2021

The Traveling Salesperson Problem: In Search of Polynomial Time
Articles

The Traveling Salesperson Problem: In Search of Polynomial Time

Emily Almgren

The Traveling Salesperson Problem is one of the most famous open problems in computer science. What is it, and why is it so important?

GLPK solution of a traveling salesperson problem. Photo by Xpron. Public domain, via Wikimedia commons. Imagine you are planning a road trip. To save time and gas, you want to choose the shortest route that goes through all the cities you want to visit. How do you figure out what path to take? One option is the brute force approach — measuring and comparing the lengths of every possible route to find the shortest one. However, the number of possible paths grows very quickly as you add more destinations. With five cities to visit there are 24 possible routes, but...
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What Do We Do With E-waste? Flash Joule Heating Presents a Solution
Columns Green Chemistry

What Do We Do With E-waste? Flash Joule Heating Presents a Solution

Isabel Thornberry and Atira Glenn-Keough

With Apple rolling out a new iPhone every year and planned obsolescence encouraging consumers to buy and throw out more and more electronics, electronic waste is piling up in landfills globally. An article published in October this year proposes flash Joule heating as a potential solution to the millions of tons of e-waste produced every year.

With Apple rolling out a new iPhone every year and planned obsolescence encouraging consumers to buy and throw out more and more electronics, electronic waste is piling up in landfills globally. Over 40 million tons of e-waste are produced annually, making it the fastest growing category of solid waste globally. E-waste often includes heavy toxic metals that can leach into the surrounding environment, contaminating soil, water, and food sources. Workers who dispose of e-waste have been found to have higher lead content in their blood because of exposure to dangerous dust and smoke when working with the waste and in...
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Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Discovery of Temperature and Touch Receptors
News Science in Society

Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Discovery of Temperature and Touch Receptors

Emi Krishnamurthy

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for research on how we feel temperature, touch, and bodily spatial awareness. This discovery marks a key breakthrough in our previously limited understanding of our sense of touch.

2021 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, David Julius (above) and Ardem Patapoudian (below), and the discovered temperature and touch sensing proteins. Images via NobelPrize.org. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoudian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch, marking a key breakthrough in our understanding of how mechanical stimuli are converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, our five major senses, connect our bodies and brains to the world. A sixth sense, proprioception, which helps our body know where it is...
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Seaweed: A Savory Solution to Save The Oceans
Features

Seaweed: A Savory Solution to Save The Oceans

Cat Kim

Eutrophication is a huge issue that is suffocating our oceans, and farming seaweed may be the key to saving them.

Algal bloom resulting from eutrophication. Photo by Lamiot, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Growing up Korean-American, I ate a lot of seaweed. My mom often made kimbap, vegetables and rice wrapped in seaweed, for me to eat at school. Every year for my birthday, I ate miyeokguk, a seaweed soup. I would have dried and salted strips of seaweed as a midnight snack. Seaweed has always been a huge part of my upbringing and diet, so I did not think much of it and never considered that it would have the potential to save the planet —...
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Emerging Solutions to Microplastic Pollution
Columns Green Chemistry

Emerging Solutions to Microplastic Pollution

Atira Glenn-Keough and Isabel Thornberry

While the problem of microplastic pollution still looms large, scientists are developing technologies to remove existing microplastics, prevent new plastics from reaching waterways, and even avoid harmful microplastic manufacturing with the development of bio-based plastics. New, innovative technologies involving microorganisms may also be on the horizon.

Microplastics in the Azores, an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic. Photo by Race4Water, via Wikimedia Commons. From heavy metals to hydrocarbons and oil to plastic debris, marine pollution is a world-wide problem. According to a review by H.S. Auta et al. published in 2017 by Environment International, plastic composes 80-85% of marine litter, and on our current trajectory, the amount of plastic litter in water bodies will only increase. Microplastics don’t decompose easily, and with increasing production and few effective clean-up methods currently implemented on a broad scale, we’re likely to see more and more microplastics in our environment. Microplastics are...
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Haverford Bee Handbook
Features Science in Society

Haverford Bee Handbook

Emi Krishnamurthy

Which bees should I be afraid of? What should I do if a wasp lands on my sandwich? Did I just see a murder hornet? This is your guide to the bees on Haverford’s campus.

