Step by Step Instructions

Ways to Improve your memory

Taking over a Body

What causes them to cease to exist

The Science Behind the

Phenomenon

From Membranes to Your Brain

Extinct Species:

Cran alRemember This?

Viruses

How to Build a Catapult

December 2014Pric

e: $

6.40

From a young age, I was always interested in science. Whether it was chemistry, geology, physics, or anatomy, it always fascinated me how all of the world can come together and create such complex things that we are still struggling to come up with explanations for. This magazine has some commonly unknown features, like parts of the brain and how each of it works, and how and why animals go extinct, but also seemingly simple ideas, like physics in our everyday lives.

As every 9th grader will soon know, making a magazine in 18 weeks is not as simple as it seems. Lots of planning, graphics making, and cramming occurs, all while trying to keep up with our already advanced classes. However, after the all the blood, sweat, and tears, I think it’s safe to say all our hard work paid off.

In Cranial we’ll help you think about things you might not normally think about in different ways, and hopefully help you analyze the world around us not as miracles, but as scientific facts.

I hope you as you read this magazine you are as happy with the results as our group is, as nothing is worth showing if you don’t work hard at it.

Letter from the Editor

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Sincerly,

Hew Willis

All photos by Hoang Willis

Julia Grim lives in Austin, Texas, and attends high school at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy. Her love of reading is very important in her life, as she spends much time reading fiction and fantasy. In her free time, she volunteers, listens to music, and spends time with her friends and family. Science and technology have always been her passions, and she loves to learn, her favorite topic being medicine and surgery.

Born and rasied in Dallas, Suhaib Shah has been a science enthuisiast since the day his mother started her profession as a veterinarian. From that day forward, he decided to persue a life of zoology. Attending the Liberal Arts and Science Academy, his dream is to go study biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins. He hopes to benefit humans and animals alike. He spends his freetime on his longboard or working on robotics.

Lauren Mangibin is a physics enthusiast who dreams of going to college at MIT. Lauren, a 14 year old, attends the Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School in Austin, TX. She finds physics interesting and can talk about about it endlessly with others. When not busy with homework and school, she reads and plays lacrosse with her friends. She likes to program video games and loves to work with computers as well.

Jenny Ramirez has been living in Austin, Texas her entire life. Her main interests are cars and how they work. The science of the engine and how it works have led to her to want to persue a life in cars. In her freetime she enjoys listening to music and helping her dad work at his job as a car mechanic. She hopes to attend the University of Chicago where she would pursue her love of cars.

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The Membranes

Contents december 2014

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9

11

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Remember This! How we can all improve our memory

Parts of the Brain What they all do to help us function

The Education of Medicine New Advances in Neurological Medicine

The Virus Cycle How viruses spread from one place to another

Why Do Species Cease to Exist? Different factors that lead to animal extinction

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29

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Tasmanian Tigers How the Thylacine lived

Finding Physics The problem with disregarding physics

Make your own Catapult An easy way to demonstrate physics

Memory We remember. We forget. Why?

Sweet Dreams Some can interact in their dreams

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Robot and Thylacine by Wikipedia; Catapult by Lauren Mangibin; Virus by Julia Grim3 Cranial

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remember Thi s

How Memory Works and How to Improve It

Ever forgotten anything? Whether it be a test, a special date, or just where you put your glasses? Here we’ll learn WHY you forget these seemingly menial tasks and how to improve your memory to help you on that test you forgot to study for.

photo by : Wikipedia

By Hew Willis

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As I sit down to take my first science quiz of the year, I reassure myself I’ll do fine.

After all, I have been attending class 2-3 days a week and it’s just a quiz. I’ll be fine.

After the teacher hands out the quizzes, my heart stops. All the terms seemed like they are in Japanese, I have no idea what they are, I can’t figure out why I don’t know these terms- after all, I have been paying attention in class?

Right?

The brain is one of the least known organs of the human body. In addition to not knowing much about the brain, trying to decode our memory, one of its vital processes, is much harder. However, we do know some things, like how to improve this mysterious skill that we use on a more than regular basis. We know there are two types of memory, short term and long term and the one leading factor of memorization: focus.

It seems like an obvious statement - but not paying attention doesn’t result in sparkling memory. As Dr. Nancy Nussbaum - Austin’s leading neuropsychologist emphasises, “Focusing is the gateway to memory.” The part of the brain that controls focus is the frontal lobe. “...information is then sort of formed in the hippocampus, a deep structure in the temporal lobe.” From there it will travel

Photo: Wikipedia

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“Focusing is the gateway to memory”

“I can’t really make myself go over my notes unless I’m working with friends”

The Brain is like a complicated muscle- how do we work it out?

to a number of places in the brain, depending on the type of memory.

Attention leads to the one experience we have all had at some point or another; the embarrassing brain fart. Walking into a room and forgetting what we were supposed to do, or raising a hand in class and forgetting what the question was are all common-day examples of the brain fart. The culprit of this is our attention span. We’ll forget what to grab in a room because as we start walking, we’ll push the memory to the back of our heads and focus on getting there. Same goes for speculating in class, we’ll raise our hand, and then

focus on the class discussion pushing that memory of the question into our short term memory, or our working memory.

