Extra Credit (4 of 4) – Reclaiming the Public’s Role Event

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On Thursday April 30th, the Fairmount Avenue School hosted a public deliberation-style event about the role citizens play in society. This event was sponsored by the State College Area School District Community Education with The Centre Daily Times and Schlow Library. While the school is about a twenty minute walk away, it was a really interesting event and it was cool getting to hear what people have to say.

The three approaches being discussed were:

  1. Democratic values: educating citizens for social responsibility
  2. Reinventing citizenship: democracy is about working with fellow community members to solve common concerns
  3. By the people: bringing the public back into politics

In the first approach, they talked about how people have become more and more preoccupied with their own personal freedoms that it’s taken away from our sense of democracy and community. When all that people care about is themselves, it undermines the nation’s ability to run as a properly functioning democracy. Going along with this, it was a major topic that schools don’t focus on this like civics anymore, so kids aren’t learning about these kinds of things to start with. Civic issues and learning about civic duty have become truly optional and this is definitely not the way to grow and further the development of a country. The discussion heavily focused on ways schools should try to reintegrate civic learning. However, of course there are the naysayers who say that schools are already trying to do too much for their students and that civic learning should come from the home. This is a major flaw however, because if the student doesn’t come from a morally upstanding family, or even just a family with lesser means, this can greatly hinder their learning experience.

The second approach was interesting because of their take on democracy in that it is not about politics and voting so much as the ability of people to work together on important issues. When people stop making civic connections, at least there’s things like the internet to kind of bring them back together. The main thing here was just getting people to stay connected with each other in a way that will keep them civically engaged in order to further our democracy and get it back on track.

Lastly, the third approach was about the role of the government and how sorely it needs to be reformed before any major change can be accomplished. The government isn’t “for the people” anymore the way it was originally intended to be. Rather, it’s a mess of politicians and partisan divisions – the people have lost control. In order to bring about a change radical enough to remedy this issue, huge efforts must be made. Many different political/policy-based changes were mentioned and discussed during this part of the event

Overall, this was an interesting topic and it’s definitely hugely relevant. I think State College is a great place to have an event like this because it’s a residential area for families and elderly people, but is also obviously a huge, bustling college town. College students are at the height of their personal knowledge and development and are in the best position to learn and go forward with what they’ve gained.

Extra Credit (3 of 4) – Extra Deliberation

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I went to a deliberation on different energy sources used in Pennsylvania concerning how things should be managed now as well as in the future. This wasn’t one of Dr. J’s class’s deliberations, it was one of my friend’s class’s, and if I’m being completely honest I was not at all interested in the topic…but it still a pretty solid deliberation. This was actually the first one I went to (and this is my extra credit blog on it).

The three approaches they discussed were:

  1. Current Sources
  2. Fracking
  3. Taking on renewable energy resources

In the first approach, the main things they discussed were coal and nuclear power as energy sources. Pennsylvania holds one of the nation’s leading coal-mining industries as well as the world’s first large scale nuclear power plant. According to the numbers given, energy used in Pennsylvania in 2013 came 40% from coal and 35% from nuclear power. Coal is absolutely vital for our state’s economy, but is also a non-sustainable and ecologically unfriendly way to provide power.

The second approach talked about what fracking is and does as well as its implications. Fracking is the process of extracting underground resources using hydraulics. Fluid is pumped into Marcellus Shale, causing it to crack and release the natural gasses trapped inside. Since the early 2000’s fracking wells have popped up all over the country, many of which are in Pennsylvania. However, fracking is really controversial because of the way it uses and pollutes water. There was discussion on how bad fracking really is because while there is a lot of data out there, a lot of it is also just political propaganda.