Bees run the world. They are widely recognized as being integral to biodiversity and food security. Their little lives impact our water cycle, carbon cycle, GDP, architecture, and so much more. Interior of the Vessel in Hudson Yards, NYC (left), honeycomb (right). Photos by Soly Moses and Archana GS. Honeybees First and foremost, the honeybee is an excellent pollinator, skilled honey maker, and close friend to Haverford’s campus. Our own beehive hosts thousands of fuzzy, golden-brown bees that help pollinate our produce at the Haverfarm. The honeybees you encounter on campus are most likely female worker bees collecting pollen and...
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Autumnal Nights: The Full Moon and Evening Star
Columns Stargazing

Autumnal Nights: The Full Moon and Evening Star

Karen Masters

Read Haverford Physics and Astronomy Professor Karen Masters’ seasonal guide to stargazing. What’s in store this fall: full moons, eclipses, and Venus, bright in the night sky.

A photo of the moon and Venus in the sky. Photo by Sean Rozekrans via Wikimedia Commons. As the evenings draw in, the Full Moon is a beautiful and accessible stargazing object. As is the case in the Spring, many cultures have festivals during the Fall that are set by the Lunar Calendar, and so they are explicitly or implicitly tied to the Autumnal Moons. For example, the date of Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur is set by the “lunisolar” Hebrew calendar, which means it (usually) starts on the date of the closest New Moon to the Autumnal Equinox (the date when...
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The Amazon Rainforest’s Sinking Carbon Sink
News

The Amazon Rainforest’s Sinking Carbon Sink

Ashley Schefler

The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, and was once an important carbon sink in the fight against climate change. However, a newly published study ten years in the making shows that the Amazon has switched from being a carbon sink to a carbon source, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it takes in.

Aerial photograph of the Amazon rainforest taken near Manaus, Brazil. By Neil Palmer/CIAT, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. It is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth, spanning 2.6 million square miles (roughly 70% the size of the United States). The Amazon contains at least 10% of the world’s known species, and, for many years, it has functioned as an important carbon sink. If you’ve been following the news on climate change, you probably know that trees are one of the good guys in the story, able to store...
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Reef Shark Conservation: Is It Too Late?
Features

Reef Shark Conservation: Is It Too Late?

Lydia Guertin

Reef shark populations have severely declined in the past decade, and many species are now functionally extinct, according to a recent report. Is it too late to save them?

Blacktip reef shark. Shot by Talon Windwalker via Wikimedia Commons. Sharks are commonly heralded as an important species in oceanic and reef ecosystems, serving as an indicator of reef health, fish populations, and even seagrass growth. However, few people outside of the marine research community have noticed the alarming decline in shark populations, especially on reefs, until now, when it may be too late.  A July 2020 report published in Nature shocked many coastal communities across the globe when it announced that 20% of the reefs observed had no sharks over multiple months of observation. Although evidence of shark population...
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What is Dark Matter?
Features

What is Dark Matter?

Hannah James

Dark matter is mysterious to many, and exploring this phenomenon usually leads to more questions than answers. Professors Dr. Karen Masters, associate professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Daniel Grin, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy, provide key answers and explanations.

Dr. Karen Masters, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy (left), Dr. Daniel Grin, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy (right). Dark matter is mysterious to many, and exploring this phenomenon usually leads to more questions than answers. Professors Dr. Karen Masters, associate professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Daniel Grin, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy, provide key answers and explanations.  This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the distribution of dark matter in the center of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, containing about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter...
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How Quickly is the Universe Expanding? The Hunt for the True Hubble Constant
Features

How Quickly is the Universe Expanding? The Hunt for the True Hubble Constant

Lydia Guertin

Though scientists have researched the increasing expansion of the universe for years, a contentious debate still churns regarding the true value of this rate of expansion and how it may be changing right before our eyes.

