YSM Issue 97.2

Yale Scientific 

THE NATION’S OLDEST COLLEGE SCIENCE PUBLICATION • ESTABLISHED IN 1894 

MAY 2024 

VOL. 97 NO. 2 • $6.99 

14 

FROM SEA TO 

SYNTHESIS 

EYE-MMUNITY 12 

DYNAMIC DINOSAURS 16 

FLIGHT TO RECOVERY 19 

SNOWBALL EARTH 22

TABLE OF 

VOL. 97 ISSUE NO. 2 

COVER 

14 

A R T 

I C L E 

From Sea to Synthesis 

Risha Chakraborty and Michael Sarullo 

The artificial synthesis of potential anti-cancer molecules marks a significant milestone in the field of 

organic chemistry. Molecules, once only accessible by harvesting through ‘moss animals’ called Bryozoa, 

can now be synthesized from scratch. Through their pioneering work, researchers at the Herzon Lab at 

Yale have presented a new foundation for investigating the biological roles and therapeutic potentials 

of these compounds. 

12 Eye-mmunity 

Sarah Li 

Researchers at Yale have discovered a novel network of lymphatic vessels connecting the eye and the 

brain. Their discovery opens up new possibilities for delivering vaccines to protect the brain through 

the eye. By directly administering a herpes vaccine into the eyes of mice, they observed promising 

results in combating herpes-induced encephalitis. This breakthrough could hold the key to treating 

dozens of central nervous system diseases and infections. 

16 Dynamic Dinosaurs 

Yossi Moff 

For decades, our understanding of the joints that dinosaurs used for locomotion has been based 

on the intuition of paleontology experts, with no quantitative method to reconstruct joints of 

extinct species. Now, with new research conducted by a postdoctoral associate at Yale, we have 

a quantitative formula that assesses the joint positions that extinct species most likely used at 

different points in their motion, based on 3D reconstructions of their fossils. 

19 Snowball Earth 

Cindy Mei and Lawrence Zhao 

Millions of years ago, the Earth was plunged into a period of extreme global glaciation that covered 

nearly the entire surface with frost and ice, giving rise to the aptly-named phenomenon “Snowball Earth.” 

New climate model simulations show that large-scale impacts in chilly global temperatures can trigger 

Snowball Earth conditions, which may expand our understanding of how life came to be. 

22 Flight to Recovery 

Abigail Jolteus and Brandon Quach 

Ever wondered why some wounds heal quicker than others? Recent research on fruit flies might provide 

the answer. Scientists at Yale comparing the healing abilities of fruit flies at different developmental stages 

discovered that fly embryos heal wounds faster than larvae, thanks to their cells’ ability to quickly change shape 

during the wound-healing process. 

2 Yale Scientific Magazine May 2024 www.yalescientific.org

CONTENTS 

More articles online at www.yalescientific.org & https://medium.com/the-scope-yale-scientific-magazines-online-blog 

4 

6 

25 

34 

Q&A 

NEWS 

FEATURES 

SPECIALS 

How did Homo sapiens lose their tails? • Nikolai Stephens-Zumbaum 

Why are moths drawn to light? • Alondra Moreno Santana 

Post-Op for an Aging Population • Pempem Dorji 

Social Distancing: Engineering Edition • Lee Ngatia Muita 

A Dark Forecast • Lynna Thai 

Retirement Reimagined • Megan Kernis 

A Centuries-Old Tale • Helen Shanefield 

Go Fish • Patrick Wahlig 

Confronting a Broken System • Jordan Thomas 

The Art x Climate Project • Patricia Joseph 

Cold Calculations • Brandon Ngo 

Roombas of the Reef • Annli Zhu 

A New Look Into Postpartum Depression • Hien Tran 

Four Years Saving India’s Giant Softshell Turtle • Kenny Cheng 

On the Bright Side • Madeleine Popofsky 

Nanotechnology in...Blueberries? • Ximena Leyva Peralta 

Undergraduate Profile: Risha Chakraborty (YC '25) • Kenna Morgan 

Alumni Profile: Eli Luberoff (YC '09) • Yusuf Rasheed 

Science in the Spotlight: Unveiling the Unseen • Lee Ngatia Muita 

Science in the Spotlight: Inside the Scientist's Mind • Andre Botero 

Counterpoint: The X Factor • Melda Top 

Crossroads: Blood: Science, Culture, and Society • Sara de Ángel 

www.yalescientific.org 

May 2024 Yale Scientific Magazine 3

WHY ARE MOTHS 

& 

DRAWN TO LIGHT? 

HOW DID HOMO SAPIENS 

LOSE THEIR TAILS? 

By Nikolai Stephens-Zumbaum 

Of the vast number of differences between humans 

and our closest primate relatives, perhaps the most 

obvious is our lack of a tail—the cause of which was a 

mystery until recently. 

Having a tail separates monkeys from apes like us. Recently, 

a team of researchers led by Harvard research fellow Bo Xia 

set out to find the cause for this evolutionary split, which 

occurred between twenty and twenty-five million years ago. 

The team was able to pinpoint the specific gene in primates 

responsible for our lack of a fifth appendage: the TBXT gene, 

which dictates tail length. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 system, 

a technology that allows scientists to modify the genes of 

living organisms, the team replicated the mutation in mouse 

embryos in their lab. The result? Many mice had markedly 

smaller tails, with some lacking any tail structure at all. 

The remaining question for the researchers is why this 

change came about. Losing our tails played a part in our 

eventual bipedalism as we stopped living in the trees. As we 

walked away from our primate cousins, we walked toward 

a new tailless era catalyzed by a fundamental change in the 

TBXT gene. ■ 

By Alondra Moreno Santana 

Springtime brings an influx of moths that appear to 

mindlessly flutter into porch lights and street lamps. 

Many might associate moths’ collisions with these lights 

with a lack of intelligence. However, one study conducted in 

Costa Rican forests revealed that moths are not to blame for 

flying into artificial lights. 

In the study, researchers captured high-resolution videos 

and high-speed infrared recordings of the flight trajectories 

of moths near artificial light. The results demonstrated that at 

closer distances, moths do not intend to directly fly into light 

sources. Rather, moths turn their backs toward the light at a 

right angle, causing them to invert their flight or orbit, even 

when this action increases their potential of crashing. During 

the daytime, tilting their backs towards natural light allows 

moths to maintain a proper trajectory. However, artificial 

sources of light lead the insects to continuously turn their 

backs to the light, trapping them in a cycle that causes constant 

and unstable fluttering. 

While these changes in flight patterns seem harmless, 

artificial lights cause major concerns for moth populations. 

For instance, these lights may greatly disrupt moths’ sleeping 

and eating patterns by signaling daytime. In addition, light 

pollution causes these insects to become more visible and 

thus more vulnerable to predation, possibly contributing to 

a decline in their population. Understanding how we affect 

the behavior of these little creatures can help us create an 

environment that limits unnecessary stress, allowing them to 

keep fluttering around every spring. ■ 


The Editor-in-Chief Speaks 

VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE 

From the slender chains of DNA wrapped around nucleosomal proteins 

to the Deinonychus dinosaurs that roamed the Earth one hundred 

million years ago, science has revealed the mechanics behind the 

previously “unseeable” and unknowable. Our second issue of Volume 

97 contends with the dual concepts of scale and sight, uncovering the clever 

ways researchers have illuminated objects obscured by time, distance, or 

human bias. In our cover story, “From Sea to Synthesis,” we show how organic 

chemists at Yale synthesized anticancer molecules originally isolated from tiny, 

translucent “moss animals” called Bryozoans (pg. 14). In Special Sections, we 

embark on a journey through the history of invisibility and learn about the 

speculative tropes inspired by the discovery of quantum theory (pg. 36). We 

also analyze how modern science has attempted to mime invisibility through 

thermal cloaking and stealth technology. In Features, zooming in on the skin 

of the blueberry reveals microscopic waxy structures that may inform the 

production of nontoxic biomaterials for use in food and cosmetics (pg. 32). In 

News, we make visible the racial inequities that exist in our police system when 

patients are transported to the emergency department (pg. 10). Our exploration 

continues into our Online and Scope sections, where we hone in on the vesicles 

that hold the key to inhalable lung cancer therapy, then expand out to the Pegasi 

star system, unlocking the secrets behind its magnetic field. 

Behind the scenes, we have spearheaded several exciting initiatives. I am 

excited to announce our archival digitization project, which we have recently 

launched with the generous support of the Yale Science and Engineering 

Association. This summer, our Archivist, Matthew Blair, and I coordinated 

with the Yale Printing & Publishing Services and the Beinecke Rare Book and 

Manuscript Library to digitize over one hundred years of archival publications, 

starting from our days as the Yale Scientific Monthly in 1894. These scans will 

be available to the public on EliScholar, ensuring that YSM’s legacy will be 

preserved. We extend our deepest gratitude to Milton Young, Joseph Cerro, 

and Elissa Dunn Levy for their unwavering support and belief in YSM’s mission 

to make science accessible. Using our archives, we plan to launch a newsletter 

containing thematized selections of past articles. At the end of the semester, 

we will curate an exhibit in the Benjamin Franklin Library, where students and 

faculty can interact with YSM’s archives. Ultimately, we will continue to strive 

to uncover YSM’s rich history, while doing our due diligence to report the truth 

behind science’s advancements. 

About the Art 

Hannah Han, Editor-in-Chief 

Yale researchers recently discovered 

a method of synthesizing 

anticancer molecules found in 

Bryozoa—a group of tiny, jellyfish-like 

marine invertebrates. 

This cover highlights the diversity, 

complexity, and vibrance of these 

microscopic organisms, just as 

this research reminds us that we 

have something to learn from all 

forms of life. 

Annli Zhu, Cover Artist 

MASTHEAD 

May 2024 VOL. 97 NO. 2 

EDITORIAL BOARD 

Editor-in-Chief 

Managing Editors 

News Editor 

Features Editor 

Special Sections Editor 

Articles Editor 

Online Editors 

Scope Editors 

Copy Editors 

Archivist 

PRODUCTION & DESIGN 

Production Manager 

Layout Editors 

Art Editor 

Cover Artist 

Photography Editor 

BUSINESS 

Publisher 

Operations Managers 

Subscriptions Manager 

Community Coordinator 

OUTREACH 

Synapse Presidents 

Synapse Vice President 

Synapse Outreach Coordinators 

Synapse Events Coordinator 

WEB 

Web Manager 

Head of Social Media Team 

Web Coordinator 

Web Developer 

Social Media Content Creator 

STAFF 

Ebru Ayyorgun 

Gabriela Berger 

Ryan Bose-Roy 

Andre Botero 

Risha Chakraborty 

Kelly Chen 

Yuanyu Chen 

Kenny Cheng 

Cara Chong 

Rayyan Darji 

Sara de Ángel 

Pempem Dorji 

Ian Gill 

Molly Hill 

Elisa Howard 

Nusaiba Islam 

Patricia Joseph 

Genevieve Kim 

Paul-Alexander Lejas 

Nyla Marcott 

Cullen Matthews 

Kenna Morgan 

Lee Ngatia Muita 

Diya Naik 

Brandon Ngo 

Kimberly Nguyen 

Nicole Isabel Oo 

Faith Pena 

Ethan Powell 

Yusuf Rasheed 

Ignacio Ruiz-Sanchez 

Sharna Saha 

Fareed Salmon 

Alondra Moreno Santana 

Hannah Han 

Sophia Burick 

Kayla Yup 

Mia Gawith 

William Archacki 

Keya Bajaj 

Evelyn Jiang 

Cindy Mei 

Lawrence Zhao 

Matthew Blair 

Lea Papa 

Katrin Marinova 

Yossi Moff 

Patrick Wahlig 

Matthew Blair 

Kara Tao 

Nina Yorou Liu 

Jiya Mody 

Madeleine Popofsky 

Luna Aguilar 

Annli Zhu 

Emily Poag 

Tori Sodeinde 

Gia-Bao Dam 

Megan Kernis 

Henry Chen 

Samantha Liu 

Hannah Barsouk 

Brandon Quach 

Jordan Thomas 

Sarah Li 

Sunny Vuong 

Michael Sarullo 

Abigail Jolteus 

Elizabeth Watson 

David Gaetano 

Henry Chen 

Sunny Vuong 

Jamie Seu 

Helen Shanefield 

Nikolai Stephens- 

Zumbaum 

Lynna Thai 

Melda Top 

Hien Tran 

Proud Ua-arak 

Qinyi Wang 

Max Watzky 

Elise Wilkins 

Estella Wittstruck 

Aiden Wright 

Nathan Wu 

Aaron Yu 

Johnny Yue 

Hanwen Zhang 

The Yale Scientific Magazine (YSM) is published four times a year by Yale 

Scientific Publications, Inc. Third class postage paid in New Haven, CT 

06520. Non-profit postage permit number 01106 paid for May 19, 1927 

under the act of August 1912. ISN:0091-287. We reserve the right to edit 

any submissions, solicited or unsolicited, for publication. This magazine is 

published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible 

for its contents. Perspectives expressed by authors do not necessarily reflect 

the opinions of YSM. We retain the right to reprint contributions, both text 

and graphics, in future issues as well as a non-exclusive right to reproduce 

these in electronic form. The YSM welcomes comments and feedback. Letters 

to the editor should be under two hundred words and should include the 

author’s name and contact information. We reserve the right to edit letters 

before publication. Please send questions and comments to yalescientific@ 

yale.edu. Special thanks to Yale Student Technology Collaborative.

NEWS 

Medicine / Engineering 

POST-OP FOR 

AN AGING 

POPULATION 

THE IMPACT OF SURGERY 

BEYOND THE OPERATING ROOM 

SOCIAL 

DISTANCING 

ENGINEERING EDITION 

SPREADING OUT NANOPORES 

IN FILTERING TECHNOLOGY 

BY PEMPEM DORJI 

BY LEE NGATIA MUITA 

IMAGE COURTESY OF FLICKR 


Today, the US population is older than ever, and the 

demographic of adults ages sixty-five and older— 

known as the geriatric population—is estimated to 

double by 2060. This demographic shift will impact several 

areas of our healthcare system, including surgery. 

A team led by Robert D. Becher at the Yale School of 

Medicine sought to understand why hospital readmissions are 

so prevalent among older patients after major surgery. Their 

study explored this phenomenon by analyzing data from 

Medicare beneficiaries, who are typically sixty-five and older. 

They found that over one in four older adults are readmitted 

to the hospital within 180 days of surgery. These findings 

underscore a critical need for the identification of patients 

who may warrant special attention before undergoing surgery, 

like patients with frailty or possible dementia. “The magnitude 

of these effects [was] much larger than we had anticipated,” 

Becher said. 

With surgical interventions on the rise, Medicare spending 

is expected to grow considerably, posing financial challenges 

to both patients and the Medicare system. Additionally, 

the looming shortage of surgeons, particularly in medical 

specialties that cater to older patients, threatens the quality of 

care. “Perhaps most importantly, the [surgical] outcomes that 

matter most are symptom burden, functional independence, 

and quality of life,” Becher said. Readmission is often 

counterintuitive to these goals, illustrating the need for more 

effective strategies to prevent readmission after surgery. 

Looking ahead, Becher and his colleagues plan to develop 

improved systems of care for older adults—especially 

those who are vulnerable to complications. Ultimately, the 

researchers’ goal is to ensure every patient gets the quality care 

they deserve. ■ 

When it comes to any filter—a sieve, a water filter, or 

even a tissue membrane—your instinct probably 

tells you that the tighter the pores, the better 

the filtration. However, a recent study from the Yale School 

of Engineering & Applied Sciences suggests otherwise. 

Researchers Brian Shoemaker, Omar Khalifa, and Amir Haji- 

Akbari revealed that pore density, a measure of how tightly the 

pores are packed together in a filter, can actually be detrimental 

to effective filtration. 

“In early 2020, a new student [Brian Shoemaker] and I 

suggested putting two pores next to each other to investigate 

our methods, expecting them to double the flux of a single pore 

system,” Amir said. “Yet our observations contradicted this.” 

They sought to revolutionize gas separation and water filtration 

in membranes by optimizing the geometry of their pores to 

achieve high permeability and selectivity. 

They conducted simulations of the complex flow of molecules 

across various filter types and configurations, or arrangements 

of pores. The results showed that closely-spaced pores increase 

co-ion transport but reduce counter-ion transport, meaning 

that very densely packed nanopores allow more unwanted 

particles through than expected. 

This research may help build better filtration systems for 

desalination plants, to make fresh water more accessible, and 

for polluting factories, to trap toxic chemicals in gases before 

they are released into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the model 

could be used to design membranes for capsules that release 

drugs directly into organs under certain conditions. These 

findings pave the way towards smarter filtration solutions that 

are as effective in application as they are in theory. ■ 


Environmental Science / Public Health 

NEWS 

A DARK 

FORECAST 

RETIREMENT 

REIMAGINED 

AN OZONE-LADEN FUTURE 

WITHOUT STRICTER 

REGULATIONS 

BY LYNNA THAI 

HOW RETIREMENT IMPACTS 

WOMEN’S MENTAL HEALTH 

BY MEGAN KERNIS 

IMAGE COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES 

IMAGE COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK 

Worsening asthma, severe coughing, and shortness 

of breath: all of these phenomena are side effects of 

ground-level ozone—a dangerous mixture of nitrogen 

oxides and volatile organic compounds in our atmosphere. Due 

to climate change and ongoing struggles to regulate air quality, 

a study from a team of researchers based at Yale and beyond 

predicted an increase in ground-level ozone in multiple parts 

of the world. Kai Chen, assistant professor of epidemiology and 

director of research for the Yale Center on Climate Change and 

Health, has been interested in the health effects of ozone pollution 

since the start of his PhD. 

