paper “Die Theorie der regulären Graph”).

What are edges and vertices? A vertex can be defined as the data with the properties; an edge depicts how a vertex is connected to each other. The concept of graph can be elucidated through Fig. 1. A graph is composed of two finite sets, A and B. The set A, which is called a vertex can be represented as {a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h}, and the set B, which is called edges can be represented as {{a,d}, {a,e}, {b,c}, {b,e}, {b,g}, {c,f}, {d,f}, {d,g}, {g,h}}. A and B, when combined, make up the graph G. Likewise, a graph database consists of two major components: nodes and relationships. Nodes are also referred to as vertices, and contain properties. Relationships describe how different nodes link to each other. The most fundamental dif60 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

Fig. 2. Visualisation of relationship between movies and genres using Neo4j

ference between graph databases and other databases is that traversing the relationships between nodes is more efficient in graph databases. This is because unlike other databases, the relationships between nodes are persisted in a graph database. A question arises here: what is a graph database, and how can a graph database transform the world?

NODES ARE the entities in the graph and it compresses any number of key-value pairs and properties. For instance, from Fig. 2, each green node represents a movie that has been released and also contains properties of movies such as plot, language, runtime, and director. These nodes are all tagged with node labels named ‘movie’ in order to abridge the traversing time.

Connections between node entities are called relationships. As in Fig. 2, relationships have a direction, a starting node, and a finishing node. They also compress properties, just as nodes do.

These four components: node, relationship, label, property are the most fundamental properties of a graph database. In relational databases such as MySQL and Oracle Database, the relations between the entries are defined through one-to-many and manyto-many, which makes operations complex. Unlike relational databases, graph databases query (a request for specific information from a database) entries through their connections.

Thus, the operation is non-complex and this structure of the graph database maximises the efficiency.

REGARDLESS OF the fact there are many graph databases: Neo4j, Amazon Web Service Neptune, OrientDB, and more, each graph database uses a different query language (language used to interact with databases to retrieve and manage data), since there is no standardised query language for them as for SQL databases. The Fig. 2 is a

data visualisation rendered using Neo4j, which is one of the most powerful and renowned databases with thousands of innovative corporate customers from Nasa to JPMorgan. Throughout the article, one query language will be introduced and demonstrated: Cypher. It allows retrieval of data from the graph database and it is the primary interface for Neo4j that allows it to construct efficient queries. It is designed to conduct queries efficiently from: relationships and nodes creation; data filtration; data aggregation.

HOW CAN A GRAPH DATABASE TRANSFORM THE WORLD? Throughout this article, a few elemental Cypher queries will be introduced. The following queries enable us to create two nodes and add a relationship between them. CREATE (a: STUDENT {name: “Alex”}) creates a node labelled as student named Alex. Likewise, CREATE (a: SCHOOL {name: “NLCS Jeju”}) creates a node labelled as a school named NLCS Je j u. He nce , M A T C H ( a : S T U D E N T {name: “Alex”}),(b:SCHOOL{name: “NLCS Jeju”}) CREATE (a)-[:Attends]-> (b) can create the relation-

ship between existing two nodes as demonstrated in Fig. 3. Also, MATCH p=()-[r:Attends]->() RETURN p

can filter out the nodes that have an Attends relationship between it. These Cypher queries are the most basic, but fundamental queries to understand Cypher. Unlike other query languages, graph database query languages such as Cypher have readable syntax, which helps developers understand relationships faster by providing a visual representation of matching relationships.

Its readability and ease of use make it a popular choice for developers and analysts working with graph databases.

WE LIVE IN an ever-more-connected world where every component is connected to each other through the relationship. In fact, most of the platforms that we use in daily life provide services that connect people with something: Linkedin connects people to people; Airbnb connects travellers to local hosts; StackOverflow connects people who need answers to people who have answers. Aforementioned, StackOverflow is an example of a platform that functions based on the relationships. If we briefly disintegrate Stack Overflow, it has five nodes: answer, comment, question, tag (label), and user. It has six relationships to connect these nodes with: answered, asked, commented, commented_on, provided, and tagged. As in Fig. 3, the question node is connected to the user node, answer node, tag node, and comment node using relevant relationship types. Even though Fig. 3 represents only a portion of the complex system behind Stack Overflow, this disintegration of Stack Overflow proves how everything is connected through the relationships. Hence, relational databases and graph databases are two different types of databases that are used to store and manage data in different ways. A relational database, such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, organises data into tables with rows and columns, and

Fig. 3. Visualisation of the basic concept of relationship and node

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DATA SCIENCE the relationships between the data are established using foreign keys. This type of database is well-suited for data that can be organised into structured relationships and is best for complex queries and transactions. On the other hand, a graph database, such as Neo4j, represents data as nodes and edges in a graph, where nodes represent entities and edges represent relationships between entities. The relationships between entities in a graph database are first-class citizens, which allows for more flexible and dynamic modelling of relationships. This type of database is best suited for data that has complex relationships, such as social networks, and recommendation systems. These platforms such as Stack Overflow contain complex tremendous amounts of data and relationships; thus even though relational databases can handle relationships it cannot handle complex relationships, which is the reason why graph databases are in demand by large corporations and platforms that control complex data. In fact, according to renowned IT consultancy company, Gartner, by 2025, 80% of data and analytics innovation will leverage graph technologies.

Besides these astonishing competence of graph databases, it compress-

Fig. 4.

