October 21, 2024

Rachel Truong 

In a world where classical computing would take billions of years to solve a seemingly impossible problem, quantum computing has the capability to do it in seconds. Quantum computing applies properties of quantum mechanics to exponentially facilitate computer processes. Since quantum computing does not adhere to classical physics, it also does not rely on binary logic. It uses qubits, which have exponentially more capabilities than regular bits. Qubits are the fundamental units of quantum information used to encode data similar to the binary number system used in classical computing...click here to read more

October 16, 2024

Dylan Nguyen

Imagine a world where surgeries are performed with flawless precision, legal documents are written in seconds, and customer service is provided 24/7, fueled by chatbots that never tire. This isn't something out of The Terminator, it's the reality we're moving toward as robots and AI integrate more into our daily lives. Is this revolution a threat to our existence, or is it an opportunity for evolution?...click here to read more

October 10, 2024

Reggie Dao

To model diseases and do multiple tests for the benefit of the human body, organoids come into play for this role to allow scientists and hospital workers to delve deeper into the unsolved questions of medicine, disease, and organ development. Research of the human body has benefited thanks to these organoids, which are replicated miniature organs in a dish to serve as testable objects, saving many lives. This new way of cultivating artificial organs has expanded scientists’ knowledge of individualized diseases and drugs...click here to read more

October 4, 2024

Jayden Chung 

What if your brain has the power to repair itself, even sharpen its abilities? Our brain possesses the ability to repair itself and even sharpen its abilities. The brain’s hidden potential can build lifelong health and resilience. The brain constantly evolves and adapts to every new experience, skill, and challenge...click here to read more

September 30, 2024

Abram Tran

Aviation has been at the forefront of humanity’s technological progress for the past century, achieving some of humanity's most impressive technological feats within a relatively short period. Undoubtedly one of the most impressive of these displays was the moon landing in 1969, which occurred not even 70 years after the first powered flight in 1903. Aviation today is a major aspect of many people's lives, with billions of flights being made each year. Aviation is not an easy field to work with however as aircraft often require intensive maintenance to remain operationally safe and instances of partial or complete aircraft failure still occur...click here to read more

September 19, 2024

Khloe Ferniz

Is plant-based meat healthier than real meat? What is the purpose of plant-based meat? To start, meat production is land-intensive, and using cattle and herds to produce it takes up significant water, land, and energy. These in turn put more greenhouse gasses and methane into the air, contributing to more climate change. This harms our Earth’s resources, whereas switching to a sustainable practice of plants would take up less energy, time, and water...click here to read more

September 16, 2024

Jayden Chung 

There are trillions of bacteria in your gut that could be key to preventing or even curing autoimmune diseases. The role of gut microbiota in shaping our immune responses has emerged as a groundbreaking frontier. These microscopic organisms are now recognized as significant regulators of immune activities.The gut microbiota is a complex community of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microorganisms that live primarily in the intestines and play a crucial role in maintaining the body’s overall health. Beyond aiding digestion, the gut microbiota can communicate with the immune system, influencing its response to various threats...click here to read more

September 13, 2024

Arielle Nguyen 

Have you heard of The Sims, a best-selling series of life simulation games? The Sims presents the player with choices regarding their character’s entire life, from their appearance to personality to strengths. What if that game could become a reality? Could you imagine how anarchic the world would become? Parents fighting for a baby to pass the intelligence of Einstein; models competing for the most stunning baby to enter the job market; sick people genetically modifying their children to not suffer their diseases…the list goes on. And yes, The Sims has it all, and for a long time, we didn’t have these advancements. Until the gene-edited babies known as Lulu and Nana came along...click here to read more

September 9, 2024

Henry Le

Have you ever wondered why children resemble their parents? From a regular standpoint, it makes sense that a mom and a dad come together and have a child who often shares features of both. But from a scientific point of view, what’s the reason behind this? Cells that aren’t involved in reproduction are called somatic cells. In the case of humans, most somatic cells have 46 chromosomes, bundles of DNA containing the genetic information that encodes for our body functions and traits. However, sex cells, or gametes (sperm and egg cells), only have 23 chromosomes...click here to read more