Chen’s team used Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 

Phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations, along with epidemiological data 

from 406 cities in twenty countries and regions, to observe global 

climate interactions. Their analysis demonstrated that ozonerelated 

deaths will increase from 0.17 percent to 0.22 percent 

of all deaths due to growing levels of global warming. However, 

one scenario projected that these deaths could decline from 0.17 

percent to 0.15 percent if we completely comply with the Paris 

Climate Agreement. 

“Our findings highlight the urgent need for stricter air quality 

regulations, as the current standards in many countries are not 

sufficient to address this growing threat,” Chen said. “We live in a 

warming world, which will, unfortunately, mean that there could 

be more ozone pollution in already polluted urban areas due to 

climate change.” Studies have confirmed associations between 

ground-level ozone and premature death, respiratory diseases, 

and cardiovascular diseases, highlighting the urgent need for 

climate action. By reducing ozone-pollutant emissions, we can 

help safeguard the health of human populations. ■ 

For women, retirement is a double-edged sword: it provides 

the opportunity to relax, but it also means losing your 

income or a sense of fulfillment from your job. In China, 

this tension is negated by strict retirement policies. Established 

in the 1950s—back when the average life expectancy of a woman 

was forty-three—these policies held that blue-collar female 

workers must retire at age fifty and white-collar female workers at 

fifty-five. In a recent study, Yale public health researcher Xi Chen 

and his colleagues analyzed this policy to explore how retirement 

impacts women’s mental health. 

The study used medical claims data to compare the 

hospitalization rates of Chinese white-collar and blue-collar 

female workers due to mental health-related issues. They found 

that blue-collar workers incurred more hospitalizations postretirement, 

which may stem from stress-related mental disorders 

due to early retirement, more time spent with family members who 

recognize their issues, or diagnoses received when seeking medical 

care post-retirement. In contrast, white-collar workers experienced 

a lower increase in hospitalizations, and those who developed 

issues often had long-term disorders like schizophrenia. This 

could be because they have more resources and financial support 

to address mental health issues while working and increased stress 

relief upon leaving a mentally demanding job. 

“Retirement age should be adjusted to life expectancy, education 

levels, and the type of job people are engaging in,” Chen said. New 

research continues to show that the appropriate retirement age 

varies from individual to individual, demonstrating that personal 

agency and early recognition of retirement’s potential negative 

effects on mental health are crucial to a happier workforce. 

mental health are crucial to a happier workforce. ■ 



FOCUS 

Ecology 

A CENTURIES- 

OLD TALE 

Protecting Our 

Urban Forests 

BY HELEN SHANEFIELD 

IMAGE COURTESY OF IAN CHRISTMANN COMMUNICATED BY PAUL-ALEXANDER LEJAS 

On a typical walk through New York City, you might expect 

to encounter tall, glass-covered skyscrapers, brightly lit 

department stores, and concrete sidewalks. But what about 

a forest? While the term “urban forest” may seem like an oxymoron, 

it describes any park, forested natural area, or collection of street trees 

within a city or suburban space. These forests provide essential habitats 

for regional wildlife and improve air quality by capturing carbon 

dioxide. Additionally, they serve as models of the effects of human 

development and pollution on nature. Despite their importance to 

a large proportion of the US population, urban forests have been 

historically understudied. 

A prime example of an urban forested natural area is the Thain 

Family Forest (TFF) in the Bronx, New York. This nearly fiftyacre 

native forest has survived centuries of regional colonization, 

urbanization, and fragmentation, making it a rare instance of an urban 

forest in the Northeast, where most existing forests were once cleared 

for agriculture and have since regrown. The TFF has been studied by 

the New York Botanical Garden since 1895, allowing for a multitude 

of ecological data to be collected over time. Recently, researchers at the 

Yale Forestry School and the New York Botanical Garden analyzed 

data collected at the TFF between 1937 and 2021. They found that 

while the structure of the forest canopy has not changed much over 

time, the species composition has experienced drastic alterations. 

Much of these changes occurred after the decline of eastern hemlock 

trees—a species of evergreen that formerly covered most of the TFF. 

The eastern hemlock was once a foundational species of forests in 

the northeastern US, but in the 1980s, the population was devastated 

by the introduction of an invasive pest—the hemlock woolly adelgid. 

“Regionally, we know when hemlock woolly adelgid was introduced, 

we saw a significant loss of hemlock in this entire region,” said Eliot 

Nagele, the New Jersey Director of Lands at The Nature Conservancy 

(TNC). Nagele began this research as a student at the Yale Forestry 

School and later served as Director of the TFF. “The concern in the 

’80s was that hemlock loss would result in a decrease in understory 

shade and an increase in the temperature of streams and rivers,” 

Nagele said. These changes in forest species composition can affect 

the forests’ suitability as habitats for native wildlife, impacting the 

ecosystem as a whole. Hemlock woolly adelgid is still spreading 

through eastern hemlock populations in places such as upstate New 

York, potentially leading to vital species loss. Since invasive species 

are often first identified in cities, a better understanding of their 

impact on urban forests will allow researchers to identify appropriate 

management practices before they spread to larger rural forests. 

Since the mid-1980s, the TFF has implemented adaptive 

management strategies to reduce human impacts, such as 

delineating forest paths to limit foot traffic and collecting data to 

monitor forest health and guide future management. The study also 

found that since these conservation efforts began, species diversity 

in the forest has increased. Both native and non-native species were 

able to fill in the gaps left by the hemlock’s decline, maintaining a 

densely populated forest. Additionally, they found that over the last 

century, the forest had continued to be predominantly composed 

of native species. “What we’re showing in this system is that if you 

can maintain the health of the system and manage invasive species 

at the same time, you can actually allow for the regeneration of a 

healthy native-species-dominant forest,” Nagele said. 

Nearly one hundred years of evidence support the efficacy of TFF’s 

adaptive management system in maintaining native species. Thus, 

the lack of urban forest research compared to rural research may be 

a barrier to developing effective management tactics. “I think the 

most important thing is that we, as a forestry community, scientific 

community, and college community, start to break down and get 

rid of the artificial divisions between urban and rural,” Nagele said. 

Although complete biodiversity in urban forests cannot be restored 

overnight, applying management efforts like those established in 

the TFF to urban forests across the US can facilitate more effective 

regeneration. Additionally, citizen volunteers can help collect data 

for urban forest managers, showing that no matter where you live, 

you can contribute to your area’s native environment. So, the next 

time you visit a city, know that between the buildings, parking 

lots, and bus stops, there is a whole world of biodiversity waiting 

for you. ■ 


Ichthyology 

FOCUS 

GO FISH 

Reconstructing the 

Spread of an 

Invasive Sunfish 

BY PATRICK WAHLIG 

IMAGE COURTESY OF ANTHONY BANIAGA 

In nature, the new kids on the block don’t tend to last very long. 

Non-native species, which move from their original ecosystem 

to a new one, often encounter unforeseen obstacles in their new 

environments. Sometimes, however, a species doesn’t just survive in 

a novel environment—it thrives. Such is the case of the Redbreast 

Sunfish (Lepomis auritus), a widely loved game fish whose native 

range spans the eastern states of North America. 

The Redbreast Sunfish’s popularity among fishermen led to its 

introduction to bodies of water far beyond its native scope. Much 

to the short-term delight of fishermen, the sunfish quickly took 

to their new environments and established breeding populations. 

However, these new sunfish populations began to threaten local 

species. Some of these local species, like the Devils River Minnow 

and the Fountain Darter, are endangered and are thus in precarious 

situations. To make matters worse, Redbreast Sunfish introductions 

were spottily recorded. Without a detailed record, it is impossible 

to determine which populations belong to a native Redbreast 

Sunfish stock and which populations are composed of non-native, 

potentially invasive Redbreast Sunfish. 

Armed with cutting-edge genetic technology, a wealth of fisheries 

knowledge, and a rather large net, Daemin Kim GSAS ’23 sought to 

solve this problem by drawing the line between native and non-native 

Redbreast Sunfish. 

In collaboration with Yale professor Thomas Near and aquatic 

zoologist Jeffrey Simmons, Kim analyzed nearly two hundred 

Redbreast Sunfish DNA samples. These samples were sourced from 

every major watershed that the Redbreast Sunfish inhabits, including 

Texas and the Eastern United States. Kim analyzed specimens using 

double digest restriction-associated DNA (ddRAD) techniques, which 

target areas of common variation in the genome for sequencing rather 

than the entire genome. This procedure allows for rapid comparison 

of genetic profiles between and among Redbreast Sunfish samples. 

ddRAD is a recent addition to the fisheries scientist’s toolkit. When 

Kim was a master’s student, his research wa limited to five individual 

genes. “Now, using ddRAD data, [...] we get tens of thousands of loci,” 

Kim said. 


Capitalizing on this advancement in genetic analysis, Kim identified 

several non-native Redbreast Sunfish populations. Some were found 

in the freshwaters of Texas, while others were found in the Tennessee 

River system and the Mobile River Basin. Kim also reconstructed the 

introductory pathways of the Redbreast Sunfish to each of its nonnative 

locales. For example, he was able to determine that the surveyed 

non-native Redbreast Sunfish in Texas originate from a river in Florida. 

Kim’s identification of non-native Redbreast Sunfish populations 

provides local fisheries and natural resources management 

organizations with vital ecological information. Targeted eradication 

of non-native Redbreast Sunfish could restore affected ecosystems, 

protecting threatened and endangered species by reestablishing an 

ecosystem’s original pecking order. Furthermore, Kim’s work has 

paved the way for similar studies designed to identify and combat 

non-native and invasive species around the planet. 

A major struggle that Kim faced during his research is a common 

issue in scientific ventures: knowing when to stop. A species like the 

Redbreast Sunfish has an extensive population distribution. According 

to Kim, sampling every unique Redbreast Sunfish population in the 

US is practically impossible. Realizing this, Kim used his prior fisheries 

knowledge and field research to home in on the important players 

involved in ecosystem infiltration. The four examined Redbreast 

Sunfish populations in Texas, for example, had nearly identical 

genetic profiles. The distribution of these populations across the large 

state of Texas provided Kim with enough evidence to infer that all 

Texas Redbreast Sunfish populations likely share a common genetic 

predecessor from the Suwanee River in Florida. To maximize the 

efficiency of his research, Kim had to balance the resources available 

to him with the possible impact of his project. 

While Kim acknowledges the doors opened by his sunfish research, 

he recognizes that the time he can spend studying the Redbreast Sunfish 

is limited. “I always have [a] hard time staying with the same taxonomy 

group,” Kim said. Currently, he is fascinated by darters, a diverse 

subfamily of freshwater fish with an enigmatic evolutionary history. 

Regardless of Kim’s future work, it is certain that this self-proclaimed 

“fish nerd” will continue to impact ichthyology for years to come. ■ 


FOCUS 

Public Health 

CONFRONTING A 

BROKEN SYSTEM 

Racial and Ethnic Disparities 

in Hospital Restraint 

During EMS Transit 

BY JORDAN THOMAS 

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF FLICKR 

From diagnosis to treatment, racial and ethnic disparities in 

medicine remain glaring. The disproportionately high rates of 

infant mortalities by race are a testament to this reality. To address 

such racial and ethnic disparities, experts have called for a broader and 

more impactful focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within 

the institution of medicine. 

Conversations about the interactions between social institutions and 

healthcare, specifically regarding the structural racism that continues 

to impact the field, have led to a significant amount of research on the 

associations between race and social practice as it impacts population 

health and well-being. A Yale research team has recently published a 

particularly striking discovery: minority patients experiencing mental 

health crises brought to the hospital via police transport are more likely 

to experience use of physical restraints during their treatment at the 

emergency department, indicating that disparities may start before they 

have even arrived at the hospital. 

“One thing that this paper really showed is that interactions with 

police and the justice system really have an impact on what happens 

in healthcare, in the emergency department,” said Ambrose Wong, an 

emergency physician and lead researcher of the study. “And even when 

we control for other factors that might confound that, we found that 

whether the person is arriving with police transport or not has a big 

impact on these decisions to restrain [the patient].” 

The paper details the team’s finding that the ratio of patients restrained 

in the presence versus absence of police is approximately five-and-ahalf 

to one, after adjustment for confounding variables such as age and 

sex. For minorities, this statistic is only made worse. The researchers 

found that, compared to white patients and other minorities, the ratio 

of African American patients restrained following police intervention 

was 1.38—a thirty-eight percent greater likelihood. Approximately 

eleven percent of this increased risk of experiencing excessive use of 

restraint during transit to and at the hospital can be directly tied to the 

involvement of law enforcement. The researchers discovered this by 

conducting a cross-sectional analysis of emergency department health 

record data from northeastern and southeastern states. 

“Restraints are things that come with side effects and complications. 

For one, when you are talking about tying someone down, it is taking 

somebody’s autonomy away,” Wong said. 

To provide possible explanations for their results, the Yale 

researchers placed their findings within a larger social context. The 

researchers proposed that racial and ethnic disparities in physical 

restraint mediated by the police are fostered by a synthesis of social 

and institutional factors that criminalize, discriminate against, and 

cause distress among minority communities experiencing mental 

illness. Such factors are apparent in the carceral treatment and 

dehumanization of minority patients during and following police 

intervention, the strained relationship between minority communities 

and law enforcement, and social determinants of health, which prevent 

minorities from accessing vital healthcare resources like outpatient 

psychiatric treatment. 

These institutional factors are cornerstones that contribute to 

racial and ethnic disparities in physical restraint use observed in 

the emergency department. Therefore, by turning our attention to 

and targeting these structural factors, we can make strides toward 

reducing the disproportionate use of restraint on minorities in need 

of medical care. 

“We need to find long-lasting solutions to try to make the problem 

[of excessive restraint] easier to treat and decrease the frequency of 

these events happening,” Wong said. “How do we prevent individuals 

from even getting agitated to begin with? Could they have potentially 

been treated in the outpatient setting? Maybe they need to go to an 

alternative location dedicated to mental health treatment in a more 

compassionate and patient-centered setting.” 

In conjunction with these efforts to target “upstream” structural 

factors, it is vital that the associations between structural components 

of our society and health disparities continue to be studied. Through 

such research and the open dialogue it nurtures, our society can better 

understand and mitigate the racial and ethnic disparities in medicine, 

and improve minorities’ hospital experiences and quality of care. 

“The general thought [about DEI] in healthcare is that if we’re 

trying to deliver as much good as possible to as many people in our 

community as we can, we have to think fundamentally about health 

inequities,” Wong said. “Otherwise, you can’t take care of the folks that 

have the worst health outcomes.” ■ 


Environmental Science 

FOCUS 

THE ART X 

CLIMATE 

PROJECT 

A Gallery for 

Climate Change 

BY PATRICIA JOSEPH 

IMAGE COURTESY OF CARLONA ARAGON AND MATT CONTI 

Art is a potent tool for communication and understanding: 

two ingredients crucial for spurring action. As the 

climate crisis continues to unfold—manifesting in 

catastrophic consequences such as sea level rise, wildfires, and 

disproportionate effects on marginalized communities—the 

need to engage with climate change’s human dimensions has 

become increasingly urgent. The Art x Climate project is an 

initiative that aims to incorporate visual art into discussions 

about climate change. Inviting artists to express their take 

on climate change, Art x Climate is the first interdisciplinary 

project of its kind to bridge the gap between quantitative 

analysis and the human experience of climate change. 

Allyza Lustig MEM ’17, a senior manager at the US Global 

Change Research Program, has been at the forefront of 

integrating art into the discourse on climate change. She 

obtained her master’s degree at the Yale School of Forestry, 

studying the relationship between humans and the natural 

world through law, environment, and religion. With an 

informal interest in visual art ever since she was young, Lustig’s 

mission to incorporate the visual arts into climate assessment 

reports was motivated by an appreciation of art as a window 

into the perspectives and emotions of others. 

“There’s a part of me that really appreciates the technical, 

structured, and quantitative ways of looking at the world, and 

then there’s the part of me that is also much [more] interested 

in relationships, emotions, and communicating,” Lustig 

explained. “I think that this project really allowed me to bridge 

those worlds.” 

For the fifth National Climate Assessment published in 

November 2023, Lustig spearheaded the Art x Climate Project, 

an initiative that called for visual art submissions across the 

US to be featured alongside traditional scientific assessments 

of climate change. Since climate change affects audiences 

from diverse backgrounds and demographics, one crucial 

consideration of the project was to ensure that it was inclusive 

of all perspectives. Lustig therefore opened submissions to 

both youth and adults and featured art exploring a variety of 

themes. The winning pieces of artwork delved into themes 

including the effect of climate change on endangered species, 

the impact of human-caused natural disasters on marginalized 

communities worldwide, and actions we can take to solve the 

climate crisis, such as the use of alternatives to fossil fuels. 