An example of our short term memory would be when reading a science textbook and you get to the end of a page. You need to remember what you are reading while

you’re reading it to be able to understand the text, so that information put into our working memory until the end of a chapter or page, when it’s time to comprehend it.

“You really will remember something that maybe makes us feel great, or... feel angry, that sticks with us ... because it sort of re-enforces that connection.”

Diagram of the different parts of the brain Photo Cred: Stanford.edu

Working term (also known as short term) memory is there for the little things. If we were to put everything we did for a day into long term memory, our brains would be full by the end of the day! Instead, our bodies regulate important versus unimportant information to remember by placing each into either short or the long term places of the brain.

When reading an assigned book for class, you can make sure you store the information into the better, more reliable long term memory rather than the working memory to actually remember later by practicing recalling what you read at the end of a page instead of mindlessly glazing over the text.

How can we study without having to use boring techniques that seemingly do nothing? In order to focus and learn, you have to fight boredom. “Typically, I can’t really make myself go over my notes unless I’m working with friends, so we usually quiz each other and go through practice exams together.”, says Ximone Willis, a National Merit Scholar who graduated top 10 percent of her already accelerated learning class while maintaining extracurricular feats like starting an all girls programming club. She fights boredom by studying with her friends while focusing on the topic to fully understand it.

How does memory work in general?

“If you’re not paying attention to it, you’re not going to remember it,” says Dr. Nussbaum. This is true in any environment, whether it be school or at home, the key part of memorizing is paying attention. “[Focus]would be more involved in the frontal lobe, that helps us be alert and focus and able to direct our attention. And then the thought is that information is [then] formed in the hippocampus, which is a deep structure in the temporal lobe. There’s one on the left

side and one on the right side. And so memory is formed in that area and then the thought it is that it is distributed for storage to different parts of the brain.” Memories in the brain are stored according to the type of memory. For example, languages are stored in the language center of the brain. “...If it’s more of a visual memory the it would be kinda sorted further back in the parietal tenciplitle lobe, if it’s more of a olfactory memory, a memory related to smell, it may be more closer to the more olfactory part of the brain- and

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interesting too, there are other structures that are nearby the hippocampus, structure called the nebula, which has a lot to do with emotion, you know like especially fearfulness or anger, anxiety, and that is near the hippocampus and so it tends to reinforce memories that are being formed. That’s why you really will remember something that maybe makes us feel great, or makes us feel really excited, or feel angry, that sticks with us better

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“if somebody has a brain injury, ... a pretty significant concussion... they often times will not remember what happened.”

Photo by: ahajournals.org

because it sort of re-enforces that connection to the angula and the other structure that is near the anuagula is the

olfactory lobe, where we register smell, and why smell will often trigger memory that it’s a very strong connection too.”

What happens if we were to injure any part of the brain? For instance, what if we hit our head near the frontal

lobe, causing it to malfunction, making us unable to focus or remember correctly? “The frontal lobe is an area that really is the underpinning for the attention system in

Brain damage and its effects on different parts of the brain.

the brain,” Dr. Nussbaum explains. “This is why if somebody has a brain injury, if they have a concussion, a pretty significant concussion, they often times will not remember what happened and well it depends, if the person has a mild injury then they just won’t remember the injury itself.” Injuring the frontal lobe of the brain can cause widespread problems, from focusing to memorizing difficulties.

The brain is by far the most complex organ in the body. Injuring it can affect you for life, but not using it can affect you just as much. Overall, focusing, practicing, and fun can make studying - and your life - better.

And What They DoFrontal Lobeworks with short term

memory, and helps with focus

Temporal Lobe

Works with memory for sight, smell, and

hearing

CerebellumWorks with

coordination

Parts of the brain Parietal Lobe

Comprends informa-tion from the bodily

senses

Occipital Lobevisual processing

center of the brain

Brain StemWorks with breathing

and sleep

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How to Improve MEMORY1 Get your exercise and Sleep

it makes the di�erence.

2 Laugh!Laughing uses multiple parts of the brain, while listening to jokes activates creativity

3 Practice makes perfectThe brain is a like a muscle- USE it or LOSE it.

Crossword puzzles and recalling information is great practice

4 SOCIALIZESocializing wards o� depression and stress, two of memory’s biggest enemies

5 Be HealthyIn order for your brain to be healthy, you have to too. Eating plenty of vegtables and fruits helps keep your body in check

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the educationof medicine

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By Julia Grim

New advances in neurological medicine are exploding with the abundance of new technology, and with this, scientists

find themselves needing to teach new students.