September 5, 2024

Rachel Truong 

Digital twins are real-time virtual models of a physical entity that continuously reflect the state of the entity throughout the entity's life cycle. Today, digital twin technology is used in many industries such as healthcare, urban planning, construction, and energy due to robust IoT systems and advancements in AI...click here to read more

August 23, 2024

Suri Le 

There is a wide range of controversy surrounding the impact AI has made on academia. The most common topic of debate involves large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, GooseAI, and other text-generating models. Teachers at the primary and secondary school levels are concerned about whether their students use generative AI for their essays. But is this issue prevalent in higher education and research as well?...click here to read more

August 20, 2024

Kathlyn Phan 

In recent years, AlphaFold has emerged as a groundbreaking tool within the artificial intelligence industry by predicting protein structures with incredible accuracy. Developed by DeepMind from Google, AlphaFold has been widely used by researchers and scientists for its 3D protein structure prediction and modeling capabilities since its debut. Although the tool has some limitations, AlphaFold is still highly regarded as the top protein structure prediction method according to CASP14. Through deep learning, this new technology holds the power to enhance disease detection and help scientists with drug discovery that could revolutionize the world of medical science...click here to read more

August 16, 2024

Uy Pham 

Ice hockey games, figure skating competitions, and speed skating races. An entertaining ice skating session with your friends. What do all these activities have in common? They all require ice rinks. The factors that maintain the temperature and structure of ice rinks are essential to ensuring that all ice activities, from recreational activities to professional sporting events, can be completed in a standardized, safe, and consistent manner — no matter the location of the ice rink...click here to read more

August 14, 2024

Sarah Nguyen

What is a revolution? A revolution can be defined as a sudden radical change or overthrow of one’s government. What made the Scientific Revolution so “revolutionary”? It was neither a sudden radical change nor an overthrow of the government. By its name you may infer that it was a sudden eruption of knowledge; however, the revolution was anything but far from sudden. The Scientific Revolution, occurring in Europe from the 15th to the 18th century, was characterized by a surge of innovation and abstract reasoning...click here to read more

August 12, 2024

Rachel Truong

Imagine being connected to a machine that pumps chemotherapy drugs into your veins. For days. For months. For years. You’re beginning to realize that maybe– just maybe– cancer will continue to thrive inside you. According to the 2020 WHO Global Health Estimates, cancers affecting the respiratory system are “ranked 6th among leading causes of death”. While cancer can be cured when detected early, it’s a complicated process for more severe stages. Various treatments such as radiation therapy often have cytotoxic side effects. These harmful side effects could last for a long time even after killing the cancerous cells because cytotoxic drugs also damage healthy cells. But there’s hope...click here to read more

July 31, 2024

Monique Nguyen

There are diamonds in the rough, but what about diamonds in the sea? Seabed mining aims to extract precious underwater minerals as an alternative option to terrestrial mining. To do so, vehicles will rummage the seafloor to find and retrieve mineral deposits such as polymetallic nodules, polymetallic sulfides, and cobalt crusts, which would be brought up to the surface for extraction. Deep-sea mining allows access to a world of underwater resources and information for future global development, covering a gap that terrestrial deposits cannot solely fulfill. However, this new type of mining poses several threats to numerous fragile ecosystems and species that lay previously undisturbed in the deep ocean...click here to read more

July 24, 2024

Paul Pham 

Minecraft, as many are familiar, contains expansive worlds through which players can freely explore and build upon their imagination. In a certain sense, as Minecraft and Mojang developer Henrik Kniberg puts it, Minecraft is an Earth simulator, with various creatures, mountains, trees, flora, daylight cycles, and climates across a seemingly endless world of blocks. These seemingly endless worlds are unique in landscape, terrain, and size. When you load into a new Minecraft world, it is almost certainly a world that nobody has ever seen before...click here to read more