Lustig received over eight hundred submissions and enlisted 


the expertise of eight jurors with backgrounds in both art and 

climate science to assist in the selection process. After careful 

consideration, ninety-two winners were chosen. The artists 

used a wide range of media to represent the causes and impacts 

of climate change. A 3D fiberglass installation designed by 

winning artist Carlona Aragon gives viewers the ability to 

visualize projected sea level rise, and Jillian Pelto’s piece 

combining watercolor, pencil, and line graphs meshes statistics 

and the natural beauty of the Gulf of Maine to call for urgent 

action. Pelto is a Washington-based artist and scientist known 

for incorporating environmental data into her art. Her piece 

demonstrates increases in climate change-related activity along 

three axes: the projected rise in sea level, the expansion of land 

protected by the National Wildlife Refuge, and the increase 

in the percentage of US adults supporting environmental 

protection policies. Other winning entries included Tammy 

West’s site-specific piece, Keep It Together, which features a red 

thread crisscrossing along a deep fissure in the earth, mimicking 

surgical sutures. Through direct engagement with the land, 

West intends to shed light on climate change-induced severe 

drought conditions in Texas. These works were interspersed 

within the report and published in a separate online gallery 

available for public viewing.“Art is a really powerful way to get 

people to understand, internalize, and connect with the issue 

of climate change,” Lustig said. 

Lustig emphasized that science and art provide frameworks 

for understanding climate change but do so through different 

means. By embracing both disciplines and understanding 

them as distinct yet complementary tools for documentation, 

interpretation, and communication, Lustig believes we can 

deepen public engagement with the issue of climate change. 

“Art invites you in,” Lustig said. “It increases accessibility and 

engagement with the topic.” 

In her final reflections on Art x Climate, Lustig said that the 

experience served as a source of inspiration and affirmation 

of the power of interdisciplinary collaboration. She hopes 

to encourage others to embrace innovative approaches to 

addressing the urgent challenges of climate change. 

“Art has a very important role in processing and internalizing 

the movement of culture and society, and internalizing the very 

human consequences of climate change. We need leadership 

across institutions to stand behind this process and to value art 

as a vehicle for change,” Lustig said. ■ 


FOCUS 

Immunology 

EYE-MMUNITY 

BY SARAH LI 

ART BY MADELEINE POPOFSKY 

DOES EYE-BRAIN 

IMMUNITY PROTECT 

AGAINST HERPES? 

When we think about immunizations, 

we typically imagine shots 

administered to the upper arm 

or the thigh. But in some cases, the eye might 

be even better—especially when it comes to 

fighting herpes. 

Research has shown that herpes can spread 

to the brain, triggering inflammation and 

potentially leading to encephalitis, which is 

characterized by the swelling of the brain. 

Severe, uncontrolled swelling can result in 

seizures and even death. Herpes is the leading 

cause of sporadic fatal encephalitis (SPE), a 

subset of infectious encephalitis stemming 

from viral infection. Since certain regions of 

the brain are too sensitive for traditional 

herpes simplex virus (HSV) treatments, 

researchers have shifted their focus to 

surrounding structures that might have a 

direct immunological connection to the 

brain. Their first stop was the eye. 

A recent research collaboration led by 

associate research scientists Eric Song GSAS 

’20, MD ’22 and Xiangyun Yin at the Yale 

School of Medicine described a biological 

pathway linking the eye and the brain. 

Using this link, the researchers pioneered an 

intravitreal immunization technique, which 

involves injecting a vaccine directly into the 

back of the eye, to protect mice from herpes. 

The Eye-Brain Connection 

The eye and the brain are unique structures 

within the body. Studies dating back to the 

mid-twentieth century have demonstrated 

that both structures are immune-privileged, 

meaning that they can tolerate antigens without 

triggering the inflammatory response typical of 

other parts of the body. This immune privilege 

helps to safeguard the delicate structures of the 

brain and eye from potential damage caused 

by inflammation, particularly in the case of 

the eye, where inflammation could otherwise 

impair vision. 

“All tissues in the rest of the body have 

lymphatic vessels in the actual tissue, but in the 

brain and eye, there are no lymphatic vessels in 

the tissue itself,” said Song, the corresponding 

author of the study. The lymphatic system plays 

a vital role in the body’s defense against disease, 

with lymphatic vessels connecting to crucial 

structures known as lymph nodes. 

When vaccines are administered, they 

typically contain antigens that mimic 

pathogens, triggering an immune response 

in the body. These antigens need to reach the 

lymph nodes, where T-cells and B-cells— 

specialized immune cells that recognize 

and eliminate diseased cells or invading 

pathogens—are located. Lymphatic vessels 

serve as the conduit for transporting these 

antigens from the site of injection to the 

lymph nodes. 

Once antigens reach the lymph nodes, they 

are presented to immune cells, initiating the 

production of antibodies and memory cells 

that provide immunity against the targeted 

pathogen. The efficient delivery of antigens 

to the lymph nodes is crucial for the efficacy 

of vaccines. 

Lymphatic vessels are also crucial in the 

body’s drainage system, which helps remove 

waste and toxins from tissues. Because the 

brain and the eye lack these vessels within 

their tissues, they are somewhat isolated from 

the typical immune surveillance and response 

mechanisms of the rest of the body. This 

isolation creates a protective barrier that limits 

the immune response within the brain and eye, 

hence their immune privilege. Because of these 

shared immune properties, the researchers 

were curious whether the eye-brain connection 

played a role in immunity. If it did, then they 

could potentially tackle herpes in the brain, 

through the eye. 

The researchers focused on the area around 

the optic nerve, which is the critical link 

between the eye and the brain. They employed 

sophisticated methods, including spatial 

transcriptomics to analyze gene expression in 

tissues and an imaging technique to visualize 

and map the lymphatic vessels that surround 

the optic nerve. If there were lymphatic 

vessels, that would mean an immunological 

connection between the eye and the brain 

exists, and therefore a potential route for 

immune cells to get to the brain. This would 

support the feasibility of using the eye as a route 

for vaccination to reach the brain. 

Using the imaging technique, the researchers 

observed that two initial lymphatic markers, 

LYVE1 and VEGFR3, stained the membrane 

surrounding the nerve rather than the nerve 

itself. This led to the hypothesis that the optic 


Immunology 

FOCUS 

nerve sheath, a system of membranes covering 

the nerve, was crucial to a potential pathway 

for an immune response. The researchers 

ultimately concluded that the optic nerve 

sheath contains a lymphatic vessel network 

that connects the eye and the brain to a set of 

lymph nodes. 

The researchers found a connection 

between the intravitreal chamber, located 

at the back of the eye, and lymph nodes 

connected to the central nervous system, 

unique from the rest of the eye. When they 

injected fluorescent dyes into the intravitreal 

chamber at the back of the eye, they found 

that the dyes localized to the deep cervical 

lymph nodes (dCLN) and the superficial 

cervical lymph nodes (sCLN) in the 

neck, indicating the presence of a distinct 

drainage system. They also found that trace 

amounts of the dye could be detected in the 

cerebrospinal fluid of the mice, following 

intravitreal chamber injection. 

This meant a vaccine delivered to the 

back of the eye could potentially trigger an 

immune response mediated by CLNs that 

would extend to the brain through their 

shared lymphatic network. Thus, the vaccine 

would bolster immune defenses in both the 

eye and the brain. 

the third through the anterior chamber at 

the front of the eye, and the fourth through 

the back of the eye. “The most difficult part 

of the research was working with the mice. 

[Human] eyes are already incredibly small 

and delicate compared to the rest of the 

body. Now scale that down to the size of a 

mouse; patience and practice were key to 

making sure [the team] could continue this 

study,” Song said. 

Vaccination through the intraperitoneal 

route resulted in all mice succumbing to the 

virus, while vaccination via the intracranial 

route provided robust protection. This 

suggests that conventional systemic 

immunization is inadequate in protecting 

against brain HSV infection. Now, what 

about the eye? None of the mice injected via 

the AC route survived. However, a majority 

of those injected via the intravitreal chamber 

route did. This outcome was attributed to the 

dCLN, which proved vital in responding to 

herpes in the brain. 

Injecting at the front of the eye via the AC 

was ineffective because there was no distinct 

drainage pathway to the dCLN. Injecting 

at the back of the eye allowed the SPE 

treatment to drain directly to the dCLN and 

fight the infection. 

Next Steps 

After a series of additional confirmation 

experiments, the researchers affirmed 

the specific relevance of the eye-brain 

immunological connection in protecting 

against pathogens affecting the brain, such 

as HSV. Moreover, there are indications 

that this pathway could be explored for 

the treatment of various other diseases 

of the central nervous system, including 

ocular diseases, bacterial infections, and 

even tumors. 

There’s even a chance that we haven’t yet 

uncovered all the immunological connections 

to the brain. Discovering more connections 

could open up even more treatment 

possibilities. “It has been shown that there is 

a connection between the nose and the brain. 

There might be more connections [to the 

brain] left to be discovered,” Yin said. 

If further developed, this targeted treatment 

approach could deliver relief to hundreds of 

thousands of patients, and physicians would 

have access to a larger range of treatment 

options based on each patient’s condition. 

Having more options would not only increase 

the likelihood of patients finding relief but 

also speed up the process. ■ 

Immunity Against Herpes 

With these initial findings, the researchers 

knew there was an eye-brain connection 

in immunity and that a drainage system 

through the eye would make delivering 

sporadic fatal encephalitis (SPE) treatment 

to the brain possible. So they proceeded 

to their main experimental goal: testing 

HSV immunizations to decrease the risk 

of fatal encephalitis. They compared four 

administration routes to deliver the HSV: 

intraperitoneal, intracranial, anterior 

chamber, and intravitreal chamber. The first 

route involves delivery via the abdominal 

cavity, the second directly into the brain, 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

SARAH LI 

SARAH LI is a first-year MB&B major in Morse College. In addition to writing for the YSM, she 

is involved in orthopedics research in the Wiznia Lab and the 3D Collaborative for Medical 

Innovation. She also volunteers through the Hypertension Awareness and Prevention Program 

at Yale and Yale EMS. 

THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK Xiangyun Yin and Eric Song for their time and 

enthusiasm about sharing their research. 

FURTHER READING: 

Yin, X., Zhang, S., Lee, J. H., Dong, H., Mourgkos, G., Terwilliger, G., Kraus, A., Geraldo, L. H., Poulet, 

M., Fischer, S., Zhou, T., Mohammed, F. S., Zhou, J., Wang, Y., Malloy, S., Rohner, N., Sharma, 

L., Salinas, I., Eichmann, A., … Song, E. (2024). Compartmentalized ocular lymphatic system 

mediates eye-brain immunity. Nature, 628(8006), 204–211. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024- 

07130-8 

Hong, S., & Van Kaer, L. (1999). Immune privilege. The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 190(9), 

1197-1200. https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.190.9.1197. 


FOCUS 

Organic Chemistry 

FROM SEA TO 

SYNTHESIS 

Cracking the Code of Bryozoa 

Anti-Cancer Molecules 

BY MICHAEL SARULLO AND RISHA CHAKRABORTY 

ART BY KARA TAO 

Modern chemistry has advanced our 

understanding of the fundamental 

makeup of much of our biological 

world, from our proteins to our genes. However, 

there are still many natural compounds 

whose complex chemistry scientists are only 

just beginning to unravel. Securamines and 

securines are two such families of compounds. 

Since the 1990s, scientists have been 

interested in these compounds for their 

potential anti-cancer properties. Although 

teams of scientists have elucidated the 

structure of these compounds, including 

their characteristic nitrogen-containing rings 

known as heterocycles, recreating them has 

proved challenging due to their convoluted 

chemical composition—until now. A recent 

study published in Science by a team of Yale 

researchers has introduced a new method for 

creating securamines and securines entirely 

from scratch. 

The Synthesis Problem 

Securamines and securines are of biological 

interest because of their cytotoxicity—their 

ability to kill living cells. “They have been 

studied for years, and no one knows how 

they work,” said Brandon Alexander, the first 

author of the study and a chemistry graduate 

student in the Herzon Lab at Yale. Through 

an unknown pathway, they are thought to 

hold therapeutic potential as anticancer 

agents. There also appears to be a curious 

correlation between the cytotoxicity, or toxicity 

to cells, of the compounds and their degree 

of halogenation, which refers to the number 

of chlorine or bromine ions attached to their 

central structure. This correlation suggests 

a potential link between the cytotoxicity of 

securamines and their interaction with certain 

nitrogen- or oxygen-containing structures, 

possibly pointing towards novel biological 

activity. However, to study the activity of 

securamines and securines, scientists need a 

reliable method for synthesizing them. 

Securamines and securines are sourced 

from various species of tiny marine animals 

from the phylum Bryozoa, also known as 

moss animals. Bryozoa are simple organisms 

that live in diverse marine habitats, where 

they feed on phytoplankton and detritus, 

the leftover remains of plants and animals. 

These Bryozoans are commonly regarded 

as the primary reservoir of securamines 

and securines, since total synthesis of the 

compounds in the laboratory has proven 

difficult. Total synthesis refers to the process 

of creating complex molecules from simpler, 

commercially available starting compounds 

through a series of chemical reactions. By 

accomplishing the total synthesis of a complex 

molecule, chemists are then able to study and 

modulate its properties. Additionally, the way 

in which a molecule is synthesized in the 

laboratory may shine light on the mechanisms 

underlying its formation in nature. Finally, 

chemists hope that studying the synthesis 

of novel compounds will yield insights into 

emerging areas of chemistry, such as complex 

bond formation or innovative new applications 

of tools and methods within the field. 

The problem of synthesizing securines and 

securamines is not new. “Back when I was 

a [graduate] student in 2006, people were 

publishing all of this work trying to make 

securamines […] and kept on reaffirming 

that these molecules are very challenging to 

synthesize,” said Seth Herzon, a professor of 

chemistry at Yale and senior author of the 

study. “Nobody has been able to actually find a 

fully human way to put them together.” 

The challenge stems from the complex 

structure of these molecules, which includes 

many different chemical substructures, or 

functional groups. When these functional 

groups are isolated, they are predictable 

to work with. However, the complexity 

increases when many functional groups are 

combined within a single compound. Imagine 

14 Yale Scientific Magazine May 2024 

www.yalescientific.org

a symphony orchestra where each musician 

represents a functional group. When a single 

musician performs, it’s easy to distinguish— 

or even replicate—their part. However, when 

multiple musicians play different melodies 

simultaneously, isolating each person’s 

contribution becomes challenging, resulting 

in a complex and sometimes unpredictable 

symphony that is more difficult to decipher. 

This is what has stumped chemists who have 

attempted the total artificial synthesis of 

securamines and securines. 

Innovations in Total Synthesis 

To solve this puzzle, Herzon’s team, led by 

Alexander, aimed to tackle two of the most 

challenging steps in the total synthesis process. 

The first step involved recognizing that three 

of the major functional groups of securamines 

and securines bear a resemblance to the 

major functional groups of two amino acids, 

histidine and tryptophan. Among these, the 

most difficult group to work with was the 

indole, a functional group of the amino acid 

tryptophan that is composed of two fused 

rings: a benzene ring of six carbon atoms, and a 

pyrrole ring containing five carbon atoms and 

one nitrogen atom. Adding the indole group 

during synthesis posed a problem because 

it tended to react with the other chemical 

reagents used in subsequent steps, and it even 

reacted with air. To overcome this obstacle, 

Herzon’s group devised a strategy to introduce 

the indole group late in the synthetic process, 

thereby minimizing its potential interference 

with other reaction steps. They achieved the 

synthesis of the indole ring by a photochemical 

transformation that involves the insertion 

of nitrogen into a carbon-hydrogen bond 

using light. 

An additional challenge arose from the 

histidine residue in the molecules, which had 

undergone an unusual oxidation. In fact, the 

oxidized histidine substructure in securamines 

is unique and not found in any other known 

molecule. To solve this problem, Herzon’s 

group made use of work performed by Yale 

researcher Harry Wasserman roughly sixty 

years ago. Wasserman had developed a reaction 

of histidine-like rings with oxygen, known as 

an oxidative photocycloaddition, and Herzon’s 

team decided to use this chemistry. Part of 

their motivation is that histidine residues are 

known to be reactive with oxygen, so this 

strategy might parallel the way the molecules 

are made in nature. 

“We were thinking, maybe this is what 


nature is actually doing, […] and we got very 

lucky! Our first reaction we tried actually 

worked beautifully for us,” Herzon said. 

The second challenge was the process of 

adding chlorine substituents to the chemical 

structure. These components seem to play 

a role in the compounds’ cytotoxicity, but 

previous attempts to add chlorine to the 

central structure used two functional groups, 

a cysteine amide and an alkyl chloride in 

succession, which proved difficult and had 

poor yields. Herzon and his team recognized 

this as a challenging transformation that would 

require experimentation. They ultimately 

devised a novel approach to forging the key 

carbon-chlorine bond. As an added benefit, 

this method also created several other key 

functional groups in the securamine and 

securine structures, allowing the team to move 

very close to the desired chemical structure in 

a single step, and complete the synthesis. 

Potential Impacts 

Despite their general anticancer activity, 

Organic Chemistry 

FOCUS 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMILY POAG 

Brandon Alexander, Vaani Gupta, and Noah Bartfield (pictured left to right) are members of Herzon's research team. 

ABOUT THE 

AUTHORS 

Herzon doubts the practicality of using 

natural compounds like securamines or 

securines directly as anticancer therapeutics 

in the near future. “I think what’s more 

plausible is that we could find out what 

biological target they’re interacting with, and 

that target may potentially be valuable for 

treating disease,” Herzon said. Herzon plans 

to investigate this further by collaborating 

with a laboratory at the University of Illinois 

Urbana-Champaign, where he previously 

worked as a postdoctoral fellow. 

