A delightful wall calendar for 2017 from Young Scientists Journal. Each month be amazed by animals from our amazing planet, all accompanied by fun scientific facts. Key academic dates and events are also included.
Learn about the new article submissions process and begin your journey to publishing as a Young Scientist.
Young Scientists Journal was fortunate to interview Jim Al-Khalili, a prominent science communicator, on a wide range of topics from his work in Physics to Science Communication.
NEW! A short video introduction to the world’s peer review science journal written, edited & produced by 12-20 year-olds.
Materials have specific properties which make them useful for certain applications. Medicine is an area in which various material characteristics find a role in the human body. Spider silk fibre has revolutionary properties which make it an excellent new biomaterial. This review article will explore the chemistry, physics and biology of this material. Spider silk fibre has more recently also been reverse engineered into the physical state of an aqueous and ultra-thin film state. This opens up additional possibilities. It also allows implantation of silk material based devices within the human body in a manner that seamlessly conforms to biotic-abiotic interface. The versatile uses of spider silk in medicine include micro sutures (a type of joint found in the skull) with more strength, sturdy bio-scaffolds for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering for artificial skin and nerve grafts, tendon and ligament repair with the required strength and elasticity, weight-bearing artificial knee menisci in Orthopaedic surgery, liquid silk for biological wound dressings, silk micro particles for drug delivery and finally silk optics, bio-photonics, biosensors and bio electronics. The practical challenges and scope of research will revolve around the mass production and genetic engineering of spider silk, and reinventing a material that has existed for millennia.
A delightful wall calendar for 2017 from Young Scientists Journal. Each month be amazed by animals from our amazing planet, all accompanied by fun scientific facts. Key academic dates and events are also included.
A delightful wall calendar for 2017 from Young Scientists Journal. Each month be amazed by animals from our amazing planet, all accompanied by fun scientific facts. Key academic dates and events are also included.
Learn about the new article submissions process and begin your journey to publishing as a Young Scientist.
Learn about the new article submissions process and begin your journey to publishing as a Young Scientist.
An investigation into the hydrating claims of isotonic drinks.
The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different solutions advertised as ‘hydrating’ on horse red blood cells. The study focused on isotonic drinks and waters. Various isotonic drinks are sold as ‘hydration solutions’ but, given the commercial aspects of marketed products, it is questionable whether the manufacturers create them to be hydrating or whether the drinks are in fact dehydrating in order to make the customer thirstier and want to buy more drinks to quench their thirst.
The human respiratory system is an vital organ system that carries out life-sustaining processes. Like other organ systems, it is prone to a plethora of diseases, both systematic and non-systematic. The objective of this research article is to compare and contrast two lethal respiratory diseases: lung cancer and tuberculosis. This article discusses the scientific nature, the diagnosis, the treatment, and the social and ethical impacts of the two diseases. In particular, this article dissects and presents ethical issues pertaining to tuberculosis, a disease that has been dubbed a social disease, and lung cancer. This article provides an insight into health sciences and its relationship with the greater society.
Young Scientists Journal was fortunate to interview Jim Al-Khalili, a prominent science communicator, on a wide range of topics from his work in Physics to Science Communication.
A mathematical problem
Can a computer think? This article explores the extent to which Artificial Intelligence is possible and how looking at our own brains may pave the way to more human-like data processing.
Or… “Are we smarter than 50 lines of code and Ireland’s most powerful supercomputer?”
Our project is a theoretical Computer Science and Mathematics project that aimed to explore the outcomes of optimal play scenarios in Erickson’s Square Game by applying the Minimax algorithm to the game.
Why do people age? This has always been an age-old question of humanity. We all know that we do not live forever and that life on our planet will end one day. Life comes with death, but it is a natural process. It is an imposed order that mankind lives up to.
Until the 1970’s, people did not know what telomeres were and what their function is in our organs. Hence, aging had been a mystery. Between 1975 and 1977 Elisabeth Blackburn, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, together with Joseph Gail discovered telomeres. Later in 2009 Elisabeth Blackburn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery.
This paper hypothesizes a connection between gravity and entropy. Gravity, which has not been successfully unified with other fundamental forces yet, is now alternatively explained as an entropic force that is caused by change in information associated with the positions of material bodies. We consider the statistical definition of entropy and ultimately conclude that gravity and entropy are two sides of the same coin and their inter-conversion is what we call ‘time’.
