firefly

Best Science Writing 2010

INSIDE

How Does It Feel To Be a Neuron? A Tragic Swan Song Science Education in South L.A. 1

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Best Science Writing 2010 Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

Fantasy: I, the Neuron Holly Villamagna It used to be all I could do to keep up with the thunderstorm of signals, the jumble of new memories, coming and going, but now I have time to rest and ponder my existence. Its exactly what Ive always wanted, but it makes me feel uneasy. Noticing: Silence and Sound Sharon Tseng The only two sounds I could hear were my heartbeats and breathing. Even so, I realized how uneasy I became when my surroundings became silent. Explaining: Crash Course Jeff Curtis The bone-jarring collisions in football attract fans thirsting for violence. The Romans had the Coliseum; we have Heinz Field and the Superdome. Big hits are replayed ad nauseam. Yet all of these collisions come with a price. Explanation: My Chemical Romance Laura J. Nelson Attraction, that burning desire to have babies, has been around since even before the first land animals schlepped out of the primordial ooze. Millions of years later, our genes still want us to breed, and breed now. Commentary: The Tragedy of the Swan Jason Kehe There was nothing to do but stare. Our boozy rowdiness from seconds earlier gave way to a perfect silence as we watched the swan poorly negotiate the cobblestones. It finally got within a foot of us, its ruined grace on full display. Noticing: Bug Off Alison Beck I heard a buzzing noise behind me. Turning, I saw hundreds of giant winged ants streaming into my room Feature: Science and Engineering Studio Comes to South Los Angeles Liz Warden The goal is to help children become excited about how the world works and do that by building, by experimenting, by discovering. Commentary: Sultans of Steroids Jeff Curtis Largely ignored during the excitement of the home run chase was its improbability. Why were baseball players suddenly hitting home runs at historic rates? Noticing: In Defense of Shadows Laura J. Nelson Compared to the dollops of golden sunlight that warm my floorboards and flit across my eyelids, shadows are the ugly stepsister.

designed and edited by Laura J. Nelson

The universe belongs to everyone, yet many students shy away from science courses because theyre afraid of getting buried in problem sets. In Writing About Science, we approach science through writing and journalism learning how to interpret the unvierse on its own terms, how to write about science clearly and accurately and how to become smarter readers (and listeners) of science as its portrayed in the media. Many of the greatest scientists are and have been popularizers including Albert Einstein and many artists and scholars incorporate ideas from science into their work. But communicating complex ideas can be tricky and requires an enormous amount of translation. The writer has to provide context, learn to use but not abuse metaphor, distill without diluting and answer the all-important question: So what? And all this in an engaging literary style that invites the uninitiated to explore unfamiliar realms. Herein, a collection of some of the best science writing from my undergraduate Writing About Science class at USC, 2010 selected by the students. Special thanks to Laura Nelson for a fabulous job of design and editing. K.C. Cole Professor

 Fantasy

I, the Neuron
Holly Villamagna 2002 Neurons are always in a bit of an identity crisis. There are 100 billion of us in the human brain, and each one of us synapses talks to, or exchanges information with many other neurons. Like the people whose brains we reside in, some neurons are more social than others. Some of us synapse with as few as 50 other neurons; some with tens of thousands. For us, talking is accomplished through chemicals, not words. But dont think of our chats as quiet conversations over coffee. Instead, imagine a stadium at largest sports game or concert youve ever been to. Before the event starts, the cacophony of people talking and laughing all around can be overwhelming. Think about trying to have conversations with dozens of these people all at once. Thats what we do, and we do it well I bet most people wish they could multitask as well as we can! But its hard to remember who you are when you spend your whole life reacting, sending messages along in a dizzying game of telephone on a scale even the brilliant inventors of that communication device cant imagine. As far as Im concerned, I lucked out on location. I live in the hippocampus, which is a region of the brain that stores memory, organizing the things the woman who belongs to this brain sees and does into orderly files so she can access them later. Today, she spent the evening standing in the crisp November air, taking pictures of the beautiful sunset. Next month, when her friends come over for lunch and comment on the lovely photographs hanging in the living room, she will be able to tell them about the evening she took the photos thanks to me. 2003 Something isnt right. We used to be called on to remember photography trips and lunches with friends all the time, but now it seems little quieter in here. Maybe I am just imagining things. Maybe we are getting more efficient with age we are more than six de-

cades old now and processing and putting away memories more quickly than before. It used to be all I could do to keep up with the thunderstorm of signals, the jumble of new memories, coming and going, but now I have little snatches of time to rest and ponder my existence. Its exactly what Ive always wanted, but it makes me feel uneasy. 2004 My favorite part of my job has always been putting the puzzle together. Signals pour down on us like rainwater slides over a window on a stormy day, and eventually they coalesce into sounds and sights and stories. The first sound from this afternoon was crying. The sight of a poster hanging in a doctors office, cold and impersonal, showing various regions of the brain. The soothing voice of a nurse. Then, a neurologist with a diagnosis Alzheimers disease. 2005 She read a book once about a father and son who were the sole survivors of an apocalypse, struggling to survive in