By overcoming multiple decades-long 

challenges in replicating the complex structures 

of securamines and securines, the team’s 

findings pave the way for deeper exploration 

into their biological functions and therapeutic 

applications. Additionally, this research may 

provide a pathway for us to gain a better 

understanding of the molecular behavior of 

cytotoxic compounds. This achievement by 

the Herzon Lab in total synthesis represents 

a major stride forward in the field of organic 

chemistry and another step toward unlocking 

the secrets of nature’s complex chemicals. ■ 

MICHAEL SARULLO is a first-year in Branford College from Royal Palm Beach, Florida. He is a 

prospective double major in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Statistics and Data Science. 

Michael has previously served as a staff writer for YSM and has taught for Synapse. 

RISHA CHAKRABORTY is a third-year Neuroscience and Chemistry major in Saybrook College. In 

addition to writing for YSM, Risha plays trumpet for the Yale Precision Marching Band and La Orquesta 

Tertulia, volunteers at YNHH, and researches Parkinson’s Disease at the Chandra Lab in the Yale School 

of Medicine. She enjoys cracking jokes, having “philosophical” discussions with her friends, and having 

boba with her PLees at the Asian American Cultural Center. 

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK Dr. Seth Herzon and Brandon Alexander for their aid in 

compiling this article. 

FURTHER READING 

RISHA CHAKRABORTY 

MICHAEL SARULLO 

Alexander, B. W., Bartfield, N. M., Gupta, V., Mercado, B. Q., Del Campo, M., & Herzon, S. B. (2024). 

An oxidative photocyclization approach to the synthesis of Securiflustra securifrons alkaloids. Science, 

383(6685), 849–854. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl6163 


FOCUS 

Paleontology 

Dynamic Dinosaurs 

Mapping Motion in Extinct Species 

By Yossi Moff 

Art by Alondra Moreno Santana 


Paleontology 

FOCUS 

The act of walking is so routine that 

many of us take it for granted, yet 

it requires complex coordination, 

muscle engagement, and joint dynamics to 

be possible. Joints—points in the body where 

two or more bones meet and interact—are 

intricate structures. They work with a variety 

of other anatomical structures, including 

muscles, cartilage, and ligaments, to 

facilitate movement. Studying joints in living 

organisms is relatively straightforward: 

researchers can observe them in real-time 

during motion and analyze the results 

afterward. Understanding joint dynamics in 

animals that have been extinct for millions 

of years, such as dinosaurs, is far more 

complicated. At best, all that is left of these 

extinct species is their bones; joint models 

must rely solely on bone-bone interactions, 

without any of the soft tissue that once filled 

the gaps. 

For years, paleontologists have relied on 

intuition to infer what the joints of extinct 

species looked like and how they moved. 

They would examine how intersecting bones 

fit together and then present assumptions 

about the joint structures of extinct 

species based on what seemed plausible. 

However, this method was subjective, based 

solely on ‘looking right’. As a result, joint 

reconstructions of extinct species relied 

largely on expert opinion regarding the 

perceived correctness of fit. 

A new study led by Armita Manafzadeh, 

a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Institute 

for Biospheric Studies, offers a new 

approach to exploring how joints fit together 

in extinct species based on bone-bone 

interactions. With the help of animation, 

we may now have a method to calculate 

the fit of different bones at a given joint 

and quantitatively determine the 

bone configurations the joint 

likely had. 

A Deinonychus is depicted in motion. 

Animating Motion 

For her research, Manafzadeh visualized 

joints and their potential range of movement 

using a 3D animation software called 

Autodesk Maya. This software could translate 

mathematical calculations into movement. 

“Instead of creating videos that ‘look right,’ 

we’re instead able to create simulations 

of dinosaur locomotion that harness the 

quantitative data we’ve collected,” said 

Stephen Gatesy, a professor of biology and 

medical science at Brown University and coauthor 

of the study. 

The actual paleontology of the research 

isn’t too complicated—it’s the math, the 

modeling, and the precise animating where 

the complexities of the research emerge. In 

collaboration with Gatesy, her PhD advisor, 

and Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, an associate 

professor of earth and planetary sciences 

at Yale and Manafzadeh's post-doctoral 

advisor, Manafzadeh devised a formula that 

assigns a specific numerical score to each 

possible configuration of bones within a joint. 

Termed an “articulation score,” this value 

takes into account three main factors of the 

bone interaction: the overlap, symmetry, and 

congruence of the joint. 

In Autodesk, users can construct 3D 

representations of articular surfaces, which are 

the surfaces of bones that come into contact 

with each other at a joint. The researchers were 

essentially modeling interactions between 

bones to see what fit and what didn’t. Rays, 

which are lines extending infinitely from 

a set point, are cast perpendicularly from 

vertices of the 3D representation of one 

of these articular surfaces. These rays will 

then either intersect with 

the complementary 

articular surface, 

or they 

IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

IMAGE COURTESY OF ARMITA MANAFZADEH 

COMMUNICATED BY LYNNA THAI 

Reconstructed walking stride for the foot of the 

dinosaur Deinonychus. 

will miss entirely. 

For the first factor, the three-dimensional 

overlap of the joint, the team was interested in 

how much contact two bones could have at a 

joint. The researchers quantified how aligned 

the curves of two bones at a joint were. If they 

were sufficiently aligned, the surfaces of the 

joint could exhibit meaningful biomechanical 

interaction for motion to occur. This value was 

quantified as the proportion of the rays cast 

from the first articular surface that intersected 

the complementary articular surface. 

The second component of the score is 

the symmetry of the joint. Manafzadeh 

was looking at ankle and toe joints, which 

are biarticular, meaning that there are four 

articular surfaces—forming two joints— 

between two bones. If the joint is symmetrical, 

this would mean that the alignment and 

structure of the bones on both sides of the 

joint are balanced, allowing for a more even 

distribution of weight and greater stability 

during activities such as walking and running. 

If the joint is asymmetrical, that would mean 

that there are differences in the alignment or 

shape of the bones on either side of the joint, 

which can affect the stability and range of 

motion of the joint. 

The final factor in evaluating the 

articulation score is the congruence of the 

joint, which is a measure of how well the 

bones fit together. This value is generated 

based on the average angle at which the 

emitted rays hit the complementary articular 

surface. Rays that hit the complementary 

surface tangentially, or at an angle close to zero 

degrees, receive a low score. This indicates 

poor alignment of the bones at the joint and 

limited joint functionality. Conversely, rays 

that hit the complementary surface at or close 

to a ninety-degree angle receive a high score 



FOCUS 

Paleontology 

to indicate a snug joint fit. 

Each of these three factors is weighted to 

calculate the overall articulation score, which 

serves as a measure of the viability of a given 

joint arrangement. 

Turning Theory into Data 

Manafzadeh was interested in testing 

her formula using two birds, the guineafowl 

and the emu, which are considered ‘extant 

dinosaurs,’ meaning that they are modern 

descendants of ancient dinosaur species, 

based on evolutionary paleontology. These 

birds presumably share certain methods of 

movement and joint structure with their 

ancient dinosaur ancestors. 

Using her formula, Manafzadeh calculated 

articulation scores for the various ankle and 

toe joint positions in these living birds by 

visualizing their skeletal elements with X-rays. 

If the birds’ joint poses yielded reasonable 

articulation scores that corresponded with 

experimental movement data, it would 

validate the efficacy of her formula in 

predicting the suitability of specific joint poses 

for movement. And that’s just what she found: 

the joint poses most used by the emu and 

guineafowl received very high articulation 

scores, indicating a correlation between a 

high articulation score and the likelihood of 

that joint pose being used by the animal. This 

result didn’t come as a surprise to her: it made 

sense that animals use joint poses that fit well 

when moving. Nevertheless, she had now 

created a method to quantify this intuition. 

“The hardest part of this project was trying to 

transform the intuition for why a joint ‘looks 

right’ or ‘looks wrong’ into a quantitative 

metric,” Manafzadeh said. “There was a lot 

of trial and error involved, as well as reading 

a lot of scientific literature from the past two 

PHOTO COURTESY OF YALE PEABODY MUSEUM COMMUNICATED BY LYNNA THAI 

A mounted reconstruction of the foot of the dinosaur Deinonychus is housed in the Yale Peabody Museum. 

centuries and trying to infer what researchers 

were thinking.” 

Now that she knew the formula worked 

in extant dinosaurs, it was time to test it in 

extinct dinosaurs. 

Yale’s Deinonychus 

The Deinonychus is an extremely wellpreserved, 

extinct dinosaur whose fossils 

were discovered by Yale paleontologist John 

Ostrom in the 1960s. The discovery of its 

fossil supported the theory that birds are 

related to dinosaurs and sparked widespread 

public fascination with dinosaurs—it’s 

the iconic “raptor” from Jurassic Park, 

recognized for its distinctive large sickle 

claw on its second toe. Manafzadeh wanted 

to figure out exactly how Deinonychus walked. 

Using guineafowl movement data as a 

foundation and applying joint constraints 

based on Deinonychus foot structure, 

Manafzadeh reconstructed a stride cycle 

showing how Deinonychus walked. This 

reconstruction was consistent with evidence 

from the interaction of its bone surfaces. 

She then used her formula to identify the 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

toe joint poses with the highest articulation 

scores in the Deinonychus and developed 

a new theory regarding the function of its 

distinctive raptor claw. She observed that 

the joint positions associated with stabbing 

and pinning had higher articulation scores 

compared to those associated with slashing 

and digging, and her previous experimental 

data indicated that a high articulation score 

suggests a higher likelihood of the toe joints 

being in that configuration. Therefore, she 

concluded that Deinonychus likely utilized its 

clawed digits more for stabbing or pinning 

rather than for slashing or digging. 

Because the Deinonychus is such a 

well-known and thoroughly studied 

extinct dinosaur, when Manafzadeh 

shared her findings, the paleontological 

community was understandably 

excited. Furthermore, when comparing 

Manafzadeh’s joint positions with the 

highest articulation scores and the joint 

models that expert paleontologists 

created, minimal differences were 

observed. Thus, in some cases, this new 

research reinforces intuition rather than 

dismissing it while also introducing a 

key quantitative method to support other 

paleontologists’ conclusions. 

The research has implications far 

beyond the joint poses of specific species. 

By using this formula to analyze more 

species, both extinct and extant, we can 

expand our understanding of vertebrate 

motion and the features that have 

been preserved or developed through 

evolution. “Ultimately, the more animals 

we do this kind of analysis for, the better 

we’ll be able to piece together the history 

of vertebrate evolution and understand 

how behaviors like feeding, running, 

and flying have evolved over deep time,” 

Manafzadeh said. ■ 

YOSSI MOFF 

YOSSI MOFF is a first-year student in Saybrook College. Currently undecided, he is planning to pursue 

the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology major. In addition to writing for the YSM, Yossi 

recently became one of its copy editors. Yossi is involved with the Slifka Center for Jewish Life and is an 

avid intramural sports participant. 

THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK Dr. Armita Manafzadeh and Dr. Stephen Gatesy for sharing 

their expertise and enthusiasm in their field. 


Manafzadeh, A. R., Gatesy, S. M., & Bhullar, B. S. (2024). Articular surface interactions distinguish 

dinosaurian locomotor joint poses. Nature Communications, 15(1), 854. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467- 

024-44832-z 


Geology 

FOCUS 

SNOWBALL EARTH 

did asteroids ice the earth? 

By Lawrence Zhao and Cindy Mei 

Art by Nina Liu 

IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

At several points throughout Earth’s 

history, our world looked nothing 

like the blue planet we know 

today—instead, it was a frozen wasteland. 

During these periods, nearly all of Earth’s 

oceans were covered by thick sheets of ice 

that ranged from hundreds of meters to 

multiple kilometers thick. 

This phenomenon of extreme global 

glaciation, called “Snowball Earth,” 

occurred at least twice over the past 

billion years. The first and most extreme 

of these episodes, the Sturtian glaciation, 

took place approximately 710 million 

years ago and lasted for nearly sixty 

million years, permanently altering the 

Earth’s atmosphere and biodiversity. The 

second known snowball event occurred 

roughly 640 million years ago and was 

followed by a surge in oxygen levels in 


the Earth’s atmosphere. This increase in 

oxygen enabled the evolution of aerobic 

metabolism, a biological process that uses 

oxygen to convert nutrients into energy. 

Aerobic metabolism’s efficiency in energy 

production and storage was instrumental 

to the emergence of multicellular life 

forms and the evolution of the first animals 

during an era known as the Cambrian 

Explosion around 540 million years ago. 

Yet the causes of Snowball Earth 

remain unknown. “Even though 

[‘Snowball Earths'] represent the most 

dramatic changes that Earth’s climate 

has ever experienced, it’s actually not 

fully understood why they occurred,” 

said Minmin Fu, a Flint postdoctoral 

fellow at Yale’s Ocean, Atmosphere, and 

Climate Modeling group. Investigating 

the potential causes of Snowball Earth has 

been a point of interest in the research 

group, which is run by Alexey Fedorov, 

a professor of ocean and atmospheric 

sciences at Yale. “Understanding why 

[snowball events] occurred in Earth’s past 

is definitely an important problem, and 

this could also have implications for 

understanding life on other planets,” 

Fu said. 

What could push the Earth to become 

a massive snowball? To address this 

question, Fu teamed up with Fedorov 

and collaborators from the University of 

Chicago and the University of Vienna. 

Their study, which was published in 

Science Advances earlier this year, suggests 

that under the right conditions, a massive 

asteroid impact—one similar in size to the 

collision that wiped out the dinosaurs— 

might just be a key to finding the answer. 


FOCUS 

Geology 

A Long-Standing Debate 

Many scientists believe that Snowball 

Earth events occur due to a positive 

feedback loop known as the ice-albedo 

feedback. This occurs as the Earth becomes 

increasingly covered in ice, causing the 

surface to become more reflective and 

reducing the amount of sunlight absorbed 

by the Earth’s surface. Consequently, the 

planet’s temperature drops, allowing sea 

ice to expand even further. Eventually, the 

Earth freezes over completely, with glaciers 

expanding 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL-ALEXANDER LEJAS 

Minmin Fu, the first author of the study, uses graphs of Earth's surface to develop a climate model. 

from the tips of the poles to the equator, 

freezing everything in their path. The 

current challenge lies in explaining why 

global temperatures dropped so severely, 

thus initiating ice-albedo feedback. There 

has been no shortage of scientific disputes 

over potential mechanisms. 

One popular theory proposes that 

increased volcanic eruptions could have 

initiated Snowball Earth. This could 

have occurred through two potential 

mechanisms. One possibility is that the 

weathering of basaltic rocks, which are 

volcanic rocks released during eruptions, 

may reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide 

(CO 2 

) via a process called silicate 

weathering, thereby diminishing the 

greenhouse effect and leading to global 

cooling. Another possible mechanism 

is that eruptions emit large amounts 

of sulfate aerosols into the 

atmosphere. These aerosols act 

as a reflective barrier, deflecting 

solar radiation back into 

space and reducing the 

amount of heat reaching 

Earth’s surface, effectively 

lowering the planet’s 

temperature. 

However, Fu and 

Fedorov were 

puzzled by how 

volcanism alone 

could lead to 

a Snowball 

Earth since 

volcanic eruptions would not release 

enough sulfate to initiate Snowball Earth. 

“You would need many [powerful] volcanic 

eruptions, uninterrupted, happening all the 

time,” Fedorov said. “In some ways, these 

explanations are unsatisfactory. So we 

wanted to explore a different and exciting 

new mechanism, which is the possibility 

that [asteroid] impacts could cause these 

events,” Fu added. 

Fu and collaborators looked at an 

alternative hypothesis, called the impact 

theory, which suggests that Snowball 

Earth was triggered by a large-scale 

extraterrestrial impact. When an asteroid 

slams into the Earth, the energy from the 

impact instantly vaporizes nearby rocks, 

ejecting tons of sulfur aerosols into the 

atmosphere—enough to initiate snowball 

conditions. While the impact theory was 

first proposed by two Danish researchers 

in 2002, it was largely overlooked due to its 

reliance on simpler modeling techniques 

compared to the technology available 

today. Recognizing the frequency of 

collision events in Earth’s history, Fu and 

collaborators found merit in revisiting 

and expanding upon this lesser-known 

theory using current, more sophisticated 

climate models. 

Finding a Recipe 

Climate models that simulate Earth’s 

atmosphere and oceans have long been 

valuable tools for everyday weather 

forecasting and climate science research. 

“We used a global climate model which is 

similar to the ones that are used to project 

future climate change, except here, we’ve 

adapted it to study the paleoclimate deep 

in Earth’s past,” Fu said. In their study, the 

researchers simulated various historical 

climates—including preindustrial (150 

years ago), Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 

years ago), Cretaceous-like (145 to 66 

million years ago), and Neoproterozoic 

climates (1 billion to 542 million years 

ago)—along with extraterrestrial impacts 

of varying magnitudes. To simulate these 

paleoclimates, the team reconstructed the 

conditions during each period of interest, 

which included factors such as temperature, 

paleogeography, and concentration of 

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 


The climate model suggests a possible 

recipe of ideal conditions for a Snowball 

Earth. First and foremost, the Earth 

must already be sufficiently cold. Out 

of the climates simulated, only largescale 

impacts under the Last Glacial 

Maximum (LGM) and Neoproterozoic 

climates—both of which had colder oceans 

compared to the warmer preindustrial and 

Cretaceous climates—resulted in snowball 

events. While smaller-scale impacts under 

LGM conditions did not trigger snowball 

events, these collisions were sufficient to 

cause a sizable increase in sea ice coverage, 

which was not seen in warmer climates. “It 

seems that the global temperature is the 

most significant variable for determining 

whether or not you’re vulnerable to 

snowball initiation after a large impact,” 

Fu said. 