Current diagnostic approaches to neurodegenerative diseases are often flawed as they are often invasive and cannot effectively diagnose early-onset dementia. Antibody-based therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases are very promising but often lack specificity to certain biomarkers and require invasive methods of administration such as a lumbar puncture. In this study I report a novel quantum-dot (QD) conjugated bispecific-antibody (BsAb) diagnosis system designed for Alzheimer’s disease. This structure is easy to synthesize and displays specificity to oligomeric amyloid-beta (Aβ), which is often present before Alzheimer’s symptoms starts to manifest. The bispecific antibody also binds with a weak affinity to transferrin receptors – thus potentially allowing it to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) via receptor-mediated transcytosis and reducing the necessity for extremely- invasive means of administration such as a lumbar puncture. The CdTe/ZnS QDs conjugated to the BsAb have multimodal, non-invasive MRI and fNIR imaging capabilities and also displayed allow cytotoxicity to neuronal cells. The synthesized nanoparticles composed of CdTe/ZnS with a Gd-DOTA doped silica shell also displayed therapeutic properties by immobilizing the toxic oligomeric Aβ and increasing neuronal viability. These novel BsAb-QD structures display promising diagnostic and therapeutic properties and represent an important evolution in neurodegenerative drug design.
I synthesized a novel nanoparticle-bound antibody for the earlier diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease which proves to be less invasive and more accurate in comparison to existing tests of its kind.
Bring out your inner poet with a chance to win storage space on a lunar lander!
Gene dependent sex differences in the expression of the Kdm5d protein in SF-1 knockout and wild type mice
Genes located only on the Y chromosome are male specific and are thus not expressed in female cells, which results in gene dependent sex differences. One of the genes located on the Y chromosome and expressed only in male cells is Kdm5d. In our study, the hypothalamus was compared between female and male SF-1 KO, intact WT and gonadectomised WT mice to investigate the genetically and hormonally dependent differences between the expression of the protein encoded by the Kdm5d gene. Standard immunohistochemical staining on floating brain sections was used to visualize the Kdm5d protein and was further analysed under the microscope. Immunoexpression of Kdm5d protein was observed only in WT intact males, but was not detected in any other groups. This observation suggests that the expression of the Kdm5d protein is both genetically and hormonally conditioned. Further experiments with testosterone supplementation should be carried out to confirm our findings.
Young Scientists Journal’s new senior team, led by Chief Editor Michael Hofmann, presents its vision for the 2016/17 academic year.
The UK Space Design Competition (UKSDC) is light years ahead of your average after school science club. The challenge is open to all secondary students in the UK, inviting schools to recreate their own aerospace company and respond to a futuristic proposal for the relocation of a space colony. Throughout the year, the schools compete either at regional heats or in an online video competition, the winners of which attend the UK final at Imperial College London in March. Twelve students from the winning team will be invited to NASA to represent UK in the international final later during the summer. We’ve been lucky enough to catch up with some of the 2015-16 winners and technical volunteers to hear about their experiences.
NEW! A short video introduction to the world’s peer review science journal written, edited & produced by 12-20 year-olds.
We’re dedicating our next issue to the UK’s first ever official astronaut – Tim Peake! For this issue, we’re looking for people aged between 12 and 20 to contribute articles and more. Click for some information as to how you can get involved with our next issue.
In this article, Lisa (17) explores the brain and its frontal lobes.
Neuroscience is a relatively new field of study that explores the brain and the nervous system, the great controllers of our body. This article focuses on the frontal lobes of the brain, expatiating on its functions and how their dysfunction could give rise to various psychological disorders. It also deals with the history of interpretations about the brain, as well as technological modes through which scientists can now examine the brain — e.g. the MRI and the PET scan.
Young Scientists Journal Conference 2016 will be held at St Anne’s College, Oxford on 18th October 2016
A bacteria busting game changer
Honey: sweet, delicious and great on toast! After proving a hit in our kitchen cupboards, honey is now making its way into our medicine cabinets too; next time you have a sore throat you may be reaching for the honey jar. This study looks at three different types of honey and their medicinal qualities against bacteria. Standard processed honey, unprocessed honey and medicinal grade Manuka honey all killed samples of both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, proving all of these honeys to have antibacterial properties. The Manuka honey, however, had a greater antibacterial effect against both bacteria, suggesting that Manuka honey is the best for medicinal use.
In the recent decade, Virtual Reality (VR) has become more common through a range of systems including computer-powered head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartphone-powered headsets. It has presented both designers and developers alike with a new field filled with unexplored potential. In this article, a new and inexpensive approach to VR is explored, allowing entry-level smartphones to run powerful computer-based VR experiences wirelessly through Bluetooth with relative high levels of performance. The project was recognised as a European and African Finalist in the Google Science Fair 2015.