Amphibians with Answers: How African Clawed Frogs Have Shaped Biomedical Research

By Sarah Latario For over three decades, African clawed frogs were the embodiment of pregnancy tests, rather than the small kits found in the drug store. After the British scientist Lancelot Hogben discovered that injecting urine samples from pregnant women caused the frogs to lay eggs, they became the standard for pregnancy tests across the … Continue reading Amphibians with Answers: How African Clawed Frogs Have Shaped Biomedical Research

Winner of Fall 2022 LTS Best Blog Post

Thank you to everyone who voted for Lions Talk Science’s Best Blog Post of Fall 2022! This semester’s competition was unbelievably close. The results are in, and your favorite LTS article was "Buyers Beware: The Problem with Pinkwashing" written by our new writer, Carli King! For her winning article, Carli will receive a $25 gift card!  Additionally, our randomly chosen voter to … Continue reading Winner of Fall 2022 LTS Best Blog Post

What Does Evolution Teach Us About Medicine?

By Afton Widdershins If you took a biology class during your school years, you may be familiar with the concept of evolution, the idea that living things acquire changes that they can pass on to their offspring. These changes begin as tiny, random mutations acquired as genetic information is copied imperfectly from parent to offspring. … Continue reading What Does Evolution Teach Us About Medicine?

Bring the Beat In: How the Brain Processes Binaural Beats and the Potential Cognitive Benefits the Beats Provide

By Gaelyn Lyons Finals are just around the corner, and you're scrambling to study for that last exam. You're probably stressed out, having a hard time focusing, and *most likely* losing sleep. First, let's take a deep breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. How are you feeling? Are you still stressed? Then let me tell you … Continue reading Bring the Beat In: How the Brain Processes Binaural Beats and the Potential Cognitive Benefits the Beats Provide

Aspirin and Its Evolution Across Decades

By Hannah Johnson Figure 1: A box of aspirin.[6] When you have a headache, a fever, or inflammation, the usual response to obtain relief would be taking an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug), such as aspirin or ibuprofen. While these are common over the counter (OTC) drugs that are often found in a person’s medicine cabinet, … Continue reading Aspirin and Its Evolution Across Decades

Buyers Beware: The Problem with Pinkwashing

By Carli King Every October, retail stores are plastered in pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month – from food packaging, to clothing, to hardware, to home appliances. But what percentage of the proceeds from pink purchases actually go directly to breast cancer patients or towards breast cancer research? The answer to this question remains unclear … Continue reading Buyers Beware: The Problem with Pinkwashing

What is love?

By Shivani Godbole Source: https://www.istockphoto.com/vector/cartoon-brain-lifting-dumbbells-vector-gm1208760136-349508008 “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, scene 1, lines 240 – 241 Shakespeare did indeed get it right. Love is a convoluted ‘mind-game’. If I were to describe love as a scientist, I would … Continue reading What is love?

The Real Cost Of A Sustainable Vehicle

By Savannah Marshall In the US, transportation is responsible for about 25% of the country’s yearly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.1  The large contribution of vehicular emissions to climate change has led to the popularization of tailpipe emission-free electric vehicles (EVs) in the past few decades. With the push to eventually transition the planet from gasoline … Continue reading The Real Cost Of A Sustainable Vehicle

An Untapped Gold Mine of Information; Detecting Structural Variants with Bionano Optical Mapping

By Laura Budurlean All cancers exhibit some degree of genomic instability, but what if we’ve been severely underestimating how much instability there really is? Structural variants (SVs) are a hallmark of human cancer and encompass insertions, deletions, duplications, inversions, translocations, and copy number variations (Figure 1). These are all mutations that can affect large sections … Continue reading An Untapped Gold Mine of Information; Detecting Structural Variants with Bionano Optical Mapping