The asteroid must also strike the Earth 

on land rather than the ocean. Impacting 

the ocean would mostly release water 

vapor, which would not cool the planet 

significantly. In addition, the asteroid 

must be sufficiently large—over ten 

kilometers wide—to generate at least 

two hundred gigatons of sulfates. Finally, 

atmospheric CO 2 

concentration cannot be 

too high; the researchers found that higher 

concentrations of CO 2 

in the colder LGM 

and Neoproterozoic climates amplified 

the greenhouse effect and prevented 

snowball events. “If you satisfy all of these 

conditions, then it’s possible that you could 

initiate snowball conditions,” Fu said. 

The recipe for a Snowball Earth aligned 

with the scientists’ expectations. Based 

on a rough estimation of the frequency of 

massive asteroid impacts, the researchers 

concluded that there is a fifty-three percent 

chance that an impact-induced snowball 

event occurred at some point in Earth’s 

history. However, the rapid speed at which 

the Earth snowballed in the model was 

quite surprising. 

“I was thinking, maybe it would take a 

century or maybe even longer, but after 

ten years, the entire ocean was covered 

with ice,” Fedorov said. In the researchers’ 

simulation, the process took only around 

seven to eight years to reach ninety-five 

percent ice coverage—a stark contrast to 

the millions of years that the volcanism 

hypothesis posits it would take for Earth 


to reach the threshold for global glaciation. 

Searching for Impact 

Moving forward, the Yale researchers 

aim to gather additional evidence to 

solidify their theory. Currently, there is 

no geological evidence to support the 

theory that previous Snowball Earth 

events were caused by impacts. The most 

recent Snowball Earth occurred over seven 

hundred million years ago, which means 

that any potential evidence is literally 

buried deep in time. Rock fragments 

from impact craters have likely undergone 

heavy erosion and compression under ice, 

making them nearly impossible to identify 

and analyze. 

Nevertheless, Fedorov remains hopeful 

that evidence of an impact might still be 

out there—and history is on his side. At 

the Chicxulub crater, where the impact 

responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs 

struck Earth, scientists identified a rock 

layer containing high levels of iridium 

dating back to sixty-six million years 

ago. Given that natural iridium is not 

commonly found on Earth, its presence 

likely originated from an extraterrestrial 

source. If the impact theory holds, there 

may be traces of elements still lingering 

from snowball-inducing collisions as 

well. Fedorov is currently in discussion 

with scientists at Yale who study the deep 

geological past to determine what clues 

they can search for. 

In addition, Fu and Fedorov hope to test 

other hypotheses, which could further 

strengthen the theory that asteroid 

ABOUT THE 

AUTHORS 

Geology 

FOCUS 

impacts 

i n d e e d 

played a role in 

snowball events. For instance, coupling 

the climate modeling approach with 

a geochemical model could aid in 

quantifying how CO 2 

levels decrease 

in the volcanism hypothesis, offering 

opportunities to test and validate the 

competing hypothesis. According to Fu, 

linking how several different hypotheses 

fit within each other may be the key to 

understanding how Snowball Earth 

events were initiated: while volcanism 

alone may not fully explain how Snowball 

Earth was initiated, it may have been 

an important factor. “If you had a CO 2 

drawdown that wasn’t sufficient to get 

you into snowball conditions by itself, but 

led you to a much colder climate that was 

much more vulnerable to an impact, then 

there could be a combination of multiple 

mechanisms at play,” Fu said. 

Asteroid or not, Snowball Earth most 

likely resulted from the blend of several 

key ingredients, all working in harmony 

to freeze the globe and create life as we 

know it today. ■ 

LAWRENCE ZHAO 

CINDY MEI 

LAWRENCE ZHAO is a sophomore in Pierson College majoring in computer science and math. He has 

been writing for YSM since his first semester at Yale and previously served as an outreach coordinator for 

Synapse. Outside of YSM, he conducts research at the van Dijk Lab. 

CINDY MEI is a junior in Grace Hopper College studying neuroscience. In addition to writing for YSM, 

she serves as vice president on the Junior Class Council and president of Yale Math Competitions. She 

also conducts epilepsy and Tourette’s syndrome research at the Yale School of Medicine. 

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK Minmin Fu and Alexey Fedorov for their time and 

enthusiasm about their research. 


Fu, M., Abbot, D.S., Koeberl, C., & Fedorov, A. (2024). Impact-induced initiation of Snowball Earth: a 

model study. Science Advances, 10(6). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adk5489 


FOCUS 

Biophysics 

Flight to Recovery 

How We Heal, According to Fruit Flies 

By Abigail Jolteus and Brandon Quach 

Art by Luna Aguilar 


Biophysics 

FOCUS 

The moment a paper cut penetrates 

the skin, a cascade of biological 

events aimed at healing the wound is 

set into motion. Wound healing is essential 

for the survival of a wide range of organisms, 

from the tiniest insects to the most complex 

mammals. Despite its fundamental nature, 

wound healing varies considerably among 

different species and even within different 

developmental stages of the same organism. 

In a recent article published in Physical 

Review Research, a team of Yale researchers 

introduced the deformable particle (DP) 

model, which factors in the physical 

properties of cells—such as mobility, 

stiffness, and cell shape—to understand how 

wounds close. Using this model, the team 

investigated wound closure dynamics in 

Drosophila, commonly known as fruit flies. 

They focused specifically on the differences 

in wound healing at the embryo and larval 

stages, which mark the two initial stages of 

development in the Drosophila life cycle. 

How Epithelial Wounds Close 

Imagine your epithelial cells—which form 

the protective layer covering your internal 

organs and outer skin—as the construction 

workers responsible for building and 

repairing structures within your body. They 

use a unique tool to close gaps or wounds: the 

actomyosin purse string. This mechanism 

involves assembling actin filaments and 

myosin motor proteins into a ring-shaped 

structure around the wound’s edges, similar 

to a drawstring on a bag. In a coordinated 

effort, cells contract the myosin proteins, 

shortening the actin filaments and effectively 

cinching the wound edges together, much 

like tightening a purse string. 

The actomyosin purse string, along with 

changes in cell motility and morphology, 

is the physical mechanism that controls 

A fruit fly lands on a leaf. 


epithelial wound closure and encourages 

the healing and repair of damaged 

tissue. As a result, variations in the 

cell’s physical properties can contribute 

to the different wound closure 

phenotypes observed across different 

developmental stages of Drosophila. 

Wound closure phenotypes refer to the 

observable physical properties of a healed 

wound, such as the shapes of the cells after 

closure and whether the wounds form 

raised or compressed scars. 

Past research has largely focused on 

computational models of wound closure. 

These models assume that cell membranes 

respond to wounds primarily through 

elastic deformation—stretching or bending 

in response to external forces but returning 

to their original shape afterward, like a 

rubber band. However, comparisons to 

experimental data show that this perspective 

doesn’t capture the entire picture. 

So, what then constitutes the best model 

for epithelial wound closure? “The difficulty 

is developing a model that is simple enough 

to explain the [experimental] data,” said 

Corey O’Hern, a professor of mechanical 

engineering, materials science, and applied 

physics at Yale and senior author of the study. 

“You can build a model that is so complicated 

that […] you can overfit the model to the 

experimental data.” 

In this study, the researchers sought 

to develop a simple yet versatile model 

to accurately mirror the properties and 

behaviors of the cells themselves, without 

unnecessary complexity. 

The Deformable Particle Model 

The DP model was developed using 

experimental data previously published by 

Yanlan Mao, a professor of developmental 

biophysics at University College London. 

In Mao’s experiments, wounds were 

created in Drosophila embryos using a 

laser, and the subsequent wound-healing 

process was observed. 

“This model is trying to quantitatively 

capture some of the key features, such 

as wound closure time and rate and the 

shapes of cells near the wound,” said Arthur 

MacKeith, a graduate student in Yale’s 

Department of Mechanical Engineering and 

Materials Science and co-author of the study. 

MacKeith and his coauthors believe that the 

DP model may be suitable for representing 

the wound closure process. 

At the heart of the DP model lies 

a simple yet powerful idea: cells are 

represented as deformable particles that 

are connected to each other by springs. 

This approach allows researchers to 

simulate the intricate alterations in 

cell shape and the cell-cell interactions 

that drive wound closure. By adjusting 

model parameters like cell stiffness 

(the resistance to deformation) and 

membrane plasticity (the ability to 

change shape or properties), researchers 

can use the DP model to measure how 

these physical traits affect the process of 

wound healing. 

“We started off with the basic DP 

model […] and added in the ingredients 

of, for example, cell-cell adhesion, cell 

deformability, and collective pursestring 

motion. The exciting part was getting to 

the conclusion of plastic shape change and 

testing it through our simulations,” said 

Andrew Ton, a physics graduate student at 

Yale and first author of the study. 

The researchers focused on 

simulating two specific body parts and 

developmental stages of Drosophila: the 

embryonic ectoderm, which forms the 

outermost layer of cells in early embryos, 

and the larval wing disc epithelium, a flat 

tissue structure present during the larval 

stage that originates from the embryonic 

ectoderm and serves as the starting point 

for the formation of the adult wing. 

Numerical simulations of the DP 

model were carried out to investigate 

actomyosin purse string-based wound 

closure in the embryonic ectoderm and 



FOCUS 

Biophysics 

larval wing disk. The results were then 

analyzed, and predictions on real-world 

phenomena were made. 

The results of the study showed that 

the wound area decreases more rapidly in 

embryos while the cell shape parameter 

rapidly increases. This rapid wound shrinking 

during the embryonic stage is especially 

important, as many critical organs and tissues 

develop during this period. The researchers 

also examined the overall healing rates of 

simulated wing disc wounds compared to 

simulated embryonic wounds. They observed 

that the wounds on the wing discs took over 

four hours to fully close, while in the simulated 

embryo, it closed in just forty-eight minutes. 

In other words, wounds heal fast for larvae, 

but they heal even faster for embryos. 

“Healing wounds quickly in embryonic 

cells would help avoid delaying development 

if any damage occurs,” Ton said. “We 

think [embryos] are a little more inclined 

to support orchestrated cell movements 

earlier in development. Whenever it sees a 

wound, the embryo is ready to close […] 

whether it comes from development or an 

artificial wound.” 

The researchers validated the DP model’s 

results by comparing them with experimental 

results to ensure the model’s accuracy, 

consistency, and relevance to real-world 

applications. The experimental systems were 

visualized using confocal microscopy, a 

technique in which high-resolution 

images are captured by scanning a 

focused beam of light onto a specimen, 

resulting in an exceptionally clear and 

detailed image. They found that the 

experimental results were similar to 

the simulated results, noting a rapid 

elongation of the cell shape, alongside 

a swift decrease in wound area over time in 

both sets of data. 

Evaluating the DP Model 

ABOUT THE 

AUTHORS 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYNNA THAI 

Andrew Ton, the first author of the study, discusses research data with Corey O’Hern, the senior author of the study. 

The current DP model has many strengths 

that set it apart from previous computational 

models used to simulate wound healing. The 

DP model is versatile; it can reliably help 

researchers understand and characterize 

how cells behave, irrespective of how densely 

packed together they are. The model also 

accommodates cells of various shapes, 

ranging from flat and angular to more 

rounded cells, and can account for pushand-pull 

interactions among cells, where 

cells repel each other or tightly adhere to 

one another. Another strength of the DP 

model is its inclusion of irreversible cell shape 

changes, a feature lacking in previous models 

limited to elastic deformation. This enables 

researchers to investigate the significance of 

these changes for effective tissue repair. 

While the DP model has many strengths, 

it also comes with certain limitations. One 

key drawback is its restriction to the twodimensional 

aspects of wound healing. 

“[Wound healing] is a three-dimensional 

problem, whereas we are only considering 

one layer of cells in the current work,” 

MacKeith said. He explained that wounds 

involve not only the surface epithelial layer, 

but also underlying tissues, blood vessels, 

nerves, and other components. Although 

the DP model can provide valuable insights 

into a two-dimensional slice of the problem, 

it simply cannot account for some aspects 

of the complex three-dimensional nature of 

wound healing. 

Nonetheless, focusing on a single 

layer of cells can yield valuable insights 

into how cells behave during wound 

healing in epithelial tissues. For example, 

studying how cell deformability influences 

wound healing can provide important 

clues to developing new treatments for 

congenital defects. 

The researchers hope that someday, the 

DP model can be applied to human wound 

healing or development—though this will 

take much more work. Computational 

models like the DP model allow for 

detailed simulations and hypothesis 

testing, complementing experimental 

approaches. They enable researchers 

to explore hypothetical scenarios, 

integrate diverse datasets, and advance 

personalized medicine by predicting 

individual responses to treatments. 

“One way that this [research] could 

be translated into treatment for humans 

could be in telling researchers where 

to focus their efforts […] when we are 

considering ways to accelerate healing,” 

Ton said. Thus, further studies using the 

DP model hold promise for accelerating 

our understanding of cell biology and its 

relevance to human health. ■ 

ABIGAIL JOLTEUS 

BRANDON QUACH 

ABIGAIL JOLTEUS is a junior in Berkeley College from Toronto, Canada, and West Palm Beach, Florida. 

Outside of YSM, she conducts research in the Konnikova Lab. She enjoys poeticizing the mundane, the 

smell of books, and the sound of rain. 

BRANDON QUACH is a freshman in Davenport College from Los Angeles, California. He is an Ecology 

& Evolutionary Biology major interested in the intersection of sustainability and biology. 

THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK Andrew Ton, Arthur MacKeith, and Dr. Corey O’Hern for 

their time and expertise. 

FURTHER READING 

Ton, A. T., MacKeith, A. K., Shattuck, M. D., & O’Hern, C. S. (2024). Mechanical plasticity of cell 

membranes enhances epithelial wound closure. Physical Review Research, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1103/ 

physrevresearch.6.l012036 


Climatology FEATURE 

COLD CALCULATIONS 

GPS ICEBERG TRACKING IMPROVES CLIMATE MODELS 

BY BRANDON NGO 

As climate change sends ocean temperatures soaring, the 

Greenland Ice Sheet is losing ice mass. With more ice 

melting now than at any time in recent history, unusually 

large volumes of cold, salt-free water mix into the ocean, wreaking 

havoc on the balanced cycles that sustain marine ecosystems and 

regulate weather patterns throughout the Arctic. Due to the critical 

role the ice sheet plays in our environment, scientists are eager to 

closely monitor its condition. To that end, scientists use predictive 

models that draw on data displaying the intricate circulation of 

water in our planet’s oceans, helping to chart the course of our 

planet’s climate future. One such model, showcased in a recent 

paper published by a team from the University of Maine and the 

University of Oregon, was built using GPS monitoring of icebergs 

in the Arctic. These data offer real-time information on water 

circulation as icebergs navigate busy waterways, hit unexpected 

barriers, and experience fluctuating weather patterns. 

Kristin Schild, a researcher from the University of Maine and 

the second author of the study, sought to probe deeper into 

the environmental patterns affecting the Greenland Ice Sheet. 

Traditional methods of monitoring water circulation involve 

scientists deploying data-collection instruments deep in fjord 

waters adjacent to glaciers. However, when using this method, 

the instruments teeter on the brink of destruction, perpetually 

threatened by the relentless onslaught of colossal icebergs. This data 

collection challenge is particularly prevalent in Schild’s work, as she 

focuses on a historically iceberg-rich and data-poor fjord in West 

Greenland: the Ilulissat Icefjord. “This is a region that has lots of 

icebergs, and so traditional methods of monitoring currents were 

less feasible because we would risk expensive monitoring equipment 

each time we deployed instruments into the water,” Schild said. 

Amid these challenges, Schild and her research team devised 

a novel method to address the limitations of traditional data 

collection techniques. Rather 

than stationing the 

equipment along the edge 

of the glaciers in Ilulissat 

Icefjord and risking iceberg 

collisions, the researchers 

placed GPS devices 

on the icebergs 

themselves. 

ART BY LUNA AGUILAR 

“We had to be a little bit more creative in terms of how we’re 

going to measure the circulation when we can’t use our normal 

oceanographic tools,” Schild said. “That’s when we had the idea to 

just put GPS trackers on icebergs as a natural tracker to understand 

the environment.” By employing this method, the researchers kept 

these devices out of harm’s way as the icebergs themselves became 

natural trackers for water circulation. 

The joint research team deployed GPS units on thirteen icebergs 

in the Ilulissat Icefjord in the summers of 2014 and 2019 to 

explore the water circulation more deeply. “We had to deploy the 

GPS by helicopter, and I got to be the team member to jump out 

of the helicopter to install the GPS devices,” Schild said. “It was 

really exciting from an adventure standpoint of doing this thing— 

instrumenting icebergs with GPS—that hasn’t been done before, 

but also in terms of testing a novel scientific approach of using 

icebergs to understand the environment.” 

Combining the fjord data from these two summers, the joint 

research team was able to uncover a correlation between tributary 

fjord runoff, or glacier meltwater from neighboring fjords, and 

the direction and speed of currents in the Ilulissat Icefjord. This 

relationship had escaped detection from previous circulation 

studies. Schild’s innovative approach to monitoring may also reveal 

other new relationships that can contribute to our understanding of 

water circulation dynamics. “[This study is part of] a bigger effort 

to produce more representative global circulation models so that we 

can better predict what will happen to the Greenland Ice Sheet in 

the future,” Schild said. 

