It is widely accepted that once boys start to undergo puberty their sporting performance over all disciplines is significantly increased as opposed to females. This is primarily due to the male sex hormone testosterone, the levels of which are increased in males relative to females once males start to undergo puberty in order to develop the secondary sexual characteristics.  On average men’s testosterone levels are between 9.2 – 31.8 nmol/L and women’s are between 0.3 – 2.4 nmol/L. Some of the functions of testosterone that are involved with sporting performance are: 

• Increases the production of leucine an amino acid involved in the synthesis of proteins in muscle tissue 
• Increases the hematocrit (red blood cell count in blood) and haemoglobin (protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells) levels, therefore increasing the amount of oxygen that can be carried to tissues around the body 
• Increase aggression and motivation while competing. 

Therefore we can see that men have an extreme physical advantage over women based off of this one hormone. This is the reason why the injection of anabolic steroids such as testosterone is banned in sport and why there is so much controversy surrounding the testosterone levels of female competitors. In the end sport is all about ensuring that everyone has an equal chance at success and are on a level playing field.

Following on from my previous post, I want to talk about a more modern form of Active SETI. The Breakthrough Initiatives, launched by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and British Physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, are a series of projects designed to search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and to determine humanity’s response to the discovery of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

The initiatives are Breakthrough Listen, Breakthrough Message, Breakthrough Watch, Breakthrough Starshot, and Breakthrough Enceladus.

Breakthrough Listen is the primary SETI aspect of the Breakthrough Initiatives. Listen is a project which uses two of the world’s largest directional (steerable) radio telescopes in the world – one in the northern hemisphere (Green Bank Telescope) and one in the southern hemisphere (Parkes Telescope) –  and the Automated Planet Finder (Lick Observatory) to scan the sky for any artificial radio or laser transmissions. The two radio telescopes have the accuracy of being able to detect a radio transmission like those found on common aircraft from 5 parsecs away (16.3 light years), and the APF can detect a 100-watt laser from a planet 4.25 light years away.

Breakthrough Message is a research project which studies the ethics of Active SETI, additionally, a public $1 million USD competition was launched as a part of Message to design a digital transmission which could be transmitted into interstellar space and act “as a representative of humanity and planet Earth”. However, no message will be transmitted as a part of this project until a global debate has been held on the pros and cons of transmitting such a message.

Breakthrough Starshot, the Breakthrough initiative that excites me the most, is a project to design a fleet of micro-satellites equipped with light-sails – a form of propulsion which uses radiation pressure to accelerate a craft without burning any fuel or holding propellant – which could, when accelerated by a laser on Earth, reach speeds of up to 15-20% of the speed of light, which would allow them to reach our closest stellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri, within 20-30 years.

Breakthrough Watch is a project which intends to develop technology to accurately catalogue Earth-like planets within a 20-light year range of Earth and search for biosignatures such as an oxygenated atmosphere.

Finally, Breakthrough Enceladus is a proposed joint mission between the Breakthrough initiatives and NASA to design a deep-space probe which would be sent to Saturn’s moon Enceladus and use radar to probe beneath the ice surface in order to search for potential life in the oceans beneath Enceladus’s ice.

The beauty of the Breakthrough initiatives is the fact that, even if just some are successful, they will place us at a position in technological advancement in which we can bridge the interstellar gap, and truly become a space-faring civilisation.

In this post, I want to discuss the Arecibo Message and its implications. First, a bit of background. The Arecibo Message is a binary radio message – written by Dr Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, et al – transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope on the 16^th of November 1974 in the direction of a globular star cluster known as M13 in the constellation of Hercules.

The contents of the Arecibo message were pieces of information about humanity and human achievements that, if deciphered by an extra-terrestrial intelligence, would give an idea of the level of technological advancement of the human race. The message consisted of the numbers 1 to 10 in binary; a detailed description of the composition of human DNA; a pictographic representation of an average human male, accompanied by the dimensions of said human, and the approximate population; a representation of Earth’s relative location within the solar system; and a graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope.

Additionally, the message was sent in 1679 binary digits, a number chosen as it is the product of the two prime numbers 73 and 23, making it semiprime. The numbers 73 and 23 make up the Arecibo Message image’s dimensions, with it having 73 rows and 23 columns. Any other arrangement of the binary digits produces an indecipherable mess; however, the arrangement is still ordered enough to indicate that there is in fact an order to the message’s composition.

