The issues of climate change, availability of natural resources, and the overall sustainability of our planet, have been a increasingly popular topic.  Being able to sustain an environment for our growing population is complicated and not an easy thing to answer.  While some solutions have been developed like solar energy and wind energy to tackle our need for renewable energy, neither are solutions that work globally; solar energy is expensive and not very efficient while wind energy is efficient but is only feasible in regions with large expanses of land with enough natural air currents.  There’s also algae that can be made into biofuel, but its far from being implemented into society.  So what can be done now and what else is being done already?  In hope of some answers, I attended Ruth Defries’ talk at Columbia on October 7th, 2014, which promised a discussion about science solutions to sustainability.  

Title: Science-Based Solutions for Sustainability: The Big Ratchet
Date: October 7th, 2014
Speaker: Ruth Defries, Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology

Ruth Defries opened her talk with an overview of the human species and how we have transformed in the midst of certain obstacles and drastically affected the Earth.  Through natural selection, the bipedal human survived and began a food system.  We created languages and technology, and soon our population increased 5 fold.  To cope with the increase in population, we soon developed some conservation techniques like using feces for fertilization and to synthesize nitrogen from the air following initial industrialization.  Now, we’re facing issues like monoculture, which began in effort to feed more people, but is susceptible to disease.  In response, we modify plants to fight disease and breed shorter so they grow stronger.

Defries, the writer of “The Big Rachet” has a very human-centric approach to sustainability.  Defries focuses on the problems we as humans create — rachets, hachets, and pivots as she calls them — and the solutions we make, which then spiral into more problems until we’re just doing downwards.

Ending at that point, Defries shifts to a Q&A session feeling it will be a better use of time for both new listeners and those who attended her other talk a few days prior.  Hands shoot up surrounding sustainable ideas and her thoughts on the prospects of certain solutions, but aggravatingly, her answer always seemed to be the same without much more discussion: there is a defining problem cycle with any solution and there isn’t an upside.

In effort to garner some sort of “science-based” answer, longer elaborated questions with proposed solutions were made, but to no avail.  I think I received more ideas about possible solutions from audience questions than from Defries herself.  I cannot speak towards her book as I have not read it, but her lecture failed to show me “How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis,” her book’s subtitle.

I left her talk without “science-based” answers to a sustainable future and frankly, her discussion left me frustrated.  While I had no intention to leave the talk with all the golden answer to our problems, I had hoped she would at least pose some solutions or give me a little insight on research and projects I had not yet heard about, alas something more to ponder.  Instead, I deeply questioned the credibility of her book and hoped she didn’t dissuade anyone from believing or working towards a more sustainable future.  Just because there may a negative cycle, there is no reason we should not try to lessen the extent that the cycle’s effects are happening.

Title: Green City Planet
Date: December 8th, 2014
Speaker: George Smith, Program Administrator of the Sustainability in the Urban Environment Graduate Program

Being unhappy with the “we’re doomed” mentality, I also attended a second lecture regarding the sustainability of urban areas on December 8th at CCNY.  While this talk did not go in depth about the mechanisms within a urban system, the speaker George Smith began his talk with a more positive look at what could be in store for us in the future.  He showed us this infographic for the Sustainability in the Urban Environment graduate program (shown below) and asked us, what’s the issue?

Answer: The image evokes an idea that in order to be sustainable, we must revert back to nature.  Rather, Smith proposes, that there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel of human development and that we can become sustainable through better practices, technology, and choices.  He also says that while it may not be feasible to create sustainability plans for the next 4.6 billion years (the expected lifespan of the planet), it is possible to look at the next 100 years and devise plans based on what we know now.

As addressed in his Q&A, he believes in order to tackle these issues it must come from growth in technology, but also social understandings of how to implement plans.  While Smith is wary to use the buzzword “sustainability,” he left us with a more proactive and complex understanding to what a sustainable future could mean.

On November 16^th, along with many of my Macaulay peers, I attended the independently organized TED event named TEDx CUNY. This event was run by Macaulay and held in the Macaulay building. Many speakers were present but one that really stood out to me was Aakaash Varma, a junior at Brooklyn College. Mr. Varma, being a history major, was going to talk about just that, history. At first I thought this wouldn’t be interesting but I was soon proved wrong.