A very rare prenatal condition that prevents a fetus from growing lungs or kidneys,

known as Potter’s syndrome, was recently diagnosed to Jamie Beutler’s unborn child. Potter’s syndrome has been known to have a 100 percent fatality rate until the child miraculously survived. With slim hopes to save the child, doctors injected a saline solution into Beutler’s womb, a surprisingly simple procedure, but one that does allow some fetuses to develop certain organs. This simple procedure allowed the fetus to successfully grow her lungs and kidneys. Without this knowledge of medicine, the baby, Abigail, would not have survived. Medicine is a highly valued discipline in many different cultures but especially in areas such as the United States

and Europe. More than any other these cultures understand that knowledge saves lives. Throughout history the human race has accumulated much knowledge with the advance of technology. However, there is still much more yet to be discovered. Andreas Matouschek, a biochemist at the University of Texas in Austin, studies the proteasome and protein degradation. The proteasome, an organelle inside the animal cell, breaks down proteins that the cell no longer needs; in other words, it acts as a garbage disposal. When the cell no longer has need of a certain protein, it marks the protein which then gets transported to the proteasome to be destroyed. If Dr. Matouschek an the scientists he works with can discover how to mark specific

proteins, they could control or even heal many incurable conditions. “We are looking at it in the context of cancer, a very broad range of diseases,” Matouschek says. “If we can find a way to remove the certain protein that the cancer needs to survive, the cancer cells will die, so this might be a way of stopping cancer,” Besides cancer, this method of destroying specified proteins could be used to treat conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, which occur when masses of proteins accumulate in a cell. Scientists believe that destroying these masses would cure the disease. David Journeay teaches anatomy and physiology at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School (LASA) in Austin, Texas, preparing students to

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“If we can find a way to remove the certain protein that the cancer needs to survive, the cancer cells will die, so this might be a way

of stopping cancer”

A diagram of a proteasome (left). The red sections

regulate entry into the proteasome;

the blue represents the chamber where

proteins are degraded.

Art Credit: Wikipedia

(Left) An Image of a Human cell expressing the green fluorescent protein, part of the study of protein degrading. This is used to view the patterns of the degrading of this certain protein.

Art Credit: Matouschek Lab at UT

work within the medical field to contribute to the plethora of knowledge. “We spend a great amount of time dissecting,” Journeay says. “If we had access to them, we would dissect human cadavers, but we cannot due to legal issues, so we dissect cats. We do a bunch of musculoskeletal labs where the subject is the student. He/she is linked to a physiograph which pick up electrical current in bodies and

brain waves; it measures the output of different muscles, “ Journeay prepares his students to go into many different types of science and medicine. He says that his students do go into a wide variety of sciences, chasing their urge to learn, though not all end up working with science. Journeay’s students are not alone in their interest in medicine. Rebecca Hicke, a ninth grader at LASA, also is fascinated by medicine. In her spare time,

she researches neurological procedures and reads about surgeries. “Clipping an aneurism is my favorite neurosurgical procedure;” Hicke says, “the surgeon will put a little clip on the neck of the aneurysm so that if it bursts, the vein won’t leak,” Like those in Journeay’s classes, she chases her love of medicine in hopes to become a forensic pathologist or a surgeon one day.She believes that medicine has

an ever increasing prevalence in the modern world and gives advice to other teenagers excited to learn more about medicine. “If you want to learn more about medicine, look things up, read a lot about conditions and procedures, and find out what you are interested in.” Neurological medicine, a branch of medicine focusing on the spine, neck, and brain, has seen an explosion of advances with the new technology being

invented for it. Engineers are working alongside doctors and other scientists to make new technologies to assist surgeons to better see and comprehend the patient’s body, helping them learn more about things they could not before.A new technology, the frameless stereotaxy helps surgeons navigate the brain, gives the surgeon exact coordinates of where the operating spot is, and maps out a direct plan for the surgeon to follow as the surgery takes place. However, the framed stereotaxy mapped out the coordinates where the surgeon was working before the surgery began, but could not be used to give data while the operation was occurring. Using the framed stereotaxy, when something unexpected happened during the procedure, or the plan of surgery changed while operating, the surgeon would not have updated coordinates to operate. The new stereotaxy allows surgeons to perform procedures more safely than before by helping them navigate the brain with accuracy. These frameless stereotaxies, used in nearly every cranial surgery, may be used in spinal as well as cranial surgeries in the future.

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Gene Therapy diagram (right).

The viral vector is represented by the

smaller shape, while the cell is the larger sphere. The vector attaches to the cell

and changes the genes

Art Credit:

Wikipedia.org

“Thought the trial itself did not make any significant

differences in the patients, they were seen to have more control over the muscles in their

hands”