What I wanted to draw into discussion, or at least to encourage the consideration of, is the question “Was the Arecibo Message a good idea?”, as many would argue that the idea of giving intelligent alien life an idea of who we are and where to find us is extremely dangerous. I would argue that it is not, as the discovery of another intelligent civilisation out amongst the stars would change the way we consider ourselves – finally making us realise that we’re not as special as we think we are, but many would suggest, justifiably, that it’s smarter to keep quiet to avoid hostile civilisations.

There is great debate in the scientific community about the Arecibo Message and other METI projects (Messaging Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) – also known as Active SETI (Active Searching for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). Professor Stephen Hawking, in his book “A Brief History of Time” suggests that it is foolish, noting humanity’s own hostility to encountering new terrestrial civilisations throughout history. However, others, like Professor Alexander Zaitsev, argue that any radio messages sent from Earth are extremely unlikely to have reached anywhere that could not have already detected us from our day to day radio chatter, so it is not possible to completely shield ourselves from detection by an extra-terrestrial intelligence.

So, what is your take on the Arecibo Message, is it a good idea, or should we just put our heads down and keep quiet?

I am an older sister to two younger siblings, ages 9 and 7. One thing I have noticed with the younger generation is their attachment to the internet, and the community which has formed around it even at schools.
At the young age of 8 my little sister was forced by her school to bring in her own laptop.
This is when I noticed a significant change in the way she views things. She stopped letting us look at her work, stating that it was simply not good enough. She stopped creating artworks at home and writing stories, because she knew that others were better than her, so she did not see a point.
As someone who paints, I have also experienced this. When I was younger I would complete a painting and feel pride and satisfaction, but now after completing a painting all I feel is the looming knowledge that someone else could have done it better, as I had seen many people online who were much more skilled at painting than I was.
I was lucky to have grown up in the time where the internet was not a big part of how I was raised, and I was able to build up a passion for art before I had to face the massive internal criticism from seeing better on the internet. But my siblings, and the whole younger generation are still learning. This is the time when they build up their skills and passions, which they cannot do when they feel like there is no point in trying.
They do not develop hobbies out of the very human fear of being not good enough, so boredom brings them right back to the internet, where they feel safe.

I hope we can break this cycle.

Both science and mental heath are two things which throughout history have been very closely intertwined.
Supposedly, the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who did a lot of major work in thermodynamics had an anxiety disorder; Nicola Tesla, who needs no introduction, had OCD; Isaac Newton had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. And those are just three. There are many more famous scientists with a supposed mental illness, who have achieved great things in their respective fields.
However, there have been studies which show the links between mental and grades being contradictory to this. For example the link between anxiety and grades in a study of over 200 engineering students has been showed to be very significant, with a statistical p value of 0.000. The relationship was shown to be parabolic, with the higher and lower points of anxiety showing a decrease in grades achieved. A similar case occurs when depression and other illnesses are taken into account instead.
In fact a link between IQ and mental disorders has even been shows, with people with a higher IQ being more likely to show signs of these disorders.
University is no doubt an extremely stressful environment filled with people of a higher IQ, and I have first hand seen a decrease in my grades as this stress increases, as have so many people around me. And this has caused quite a few of us to panic, as grades are very commonly seen in the scenario as a measure of our worth.
However one thing we do not often see is that we are more than capable of getting through this degree and completing our aspirations, as was the case with all the famous scientists listed above. We all still harbor our intense passions, and our creativity, and our determination for fields, which is what leads to great scientists.
Mental illness is something which needs to be talked about more in science, and it is not something which should get in the way of us becoming the scientists we aim to be.

Sometimes it’s fun to stop what you’re doing and question things that really don’t need questioning. Or do you sometimes get those moments when you are zoning in and out of consciousness in class and you finally snap back into focus only to learn something extremely interesting and also quite unnecessary.

This is exactly how I felt one fateful day in semester 1 whilst at my 4pm BioSci108 Lecture.

Here’s something to think about that you may not have thought about before. We all know that to make alcohol there is a process that the liquid undergoes called ‘fermentation’. But what does this actually mean?