The name of Mr. Varma’s presentation was “Putting the ‘Story’ Back in History” and it was about a phenomenon called historical empathy. To Mr. Varma historical empathy is the connection of emotions to historical events. Mr. Varma discussed how in today’s educational environment history is looked at as a boring topic, one that must be studied to get through school, but rarely enjoyed. This is because of the lack of historical empathy. Using the attacks on 9/11 as his first example, Mr. Varma showed us that as New Yorkers this part of history sticks out more to us, not because it happened recently, but because of historical empathy. Being that most of us there were New Yorkers, we have a deeper connection to 9/11; it’s an event in history that is more than just facts to us. We might have known someone who either died or was affected by the attacks, bringing the whole event closer to home. Mr. Varma also talked about the India Pakistan split. As a man of Indian descent, Mr. Varma explained to us how this split was more that just the facts he learned in his 10^th grade history class, his ancestors went through this rough time, and thus he feels an emotional connection to the events that transpired.

The whole point of Mr. Varma’s talk was not to just explain to us what historical empathy is and some events that are related to us. Mr. Varma wanted to show us the effects of this historical empathy and how it can make history more interesting to all. Our history is who we are and Mr. Varma wants us all to know where we come from, not just as a list of facts, but as stories passed down through generations. Bringing historical empathy to the history we learn in school and otherwise allows us as a species to be more connected to where we come from, it allows us in essence to be more human.

As a whole the talk was extremely engaging and entertaining. There were some points in which Mr. Varma’s presentation skills were a bit lacking but all in all he did a great job. He really put into perspective how important these events are that I have learned and are learning. Although they might not be connected to me, they are connected to someone and every historical event has an impact on someone’s life.

I went to a lecture hosted by The Explorers Club called “Art of the Invisible Ocean.”  The speakers were Mara G. Haseltine and Emily Driscoll.  Haseltine is an artist who creates 3D sculptures of microscopic life.  She is also an  environmentalist who aims to use art as bridge between  biological and cultural evolution.  She helped to create New York City’s first solar-powered reef.  Haseltine currently uses  microscopy as inspiration to create oyster and coral reefs.  Driscoll is a video director specifically for topics of science, and is the founder of BonSci films, a production company specializing in science and art documentaries. She has worked on films about invasive species, restoring wild oysters to New York Harbor, and preserving fireflies in the environment – all which have been screened at many museums, universities and PBS television programs.

Together, the two teamed up to present their work on ocean microbiology.  The presentation started off with Haseltine explaining the invisible world of the ocean.  She says that a majority of marine life cannot be seen by the naked eye.  Organisms such as plankton are equivalent to plant-life in the ocean food-chain.  They are the basis of the food-chain and are so fundamental to a healthy environment.  Haseltine went on her expedition to collect plankton from oceans.  When she looked at the plankton under a microscope, she discovered that all her plankton samples were wrapped around in microscopic plastic.  She believes that this is the result of pollution of the oceans and that this ongoing problem of pollution has a much more detrimental and microscopic effect that people do not realize.

The talk was then followed by two films.  The first film was a documentary called Invisible Ocean: Plankton and Plastic that she and Driscoll created on her artwork of glass plankton sculptures.  The documentary focuses on how how critical of a problem pollution is and her artwork is used to visually show the impact of pollution on plankton. The second film was La Boheme: A Portrait of Today’s Oceans in Peril, which was an opera written by Haseltine based on the emotional love a person has for a depleting ocean.  In the film, a man is singing to her glass plankton sculptures.  The films were then followed by a question and answer session.

This was the first science lecture I went to that bridges art and science in a way that brings awareness to the environmental problem, but also really keep an artistic element to her work.  I really liked the examples of her plankton sculptures she showed us, and the documentary was very informative.  The opera, however, completely threw me off guard.  I am not really into art (and really not into operas) so I was really confused why a random man was singing to glass plankton. She explained that she based it off another opera, which did nothing to make me less confused. However, when I looked up La Boheme, the opera her work was based on, she gave a more detailed description on her site.  She states that the opera was about falling in love with someone that was dying.  Haseltine used this analogy to depict the emotions of falling in love with the “dying” ocean.  It was an interesting artistic angle of this pollution problem of the ocean – however, the piece did not make sense to me.  I can definitely see the appeal her work could have on someone who was both interested in art and science, and she does a really nice job in intertwining the two concepts.

In my frantic last minute rush to find a science lecture to attend, the American Museum of Natural History offered a talk about the upcoming things to look for in the sky throughout the winter season. After having just watched Interstellar, this was probably the closest I was going to get to the stars (thankfully). We found ourselves walking down the hallway decorated with images of astronauts floating in space, rushed into an elevator, and entering a dark room with lights coming from the floor. Yes, we did arrive about fifteen minutes late – but only enough to miss the beginning of one of the speakers review a series of slides discussing where else to observe the night sky throughout the North Eastern region.

