Big news on dark matter? Soon, scientists promise. Real soon.

By Kate Lunau - Monday, February 18, 2013 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments

NASA

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

The International Space Station isn’t just home to astronauts like Canadian Chris Hadfield, who’ll assume command in a few weeks’ time. It’s also an orbiting laboratory: hundreds of experiments are done there, looking into everything from human health to colloids. The ISS holds a $2-billion particle physics detector, called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is searching for signs of exotic stuff that makes up our universe, like dark matter. Big news might be coming soon. At the AAAS Meeting, Nobel laureate and AMS principal investigator Dr. Samuel Ting promised that the first results from the AMS detector should be published in two or three weeks’ time. “It will not be a minor paper,” he told a crowded room of reporters.

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The mystery of memory

By Kate Lunau - Sunday, February 17, 2013 at 2:07 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

A 3D print of famous memory patient HM's brain. (photography by Kate Lunau)

In 1953, at the age of 27, the man who later became known to scientists as “HM” lost his memory. Henry Gustav Molaison had suffered acute epileptic seizures, and as part of his treatment, he had part of his brain surgically removed, including much of the hippocampus. While the procedure helped alleviate his seizures, it left him unable to remember much of anything, including who he was. Before his death in 2008, HM partcipated in countless experiments, and helped give rise to an entirely new understanding of the human brain. At the AAAS Meeting, neuropsychologist Dr. Brenda Milner of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, who conducted pioneering studies of HM’s condition with her student Suzanne Corkin, discussed this famous case.

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Catching neutrinos

By Kate Lunau - Saturday, February 16, 2013 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

Scientists distributed out buttons featuring the neutrino sign, the peace sign and hearts for the "Neutrinos for Peace" effort, which is against nuclear proliferation. (Photo by Kate Lunau)

Did you know that about 100 billion neutrinos pass through your thumb every second? Catching a single one is like trying to grab at a ghost.

We heard about this today at an AAAS Meeting talk on these mysterious little particles. Neutrinos are one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe, like a photon (light particle), an electron, or the recently discovered Higgs boson; they come from the sun, from exploding stars (supernovae) and from cosmic ray collisions. Neutrinos, which carry no electric charge, hardly interact with ordinary matter and slip right through the Earth; you’d need a wall of lead “as thick as the solar system” to stop one from the sun, said André de Gouvêa in his introduction. But perhaps most importantly, they could tell us about why we’re here.

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The downsides of human evolution

By Kate Lunau - Friday, February 15, 2013 at 4:36 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

In a talk this morning on human evolution, I kept imagining that classic diagram of an ape transitioning to an upright human—and how it should show him hunched over in back pain, hobbling on a twisted ankle, on his way to the dentist to get his wisdom teeth removed. Evolution has put us at the top of the food chain, but “evolution doesn’t produce perfection,” anthropologist Jeremy DeSilva said today at the AAAS Meeting, where he spoke on a panel with others. Adapting to bipedal walking has left us with all sorts of aches and pains that no other animals seem to suffer, everything from hernias and flat feet, to fallen pelvic floors. He called these adaptations the “biological equivalent of duct tape and paper clips,” which affect us everyday.

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New worlds, brain machines, feathered dinosaurs and the Higgs boson

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

Photo by Kate Lunau

As I landed in Boston bright and early this morning, and hopped on the subway to the Hynes Convention Center (host of this year’s meeting), I was gripped by a familiar feeling—one I remember from covering this event last year, too—the fear of missing out. The AAAS is the world’s biggest general scientific society, and their annual meeting is a scientific smorgasbord. Over the next few days, thousands of researchers, journalists, engineers, teachers and policy-makers will be here to talk about their work. The program is as thick as a paperback novel. How to attend all the sessions that have already caught my eye?

There are a few I know I’ll be attending: like one on exploring other worlds, and what they can teach us about our own; and another on brain-machine interfaces. There’s a talk on whale evolution, and another on China’s feathered dinosaurs—especially interesting given the newly discovered Yutyrannus huali, a massive feathered cousin of T. rex. (As we now know, feathered dinosaurs weren’t just in China; last year, Canadian paleontologists found them in Alberta, the first time we’ve seen such a thing in the Americas.) Another session, on science at the International Space Station, should be interesting given that Canada’s own Chris Hadfield is about to take command. And, of course, the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle,” makes an appearance on my list, too.

It’ll be an exciting few days in Boston, soaking up some of the biggest ideas in science. Follow me @katelunau and check back at Maclean’s for the latest.