Lastly, the third approach was on finding alternative, renewable energy resources. The way things are going for now is working, but will not be sustainable for very long. Fossil fuels are running out, but there are things like hydroelectric power and wind power that are perfectly sustainable and also leave a much smaller carbon footprint. With these types of energy, there is no problematic waste and it can be regenerated quickly too. The drawbacks, however, are that these are expensive methods that would require a huge political push to become more mainstream. Things like solar power are also somewhat unreliable. This was the most productive part of the deliberation because people were talking about ideas for the future instead of dwelling on problems and issues that have already been happening.

This is an extremely relevant topic because energy is such a hot-button issue in society and because Pennsylvania is such a hugely important place for many of the crucial energy sources. However, this is also a topic that the majority of people have limited knowledge on. There were a few people in the discussion who definitely had a lot of knowledge on the topic and they were the biggest contributors to the conversation aside from the people whose deliberation it was. Most of the other people there, myself included, were just spectators because we didn’t know enough about the topic at hand to intelligently contribute.

Extra Credit (2 of 4) – Earth Day Rap

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An Earth Day rap? My first thought was what the hell? Who would ever make such a thing? But after experiencing this 90’s video, it was definitely a sight to see and it was actually kind of interesting with a bunch of rhetorical devices mixed in (also mixed in with the likes of Will Smith, Queen Latifa, and Ice T).

Back in its heyday I’m sure this was a pretty effective video. You’ve got the big names, the big culture, the “new age” feel. As it was an MTV video after all, the target audience was definitely the younger generation. Applying serious information to a casual, pop-culturally familiar setting definitely makes it easier to swallow while grabbing the attention of the people who will one day have the most power to do something about it.

However, the fact that it is indeed a rap means that some people won’t quite understand the words and the message will be lost. In congruence with this, this video is definitely completely lost on the older generations. At this point, they would’ve looked down on the culture as well in addition to not being able to understand the words – even today, I know for a fact my dad doesn’t understand the words to most songs (though he thinks he does and attempts to sing his own words anyways). Another strange thing about this video is its setting. The random dark alley, the bookstore in the back, the old white people watching and dancing along, the list of non sequiturs goes on.  The different aspects of the scene just don’t piece together in any type of cohesive manner, but maybe they were hoping you’d be too enraptured by the rap itself to notice.

Although, I will admit I was impressed by the actual information relayed in the rap. I never realized that people were ecologically conscious in the nineties too. I was under the impression that nowadays being eco-friendly and kind to the earth was making a modern comeback after being birthed by the hippies. In one way it’s nice to see that it’s actually been around for a longer amount of time. But it’s also kind of disheartening that these kinds of messages were around even in the nineties but mass actions weren’t being taken until recent years.

Overall, I’d say I have mixed feelings about this video. If it really is just the thought that counts, then this Earth Day Rap would definitely be successful. But…when it comes to things as big as this, the thought is nice, but it’s the actions that really count. Maybe the message got through to some people and maybe they even made some kind of lifestyle change because of it. But, this was the nineties and any kind of ecologically conscious change would’ve been a lot harder to make, and most people didn’t really see it as a huge concern anyways. You still have to give them props though; say the big names of today came together and made a rap about global warming. That would be ridiculed and satirized to no end. Say what you will about the nineties, but I think people were definitely less judgmental and a bit more tolerant!

Extra Credit (1 of 4) – Sizzler Video

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The Sizzler promo video has to be one of the cheesiest videos ever. It’s clear to see why the restaurant chain is no longer relevant, but a quick google search will show you that they actually do still exist on the west coast (and there’s also one on Long Island). This has got to be one of the longest commercial/promo videos out there, really it’s almost an infomercial. People think the eighties were cheesy…well someone should show them this 1991 video. But I digress; anyways, as funny and overdone as this video is, it is also extremely rhetorically charged.

Strongly utilizing nationalism and patriotic pride, this video is chock-full of independence, freedom, and good ol’ Murica. A little girl hits a ball with a baseball bat in the true American spirit of the traditional national favorite sport. This classic image represents convention, implying that American families make it a tradition to come dine at Sizzler. The sailor parting with his girlfriend elicits an emotional response from the audience, appealing to their pathos. It can be assumed that he is going off to war, defending his country after one last brunch at Sizzler with his sweetheart. This image also evokes patriotism, further associating the chain with good old American freedom. There’s also the elderly couple watching a child, presumably their grandchild. Maybe they taught him how to ride that bike. Either way, this image furthers the idea of tradition and the timeless joy of eating at Sizzler.