July 10, 2024

Sarah Nguyen 

Developed by a team of Northwestern University researchers, dirt-powered fuel cells use energy from microbes that live in dirt. The research for these cells was published on January 12, 2024, and was led by Northwestern Alumni Bill Yen, a PH.D student at Stanford University. Yen began the project of dirt-powered fuel cells while he was an undergraduate at Northwestern....click here to read more

June 21, 2024

Uy Pham 

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. A line from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita recited by Julius Robert Oppenheimer on national television in 1965 when describing the extent and implications of the development of the atomic bomb, and an iconic line uttered by Cillian Murphy, who plays the role of Oppenheimer in the respective 2023 biographical film. In the summer of 2023, the “Barbenheimer” craze struck movie theaters across the country with intrigued viewers flocking to watch two simultaneously-released movies: Warner Bros. Pictures’ Barbie and Universal Pictures’ Oppenheimer...click here to read more

June 19, 2024

Monique Nguyen 

Achoo! In this world, there are good germs, bad germs, and germ weapons. Biological warfare has reigned as a critical threat in history, yet its dangers are especially underexposed in the modern era. Its primary definition is the deliberate use of biological weapons, such as illness-causing agents, to harm either humans, animals, or plants. These agents take on multiple forms including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and toxins. Some of the most common are smallpox, tularemia, anthrax, botulism, and hemorrhagic fever viruses, whose effects can range from mild allergies to serious conditions. However, most biological weapons are used to induce death and have the potential to create epidemics and pandemics, which is why they are classified as weapons of mass destruction. However, the use of these weapons is broad in effect, materializing in various situations with different causes, uses, and consequences...click here to read more

June 10, 2024

Arielle Nguyen 

If you live on the Western Coast of the United States, you’ve probably heard of (or, if you’re lucky enough, seen) the bioluminescent sea shuffling up on beach’s shores. Have you seen that bright, neon blue wave wash onto the sand? Or, more commonly, seen a firefly during the night? The phenomenon is known as bioluminescence, a type of light that seems to have been sparked from science fiction rather than reality. It’s not too common on land, more in the ocean’s pelagic zone — an ecological terrain that includes the entire ocean water column, from the Epipelagic to the Hadopelagic; the highest and lowest zones. Typically, it’s frequent amongst fish, squid, and animals that are mostly made of water; all of which live between 200 and 1,000 meters deep in the ocean...click here to read more

May 24, 2024

Suri Le 

The universe works in mysterious ways. Even though we question the universe, is it questioning us back? On Wednesday, July 26, 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope team based at the European Space Agency (ESA) publicly released a stunning image of a pair of young stars forming almost 1,500 light years away from Earth. Upon further analysis of the photo, viewers noticed an object in the background resembling almost a perfect question mark icon. Across social media, the zoomed-in image went viral with references to popular Sci-Fi culture such as The Matrix and more...click here to read more

May 22, 2024

Paul Pham

The question of habitability beyond our home planet Earth has long been one of humanity’s largest, most pressing questions. For centuries, a myriad of thinkers have dug deep at this seemingly unanswerable question, in attempts to justify extraterrestrial life in our cosmos. Perhaps, though, the key to unlocking the mystery of life beyond our Earth lies in the existence of exoplanets throughout our universe...click here to read more

May 13, 2024

Kathlyn Phan

By understanding chemical reactions on a molecular level, scientists have developed a method to capture rapid chemical reactions in slower time frames in order to analyze and make observations. Some chemical reactions can occur within femtoseconds, making it impossible for scientists to predict results or conduct research. With collective knowledge in both Physics and Chemistry, researchers invented a computer that could slow these reactions down to a time frame humans can observe. These chemical processes are crucial for applications of forensic science, solar energy harvesting, etc., so understanding how their dynamics work will enable us to find solutions to some of the most complex problems in science...click here to read more

April 25, 2024

Reggie Dao

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, there have been several ways of producing energy to fuel our daily resources. Although the introduction of fossil fuels and manufactured energy is still prominent in the market, we’ve turned ourselves toward more natural sources of energy. Currently, society is leaning more towards a wide variety of renewable gasses ranging from solar power, wind power, and hydropower. Specifically for solar power technology, the strategy of collecting energy from the rain has been applied to fuel the electricity in today’s houses. But what exactly is rain energy?...click here to read more

