Madelyn Perkovich

     This one hits a bit closer to home, being that this search for dark matter is taking place directly under the Black Hills. A team of scientists are plunging underground the Homestake gold mine in Lead. Reason being, in the late 60's, Ray Davis visited the site in search for particles with no electrical charge, called neutrinos. When he found them, the site was named the Davis site, and people came to realize that to discover more about the universe, you may just have to travel farther from it. Other places around the globe are setting up similar labs, about 4,000 feet under the earth. Students from SDSMT are even involved, and they are getting closer to a breakthrough.

Scientists from Curtin university have stated that Mars has been too dry for millions of years to support life. The rover on Mars has proved from the surface of the planet that it is, and has been, too dry. They ran several experiments, one including the formation of rust, to determine the moisture levels on Mars. What they found was that the ratio of rust formation was one to four fewer than Antarctica. Since Antarctica is the driest place on earth, it is confirmed that mars is too arid to support life.

Today I read that there is actually a mutation in some peoples genes that causes sleep disorders. For some people, they absolutely cannot sleep until very late hours. This is a form of insomnia, but not the typical case. For these people, their brains do not produce melatonin for hours after the typical person. When scientists studies a woman for 18 days, her sleep habits were very late and restless. What they found, was a mutation in a gene called cry1 , which her family members with sleep problems also reported.

    In todays reading, I read about albanism. More importantly, the terrible things albinos face in Africa. In Africa, albinos are being mutilated and murdered for their body parts. In Tanzania especially, these terrible things are more common. The reason for these brutalities is because in Africa, an ablinos Skin, hair, and blood are believed to have magical powers. people will weave the hair into fishing nets ect. In short, Albanism is a mutation that effects the loss of pigmentation in the cells. It can lead to loss of vision, and extreme sun damage. There have been over 40 murders of Albinos since 2007, and this is terrible.

Madelyn Perkovich    Recently, scientists have been exploring new ways to protect skin against the sun, and synthetic melanin may be one of the new breakthroughs. Synthetic melanin could act as a new sunscreen! Scientists bathed dopamine and made melanin-like nano particles. When the particles were incubated in a petri dish, they attached and absorbed into the skin cells like natural melanin, which could mean better protected skin cells, and less skin cancer. I think this is an incredible discovery. The only question left unanswered for me is, would the synthetic melanin change the color of the skin? If so, how much?