The invaders are lumpy structures, folded in on themselves over and over again without any of our delicate grace. They land on top of us and in the midst of our networks, like a movie villain cackling as he pulls two people reaching for each other apart. Something about the invaders is toxic, and whenever they land on one of us, the neuron is killed. I have all the free time I thought I wanted now as those around me are poisoned by the invaders, one by one, I dont have much to do anymore. All these years, I thought my constant connection with so many otha world devoid of help, warmth, and ers was taking away my identity. Now, life. I cant help but worry that this is I realize these connections were my identity. where I am heading. I watch it happen to my friends 2006 and neighbors almost every day one A tumbleweed moves down a desmoment, we are sending information ert highway at night, making a soft back and forth like always, and soon after, they are silent, wilted petals scratching sound against the highway every few seconds. It should be a quiwhere a flower once stood. I hate the idea of falling silent, but et sound, but it is almost deafening I fear the prospect of being the last compared to the silence all around it. A woman whose family is still one standing even more. At least the father and son had each other to cling asleep turns off her hair dryer early to in a world turned upside down. I in the morning, and the sudden sicould someday be anchored here, to- lence that greets her rings in her ears. Thats what it feels like here. So quiet. tally alone. My friends have been savagely Most of my friends and neighbors murdered by barbarians, which makes have been smothered by invaders, forever silenced. this situation even harder to accept. With them, the photographs, the In spite of the racket we used to make, I have always thought that neu- lunches with friends, the days in the park with the kids, have all died too, rons are a remarkably polite group. We reach out to each other through because we cant talk to each other to delicate projections, coming close but retrieve them. The few of us who are never quite connecting, shy teenag- left sit in isolation, the only inhabiters working their way up to holding ants of a deserted island in a sea of hands on their first date. Though we fallen comrades. dont touch, our connections are close 2008 enough to allow us to send chemiSilence. cals to each other, creating a network, a family sharing news in a crowded villamag@usc.edu room during a holiday.

 Noticing

Silence and Noise

Sharon Tseng I must have walked through campus more than a thousand times, but I had never noticed the different kinds of sound surrounding meat least not until I took a class called music as communication. The professor asked us to walk around campus for 15 minutes and to pay attention to every sound that we heard, recording each in a sound diary. At first, nothing sounded different. Birds chirping, people laughing, the marching band practicing But within minutes, I started to tune out usual sounds and hear sounds that I had never paid attention to. The sound of my footsteps became clear, vivid and rhythmic. The kolum -kolum sound of skateboards zipping by, the crackling of leaves and the whipping of a flag in the wind. Behind these sounds, of course, was the ear that did the hearing. Sound, by definition, is the sensation produced by stimulation of the hearing organs through the vibrations transmitted in the air. The eardrum and the brain have to work together to help us understand a vibration as a sound. The vibration hits the eardrum, which then sends ripples across the three smallest bones in the body (the malleus, incus and stapes). These three bones are called the middle ear. The primary function of the middle ear is to transfer the vibration to fluid-membrane waves within the cochlea, a snail-like organ that reverberates into the auditory nerve, which then carries the vibration to the brain. The brain then recognizes it as a sound. So if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is no sound is a subjective sensation that only occurs in living beings through the coordination of the eardrum and the brain. But what if a hearing-impaired person sees the falling tree? Does the concept of sound even exist for him/her? Is silence a sound? What is the difference in the concept of sound between a person who was born with hearing impairment and someone who had later become impaired? One night, I tried to put myself into a sound-proof cocoon. I put in earplugs and walked around. The only two sounds I could hear were my heartbeats and breathing, and I realized how uneasy I became when my surroundings were silent. In our culture, silence seems to signify death. We expect a new-born baby to cry, a child to speak and a healthy person to laugh. We avoid silence when we are with other humans, because silence creates awkwardness, embarrassment and confusion. So we keep ourselves saturated in sound. Thats why we keep ourselves occupied on the phone, or with music, or doing anything that makes noise to keep us feel comfortable. I hum songs in my head when I am alone to keep myself filled with sounds, with music. After walking in silence that night, though still humming in the inside, it became clear to me that sound has integrated to an essential part of our lives; were almost inseparable to sounds. Whats more, only we as human beings can experience this tight relationship with sounds, music and noise. The animals may hear sound, but they could never appreciate and hum a piece of music as humans do. farnruts@usc.edu

