Rain-on-snow: I’m melting!

Posted on April 24, 2021 by Dan Myers

Two “road closed” signs because a major flood blocks a street in the outskirts of a big city. — An extreme 2013 flood in Alberta, Canada that included rain-on-snow melt. *Photo credit: Ryan L. C. Quan (CC BY-SA 3.0)*.

In mid-February 2021, Bloomington, Indiana was hit by a winter snowstorm that dropped several inches of white, fluffy snow around town. Schools and businesses closed. However, as other people were wondering “How will I get my car out of the driveway?”, I caught myself wondering “Will it rain soon?” What? Why?

Rain-on-snow melt events have been receiving a lot of attention in scientific articles I have been reading. Aptly named, these events occur when a warm rain falls on an existing snowpack. Along with other sources of heat, this causes the snow to melt. The meltwater and rainwater from this event can then cause extreme floods. Counterintuitively, rain-on-snow melt can also lead to a decrease in water availability during the summer, since the meltwater is not stored in the landscape or groundwater. Rain-on-snow melt events occur in temperate, high-latitude, and mountainous regions around the globe. (more…)

The Origins of 420

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Michelle Murphy Green

This Tuesday is April 20th, otherwise known as 420. For some it’s just another day in the week, but for others it’s a much-anticipated and beloved holiday.

However, have you ever stopped to consider how this pseudo-holiday came to be?

A quick google search will provide a number of varying and amusing theories. Some of the most popular 420 stories include 420 as a police dispatch code for cannabis use, as the number of chemical compounds in cannabis (actually there are over 500), or the day of Bob Marley’s death (actually May 11th). However, the true origin of 420 began in 1971 at a high school in San Francisco, CA where five friends agreed to meet at 4:20pm every day near a wall outside of their school to smoke and search for a cannabis patch rumored to be abandoned in the woods. Over time, they became known as the ‘Waldos’ and 420 developed into a shorthand for anything cannabis related. Eventually, due to familial connections, the Grateful Dead picked up the phrase, incorporated it into flyers, and spread it across the nation. Today, April 20th is widely recognized across the United States and several other countries as cannabis day and celebrated by meeting up, preferably at 4:20pm, to partake in the fun.

The five founders of 420 sitting in the woods together. — The founders of 420: Mark Gravich, Jeffery Noel, Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, and Larry Schwartz. Image credit: 420Waldos.

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Work-life balance

Posted on April 10, 2021 by Dan Myers

An inquisitive dog and cat get in the way of a computer screen on a work desk. — Lola (dog) and Pumpkin (cat) think we should just exchange all our work time for play. Photo Credit: Dan Myers.

I am writing about work-life balance, the subjective idea of basically having a life outside of our job or schoolwork. Experts say that a healthy work life balance is when we are able to fulfil our responsibilities to our jobs, families, and other parts of life that are important to us. It has been the buzz on social media lately. Why? It seems at times there is almost an expectation to constantly be working, known as “hustle culture.” This can be fed by many things including changes in job demand, a fast-paced work environment, and the inability to escape work because of that darn internet. People early in their careers have not been satisfied with this and are pushing to discuss better balance. I know this can be a sensitive topic and that people have disagreements about what work life balance is, its value, and even how it can be attained, but most research finds that it has a positive effect on our wellbeing and places of work. Personally, I believe a work-life balance is incredibly important and would like to offer a fresh perspective on it. (more…)

Finding the Right Question

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Jennifer Sieben

Dr Songhu Wang. Image credit: Heising-Simons Foundation.

Imagining life on other planets is usually the work of science-fiction authors, but increasingly it is becoming the work of current astronomers. Although it had been theorized that there existed other planets outside of our solar system, exoplanets were only confirmed in the late 1980s. The field exploded when the Kepler space telescope started finding thousands of exoplanets. A rich field of study was born.

One of IU’s own astronomers focuses on the interactions of these distant planetary systems. Dr. Songhu Wang became interested in exoplanet research when he was learning about non-linear dynamics in his undergraduate years. He worked with chaos theory, where “if your initial conditions are a little bit different, your results are totally different.” He started out being interested in pure mathematics, but got drawn into the practical aspects of it. Chaos theory can be applied to diverse fields of study like the stock market, weather systems, or even the spread of disease based on the movement of people. Of course, it’s also used in astronomy. (more…)

My journey in graduate school

Posted on March 27, 2021 by Riddhi Sood

There are few experiences in one’s life that are deep and impactful. Graduate school was definitely one of them.

My journey in graduate school can only be described in one way: as a paradox.

Ask any graduate student, and they will tell you that graduate school is not a place for the faint-hearted. Just like any jaw-opening, thrill-seeking action movie, there are mysterious, shady characters wanting to put you down, as well as a kindhearted stranger that makes the journey bearable. As I reflect about my journey as a cancer biologist, I feel that my story here at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) can be described in a few words: confidence, structure, purpose, and knowledge. Let me tell you what I mean.

Image showing graduate student's journey as full of adventure, obstacles, test, enemies and rewards — Journey is full of obstacles. Image Credit: Esbjorn Jorsater

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Particle physics goes virtual through pandemic difficulties

Posted on March 20, 2021 by Guest Contributor

This post was written by Thomas Rainbolt, a student from the ScIU-led winter intersession course “Science in a Digital Age.”