Microwave emission map that shows the Cosmic Microwave Background, a distribution of early universe temperatures. The blue spots are colder than the red spots. Via NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day/Planck Collaboration It is now a well-known fact that the universe is expanding, but how quickly is it growing? Despite decades of cosmological research across the globe, no astronomer can definitively identify this rate of expansion, the Hubble Constant H0. Such uncertainty stems from Hubble Tension, the quantitative difference between two different methods used to calculate H0. Luckily, Dr. Bruce Partridge, one of the original collaborators on the Planck Satellite...
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Russia’s Neutrino Detector: A New Realm of High-Energy Particle Physics
News

Russia’s Neutrino Detector: A New Realm of High-Energy Particle Physics

Lydia Guertin

Scientists in Russia recently launched a new telescope designed to detect heavy particles coming from all across the galaxy, moving us closer than ever to understanding extreme astrophysics.

Setup view of the Antares Neutrino Telescope, François Montanet Via Wikimedia Commons Some of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy involve the emission of neutrinos, including high-energy astrophysical events like supernovae and black hole formation that also emit high-energy light in the form of gamma rays. These neutrinos are subatomic particles that interact very weakly with their surroundings, so they can only be observed using very sensitive telescopes, complicating the process to observe them. To further the studies of extreme phenomena like black holes, rapidly-rotating neutron stars called pulsars, and galaxy merger events, where two galaxies collide, scientists in Russia...
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Crystal Synthesis: A Sneak Peak into the Norquist Lab
Features

Crystal Synthesis: A Sneak Peak into the Norquist Lab

Asher Maitin

Asher Maitin ’21 explains the Oxide Project in the Norquist Lab, where students work to generate crystals using compounds that are largely neglected in published literature.

Simulated image of crystal structures. The work done in Alex Norquist’s Chemistry Lab at Haverford College involves both the synthesis of novel compounds with exciting properties as well as addressing inequalities in material chemistry datasets. For instance, some materials can be used for material synthesis but are not due to various human-driven biases and decisions. One example is the material availability bias, referring to the cost of a material, or how readily available the material is to locate and use.  The Norquist Lab at Haverford is divided into several different projects, all pertaining to material chemistry and machine-learning, which can...
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Ingenuity: The First Powered Flight on Mars
News

Ingenuity: The First Powered Flight on Mars

Hannah James

Ingenuity, which landed on Mars in February 2021, is the first powered aircraft to take place on Mars. Exploring Mars from the air gives scientists a unique perspective: they will be able to survey Mars’ geology in ways never attempted before.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on the belly of the Perseverance rover, ready to be dropped off at the helicopter’s deployment location. Photo by NASA. Ingenuity, which landed on Mars in February 2021, is the first powered aircraft to take place on Mars. Exploring Mars from the air gives scientists a unique perspective: they will be able to survey Mars’ geology in ways never attempted before. The Perseverance Rover has recently made headlines as the most recent rover to be sent to the red planet. Its main objective is to detect signs of life and to collect rock and soil samples....
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Bark Bacteria May Limit Tree Greenhouse Gas Emissions
News

Bark Bacteria May Limit Tree Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Emi Krishnamurthy

Wetland trees are an unexpected but major source of global methane emissions. Methane-oxidizing bacteria recently discovered in tree bark could inform how climate scientists and legislators approach future methane mitigation strategies.

Paperbark Trees in Coombabah Lake Conservation Park. Photo by Silverish Lily via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Wetland trees are an unexpected but major source of global methane emissions. Methane-oxidizing bacteria recently discovered in tree bark could inform how climate scientists and legislators approach future methane mitigation strategies. Methane comprises 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, but can be 32-87 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming Earth’s atmosphere. Natural sources produce millions of metric tons of methane every year because of climate change feedback systems, with wetland forests contributing about one-third of total methane emissions...
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Lightning and the Origins of Life on Earth
Features

Lightning and the Origins of Life on Earth

Ashley Schefler

Lightning strikes could have provided the phosphorus needed for the development of life on Earth, according to a new study.