Developing precise, predictive climate models for the Greenland 

Ice Sheet is crucial since the ice sheet’s response to climate change 

has critical implications beyond the Arctic. “Iceberg research is 

continuing to move forward, and it’s really exciting,” Schild said. 

“We’re working with many other iceberg scientists to figure out 

how we can more efficiently track icebergs, like through automated 

tracking using satellite remote sensing data, and also how we can 

better integrate these data sets into models.” Each improvement 

deepens our understanding of the ice sheet’s dynamics and 

their connection to the global climate, highlighting the need for 

innovative research and advanced data processing to address 

climate challenges. ■ 


May 2024 

Yale Scientific Magazine 

25

FEATURE 

Ecology 

ROOMBAS 

OF THE REEF 

BY ANNLI ZHU 

Dirty laundry, expired milk, an unknown rat infestation … 

every home requires routine cleaning to keep it functional. 

When this simple task is neglected, the consequences can 

be unpleasant, hazardous, or even lethal. Just like your home, 

coral reefs need to be kept clean. Despite covering less than 0.1 

percent of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to a quarter of 

all marine species on the planet. As oceans become warmer and 

more polluted, diseases caused by sediment-inhabiting bacteria 

have rapidly shrunk global coral area. Now more than ever, the 

reefs need their janitors. 

Enter the sea cucumber: a rotund, hand-sized, wormlike 

creature that dwells on the seafloor. Known as detritivores— 

literally “waste eaters”—sea cucumbers consume sediment and 

remove organic matter within it, which often includes diseasecausing 

pathogens. Unfortunately, this symbiotic process in coral 

reefs has been interrupted in recent decades by the overharvesting 

of sea cucumbers as a delicacy. 

In a recent study conducted in French Polynesia, a team of 

scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology demonstrated 

just how damaging the removal of sea cucumbers can be to 

a coral reef. Principal investigator Mark Hay, a professor of 

environmental biology at Georgia Tech, was inspired to conduct 

this project during a visit to a Fijian museum. An etching from 

the 1800s depicted a ship carrying many tons of dried sea 

cucumbers, suggesting that the now-rare creatures were once 

abundant. Hay wondered how this change could have impacted 

involved ecosystems. 

At the same time, research scientist Cody Clements had 

been independently studying corals in Fiji, often removing sea 

cucumbers from reefs just to get them out of the way. He soon 

noticed that when this happened, the corals seemed more likely to 

die. Could these detritivores be keeping the reefs alive? “Equally 

important [as apex predators] are the guys at the bottom of the 

chain helping you clean up all the waste,” Clements said. “They 

HOW THE HUMBLE SEA CUCUMBER 

KEEPS CORALS HEALTHY 

might be integral to a lot of ecosystems that are falling apart.” 

In a stroke of serendipity, Hay and Clements converged on the 

same question from two directions, and they teamed up to test 

their hypothesis in Mo‘orea, Polynesia. The reefs surrounding this 

island are home to an abundant population of sea cucumbers. 

The researchers split the nearby reef into patches, removing 

sea cucumbers daily from some areas and letting them remain 

in others. After forty-five days, the differences were staggering. 

White band disease—a coral disease characterized by a band 

of exposed skeleton that slowly consumes an entire coral—was 

fifteen times more likely to kill a coral in patches lacking sea 

cucumbers than in patches with sea cucumbers. Repeating a 

similar experiment three thousand kilometers away on Palmyra 

Atoll with different species of sea cucumber and coral, the team 

found similar results. 

These findings confirmed the scientists’ hypothesis and 

highlighted the important role sea cucumbers play in reef 

ecosystems. “The results from this are so clear, and the experiments 

are so simple,” Hay said. “I’m very confident in the relationship 

we’ve established.” More than a century of irresponsible sea 

cucumber harvesting, coupled with an unprecedented rise in 

pollution, likely catalyzed the destruction of the ocean’s precious 

reefs. Hay and Clements hope that their research will encourage 

more sustainable harvesting practices and the targeted cultivation 

of sea cucumbers to help restore reefs. 

Building on top of this work, Hay and Clements hope to 

identify the pathogen that causes white band disease in corals 

and learn how sea cucumbers disable it. “Marine diseases are a 

constant problem,” Hay said. “If humans start getting sick, there is 

a huge infrastructure that immediately jumps on the problem. If 

sea urchins or corals start getting sick, people just go, ‘Oh I guess 

they all died. I wonder what caused it.’ We’re working hard to 

chase that down.” 

Ultimately, revitalizing sea cucumber populations is crucial 

for protecting the world’s remaining coral reefs, the homes 

of millions of marine species. In the wake of ever-increasing 

detrimental human activity and ecological disturbances, these 

efforts are important for buying time. “Some people might claim 

that these are just band-aids,” Hay said, referring to the idea that 

the root cause of climate change is not addressed by cultivating 

sea cucumbers. “And that might be true. But when you’re slowly 

bleeding out, you want a bandage.” ■ 

26 Yale Scientific Magazine May 2024 www.yalescientific.org 

ART BY ANNLI ZHU

A NEW LOOK INTO... 

Medicine 

POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION 

INTERVENTION-BASED THERAPY PROVIDES CARE 

SIMPLY AND EFFECTIVELY 

BY HIEN TRAN 

ART BY PATRICIA JOSEPH 

FEATURE 

Though bringing new life into the world is often a joyful 

experience, new mothers also experience pain—both 

physically and mentally. Some mothers who have 

endured the emotional and physical struggles of pregnancy and 

childbirth also have to deal with postpartum depression. Unlike 

the “baby blues” that last for a few days or weeks after birth due 

to hormonal fluctuations, persistent symptoms that last longer 

than two weeks indicate postpartum depression (PPD)—a deep 

sense of sadness and anxiety that does not go away. “Postpartum 

depression is debilitating for both mothers 

and their children,” said Pamela Surkan, 

a professor at the Johns Hopkins 

Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

To address PPD, Surkan and her team 

conducted a phase III clinical trial 

to determine whether an anxiety- 

focused cognitive behavioral therapy 

that is delivered by a non-specialist can 

contribute to the prevention of PPD, as 

published in Nature Medicine. 

The rationale behind this trial comes 

from two key pieces of information. 

First, as Surkan learned, anxiety during 

pregnancy can lead to PPD. Second, 

anxiety during pregnancy is especially 

prevalent in resource-poor countries. 

With that in mind, Surkan conducted the 

study in the Punjab province of Pakistan 

between April 2019 and January 2022. Out 

of the 755 pregnant women involved in the 

study, about half were randomly assigned to 

receive “Happy Mother–Healthy Baby” cognitive behavioral therapy 

while the other half received just routine pregnancy care. The Happy 

Mother–Healthy Baby program consisted of six therapy sessions in 

which new mothers learned to cope with anxious thoughts and replace 

them with positive ones, with five sessions conducted during early to 

mid-pregnancy and the last session occurring in the third trimester. A 

typical session might consist of exercises focused on reframing negative 

thoughts, such as thoughts regarding miscarriage, and replacing them 

with helpful thoughts and behaviors, such as ways to keep healthy during 

pregnancy. Six weeks after giving birth, all the women were assessed for 

anxiety and depression. 

Pamela and her team found that only nine percent of women who 

were assigned the Happy Mother–Healthy Baby program showed 

moderate-to-severe anxiety while twenty-seven percent of the 


routine care group did. They also found an even greater improvement 

regarding symptoms of depression—a seventy percent reduction in 

depression among women in the program compared to the group who 

received routine care. Thus, there is evidence to suggest that giving 

mothers the tools to manage their anxiety can lead to better health 

outcomes for both mothers and their children. 

Interestingly, one of the main challenges that Surkan faced during 

the study was the COVID-19 pandemic, which coincided with the 

data collection process. “Women were fearful about coming to the 

hospital, and there were lockdowns—including 

one national one—where we couldn’t collect 

any data at all for six months,” Surkan said. 

Despite this, the length of the study allowed 

researchers to collect quality data for their 

investigation. As COVID-19 responses 

in the medical system improved and 

more social interactions were allowed in 

Pakistan, recruitment of mothers became 

easier and allowed the study to continue. 

The next step for researchers is to 

complete a biological study looking at the 

impact of the intervention program on 

immune dysregulation and hormone levels 

during pregnancy since psychological 

and social stressors can also lead to 

physiological changes. Beyond its impacts 

on the mother, immune dysregulation can 

contribute to neurological impairment in 

the newborn. “Postpartum depression not 

only harms mothers, but it is also associated 

with poorer physical growth and delayed 

cognitive development in their children,” Surkan said. With further 

implementation and continued study, these physiological implications 

could become easier to explore. “We weren’t able to recruit enough people 

in the intervention or control groups to look at differences between the 

groups for the biological study,” Surkan said. Surkan eventually hopes to 

implement this research on a larger scale, potentially in the US. 

This study is particularly relevant to women today because it addresses 

a key source of anxiety for pregnant mothers during the transition 

between pregnancy and childbirth: their health. Pregnant mothers 

already experience major hormonal and physical changes that may be 

uncomfortable and require them to change their lifestyles. Preventing 

PPD makes this lifestyle transition easier and healthier for mothers 

and their children, ensuring that bringing life into the world also 

brings joy. ■ 


FEATURE 

Ecology 

FOUR YEARS SAVING INDIA’S 

GIANT SOFTSHELL TURTLE 

A STORY OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 

AND LOCAL CONSERVATION 

BY KENNY CHENG 

ART BY ANNLI ZHU 

In the tranquil depths of Southeast Asia’s 

winding waterways dwells Cantor’s 

giant softshell turtle, Asia’s very own 

silent sentinel. Unlike its close kin, the 

sea turtle and the terrestrial tortoise, this 

turtle boasts a soft shell draped in leathery 

skin. With a flattened, pancake-like body 

and a long, tubular snout, Cantor’s giant 

softshell turtle possesses an otherworldly 

appearance. Typically found half-buried 

in the riverbed, the nocturnal creature 

has rarely been detected by ecologists in 

India until the authors of a recent paper 

utilized local ecological knowledge from 

communities along the Chandragiri River 

in Kerala, India to finally observe the 

mysterious creature in its natural habitat 

and determine its conservation status. 

Cantor’s giant softshell turtle, Pelochelys 

cantorii, is listed as an Evolutionarily 

Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) 

species and is at high risk of extinction 

according to the International Union for 

Conservation of Nature Red List. The 

species is protected under international 

law, and hunting or trade of the turtle 

within India is a punishable offense under 

a long-standing wildlife protection act. 

However, despite these legal designations, 

the population of the species in India has 

waned as a result of habitat destruction, 

illegal opportunistic hunting, and 

accidental killings by fishermen. “I didn’t 

even know soft-shelled turtles existed until 

I was in my early twenties,” described 

Ayushi Jain, a current PhD candidate at the 

University of Miami and the first author of 

the paper. When Jain once distributed an 

online survey to residents across Kerala, 

she found that only about five percent of 

six hundred respondents even knew what 

a softshell turtle was. 

Funded by the EDGE of Existence 

Fellowship, Jain was determined to unravel 

the mysteries surrounding the turtle’s 

behavior and population distribution. 

However, almost immediately, she 

ran into an obstacle: the only records 

among the sparse literature of Cantor’s 

turtle sightings in India were anecdotal. 

Working with Francoise Cavada-Blanco, a 

senior teaching fellow at the University of 

Portsmouth and Jain’s mentor, Jain began 

her project acknowledging the very real 

possibility that the turtle had gone extinct 

in India. “Even if we were unable to observe 

an individual, speaking to the community 

would produce valuable information about 

the species historically,” Jain said. “We 

wanted to tap into that knowledge that is 

passed down through generations—what 

we call local ecological knowledge—and 

gain a better understanding of the behavior 

of the turtle.” 

Over the next two years, Jain dedicated 

herself to living among the local 

community as she conducted interviews 

along the Chandragiri River. Working 

on a limited budget, Jain initially carried 

out chain-referral “snowball” sampling— 

interviewing participants who had seen 

the turtle and asking locals to refer other 

members of their community. In these 

semi-structured interviews, Jain listened 

to the stories of the local people as she 

collected data about the turtle’s seasonal 

habits, daily activity, and other ecological 

behaviors. Once snowball sampling ceased 

to provide further interviewees, Jain turned 

to opportunistic sampling as she slowly 

gained the trust of the local inhabitants 

and expanded her ecological survey. “The 

wider implication of the study, I believe, 

relies on the use of Local Ecological 

Knowledge (LEK) as a scoping step to 

refine and better design ‘conventional’ 

ecological surveys when working with 

rare species,” explained Cavada-Blanco 

when discussing their research approach. 

“This is not a novel approach, but one that 

has scarcely been used in freshwater and 

marine systems. This is mostly because 

naturally rare species usually have low 

detection probabilities when using 

conventional sampling designs.” Cavada- 

Blanco described how LEK can be a 

powerful tool in conservation studies, and 

Jain supported the idea that this bottomup 

community approach was crucial to 

her success. 

In one particular incident, Jain was 


Ecology 

FEATURE 

informed by members of the community 

about a poaching incident that took place 

during her stay. “We informed the Forest 

Department that the incident had occurred. 

However, we couldn’t take action against 

them as no community member would 

ever trust us again,” Jain explained. Jain 

described the incredibly difficult tension 

commonplace in ecological conservation 

efforts: choosing between seeking justice 

for one poached animal or protecting 

numerous others through continued 

research. “After, the local community 

members came to trust me a lot,” Jain said. 

“They knew that they could tell me things, 

even if they have done something wrong, 

without having to fear I would go to the 

authorities and get them into trouble.” 

Jain’s decision paid off. In the third 

month of her fellowship, she finally laid 

eyes on the majestic Cantor’s giant softshell 

turtle, guided by a local resident. Snapping 

a quick picture of the turtle, Jain allowed 

herself to simply observe the turtle as it 

surfaced for a few seconds. Jain basked 

in elation, having proven the continued 

endurance of the species in India. Over 

the next few years, Jain had several 

encounters with the species as she shifted 

her work towards the conservation of 

Cantor’s giant softshell turtle. 

sustaining community effort to protect the 

magnificent giant freshwater turtle. 

According to Cavada-Blanco, the power 

of local communities in conservation 

initiatives has been demonstrated 

across various cultures and contexts 

for numerous conservation objectives, 

including ecosystem restoration, species 

reintroduction, and threat reduction. 

However, this approach remains 

challenging as each intervention or 

program must be tailored to address 

the local cultural, socio-political, and 

economic environment, hand-in-hand 

with the biological and ecological 

requirements of the targeted species or 

ecosystems. “There is not a prescribed 

recipe for success,” Cavada-Blanco said. 

“However, LEK is a powerful tool to 

improve the effectiveness of conservation 

research and one that should be used more 

frequently in aquatic systems, given the 

deficit in financial resources available 

for the enormous list of species of 

conservation concern.” 

“In truth, field scientists have always 

relied on local knowledge, even when 

they were busy ‘discovering’ species. 

But those roles were typically ignored or 

downplayed. It is a different world today 

with community science, indigenous 

knowledge and other sources and 

approaches being actively developed,” 

said David Skelly, the Director of the 

Yale Peabody Museum and a professor of 

ecology and evolutionary biology who is 

unaffiliated with the original work. “Just 

within the last few years, the incredible 

power that comes from tapping into local 

communities to help understand species 

and natural systems is finally being 

surfaced,” he said. Indeed, the focus 

on self-sustaining conservation efforts 

cultivated by Jain, Cavada-Blanco, and 

their team exemplifies a shift in the 

methodology of small-scale ecological 

studies. After helping to reveal the 

importance of human connection in 

science, Cantor’s giant softshell turtle 

can now rest easy in the depths of its 

shadowy rivers, protected by an invested 

and enthusiastic community. ■ 

In this time, another challenge Jain 

faced was the language barrier—she had 

to rely on translators to communicate 

with the locals. Nonetheless, the trust she 

earned in these communities triumphed, 

facilitating the relationships that aided 

conservation efforts. Hosting awareness 

workshops, going house-to-house to 

hand out small information notebooks, 

and setting up signs and fencing around 

identified nesting areas, Jain spent another 

two years dedicated to conservation. 

Funded by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species 

Conservation Fund and The Habitats 

Trust, she conducted yearly turtle nesting 

surveys in the region starting in 2021 and 

oversaw the incubation and release of 

between forty and fifty hatchlings into 

the wild. 

Beyond just the research, Jain’s lasting 

legacy in the region is the active alert 

network she helped set up among the 

locals via WhatsApp. “Human behavior 

takes time to change,” Jain said. “But, 

in my studies, the communities have 

really grown to be enthusiastic about 

protecting the turtle, and they even took 

it upon themselves to protect discovered 

nesting sites.” Currently working on her 

interdisciplinary PhD, Jain sits at the 

intersection of social policy and ecological 

conservation. Even as she now researches 

the policies behind dam management in 

freshwater ecosystems, Jain continues to 

keep in touch with the Kerala community 

and still looks for more grants 

to help fund the selfwww.yalescientific.org 


FEATURE 

Astronomy 

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE 

THE RECORD-BREAKING QUASAR THAT TRICKED 

MACHINE LEARNING 

BY MADELEINE POPOFSKY 

ART BY MADELEINE POPOFSKY 

Machine learning (ML) 

algorithms are addressing 

one of the biggest challenges 

astronomers currently face: digging 

through the vast mountains of data 

they have collected. “We are now in 

the epoch of big data in astronomy, 

where there is more data than there are 

astronomers to process it,” said Samuel 

Lai, an astronomy PhD student at 

Australian National University. Such a 

data surplus makes ML algorithms that 

automatically process data especially 

valuable in astronomical research. 

