Different generations can’t understand each other when it comes to technology.

When older professors discuss the joys of computer programming on punched cards, I nod periodically and feign interest, but secretly send texts under the table.

Soon enough, however, it will be us spouting technological trivialities on the next generation’s deaf ears. In fact, it’s already happening to me. A friend asked me recently if I knew about 8-tracks, and I replied in the affirmative: “Yes, of course, apparently they were quite useless because they jammed all the time.” It turned out she was referring to the internet radio site, 8tracks.com, not the obsolete sound recording technology I assumed we were discussing.

While few will feel regret as 8-tracks fade from memory, there are a number of much loved gadgets, revolutionary in their day, which will never be known by future generations. The rise of cell phones is bringing about the fall of wrist watches, themselves responsible for shoving pocket watches off the world stage. Future generations may wonder: What is that thing the white rabbit keeps looking at? Why would Dumbledore have to wind his cell phone?

Just as we smile bemusedly at the mention of floppy discs, tomorrow’s youth will return blank stares at references to encyclopedia sets. Think back to your first memory of reading: it probably involves a book that was used, shared, or gifted. E-books could spell the end of book exchanges between travellers in hostels, lending a favourite book to someone you know will appreciate it, and getting the feel of where a book has been by touching its pages.

Photography is an even sharper example of the shift from hard copy to digital. It is not uncommon to see seven-year-olds toting around iPhones and taking pictures at arm’s length. How many will grow up without the memory of looking through a viewfinder, or winding film? Will any of them experience the magic of an image suddenly materializing out of nothing on a blank page in a dark room, or the anticipation of taking in a completed roll to be developed, and the surprise at getting the photos back?

The benefits of new, innovative technologies are obvious and numerous; but respect is owed to the various successes and failures along the way. Those intermediaries made the improved, more efficient versions of today possible.

In the words of Terry Pratchett, author of Discworld: “It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”

It turns out your high school science teacher was wrong. While evolution can seem like a random series of events, some researchers are arguing that there may be a non-random, or even predictable, aspect to the process.

Ehad Abouheif, Canada research chair in evolutionary developmental biology, and associate professor of biology at McGill, conducts research on ants and the nature of evolution. Ants are ideal for study because they have a complex social hierarchy—workers, soldiers, queens—as well as great diversity, with over 15,000 species.

“Because they are so dramatic, they make phenomenons that are often hard to see in other organisms [obvious], and bring out effects that you could easily miss with a solitary creature,”Abouheif said.

One of his main projects involves super solider ants, vastly larger and stronger than regular soldier ants (the colony protectors), these insects were discovered in the colonies of several species in Arizona. However, Abouheif stumbled upon super soldiers in ant colonies in Long Island, nearly 4,000 km from Arizona. He began studying these colonies, hoping to discover the trait that triggers the transformation.

Abouheif injected larvae with growth hormones at different points in their development, and eventually found the critical moment when the the super soldier gene could be activated. Rather than developing into small, short-lived worker ants, these larvae grew into giant super soldiers. Furthermore, Abouheif found that while few had these giants in their natural colonies, many species of ant larvae could successfully become super soldiers in the lab.

“[Historically], there were super soldiers,” Abouheif said. “Then somewhere in evolution, [ants] lost the phenotypic expression of them, but they retained this potential to produce them; that given some kind of environmental stress, with hormones and nutrition […] you can get the super soldiers to pop out.”

This discovery reinforced Abouheif’s belief that environmental cues play a crucial role in genetic expression, and that freak ants reveal a hidden evolutionary potential that may be present in all species. As humans ingest an increasing amount of growth hormone in food, we could potentially unlock traits only seen in our ancestors.

Another piece of this evolutionary puzzle arose in separate research. Abouheif found an unusual trait in a species of tropical ants: their heads were split down the middle, with one half male and the other female. In another case, the heads were half worker, and half soldier.

Abouheif uncovered a seven-year-old report of the split-head ants on a completely different continent, in a separate species of ant. Digging through older literature, Abouheif came across even more examples.

The split-head trait cannot be entirely genetic, says Abouheif. It is not only due to a mutation in the genome, but also some environmental factor which is changing the way in which the genes are expressed. The fact that this trait occurred and survived in so many isolated colonies was telling to Abouheif.

“We [are] seeing this really rare thing that’s revealing a deep predictability about evolution.”

Discoveries like these are changing assumptions about the random nature of evolution. Super soldiers “are not totally bizarre, random freaks,” but the result of genes from an organism’s ancestry reacting to environmental stimuli.

If evolution is not entirely random, then the ability to predict patterns in genes’ expression will allow for a greater understanding of all organisms, Abouheif says.

“Who knows what kind of potentials we could be activating in humans, other animals, all kinds of things.”

Most people associate chemistry with toxic fumes and caustic materials. The Green Chemistry movement, which began in the 1990s, is working to change both the perception and the reality of the field.

  Dr. Audrey Moores, an assistant professor in the McGill department of chemistry, focuses on green chemistry in her research.

“What green chemistry proposes is [that] when you do chemistry, you have to think about health, the environment, and you have to try and design new things that will take this into account much better.”

On September 13, Moores gave a presentation on green chemistry, nanoparticles, and catalysis in the Fall edition of Soup and Science, a lunch lecture series by McGill professors held each semester. Last week, she sat down with the Tribune to discuss her research and the green chemistry philosophy.

“Chemistry used to be focused only on the chemical equation of a chemical reaction itself. Now, it’s considering everything around it:  where are my starting materials coming from? Where is my product going? Where is my waste going? And so on.”

In her lab, Moores’ work focuses on trying to find and design recyclable catalysts. A catalyst is a substance that, when added to a chemical process, makes it more efficient. For example, platinum is a catalyst used in cars to speed up the conversion of carbon monoxide, a toxic gas, into the less harmful carbon dioxide.

“If you have a catalyst, you need to make sure it can be recovered after the reaction and can be reused again and again,” Moores said.  “In trying to design new catalysts, one of the things we use [are] nanoparticles.”

Due to their small size (between 100 and one nm in diameter), each nanoparticle has a high surface area, making them ideal catalysts.

Moores’ lab is focusing on using iron to replace palladium in hydrogenation reactions. Hydrogenation, or the addition of hydrogen to any molecule, is used in many different applications: in the food industry, hydrogenation is used to make margarine.

The problem with using palladium in the reaction is the potential for leaching. The FDA, European Union, and other bodies strongly regulate the quantity of noble metals, like palladium,  in food and pharmacuticals because of their negative health effects.

Iron is a safer alternative and is less likely to leach into the final product. For example, because iron is magnetic, catalysts can be easily extracted  from the lab’s final product. Another huge point in iron’s favour is price: one kilogram of palladium sells for $2,116.44 while the same quantity of iron sells for $0.12.

Finding better alternatives—such as iron instead of palladium—is the goal of green chemistry. However, this process is not always simple.

A big issue in green chemistry is the process of ‘green washing’ or ‘green sheen.’ This is a term for projects in which more money or time has been spent on advertising ‘greenness’ than on environmentally sound practices.

“We want to equip our students with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions about what is green and what’s not,” said Moores.

Undergraduate students interested in learning more about green chemistry can take CHEM 462, taught by Moores and Professor Chao-Jun Li. The course, Green Chemistry, is offered in the Fall semester, and covers topics such as renewable feedstocks, catalysts and reagents, biocatalysis. It provides students with the opportunity to study in an ever-evolving field.

“We use the term green chemistry, but it really we should call that greener chemistry, because there’s no end to it.” Moores said. “It’s a work in progress.”