Monthly Archives: October 2015

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DDT and the Environment in the 20th Century

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DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was a popularly used insecticide in the 1940s, first in WWII and then in agriculture. In the 1950s, it was used to combat the spread of malaria by killing mosquitoes, but this project failed in tropical regions. Its widespread usage also caused high rates of DDT resistance in mosquitoes. American scientists were concerned with the possible dangers of DDT since it first began being used, but this issue did not gain attention until Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962. This book claimed that pesticides, including DDT, were causing great harm to the environment and human health. Soon after, Silent Spring garnered great public attention, ad JFK ordered the investigation of Carson’s claims. The EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) was created with the aim to ban the use of DDT, which was discovered to be toxic to marine organisms and a chief cause of the thinning of birds’ eggshells. Its comprehensive uses were banned in 1972, but DDT is still used for disease vector control. For example, DDT is sprayed on the inside walls of houses to kill or repel mosquitoes, and this method supposedly greatly reduces environmental damage.

DDT is thought to be the major cause of the decline of birds of prey like bald eagles and peregrine falcons. Egg shell thinning makes the birds more susceptible to embryo deaths and egg breakage. DDT’s are also chemically similar to estrogens and can cause hormonal changes in animals. Thus, it is believed they also damage the reproductive system and decrease reproductive success. Some speculate that DDT is carcinogenic, but the CDC reports otherwise. Additionally, there is an ongoing debate between people who oppose the use of DDT for malaria control due to environmental concerns and those who support its use in order to save more livess. Regardless, the use of DDT is frowned upon in the US and most nations, yet it is still used in controlled manners.

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Development of Pharmaceuticals in the 20th Century

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In 1900 the three main causes of death in the US were pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diarrhea. In 2000, the odds of dying from any one of these was 1 in 25 but only pneumonia remains in the list of the top 10 causes of death today. This can be attributed to the rise of better sanitation and vaccination techniques but the development of drugs also had a major role.

Pharmaceuticals began primarily with apothecary shops in the 19th century but a few preliminary drugs were discovered such as epinephrine, nor epinephrine, and barbiturates. In the post WWII period, several other antibiotics were produced and vaccines made for measles, rubella and mumps. Antihypertensive drugs and oral contraceptives were made as well. The Kefauver-Harris Amendment was passed in 1962 which enhanced drug regulation and forces manufacturers to prove that it was effective before a new drug went on market after thalidomide was shown to cause widespread birth defects in Europe. In the late 20th century statins such as simvastatin became a major development as they lowered cholesterol levels and reduced heart disease.

Overall the cost of the drug industry is extremely high. Industry wide research and investment cost $65.3 billion in 2009. It was also estimated that in 2003,  the cost for discovering, developing and launching a new drug over a 5 year period is $1.3 billion. However by 2010, development costs range from $4 billion to $11 billion per drug.

–Julia Ng

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Computers in the 20th Century

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The first electronic digital computer was created in the 1930s by John Vincent Atanasoff. While it wasn’t programmable, the machine could solve linear equations and used a paper card writer/reader as its storage mechanism. This machine established three rules that became the basis for future computers: it used binary digits to represent data, performed calculations electronically, and contained a system in which the computing and memory were separated. Although the computer was never fully developed due to Atanasoff’s leave from Iowa State College for World War II assignments, the 1930s also saw the creation of the first binary digital computers and the first programmable calculator, the Z2.

The creator of this calculator was a man named Konrad Zuse, who went on to create his next technological wonder that was aptly named the Z3. An electromechanical computer that became operational in 1941, the Z3 was the world’s first programmable, fully automatic digital computer. Later, the Z4 became the world’s first commercial digital computer.

As computers became increasingly sophisticated and increasingly widespread, organizations began to use them to simplify tasks and work more efficiently. Telephone exchange networks were converted into electronic data processing systems, and the US Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer named the “Torpedo Data Computer,” which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. The world’s first electronic digital programmable computer, the Colossus, was also built for the purpose of World War II. The Colossus was designed by engineer Thomas Flowers for the purpose of cracking German codes.

In the 1950s, the first computer designed to aid US businesses was created. Eckert and Mauchly created the UNIVAC, or UNIVersal Automatic Computer. Instead of punched cards, it used magnetic tape storage to aid in data collection. This machine was used by J. Lyons & Company to calculate the company’s weekly payroll. The first home computer, the Altair 8800, is not marketed to the public until 1975. At the cost of $400, hobbyists could own their very own machine that did not include a keyboard, monitor, or its own programming language. However, two young men decided to try their hands at writing a coding language for the new computer. Their names were Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and they started the project by forming a partnership called Microsoft. Soon after, Apple Computer, founded by electronics hobbyists Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, releases the Apple II, a desktop personal computer for the mass market that amazingly featured a keyboard, video monitor, mouse, and random-access memory (RAM).