April 22, 2024

Caroline Mora

In 2016, two sophomores at the University of Washington became one of seven recipients of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for the undergraduate "Use It" category. The invention submitted was a pair of gloves with the technology to translate American Sign Language (ASL) into audible words. The gloves are called “SignAloud” and they use sensors to pick up different gestures and signs, sending them via Bluetooth to a computer where the information is then sorted, translated, and spoken through a speaker. This product, though a prototype, could have major benefits for deaf and hearing people alike...click here to read more

April 17, 2024

Uy Pham

What if you could walk forever in an immersive virtual world, yet still physically remain in the same place? With Disney’s new HoloTile floor, visitors at Disney’s various attraction parks may soon be able to do so thanks to this new technology...The HoloTile floor. It allows a person to walk infinitely in any direction; however, the person remains in the same place on the floor. The floor adjusts to a person’s movements in any direction and can manage users at any speed up to Usain Bolt’s sprinting pace. Multiple people can step on the floor at the same time, making the HoloTile floor an omnidirectional, multi-person treadmill apparatus...click here to read more

April 2, 2024

Jasmine Nguyen

For decades, plastic consumption has been a significant threat to our environment. The consequences of overconsumption have been made apparent through wildlife endangerment, polluted habitats, and food contamination. Scientists have taken action, recognizing these recurring issues due to plastic pollution, and increased their focus on combating these issues. The carbon structures of plastic make it much harder to decompose in a natural process. Scientists have been working hard to understand and reveal the works behind breaking down plastics. So, how have scientists combated the study of decomposing plastic? In what ways have they developed the process of breaking down these stubborn bonds? Is there a way to assess this problem without further damage to our environment?...click here to read more

March 26, 2024

Audrey Tran

Stronger than steel and thinner than human hair, spider silk has remained a fascination to scientists. The liquid silk is secreted by glands in the abdomen and passed through the spider's spinnerets, leaving the body as a dry material. With its high tensile strength, flexibility, and lightweight nature, this natural fiber is extremely difficult to replicate synthetically. Its unique properties can be used in clothing and rope and its biodegradability and biocompatibility present much potential in medical applications...click here to read more

March 22, 2024

Monique Nguyen

With the exponential growth in the healthcare industries, medical ethics is involved in even the most basic of operations. It is loosely defined as the moral obligations involved in a healthcare worker’s decisions to ensure a patient’s safety. As the concept has been developed, basic principles have been integrated as standards in procedures. This includes beneficence, autonomy, nonmaleficence, and justice. Beneficence is ensuring patient safety, autonomy is considering the patient’s will, nonmaleficence means doing no harm, and justice means providing fair treatment...click here to read more

February 27, 2024

Suri Le

   The merge of machine learning with the realms of atomic science and pure mathematics has transformed a new era of scientific exploration. This article dives into the captivating intersection between machine learning and these intricate fields, shedding light on groundbreaking advancements that promise to reshape our understanding...click here to read more

February 19, 2024

Reggie Dao

As you stroll along the beach and kick sand into the shore, there is always a creature in the corner of your eye that stands out among the scattered seashells and seaweed. That prickly-skinned, sharp-edged animal glistens on the protruding rock, un-moving, and intrigues your curiosity to find out why its shape is the way it is. This familiar, unusual sea creature is known as a starfish, its name coined from their body holding a close resemblance to a star shape. The question of how their body shape formed has always been lingering in the air, and the history of their genetics can explain why their body is different from their sea neighbors...click here to read more

February 15, 2024

Kathlyn Phan

In the complex world of trigonometry, there are three key functions: sine, cosine, and tangent. These functions help us solve problems and better our understanding of right-angled triangles. But how were they created? These mathematical tools stemmed from ancient mathematicians and astronomers deriving them from side length ratios in right-angled triangles. By understanding their history, we can see how sine, cosine, and tangent evolved from ancient problem-solving techniques to the essential math tools we use for everyday applications today...click here to read more