If you ever go wine tasting on Waiheke, bathe in the knowledge that you are drinking the sweet victory of our yeast friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Let me explain, Dr. Mat Goddard from the University of Auckland demonstrated that S. cerevisiae modifies its environment to kill off potential competitors.

Basically, what is happening is that S. cerevisiae co-exists with many other species at the beginning of wine fermentation. Then what it does is releases a bunch of ethanol that will kill other species that are also existing in the wine. S. cerevisiae is not affected by ethanol so it is able to survive.

This is a process called ‘niche construction’, where an organism modifies its own environment to enhance its fitness. S. cerevisiae is better adapted to pH and osmotic stress. So it is able to survive, the harsh conditions that other species can’t and we get our lovely ethanol filled liquid as a by-product.

If you follow astronomy news, you may have heard about Planet 9, the theoretical planet in the outer edge of our solar system. It is predicted to be between 5 and 20 earth masses, and was discovered due to its gravitational effect on the trans-Neptunian objects. These objects behave very strangely, clustering together in odd patterns, and orbiting the sun on a different plane to the main planets in our solar system. Scientists proposed that the gravitational effects of a massive planet would result in this.
This isn’t the first time gravity has been used to discover planets, with Neptune being mathematically predicted in the 1800s before it was ever seen, so we know that it is a reliable method.
However a new explanation has aroused that may be even more exciting than another planet. Some scientists proposed that it may be a primordial black hole which has been captured in the gravity of the sun as it moves through space.
Primordial black holes are very different to core collapse black holes, in that they are formed at the very beginning of the universe when everything is hot and dense. A large gathering of mass could collapse into a singularity, resulting in a much smaller and less massive black hole that you would get from the core collapse of a massive star. In fact, they would be around 5-20 times the mass of the earth, and around the size of a grapefruit or a bowling ball. There would be no clear distinction between the gravitational effect of a primordial black hole and that of a planet, and would orbit the sun as planets do. This would explain it’s strange plane of orbit, as it was not formed along with the other planets, but instead picked up, so at the current time we cannot rule out either option.

References:
Letzer, R. 2019. “Is our solar system’s mysterious “planet 9″ really a grapefruit sized black hole”. Retrieved from https://www.space.com/planet-nine-ancient-black-hole-theory.html

“Discovery of Neptune”. Retrieved from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune

I recently stumbled across a post about a very unique formula called Tupper’s self-referential formula. This formula allows you to plot anything that can fit into a 106 wide by 17 tall grid. It is called “self-referential” because this formula can plot itself on the grid.

An easier to read version of the formula is:

Don’t worry if these seems like a bit of a Frankenstein’s Monster of a formula, there is a rather intuitive understanding behind it.

• We can take everything on the right had side of the ‘<‘ sign and wrap it all up as a function f(x,y). This function takes in two values x, y that represent a square on the 106×17 grid I was talking about earlier.

• This function will then spit out a value (calculated using the big formula above), which we will then compare to 1/2.

• If the value that we get from f(x,y) is greater then 1/2, we color in the box on the grid that is represented by x and y.

• If the value we get is less than, or equal to 1/2, we don’t color in the box, and leave it blank.

• This process is done (by a computer) for every single x and y value that we want to look at.

Now in order to find the bit of the output graph that produces the image we want, we have to find the point on the y-axis where this image starts. In the diagram above, this is shown as the number N. There is another function to find the point where your desired image will start, but it would require another lengthy explanation, so I shall leave it out here. Skipping over the method for finding this, if we start graphing at the number below, we will end up with the image of the formula above.

960939379918958884971672962127852754715004339660129306651505519271702802395266424689642842174350718121267153782770623355993237280874144307891325963941337723487857735749823926629715517173716995165232890538221612403238855866184013235585136048828693337902491454229288667081096184496091705183454067827731551705405381627380967602565625016981482083418783163849115590225610003652351370343874461848378737238198224849863465033159410054974700593138339226497249461751545728366702369745461014655997933798537483143786841806593422227898388722980000748404719

This 543-digit monstrosity can be thought of as the unique code for the image of the formula. The really cool part of Tupper’s formula is that you can create any image, provided that you can fit it into a 106×17 grid. In fact, the formula generates every single possible image that can fit into that 106×17 grid, and all we have to do is find the point at which the image we want starts. I find this fascinating, as literally any piece of information can be encoded with this formula.

