By Lauren Stiene | Saltman Quarterly | SQ Online 2016-2017 Throughout history, debilitating stigmas have been attached to individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses. These stigmas have been fashioned and generalized as a result of misconceptions that surround certain mental illnesses. Some of these misconceptions are developed through the influence of the media. For example, seventy-seven…
For many students at UC San Diego with aspirations for careers in the sciences, the path to these professions can seem arduous, and the obstacles along the way are perceived as insurmountable. The anonymity that comes with studying at a large university, the process of applying to graduate programs, the struggle to find experience relating…
BY BAR YOSEF| SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2016-17) ____________________________________________________________________________ On Earth Day, 15,000 people gathered in downtown San Diego and marched from Civic Center Plaza to Waterfront. When asked why she marched, middle school science teacher Kimberly Carpenter said, “So many things.” And the signs carried by the marchers reflected this. Signs included remarks about…
Theresa Bui | Blogger | SQ Online (2016-17) Perhaps you’ve seen real-life Avatars-in-training before. I certainly have. As a child, I remember watching my neighborhood’s elders gather with large bamboo sticks on the main street at 7 a.m. The elders would slowly but decidedly rock back and forth on their heels and sway their arms fluidly in…
LIAM HUBER | BLOGGER | SQ ONLINE (2016-17) How Flowers Overthrew the World’s Reigning Flora and Reshaped the Biosphere, Befuddling Botanists to this Day Having outlasted the 2016 dumpster fire, it would be nice to report that 2017 will be less lousy. Unfortunately, only a few weeks in, this does not look like it will be…
By Sharada Saraf | SQ Online Reporter | SQ Online (2016-2017) ________________________________________________________________________________________ President Trump wants to cut billions of dollars in research grant funding, and institutions like UC San Diego have become seriously concerned about the future of science. Presidential budget proposals, while never implemented in their final form, are good indicators of what the Executive Office wants…
By Lauren Stiene | Online Reporter | SQ Online (2016-2017) Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a range of disorders associated with social deficits. The neurological cause of these social deficits is not entirely known, but in the past two years there have been important discoveries about this cause. It has been theorized that the perceived…
Through centuries of experiments, theories, and discoveries made about the wonders of our planet, astronomers from across the world have looked to the stars, wondering, “is it just us? Is it just Earth?”. The fascination of life, or the possibility of life, on other planets and in other galaxies continues to be at the forefront…
BY BAR YOSEF| SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2016-17) ____________________________________________________________________________ In the January 26, 2017 issue of Cell, Salk Institute scientists reported on their breakthroughs in interspecies chimeras. Chimeras are organisms with organs of different species. The paper, whose first author is staff scientist Dr. Jun Wu, featured explanations of the scientists’ success in growing a…
BY MADISON RAE | SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2016-17) ____________________________________________________________________________ We are living in a complicated era for education. With the new presidential administration, changing standards and curriculums, and many different attitudes toward the sciences across our nation, it’s hard to predict the future of science in our schools. In the past, the common method of…