January 17, 2024

Sarah Nguyen

Working as a research associate for Imperial College, physicist Dr. Jessica Wade studies the use of polymers as semiconductors, focusing on chiral organic semiconductors. Despite Wade’s impressive work as a physicist, she also advocates for the diversity of women in STEM and has been awarded the 2019 UK Wikimedian of the Year and the British Empire Medal for her contributions and efforts...click here to read more

January 15, 2024

Reggie Dao

When we hear the word “cancer”, realization dawns upon us, as we constantly lose our close friends and loved ones due to this terrible disease that takes advantage of our cells and rips the life out of them. But as time progresses and we’ve gotten to know the tactics of this condition, many entrepreneurs and scientists have found ways to combat the severity of this disease. When cancer first enters the body and spreads cells outrageously to other parts, the individual with the disease is unaware that they’re even experiencing it. The chances of survival are higher when a patient figures out its arrival early, rather than finding out in the later stages of their body undergoing the condition. New inventions that are incorporated into our daily lives make it easier to tell if we’re infected, from a simple toothbrush to even a bra. The cancer-detecting bra is utilized for patients to tell if they are at risk for breast cancer. It can be hard to tell if the cells in the breast are uncontrollably growing in large amounts, so wearing this ultrasound bra can benefit millions of women when it comes to fighting cancer...click here to read more

January 3, 2024

Kathlyn Phan

From helping you answer your homework to effortlessly generating multiple complex lines of code, ChatGPT is an all-in-one generative AI chatbot that has the solution to any problem powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Although this technology is relatively new as it only came out a year ago, ChatGPT has been rapidly growing in usage to roughly 100 million monthly users in only two months. The AI is continuously learning and evolving itself with every question it’s asked with the help of machine learning. With other generative AI being produced by industry giants like Facebook and Twitter, what makes ChatGPT so special? How does it manage to make itself stand out and accumulate such a vast user base?...click here to read more

December 18, 2023

Nathaniel Keoni De La Cruz

Water is a necessity for all living things, and direct access is a true blessing. Electrical engineering is the future of accessible clean water. Water purification systems that are electrically engineered allow people in modern society to receive water with very few contaminants. While most developed countries have direct access to clean water without risk of illness.  The United Nations has taken notice of the importance of providing clean water for all living things, especially in developing countries. Goal six of the United Nations' sustainable development goals is focused on exploring innovative ways to grant universal access to uncontaminated water and sanitation. There are many ways to purify water using electrical engineering including electrolysis water purification systems, and desalination processes which include reverse osmosis. Are these sustainable ways of purifying water?...click here to read more

December 13, 2023

Reggie Dao

Our world has been exposed to certain substances shaped in pills, dust, or any shape or form that is either illegal or prescribed, known as a drug. All of this material is bound to place extreme psychological effects on people, which raises a certain question. What kind of receptors are in someone’s DNA to determine how they’ll react? Doctors in the field of pharmacogenomics are actively seeking ways to treat their patients, and need to know the cerebral effects that come with these drugs. Thanks to Watson and Crick’s discovery of the DNA structure, figuring out how one’s DNA detects drug reactions is made easier in the lab...click here to read more

November 15, 2023

Jasmine Nguyen

Imagine a world where people are starving from a food shortage, where once-common animals are on the brink of extinction, and where going outside starts to seem unbearable due to the constant heat waves. There’s no need to imagine it because that’s where the world is headed. Sea levels are rising, the temperature of oceans and our atmosphere are skyrocketing, and habitats are being destroyed. These are the consequences of the world’s increasing use of fossil fuels and production of greenhouse gases...click here to read more

November 9, 2023

Audrey Tran

The number zero represents nothing, an empty quantity. This prevalent symbol surprisingly only arrived and was accepted in the West in the late 12th century, though with resistance. Since then, the development of the number zero has transformed prior numbering systems and revolutionized calculations in mathematics and science. But, prior to that, ancient civilizations did not need a value to represent nothing. Counting usually involves physical objects like the number of people in a tribe or animals in a herd, so it wouldn’t make sense to count zero objects. So why was zero invented and when and where did this symbol first appear?...click here to read more