Also helping scientist nurture their love of learning, the interventional magnetic resonance imaging device (MRI) is a more advanced model of the traditional MRI, a scan that produces detailed images of the body. The interventional MRI allows patients to sit or stand while being scanned as opposed to lying down, as is traditional, so that doctors can have different views of the body. Though a relatively new invention, doctors expect it to soon replace the traditional MRI, though not fully, because of its larger size and expense. Besides the inventions, procedures themselves continue to advance as technology increases. One theory that has not fully been put into play is gene therapy, yet it may soon become a reality. Since faulty genes cause many major diseases and conditions, would it work to simply change the genes themselves to reverse the problem. Scientists use this line of thinking to foster the idea of gene therapy, changing the genes of a certain area in the body. In order to change the genes themselves, scientists use viral vectors, viruses that are purposefully released into the tissue to modify DNA. Viruses have a natural tendency to change the DNA of cells so the cells produce more viral cells and spread the new viruses. If scientists can select a certain virus

to change the DNA of a group of cells to function correctly, many conditions could be reversed such many types of cancers. The first trial using gene

therapy occurred in 2001. A virus was injected into several patients with Canavan’s disease, a genetic disorder that damages nerve cells in the brain. Though the trial itself did not make any significant differences in the patients, they were seen to have more control over the muscles in their hands. Similarly in 2008,

patients with Battan’s disease were injected with a viral vector that had no long-term effects, but did have small beneficial changes. New inventions and knowledge have the ability to heal and save lives, but only if scientists know how to use them. They must learn and evolve to keep up with the diseases that threaten humans and educate others, because through

knowledge, science has granted baby Abigail Beutler and millions of others a shot at life. With more learning and research more can be saved.

Another Diagram of the Proteasome.(Above)

Art Credit: Matouschek Lab at UT

the Virus cycleby Julia Grim

How viruses infect a body, are contracted, and spread from cell to cell and person to person.

Coming into Contact with a VirusViruses spread when people make contact with the virus. This could be many things such as simply touching a surface with virus cells on it .

virus gets inside bodyIn order for a virus to infect a body, it must get into the blood stream through a break in skin: mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and cuts. One of the most common ways viruses enter a body is when the owner eats without washing their hands, so the viruses get onto the food which enters the body.

Virus finds and attaches to a host cell Once inside, the virus looks for a host cell; depending on the virus, the host cell could be a part of many different organs. Once it has found the host cell, the virus attaches to the cell membrane.

Virus Inserts DNA into Cell Now that the virus is attached to a host cell, all it has to do is insert its DNA into the cell for the cell to start replicating the virus.

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Cell replicates the virus The host cell now has the viruses DNA, which is now in charge of the cell. It signals to the enzymes to start making new virus parts.

host Cell assembles viruses The host cell has completed the process of making the different parts of the virus; it now assembles the new parts to make duplicate viruses are ready to be used.

Viruses escape the cell The newly made viruses are then sent out of the cell to repeat the cycle and give their DNA to other cells.

Virus escapes body Now that the virus has spread, the body begins to show symptoms of having the virus. But the virus now needs to infect other people to continue to spread. Each virus has a different way of getting out of a body. In this case, the virus has forced the body to sneeze, putting other viruses out of the body onto their hand.

Virus spreads to other Surfaces The hand that had the viruses on it from the sneeze touches other surfaces as the day goes on spreading viruses for others to contract.

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“The last Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) in captivity. It died at the Beaumaris Private Zoo in Hobart in 1936. The last animal captured in the wild was shot at Mawbanna in 1930”

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Why do Species Cease to Exist?

Why do Species Cease to Exist?By Suhaib Shah

s of 2013 there are an estimated 8.7 million species in the world. Along with that there are about 10,000 newly dis-covered species each year. Despite this huge number, since the beginning of life on earth, a whopping 99.9 percent of all species have gone extinct. Why are the species that fascinate us the most the ones that cease to exist? Is it their fault for lack of adaptation? Let us explore through this jungle of misjudgments and theories to find the real reason animals cease to exist .

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A

While it’s unusual for disease alone to wipe out a given species--the groundwork has to be laid first by starvation, loss of habitat, and/or lack of genetic diversity--the introduction of a particularly lethal virus or bacterium at an inopportune moment can wreak havoc. A biology teacher at Austin Academy for Excellence in Garland, Tx, Mrs. Atwell, explains that “a foreign pathogen can have a devastating effect on a community’s wellbeing. Without diversity in genetics the entire community will react the same: this usually in a

negative way. Climate change. Even in the absence of major asteroid impacts--which can potentially lower worldwide

temperatures by

their population. A single bird may be content with the high branch of a tree, while large predatory mammals (like Bengal tigers) measure their domains in square miles. As Stacy Eckman,the Clinical Assistant Professor at A&M explains “Coping with the rapidly changing world we live in

is one of the biggest challenges animals are faced with today. Humans will

come in to any given habitat and turn it completely upside down”. She vividly explains how animals are obviously not equipped to handle this kind of change. Once a species starts dwindling in numbers, there’s a smaller pool of available mates, and often a corresponding

20 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit--climate change poses a danger to terrestrial animals. You need look no further than the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,000 years ago, when various mammals were unable to adapt to quickly warming temperatures. Most animals require a minimal amount of territory in which they can hunt and forage, breed and

raise their young, and expand

“Coping with the rapidly changing world we live in is one of the biggest challenges animals are faced with today. Humans will

come in to any given habitat and turn it completely upside down”