 Explaining
Jeff Curtis It can start as early as Pop Warner games. Like most snaps at this level of football, the play ends with a cluster of small bodies swarming toward the football like ants at a picnic. At the bottom of the pile, one young player is squished. Not wanting to look soft, he picks himself on wobbly legs as soon as the pile clears and tries to shake away the cobwebs. Football players learn early that toughness is their sports most precious commodity. And like the little kid at the bottom of the pile, many put themselves at risk by downplaying injuries. After all, Ronnie Lott cut off his finger to avoid missing a down of football. How can they sit out a play just because they got their bell rung? Lott just might be the nastiest player to ever strap on shoulder pads. In many ways he embodied the idyllic view of football players: violent and tough as nails, modern-day gladiators waging battle in pads and helmets. The San Francisco 49ers safety used to tackle opponents so hard they lost their will to compete. Lott once told people about curious how hard he actually hit to have a friend beat them with a baseball bat. That was the closest parallel he could think of. In 1985, Lott mangled his left pinky tackling an opponent during a playoff game. Rather than miss time next season recovering from surgery, he chose to have the tip of his finger amputated. Indeed, the bone-jarring collisions in football attract fans thirsting for violence. The Romans had the Coliseum; we have Heinz Field and the Superdome.

CRASH COURSE
The hard-hitting costs of playing Americas favorite contact sport
Big hits are replayed ad nauseam. Yet all of these collisions come with a price. Scientists are just beginning to measure the destructive impact playing football has on the brain. One posthumous study found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or CTE) in six former NFL players who died from self-destructive behavior. The study revealed brown tangles scattered throughout the players brain tissue consistent with what might be found in the brain of an 80-year-old with dementia, even though four of the six players studied were between 30 and 40 years old. Three of the players in the study died young af continued on page 9

ter long bouts with depression. One died of an accidental gunshot wound to the chest. Another died of a drug overdose. Another player committed suicide. Mike Webster, who played before modern helmets were introduced, was one of the players in the study who struggled with depression. He also suffered from dementia, living in his pickup truck and train stations after retiring from football. Some doctors estimated Webster had been in the equivalent of 25,000 automobile crashes over the course of his football career. Another study has shown that retired NFL players with a history of three or more concussions have high rates of depression and mild cognitive impairment. CTE is also known as dementia pugilistica or boxers dementia, due to the number of boxers who develop the syndrome. Sudden collisions, like a left hook to the jaw or a helmet-to-helmet hit

in football, can cause the brain to slosh around in its skull. The syndrome is commonly referred to as being punch drunk. The size and speed of modern football players is putting them at risk. Offensive linemen used to weigh 200 pounds. Today, they can weigh up to 350 pounds. Scientists measured the force of a pulling block by Maryland left tackle Bruce Campbell at 272 pounds, similar to the impact of being run over by a Pamplona bull during the Running of the Bulls. The effects of CTE are mainly neurological and manifest as an inability to maintain relationships, depression and, in some cases, suicide. Chris Henry, a troubled receiver whose career was marred by a string of run-ins with the law, died last year after he fell off the back of his fiances truck during an argument. An autopsy found evidence of CTE in

the 26-year-olds brain. The NFL has instituted rules outlawing helmet-to-helmet tackles and playing with concussion symptoms, but players still put their futures up as collateral for the right to compete. In a league where multi-million dollar contracts can be dissolved by teams on a whim, it can sometimes seem more dangerous to report a concussion than miss a game. General Douglas MacArthur once said, Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. The same could be said for former athletes. We remember them as thoroughbred racehorses, paragons of fitness and skill. Their enduring image is an electric touchdown run or fingertip catch. Yet athletes lives go on after their playing days are over. And the longterm effects of playing football dont fade away. Its time to decide whether the thrill of the game is worth it. curtisjm@usc.edu

 Explaining

My Chemical Romance
How we develop crushes and why we choose who we do
Laura J. Nelson My friends had just forced their way through the thongs of drunk bros when I saw him: a tall blonde guy in a black V-neck, leaning against a tree, watching the keg stands with a lopsided smile. Our eyes locked. My heart thudded. And as he walked towards me, my brain whirred into overdrive. Luke* introduced himself and I subtly looked him up and down as we began chatting. He was that clean-cut, intellectual East Coast type I like so well, the kind who wears polos and football jerseys equally well. He was funny, interesting and single? I thought Id chosen Luke from across the crowded room. But in reality, my attraction to him was unconscious and biological. My crush was triggered by a bursting floodgate of chemicals that filled my body with an instinctive desire to get closer to this boy. And boom. I was smitten. A crush begins with the primal instinct to mate and reproduce. Attraction, that burning desire to have babies, has been around at least since the first land animals schlepped out of the primordial ooze. Millions of years later, our genes still want us to breed, and breed now. That desire for children is particularly strong in females, who only get a few rolls of the reproductive dice in their lifetimes. Men, on the other hand, can and do produce millions of sperm. Seeking out attraction is a process of the five senses, starting with audio, visual and olfactory cues. My body, which knows Im single, kicks into overdrive to find me the best mate possible whenever Im in the company of men. The first cues are visual: broad shoulders, a barrel chest and beefy arms. A guy built like that could club more meat and kill more lions than the scrawny kid in skinny jeans. When Luke got close enough, his deep voice sent shivers down my spine and drew me in even more. The deeper the voice, the higher the testosterone levels and, perhaps, the higher the attractiveness, studies have shown. Scientists at the University of Albany recently asked 149 volunteers to listen to recordings of mens and womens voices, then rate those voices on a scale from very unattractive to very attractive. The scientists found that the male voices rated as more attractive were physically attractive as well. For men, that means broad shoulders and chests. For women, a curvy silhouette and a low waist-to-hip ratio. Biologically, looks count but scent, like the crisp, spicy scent drifting from Lukes collar, may be even more important. Women drop $100 on bottles of Chanel No. 9 and middle school boys douse themselves in Axe Body Spray not merely to mask the bodys bad odors, but enhance the good, or natural, ones. Those scents signal to the opposite sex that its wearer would be