Thinking that this was how the rest of the evening was going to go – slides projected onto a unique screen above us, I was disheartened and disappointed that I paid $13.50 to see it. The next speaker was Joe Rao, a weatherman from somewhere far off and beyond (I’m funny, I know)  to discuss the major star features to see in the night sky. The screen projected a spherical panorama of the night sky in Manhattan and was able to reduce the atmospheric lights to truly bring out the stars. Rao taught us how to look for specific clusters and constellations, such as Pegasus, Andromeda, and Orion. He also mentioned a faint cloud that was a galaxy, a very many lightyears away. At that point, I realized, you must be really far away when they stop measuring you in distances and in a unit similar to time. He spoke like he was predicting the weather for the following week – but that’s the weatherman for you.

The speaker after was Ted Williams, who basically did the same thing but with more obscure constellations and at a quicker – hard to keep up with pace. It also did not help that every time I looked in one direction at the screen and then in another, the after image of the previous would still be glimmering with the current – leaving me actually seeing stars. He pointed out Cassiopeia, Perseus, Taurus, the Big Dipper and some other things. To help us locate these things, he briefly pointed out other “easier to find” constellations (they’re all the same to me) and in the projections, the projectionist outlined the figures of the characters in the sky. Also, I learned that you can connect the stars however you like, but they do not clearly make the suggested image (ex: Pegasus, a box with three protruding lines does not make a winged, perhaps a sad octopus instead).

After the presentations, we had an opportunity to go into the terrace for hot chocolate and cookies. With a hot beverage in our hands and snacks, we waited on lines to telescopes and binoculars to see some of the mentioned constellations. Sadly, I could not really differentiate between a lot of the things seen except for the red eye of Taurus – because it was red.

All in all, it was a good introduction into astronomy and star gazing on a kind winter night.

I went to a talk called “Urban Appetites” by Cindy R. Lobel at the CUNY Graduate Center . Lobel’s talk was a synopsis her new book, Urban Appetites and a brief explanation of the research that went behind the creation of her book.

Cindy R. Lobel’s Book

Cindy Lobel attended and graduated from The CUNY Graduate Center in 2003 and has been a Urban History and New York History professor at Lehman College since 2006. A lot of her research was found perusing through many old historical records and historical documents, such as maps of New York City, images, legal documents, etc. Lobel also cited other relevant research performed by others.

Lobel began her talk by posing the question: “Are you ever concerned of where our food is coming from and the quality of the food?” She then brought up several healthy food and organic food initiatives taken by our government and those who really care about the quality of our food. Lobel notably mentioned Michelle Obama’s initiative to make school lunches healthy for children and to overall reduce obesity of young children. In addition to these questions she also asked if we ever gave a thought to the different settings where we eat, such as restaurants.

At this point in her talk she began talking about the contents of her book: the New Yorker’s food habits. In the 19th century, all the food that fed New York City residents was locally grown. These foods and goods were sold in a public market, known as fly markets during the early 1800’s. The food available in these markets were fresh, heavily regulated, and grown from what was then Long Island (Brooklyn and Queens), Bronx, etc. Because of how personal and localized food shopping was back then, many people probably had personal connections to those whom they purchased food from.

Eventually she told us of how markets houses began to flourish because of advancements in technology. One preservation techniques mentioned was harvesting ice, which allowed for the transportation of food. There were also newer and faster ways to transport food, such as railroads and steamboats. Market houses soon followed this growth in technology. This resulted in an influx of new types of food and there was a huge increase in abundance of food, but with this marvelous increase in what was available to the public came many issues. There were often rats running around in these markets, whereas before, the the fly markets went into the villages out in the open and left before sundown. Also, a lot of food arrived at the markets spoiled and were still sold.

Lobel also mentioned that these markets expanded so rapidly that they were eventually abused by the wealthy, such as Tammany Hall. While the sellers that sold in these markets sold the same amount of food, they were forced to pay more and more fees overtime by those that owned the market. But these fees went into other peoples pockets rather than into benefiting the market. In addition to this, the wealthy owners of the market did not care for the quality of the good and there was little regulation of the food available, which was dangerous for the consumer.

The growing size of these markets soon forced them to begin selling wholesale goods. Since the everyday consumer did not need to buy a large amount of food, small, private groceries began popping up in New York City. These shops would buy wholesale goods and then sell those goods to the common consumer.