In addition to the strong visual rhetoric, there is also exceptionally rhetorically strong audio. The main narration is done by a man who offers a sort of ethical appeal with his strong, steady, basically patriotic tone. This is the voice of a person the American people will listen to – the voice of a man who would never spends his Sunday afternoons doing anything but eating brunch at Sizzler. In his dialogue, the word freedom is repeated at least ten times (if I can count) through his emphasis on liberty and all things stereotypically American. There is also the choir singing in the background which adds a righteous as well as a communal effect to the video. Choral music is often associated with religious services and gives the video an air of virtue, furthering the wholesome image they are trying to present. The communal effect comes from the fact that choirs are made up of so many people, it’s almost like anyone can join in, start singing, and come join them at brunch.

The happy smiling people are having a great time at Sizzler, surrounded by loved ones and people of all ages and races as well as a wholesome meal. Having this feature in the video promotes the idea that this could be you too, if only you were at Sizzler too!

Immigrants Today – CI Blog (the forgotten #5)

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When you picture the stereotypical American, you probably envision some middle aged chubby white guy holding a large fries and a diet coke with an American flag waving majestically behind him. No? Okay maybe that’s just me… But around the world Americans are generalized as being white, or Caucasian, or of European descent – whatever you wanna call it. But now more than ever, this is just so untrue.

The Migration Policy Institute has a webpage entirely devoted to “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States” (the stats were all taken in 2013, so they aren’t completely up to date, but they’re still pretty close). From this page, I came to learn that “approximately 80 million persons, or one-quarter of the overall U.S. population” are immigrants/their children. This is compared to 1850 where there were “2.2 million immigrants in the United States, representing almost 10 percent of the total population”. A closer look into the demographics of today’s immigrants reveals that most immigrants today are from Mexico, followed by India and then China. They found that the average age of immigrants now is older than the average age of the US population (43 verses 35). Of the entire foreign-born population, almost half identify as white and about a quarter as Asian.

The numbers alone are enough to show that America is still the ever growing melting pot it started out as. Lately in the media there has been more and more unrest between races in our country; an issue that should really be long behind us. The United States of America is very clearly so much more than just the Caucasian people who seemingly dominate the highest positions in society.  In the past year alone there has been so much unrest caused by racial tensions. These inextricable events show just how deeply some sentiments can be, and how not even years of progress can completely erase them.

It is a lot harder for immigrant Americans and first generation Americans to move up and through the rankings of society than it is for people who’ve been here for generations. This is partly because immigrants don’t have the connections or family legacy that more established citizens do, but another part of it is definitely directly due to their “newness,” naivety, and the way that the current American citizens view them. However, the same thing applies to people of color as well. And even immigrants who appear Caucasian but have a foreign accent will still suffer from whatever social stigma their differences seem to bring. In addition to this struggle, people often openly hate on Mexican immigrants in particular for coming and “taking jobs” from current citizens. I personally have mixed feelings on the issue because, yes they are taking jobs, but at the same time those are the morals on which America was built in the first place and who are we to try to shun people now?

Now, people like President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are people of color as well as immigrants/first generation. This just goes to show that yes, of course it is possible to defy the odds and come out on top. However, the amount of hard work needed and all of the obstacles you’d face are extreme. Going forward, hopefully these differences will lessen and be a lot less relevant in society. In order to achieve this we need flexible leaders who are willing to work for the change they want to see without being afraid of radical traditionalists. Of course, there are also situations where people just get lucky, but there’s still enough good in the world that talent and skill are usually recognized and duly rewarded – regardless of race, status, country of origin, or any other kind of bias.

