A New da Vinci Code?

The da Vinci Surgical System

Leonardo da Vinci, known for his revolutionary advances in art, music, and science, is now known for his ability to peel a grape.

The da Vinci Si Surgical system is the future and present of surgeries here in Ventura County. Earlier this year, St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard was awarded a $1,750,000 grant, the largest gift in the history of the hospital, which was used to purchase the da Vinci system. “I am overwhelmed by this generous gift to St. John’s,” said Laurie Eberst, president and CEO for St. John’s Hospitals in an interview posted on the St. John’s Hospital website. “It demonstrates that our legacy is strong and that local philanthropic leaders recognize and support the innovative surgical procedures being performed at St. John’s by our highly skilled physicians.”

The da Vinci Si Surgical System is one of the most technologically advanced surgical platforms available today. It is used as an extension to the surgeon during procedures, for those such as lung cancer, prostate cancer, thoracic surgery, gynecological procedures, urology, and general surgeries. “The application of this technology in the treatment of lung cancer [at St. John’s] is a relatively new and tremendously advantageous approach,” said Dr. Bruce Toporoff, a cardiothoracic surgeon at St. John’s, per the St. John’s Hospital website. “The potential to perform minimally invasive surgery to treat and cure lung cancer is phenomenal and will enhance St. John’s active lung cancer program.” Toporoff added, “we are already innovative in our cardiac surgery program and the use of robotics affords us new opportunities in the future.” The surgeon is in control of the da Vinci system during the entire surgery and is able to project precision that is impossible to replicate with just one’s hands. The system allows the procedure to involve the smallest incisions possible, as well as giving the surgeon 3-D views of the patient.

The da Vinci Si Surgical System benefits both the hospital and the patients through shorter hospital stays, reduced blood loss, fewer blood transfusions, minimized side effects, faster recuperation, reduced postoperative pain, and smaller incisions that lessen the likelihood of infection. Incisions made by the surgeon using the da Vinci System are so small and precise they can peel a grape! A video for this grape peeling can be seen on the St. John’s Hospital website.

Technological advances like these are bettering our medical practices every day. We have a machine that eliminates the possibility of a surgeon's hand shaking hindering the success of a procedure and it’s only a few miles away from Cal State Channel Islands. The future looks bright for students aspiring for positions in the medical field because machines like this are opening more and more doors.

Once again science, you rule. 

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From Green Waste to Dark Earth

Untreated soil (left)
Soil treated with biochar (right)

Though carbon sequestration, the act of taking carbon out of the atmosphere, is hardly a new concept when it comes to the fight against climate change, researchers all over the globe are eager to think up new wacky ways to do it. Biochar, a newly developed charcoal-like soil additive based on an ancient technology, has researchers and environmentalists thrilled about its potential to reduce our carbon footprint. In a 2010 study that was published in Nature titled Sustainable Biochar to Mitigate Global Climate Change, it was calculated that if industrial scale biochar production was practiced globally it could offset carbon dioxide emissions by 12%.

The biochar soil enhancement technique comes from the remarkably fertile soils of ancient Amazonia. The man-made dark earth soils, otherwise known as terra preta soils, have been found to contain charcoal, fish bones, ceramics and other bits of debris. The extraordinary thing about terra preta soils is that though naturally they are particularly barren and fruitless in nature, they have remained fertile for thousands of years.

Biochar is made from any organic waste product. Normally organic waste would be consumed by an animal or decomposed, eventually making its way back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide or methane. Instead, thermal degradation breaks down the waste in a pyrolysis process, heating in the absence of oxygen. Combustible gas is then produced which provides more than enough energy to sustain the reaction for the rest of the production process leaving behind a charcoal-like residue. Since the carbon is stabilized in this process it can be stored in the ground for thousands of years without escape.

Reduction of greenhouse gasses isn’t the only benefit to this technology. Since biochar has a weak electric charge it attracts plant nutrients in the form of positive ions in the soil. Preliminary research suggests that the use of biochar can boost plant yields as well as reduce ground water contamination from fertilizers.