Phineas and Ferb (in the funny Disney cartoon) had it right when they wondered what could be done over a 104-day summer vacation. There is a lot to do, such as go on a trip, get ice cream, spend weeks on end floating in a pool, or do particle physics research. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted everything in life, resulting in many of these plans being canceled this past summer.

Wait! Go back! Why would any student want to spend their summer, their solitary free time during the year, doing particle physics research? Moreover, how would that work during a pandemic, when the university is completely shut down?

Physics research has taken a significant hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the first wave started in March 2020, Nature published an article about how major physics research projects were brought to their knees due to the restrictive nature of the safety guidelines. In fact, the American Institute of Physics predicted that the impacts of the pandemic will result in billions of dollars in fund deficits and “could reverberate for years to come.”

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A quick summary of the immune system and the COVID-19 vaccine

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Haley Jordan

There are many strategies when it comes to developing a vaccine, but the idea behind all of them is similar. Vaccines are designed to pose a foreign invader, such as a virus or bacterium, to your adaptive immune system without causing you to be sick. Our immune systems are quite amazing, which also makes them quite complex. Here, we will focus on a few aspects that are important for understanding vaccine development.

This image shows a person’s hand, and a syringe is being held between the person’s fingers. The needle of the syringe is pointed towards a round pathogen cell with small projections. — Vaccines give our immune system a template, from which our bodies can build immune ‘memory’ against a particular pathogen (e.g., virus or bacterium). If we are then re-infected by this pathogen, this immune memory will reduce the symptoms that we experience. *Image credit: CC0 on Pixabay.*

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Potluck of neuroscience: Meet microglia, your brain’s National Guard

Posted on March 6, 2021 by Taylor Woodward

This post is the second in a series that will highlight contributions from various scientific disciplines that have furthered our understanding of how the brain and nervous system affect how we think and behave. Click here for the previous installment about ion channels, and look out for more posts in the future!

One of the first things you’ll learn about if you start studying the brain is that it is made of cells called neurons. While neuroscientists have a decent understanding about how neurons work, it turns out that at least half of the brain is actually made of non-neuronal cells called glia*. Glia, named after the Greek word for ‘glue,’ were initially thought to be a type of connective tissue in the nervous system, acting just as scaffolding, while the neurons did all of the communicating. In the last couple of decades, the growing field of neuroimmunology has highlighted the importance of a certain kind of glia: microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells.

An illustration of a neuron showing its root-like dendrites, its blobular soma (body), and its long axon. — A simple diagram of a neuron with its three main parts: the dendrite, the soma, and the axon. *Image attribution*: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Neuron.svg.

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The beneficial attributes of vaccines

Posted on February 27, 2021 by Guest Contributor

This post was written by ScIU undergraduate intern Autumn Shively.

Vaccines remain a hot topic in this country, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the importance of why we should be vaccinated, we first must understand how the immune system responds to an infection. When a disease-causing microorganism, called a pathogen, is introduced into our bodies, our immune system is signaled to initiate an attack on this intruder. Specifically, our immune system will try to stop the pathogen from multiplying, which will prevent the pathogen from spreading and decrease the infection. To coordinate this attack, the immune system will recruit different types of cells, including macrophages, B-lymphocytes, and T-lymphocytes. These cells all work together to dismember the virus or bacteria that enter the body, and then remember this intruder using molecules, called antigens, that are left behind. This response allows our immune cells to be alert and ready if the pathogen was to enter the body again and ensures that next time, the pathogen will be quicker and easier to attack.

Vaccines imitate this initial introduction of a foreign pathogen in the body, since they typically contain the pathogen in a weakened or dead form. Therefore, vaccines allow our bodies to fight off the pathogen more easily by activating or refreshing the antigen recognition within our memory cells, so that we are prepared to find and fight off the same pathogen as soon as it enters our bodies again.

This image shows three pathogens, including measles, chicken pox, and the flu respectively, with their existing antibodies that have built up due to exposure of disease within our bodies. The last antigen shown is a new pathogen with no antibody near it because it is a new exposure. — *Image credit: World Health Organization*.

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Building Wakanda: a graduate student’s journey into sports psychology

Posted on February 20, 2021 by ScIU Editorial Team

A banner that reads: ScIU Commemorating Black History Month

This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published by Lana Ruck in February 2020 and has been lightly edited to reflect current events.

A profile of DeJon Purnell in celebration of Black History Month

In the USA, sports are important, period. But many of us are aware that America’s cultural obsession with sports is not without its downsides. Still, I know people who are fine with that past few years’ Super Bowl mascots, or who found the coaches and plots of Netflix’s sports documentaries Cheer and Last Chance U [warning: very strong language] endearing, rather than concerning. This week on the blog, we tackle sports and performance from the perspective of mental health, talking with IU’s DeJon Purnell.

Purnell is a Ph.D. student in the Counseling Psychology program in IU’s School of Education, and his specific focus is Sport and Performance Psychology. According to Purnell, who goes by DJ, he and others in his field “basically combine the fields of mental health counseling and psychology and apply them in the athletic performance domain.” While much of sports psychology translates directly into counseling the athletes themselves, DJ focuses on bigger-picture issues in sports and performance mental health, such as coaching behaviors and pathways to licensure for practicing sports counselors. (more…)