June STEM News

Welcome to the latest edition of STEM Spectrum Monthly News, presented to you by The STEM Spectrum's News Editors! Each month, the latest advancements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are broken down and analyzed. This months edition zooms in on various topics, ranging from discoveries about Martian meteorites to revolutionary gene therapy trials restoring hearing in children.

Martian meteorites deliver a trove of information on Red Planet's structure

“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” said Neil Armstrong as he placed his foot on the surface of the moon. Space is a great mystery, a mystery that we have been attempting to unravel for decades and have had success uncovering the great mystery of the universe. When we think we understand it all, we continue to be surprised with all the new things we learn. 

After our landing on the moon, for decades, our next goal has been set on the red rocky martian planet, Mars, a planet that is intriguing in its history and parallels Earth. Recently, scientists from UC San Diego have discovered new information about Mars's geographical structure including its mantle and crust due to meteorites that scientists analyzed right here on Earth.

The scientists analyzed meteorites that formed about 1.3 billion years ago which came from Mars, and were deposited at sites near Antarctica and Africa and in recent decades scientists have been researching them. Geologist James Day and his colleagues conducted analyses of samples of these meteorites to get information on their chemical composition which can help understand the chemistry and history of the Red planet.

Day’s teams believe about 11 millions years ago Mars experienced a large meteor impact that shred parts of the planet and sent smaller meteorites that were hurtling towards Earth. Since 1800 these meteorite deposits have been discovered in France, Egypt, Antarctica and a few other places. They deduced that these meteorites came from Mars because the composition is tied to the Martian volcano nakhiltes & chassignites. 

The team analyzed the composition of these meteorites and found that they were rich in minerals that were found in Earth's crust and mantle which is very similar to that of Mars. Furthermore, they were able to show that they came from a volcano and that interacted with the Martian atmosphere. 

These analyses of the meteorites allowed for the scientist to discover a new rock type on Mars and were able to gain more information into the formation and history of Mars. They discovered how the upper crust has been altered by interactions with volcanos and these minerals causing the outer crust to be significantly more different then the interior crust which formed much longer ago. 

In essence, the red martian planet is clearly our next step in interstellar exploration and it is only time before we are able to put ourselves on the planet. It is truly astonishing how much information we are able to get about a planet from rocks that landed on our home millions of years ago, and it truly shows us that no matter what we think we know, there is so much left to discover. That’s the beauty of space.

New Gene therapy trial shows restored hearing and speech in children born deaf, treated in both ears

Humans use 5 key tools to perceive and interact with the world around them, touch, sight, smell, hear, and taste. Together these senses allow the human mind to connect itself with the world and interact with everything within our environments. Unfortunately, for a vast many individuals, some of these sensations are lost or never developed and the most prominent of these is deafness, something that affects over 470 million people worldwide. For decades scientists have been working to find new and improved ways to treat these conditions and fortunately in a recent clinical trial at the Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, five children who had inherited deafness were able to get their hearing and speech restored after being administered gene therapy in both ears. 

Gene therapy is the transplant of normal genes to the body and within specific cells that lack or have defective genes in hopes of correcting those abnormalities. Recently, a newly designed gene therapy was created to target deafness and restore hearing and speech within children. The children who were tested saw remarkable hearing and speech abilities and were able to gain the ability to perceive the location and position of sound. This was the first trial in the entire world that targeted both ears and saw vastly more benefits than past therapies that only had targeted one ear. 

The researchers were astonished with the ability that the children were able to do after the therapy. Their goal was to help develop three dimensional hearing capabilities that were crucial for many of our everyday tasks such as driving. Although this was a very small clinical trial and only a handful was taken as a sample, the researchers hope with this great breakthrough that it will warrant large attention and international trials. 

Children are often susceptible to deafness because of an abnormality during development in the OTOF gene that hinders the production of the otoferlin protein that is crucial in the auditory sensation and the neural mechanisms that are needed. Within the trial the children were given the OTOF gene through their ears in a minimally invasive surgery, and afterwards no complications arose and all showed recovery in both of their years with vast improvement in auditory and speech capabilities. 

