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Crowdsourcing: Northeastern Ph.D Candidate Turns to Crowdsourcing for Data, Funds Philip Strandwitz wants you. Really. He also wants all of your friends, and probably your parents and relatives, too. Strandwitz, a Ph.D. candidate for Microbiology in Kim Lewis’s lab, the Antimicrobial Discovery Center, is taking a creative approach to big data that could be a model […]

I Smell Dead People By Stephanie Wasiuk, Biology, 2018 Some may find it surprising how useful it is to know what a decomposing human body smells like and what exactly it is that makes it smell that way. Besides a putrid odor, the “smell of human death” is a major component of searching for bodies in

Mapping Out a Plan By Cicely Krebill, Biochemistry, 2019 Soil transmitted helminth infections (STH) are easily treated parasite infections, yet the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 880 million children are still in need of treatment. Although most infections are relatively asymptomatic, STH has been linked to impaired cognitive and physical development in children.

Working on Pills and Needles By Heather Offermann When given the choice between swallowing a pill or receiving a shot for drug delivery, most people would choose the oral method. In fact, approximately 20 percent of the population has a fear of needles. The problem is, oral drug delivery is a poor method for administering drug

US vs. Argentinan Healthcare: a Firsthand Look By Jen Obrigewitch, Biology, 2016 For my spring 2015 co-op at Northeastern, I accepted a position as a doctor’s assistant in a public hospital outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Immediately after agreeing to the internship, I was given a slew of instructions detailing that I was not to

Losing Nemo: The Ticking Clock on Marine Defaunation By Rachel Stoddard, Biology, 2017 It is no secret to mankind that humans negatively impact many animals and species. Our history has been fraught with instances of human-caused extinctions, with some studies putting the first extinction as early as 132,000 years ago. However, the focus in these

Distractions: Fueling your Inner Genius? By Natasha Mathur, Behavioral Neuroscience, 2018 It is hard to imagine exactly what differentiates people between good and great, but based on what is known about quite a few great minds there is one common occurrence. Marcel Proust, Charles Darwin and Richard Wagner were all plagued by the inability to tune

Have you read this already? How Déjà vu Works By Sage Wesenberg, Biochemistry, 2019 “Woah, I just had déjà vu!” is about the only proof there is that a person has experienced the phenomenon commonly known as déjà vu, meaning “already seen” in French. Although it is so mysterious and difficult to pin down, about 60–70

Small Steps, Huge Leaps, and Great Bounds By Jameson O’Reilly, Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, 2019 In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lived the dream that billions of humans have had for hundreds of thousands of years. Humans had long been curious about what lies beyond our humble Earth, but it took a decades-long struggle