What started as an enormous machine that could only solve simple math problems soon blossomed into something truly life-changing. Computers became more and more complex over time, and it took less than a century for them to integrate into the public’s daily life. Computers are easy to use, and they make tasks easier. The Internet allows us to share information with each other at a staggering speed that was impossible just a few years ago. This technological innovation has opened up a vast world of knowledge and information for everyone in the modern world. Where will all of this advancement lead, you ask? Well, we haven’t come up with an algorithm for that just yet.

-Sofia

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Semi-Coherent Sentences of In-Class Cut-up

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1. After more than 50 years and strength to legitimize atte[ndance] and began to tap on disorder, Keith Connors.
2. Severely hyperactive and thousands of men, once shunned, angry-looking bird with a recognized as having a have taken part in problem.
3. Doctors against the pressure of accepted drugs like Addeen turning the parta to temper in the parcel on the desk; helping youngsters succeed who will throw a beyond.
4. A traffic light gonged; disorder had soared to 3 democracy’s big 100,000 in 1990.
5. Medication often assuaged, but our will is great; impulsiveness and I in his mouth, dropped, allowing a person’s under-intelligence to emerge.

There were a few more that might pass off as understandable, but these were by far the best ones.

Have fun with them!
Ricky Lozoya

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Cybernetics

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Cybernetics and systems science as academic domains were founded in the 1940s and 1950s. Cybernetic systems are defined as systems that are complicated, adaptive, and self-regulating. Systems science is a broader domain that encompasses cybernetics and other systems. Systems science theory states that however complex the world may seem, we can organize it into systems. Therefore, we can find general rules that apply to all systems.  Systems theory focuses on the structure of these systems, while cybernetics focuses more on how they work. These two domains are often studied together, as they both focus on information, feedback, and communication.

-Audrey

Source: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CYBSWHAT.html

 

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Gojira and Peaceful Japan: How People Worried and Learned to Hate the Bomb

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Unlike its sequels (American and Japanese), the very first Godzilla (Gojira in Japan) film was, not only about the fantastically epic monster-man battle, but also centered around the morality of using weapons of mass destruction. Truthfully, using an ancient dinosaur-dragon beast is a particularly strange way of highlighting such a serious topic, but if anyone has the right to talk about the human cost of WMD’s, it’s Japan. At the time this film was released, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had only just been bombed nearly a decade prior and reconstruction (emotional, psychological, and physical) were still taking place. So it makes sense that several of the scenes within the film seem to mirror what Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like after being obliterated and many pieces of dialogue amongst the characters reflected the opinions of several scientists working on the Manhattan Project.

In the film, Gojira destroys a large portion of Tokyo, leaving smoldering remains and orphaned children that seem eerily reminiscent of the results of a nuclear explosion. In addition, the movie played around with the idea that in order to deal with an unstoppable, destructive force like Gojira (who is an embodiment of a nuclear weapon) another unstoppable, destructive force needed to be deployed. This mirrors the arms race on a small scale; the fear that no one entity can or should control such a destructive force and the only solution is to arm at least one other entity with an equally powerful destructive force. In the case of the movie, it was a WMD that sucked the oxygen out of water and destroyed all organic matter. The creator did not want to use it as a weapon, for fear that it would spark an even more intense arms race from that which was already going on between the USSR and the U.S. He was so afraid that many innocent people would be killed if his invention were to be used for some geopolitical goal that he chose to destroy his life’s work and die rather than leave a single trace of his weapon.

So what’s the message? Nuclear weapons are bad? That was already an established fact (especially to Japan), so why make a film highlighting it? I believe the Ishiro Honda, the director, wanted us to instead focus on the human reaction to a devastating attack. When a WMD

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Cut-up

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“Here today are tens of relativity, opened and a tall the understandable satisfaction of those isn’t just the door behind him their hopes fulfilled. But my thoughts who would be watching at home, to an older been able to from his pocket the flag goes by and the woman who will tell time by desk. The tall birds I don’t mean this to be sentimental. I mean humans 100 to slip through. We are all part of a continuum, inescapably.”

Anna Truong

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Is Gojira Really Anti-American?