This was very fortunate for the children as they gained the ability to appreciate the main things that deafness often prohibits for people. For example, the children were able to appreciate music, have clearer conversations with their parents and each other and overall had their quality of life substantially increased and this is why it is crucial that this trial be widespread as there are millions of people who are suffering who would benefit significantly from this treatment. 

With this tremendous success there still requires further study needed to refine the therapy and procedure and most importantly the trials need to be held internationally with a much greater sample to more closely examine the therapy. 430 million people may be suffering from deafness but this trial brings hope that soon enough that number can and will substantially decrease. 

New model allows a computer to understand human emotions

Ever since the inception of computers decades ago, computers have been advancing at an unprecedented rate and we are currently in the midst of an AI revolution. However, with all of these advancements and great achievements, there has been one thing that computers struggled to achieve, something that was thought to be impossible for machines, a quality reserved for us human beings and that is emotion, but that was until a groundbreaking development. 

Researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland were able to develop a computer algorithm model that was able to interpret and understand human emotion. It utilized ideas of mathematical psychology to be able to understand these emotions, and this advancement has the potential to revolutionize computer systems as with the development of AI we can be seeing a new age of interactions between humans and computers very soon. 

The model is said to be able to use the algorithm to change what it does and how it interacts based on the emotion of the users. For example if a user becomes annoyed or anxious the computer would be able to give additional instructions and information to change the interaction. With computers we face a plethora of emotions from joy, anger, frustration, sadness, boredom, excitement and many more, but computers or AI were never able to recognize this but with this model that can change. 

The model was able to predict if the user was feeling happy, bored, irritated, angry or had anxiety. With human interaction, emotion is a necessity in fully interpreting the feelings and messages of a human and a computer that is able to understand that can far better deliver what the user wants with that understanding. Researchers believe this model can be integrated into AI systems that will allow them to have better interaction with the users by gaining that understanding of what the user is feeling and providing better services based on that. 

The model works by the emotion theory which believes that emotions are based on human cognition that evaluates different perspectives. By being able to program that in a computer, based on the different responses that humans have to a certain event or tasks the computer could predict the state and emotion of that person. 

This is only the beginning of this discovery, and there is far more work to do before this comes to a practicality. The researchers are looking to explore further applications of this emotional understanding and further develop the model to make it improved. They believe that this model can be useful in a variety of settings from social media to the workplace to improve experiences and workflow. This breakthrough is a crucial one that can revolutionize the way in which we interact with our machines and remember in just some time your computer will be just like another human being, scary or excited?

Collossal black hole seen turned on for the first time

SDSS1335+0728 is a supermassive black hole which, for the last four years, has been observed by astronomers as it goes from dim and quiet to bright and active. This black hole is a million times the mass of our sun and ‘floats’ 300 million light-years aware inside the galaxy. The first transition was observed recently and is predicted to provide valuable insight into the processes that power active galactic nuclei. Additionally, this holds the power to be bright enough that is can be seen across the cosmos. 

In December 2019, the black hole first caught astronomer’s attention in the Zwicky Transient Facility when it brightened dramatically in “optical wavelengths.” Whilst first thought of simply as a normal AGN candidate (active galactic nucleus - extremely bright central region of the galaxy) archival data disproved this by revealing a lack of activity 20 years ago. 

How this phenomenon works is seen when black holes normally light up when they rip apart and consume stars - a tidal disruption event. This system produces bright radiation when the demolished object spins around the black hole and is normally short-lived, only lighting for short periods of time (lasting a few days or months). However, Paula Sanches Saez, astronomer at European Southern Observatory, stated that the SDSS1335+0728 was able to remain luminous for a few years, making it that much more remarkable in the world of astronomy.

Whilst it is still unclear exactly what is going on researchers from the facility prophesize that the black hole is consuming smaller satellite galaxies which fell into it. This is feeding the awakening of the black hole as it becomes very bright.

As this black hole opened up many possibilities, it also enlightened an avenue to explore AGNs, the process of development and how they are fed to create their own supermassive light in the world of science, astronomy and our outer galaxy. 

McDonald's, First of Many To Shut Down Integration of AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been facing a rapid technological boom and widespread utilization. AI itself refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines which are programmed to think, act and perform like humans themselves. With the backbone creation of algorithms and models, the machines are able to interpret and respond to prompts and data provided by humans in a much quicker and efficient manner. 