As technology made more food available, more restaurants began popping up in Downtown areas of Manhattan. This happened due to the need for places for workers to have lunch. More often than not many people commuted from residential areas (Uptown) to work (Downtown). To go back Uptown to eat lunch was a hassle for most people and they likely did not have enough time to even go back home, let alone eat. Thus, restaurants began forming in Downtown areas of NYC, but these were not like the restaurants we have today. These early restaurants were akin to fast food places, the food was made quickly, the consumer ate quickly, then left. But soon more recreational, family restaurants began surfacing, the most well know is Demonico’s. This was the start of New York’s food scene. Eventually New York became the food capital of the United States, offering more cosmopolitan food choices than anywhere else.

At the beginning of her talk, Lobel hinted that the United States is trying to get back to more localized, personalized and healthier food shopping. More and more people seem to care about the source and the quality of their food. In fact, it seems that food habits in New York City are making a u-turn. Nowadays, you can walk through the city and find small food stands with locally grown food for sale, paralleling the fly markets from 1886. At the same time, New Yorkers also have access to imported foods at supermarkets and can purchase wholesale goods and food at stores such as Costco, so there are many options available to New Yorkers.

The point of her talk was not only to explain her research and to present her book Urban Appetites, but to also show us how New York grew from being a city with a few, small fly markets providing residents with local food to a city known for its variety of restaurants and different types of foods available during anytime of the year. Despite all the options available at our disposal many New York residents still want to go back to healthier and more locally grown food, showing the profound connection that people have to the food they eat.

Dr. Roberta Troy might have found a new treatment for cancer.

On Tuesday, December 7th, 2014, I went to hear Roberta Troy talk about breast cancer. The name of her presentation was “Triple Negative Breast Cancer in women of the African Diaspora. To be honest, I chose this lecture because of the free food offered, not because I was particularly interested in the topic, but Dr. Troy changed my mind completely in only the first few minutes of her lecture.

Dr. Troy doesn’t just study any old breast cancer, she studies Triple Negative Breast Cancer or TNBC. TNBC is an extremely aggressive form of breast cancer that effects young women and is most common among women of African descent. In Dr. Troy’s studies in Ghana, she saw women as young as 16 years old with TNBC. In fact, of all the West African women with breast cancer, 60% have TNBC. African American women with breast cancer, many of whom trace their lineage to West Africa, have a 30% chance of having TNBC. That’s a lot of people who are affected by this extremely hard to treat cancer. The reason TNBC is so hard to treat is because it is not dependent on estrogen, progesterone, or HER2 like most other breast cancers. Because of this, it doesn’t respond to  hormone therapies, and the usual treatment is a mastectomy. This is usually paired with chemotherapy and radiation, but still, the outlook for survival is slim.

Dr. Troy, however, thinks natural products are the way to combat TNBC. As a natural food advocate and GMO fighter, I was thrilled to hear this. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of research saying very similar things, that eating whole, unprocessed foods can prevent many of the diseases that ail us. Our modern American diet of processed carbs and meat has made us sicker and fatter, and Dr. Troy was finding similar patterns among TNBC patients. Many patients had poor diets and were not getting enough nutrients from fruits and vegetables. Risk factors for TNBC include a diet high in fat and processed foods and exposure to chemicals.

Furthermore, Dr. Troy found something in many natural foods that really made a difference when it came to TNBC. What she found was a carotene called lycopene. Lycopene is found in tomatoes, grapefruit, and watermelon, among other red fruits and vegetables. Women with diets high in lycopene are less likely to get cancer in the first place so Dr. Troy was interested in what lycopene could do to already progressive cancers. When she injected lycopene into cancer cells, something incredible happened. Lycopene was actually effective in reducing their cancer cell growth drastically, even without any surgery or chemotherapy. She thinks that she might be on to something and wants to further her studies on how lycopene inhibits tumor growth.

Overall, listening to Dr. Troy was an incredible experience and I’m very excited to see where she goes from here with her studies. She is a woman who is really making ground-breaking steps in her field, and that’s something we can all admire. It’s another study to prove to me that eating healthy is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Everyone should really educate themselves on what they’re putting in their bodies, since so many diseases, including cancer, can be traced back to the gut. Why wait to fight these diseases when you can prevent them from even happening by making simple lifestyle changes.

“The universe united us all, and the cosmos belongs to all of us.” -Charles Liu

One of the Macaulay events that I was most excited for this year was the TEDxCUNY event held at the Macaulay building on November 16^th. It was an independently organized TED event. The theme of the event was “Access,” a pillar of the CUNY philosophy. I attended the “Access Your World” section, and was very pleased with my experience.

