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ScIUConversations in Science at Indiana University

Cannaba-what!?: Cannabinoids in their various forms — mainstream and uncommon

Posted on by Taryn Bosquez

If I was to say the word “cannabinoid” to you, where would your mind go? Would you immediately wonder, “What? Is it just a fancy way to say weed?” or would you ask questions like, “As in the molecular components of Cannabis?” or “Are you referring to the specific endogenous cannabinoid ligands in our body?” If your first thoughts align with the latter, prepare for a nice refresher on cannabinoids. If your response was closer to the former, get ready for a crash course in how we characterize cannabinoids and how they can be used to treat various health conditions. 

“Cannabinoid” is a term that pertains to the wide array of molecular compounds that modulate cannabinoid receptors, which are present throughout our bodies’ central and peripheral nervous systems. These receptors are part of a larger system called the endocannabinoid system, which is an integral regulatory system in our body. In addition to cannabinoid receptor types 1 and 2 (CB1 and CB2, respectively), the endocannabinoid system is comprised of molecular transporters, endogenous cannabinoids, as well as enzymes that build and break down said cannabinoids. 

Image of the Cannabis plant and its distinctive green leaves.
A Cannabis plant. Image credit: CCO on Pixabay.

Cannabinoids can come from different places and, depending on their origin, are characterized and placed into one of three categories: endogenous cannabinoids, phytocannabinoids, and synthetic cannabinoids. Endogenous cannabinoids represent a class of cannabinoids that originate from the body, so these are compounds that we produce naturally. The term “phytocannabinoid” refers to cannabinoid compounds that are naturally produced by the Cannabis plant. In contrast, the class of synthetic cannabinoids consists of cannabinoid compounds that have been synthesized in a lab setting and, therefore, are not naturally-occurring, like its endogenous and phyto- cousins. 

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Where did all the jobs go?

Posted on by Chloe Holden

I was recently re-watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory, where the unfortunate passing of a colleague opened up a tenured position in the department that Sheldon, Raj, and Leonard were all vying for. While most people would find their various tactics to shmooze the tenure committee funny, the part that I found most hilarious was a tenure line being maintained instead of turned into cheaper, temporary adjunct positions. In reality, tenure is a dying position in academia, and it’s severely impacting the job market. This discrepancy between the number of tenure-track faculty positions available relative to doctoral degree graduates is so severe that current graduate students are warning undergraduates to stay away from graduate school, because there will be no jobs in academia for them by the time they graduate. 

Pictured is an empty classroom with all the chairs facing a blank white board
Photo credit: CC0 on Pixabay.

Scientists working in many sectors are motivated by a love of research, whether or not they hold PhDs or are tenured at research universities. However, many people seek doctoral degrees as a prerequisite for the typical academic career trajectory, which often culminates in a tenured full professorship with ample resources for both research and teaching. While this academic career trajectory has existed for decades, more and more higher education faculty positions switch from tenure-track to adjunct as each year passes. This trend can be dated back to the 1970s and can largely be linked to a combination of: 1) the significant increase in undergraduate students after the GI Bill was passed — more students = more classes and larger classes needing to be taught, 2) university business models focusing on bringing in as much money as possible (yay for capitalism…), and 3) economic recessions. When a recession hits, universities put tenure-track positions on hiring freezes and instead opt for filling the cheaper, temporary adjunct positions. Now, over 70% of higher education faculty are adjunct instructors, and tenure-track positions are becoming a rare find. 

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Do scientists get bad grades?

Posted on by Taylor Woodward

I wasn’t accepted into grad school when I first applied during my final year of college. The emails beginning with “We’re sorry to inform you” trickled one by one into my inbox, and I spent time frantically trying to figure out my post-graduation plans, since they were previously just ‘grad school.’ Fortunately, most of these emails had good suggestions about actions to take over the next couple of years, but one piece of feedback stung a little more than the rest. One program noted that while I had spent time doing research, my science grades were ‘quite poor.’

Honestly, they weren’t wrong.

A cartoon drawing of a stick figure in the fetal position ruminating about a failed chemistry exam

Before college, I based a large portion of my self-worth and satisfaction on my ‘straight-A’ high school performance. However, a combination of unaddressed physical and mental health challenges really destroyed my GPA when I started taking higher-level science courses. I did well in calculus and general chemistry as a freshman, but was blindsided when I became completely overwhelmed by organic chemistry, molecular biology, and introductory neuroscience courses during my second year. As the semester drew to a close, I had to come to the cold realization that I was no longer a shiny straight-A student, a fundamental part of who I was. After that semester, I decided that science obviously wasn’t for me and started to explore other majors like linguistics and music production. (more…)

Putting it into context: How psychology has shaped our knowledge of universal emotions

Posted on by Emma Herms

What are common emotions experienced in your culture? In the United States, happiness, anger, sadness, and fear are considered common emotions. The traditional theory of emotion assumes emotions are universally recognized by all humans. This theory dominates pop culture, with movies like Pixar’s Inside Out, which features characters personifying five emotions that coordinate our every action, and items like Amazon’s Halo Watch, which claims to detect emotions based on tone of voice. Yet, it is not possible to determine what emotion someone is experiencing based only on their face or tone of voice. Instead, our brain makes a prediction that is influenced by past experience, the current context, and interoceptive signals from our body (e.g., heart and breathing rate, hunger cues) from a culture-specific perspective (Barrett, 2017). This prediction is made meaningful through language, such as emotion words. However, our brain’s predictions are not always accurate. 