These algorithms can comb through 

data collected from telescopes to finish 

tasks like classifying astronomical 

objects that would take astronomers 

much longer to complete by hand. 

“Although machine learning has been 

used for decades in astronomy, in the 

grand scheme of things, we’re only just 

starting to explore its applications,” 

Lai said. 

Though promising, ML algorithms 

have a critical flaw: they are dependent 

on their training data. ML algorithms 

IMAGE COURTESY OF NOIRLAB 

Quasars, frequently mistaken for stars, are actually 

black holes surrounded by superheated material. 

“learn” by processing training data, which 

humans first categorize to develop the 

algorithm’s ability to recognize patterns 

and extrapolate new data. ML algorithms 

often fail when they encounter extreme 

cases in datasets, since exceptional 

cases are, by their very nature, outside 

of the patterns that the algorithms use 

to make sense of large pools of data. A 

striking example 

of this failure 

has emerged 

in the case 

of a recordb 

r e a k i n g 

q u a s a r : 

the newly 

i d e n t i f i e d 

J0529-4351. This 

astronomical object, 

first spotted in the 

sky by astronomers in 

1980, has only recently been 

recognized as the most luminous object 

in the known universe, according to a 

paper published in Nature Astronomy. 

Quasars, short for quasi-stellar objects, 

are often mistaken for stars near Earth 

because of their remarkable brightness. 

However, quasars are not stars; they are 

actually black holes in distant galaxies 

that heat their surroundings so much 

that everything around them starts 

to glow. As gravity sucks the matter 

around the black hole inward and energy 

is transformed into heat, the matter 

immediately surrounding the black hole 

emits high-intensity light. “The light 

from this glow escapes and travels 

through incredible distances across the 

Universe to reach us and our telescopes,” 

Lai said. A quasar in another galaxy 

might rival the brightness of a nearby 

Milky Way star when viewed from 

Earth. While the relative brightnesses 

are similar, the objective measure of light 

emission known as luminance 

shows dramatic differences. 

The particular quasar known 

as J0529-4351 is one of many 

discovered by Lai and other 

researchers at the Research School 

of Astronomy and Astrophysics 

at the Australian National 

University based on recent 

computational work. The 

team’s initial goal was to 

identify all the quasars 

in the sky visible to the 

space telescope Gaia by 

combining observational 

data from Gaia and another 

telescope’s sky survey. First, 

they filtered out objects that didn’t 

exhibit quasars’ characteristic lack 

of movement. Astronomers cannot 

perceive the movement of quasars due to 

their great distance from Earth, but they 

can for closer objects such as Milky Way 

stars. The researchers also filtered out 

objects that lacked a particular effect 

of viewing known as parallax, in 

which the position or direction of the 

object appears different when viewed 

from different points in Earth’s 

orbit. Second, they used mid-infrared 

photometry, a technique of analyzing 

light, to discriminate between the 

spectrum of colors emitted by quasars 

and other objects. Among the objects 


Astronomy 

FEATURE 

that made it through the screening 

was J0529-4351. 

The data from Gaia were originally 

published in 2022 and included a color 

spectrum of J0529-4351 that a human 

astronomer would easily detect as 

derived from a quasar. However, when 

these data were initially analyzed by 

a machine-learning algorithm known 

as the Gaia Discrete Source Classifier, 

the quasar was given a 99.98 percent 

probability of being another star in the 

Milky Way. 

“For quasars outside the training 

sample, especially record-breaking 

quasars like J0529-4351, the models 

may be led to believe that the target has 

attributes of both stars and quasars,” 

Lai said. “Depending on how those 

attributes are weighted, the machine 

learning model can fail to characterize 

the object accurately, and we have a 

concrete example for J0529-4351.” 

Based on the manual screening 

process, the researchers produced 

“The All-sky BRIght, Complete Quasar 

Survey,” a comprehensive index of 

quasars visible to Gaia. In addition to 

having near-perfect identification of 

quasars already documented, it was 

also highly accurate in identifying 

more than one hundred new quasars, 

as measured by comparison with other 

recent astronomical research. Using 

the survey, the researchers took note 

of J0529-4351 and then began learning 

more about its unique luminosity. 

Typically, more luminous quasars 

indicate larger black holes. By measuring 

the speed at which matter orbited 

J0529-4351, Lai and his colleagues 

were able to calculate the mass of the 

black hole to be seventeen billion 

times the mass of the Sun. Beyond just 

that, they found that it is the fastestgrowing 

black hole discovered in the 

Universe, as shown by data from the 

Very Large Telescope at the European 

Southern Observatory. “To shine with 

the measured luminosity, the black hole 

is possibly feeding material at a rate of 

one Sun mass every day, or equivalently, 

about four times the mass of the Earth 


every single second,” Lai said. 

Ultramassive black holes such as 

this one present a scientific mystery. 

Because they are so far away, the light 

from these quasars is from quite early 

in the Universe; the light from J0529- 

4351 took twelve billion years to reach 

Earth. “At such an early time in the 

Universe, we [thought] that there hadn’t 

been enough time for the black holes to 

grow to those sizes under the normal 

processes that we know of,” Lai said. 

Discovering such a luminous quasar 

provides invaluable data that can be 

used to answer further questions about 

how black holes grow as astronomy 

advances. In another intriguing future 

project, these quasars might be used 

to directly measure the expansion of 

the Universe through 

continual observation 

over many years. 

Despite the failure 

of machine learning 

in the case of J0529- 

4351, Lai was optimistic 

about its future use to 

astronomers. “By combining 

known physics with machine 

learning, it will help the 

statistical models develop 

meaningful and physically motivated 

correlations, which should help achieve 

more accurate and reliable predictions,” 

Lai said. To discover quasars, scientists 

have historically changed methodologies 

many times. In the 1960s, research 

was done using radio detection to 

separate quasars from stars, which have 

very different appearances to radio 

telescopes. Later surveys used methods 

such as color spectrum analyses and 

distance measurements. In the new age 

of machine learning, astronomers have yet 

another chance to refine their techniques. 

The researchers contend that it is 

unlikely that a quasar brighter than J0529- 

4351 will be found. However, there is a 

possibility that such quasars could exist if 

they are located in what is known as the 

galactic plane, an area with a high density 

of matter from the Milky Way within 

which identification of quasars is uniquely 

difficult because of interference. Only with 

further searching—and a human touch to 

catch the most surprising cases—can the 

study of quasars advance. ■ 


FEATURE 

Chemistry 

NANOTECHNOLOGY IN... 

BLUEBERRIES? 

COMPLEX WAX STRUCTURES EXPLAIN 

FRUIT’S BRILLIANT BLUE 

BY XIMENA LEYVA PERALTA 

ART BY ALONDRA MORENO SANTANA 

For plants, color is not just a matter 

of aesthetics—it’s a strategic tool 

for survival. The green, yellow, 

and orange hues in a tree’s leaves 

maximize their ability to capture light 

and make food through photosynthesis. 

Other colorful features play different 

roles; attracting pollinators or repelling 

predators with color can ensure a 

species’ survival. While scientists have 

long known that pigments like those in 

a tree’s leaves give rise to a variety of 

colors in plants, a lesser-known player 

produces color in an entirely different 

way in some plants: wax coatings. In 

a recent study published in Science 

Advances, researchers demonstrated 

that blueberries and other blue fruits 

owe their characteristic color to how 

light interacts with their wax coatings. 

For Rox Middleton, a research fellow 

at the University of Bristol’s School 

of Biological Sciences and the first 

author of the study, the journey towards 

discovering this phenomenon began 

with a different optical effect. While 

completing their PhD, they studied 

Pollia condensata—a small, shiny blue 

fruit with a metallic sheen found in 

African rainforests—as well as the 

teardrop-shaped, dark blue fruits of 

the laurestine plant (Viburnum tinus), 

which is better known for its white 

flowers that bloom in the winter. 

Both fruits shine with a vivid blue 

hue. “From a materials science and an 

optics perspective, they’re incredible,” 

Middleton said. The root cause of the 

blue color on the fruits is what chemists 

call ordered crystal multilayers— 

structures in which crystal particles 

stack into layers in a repeating pattern. 

The thickness and composition of these 

layers can change how light interacts 

with the crystals, producing what is 

known as “structural color.” Scientists 

have also identified ordered crystal 

multilayers that create vibrant hues 

in peacock feathers and other brightly 

colored birds. 

After spending their PhD uncovering 

the mysteries buried in other blue 

fruits, Middleton saw blueberries as a 

logical next step. As an expert in optics 

and structural color, Middleton knew 

exactly what to look for. 

Middleton expected to find the same 

ordered crystal structure in blueberries 

as they had for the other two fruits 

they had studied. Blueberries—and 

fruits like damsons and barberries— 

do not actually have blue pigments. 

The only pigment molecules present 

in blueberries are dark red 

or purple, which is why 

mashed blueberries (in a 

smoothie, for instance) 

are that color. Instead 

of blue pigments, 

blueberries have 

a waxy layer on 

their skin called 

epicuticular wax, 

which contains 

n a n o p a r t i c l e s 

that scatter 

light. The 

n a n o p a r t i c l e s 

consist of only 

a few hundred 

atoms arranged 

into organic 

molecules. To better understand this 

wax coating, the research team isolated 

it from the fruit and recrystallized it on 

a flat card. “When [the wax] is dissolved, 

it is completely clear, so we knew it’s 

not a pigment,” Middleton said. As 

expected, once reformed on the card, 

the coating regained its blue hue. But, 

unlike what Middleton had expected 

based on previous work, microscopic 

analysis of the recrystallized blueberry 

wax showed no ordered layers—only 

randomly arranged crystals. 

All structural coloring is caused by light 

scattering, the same effect that makes 

the sky blue. Scattering refers to the 


Chemistry 

FEATURE 

phenomenon of light changing direction 

after interacting with particles. 

Incoming white light from the Sun is 

composed of a range of wavelengths that 

correspond to different colors. Upon 

scattering, each wavelength changes 

direction at a slightly different angle. 

When this angle is large enough, we can 

see individual colors in the scattered 

light beam, like a rainbow, rather than a 

uniform white beam. The simplest type 

of scattering occurs in gases, where light 

can interact with individual particles. 

The blue of the sky is a result of this 

effect. As sunlight travels through 

the atmosphere, it is scattered by 

air particles. The relatively short 

wavelength of blue light causes it to 

change direction at a greater angle 

than other colors, so blue light is more 

easily scattered. This angle is just 

large enough for blue light to separate 

from other colors in its relatively short 

journey through the atmosphere. When 

the sun is closer to the horizon, sunlight 

travels a greater distance through our 

atmosphere, revealing the scattered 

reds and oranges. 

Scattering in solids is more 

complicated. “When light goes into a 

piece of material, it can bounce one 

time and come back, or it can go in and 

can bounce lots of times and then come 

back,” Middleton said. Unlike in gases, 

where scattering occurs at the level 

of individual particles, solids exhibit 

multiple scattering events. 

Describing collective scattering in 

ordered solids like crystals is relatively 

straightforward due to their regularity. 

However, the randomness of the 

blueberry wax introduces an additional 

challenge. Apart from the scattering caused 

by collections of particles, single particles 

seem to cause their own additional 

scattering. “It’s a halfway point between 

this singlep 

a r t i c l e 

scattering 

in gases 

and this 

m u l t i p l e 

scattering 

that you 

get in 

m ater i a l s ,” 


Blueberries, whose blue hue is produced by epicuticular wax, grow in a tree. 

Middleton said. At this point, it was still 

unclear to what extent the researchers 

could accurately describe the scattering 

of epicuticular wax with just one model 

of scattering. To dig deeper, Middleton’s 

team used computer simulations 

to model scattering in fruit wax 

coatings. Using these simulations, they 

discovered that including scattering 

contributions from single particles 

produces scattering similar to that 

observed in blueberries. However, 

further work is still needed to fully 

understand how multiple scattering 

contributes to blueberries’ color from 

the standpoint of fundamental physics. 

As for the biological side of the blue in 

blueberries, evolution offers an answer. 

Many fruit-eating animals, such as 

birds, evolved to distinguish blue and 

UV light. Blue pigments are fairly rare 

in nature, so plants with blue fruits 

stand out more easily and thus have an 

advantage by attracting animals to eat 

their fruits and spread their seeds. Given 

this advantage, multiple fruit-bearing 

species evolved to have structurally 

constructed blue hues despite the 

complexity of structural coloration. 

Beyond blueberries, the research 

team hopes their work will contribute 

to our broader understanding of 

the epicuticular waxes present in 

most plants, even when they are not 

responsible for color. Since the 1990s, 

studies have revealed the remarkable 

properties of these waxes. They can 

undergo self-assembly, meaning they 

spontaneously regenerate themselves 

after being perturbed or even 

IMAGE COURTESY OF PXHERE 

completely removed. Reproducing 

this property in man-made waxes or 

coatings could make them easier and 

faster to fabricate. The waxes also 

possess powerful hydrophobic (waterrepellent) 

properties, which could be 

used to develop more sustainable forms 

of packaging or even hydrophobic 

materials for medical applications. 

Surprisingly few studies on the 

applications of these waxes have 

focused on their optical effects. 

“When I looked at these studies, I 

thought, ‘You didn’t look at the optical 

properties one time?’” Middleton said. 

Middleton’s team hopes that their work 

on understanding structural color can 

help create more sustainable colorants 

and coatings with hydrophobic and selfassembling 

properties. Because they are 

biologically derived, these hypothetical 

products would be non-toxic and usable 

in fields ranging from medicine and 

food packaging to cosmetics and 

textiles. While plants might not be 

able to perceive the aesthetic value of 

their vibrant colors, we humans can 

certainly appreciate both their beauty 

and utility. ■ 


SHORT 

Profile 

RISHA CHAKRABORTY 

YC ’25 

BY KENNA MORGAN 

Risha Chakraborty (YC ’25) describes herself as “a firm 

proponent of the idea that there’s a lot we can do in just 

these four years.” Through her studies as a Neuroscience 

and Chemistry double major, research in the Chandra Lab, 

volunteer work, and involvement in Yale’s musical and cultural 

communities, Chakraborty proves this point true. Growing up 

in California, Chakraborty was surrounded by a community 

that supported and shared many of her family’s values, including 

education, family, and community service—things that she 

has continued to hold in high regard throughout her time in 

college. It was also within the context of her community at home, 

particularly in San Ramon, where she attended middle and 

high school, that Chakraborty began to develop her academic 

interests. She recognized early on that she was deeply interested 

in neuroscience. By reading extensively about neurobiology and 

science more broadly, Chakraborty prepared herself to hit the 

ground running in college, where she is working towards her goal 

of becoming a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon. 

In addition to her pre-medical coursework, Chakraborty joined 

Sreeganga Chandra’s neurology lab in October of her first year 

at Yale. Here, she quickly realized her passion for conducting 

bench research and studying the basic science of synaptic 

biology. She currently works with mentor Vidyadhara D J on 

research investigating the causes of cognitive problems that 

are sometimes associated with Parkinson’s Disease. Using 

techniques like western blotting, single-cell RNA sequencing, 

and immunohistochemistry, she hopes to elucidate the molecular 

mechanisms underlying the relationship between cognitive 

decline and mutations of the GBA gene. Chakraborty has been 

an invaluable member of her research team; in fact, her excellent 

work earned her the Y-Work Award for Outstanding Student 

Employees last year. In the near future, the Chandra Lab plans 

to publish a paper citing Chakraborty as second author, and for 

her senior thesis, Chakraborty will continue her research by 

conducting gene knockdown studies in cell models. 

Though Chakraborty’s research largely investigates RNA 

and proteins in the brain with mice as her model organism, she 

is careful not to lose sight of the patients who will ultimately 

benefit from her 

work. As an aspiring 

healthcare provider, 

she is intentional 

about engaging with 

the New Haven 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FAREED SALMON 

community around 

her. By volunteering 

with the Hypertension 

Awareness and 

Prevention Program 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FAREED SALMON 

at Yale (HAPPY), shadowing at Yale New Haven Health, and 

working with the Yale School of Medicine’s Community Health 

Care Van, Chakraborty has been able to build connections with 

patient populations with whom she may interact with in future 

clinical work. “These three experiences have highlighted that 

I’m also really interested in person-centered care and bridging 

the gap between my basic chemistry [and] neuroscience 

interests with treatments that are actually applicable to 

people that I see on the daily,” Chakraborty said. 

Beyond her science and healthcare-focused extracurricular 

pursuits, Chakraborty is also involved in Yale’s vibrant musical 

and cultural communities. She currently plays trumpet in the 

Yale Precision Marching Band and leads La Orquesta Tertulia, 

Yale’s premier salsa and merengue band. Throughout the past 

year, Chakraborty also served as a Peer Liaison with the Asian 

American Cultural Center. This role allowed Chakraborty to 

create the sort of environment she is thankful to have had while 

growing up in California, where her family could celebrate 

their Bengali-American identity. Chakraborty derives immense 

gratification from her role as a Peer Liaison, where she mentors 

first-years and helps them feel at home during their transitions to 

college life. “It has been tremendously rewarding to be involved in 

spaces where people share culture and heritage [...] and to see how 

happy they are to do it,” Chakraborty said. 