Although not necessarily my favorite, the most interesting talk I saw was called “Accessing the Cosmos,” done by Charles Liu. Charles Liu is an astrophysics professor at the College of Staten Island, and an associate with the Hayden Planetarium and the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. He has published multiple books, and received the 2001 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award.

From the beginning, Charles stood out by having a child on the stage with him—whom we later learn is his daughter Emma. Although Emma was a bit shy and timid, Professor Liu had an upbeat and charismatic demeanor. He could almost even be described as a bit silly: he puts on a sweatshirt immediately after beginning and sings to the audience in between portions of his speech.

The structure of his talk was much different than other TEDxCUNY speakers. To demonstrate the curiosity of children in the cosmos and to show how education is needed to kids to truly be able to “access” their world, he has his daughter conduct a Q&A session with him where he answered questions on the spot that his daughter and her friends have about the universe. They cover topics such as the color change of the moon in eclipses, how the tides and the moon are linked, the size of the rings of Saturn, how astronauts navigate, whether Pluto is a planet, what stars are made out of, and whether humans can live somewhere other than earth. Having his daughter ask him the questions, wearing a sweatshirt, and sitting down on the stage almost gave him talk the feeling of watching a private conversation between him and his daughter instead of a formal TED lecture.

He reminds the audience that although we strive for success and we set ourselves up for success, it’s okay to make mistakes as they don’t define you—in reference to the possibility that he answer one of the on-the-spot questions incorrectly. Liu finishes by asking us to compare our problems to the number of things in the universe and let than comparison diminish the differences between each of us, as they are nothing in comparison.

Although it was an interestingly structured talk and not necessarily anything I didn’t know before, I enjoyed Liu’s talk for its eccentricity and unique format. Being exposed to new things is why I put myself out there, and learning new and relevant things is why I enjoy TED talks so much. I will be attending more in the future.

I went to the NYC Skeptics talk: Ann Reynolds: The Challenges of Science, Medicine and the Media. It was a very interesting talk in the way that it related to what we have seen in class. The speaker works for ABC as a producer who provides the material about medical information. One of the first things she mentioned was that she didn’t put a lot on the news due to the fact that it wasn’t news worthy. Not many people will watch the new if it’s boring, and this is a big problem. Some important information can appear to be very boring, and if no one learns it, it becomes lost. Another point she made was that she didn’t put things on the new if there was nothing that people could do about it. It would simply cause hysteria if it were something harmful. Her example of this was that she never aired a story on how the Alzheimer’s patients that are nose deaf almost always die in four years. This kind of story would simply cause people to check people’s sense of smell even though there is nothing that can be done about it.

One of the big points that she made was that always go to the source. She emphasized this immensely, and gave examples where it leads her to provide the public with true and precise information. She mentioned that a bunch of other news station were publicizing that Michelle Obama’s exercise movement for children was working. Upon further inquiry this proved to be false. The only children that had lost weight were those in the age range of 2-3 years old. These children aren’t even in school to be affected by Michelle Obama’s movement, and it meant that the information was false. This reminded me of what we did in class towards the beginning of the year with the baby face experiment because she practically does that on a daily basis.

I found this talk to be very interesting. It was filled be a lot more fun medical facts along with various things to know. It became a little more boring towards the end when she was accepting questions. The audience was filled with elderly people mainly trying to make their own point. It seemed like none of them were open to hearing her ideas, but rather came to state their own facts and see if they were correct. While, this did hurt my memory of this public talk, I still felt that it was a worthwhile experience.

The public talk I attended was The New York Academy of Science’s discussion on The Unification of Physics: The Quest for a Theory of Everything. The public talk grouped together three physicist that all focused their work on theoretical physics. Katherine Freese is the director of the Nordita – Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, Marcelo Gleiser is a professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College, and Max Tegmark is a professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The panel was asked various questions focused on the idea of understanding The Universe. The beginning of the discussion was on this concept of a Theory for Everything, this soon dispersed into smaller discussions that all ultimately relate towards the Theory for Everything. This public talk was extremely interesting as it elaborated on many questions I have asked my self about the cosmos.

Starting with the unification of physics, the panel clarified that this meant that theoretically the four main forces unify into one primary mother force present in all dimensions. The four forces consist of gravity, electro-magnetism, weak, and strong. Marcelo Gleiser clarifies for the audience that “When we talk about unifying physics we talk about creating a description of nature, whereby the four forces can be understood as manifestations of a single force.” Unfortunately this has been incredibly difficult to prove. So far we are able to understand how to unify electro-magnetism, weak and strong forces except for the force of gravity. However, some mathematics prove that the String Theory can unify all four forces, but lack the proper experimentation to prove said theory.