Therefore, it minimizes the human labor for many activities and has allowed for larger business entities to speed up their processes and become more efficient as they rely less on tedious self-conducted activities. Specifically, the fast-food industry which primarily focuses on speed and effectiveness in the delivery times of their meals has been turning to AI with expectations of increasing their efficiency. One of the first pioneers in this movement was Mcdonald's - the largest global fast-food chain where in 2021 they formed a partnership with IBM to mock an AI system. The prototype featured the ability for customers to drive up and loudly say their orders to a drive-thru microphone, recorded by AI instead of a human employee. The anticipation was for the AI to comprehend complex orders, offering recommendations based on processed past orders and reduce inefficiency by offering faster, seamless service. 

The benefits of these AI drive-thrus entail the primary delivery of something very compelling as AI would be able to propagate and understand complicated, twisted customer issues. Armed with their prior ordering data they could be more durable and equipped to provide custom responses additionally, it can reduce labor costs in the long-term and mental well-being of employees as they deal with tiresome activities for hours on end. 

Yet, despite all the strong promises AI was able to market and advertise itself with, McDonald's has already begun giving up on the advanced machine learning implementation, just a few years after its introduction. The system was exposed to become overwhelmed even with simple orders, incorrectly processing orders and offering peculiar, unwanted options. The renowned fast-food chain announced halting the continuation of IBM partnership beginning August of 2024. 

Nevertheless, this one negative experience is not the end all be all. The wider consensus amongst businesses, gastronomical and elsewhere is that the technological power within AI will most definitely be integrated once further software development solidifies the machine's strength and capability to respond with higher accuracy. The limitations truly are endless and the obstacles are, if anything, simply just another way for the revolutionary engineered product to become more useful, more precise and more powerful. 

What is the true source of our uncontrollable paranoia? 

A signal of advanced cognition is seen when individuals are capable of adjusting their believes about actions and consequences in a constantly changing environment. Any disruptions to this capability can hinder cognition often leading to states of mind like paranoia. Paranoia is characterized as a mental state fueled by intense, irrational suspicion of possibilities and mistrust of probabilities. Present in all humans as a natural instinct, severe conditions can severely impact an individual's perception of reality and their interpersonal relationships.

Recently, a novel study conducted by Yale scientists has exposed how one specific region of the brain may actually be the trigger to provoke these feelings of second-guess. The scientists implemented a novel approach, aligning data collected from monkeys with humans and integrating a new cross-species framework to help provide clarity on human cognition. 

Researchers analyzed existing data from trials where humans and monkeys completed the same task - aiming to comprise the volatility a candidate perceives their environment to be. Each participant was given three options associated with varying probabilities of receiving a reward. If the highest probability of reward was selected, they would get a reward with fewer clicks and vice versa. Participants were intentionally made unaware on the reward probability and as noted by Steve Chang, associate process of psychology and neuroscience in Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences, had to use trial and error to uncover their best option once the environment adapted. 

The results obtained from their clicking behavior revealed information about how volatile they found their environment to be and the adaptive nature of their behavior. Furthermore, to support the physical collection of data the scientists used computational analysis on both data sets to try to explain the behavior serving between the common language of monkeys and humans. 

And what were the results? It was observed that monkeys had specific lesions in one of two brain regions: the mediodorsal thalamus known to send environmental information to decision-making control centers or the orbitofrontal cortex, a region denoted with reward-related decision-making. The presence of these legions negatively affected monkey’s behavior. The first associated showing erratic switching behavior despite having already received a reward and the latter was when monkeys struck the same option even when not receiving an award. The monkeys, like the humans, perceived their environment as very volatile - signifying high paranoia. 

The significance of this research remarks in the ability to translate human cognition from simpler species aiding to accelerate the understanding and knowledge of our own thinking. By targeting the specific regions where lesions propagate, neuroscientists are more equipped to navigate our psyche, and brain- paving the way to discover ways of reducing paranoia and ensuring a more stable homeostasis between our physical and mental thinking and environment. 

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Presented to you by The STEM Spectrum's News Editors: Akishai Sabaratnasarma and Shiena Fernando.