Lightning during a thunderstorm. Photo by Felix Mittermeier via Unsplash. Phosphorus is an essential element for all life on Earth. Without it, we would not have the DNA that stores our genetic information, the ATP that provides energy for chemical reactions, or the phospholipids that make up our cell membranes. While phosphorus is abundant in Earth’s rocks, it is present in an oxidized form that makes it unreactive, and is therefore inaccessible to biological organisms. So how did early life on Earth gain access to phosphorus? Until now, the prevailing theory has been that meteorites brought phosphorus to Earth in...
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Summer Stargazing: Black Holes and Shooting Stars
Columns Stargazing

Summer Stargazing: Black Holes and Shooting Stars

Karen Masters

Summer nights are short but warm, and many people spend time camping — an ideal activity to mix with stargazing. Try looking for Sagittarius, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, meteor showers, and even a partial eclipse of the sun this summer.

Scroll to the bottom of this article for a stargazing and astronomy calendar for Summer 2021. The summer is one of my favorite times for stargazing. The nights are short but warm, and many people spend time camping — an ideal activity to mix with stargazing. Try looking for Sagittarius, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, meteor showers, and even a partial eclipse of the sun this summer. You can see almost everything I suggest below without any equipment. Sagittarius is one of my favorite summer constellations to look for. Greek astronomers saw a centaur firing an arrow, but I always look for...
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Science in Society

A New Frontier: Scientific Funding Policies after COVID-19

Lydia Guertin

America’s scientific funding is at its lowest in 60 years. After the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how unprepared we are to face health crises, the public eye has now turned to how basic scientific research is prioritized and funded, if at all.

Federal research and development funding has become a hot-button issue after the Trump administration defunded Predict, a pandemic early warning project that had already identified and flagged 190 dangerous coronaviruses, just months before the global outbreak of COVID-19. In the 2019 fiscal year, federal research and development (R&D) funding was sitting at less than 1% of the US national gross domestic product, the lowest in over 60 years. Because of this decreased funding specific to health and viral research, it was no surprise that the US was unprepared to face the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the biggest health crises of...
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What We’ve Learned from Juno’s Latest Laps Around Jupiter
News

What We’ve Learned from Juno’s Latest Laps Around Jupiter

Lydia Guertin

You may have seen the gorgeous pictures of Jupiter floating around your twitter feed, but they only scratch the surface of the incredible discoveries the Juno spacecraft has sent back to Earth.

Jupiter’s (cyclonic) south pole, taken by the Juno spacecraft. NASA, 2017. You may have seen the gorgeous pictures of Jupiter floating around your twitter feed, but they only scratch the surface of the incredible discoveries the Juno spacecraft has sent back to Earth. “Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian [pertaining to Jupiter] science, and there is always something new,” says Scott Bolton of his experience as principal investigator aboard the 10-year-old Juno mission.  Since July 4, 2016, when the Juno spacecraft was close enough to Jupiter to complete one orbit...
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The Ocean as a Key Resource in the Antibiotics Arms Race
Features

The Ocean as a Key Resource in the Antibiotics Arms Race

Emi Krishnamurthy

One key solution to fighting antibiotic resistance is to discover new antibiotics. Shreya Kishore ’21 shares how she screens marine bacterial cultures in pursuit of discovering a novel antibiotic.

Shreya Kishore ’21 in the Whalen Lab at Haverford College. Shreya Kishore is currently a senior Chemistry major with a biochemistry concentration and health studies minor at Haverford College. As a peer tutor and member of the Chemistry Student Group, Kishore is passionate about increasing the transparency of Haverford’s chemistry department. She plans on working toward her Chemistry PhD at Stanford University this fall. One key solution to fighting antibiotic resistance is to discover new antibiotics. Shreya Kishore ’21 shares how she screens marine bacterial cultures in pursuit of discovering a novel antibiotic. Almost 100 years ago, Sir Alexander Fleming...
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Scientists Clone Disease-Threatened Ferret Species to Introduce Genetic Diversity
News

Scientists Clone Disease-Threatened Ferret Species to Introduce Genetic Diversity

Griffin Kaulbach

For the endangered species of black-footed ferrets, scientists are going beyond the typical conservation methods. Biotech companies and wildlife conservation organizations are working together to implement reproductive cloning to introduce genetic diversity into the disease-threatened ferret species. If successful, this method will create a more resilient population and show that reproductive cloning has the potential to save more of our vulnerable native species.