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lack of genetic diversity. (It’s much healthier to marry a complete stranger than your first cousin, sinceyou run the risk of “inbreeding” undesirable traits, like susceptibility to fatal diseases.) To cite one example: because of habitat loss, the African cheetah has unusually low genetic diversity, and thus may lack the resiliency to survive a major disruption in its environment. Again we see how because of human interference animal

numbers are lessening. The next factor is introduction of invasive species. While most struggles for survival transpire over eons, sometimes the contest is quicker, bloodier and more one-sided. If a plant or animal from one ecosystem is transplanted into another (usually by an unwitting human), it can reproduce wildly, resulting in the extermination of the native population. That’s why American botanists wince at the mention of kudzu, which was brought here from Japan in the late 19th century and is now spreading at the rate of 150,000 acres per year. Stacy Eckman

explains again how “the accidental introduction of

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a nonnative species has been one of the leading causes for diminishing numbers. Lack of food. Mass starvation is the quick, one-way, surefire route to extinction--especially since weakened populations are more prone to disease and predation. Imagine that scientists find a way to permanently eliminate malaria by exterminating every mosquito on earth. At first glance, that may seem like good news for Homo sapiens, but just think of the domino effect as all the creatures that subsist on mosquitoes (like bats and frogs) also go extinct, and all the creatures that subsist on bats

and frogs, so on down the line! Better-adapted competition. Here’s where we risk succumbing to an insidious tautology: by definition, evolutionarily speaking, better-adapted populations always win out over those that lag behind (and we often don’t know exactly what the favorable adaptation was until after the event). Usually, determining the winners and losers of these encounters takes thousands, and sometimes millions, of years; suffice it to say that the vast majority of species have gone extinct in this comparatively unexciting

way. Adaptation becomes totally irrelevant when a species is the

target of human predation. Humans have only occupied earth for the last 50,000 or so years, so it’s unfair to blame the bulk of the world’s extinctions on Homo sapiens. There’s no denying the fact that in the time we have spent on the Earth has resulted in mass death of animals. This is clearly represented with the Tasmanian Tiger in that they were hunted in such huge bulk in the 1900s. they were hunted for game and bountied

by the government. Extinction by pollution is directly tied into hu Even without a vast knowledge on the topic, Jenna Worrel, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, talks of how “The Earth is a sacred place and its protection and growth falls into my generation’s hands and we are not doing as much as we could be. The thought of that concerns me because we do not have any other place to live besides this Earth that we are not

taking good care of.”man activity. It would be preposterous to accuse animals as being the leading cause of pollution in today’s world. Are we wise

enough?All photos from National Geographic

TASMANIANTIGER

They could smell better than most wolves

Their teeth were sharp directly correlated to their carnivorious life style

The absolute extinction is attributed to competition from indigenous humans and invasive dingoes.

Another study brings disease into the debate as a major factor in thylacine’s extinction.

Although there had been a conservation movement pressing for the thylacine’s protection since 1901, driven in part by the increasing difficulty

The species by the Tasmanian government was introduced on 10 July 1936, 59 days before the last known specimen died in captivity.

in obtaining specimens for overseas collections, political difficulties prevented any form of protection coming into force until 1936.

Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction

Extinction

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TASMANIANThe thylacine binomial name: Thylacinus cynocephalus, Greek for “dog-headed pouched one” was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped lower back) or the Tasmanian wolf. Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is thought to have become extinct

in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its family, Thylacinidae; speci-mens of other members of the family have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene. Surviving evidence sug-gests that it was a relatively shy, nocturnal creature with the general appearance of a medium-to-large-size dog, except for its stiff tail and abdominal pouch (which was remi-niscent of a kangaroo).

Their ears were very keen for night hunts when it was too dark to see

A series of dark trans-verse stripes that radi-ated from the top of its back (making it look a bit like a tiger). and helped with camouflage

Their quick feet were made specifically for the australian plains.

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Finding Physics

By Lauren Mangibin

Physics is a necessity, not a

want.

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Popping a balloon in slow motion,

the balloon retains its shape through

coefficient friction and creates the bulbous

shape of the balloon.

Photo Credit: Nina Matthews

Physics is the science of movement and energy relative to one another, but that is only a general idea. Everyone needs physics in day-to-

day life. It is not just a subject that someone learns in the classroom, but something that becomes incorporated into everyday lives. Toddlers, babies, pets, and all living creatures use physics unconsciously. Without physics, humans could not survive or even exist. It affects much of our daily lives from sports to computers to buildings. So the big question is: why do people disregard physics? Most days people think about video games or homework, but not science in daily objects. In the modern era, the effort and design put into making the objects are taken for granted because no one pays attention to the fine details of an object. By the time someone gets a product, the physics have already become a part of it. People like Dan Harper, a science teacher at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School (LASA) in Austin, Texas, thinks that if we take physics for granted, the world will turn into chaos because nothing will work. “Some people think [physics is] an elitist science; when they say physics they say it with a very erudite manner,” says Harper. Many people view physics as exclusive and not many people think

physics combines with aspects of their lives. Physics is a major branch of science pertaining to mechanics and fields of energy relative to one another. It includes other branches of science and is useful more than ever due to the many technological devices produced and designed every day. According to Harper, while people do not study physics extensively, they should have