November 7, 2023

Kathlyn Phan

Have you ever used ChatGPT before? How about a customer service chatbot? You may have interacted with artificial intelligence before at some point. In doing so, you might have unintentionally helped further develop one of the fastest-growing fields in recent years. Machine learning has rapidly become an in-demand skill because of how versatile, powerful, and continuously self-improving it is. Although some might question how trustworthy a computer is in analyzing mass amounts of data, machine learning has proven its worth over the past few years by examining and recognizing algorithms that help improve other fields such as marketing, business, education, and much more...click here to read more

October 23, 2023

Reggie Dao

Marjorie Lee Browne, one of the most influential women in STEM, laid the pathway to the feminist movement regarding the area. She was born on September 9, 1914. She soon would accomplish many mathematical achievements and become a respected figure of African-American women's suffrage in the modern world of mathematics. Browne was an African-American analytical prodigy who enjoyed solving difficult arithmetic and held a passion for learning, ultimately earning herself a Ph.D. Not only did she become one of the few women to hold the title in 1949, but the impact of her work guided her to being the first African-American woman to obtain a prestigious academic degree in the strenuous and competitive fields of abstract mathematics...click here to read more

October 13, 2023

Kathlyn Phan

Chances are that the majority of people have encountered, scanned, or generated a QR code at some point in their daily lives. We see them being used everywhere both in the digital and physical world around us. QR codes have been utilized to replace physical copies of menus in restaurants to prevent the spread of germs since COVID-19, to advertise by taking the user to a company’s web address, to share contact information conveniently, etc. According to Roselle from QR Tiger, QR codes have grown 443% year-on-year in usage in 2022 alone. Their rise in popularity stems from their vast capacity for storing URLs, text, photos, and videos. Barcodes can only contain 20-100 characters. Meanwhile, QR codes can contain up to 7,089 numeric and 2,953 alphanumeric characters. QR codes can contain multiple data types; such as numeric, alphanumeric, byte, and kanji. Additionally, whereas barcodes are limited by the amount of data they can store due to them only being able to be read horizontally, QR codes are two-dimensional and can be read both horizontally and vertically...click here to read more

September 18, 2023

Joshua Morgan

How did our universe, something so massive and complex, come to be? What was the trigger that created the cosmos? Questions regarding the origins of our universe are so direct yet at the same time very complicated. The subject has been controversial and puzzling for ages, where many individuals have speculated and hypothesized. As of the 1960s, however, the cosmology community has come to accept only one theory: the Big Bang theory...click here to read more

August 21, 2023

Benjamin Woo

Our universe may not be the only one out there in the unending night sky. Many have proposed that other universes could exist and that our universe is simply one of many outside of the observable realm. However, is this idea actually true? Can such a proposal be substantiated? This article will explore the multiverse theory and some different interpretations of the seemingly absurd concept...click here to read more

August 15, 2023

Jasmine Nguyen

The initial thought that comes to mind when discussing dopamine is the feeling of pleasure that it gives the body. However, it is much more complicated than that. Dopamine is one of many neurotransmitters, chemicals that sends electrical signals throughout the brain’s and body’s neurons and target cells. These neurotic messages control emotions, behaviors, and the function of muscles and organs. Dopamine is especially vital to the functions of our bodies’ motor control, memory, attention, motivation, mood, and more. Although dopamine plays a crucial role in many bodily actions, this article will specifically focus on its relationship with individuals’ reward centers...click here to read more

July 5, 2023

Audrey Tran

The human body consists of 200 different types of cells. All cells, ranging from blood cells to nerve cells, originated from the stem cell. Stem cells are cells that have yet to differentiate into a specific function, much like a body’s raw materials. These cells do not have particular tissue characteristics; however, they can later differentiate into numerous specialized cells and tissues. Unlike most body cells that divide for a limited amount of time, stem cells can divide indefinitely. Due to the versatile nature of stem cells, they hold the remarkable potential to be clinically applied in therapies and organ transplantation...click here to read more