Beyond this first segment of the panel, each panel member began to show a sort of focus of interests in cosmological physics. Katherine Freese showed interest in the exploration of dark matter and energy, Marcelo Gleiser talked about the extents of our universe, and max Tegmark was most interested in understanding how consciousness works. In discussing dark matter, we start to realize how dramatically our understanding of the universe can shift when we begin to understand the majority about dark matter. It exists everywhere, and takes up 25% of the universe’s mass. Dark matter is also another way we can learn to date the Big Bang as well as discovering what lies beyond the scope of our universal horizon. We can only see the extents of the universe via the last light of our universal bubble. Beyond this bubble, the dark matter could act as a way to describe what lies beyond. Exploring the idea of understanding the consciousness is another critical field that many scientists debate is possible to understand. The notion that consciousness is quantifiable is hard to imagine, the sense of emotion and though that occurs within the mind. However, Max Tegmark explains that there is much advancement in this field through experimenting with prediction techniques and consulting the predictions of thought to the user’s actual thought.

The lecture was incredible, considering I watched Interstellar only a few days before. Understanding the universe is important in understanding ourselves. The panel even said that it is our purpose as the only intelligent beings we know of to explore and discovering how our universe works. We are the only ones who can, thus it is our purpose. Questioning is what allows us to always move forward. We begin to doubt what we know and hypothesize, experiment, record, and analyze to grow as a species. This discussion of the unification of forces to understand everything is the next, but not ultimate, quest for humans in knowing our origins.

http://www.nyas.org/Events/Detail.aspx?cid=f2d6dea2-ea83-4c5f-ab45-ca3eeaa60268

For my Public Lecture assignment I decided to attend a lecture at the New School titled Confronting Climate Change: Insights from the Nuclear Disarmament Movement, on Thursday December 4^th. The lecture addressed the topics of global warming and nuclear energy. The lecture was divided into two sections led by two presenters: Robert Jay Lifton, anti-nuclear activist and author of Witness to an Extreme Century and Naomi Oreskes, author, environmental activist and History of Science professor at Harvard University.
            The first section of the lecture, led by Robert Jay Lifton, was a study in the comparison between nuclear normality and climate normality. Robert Lifton believes that both the government and the people of the United States are treating climate change similarly to how people in the post World War II era up until the end of the Cold War treated the possession of nuclear weapons. This is because instead of taking preventative measures against climate change and its destructive events, Lifton says we approach climate change in a way where we cope with the short-term consequences and try to adapt to life with these new side effects, like global warming and rising sea levels. During the Cold War, America took the same approach to addressing nuclear wars, weapons and energy. Lifton recalls reading American propaganda in the 1960’s where the United States government described measures of “living with nuclear weapons”. Measures included teaching children how to duck under desks during an air raid, creating radiation teller devices for individuals to carry and training people to distrust those with “atomic neurosis” or overblown fears of the danger of atomic weapons. In the end, Lifton urges the audience to beware of climate normality in the present day. In order to do so, Lifton says we must urge our politicians to enact policies that can reverse climate problems like CO2 emissions, and not just take adaptive measures to protect ourselves from effects like Hurricane Sandy.
            The second half of the lecture was taken over by Naomi Oreskes, who wanted to address our current climate change initiatives. Oreskes explains that after being asked so many times as an activist whether she feels optimistic or pessimistic about the United States and climate change, she cannot muster an answer for either position. This is because while America has made some positive steps towards solving the environmental problems we have created, there are still too many negatives to conquer. First speaking about her optimism, Oreskes says that we are experiencing a climate swerve, where 80% of the United States’ population believes that something should be done about climate change in this country. Also, 70% of Americans believe fostering green energy is a possible technological solution to this growing issue. So while public opinion is high and the technology we need to solve the issue has been created, there are major negatives to address.
Oreskes laments over the increasing rate of greenhouse gas emissions, which has multiplied at a faster rate since 1992. She also is pessimistic about the political discourse surrounding climate change, stating that even though global warming is a growingly popular issue for the American people, not enough politicians are making climate change a major priority in their campaigns. Furthermore many politicians, mostly of the Republican party, deny the issue altogether. To make matters even worse, Oreskes reminds us that Oil companies who hold a large control over the economy of the United States and the politicians who run it, will never be willing to accept or compete with alternative forms of energy. Lastly, Oreskes addresses our own forms of passive denial towards climate change, stating that the majority of Americans want to help but either feel powerless or are too busy to dedicate their time to the cause. Furthermore, since alternative energy and green technology are very expensive, many Americans simply cannot afford to pay for a better environment. Oreskes concludes on a bittersweet note saying that the only way to make a difference is to change our mentalities towards the issue and once again, push for policy changes. She concludes that although we may feel powerless, we the people have the power to elect the officials who eventually make the decisions to either help the environment or not, and that is where we can help.
            While I feel that attending a climate change lecture makes one walk out of it extremely depressed, I also feel that one of the most important things we can do as inhabitants of this world, is educate ourselves about the issue. I find that much of the doubt and disinterest that surrounds climate change is fuelled primarily by a lack of knowledge of the problem and the disastrous consequences of not acting. While it is impossible to convince someone who refuses to believe in climate change of its urgency, public lectures can really make a difference to people who, like me, want to help but feel there is very little that can be done while acting alone. In the end, I feel the best point made in the lecture by both speakers, was that we as a people must elect the individuals who can truly make a difference. Hopefully next election, if America still exists by then, we can make better decisions about how we want our issues to be represented, and our world to be handled.
 