Visualisation using Neo4j of relationships behind Stack Overflow (Open Source) 62 NLCS Lucidity, Issue 9 2024

es more powerful potentiality. The Panama Papers were a massive leak of financial documents in 2016 that shed light on the secretive world of offshore companies and tax havens. The leak consisted of over 11 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing the identities of wealthy individuals and organisations who used these offshore companies to hide their assets and evade taxes. The sheer scale of the Panama Papers presented a significant challenge for investigators and journalists working to uncover the truth. The data was massive and complex, making it difficult to search and analyse. However, with the help of graph databases, the team was able to quickly and effectively process and understand the vast amount of data contained in the leak. The investigative team utilised a graph database to create a web of relationships between the various entities in the data. They were able to easily identify key players and uncover hidden connections that would have been difficult to discover using traditional database techniques. This allowed them to track the flow of money between individuals and companies, making it possible to map out the complex network of offshore entities and identify patterns of tax evasion. The

use of graph databases was a crucial component of the investigation into the Panama Papers. By providing a powerful and intuitive tool for visualising and analysing complex data, the graph database allowed the investigative team to quickly and effectively uncover the truth behind the massive leak. The Panama Papers investigation serves as a powerful example of the capabilities of graph databases in uncovering complex and hidden relationships in large amounts of data. By leveraging the power of graph structures, the investigative team was able to uncover the truth behind the secretive world of offshore companies and tax havens, bringing to light the practices of the wealthy and powerful. The use of graph databases in such investigations serves as a reminder of the importance of using advanced technology in the pursuit of justice and transparency.

FROM THIS point onwards, this article will delve into a comprehensive analysis of the methodology employed to analyse the Panama Papers using Neo4j. The leak of financial documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm, included a vast collection of files from emails, PDFs, images, and even text documents. These raw documents contained numerous properties such as document numbers, share amounts, addresses, start- and enddates of involvements and citizenship information.

To begin with, to create a relationship between the various entities in the data in order to uncover hidden connections and key players, raw documents were classified based on their document types and subtypes. Hence, metadata (data that describes other data, pro-

viding information such as the origin, format and structure) inside the documents are all extracted from the content of documents through using natural language processing (branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on understanding and generating human language), name entity recognition (subtask of natural language processing that involves identifying and extracting named entities), or plain text search (technique used to search for specific words or phrases within unstructured text data). As the metadata is extracted through the techniques above, metadata and data is stored in the form of nodes and relationships.

Through using the cypher in Fig. 6., we can create nodes and relationships: Despite the use of more complex technologies for converting raw data into structured graph databases, it is undeniable that graph databases played the most significant role in solving the Panama Papers case. In fig 6, a node with the label “Officer” with one property is created, and a

Fig. 5. Generalised visualisation of the Panama Papers using the Neo4j database data model

node with the label “Company” with one property is created. Finally, a relationship between the nodes with the label “IOO_BSD” is created. This relationship represents the fact that Officer Leyla Aliyeva is an officer of Beneficiary, Shareholder, Directory (IOO_BSD) of UF universe foundation. Then, after creating millions of nodes and relationships based on the extracted data from the raw document, it is possible to uncover the specific relationship and pattern through querying. For example, in order to find companies that are involved with the Aliyev family, by using the Cypher query as shown in Fig. 7 we can find all the companies that are involved with the Aliyev family.

In some cases of the Panama Papers case, it was crucial to identify the joint company involvements. For instance, upon discovering that “Arzu Aliyeva” and “Leyla Fig. 6. Cypher statement for Aliyeva” were increating nodes and relationships volved together, to find the company involved with these two individuals, the cypher querying Fig. 7. Cypher statement for querying method as shown in Aliyev family involvement Fig. 8 can be used.

Thus it is possible to find the companies that are jointly involved with these Fig. 8. Cypher statement for showing joint company involvements of family members two people.

IN CONCLUSION, graph databases are an innovative way of storing and managing data by representing it as nodes and relationships, rather than tables and columns. Graph databases are designed to navigate relationships efficiently, and traversing the relationships between nodes is more efficient in graph databases as the relationships are persisted. Graph databases offer a powerful query language, such as Cypher, which allows developers to construct efficient queries to retrieve and manipulate data. Although there is no standardised query language for graph databases, they provide a visual representation of matching relationships that are easy to understand. As we live in an interconnected world, where every component is connected to each other through relationships, graph databases offer a new way to understand and model these relationships and unlock new insights. As a result, graph databases are becoming increasingly popular and are being used by innovative corporate customers from Nasa to Zurich, showing how they are changing the world of data management.

Works Cited Sasaki, B.M. (2022) Analyzing the panama papers with neo4j: Data Models, queries & more, Neo4j Graph Data Platform. Available at: https://neo4j.com/blog/analyzing-panama-papers-neo4j/ What is a graph database? - developer guides (2023) Neo4j Graph Data Platform.

Available at: https://neo4j.com/developer/ graph-database/ Gartner, I. (2023) Cloud Database Management Systems Reviews 2023: Gartner Peer insights, Gartner. Available at: https:// www.gartner.com/reviews/market/ cloud-database-management-systems/vendor/neo4j/product/neo4j-graphdatabase Saengsuwan, M. (2021) Using neo4j graph database to analyze Twitter data, Medium. Towards Data Science. Available at: https://towardsdatascience.com/usingneo4j-graph-database-to-analyze-twitterdata-6e3d38042af1 Guevara, M.W. et al. (2019) How artificial intelligence can help us crack more panama papers stories, ICIJ. Available at: https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2019/03/how-artificial-intelligence-can-help-us-crack-more-panama-papers-stories/ (2023) ACM Digital Library. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/960126.806891 Codd, E. F. (1981). Data models in database management. SIGMOD Rec, 11(2), 112-114. https://doi.org/10.1145/960126.806891 SITNFlash (2021) Graph theory 101, Science in the News. Available at: https://sitn. hms.harvard.edu/flash/2021/graph-theory-101/ (Accessed: March 1, 2023).

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