an intuitive knowledge about it. Jocks may seem like they do not know anything about physics, but sports cannot exist without physics. Remember Newton’s Laws of Physics? “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Kicking, throwing, and running: all these actions require

some laws of physics because more forces appear in objects than we can visualize. “Well, most people think of just mechanics …when they think of physics in everyday objects, but it turns out like in this phone, the electric field and the magnetic field are used,” says Harper. Technology integrates physics as much as sports do. Building and designing machines requires a ton of physics to know how machines will operate and what every part does. A mother secretly buys a remote-controlled mini Mustang for her four year-old son, but little does she know that she will give him a toy full of physical forces and energy transformations hovering around the wheels and control circuits. She only knows that it is a toy and a great experience for her son. In reality, that remote control car includes so much more physics than the mother would expect. Radio waves in the Mustang cause it to react and move based on the types of waves the car obtains. Electromagnetic waves entail movement and kinetic energy forcing the car’s wheels to move. The magnetic field and electric field burst with energy as they receive signals from each other and force circuits to turn on and off. A domino effect of physics is created here through tons of running parts collaborating which force the car to drive

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Ana Ivanovic, a tennis player for Serbia, throws the ball in the air and performs physics as she is about to use her body weight to hit the ball.

Didier Drogba takes a step to kick the soccer ball and uses physics through his momentum to kick the ball far and hard.

Photo Credits: Wikipedia

“Physics is the science of movement and

energy relative to one another.” -Merriam Webster Dictionary

How to Make a Catapult Catapults were frequently used in Medieval times. Several of them could chuck four tons of weight over 1000 feet in the air! These mass destruction devices incorporate physics through the use of torque, elastic potential energy and force. There are several types of catapults that are used for different purposes, but the easiest and most efficient catapult is the Mangonel, a catapult with a base and an arm to push down. Many physics professors and physics majors use these projects to show the enormity of physics in small objects, and now you can make your own catapult!

1. Stack five craft sticks together, and tie the ends with a rubber band.

2. Stack two craft sticks together, and wrap a rubber band around the very end.

3. Separate the two craft sticks. Place the stack of five craft sticks between the two craft sticks.

What You Need: - 7 craft sticks - 3 rubber bands - A milk cap - A glue gun or tape

4. Wrap a rubber band around all the craft sticks to hold the catapult together.

5. Glue a milk cap {or something similar} on to serve as a launching platform for the object.

6. Push down on the top craft stick and release to launch an object from the milk cap.

Lauren Mangibin

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All Photos by Lauren Mangibin

When the arm is pushed down, the rubber bands create tension adding more or less power to the throw when adjusted.

The arm carries the load and

wants to keep launching, but

the rubber band keeps it down.

This is the most important part of the catapult because it holds the most tension throughout the catapult. The tightness created between the two parts of the catapult are stressed even more, adding more distance and power to the launch.

The angle with which the catapult releases affects the projectile and distance of the object thrown.

This catapult works like a lever and uses elastic potential energy through the rubber bands.The

problem with catapults is they either are accurate, but not precise or vice versa.

The size of the base created by the five craft sticks manipulates the angle of the catapult. If there is less of an angle, then there will be less tension in the throw, but if there is too much of an angle, the tension is too high and the rubber band will snap.

Physics in Flight

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in different directions, causing even more parts to move and operate. Simple objects such as toy cars generate a million forces to make one tiny and marginal action. With this knowledge, humanity creates billions of technological devices that influence our lives. “Life would be much harder without technology and understanding why things move the way they do. As technology grows more advanced there will be people who need to know how to maintain them and improve upon these devices,” says Ann Wang. As a junior at LASA, she currently takes physics and thinks many people today obsessed with their handy-dandy devices and cannot live without technology. People depend on technology to take care of them in hospitals and homes; technology is the base of our lives. Therefore, many jobs compensate for physics to conquer that problem. Engineering is one job that uses physics to a great extent and engineers also process all the problems they might encounter when designing a product. “Well, you can’t have mechanical engineering without physics because the…main thing that you’re always looking at is forces,” says Christy Moore. Moore, a mechanical engineer for Goodyear, checks for the durability of tires. Before the designs come out, the tires have to pass certain requirements to warranty them. In many engineering jobs, physics is critical due to technological advancement.