Using the tool at https://keelyhill.github.io/tuppers-formula/, I made my own message that a reader can find by plugging in the number below:

3001547358332770337372193127007941112227917925519022078304465383983124232533144561341576011711896582837921994365782183448232289052064015773896436007050360698547286909389057858213997522549096288462346206978648063732239023943282643481174067982217989028008850820503895735538113981777002133004132473920044226681146756708625935883057578117674089671844674436952927335276076991889638741656026059567568222136535872544438084795695231639874783784523382786606698519481516815942858219600715039048293001724370495587956592344214989611120887362466985852010496

Finally, my source for this post is available at the starting location of

7845537408904881636064106214019549300205215619222485587018701716195646432344602803459114735925011308779228667093471850927255552811045168928997859454200967078070417294338953745932718753239778710955582001217046244805771391630460355923564278851978862601434046077680409660655269354118985326403017298859607638517927118207761770809581559261192095313776776095699605690678663027578532917535666203037284366066187987963206072697970534845667420812876428909190113491880948688243554409272615443199691039313055326933942373971918848

Scientists from the Chongqing University have successfully managed to grow a plant on the moon. The experiment involved sending up a biosphere containing an array of different seeds and eggs on China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft that landed on the dark side of the moon early this year. Inside this biosphere was a collection of cotton, potato, and Arabidopsis (similar to cabbage) seeds, along with yeast and fruit-fly eggs, of which only the cotton seeds successfully grew.

Scientists originally wanted to send tortoises up with the spacecraft, but eventually sidelined this idea due to weight constraints. While this may sound like a horrible idea, tortoises are actually quite well suited to the harsh conditions of space flight. In fact, tortoises were the first living beings to circle the moon and safely return to the earth, doing so in the 1968 Zond 5 Soviet space mission.

The very first life to grow on the moon was two cotton leaves that sprouted from the seeds; but they did not last long. The biosphere was unpowered, and upon the onset of the first lunar night (with its negative 190 Celsius temperatures) the plants quickly perished. Nevertheless, this marks an important milestone in the exploration of space and the moon and sets the stage for future experimentation into growing plants on the moon, potentially paving the way to terraforming the Earth’s astronomical neighbor.

Source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/robotic-exploration/china-grew-these-leaves-on-the-moon

Swimming is something I hold very close to my heart. It is a life-saving skill I believe we all should learn from a young age. It has occurred to me that some kids and even adults, simply do not know how to swim. They cannot stay afloat or blow bubbles because they have not been taught the basics. This is very concerning especially because our earth is 70% water. I am not here to teach you how to swim (even though I would love to, considering I’m a swimming coach) but rather the importance of swimming and its benefit to your physical and mental wellbeing.

Swimming is a great recreational or competitive activity. It is proved to be one of the most effective ways of losing calories even more so than going for a walk or run. There are 4 strokes associated with competitive swimming; butterfly, backstroke, breastroke and freestyle, each burning a different number of calories:

This way, you can give your muscles a makeover easier than ever!

Physical Benefits
1. Swimming is a full body workout and uses all muscles in the body, helping to build endurance, muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness, all of which are important fitness components in maintaining a healthy weight, healthy heart and healthy lungs. The risk of disease is therefore lowered, and you are less likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke or type 2 diabetes.

2. Water supports up to 90 percent of the body’s mass, making it a very low impact activity. It is easy enough to continue swimming when injured because you can manipulate, and isolate different parts of the body e.g. having a shoulder injury – doing kick and no arm movement.  

3. Swimming increases your energy levels through increased metabolism.

Mental Benefits
1. Swimming can be a relaxing and peaceful form of exercise that alleviate stress, keeping you calm and focused.

2. Improves co-ordination, balance, posture, flexibility

3. It can lower stress levels, reduce anxiety, depression and sleeping patterns

4. Swimming is fun and can be enjoyed in several environments whether this be cooling down on a hot day, having lessons, or training for a national competition you have coming up next month.

Getting into swimming is easy. Public pools, beaches, lakes, rivers are easily accessible. Swimming could save your life, physically and mentally!

References:

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/swimming-health-benefits