The redefinition of the salad-making worker is upon us. Heralded by Sweetgreen, what once was a person in a plain Sweetgreen uniform now has the potential to be a singular robotic arm. In 2021, Sweetgreen acquired Spyce, a robotically staffed, automated restaurant. Together with Spyce, technology is being developed to roboticize Sweetgreen’s salad-making experience.
Donating blood — it’s a simple act that can save a life, or several. Yet, current Food and Drug Administration regulations require that gay and bisexual men only donate blood under the condition that they have not engaged in sexual intercourse with another man for the past three months. This restriction, a product of the 1980s AIDS crisis, precedes the widespread research and education regarding the AIDS and HIV now available. This outdated policy has drastically reduced the amount of possible blood donors across the United States, along with the number of possible lives that could be saved.
On Oct. 5, 2022, Nicole Mann became the first Native American woman to launch into space. Born in Petaluma, Calif., Mann is a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes. Her astronaut career began at the United States Naval Academy where she studied mechanical engineering and went on to earn a master's degree from Stanford University. In 2013, Mann was selected for NASA's 21st astronaut class, where she underwent extensive training in International Space Station Systems, robotics, spacewalks and much more. Last fall, Mann launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center in the Dragon Endurance Spacecraft as SpaceX's first woman commander. This endeavor took her and her crew to the International Space Station, where, on Jan. 20, 2023, Mann became the first Indigenous woman to venture out on a spacewalk to prep the ISS for more solar panels.
For the first time ever, a vaccine has been approved for insects.
The Daily sat down with environmental engineering major Kyrielle Lord, a junior, for a conversation about environmental activism and Lord’s Tisch Summer Fellowship with the Mystic River Watershed Association.
Lab grown meat used to be something out of a science fiction movie, but Tufts has been at the forefront of progress to make it a reality. In 2021, the United States Department of Agriculture awarded Tufts a $10 million grant which helped found the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. The Center for Cellular Agriculture is a partnership across multiple different Tufts schools, with researchers who specialize in tissue engineering, nutrition and livestock. In October, the center announced the creation of the TUCCA Consortium, which will see Tufts partner with different companies and nonprofits to solve fundamental challenges in developing lab-grown meat.
The path of life is a whirlwind, filled with the good, the bad and the ugly. But the memories you make along the way are what make you who you are. But somewhere down the road, you have lost that part of you, because the very memories that built your foundation have dissipated. This is the reality for more than 6 million Americans who have lost who they are and who they were to become due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The word “physics” alone is enough to make many students flinch. But quantum physics…
Trigger warning for all vampires — look away and avoid the urge to count. Continue reading and be stuck with numbers for a while!
What do encrypted messages, recognizing speech commands and running simulations to predict the weather have in common? They all rely on matrix multiplication for accurate calculations. DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company, recently developed a faster algorithm to conduct matrix multiplications based on deep reinforcement learning. This recent auto-discovery of an efficient algorithm in mathematics by another machine learning algorithm expands the purview of the uses and applications of machine learning.
The issue of the workplace’s impact on workers’ physical and emotional health has been a topic of discussion largelynot part of the portfolio of the Office of the Surgeon General. That was the standard until a recent report was released on Oct. 20, 2022, by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.
The fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears teaches young kids about the sweet spots of life. From that favorite chair to the perfect temperature of food, sweet spots can be found everywhere. Did you know there’s a sweet spot of “just right” in our emotions as well?
Maybe you’ve heard about the lack of female representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines or the gender pay gap that still lingers in many STEM fields today. However, a gender equity issue in STEM that gets talked about a lot less frequently is a phenomenon known as the citation gap.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three pioneering scientists for their work in a remarkable new area of research. The award was given to Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless. Bertozzi is the first openly gay woman to win a Nobel prize, and this is Sharpless’ second Nobel prize, which makes him one of five people to have won twice.
If you’re passionate about baseball and are familiar with the history of the sport, you may be familiar with the player Babe Ruth and his record of 714 home runs set in 1934. This record stood strong until Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run in 1974 — a historic day for baseball and an inquisitive day for mathematicians.
I stared blankly at my phone as I read an incoming message, “Sorry, I forgot the dirt.” I was devastated. I really needed that bag of dirt. I had asked my friend to pack me a bag of soil when he was away in New Jersey for the weekend. Inside that bag would have been an assortment of bacteria, too numerous to count, fighting with each other for space and resources.
What do a non-stick pan, a raincoat and a medical stent have in common? They all have water-repelling properties that resist water uptake or degradation by hydrolysis. Hydrophobicity, the capacity to not interact with water, is important as we are consistently in contact with water in the external environment and inside our cells.
Harvard Medical school recently conducted an extensive trial of the bionic pancreas, a device that uses cutting-edge technology to automatically deliver insulin to the human body.
Adderall, the drug used to treat the most commonly diagnosed mental disorder in American children, is currently in short supply. Pharmaceutical companies are reporting that they are unable to supply Adderall, which is used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Lower temperatures and changing leaves signal the coming of fall, a season of apple picking, pumpkin spice lattes and Halloween movies. The colder months also bring with them an unwelcome guest: influenza season. This year’s flu season is expected to be worse than past winters according to forecasts based on patterns in Australia and New Zealand. Experts look toward countries in the southern hemisphere to predict the upcoming season because winter runs from April to October. According to government surveillance reports, Australia had its worst flu season in five years this year, with an early onset and a peak that was three times higher than average. Public health experts are worried that, along with a COVID-19 peak predicted in early December, two circulating respiratory viruses will be problematic for an already weakened hospital system and are emphasizing that people take the flu season seriously.