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*names changed to protect the unsuspecting

For women who like me arent in relationships, that urge to have babies becomes what college kids call the single and ready to mingle mindset. Female brains put women on the prowl, to attract a man and mate immediately. Every girl whos been through puberty is at the mercy of her rampaging hormones, even if (like me) she doesnt consider herself a man hunter.

That urge to have babies becomes what college kids call the single and ready to mingle mindset. Female brains put women on the prowl, to attract a man and mate immediately.

a good genetic match. A gene called MHC (major histocompatibility complex) is responsible for many of the good scents the human body produces, researchers at the University of Bern found. MHC is part of the immune system and controls tissue rejection. Conceiving with a partner whose MHC is too similar increases the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. To show this, scientists at the University of Bern asked females to smell T-shirts worn by anonymous males and pick the ones that smelled best. Every time, the women chose shirts whose owners had different MHCs. The sights, smells and sounds I associated with Luke kick-started a flood of hormones in my body. Hormones are chemicals, produced by cells, that zip through the bloodstream like tiny chemical carrier pi-

geons, delivering instructions to different parts of the body. Hormones control everything from kidney function and digestion to menopause, pimples and crushes. When I started crushing on Luke, a hormone cocktail coursed into a part of my brain called the reward system. This mix of neurochemical pathways, buried deep in the unconscious brain, controls my behavior by teaching me what I like and what I dont. The system produces dopamine, a chemical that triggers the rush of elation associated with gambling, shopping sprees or cocaine highs. This system too has its roots in evolution. The brain keeps the body alive by triggering survival instincts. For example, eating sugary foods and carbs gives the body energy to keep moving, while picking a genetically

well-endowed mate means more babies down the road. With the help of my eyes and nose, my brain analyzed Lukes genes a good fit for me, apparently and my reward system said, This is the one you want! My body reacted accordingly, flooding my body with dopamine. That rush of feel-good chemicals ratcheted up my heart rate and my blood pressure, making my cheeks flush and my heartbeat irregular. Our friends pulled us away within 10 minutes time had flown! but for the rest of the party, I couldnt keep my mind off the guy. None of us knew him, my friends told me. And we didnt even think he was that cute. But what could I do? Evolution told me otherwise. ljnelson@usc.edu

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The Tragedy of the Swan

Jason Kehe For summer school students at Cambridge University, every night means the same thing pubbing and clubbing. Underage Americans are the worst. Unused to the European nightlife, they find liberation in libations and carouse about town well into the wee hours. Come morning, memories are foggier than the early-morning streets. I cant remember much from those nights, except a vague sense of a good time. In fact, theres only one memory an image, really that I can recall with any clarity. But such clarity that I will never forget what I saw. There were five of us. It was late, and the air was thick with the kind of mist that precedes rainfall. We were stumbling down the wet cobblestone streets of Cambridge, crying out to no one in particular and playing leapfrog over curbside bollards. Then, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white. Something was inching toward us from the other end of the street. With some effort, I tried to focus on the creature. As the shape materialized in the distance, I realized what it was: a great white swan. My first day in Cambridge, I had seen a family of swans paddling down a rivulet near my college. I had wished then that I had gotten closer. Now there was one was walking right toward me. But as the swan staggered forward, I realized something was wrong. It moved as though sightless, tripping over its own feet. Its feathers were splotched with mud, grease and tar an ugly duckling all over again. By now it was raining, and the raindrops rolling down the swans slender face gave an impression of tears. It was confused, lost, alone. There was nothing to do but stare. Our boozy rowdiness from seconds earlier gave way to a perfect silence as we watched the swan poorly negotiate the cobblestones. It finally got within a foot of us, its among birds, reduced to a mere plaything for the drunk. Over the next couple of weeks, the image of the swan flitted in and out of my thoughts, ever wandering that featureless street. Always the question remained: What was it doing? I began constructing stories, each more miserable than the next. It took a wrong turn on its way home. It got separated from its ducklings by bad weather. Its whole family was run over by a speeding car. It was the saddest creature in all the As the swan staggered world. forward, I realized Weeks later, most of my friends something was wrong. had forgotten about the swam Oh yeah, they said when I reminded It moved as though them. sightless, tripping over Why couldnt I get that picture, its own feet. Its feathers that anti-poetic vision of abject lonewere splotched with mud, liness, out of my head? Why was I sympathizing with it? grease and tar an ugly Then I got rational: Its just an aniduckling all over again. mal, I told myself. It cant be heartbroken. Should I even be sad for it? Similar thoughts no doubt moruined grace on full display. tivated the perverse actions of those Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it peers of mine who chased the swan rounded a corner and was gone. No down the street, taunting it with one dared follow it. mock warbles and showering it with Later that night, a friend said to pebbles. me, I think it was looking for a place Animals dont feel. They have into die. stincts and they can get spooked, but The next morning, conversation at those arent feelings, at least as we the breakfast table centered on the think of them. The swan I saw was no mysterious swan. It seemed everyone happier or sadder than the next one had seen it. I recoiled at stories of it cant even comprehend happikids chasing it down the street. King ness or sadness.