Looks like biochar may be the next new thing in progressive agriculture as well one more weapon in the arsenal for scientists in the battle against climate change. Thanks for the tip ancient Amazonians!

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Rest in Peace F. Sherwood Rowland

F. Sherwood Roland, May 2008

F. Sherwood Rowland, Nobel laureate most famous for his groundbreaking atmospheric chemistry work in the mid-nineties on the formation and destruction of the earth's ozone layer, died at his Corona del Mar home earlier this week on March 10th at the age of 84 from complications with Parkinsons Disease.


Rowland and his two colleagues Paul J. Crutzen and Mario J. Molina won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for their extensive work on the potential destruction of earths stratospheric ozone layer by anthropogenic sources, specifically chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were commonly found in refrigerants and other man-made materials. Rowland and Molina's paper titled Stratospheric Sink for Chlorofluoromethanes: Chlorine Atom-Catalyzed Destruction of Ozone that was published in Nature in 1974, was instrumental in the banning of CFCs by the Montreal Protocol in 1996.


F. Sherwood Rowland will surely be missed and revered in the scientific community for his significant contributions.

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Ocean Acidification: Global Warming’s Partner in Crime

Impact of ocean acidification on a key Arctic pelagic mollusc

As carbon dioxide (CO2) levels rise and global warming continues to rear it’s ugly head, disaster may be in store for some of our oceans key players. According to a study titled The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification published in Science this month, due to ocean acidification, the decline in pH caused by the rise of CO2 mainly due to anthropogenic sources, we may be headed into dangerous territory in comparison with historical carbon cycles.

Earth’s oceans gobble up approximately one quarter of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Carbonic acid is then formed, lowering the pH of seawater. Due to the drop in pH the concentration of the carbonate ion, which would normally be supersaturated in surface waters, is reduced. For calcifying organisms, organisms made of calcium carbonate, a decrease in carbonate ion concentrations could spell catastrophe. In the incidence that acidification directly affects calcifying organisms such as corals, molluscs and other creatures that produce their shells and plates from calcium carbonate, it could eventually upset the entire marine food chain.

In the study researchers looked to earth’s geological record for clues to what biotic responses might be based on record disruptions in carbon cycling and climate change, which were potentially caused by ocean acidification. In the past it has been challenging for researchers to determine future impacts of ocean acidification due to the limited sample period and the fact no existing oceanic crust or sediment is available for examination over 180 million years old.

Admittedly the study isn’t perfect. Researchers state in the paper “no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry;” however, in the timespan of our geological record there are several events providing evidence regarding biotic responses in the incidence of carbon cycle disruption. It was concluded in the study that acidification levels seem to be headed for a maximum that we haven’t seen in the last 300 million years, which they call “unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.”

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CI Students Present Research at Biotechnology Conference

CI students from left to right
Lorenzo DeSantiago, Camille Peredo, Devon Dally,
Eric Needleman (from the CSU), Jason Torres, Susan Ly, Claudina Cammack
Photo compliments of the CI Chemistry Department

While some of us may have been feasting on leftover Christmas cookies or savoring our last days of sleeping in before the dawn of a new semester, several CI students including Susan Ly and Lorenzo DeSantiago were busy presenting their research at the CSU Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) symposium in Santa Clara over winter break. “It’s cool because you get immersed into everything… all the big companies are there,” said DeSantiago. “You have Google, Yahoo and biotechnology companies are everywhere.”

Ly and DeSantiago are part of a research team led by Dr. Blake Gillespie, associate professor of chemistry at CI. The team is dedicated to studying CusF, a protein found in E. coli, in hopes to better understand what governs protein stability. “We want to understand the basis of ligand-dependent stability,” said Ly. “We are not trying to cure a disease but many diseases arise from protein misfolding.” The team hopes to create a global model for protein stabilization that can be related to other proteins as well as CusF.