So, what does it mean for an emotion to be universal? A universal emotion is an emotion that is associated with a single facial expression across cultures. For example, an American adult, when angry, scowls with pinched eyebrows. If anger was a universal emotion, then a Chinese adult, when angry, would also scowl with pinched eyebrows. 

[Alt-text: Yellow painted eggs with various facial expressions.]
What words would you use to describe these facial expressions? Image credit: ROMAN ODINTSOV (CCO on Pexels).
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Collecting drinking data: There’s an app for that

Posted on by Lindy Howe

Why do college students really drink alcohol in excess, even if they probably shouldn’t? Addiction researchers have been studying this topic for decades. They’re interested in learning more about alcohol use, the reasons for drinking, and the consequences of heavy drinking. Typically, addiction is studied by having people come into a psychology lab, fill out questionnaires, or maybe do some computerized tasks. 

More recently, however, scientists wanted to step out of their offices and understand real-world drinking behavior. But, how do they do that? Picture these scenarios:

Scenario 1: Sally, a recent college graduate, goes out drinking with her friends on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. On all of these nights, a team of 8 scientists follows her, documenting the type of alcohol she drinks, keeping track of her alcohol intake, asking her about her motivations, observing her environment, and assessing her overall mood. This team of scientists follows her every move and observes all of her drinking tendencies. They want to learn more about what makes people really drink so much, what else is a scientist going to do?!

This first scenario is obviously unnatural, maybe a little bit uncomfortable, and could even influence Sally’s drinking behavior. 

Now, picture this second scenario:

Scenario 2: Sally, a recent college graduate, goes out drinking with her friends on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. On all of these nights, she responds to a notification on her mobile phone to confirm “I am drinking tonight.” Throughout the night, she gets a handful of notifications inquiring about the number of drinks she’s had, why she’s drinking, what’s going on in her environment, and her mood. Later, a team of 8 scientists downloads her data over the week to explore commonalities in her behavior and compare her drinking behavior to others in the study. 

Most likely, the second scenario sounds more natural, comfortable, and feasible. Sally’s probably checking her phone throughout the night anyways. 

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Viral variants: What are they, and how do they form?

Posted on by Haley Jordan

Because the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging for almost 2 years now, most people have heard of the different viral variants that threaten the effectiveness of full protection with vaccines. This topic can be confusing to anyone who is not familiar with viruses or virology. This article will: 1) help you understand what viral variants are, and 2) explain where they come from. 

A picture of virus particles each in a different color to represent a different Sars-CoV-2 variant.
A cartoon of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, in which different colors represent different viral variants. Image credit: Shafin_Protic (CC0 on Pixabay).

Viruses rely on host organisms (e.g., people and/or animals) to make more copies of themselves so that they can infect more hosts. However, hosts typically mount an immune response to clear a virus, which creates a challenge for viruses to overcome. Many viruses have tools that enable them to change their genetic information, which helps them overcome the host’s immune response and transmit and infect other hosts more effectively. These genetically-modified viral forms are called variants. Different viruses change their genetic information at different rates, meaning that certain types of viruses are better at this task than others. The emergence of viral variants also depends on other factors, like how many hosts have already been infected with the virus (the more hosts that have been infected, the greater the opportunity for the virus to produce genetic variants).

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What does it mean for science to be falsifiable?

Posted on by Evan Arnet

Science is falsifiable. Or at least, this is what I (like many Americans) learned in many of my high school and college science classes. Clearly, the idea has appeal among scientists and non-scientists alike:

Tweet by Dr. Michio Kaku stating, “Can you prove the existence of God. Probably not. Science is based on evidence which is testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. So God is outside the usual boundary of science. Also, it is impossible to disprove a negative, so you cannot disprove the existence of God, either.” Tweet by Dinesh D’Souza stating, “Karl Popper taught us that a valid scientific theory is narrowly drawn and makes specific predictions that can be empirically tested to invalidate the theory. Now ask yourself: by this standard, is “climate change” a valid scientific theory.” Tweet by Naval stating science is independently verifiable, falsifiable, and makes risky predictions (read Popper/Deutsch). It responds to a tweet by a Mike Solana stating “is there a less scientific phrase in popular discourse than “believe science”.”

 

But what exactly does “falsifiable” mean? And why is it valued by some scientists, but dismissed or even considered actively harmful by others?

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Seeing science in a different light

Posted on by Guest Contributor

This post was written by Hunter Herriage, a student in the Basics of Science Communication class (MSCI-M509) taught by ScIU blogger Vaishnavi Muralikrishnan and Dr. Claire Walczak.

The first time I remember my malfunctioning eyes affecting my life was when I was younger than 5 years old. I was riding in my grandfather’s truck; we had reached a stop light, and my grandfather said we could go when the light turned green. I remember thinking, “Green? That light is white.” This problem persisted all through K12 school, when a sea of classmates flashed colored pencils at me and asked, “What color is this?” I tried to explain that the issue isn’t interpreting a single pencil of stark shade, but that it’s distinguishing combinations of colors that are close together, like reds vs. greens, greens vs. browns, or purples vs. pinks. This explanation often fell on deaf ears.

As a scientist, it is essential to see details in scientific figures in order to interpret scientific findings. Scientists like to label proteins of interest with things that make them look bright green or red in a microscope, which is a good way to make these features easy to find. While the inability to distinguish between certain colors would seem like an impediment towards understanding the scientific literature, there are numerous scientists with color vision deficiencies.

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