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One company called PlayPump, which provides clean water in African countries through “harnessing the power of children at play,” failed to inspect their design of the water pump and caused several of them to break down and deprived many villages of clean water. The idea was to create a spinning wheel children could play on to make pumping water fun and easy. The company became too excited with the success of the first water pump

that they rushed through several careless designs and installations. Twenty nine out of 42 pumps collapsed in Mozambique and did not release any more water forcing numerous villages to use pumps from other villages and causing conflict between them. A significant problem of the PlayPumps pertained to the pressure of gravity and the force of the children when playing with the wheel. The spinning wheel caused the hydrant to swerve and pressure the flow of

Remote control parts inside of a car are important to make sure that the car actually moves. Most of the objects in our toys and computers look like this to provide for all of the signals and connections that we get throughout the day. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Fans in the computer operate to cool down the heat created from the friction of spinning discs and hard drives. There are other types of cooling systems, but the fan is a common type of cooling system. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

water from the pump, causing a loss of water in a diminutive source of water. The physics incorporated into the design was abrupt leading to several problems for the people of the country and water supply. When a computer updates throughout the year, engineers have to find a way to fit a million transistors onto a small screen; keep the wires from burning out; and keep the computer safe so it does not explode. A thin, high-resolution computer made in 2014 has come a long way from the clunky, heavy boxes in the 1980s. When most people think of physics in a computer, they mostly think about well… nothing. A computer does not move; it does not do anything except entertain and show things on a screen. In fact, computers do more physics than most of us would expect. When using computers, the monitors work hard to keep up with all the programs opened and functions on the computer. In this fashion, the computer heats up in a manner that will eventually burn up the circuits and shut the computer down. “The physical thing that gets [the computer] is not the forces necessarily,

“The physical thing that gets [the computer] is not the forces necessarily, but the heat.”-Christy Moore

A robot programmed by computer scientists and built by mechanical engineers has to do with moving parts and machines that make actions easier for our lives. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

but the heat,” says Moore. “And so the big challenge usually is, the physical aspect of it, is to make sure that the heat dissipates enough so that your electronic equipment doesn’t shut down,” says Moore. If someone

disregards the design and physics built into the product, then the object will start breaking because of structural limits and poor design. Engineers design products of comfort such as chairs or pillows and combine them with safety factors that ensure the products will not break when used. “Usually you have like a 10 percent margin of error, so to combat that, you have this factor of safety [of] two or three, meaning

you design everything for two or three times what you think will work,” Any product a person works on, any design someone draws has physics blended into it so that it satisfies the customers and the product is used for the longest time possible. All forces act on an object to affect it in a positive or negative way, and it is crucial to counter or encourage those effects. For example, if a piece of wire bends due to heat, then engineers find ways to prevent that from happening, or if the wire is light and holds 20 pounds due to gravity, then engineers want to keep that trait of the wire and advance the result. Physics is too important to leave to computers and other machines. Everything uses physics for the smallest of things. Without it, society and technology would not be able to advance. No matter what you do, physics will stay with you like an annoying best friend. You probably won’t notice it or even consider it half the time, but thank physics once in a while for everything that it does.

Light refractions from a mercurial lens refract light to form a rainbow. Photo Credit: Wkipedia

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why Do We Forget Stuff?

The human brain is a mysterious little ball of gray matter. After all these years, researchers are still baffled by many aspects of how and why it operates like it does.

Scientists have been performing sleep and dream studies for decades now, and we still aren’t 100 percent sure about the function of sleep, or exactly how and why we dream. We do know that our dream cycle is typically most abundant and best remembered during the REM stage of sleep. It’s also pretty commonly accepted among the scientific community that we all dream, though the frequency in which dreams are remembered varies from person to person. In some part of your brain you just simply get distracted and forget what you were thinking about or trying to remember.

For example you go to the store to buy some thing, as soon as you walk in the door you get distracted by all the colors and stuff. Also people forget to buy their stuff because of the abundance of sales and people just want to buy more stuff from the low price stuff and automatically forget why they came to the store and what they needed to buy. Also people are just to energetic to remember the stuff they need, or the other way they are to old to remember stuff. The older people from 45 and older are to old and have to many memory in the brain and also can’t remember the present stuff they need to remember like their medications, the time they need to eat and etc. The brain has a significant number of memories it can hold and at one point of your life you won’t be able to remember stuff that you actually need to remember.

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By Jenny Ramirez[Published on June 18, 2010 by Joshua Gowin, Ph.D. in You, Illuminated]

Why is our memory so short?Neurobiologist Reshma Naidoo says “Short term memory is short - the span of STM is about three minutes. So, we don’t really hold things in it to remember later. You have to do something with that memory to be able to remember it later on. Unfortunately, your short term memory is pretty much spent up by the time you reach the door. “ Also we all have that time in age where we are to elder and have trouble remembering stuff or we are just too busy to remember what we needed from the store, Reshma also said “ Is loss of short-term memory related to age or just how busy/distracted you are at that time and why. Well, the more things that you have to juggle at the same time, the less likely you are to remember all of it. Which is why we have so much difficulty remembering everything. “

You may think just writing down what you need from the store will help you remember what you need and yes that helps you build a stronger memory for your STM, Reshma said “ Rehearse, plan and organize your information. This is one of the reasons why teachers want you to write down your homework. Yes, you can check what you wrote down when you go home. But, the actual act of writing it down strengthens your memory and helps build your STM. “ said Reshma Naidoo. For some people you can’t remember how to do stuff at what they’re good at, some part of you forgetting how to do the stuff you’re good at is because you feel anxiety but you might not even feel like it, “ Well, anxiety is often a factor. We are horribly inefficient when we are stressed or anxious. The brain is an organ, and if not well rested, fed and hydrated, just doesn’t work too well. So, if you have a high sugar and carbohydrate breakfast, you are less likely to be connotatively sharp remember things as well. “ something else you can do to better your short term memory is by just going a different route threw-out the store, you might just go directly to the section your product is at, that makes you less distracted about the other stuff that most likely be on sale. Just go straight to what you need and you won’t

“Your short-term memory is pretty much spent up by the time you reach the door.“

- Dr. Naidoo

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get distracted with the other attention products. Some people are horrible at remembering their needs when they go to the store, they get frustrated and go home and then they remember what they needed and they get mad again because they remember.