Regenerative engineering seems to be the up-and-coming field to watch, or at least it is according to Dr. Cato T. Laurencin MD, PhD, who gave a lecture at The City College of New York on November 19^th describing his research.

Laurencin is currently a professor at the University of Connecticut and a practicing orthopedic surgeon. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Regenerative Engineering. He earned his degrees from Princeton University, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Regenerative engineering integrates the principles of tissue engineering with advanced materials science, stem cell based science, and developmental biology,” said Laurencin.

Most of Laurencin’s lecture focused on regenerative bone engineering and its future. Since he holds both an MD and a PhD, he not only invents new methods to treat injuries but is also able to one day put them to use.

Cross section of a human hip bone
(Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

“Being a doctor, I work with a lot of injuries that used to be irreversible,” said Laurencin. “Advancements in regenerative engineering allow us to begin addressing these challenges in musculoskeletal regeneration.”

Laurencin’s lecture included his work with nanofibers which are used to create “matrices” that are placed in the body where there has been bone loss. Amazingly, the bone can grow within these matrices as the matrices dissolve, leaving a new and healed bone. This is also possible, through different methods, with tissues and ligaments.

“We all must find the ‘newt in us,’ meaning our ability to regrow and heal ourselves in ways we never believed,” said Laurencin.

The first bone matrix implant in man was done in July of 2013, and Laurencin hopes that there will be more executions of his work in the future.

Last month, I attended a talk at the American Museum of Natural History which featured a discussion on the limits of of science. Physicist Marco Gleiser, who had just published a book on the subject, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, asked how much can we really know about the world given the limitations of our measuring instruments and current knowledge. For Gleiser, the boundaries of science will always expand with our increased understanding; each new discovery only brings more questions to answer which, in effect, renders  the scientific endeavor a sort of Sisyphean cycle of problem solving and problem creation. The blurb of his book captures the source of these ideas in a nutshell:

[The] limits to our knowledge arise both from our tools of exploration and from the nature of physical reality: the speed of light, the uncertainty principle, the impossibility of seeing beyond the cosmic horizon, the incompleteness theorem, and our own limitations as an intelligent species.

In other words, our ability to model natural laws is limited by the imperfections in the tools we use to measure them. Even as technology improves, new tools will still have a threshold after which they are no longer useful. In the 19th century, observing a molecule was beyond the capabilities of microscopes. Today, microscopes can, in fact, view single molecules, but they cannot view atoms in motion during a chemical reaction. Each iterative technological improvement presents us with new gaps in understanding to consider. In his talk, Gleiser likened these scientific boundaries to the coast of a volcanic island; in the same way the size of the island results in a larger coastline, as the body of science grows, so too does possibility for discovery. So, in effect, we can never truly know all there is to be known.

Gleiser’s ideas make sense, when taken in the context of his field of study. Physicists focus a great deal of energy on assessing the degree of uncertainty in their measurements; from significant figures, to standard uncertainty, graphing with error bars, organized methods of error quantification are necessary for a science that needs to mathematically predict the goings on of the world around it. This concern with error is much more pronounced in physics than, say, chemistry or pure mathematics. In mathematics, a theorem either is or is not valid. Likewise, in chemistry a compound is either cis, trans or neither.  So, when looked at through the lens of a physicist, where error is such a central focus, it might seem that there will always be a degree of uncertainty in scientific assertions.

