The Spectrum
The Spectrum is the Triple Helix’s science blog. Every quarter, we guide a team of writers and editors through the process of producing timely, creative, original, and accurate commentaries, articles, and/or editorials on issues that are most relevant for the scientific, political, and social climate of our time.
Here you can find The Spectrum’s articles about recent scientific discoveries, technological advancements, and opinions on science in society.
Childhood brain development
By Omar Kassem, Spring 2021. Brain development and maturation are modulated by an interaction between environmental conditions and genes. Early childhood is a critical period of brain development, which renders it highly vulnerable to disorganizing environmental...
Fish Farming: Insights and Considerations on the Future of the Fishing Industry
By Isabella Xu, Winter 2021. Sushi, fish tacos, and shrimp cocktails are undoubtedly delicious and well known around the world, but the origin and production of the seafood that ends up on our plate rarely crosses our minds. As the human population grows faster than...
Understanding how we make decisions: Neural Inhibition’s role in facilitating decision making and reducing anxiety
By Sam Rydberg-Cox, Winter 2021. Every morning we must immediately make decisions. Do I get out of bed or do I hit the snooze button? What do I want for breakfast? These types of questions fill our days, but how do we actually go about choosing one option or the...
Green Burials: How the Climate Crisis is Changing After-Life Services
By Annagh Devitt, Winter 2021. Due to the ever-looming climate disaster, individuals are beginning to change their habits and alter their decisions to go green both in life and in death. So called “Green Burials” offer an alternative to the recently departed that...
The Difficult Search for Life After Death
By Corinne Stonebraker, Winter 2021. So much of our day-to-day lives are consumed by just that–our lives. The content of our conscious human experience is contained within the 80 or so years we spend as living beings. However, regardless of your belief about what...
The Growth of Aquaculture: Potential and Consequences
By Nichos Molnar, Winter 2021. Humans have utilized agriculture since the beginning of organized civilization. Agriculture has been with us for so long that innovations and advancements in the field aren’t interesting to most people. However, aquaculture - even in the...
Biological rhythms and shift work
By Omar Kassem, Winter 2021. Biological rhythms Circadian rhythms are daily biological rhythms driven by an endogenous, self-sustaining, time-keeping biological clock. Biological time-keeping systems act on coordinating oscillations in the internal biological...
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines and the Limitless Potential of mRNA Technology
By Mia Carleton, Winter 2021. As we enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, our most vulnerable are beginning to receive life-saving vaccines and cases are coming down thanks to increasing immunity. In just one year, we’ve lost over half a million American...
Bats and viruses: how and why are they special?
By Clare Booth, Winter 2021. Ever since the novel coronavirus COVID-19 turned our collective lives upside down, people have been searching for something or someone to blame. Many have found that culprit in bats, which scientists believe were the viral reservoir from...
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Can They Beat Evolution to End the COVID-19 Pandemic?
By Sam Rydberg-Cox, Winter 2021. The world changed last March when the COVID-19 pandemic completely altered day to day life in the United States and around the world. Since then, people have been working from home, students have been learning on Zoom, and friends have...
Unnaturally Destructive Natural Disasters: How Climate Events Have Intensified In Recent Years
By Carolyn Castroblanco, Fall 2020. On August 26, 2005, over 1 million people were forced to evacuate their homes across Mississippi and Louisiana in preparation for the now infamous Hurricane Katrina. This category five storm ravaged the Southeast coast of the United...
Case Study: Global Forecast System- Finite Volume Cubed-Sphere dynamical core (GFS-FV3)
By Annie Mitchell, Fall 2020. No one can read the future. That is, except for meteorologists. Thanks to these scientists of weather, the human race can predict what Mother Nature plans to offer the world with astounding accuracy. Current 10-day weather forecasts are...
The Eating Disorder Epidemic at Universities
By Corinne Stonebraker, Fall 2020. Content Warning: This article discusses topics related to eating disorders and body image that may be triggering for some readers. The passage from high school to college is one of the most significant lifestyle changes that a young...
Ethics of Animal Experimentation: Then and Now
By Annagh Devit, Fall 2020. The air pump experiment and the flowerpot technique are two innocuous sounding procedures that hide their horrors behind their names. In the air pump experiment, a small animal is placed inside a sealed glass container and the air is slowly...
Disparities in COVID-19 Patient Outcomes
By Aman, Fall 2020. The ease with which the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the nation and killed hundreds of thousands of people has made many Americans question the effectiveness of their country’s institutions and systems of healthcare. As the American healthcare...
The Evolution of the Trauma Response and Why Women are More at Risk
By Miles Kaufman, Fall 2020. When people think of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), they most often think of the “shell shocked” veterans of World War I. While traumatic combat experiences do contribute to a number of PTSD diagnoses, other causes of this disorder...
Costs and Applications of High Energy Physics
By Tejo V, Fall 2020. When most people think of physicists and physics research, they think of giant telescopes, nuclear reactors, and lasers. As fascinating as all these concepts are, however, there is another field that often remains unregistered by the general...
The Search for Superhabitable Worlds: Could There be Planets Better for Life than Earth?
By Alex Masegian, Fall 2020. We are in the midst of a golden age of exoplanet science. Since the discovery of the first exoplanets in 1995, the field has grown in leaps and bounds, with the number of confirmed exoplanets nearly doubling every 27 months [2]. Of...
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