Whether as a scientist, volunteer, musician, or mentor, 

Chakraborty has proven herself to be a leader on campus. Through 

her humble work ethic and genuine passion for all that she does, 

Chakraborty exemplifies what it means to make the most of your 

time at Yale. ■ 


Profile 

SHORT 

ELI LUBEROFF 

YC ’09 

BY YUSUF RASHEED 

Eli Luberoff (YC ’09) is the founder of one of the most 

well-known online tools in math education: Desmos, 

the online graphing calculator used by over seventy-five 

million people annually. 

Luberoff ’s inspiration to create Desmos came from his 

exposure to math students who struggled to pay the high cost 

of physical graphing calculators. While at Yale, Luberoff tutored 

students in Westport and volunteered at New Haven public 

schools through the MathCounts Outreach program. Luberoff ’s 

experiences opened his eyes to the financial burden of graphing 

calculators. “It’s completely unacceptable that every other part 

of the technology spectrum has come down so far in cost or 

gone up so far in performance but [graphing calculators] have 

just been frozen in time for thirty years,” Luberoff said. Hoping 

to reduce disparities in access, Luberoff started to consider 

the possibilities of a web-based graphing calculator that was 

accessible, equitable, and convenient. He described the genesis 

of Desmos as an “accidental experiment” rather than a goalfocused 

approach. He had learned to code in the programming 

language C++ in middle school, and the rudimentary graphing 

calculator he created was at first just a passion project. 

In seventh and eighth grade, Luberoff was homeschooled but 

went to UMass Amherst to take math, physics, and language 

courses. Two years later, he started going to Amherst College 

to take courses there, where he was able to study math at a 

much higher level than a high school curriculum. Luberoff 

noted how he was able to build relationships with college 

students and professors much earlier than normal. “Looking 

back, I realize that was just an absolutely absurd opportunity 

that I had that very few people have,” Luberoff said.“And so a 

lot of that motivated the work to say, ‘How can we make public 

education better?’” 

After Yale, Luberoff started to build Desmos. One of the first 

obstacles was procuring funding from investors. “The goals 

that I’ve had have always been different enough from the goals 

of most investors. We never want to advertise. We never want 

to sell user data. We did get really lucky with some investors, 

but I think it was definitely challenging for a long time to 

get people to think that this opportunity was big enough,” 

he said. Luberoff found that educational conferences were 

more receptive to Desmos than technology-focused 

events, which didn’t focus on his mission of increasing 

educational accessibility. 

After some time, Desmos started to take off. “I remember so 

distinctly the first time that I noticed that a couple hundred 

people used [Desmos] that day, and to me, that was completely 

unfathomable. And every year, I would look back and think, 

‘that number was kind of small.’” Now, millions of people use 

the software on any given day, and for more than drawing 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL HAVLAT 

A computer operates the web-based interface of Desmos, while a phone runs the Desmos 

mobile app in the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale. 

pictures using equations, which was its initial appeal to users. 

Desmos’s current business model runs on partnerships, 

which allows organizations and companies to integrate the 

calculator into a curriculum or a test. In fact, Desmos is now 

the official calculator for the SAT. When students open their 

test, they can press a button in the corner that pulls up a secure 

version of Desmos, allowing them to access their saved graphs. 

Desmos is also in “a number of the ACT exams” and fortythree 

out of the fifty state tests. “I’m very, very proud of [this]. 

I think the benefit is that kids can practice for free at home on 

the exact same thing they’re going to see on the test, so it’s a 

more fair and equitable test,” Luberoff said. 

Luberoff and his team have also been working on creating 

new features in Desmos. Due to high demand, they have 

recently released a beta version of 3D graphing at https://www. 

desmos.com/3d. Luberoff said they also have someone on 

their team leading efforts to ensure that visually impaired and 

blind students can use Desmos. “For example, you can take a 

graph and play it as a sound to be able to hear the shape of the 

graph,” Luberoff said. 

Luberoff describes these kinds of accessibility features as his 

favorite thing to demo at conferences because of how they pull 

the audience in. “Most software doesn’t consider people with 

these kinds of accessibility needs, and so when [a software] 

actually does, it’s so transformative,” Luberoff said. “Their 

stories always blow my mind, and those are the ones that just 

make it all worth it.” ■ 


UNVEILING THE UNSEEN 

A REVIEW OF INVISIBILITY: THE HISTORY 

AND SCIENCE OF HOW NOT TO BE SEEN 

BY LEE NGATIA MUITA 

SCIENCE 

F 

or 


most of us, invisibility sounds like a magical superpower. Imagine it: 

you could completely let yourself loose at a party at no risk of finding 

yourself in some Instagram story, sneak into any restricted space and 

gain insights into what is discussed inside private political meetings, or catch 

your partner cheating. The recently published book Invisibility: The History 

and Science of How Not to Be Seen by Gregory Gbur digs into fictional yet 

theoretically realistic depictions of invisibility and its evolution over the years. 

Gbur analyzes many stories about invisibility from writers such as Plato to 

Fitz James O’Brien and finds that invisibility often results in suffering for the 

IN 

invisible characters or those around them. While most of these stories share 

a somewhat grim view, they make the valid point that humans, when freed 

of accountability, tend to indulge their more malevolent and selfish desires to 

others’ detriment—including their own. He even uses these stories, and the 

logic behind them, to speculate that invisibility would be hazardous technology 

to grant to the world as we know it. 

Undoubtedly the most prominent application of invisibility is espionage and 

surveillance: governments and corporations equipped with complete invisibility 

wouldn’t be able to resist infiltrating private spaces and maximizing their 

clandestine operations within national and international spheres. Criminals 

with access to invisibility technology could evade detection and capture by the 

police while pursuing their malicious goals. Conversely, though, invisibility 

could be used to more benevolent ends. People could turn invisible to escape 

dangerous situations and protect themselves. Theater performances could use 

strategic placement and timing of invisibility to revolutionize prop management 

and costume changes. Social organizations could maximize inclusivity because, 

frankly, it would be difficult to keep people out of a space if you could not even 

see them. With all of these considerations, could invisibility technology be in 

our future? 

Practically speaking, achieving optical invisibility is very unlikely. However, 

other forms of invisibility could be developed. Scientists from the University 

of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Hunan Normal University 

have conceptualized imperfect forms of invisibility through methods such as 

thermal cloaking, where heat from a body or machine is redirected so that it 

is invisible to thermal sensors. A team of researchers led by English theoretical 

physicist John Pendry also created cloaks that guide certain wavelengths of 

light and energy around an object to hide it within those spectra: think UV 

invisibility. Additionally, scientists could create a matrix in the ground around a 

city that reflects or interferes with seismic waves, essentially making it invisible 

and impervious to earthquakes. 

Gbur's book illustrates the unexpected ways technology can be utilized 

for better or for worse and shows how much real science can be inspired by 

science fiction. ■ 


INSIDE THE SCIENTIST’S MIND 

EXPLORING “THE LIFE SCIENTIFIC” 

WITH JIM AL-KHALILI ON BBC RADIO 4 

BY ANDRE BOTERO 

From marine conservation to protein folding to the choreography of 

metals, “The Life Scientific” offers an insightful and often surprising 

look into the personal lives and eureka moments of the world’s 

preeminent scientific minds, revealing the stories behind their discoveries. 

Podcast host Jameel Sadik “Jim” Al-Khalili is a British theoretical physicist, 

author, and broadcaster known for his work in quantum physics and nuclear 

reactions. He began broadcasting “The Life Scientific” about two years ago 

to make science accessible and engaging to a broad audience and currently 

averages two million listeners a week. The audience of “The Life Scientific” 

consists of science enthusiasts, students, educators, and anyone who might 

appreciate an insider’s view into science. Guided by Al-Khalili, listeners 

embark on a journey through topics spanning sentient robots, black holes, 

and coral reefs, a coverage reflective of the diversity of the field of science itself. 

Al-Khalili’s dialogue is conversational, and the podcast adopts an 

informative yet approachable tone. His interviews often encompass personal 

anecdotes, nitty-gritty explanations, and broader discussions about the 

implications of his guests’ work. A prime example is an episode with Richard 

Bentall, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Sheffield, that 

emphasized the causes of poor mental health. Bentall talked about prioritizing 

research on the symptoms of mental health disorders rather than solely 

focusing on their causes, as symptoms are more prevalent and concrete for 

evaluation and treatment. Al-Khalili asked very direct questions, translating 

what Bentall detailed into simple words for the layman. Al-Khalili managed 

to inject lightness even into this serious discussion of mental health. In this 

episode, he created a space conducive for Bentall, a renowned psychologist, 

to open up about his struggles. After all, the mark of an exceptional podcaster 

is the ability to both speak and listen. 

“The Life Scientific” is full of these moments of relatability, such as in 

an episode with Jonathan Van-Tam where Al-Khalili compares the effects 

of COVID-19 to soccer teams blowing a game. On an episode with Giles 

THE 

SPOTLIGHT 

Yeo on “how our genes make us fat,” Al-Khalili implemented this technique 

again, telling morbid stories about the history of the human appetite while 

subsequently talking about his “dessert tummy.” 

Al-Khalili’s interviewing prowess keeps his audience coming back. The 

accomplished host understands when to joke about a topic and when to 

strike a more serious tone. He has shown himself to be a virtuoso in the art 

of navigating a dialogue without stealing his guests’ spotlight. His talents 

are recognized by his ever-growing fanbase, and it is no surprise that in just 

two years the podcast has become one of the most appreciated across BBC 

Radio 4. ■ 




COUNTERPOINT 

THE X FACTOR 

Understanding Autoimmune Diseases 

Around the globe, a universal statistic dominates: 

women are more likely than men to experience 

autoimmune diseases including lupus, Sjögren’s 

syndrome, celiac disease, and over eighty others. 

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system 

attacks the healthy cells of the body, destroying healthy 

tissues. In terms of numbers, autoimmune diseases are 

the third most prevalent category of diseases, following 

heart disease and cancer. While most are not fatal, these 

diseases impose limitations on an individual’s health 

and lifestyle, requiring constant treatment and certain 

lifestyle changes. Women make up an overwhelming 

eighty percent of those affected and are thus the primary 

population subjected to the limitations brought by 

autoimmune disease. 

The female and male genotypes are almost 

identical, with twenty-two out of twenty-three pairs 

of chromosomes being indistinguishable between the 

two sexes. The twenty-third pair, however, is different: 

females carry two X chromosomes, while males carry 

one X and one Y chromosome. A recent study, published 

in the scientific journal Cell, suggests that the extra X 

chromosome females bear may explain the higher rates 

of autoimmune diseases observed in women. 

The molecule Xist, a long non-coding RNA, encodes 

proteins that “silence” the second X chromosome. A 

long non-coding RNA molecule is a ribonucleic acid 

that is not translated into a protein—instead, it plays 

a role in regulating gene expression. Hundreds of 

Xist molecules wrap themselves around the second X 

chromosome to completely “turn off” the functionality 

of the chromosome, inducing the inactivation of gene 

expression of the second X chromosome. In some cases, 

if the second X chromosome is not fully inactivated, 

genes can “leak out” and cause excess protein production, 

which can be toxic. 

Scientists have been studying this phenomenon to 

explain the increased rates of autoimmune diseases in 

women. However, Howard Chang, a dermatologist and 

geneticist at Stanford University and the study’s lead 

author, noticed that many of the proteins that assist Xist 

in inactivating the second X chromosome are also key 

proteins present in the development of autoimmune 

diseases. Chang’s team has been investigating the Xist 

By Melda Top 

IMAGE COURTESY OF NDLA 

molecule to explain the emergence of autoimmune 

diseases in women rather than investigating the 

leakage of proteins. In their paper, Chang and his team 

hypothesize that chromosome inactivation, facilitated 

by Xist, plays a substantial role in the development of 

autoimmune disease among women in addition to 

environmental factors. 

To investigate the effect of Xist molecules on the 

development of autoimmune diseases, Chang and 

his team studied a strain of female mice, the control 

group, that were at a high risk of experiencing lupus, 

an autoimmune disorder. Next, they genetically 

engineered male mice, which had a limited risk 

of experiencing lupus, to produce levels of Xist 

comparable to females. As deduced in their hypothesis, 

the male mice showed higher levels of autoimmune 

disease once they produced Xist. 

In previous studies, scientists had observed that 

immune cells known as autoantibodies tended to attack 

large nucleic acid-protein complexes. Chang and his 

team believe that Xist is a component of a large nucleic 

acid-protein complex that triggers immune responses. 

They explained that when a cell dies during tissue injury, 

it splits open and releases the Xist complex into the 

bloodstream. These freely moving Xist molecules, with 

multiple proteins attached to them, come into contact 

with immune cells that produce antibodies against these 

proteins. With sufficient genetic predisposition and 

multiple tissue injuries, Xist becomes a key player in the 

development of autoimmune diseases among women. 

While the Xist molecule, unique to females, is not 

the sole determining factor in the development of 

autoimmune disorders, this new study carries clinical and 

societal implications as it sheds light on the importance of 

sex differences in health. Many modern-day treatments 

of autoimmune diseases directly attack the entire 

immune system. Physicians and scientists can now focus 

their research on the second X chromosome and the Xist 

molecule to create targeted and improved treatments 

for women with autoimmune diseases. Chang’s 

unconventional study, which hypothesized chromosome 

inactivation as the problem, emphasizes the importance 

of further medical research to understand sex-biased 

health in depth. ■ 


One of the foundational values of Yale College is its 

emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. The purpose 

of an interdisciplinary education goes back hundreds 

of years to the idea of Renaissance thinkers—intellectuals 

knowledgeable in many different areas. In practice, some 

students at Yale think about this as simply getting the number 

of distributional requirements needed to graduate and move 

on. Most distributional classes—in Quantitative Reasoning 

or Writing, for example—remain self-contained within 

their departments, with students from different disciplines 

often struggling to integrate what they learn across their 

academic studies. Perhaps the key to not simply requiring, 

but encouraging, interdisciplinary education at Yale starts 

with the instructors. 

Claudia Valeggia, a Yale professor of biological anthropology, 

and Moira Fradinger, a Yale professor of comparative literature, 

met by coincidence at a committee meeting for the Yale Center 

for International and Professional Experience seven years ago. 

Despite their disparate academic fields, they bonded over both 

being Argentinian women with similar worldviews. They 

became determined to co-teach a course. After months of 

brainstorming, inspiration struck from the most unlikely place: 

Valeggia nicked her finger. From that seemingly mundane 

moment, “Blood: Science, Culture, and Society” was born. It 

was first taught in the Spring of 2022 and is currently being 

taught for the second time as a Spring 2024 course offering. 

In their class, Valeggia and Fradinger discuss everything from 

the scientific and cultural origins of the vampire myth to the 

way some cultures assign personality traits to different blood 

types. Both professors and their team of teaching fellows are 

present during lectures, along with occasional guest speakers 

who bring their unique expertise to discussions. This is also 

reflected in the class demographics, with there being an equal 

proportion of STEM, humanities, and social science students. 

This fosters interactive discussions, with everyone, including 

the instructors, sincerely asking questions and openly learning 

from different perspectives. 

CROSS 

BLOOD: SCIENCE, CULTURE, 

AND SOCIETY 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARA DE ÁNGEL 

Moira Fradinger, a professor of comparative literature, presents the topic for 

the day’s lecture: the socially constructed fantasy of a pure race. 


IMAGE COURTESY OF CLAUDIA VALEGGIA 

Claudia Valeggia, a professor of biological anthropology, poses with the friends 

she made during her time in Qom, Iran. 

Both professors cite how much they have learned from each 

other, combining scientific thinking with the human sciences, 

a term Fradinger prefers to use to describe the humanities. 

Fradinger told the story of the first lecture they gave together. 

“Claudia made her slides very straightforwardly, [with] bullet 

points, keywords, and a few images. My slides had paragraphs 

on paragraphs of text,” she said. To Valeggia, this contrast made 

sense in the context of their disciplines. “The nature of STEM 

thinking is to be as concise as possible, to get your point across 

with as few words as possible, but in the human sciences they 

live through the words. You make a STEM student write a thirtypage 

paper, and it’s difficult for them to elongate it,” Valeggia 

said. “And if you made a human sciences student shorten their 

paper to thirty pages, it’s practically torture,” Fradinger added. 

The interdisciplinary nature of the course creates a special 

type of challenge, where all students, no matter their major, 

will encounter pedagogical methods they are unfamiliar with. 

Fradinger and Valeggia expressed that this learning experience 

does not come without some bumps along the road. The result, 

however, is illuminating, with both professors encouraging 

other fellow members of the Yale faculty to consider how they 

can offer interdisciplinary courses. 

“The mutual respect shared between me and Valeggia is 

the foundation of our partnership, with a genuine openness 

to discovering the value of each other’s disciplines,” Fradinger 

said. Valeggia said that the two professors consider themselves 

friends first and colleagues second, which is evident in the 

lively and humorous atmosphere of their lectures. This is 

exactly what the purpose of a liberal arts education is—to 

create an environment where students are encouraged to let 

each others’ differing worldviews influence their own. “Blood: 

Science, Culture, and Society” challenges common attitudes 

among students that distributional requirements are “filler 

classes.” Instead, it suggests that these courses can serve as 

transformative experiences that push students towards being 

Renaissance thinkers, driven by genuine curiosity. ■ 

ROADS 

BY SARA DE ÁNGEL 


Interested in getting involved with 

Yale Scientific 

for writing, production, web, 

business or outreach? 

Learn more at 

yalescientific.org/get-involved

YSM Issue 97.2

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