Commentary

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This was the real tragedy of this swan, my swan. Nobody really cared. In all likelihood, we were responsible for its condition: We tarred its feathers with our onrushing cars and muddied its wings with our polluted sewers. When I had seen that family of swans drifting down the river my first day at Cambridge, how I wished I could have gotten closer. Now I wish they were as far away from people as possible. Can swans get sad in the sense that humans do?

We cant know, but we do know that animals feel certain core emotions rage, panic, separation anxiety, fear. Denying that animals feel that chickens cooped up in small cages or dogs fighting in pens dont get stressed to the point of wishing for death is its own kind of animal cruelty. As Temple Grandin, one of the nations foremost interpreters of animal emotions, puts it, Some people might think thats being anthropomorphic to talk about animal emotions. No, its neuroscience. Animal emotions may be simpli-

fied or more instinctual, but are no less real. I wont ever know what that swan was thinking as it hopelessly staggered by in the middle of the night. But I do remember what I felt a primal urge to reach out, wipe the crud from its eyes and help it find its way home. jkehe@usc.edu

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 Noticing

Bug Off
Sometimes, a shoe just isnt enough to defeat thousands of years of successful evolution.
Alison Beck Nighttime in Nicaragua was the only time I ever got anything done. By 9 p.m. it was too hot to think let alone sit at a computer, so every night after the sun had set on the city of Managua, I sat down to type up my homework. One night, the biggest ant I had ever seen came ambling across my desk. The size of a paper clip with wings attached, the ant was an entomophobes worst nightmare. Unperturbed, I slipped my sandal from my foot and smooshed the ant into a streak on my deak. Something landed on my shoulder. A second ant fell to the floor as something else landed on my head. Three ants ambled across my desk while two struggled between the keys of my keyboard and four clung to my computer. I heard a buzzing noise behind me. Turning, I saw hundreds of giant winged ants streaming into my room through a crack in the wall and pouring in an undulating swath down the wall and onto the floor. Shit. Springing into action, I laid waste to the ant population. I slammed my sandal against the ground, squashed whole families as they streamed from the hole in the wall and swatted hordes of bodies out of the air as the angry swarm buzzed around my head. For

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each ant I killed two or three more would dive bomb me, as if they somehow knew Id swatted their relatives. I brushed them off in violent indignation and my sandal sent them to join their fellows in the ant afterlife. For two straight hours I toiled among the rapidly growing pile of bodies until the carcasses littered my floor. I swept the bodies into a dustpan and tipped them unceremoniously into a garbage bag. I sat down at my desk and stared glumly between the clock and my unfinished homework. As horrified as I was at the prospect of killing more ants, my anger and frustration dissipated as I came to a realization: I was a crucial part of the most effective demonstration of natural selection I had ever witnessed. My frantic sandal-flailing had mown down the young, the old, the sick and the weak. Now only the strongest and cleverest of the ants remained, waiting patiently in their safe havens for my wrath to subside. But, even the cleverest of ants are not that clever. The tantalizing glow of my computer screen inevitably proved too much for them, and one by one the survivors waddled determinedly towards the computer, where I dispatched them with the Sandal of

Doom. Your puny ant brains are no match for me, I whispered triumphantly. Im gonna wipe you out like the Dodo bird. With the last ant vanquished I stood victorious in my room and reflected happily on the intellectual superiorityminethat had trimmed an entire population down to its fittest members and sent even those superior individuals to their doom. I went to bed pleased with myself and confident I had solved the problem for good. But the very next night as the light of my computer gleamed solitary in the dark, the ants came back. They would return again the night after that. Playing the predator grew old as I realized that evolution had blessed the queen ant with a characteristic that had allowed its kind to survive for millions of years despite their pathetic mental capacity: the ability to produce offspring faster than predators could kill them. After three nights of battle, Nicaraguas giant winged ants had defeated me. On the fourth day I turned on my fan, wiped the sweat from my eyes, and sat down to do my homework at noon. alisonrb@usc.edu