 

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states

http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/communique/2009/08/minority-leader.aspx

An AIDS vaccine??

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HIV has long been seen as unavoidable after exposure to it. Millions of people worldwide have this disease and, until now, there hasn’t been a whole lot that can be done about curing and internally it. Treatments have been developed over the past few decades to suppress the effects of HIV/AIDS, but so far all they have been able to do it prolong the lives of patients while attempting to raise their quality of life. Now, doctors are hopeful that they may have a new drug on their hands that could even serve as a vaccine against HIV, thereby preventing AIDS as well. Vaccines work by helping your body develop a sort of immunity to a given pathogen. They do this by introducing either dead, inactivated, and even live strains of infectious particles and getting the body to respond by making antibodies against them.

During HIV infection, antibodies capable of neutralizing the pathogen are actually made. They are actually the things that recognize the part of a virus that allows it to get into a host cell and then block its entry. They also help block cell-to-cell infection. However, these antibodies are quickly wiped out as the infection takes over. Scientists have been able to isolate and clone the important genes found in these antibodies. The one being used in particular is known as 3BNC117, and is capable of neutralizing more than eighty percent of the virus samples they tested, but is also just one of 500 antibodies scientists had to screen.

To test its effectiveness scientists infused 3BNC117 at different doses to look for positive or negative reactions within the body. The highest dose of infusion, equal to half a teaspoon of antibody, was well-tolerated in the body and actually was found to be neutralizing HIV. The amount of virus circulating in the patients’ blood was found to be in a range between 8 and 300 times less than it was before introducing the antibody. Of course some patients had varying viruses that escaped the neutralizing power of the antibody. This is because 3BNC117 isn’t an all-encompassing treatment, but was still found to be effective.

Because the highest testable dose of 3BNC117 was needed to obtain positive results, they know that a lot of this antibody is going to be needed for this to become a mainstream treatment. However, isolating and replicating such a specific molecule is a very expensive and time consuming task. Despite the twenty percent of virus samples that were unaffected by infusion, this is still really good news. Scientists are still unaware of what results would look like if patients were undergoing continuous treatment as well. They think that using this antibody in combination with existing drug therapy for HIV/AIDS could be the way to go one day.

This study was done in people who already have HIV, but it left scientists thinking about the bigger picture. If a vaccine could be made that contained 3BNC117, it could potentially protect people from HIV infection. We can’t quite call this a cure just yet, but it seems like we are definitely one step closer to finally beating HIV.

Geographic Tongue

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When you wake up in the morning, or late at night, you might find a weird coating on your tongue that tends to give you bad breath. Now imagine Geographic Tongue (GT), which is a medical condition where the surface of the tongue is damaged in patterns that resemble an evolving map. This is because tiny papillae on the very surface are damaged by expanding inflammation. Any further causes are currently unknown. However, people who do have it say that it tends to get worse when they are under increased amounts of psychological stress. While it looks weird, this is actually harmless and is thought to affect two percent of the population. Many people panic, but it is important to realize that this is not indicative of any worse disease like oral cancer (they used to think GT was associated with things like diabetes and dermatitis). Because it is so rare, it is usually lumped in and associated with diseases like psoriasis.

It happens the way a forest fire occurs, once it has started, it moves along to fresh areas until it has taken as much as it can. This is known as an excitable media dynamic, however GT is a chronic condition that will keeping happening over time.

Taking a dynamical systems approach to GT enabled us to classify the severity of the condition, based on the patterns observed on the tongue of a GT patient. Typically GT-affected tongues fall into two main categories. The first corresponds to oblate patterns that expands and merges with other growing oblate regions. In this case, like with forest fires, the tongue is gradually affected but then subsequently heals. Another more “exotic” form of the condition involves patterns consisting of open-ended tips, most notably spirals, which can evolve into the recovering regions of the tongue.

As the spiral pattern evolves, its arm rotates and continuously affects recovering regions. This self-sustaining characteristic might hinder the tongue from healing and so cause a more acute condition, which will linger for longer periods of time before the tongue is completely healed.

