Dr. Phyllis Zee, Chief of the Sleep Medicine at Northwestern Hospital, warned the audience at Horner Park on Wednesday, August 15, that we cheat sleep at our peril. Dr. Zee’s excellent presentation was the first instance of C2ST’s collaboration with the Chicago Park District in the “Science in the Parks” series. Watch the video here.
Dr. Zee explained that three scientists recently shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work in the early 1980’s identifying the genes and protein molecules that drive our twenty-four-hour biological clocks, often referred to as our “circadian rhythm.” Every cell in our bodies has the clock mechanism, and all these clocks are coordinated by the master clock in our brains. The mechanism interacts with light and dark. It keeps us awake and productive (usually) during the day and early evening, and puts us to sleep at night to rejuvenate our systems for another day.
This is the repository for all things C2ST. You can learn with videos of our past events, read articles concerning cutting-edge research and development in Chicago and elsewhere that will change our lives (generally one new article posted each week), check out C2ST in the news, and more! Use the Filter Media options below to browse C2ST’s content and discover something new!
December 6th to 12th was Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek¹). The idea behind the week-long celebration is to inspire K-12 students to learn computer science, to raise awareness for computer science education, and to highlight the contributions of the computer science field. This event falls during the week of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper’s² (aka “the mother of computer science”) birthday (December 9th, 1906).
By Summer Seligmann, C2ST Intern, Loyola University
Recycling can be tricky–it may not always be clear what to put in those blue bins. Although we may have good intentions when we drop our plastics and papers into those bins, the unfortunate reality is that most of this material ends up in a landfill anyway. From January to August of 2021, less than 9% of Chicago’s 578,687 tons put in blue bins were recycled. The city’s low recycling rates stem from a variety of issues in sanitation, but a prominent one is the lack of resources to properly handle large items. Stoves, furnaces, and other household appliances contain metals that can and should be recycled, yet they end up in landfills. Recycling scrap metal can help with this issue, but at what cost?
Scrap metal is metal material recycled from different products; essentially, the leftover metal parts from objects like motors, transformers and faucets. There are two main types: scrap that contains iron (ferrous) and scrap that doesn’t contain iron (nonferrous). Scrap can be brought to a scrap yard where valuable metal material is separated and recycled. It might seem unnecessary to go to a scrap yard when the City of Chicago picks up bulky items for free, but given how low the city’s recycling rates are, there is no guarantee that what is set by the curb will be recycled. Bringing scrap metal directly to a facility reduces what ends up in landfills.
This is what a ceiling fan looks like when the metal parts and non-recyclable material are separated. Courtesy of my dad – a scrap metal recycler and environmentalist.
Pfizer recently used the Advanced Photon Source (“APS”), a powerful x-ray machine operated by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, to help them develop a pill that appears to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death among COVID-19 patients by 89%. Pfizer is now seeking FDA approval to administer the drug to patients. The process Pfizer used to develop this pill may be the blueprint for preventing future pandemics.
Thank you to all of the science enthusiasts from Chicagoland and beyond!
We hope you and your loved ones are staying warm and enjoying festivities as the temperatures drop across the city.
With the holiday season upon us, will you help provide low-cost STEM education? By contributing to the Chicago Council on Science and Technology, you will be directly responsible for new and exciting programming on a variety of important topics.
By making a tax-deductible donation to our organization, you are directly aiding us in spreading open and accessible science and technology education to the Chicago community and beyond!
Ryan Lepak is a post-doctoral researcher at the National Science Foundation (NSF). He previously did mercury and food web research with the United States Geological Survey and now works for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). His recent research focuses on measuring contaminants, specifically mercury, in the Great Lakes and observing fish populations as bioindicators of the health of the Lakes.
By Summer Seligmann, C2ST Intern, Loyola University
2020 was a difficult year for everyone. The global pandemic altered life as we knew it, and the world around us felt like it was burning, and it was. Unfortunately, it seems that 2021 hasn’t been much different. Like the pandemic, wildfires have not gone away, and they probably won’t any time soon. There have been nearly 49,000 wildfires in 2021, for a total of 6.5 million acres burned. Although there have been fewer wildfires this year, scientists warn that the future will be much worse if we don’t act fast.
In September of 2020, 3.5 million acres of land were burned in wildfires. In total, 10.2 million acres were burned in more than 58,000 wildfires in 2020. The acres that burned across the U.S. combined were bigger than the entire state of Maryland. This was a record high in the 21 years since data has been tracked and reported by federal wildfire agencies in the current reporting system. 22 climate disasters, three of the largest wildfires in Colorado’s history, and 4% of the state of California burned – all in the year 2020.