 Feature

Science and engineering studio comes to South Los Angeles

Liz Warden Kevin Hernanedence cuts off a finger of a plastic glove, slices an X through the tip of it, then uses his small index finger to shove the piece of the glove into a small plastic tube; by taping another plastic tube on top, he creates his very own lifelike heart valve. His mother sits beside him and helps him work through the experiment, and his father arrives from work to the Norwood Elementary Schools auditorium just in time to watch Kevin test it out. USC engineering students and mentors Dave Christophe and Kathy Chang then tell Kevin and a group of other students that they can head over to the experiment table when their valves are ready; Kevin is the first. He slowly dips his plastic valve into a large tub of water and watches a little water seep out. After following Christophes instructions to dip the tube in the water, he then flips the tube to the other side and watches water leak out faster than it had before. Wow, Kevin says in awe, noticing that one side of the valve constricts water and the other just lets it run out. He watches the other small children - just barely eye-level with large plastic water bucket - try out their own tubes. Theyre testing plastic heart valves they constructed through cutting fingers off of gloves and jamming the fingers into small plastic tubes and then taping two or three tubes together. Each glove finger was cut with either

with a big or small cut, so water would flow at different rates from different sides of the plastic valve. Kevin waits until the very last child completes his or her experiment, and then sits next to his mother. He gets ready to fill in the blank box on his handout that is translated in both Spanish and English. The mentors start the debrief. What did the valves do?said Christophe. The valve prevents the water!exclaims Kevin. Kevin is just one child in South Los Angeles who has taken advantage of family science night, weekly twohour classes hosted by Iridescent, a science and engineering education nonprofit that brings college engineering

students, like Christophe and Chang, to elementary schools in inner city areas such as Los Angeles, New York City and Oakland. Kevins experiment with his plastic valves is one of three family science workshop nights that focused on cardiovascular mechanics. At the first workshop Kevin attended he and a roomful of some 20 children built hearts out of gloves, straws and tapes. They then put water into the different heart chambers theyd constructed and tried to squeeze the water out. The smaller chamber was harder to squeeze than the larger chamber due to its smaller surface area. The kids thus learned about blood pressure and how t relates to the ability of the heart to pump blood by means of valves and circulate it throughout body. continued on page 16

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down wood and fly a remote control airplane to learn about aerodynamics. More than 600 students attended the event, waiting in line at various booths to test out these activities. The biggest hit at the fair - a blowup pool with submarines the size of a human head - attracted students of all ages. Small children gathered around the pool with their parents. High school students grabbed control of the remote and drove the submarines, which made buzzing noises as they plowed through the bright blue water. If a student pressed down on the button, the miniature submarines even blew bubbles into the water as if it was submerging for the first time. The goal of the underwater robotic submarine is to keep the students interested and possibly want to build something of the same nature in the future, according to mentor Jeffrey Cui. Its just a way for kids to explore the underwater environment using a device and its also to help them build an object like this using engineering techniques, he said. Iridescent believes a hands-on approach to learning about science is es-

The goal is to help children become excited about how the world works and do that by building, by experimenting, by discovering, said Tara Chklovski, who founded Iridescent four years ago when she was earning a doctorate degree in aerodynamics engineering at USC. Iridescent, so far, has trained more than 300 engineers to mentor 4,800 children and parents in not only Los Angeles, but other inner-city areas such as Oakland and New York City. On October 16 of last year, Iridsecent opened a new science studio on 23rd Street within blocks of USC and Downtown Los Angeles. Vanessa Garza, who serves as Iridescents regional director in Los Angeles, hopes to help close the historic achievement gap in math and science test scores between minority students, who are in fact the majority of South Los Angeles students, and their White and Asian counterparts throughout the US; the reasons for the gap include poverty, poor schools, and the stresses of living in inner city communities. I have no doubt that our students are from .... low income households, said Garza. The Science Studios cover a wide spectrum of topics like Kevins lesson on cardiovascular mechanics, but all relate to engineering or are somehow science-based, according to Garza. During Iridescents summer engineering boot camp, one of the many programs it offers, mentors taught students how to create a roller coaster out of insulation tubes that exhibited the concept of potential and kinetic energy and the conservation of energy. The children used a sling shot to shoot a ball through the top, or hill, of the windy roller coaster and watched the ball convert potential energy (stored in its height) to kinetic energy (motion). Iridescents hands-on approach also allows mentors to test out the effec-

tiveness of experiments theyve put together for the students. At the studio launch science fair on October 16th in Los Angeles, students were allowed to take things apart and try to put them back together - from fans to toasters, pet tools by learning how to nail

The goal is to help children become excited about how the world works and do that by building, by experimenting, by discovering.