Endangered black-footed ferret in an outdoor preconditioning pen at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado. Photo by Stewart Brand for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. For the conservation of endangered black-footed ferrets, scientists are going beyond protected areas and habitat restoration. Biotech companies and wildlife conservation organizations are working together to implement reproductive cloning to introduce genetic diversity into the disease-threatened ferret species. If successful, this method will create a more resilient population and show that reproductive cloning has the potential to save more of our vulnerable native species. In 1988, a Wyoming rancher was surprised when...
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The Twenty-Two Percent: A Review of Gender in Physics
Features Science in Society

The Twenty-Two Percent: A Review of Gender in Physics

Ashley Schefler

Recently, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University published a study ten years in the making investigating the relationship between gender and performance in introductory physics courses. This article will review the results of the study, as well as the underlying problems that have led to the underrepresentation of women in the field.

Naval officer Gretchen S. Herbert speaks with young women participating in a Pre-College Experiences in Physics (PREP) Summer Program at the University of Rochester. Photo by U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Katrina Sartain, via Wikimedia Commons. Note: This article will use some binary gender language (“women” and “men”). These were the genders studied and language used in the papers this article covers, but I acknowledge that this language does not encompass the whole spectrum of identities. Recently, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University published a study ten years in the making investigating the relationship...
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Swirling Plasma Clouds: What We Know About Space Hurricanes
News

Swirling Plasma Clouds: What We Know About Space Hurricanes

Lydia Guertin

On August 20, 2014, researchers at Shandong University in China noticed some strange readings at Earth’s polar regions. While they didn’t know it then, the team at Shandong University was watching the first observed space hurricane.

Illustration based on recent confirmation of first-ever observed space hurricane. Qing-He Zhang/Shandong University eOn August 20, 2014, researchers at Shandong University in China noticed some strange readings at Earth’s polar regions. There were no solar flares, abnormal geomagnetic conditions, or other phenomena that could explain these readings, yet there was a storm building at the North Pole. This was no ordinary storm: massive plasma clouds with spiraling arms were beginning to take shape, pulling electrons in from Earth’s magnetic field lines. While they didn’t know it then, the team at Shandong University was watching the first observed “space hurricane.” These...
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Creating a Real Warp Drive: Zero to 299,800,000 in No Time
News

Creating a Real Warp Drive: Zero to 299,800,000 in No Time

Lydia Guertin

A warp drive is a type of engine designed to travel at the speed of light, which is a revolutionary concept, if one can solve the issue of hurtling a spacecraft with much more mass than a photon through space.

Concept model of an Alcubierre Drive. Via NASA. In 1994, Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed something seemingly out of science-fiction: a real, working warp drive with the capacity to travel faster than the speed of light. Well, “working” in the theoretical sense, but even then it did not quite follow the ever-present laws of physics. A warp drive is a type of engine designed to travel at the speed of light, which is a revolutionary concept, if one can solve the issue of hurtling a spacecraft with much more mass than a photon through space. This idea, while not practical...
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New Anti-Biofouling Technology “SLIPS” into Action
Columns Green Chemistry

New Anti-Biofouling Technology “SLIPS” into Action

Atira Glenn-Keough and Isabel Thornberry

Biofilm buildup on marine infrastructure forces ships to use more fuel and pay for more maintenance, and most solutions are harsh and dangerous for the environment. As a more environmentally-friendly solution, chemists are currently looking into SLIPSs.

Dried algae and rusty metal on a boat ramp. Photo by W.carter, via Wikimedia Commons. Biofouling is a process that occurs when microorganisms, such as bacteria, form communities and adhere to surfaces. These communities are called biofilms, and once established, they often spread rapidly and expand onto other surfaces. Biofouling can create many problems for the environment and man-made structures as it interferes with and accelerates the degradation of infrastructure, such as plumbing and shipping. For example, marine biofouling occurs when biofilm on a ship accumulates, followed by other surface marine organisms, like algae and barnacles, causing ships to use...
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