NU Sci Staff

Less Than Lethal Injections By Adanya Lustig, Linguistics, 2018 “Wood repeatedly gasped for one hour and 40 minutes before death was pronounced.” (July 23, 2014) “Lockett began breathing heavily, writhing on the gurney, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow. Lockett died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the […]

Into the World of Chimeras By Yang Lin, Chemical Engineering 2018 Genetically engineering humans remains one of the most controversial topics today. Altering the germline, which is defined as the DNA that is passed on from generation to generation, is often seen among the scientific community as taboo, unethical, and “playing God.” Critics of human germline

The Last of the White Rhinos By Abigail Pietrow, Biology, 2018 On the 17th of October, in a wildlife conservancy in Kenya, a 34-year-old Northern White Rhinoceros died. The male rhinoceros, Suni, was one of only seven of his subspecies left alive in the world, and one of only two males. Throughout the 20th century the

Northeastern’s Health Disparities Student Collaborative By Chloe Nobuhara, Behavioral Neuroscience, 2017 When someone mentions the field of medicine, what comes first to mind? Maybe you think of cutting-edge research on breast cancer, or perhaps you envision a thrilling image of the da Vinci Surgical System. Either way, the thoughts on the forefronts of our minds

Hot Jobs and Frozen Eggs By Natasha Mathur, Behavioral Neuroscience 2018 Being a woman in the workforce has never been easy. For years, women have been jumping hurdles trying to prove that they can be “one of the guys” in the workplace. Over the past 50 years, the number of women in the workplace has increased

Dawn of the Planet of the… Mice? By Ronan Talty, Behavioral Neuroscience, 2017 Every thought, action, memory, feeling, and experience that you perform or possess is the result of your brain. At the root of all of those phenomena, are the brain’s most fundamental cells: neurons and glial cells. Neurons are the brain’s functional cells that

The Vegetarian’s Dilemma: Do Plants Feel Pain? By Elizabeth Olson, Environmental Science, 2018 As a long-time vegetarian, I am quite used to the reactions I get after telling people about my dietary choices. “Where do you get your protein?!” asks the hot dog-eating skeptic. “How can you live without bacon?” asks the devil’s advocate. There is

How Safe Are Supplements? By Joe Zimo, Mechanical Engineering, 2015 From gym-goers gulping down protein shakes to daily vitamin devotees, supplement users have become ubiquitous in modern society. But how safe are these supposedly miraculous compounds? In 1994, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) became law. This act removed the requirement for products

Genetic Engineering Gone Wrong? By Asa M. Budnick Evolution is dumb. Which is to say that evolution is utterly blind and acts with no intention. Evolution is just trial and error: some DNA gets bumped around here, a little bit of shuffling happens there, and one time in a billion it results in a change in