sential because it will help foster the childrens interest in the subject as they move into higher education, according to its main Website. The nonprofit also believes parents, who may never have been exposed to science, should be given the same experience as children; experiments are designed so both the parents and students can work together and learn. To this end, Iridescent translates all activities into Spanish. Fernando Izaguirre tarted to translate for Iridescent after serving as a mentor the previous year. He remembers struggling to translate a computer lesson with a basis in mechanical engineering. A lot of the concepts are hard to translate but I became more confident...I wanted to experience something that was less technical than engineering, he said. Garza said that Iridescents family science workshops and other events offer minority students a way to get out in the neighborhood and get valuable experiences unavailable in their neighborhood schools many of which have experienced staff lay-offs and budget cuts; many of these children are virtually house bound due to fear of crime in the area. By publicizing events at schools and individually calling households, the nonprofit hopes to engage even more students and add weekend workshops, science film screenings and opportunities for students to use high-tech equipment for larger projects. Such projects are expensive. The science studio and equipment including science books, microscopes, building blocks, magnifying glasses for the Los Angeles location was funded by a $2.3 million grant from the Office of Naval Research to boost its STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education outreach in inner city neighborhoods. Dr. Kassner, director of ONR, said

Iridescents family science workshops and other events offer minority students a way to get out in the neighborhood and get valuable experiences unavailable in their neighborhood schools many of which have experienced staff lay-offs and budget cuts; many of these children are virtually house bound due to fear of crime in the area

that the Navy spends about $5 million a year on STEM education; Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has recently doubled the budget. The White House is acting to address this issue through funding work like Iridescent so the technology of Americas armed forces will still be competitive with other countries and doesnt fall behind for years to come. It appears to me to be a very constant shift with the White House, so this is a national push, he said, speaking of engaging youth with STEM education. ONR stresses that the nonprofit teaches students subjects that involve water like hydrodynamics or underwater robotics. The Navy plans to establish a presence at Iridescent, by sending over present or retired personnel, or even members of Navy ROTC at local universities, Dr. Kassner explained. We hope that [the students] remember that the Navy made some effort to make sure they were interested in science.

However, Garza said that although Iridescent may cultivate lesson plans geared toward Naval themes like the physics of sailing, theyre not pushing the children into a military career. Our whole vision is that they major in their field and make it a hobby once they are an adult. But for young students like Kevin, all that may really matter is the opportunity to participate in a hands-on experiment, something he finds fun

and exciting and keeps him attentive because he gets to build his own experiments Or, as he says, I get to investigate things! ewarden@usc.edu

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Commentary
Performance-enhancing drugs have permanently tainted baseball
Jeff Curtis homers, from smaller ballparks and strike zones to improvements in weight training, but the obvious answer is also the most satisfying. Steroids. Unless youve been living in a selfimposed media blackout the last five years, you probably know that steroids and baseball went hand-in-hand for the better part of the last two decades. Admitted steroid cheat Jose Canseco (who, along with Mark McGwire formed the power-hitting Bash Brothers tandem in the 80s) estimated 85 percent of major league baseball players take performance-enhancing drugs. Skeptics wanting evidence of steroid use need look no further than major league clubhouses. Players return from offseason training with cartoonish muscles and suitcase-sized heads. Veins ripple across their bodies like raging tributaries, pounding against the restraint of their skin. Once-svelte outfielders pack on 35 pounds of lean muscle mass in three months. Players respond to questions about their chiseled physiques with evasive answers about new workouts. On that front at least the players are being honest. Sort of. Gaining strength requires hard work, no matter what people put in their bodies. But simply using steroids will not result in muscle growth. Unlike Popeye the Sailor, regular people dont see immediate progress after eating spinach or taking steroids. What steroids do is help people recover from workouts faster by providing their cells with added testosterone. Anabolic steroids, which are synthetic steroid hormones used to stimulate muscle and bone growth, mimic the effect naturally produced testosterone has on the body. Testosterone switches on receptors in muscle cells and causes them to increase protein synthesis. Muscle growth occurs when the rate of muscle protein synthesis is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown. Put simply, testosterone tells muscles to grow. More testosterone leads to more growth. But how does added strength help these players hit baseballs farther? If it were purely a question of strength, NFL linemen and Olympic weightlifters would double as home run hitters. Roger Tobin, a physicist at Tufts University, calculated how much of an impact steroids could have on players ability to hit home runs. He found that steroid use could increase muscle mass by up to 10 percent. That added muscle could help a baseball player swing his bat five percent faster than before, causing the ball to jump of his bat four percent faster when he connected than it did previously. Four percent added velocity might sound negligible, but applying that slight increase to a scatter plot of baseball reveals it can boost home runs by 50 percent. Baseball players skilled enough to put the barrel of their bat on a major league pitch were now hitting them