There is no given cure for GT as of now, because it’s not really a huge problem. People who have it may have a burning sensation on the tongue, and there are a few treatments for that, but they haven’t been very effective so far.

The Immigrant Struggle (CI)

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Throughout American history, immigrants have had to face very many different issues. I came across an article that touches on a lot of difficulties they’ve had to face categorized by different time periods and found it fascinating. With every new wave of people brings new challenges, customized by their preexisting cultures.

Starting with our founding fathers in the late 1700’s, the Alien and Sedition acts. This happened during a tense period in French history, when a lot of people were trying to find asylum here instead. However, these acts changed the amount of time needed to become a US citizen to a whole fourteen years (up from five), as well as allowing the president Jon Adams to deport anyone thought to be a “danger” to the United States By the turn of the century, this had died down quite a bit, but viciously sprung up again years later when the number of German and Irish immigrants spiked.

The aforementioned time frame is known as the Antebellum period. The German and Irish families were leaving their home countries for a number of reasons, including everything from famine to political repression. In the mid-1800’s some ignorant anti-immigrant Americans got together and formed the secret “Know-Nothings” political group. Despite all being children and grandchildren of immigrants themselves, the Know-Nothings believed that native born Americans such as themselves were markedly superior to the new immigrants to tended to be poorer than them and also Catholic. Throughout this time, Irish people became “economic scapegoats” when the economy got bad. This discrimination would not come to pass until after the Civil war when cultural communities became more established throughout the country.

In the industrial revolution, many immigrants came from Asia as well as Eastern and Southern Europe. The gold rush and many new railroad projects drew in millions of new immigrant workers, hoping to find a better life for themselves and their families. This upset a lot of people who felt that job opportunities were being taken away from current American citizens, sparking the Chinese Exclusion Act. From here through the 1920’s millions of immigrants came to America and formed cultural communities wherever they could in order to avoid discrimination and attacks by anti-immigrant mobs. During this time period, it is also estimated that over four million immigrants came over from Italy, and almost one million from the economically struggling and repressed Poland.

All this wasn’t bad enough, however. Anti-immigrant feelings peaked again after the First World War New laws put quotas on how many people from different countries could move here, and this heavily dampened immigration for quite some time. It was during this time that the “cultural communities” of previous eras became truly established and developed into what we are familiar with today: Chinatowns, Little Italy’s, Polish communities, etc. Many of the American soldiers who fought in WWII were the direct descendants of these immigrants and they served our country to their full capacity.

All of these are more legal challenges that immigrants had to face, not to mention the psychological aspect of leaving everything you’ve ever known behind to start your life over in a foreign land, and the emotional aspect of being physically rejected by the people of this new place. Immigration is still a hot-button topic today in the United States of America, and one would hope that people would be less prejudiced and against it than before, yet grand problems still exist. As new generations of immigrants enter into American life, many of the controversies and tensions evident in previous periods might again become apparent.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/immigration/pdf/teacher_guide.pdf

Frozen II (it’s not a musical, but it still has a happy ending)

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In recent news, an almost-two-year-old little boy was revived nearly two hours after falling into icy thirty four degree waters and being swept a quarter mile downstream. Once he was found after maybe half an hour in the water, he wasn’t breathing and also didn’t have a pulse. As soon as emergency responders arrived they started CPR, a pretty standard procedure especially for people without breathing/pulse in drowning situations. CPR continued on the way to the hospital, but the boy still didn’t have a pulse when they got there and his body temperature was a startling 77 degrees (normal is 98.6, and humans aren’t very tolerant of big body temperature changes). Resuscitation attempts continued as doctors also gave him fluids in an attempt to raise his body temperature. Doctors decided to put him on a heart bypass machine as well. Twenty minutes later, they could finally detect a pulse. After an hour and forty one minutes and many many helpers, the child’s heart was finally beating on its own. Eventually his body temperature also normalized so doctors were able to give him blood pressure medication and also put him on a ventilator to maintain breathing. The boy actually woke up early the next morning and miraculously made it out with no neurological damage. Five days later he was able to leave the hospital and is now completely back to normal, as the healthy and happy little two year old he should be.