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I know that we touched on this a little bit during our discussion after Gojira on Thursday but I wanted to elaborate on Gojira as an anti-American work. I wouldn’t say that Gojira is anti-American but rather anti-nuclear. It’s true that the US dropped the nuclear bomb and it caused Japan a great deal of turmoil given that the radiation effects persisted several years after the bomb was dropped. But Japan would have gone through that regardless of whether the US dropped it or any other world power.  It was only a coincidence that the US happened to be the one to drop the bomb. Gojira seems to be a major symbol for nuclear weapons in the film. It comes to destroy Tokyo much like a nuclear bomb would as Gojira emits an atomic breath that melts buildings, causes fires and destroys the city landscape. The oxygen destroyer becomes a new nuclear bomb considering the potential for mass destruction in the world’s oceans if other countries had access to it. Most of the film focuses on how the Japanese attempt to defeat Gojira. I think the film tries to portray the negative effects of the nuclear bomb in a way that allows its viewers to feel a little bit of what the Japanese felt after the bomb. It could be read as anti-American – because the Americans were the ones who dropped the bomb, released the radiation and thus allowed Gojira to become as strong as it did – but I think there’s a lot more to the film than that.

–Julia Ng

Reflection

About the animals…

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In class, we thoroughly discussed the title of “Come into Animal Presence” and took apart the words. “Come” can be seen as an invitation, command, or request. “Animal” is specifically talking about alive things in nature and not just nature itself (ie. rocks, trees, water, grass). And “presence” is something spiritual, religious, and not physical, but a way of being in the world.

What I want to focus on is the animals that Levertov chose to use in the poem. There are four animals: serpent, rabbit, llama, and armadillo. There is a lot to say about serpents and rabbits because they are seen a lot in cultures. Serpents are associated biblically, mythologically, and Disney-movie-ly with a bad/evil connotation. There are little to no fables or stories that have the snake being a “good guy” or anything short of evil. However, Levertov focuses on the cunning and beauty of the snake. The snake is “guileless” and has “no blemish”. Being smart and not having acne seems like a pretty good deal to me, but people still think of snakes as bad.

Secondly, we have the rabbit. We see the rabbit as lucky (it’s foot on a key chain), with spring time (Easter Bunny… but who knows why),  and in a lot of disney movies (Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, Bambi, Winnie the Pooh, and countless Disney Junior shows). The rabbit is popular in our culture. However, Levertov again focuses on a different aspect, its loneliness. Rabbits are actually well known for being social creatures.

But then we come to the llama and the armadillo and I am stumped. Why a llama and an armadillo? First thing that comes to mind with llama is wool and Peru. Llamas are notoriously beasts of burden in South America (kind of like horses are in other places, carrying humans stuff around). I doubt there are many wild llamas roaming the mountains of Peru, but there are many under human control.

First thing that comes to mind for armadillos is road kill. That again, is under human control. Armadillos are pretty cool. They have their own armor, they can roll up into balls, they apparently have leprosy (not cool but interesting). But all I can think of is road kill. Llamas and armadillos encounter humans way more than rabbits and snakes and yet they are included in part of this natural imagery of coming into an animal state of mind.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the choice of animals seems very random to me and the animals aren’t exactly mysterious to us.  She’s telling us to “come into animal presence”, but we kind of already have by including them in our lives. However, I guess the poem could be telling us to think about it from their point of view and not the points of views that I have previously stated. To think about how there is more to animals than how they are associated with and by humans. They are their own thing and we cannot limit them to what we have predetermined they are/can be.

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Rockets n’ stuff

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I have a special affinity for space travel because my aunt is an astronaut. I have a rad jacket from the 80s that has been to space.

Actual post:

There were rockets in the past, but the 20th century marked the creation of rockets that had enough power to beat gravity and reach a speed that could lead to human space travel. Germany, Russia, and the USA all were designing engines at the same time. Nazi Germany wanted to use long-distance rockets for weapons. After the war was over, the USA and Soviet Union started their own missile/rocket programs. SPACE RACE! Sputnik 1 (Russian) was launched into space in early October of 1957. Four years later they put a human in space with Vostok 1. Not too far behind, Explorer 1 (USA) began orbit in late January 1958 with the first american to orbit earth being in February 1962 (yay US). JFK was hellbent on getting a man on the moon… Neil Armostrong accomplished this in 1969. Various aircrafts went to map out and image Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and various moons. Eventually America and Russia worked together in the 70’s in an international space mission. Satelites have been used for TV, imaging of the world, finding stars, and seeing parts of the galaxy (woa that’s dope). Sadly, the Challenger exploded in 1986 and killed 7 people. Fun fact: my aunt (Millie Hughes-Fulford) is an astronaut and was supposed to be on the Challenger, but the teacher bumped her. She has since been to space three times to study the effects of anti gravity on bone density…. I think?

Since the Challenger, new launch methods have been made to ensure safety. In recent years however, NASA’s influence has declined. There are a few private researchers trying to send people into space. One of which is Red Bull. Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver, was sponsored by Red Bull to jump from 24 miles into the stratosphere. To my knowledge they have yet to go back into space, but we shall see.

 

Dani