CI student Lorenzo DeSantiago 

Photo compliments of the CI Chemistry Department

In addition to allowing undergraduates the opportunity to present their own research, CSUPERB is an excellent place for students to make new connections in their field. “You get to network across different CSUs,” said DeSantiago.

Ly explained that her favorite part of the conference was viewing the other student’s research poster presentations. “It is really interesting to find out about what other students are doing,” said Ly. “Also, it is good practice to try to explain your own research in a way that a person outside your field can understand.”

Both Ly and DeSantiago expressed thanks for the opportunities that have been available to them at CI. “I am incredibly grateful for this research opportunity,” said Ly. “I know if I was at another school I would not be able to do the research I am doing now.” Interested parties will have a chance to check out Ly and DeSantiago’s project among other current research happenings at the 2012 Southern California Undergraduate Research Conference in Chemistry and Biochemistry (SCURCCB) that will take place in April on our very own CI campus.

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Reply Hazy, Try Again

Albert Einstein

In the past decade, suspicions have arisen in the scientific community concerning the uniformity of the constant, alpha, that reflects the strength of electromagnetism in regards to how hydrogen gas absorbs ultraviolet light in space. Alpha seemed to differ throughout the universe based on observations made in the last decade with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii and again in 2010 with the Very Large Telescope in Chile. If confirmed, this idea would challenge Einstein’s equivalence principal, that states that the laws of physics are the same in all parts of the universe, and may lead to wacky new ideas like the existence of other universes and additional dimensions. Some scientists thought this idea was a bit too bizarre to deserve much merit.

Recently, in a study done by teams at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune, India and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico titled Constraining Fundamental Constant Evolution with HI and OH Lines, that was thought to finally settle the debate, researchers detected the hydroxyl molecule’s emission and absorption of radio waves in a gas cloud 6.7 light years away. The hope was that the radio instruments used, which are capable of taking measurements at 50 to 100 times greater accuracy than in previous experiments to detect hydrogen absorption, would provide evidence of a more conclusive nature regarding these claims.

Unfortunately, researchers came up empty handed. It was the expectation that the emission and absorption lines observed from the hydroxyl molecule would be mirror images of each other. This was not the case in this experiment, which led researchers to believe there was something spoiling their measurements. One possibility is that a second hydroxyl gas cloud lying on the same plane was responsible for the screwy results.

Since gas clouds that carry a hydroxyl signal are hard to come by, possibilities for settling the dispute in the near future are looking grim; however, every gas cloud has a silver lining. Though it may take years, this new promising method may prove useful as new clouds are discovered and examined.

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Life's New Ingredient: Someone's in the Kitchen with Methane

Zircon Crystal

Early Earth may not have been the methane-rich reducing soup the scientific community previously believed it to be. Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute uncovered evidence that will force scientists to write a new recipe for the atmospheric conditions of early earth that gave rise to the building blocks of life.

Prior to this study, scientists believed that early Earth consisted of an oxygen deficient atmosphere filled with methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. To date, theories of how life began on earth were concocted from these toxic ingredients.

In the paper titled The Oxidation State of Hadean Magmas and Implications for Early Earth’s Atmosphere that was published in the December 1st issue of Nature, researchers reveal that the atmosphere of early Earth may be closer to our current oxygen-rich conditions than previously thought.

The theory that the outgassing of magma released by volcanic activity was responsible for forming early Earth’s atmosphere is widely accepted by most scientists. To determine what gasses the magma was supplying researchers at Rensselaer looked at zircons, minerals contained in the magma that had crystalized into solid rock on Earth’s surface, to provide a glimpse into the past. Zircons, being that they are not destroyed over time like most other minerals, are commonly looked to for clues regarding the history of Earth. In this experiment, researchers used zircons to provide them with a sneak peak into the oxidation states of atmospheric gases by determining the oxidation state of the magmas that created the zircons.

Understanding the conditions that gave rise to life on earth is not only crucial to further our quest for knowledge of our own origin but alters the way we look for potential life on other planets in our universe.

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