Of course, the Idea sounds sensible when analyzed off-the-cuff, however when put through more rigorous analyzation (as we scientists are prone to do I’m afraid) Marco Gleiser’s argument does not stand to scrutiny. Firstly, never is a strong word to use in math and science. Never holds behind it the weight of eternity; it means not now, not in 100 years, not in 1 million years, not even in many billions of years. In science and math, never means absolutely, unequivocally, never. So saying “we will never know all there is to know”, is a huge statement to make. In his discussion and his book, Gleiser uses the trials of modern science, a 300 year old institution, to extrapolate a trend of how human understanding will persist into infinity. If ever there was an example of the fallacy of hasty generalization this would be it. In the context of infinity, or even the 5 billion years until the universe decays through entropy, our 300-year age of scientific reason pales in comparison. If 5 billion years could be scaled to the size of a meter stick, the 300 year period between the age of enlightenment and the 21st century would be a sliver of a human hair at the end of that stick. That is to say, it is an extremely small amount of time to make a judgement over.

Notwithstanding developments in other technologies, computation and artificial intelligence alone promise servers that can, not only think coherently, but think multiple ideas at once with a speed at the femtosecond level. This will occur within the next hundred years. If mankind survives the next billion years, there’s no telling what amazing tools might be at it’s disposal. The face of science might indeed change by then into a higher form of reasoning in the same way the mysticism of alchemy transitioned into chemistry. Perhaps then mankind will understand the universe to an extent that we can call “complete.”

Notice, that I use words like “might” and “perhaps” in the last paragraph. That is because I am not making my own assertion—a more “correct” idea that should stand to replace Gleiser’s. Rather, what I am saying is the far-off future is entirely up in the air. In the end, Gleiser might be right, I might, or some third party might. Simply because he uses a fallacy (hasty judgement) to justify his ideas, does not mean the ideas themselves are wrong. What I take issue with is not Gleiser’s theory, but his certainty in it. The only scientifically responsible statement one can make about humanity in the far-flung future billions of years from now is that we do not know what will happen. Gleiser has an idea, but really, his guess is as good as anyone’s. In a sense, Gleiser was right. He only neglected to take his argument to its ultimate logical end; there is an inherent uncertainty in everything, including whether uncertainty itself will persist indefinitely into the future.

I have attended a lecture titled “Quantum fluctuations in hydrogen bond networks: from atmospheric science to enzyme catalysis” featured by Thomas E. Markland, a Ph.D professor from the University of Stanford. The moment I entered the room for the seminar, I felt an awkward discomfort because I was the only person there in the middle of the room. Eventually a large crowd of professors from CCNY flooded into the room from a small meeting with food.

As the only student in attendance, I understood only a small portion of what the talk entailed. However, I was able to understand the general gist of what Professor Markland was studying. He discussed the effects of quantum mechanics on hydrogen bonding of molecules. Hydrogen bonding is one of the attractive forces in the world that give certain molecules peculiar properties. Water can exhibit capillary action through hydrogen bonding. Hydrogen bonding is taught in a rather simple way: any hydrogen that comes into contact with any of the three electronegative species (Fluorine, Oxygen, or Nitrogen) creates this partial bond that is significantly stronger than any other intermolecular force. However, once quantum mechanics is applied to this concept, the chemistry becomes much harder to quantify and study.

Quantum mechanics is applied to the smallest species that makes the largest difference: the electrons. Electrons are extremely small particles that are the basis of bonding. Sharing and transferring of these electrons create bonds, but quantum mechanics blurs the line between particle and wave. Because of their size, electrons exhibit strange qualities, which is described by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of an electron. Because of this phenomenon, hydrogen bonding is seen in a new light.

The majority of Professor Markland’s work dealt with how quantum mechanics fluctuates the effects of hydrogen bonding by isolating a specific amount of water molecules and checking their interactions with each other. Using this data, he saw how this affected a specific enzyme at their hydrogen bonding centers. His methodology was extremely well planned and controlled, but complicated in terms of the technology and terms he used to describe the process.

The importance of mathematics and statistics was emphasized because quantum mechanics is mainly statistics of electrons and their influence on hydrogen bonds. He threw around terms like the “Hamiltonian,” which I had little to no idea what it meant. Although his entire presentation seemed hard to understand for me, the majority of the professors in the room were actively asking questions and needing clarifications, which lead to more intense conversations. As a person who usually has a lot to say, in the middle of these conversations I was but a speck of dirt in terms of intelligence and expertise. However, it was extremely interesting and encouraging that I was able to gain a small understanding of the basic concepts he used in his presentation from my education.