Sultans of Steroids

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Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa captured the nations attention in 1998. Locked in a race against history, the two baseball stars took turns blasting home runs into the upper decks of stadiums. Records that had stood for decades fell without resistance, pounded into obscurity with each mammoth swing of the massive sluggers bats. Largely ignored during the excitement of the chase was its improbability. Why were baseball players suddenly hitting home runs at historic rates? It takes less than a half-second for a major league fastball to travel the 6 feet, 6 inches from the pitching mound to home plate. In other words, batters dont have a lot of time to think about a pitch before they have to swing at it. Not many people can hit a major league fastball. And fewer still can consistently hit one out of the ballpark. For much of baseballs history registering 50 home runs in a single season was the greatest measure of a power hitter, reserved for the biggest names in the sport. From 1900 to 1994, only 11 players hit that mark. Since then, 15 different players have risen above the oncespecial plateau. Why was there one Sultan of Swat (Babe Ruth) in the first 100 years of the sport and one on seemingly every team in the two decades since? Various explanations have been used to justify the sharp uptick in

farther. Suddenly, players knocking in 12 home runs a year saw their totals spike to 18. And players hitting 35 or 40 home runs a year started chasing Roger Maris record-setting 61 home run season. On Sept. 8, 1998, McGwire blasted his 62nd home run of the season. At the stadium that evening was the family of Maris, a slender, sweet-hitting lefty who set the old record in 1961. As McGwire lumbered around the bases, his St. Louis Cardinals jersey pulled taut around unnaturally broad shoulders, one has to wonder how Maris family felt as his legacy was wiped away. Sosa ended up with 66 home runs that year. McGwire finished with 70. Three years later even his record was broken. curtisjm@usc.edu

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 Noticing

In Defense of Shadows
Laura J. Nelson My bedroom is barely bigger than my bed. I knew when I moved in that Id be cramped, but it was too late: Id already fallen in love with the light streaming from the west-facing window. The plate glass is huge, and it brings the world in: the familiar hum of bike tires against the bumpy pavement, the cool kiss of the evening breeze on my cheeks and the ever-shifting shadows that dance across my dusty shades. I seldom notice those sinuous silhouettes. Compared to the dollops of gilded sunlight that warm my floorboards and flit across my eyelids, shadows are ugly stepsisters. Shadows are the absence of light, the absence of warmth and in my view, vastly underappreciated. Even the word shadow carries a negative connotation. Any selfrespecting horror movie includes at least one shadowy hallway or darkened door. Cowards are afraid of their own shadow. A disease can ravage someone until he is a shadow of his former self. And the word foreshadow doesnt mean happier days are coming. Despite that reputation for being harbingers of gloom and doom, shadows are formed by the light that brightens my mornings and warms my floors. For example, the nearby oaks fluttering leaves that cast jitterbugging shadows across my bedspread? That shadow begins with light from

They cant be ironed or kissed, slapped or caught. And although theyre always there, we dont think much about the shadows that follow us everywhere.

But every shadow is made up of multitudes of shadows cast by thousands of rays. That creates blurrier outlines more like the many-edged shadow of a ballerina whos illuminated by a row of footlights. But photons generally come from so many directions and so many different light sources that almost all shadow paths are partially illuminated. Whether fuzzy around the edges or crisp and clean, shadows are never tangible. Peter Pan of the famous childrens story finds this out the hard way when hes accidentally separated from his shadow. He tries unsuccessfully to stick it back on using soap, before finally allowing Wendy to sew it back

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the sun. The sun emits miniscule packets of energy called photons that stream toward the Earth in straight lines sometimes called rays. The photons rocket toward Earth at the speed of light until they hit something. In this instance, thats the tree. The photons bounce off the trunk and the leaves. Because the tiny energetic packets cant pass through the opaque tree, an absence of photons an absence of light appears on the other side in the shape of the object the photons hit. Thats a shadow. But shadows come in shades of gray. If shadows could be created by one ray, then each shadows outline would be crisp, like a ballerina standing in front of a single, hard spotlight.

on. Perhaps I should have ironed it, she says thoughtfully. Theres only one catch: shadows cant be ironed or kissed, slapped or caught. And although theyre always there, we unlike Peter Pan dont think much about the shadows that follow us everywhere. Still for centuries, shadows have been a fulcrum for cultural and societal change. Egyptians first told time by using shadows and miniature sundials, examining where on the disc face the shade of the needle fell. The Chinese entertained themselves with shadow puppet shows, a more refined version of a childs bunny ears in front of the movie projector. And some scientists think Neanderthals created the first cave painting while tracing the shadows of their flickering fires. All those shadows come from light, whether its the sun or a campfire. Im growing to appreciate the shadows that play across my apartments window and their relationship with the light that fills so much of my life. I notice how the dewy sunrise pours through that wall-to-wall window to rest in pools of golden morning on my pillow but also how my pillow then casts a soothing shadow across my sleeping face. How I kick off my shoes in the late afternoon, step into a patch of molten sunlight and feel a gentle warmth seeping through my toes but also how I step into the cooler shadows when the sun gets too hot. How every night, the same rosy sun bathes my wooden floors in the majestic blush of sunset but also how the lengthening shadows meld with the darkness as our planets own shadow envelops Los Angeles. ljnelson@usc.edu