So how did such a small child survive such an ordeal? How did his little body (and brain especially) escape unscathed? Well scientists are saying it’s actually because of his young age as well as the extreme temperature of the water. Drowning/staying submerged in water can be extremely damaging to your brain and heart due to the lack of oxygen. But, really cold water triggers the “diving effect” that helps the body conserve oxygen by slowing down your heart and shifts blood flow to other important parts of the body. Funnily enough, this effect is actually a lot stronger in kids than it is in adults. Being in and also swallowing cold water are known to trigger things like hypothermia. But at body temperatures below 86 degrees, the brain’s tissues become less susceptible to hypoxia because oxygen and energy consumption becomes reduced by almost half. The body’s regulatory mechanisms aren’t fully developed in young children such as this boy. This is one way his age could have also been detrimental. And not only do children have less developed body systems, but also a much higher surface area to body mass ratio as well as less fat than adults. These factors put together mean that they will cool much faster than an adult in addition to their less efficient thermoregulation. The human body is full of amazing regulatory mechanisms that keep us functioning second to second and day to day. We really take most of them for granted because they seem so simple and trivial, yet there are still so many that most people don’t even know about and all of which we would be totally doomed without.

 

Who run the world? (Girls)

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Today’s passion blog is gonna be a little bit different than usual. Instead of a medical advance, we’re going to take a look back into the history of modern science. So, in honor of International Women’s Day last week and in the same realm as my usual blog topic, here are nine kickass women scientists and some of their accomplishments:

Marie Curie – Duh, everyone knows about Madame Curie. She was a Polish physicist who worked alongside her husband (not as his assistant or secretary, but as equals) to discover the radioactive elements polonium and radium. She won the Nobel Prize for physics and then eight years later won it again for chemistry. She was the first scientist, on top of the fact that she’s a woman, to win a Nobel Prize more than once.

Rachel Carson – Less known than Madame Curie, Carson was a marine biologist and conservationist. She had the foresight to write about the dangers of pesticides all the way back in the early 1900’s and her worked helped to ignite the global environmental movement from then on.

Rosalind Franklin – Watson and Crick did not discover the double helix shape of DNA. It was actually biophysicist Franklin who took the x-ray crystallography pictures of DNA. Watson and Crick later used her work to make their model of DNA, yet somehow they get all the credit while her work seems to fall to the wayside.

Maxine Singer – She was a molecular biologist and science administrator. Her work helped unlock secrets and led to discoveries about the genetic codes. She also spurred debate and discussions concerning the ethics of DNA research, testing, and things like genetic engineering.

Lise Meitner – We’ve all heard of Oppenheimer, the mastermind behind the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb, but none of those discoveries would have been possible without Meitner, the Austrian physicist and co-discoverer of nuclear fission. Her partner, a man named Otto Hahn, won the Nobel Prize for their work — she did not. As a historical consolation prize for being ignored is Element 109, Meitnerium, which is named after her.

Rita Levi-Montalcini – She was an Italian neurologist who discovered nerve growth factor with her partner Stanley Cohen. Together, they won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine.

Jane Goodall – The world famous primatologist, ethnologist, and anthropologist is also a UN Messenger of Peace. Her extensive work with the behavior and sociology of chimpanzees set the benchmark for the way primate life is viewed and studied.

Maria Mitchell – An astronomer, she was the first woman to ever become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She used a telescope in the 1800’s to discover what became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet”.

Shirley Ann Jackson – She is a theoretical physicist as well as being the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her work with Bell Labs is responsible for things like caller-ID and call waiting. In addition to this, she is also the first African-American woman to earn a PhD from MIT.

I hope you got something out of this, cause I definitely did!