Brain While Intoxicated By Jenny Ramirez

Do you ever wonder why people remember a lot of stuff when they are intoxicated? Do you ever wonder why we remember stuff when your under the influence? Do you ever wonder why our brain functions way better when its intoxicated? Here is the answer to all your questions... We remember stuff when under the influence because the alcohol is so powerful it messes with your brain and it makes you remember stuff that you want to remem-ber and stuff you don’t want to remember. Yeah it sucks but that’s how the brain works and functions. Alcohol is the most widely consumed drug worldwide. For many, drinking is as much a part of daily life as having din-ner. Although we consume it regularly, we don’t really know what it does to us, or why it causes (some of) us to suddenly find streaking naked through a college cam-pus a brilliant idea. Alcohol, according to conventional wisdom, is a depressant. Yet, that doesn’t fully explain alcohol’s effects. People often drink to liven up a party, not mellow it out. A few drinks can spark energy, elation and excitement; it gives an intemperateness.

Memory while IntoxicatedClassification of drugs can be explained by their chemi-cal targets within the brain. Stimulants may influence dopiness or norepinephrine. Depressants target a chemi-cal called GABA, the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter within the brain. The brain reacts more when its intoxicated then when its sober. Its weird to hear that the brain functions and re-acts better sober. It may not look like it but experts have done some research and a scientist did a pet scan to a man intoxicated. Alcohol also decreases energy consump-tion in the cerebellum, a brain structure that coordinates motor activity. With a cerebellum running at half-speed, it would be hard to walk a straight line or operate heavy machinery. Classification of drugs can be explained by their chemical targets within the brain. Stimulants may influence dopiness or norepinephrine. Depressants target a chemical called GABA, the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter within the brain. They react slowly to stimuli, which is why drinking before driving is so dan-gerous. All of these physical signs occur because of the way alcohol affects the brain and central nervous system.

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Do you ever think about when intoxicated people say stuff from the past and remember when they don’t have control of their actions, keep on reading it and find out why that happened.

target of many stimulants, suggesting that alcohol is more than merely a depressant. Elevated levels of norepineph-rine increase Drunken brains are primed to seek pleasure without considering the consequences; no wonder so many hook-ups happen after happy hour.Although increased norepinephrine offers some expla-nation of alcohol’s effects, it doesn’t tell us where in the brain changes are occurring. To see which regions of the brain were more or less active while drinking, researchers gave a group of subjects a PET scan after injecting them with harmless radioactive glucose, the brain’s preferred source of energy. Highly active regions consume more

glucose, and those regions are brightly lit during the PET scan, where less active regions are dim-mer.

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At this point, our understanding of alcohol’s effects was a bit cloudy, as if rather than looking through a microscope, we were wearing beer goggles. More things could get into our cells, but we didn’t know what those things were or why it was happening. Our scientific explanation was as precise as our lay explanation. When we drink, our cells get messed up. Is this the best we could do?

At the same time, behavioral researchers sought to understand the physiological and psychological ef-fects of drinking. Drinking profoundly alters mood, arousal, behavior, and neuropsy-chological functioning. However, studies have found that the specific effects depend not just on how much someone drinks, but also on whether blood alcohol content (BAC) is rising or falling; while in the process of drinking, alcohol acts as a stimulant, but as drinking tapers off it begins to act more as a sedative. Sometimes its to strong for your brain and you brain just wants to give up and that’s when people blackout because its to much for the brain to handle.

A subsequent group of researchers found that drink-ing increases levels of norepinephrine, the neu-rotransmitter responsible for arousal, which would account for heightened excitement when someone begins drinking. Norepinephrine is the chemical

“I can remember my whole childhood when I drink myself a couple of beers “ - Joe Smith

When we fall in our dreams it really means we have lost control with some sort of situation in your life. Falling in your dream is a way your unconscious communicates with your conscious to let you know that something needs to be fixed right away.

When we fly in our dream, this means you are fully aware that you are in a dream and are able to control the dream settings. Manipulating your dream environment in a lucid state makes you feel like flying in your dream.

Falling

Flying Dreams

Have you ever woken up and gone about your daily morning routine - getting up, brushing your teeth, eating breakfast and going to work - only to wake up “again” and realize that what just happened is just a dream? That sensation is referred to as a false awakening. Some people can experience four or five false awakenings before they truly wake.

False Awakening

Dream- a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep.

Types of Dreams