Video and Editing in IMOVIE
Dear Seminarians,
Kindly see below for the resources referenced in the presentation today.
- iMovie Tutorial by Amanda Favia on importing video, start new video, iMovie tools, and basic editing.
- Videos on iMovie by former-ITF J. Kijowski.
- Part 1: How to trim clips, split clips, freeze frames, and add chapter markers, all by right-clicking on the clip in your Project window.
- Part 2: How to create visual effects for your movie using Clip Adjustments and Video Adjustments.
- Part 3: How to crop, rotate, and add a Ken Burns effect to your video clips.
- Part 4: How to add and edit basic audio files, such as sound effects and music, to your project.
- Part 5: How to create voiceovers, how to detach the audio from a clip in your Project window, how to add just the audio from a clip in your Events window, and how to adjust sound levels.
AO
Sarracenia’s Super Slippery Surface
Pitcher plants, scientific names Sarracenia and Nepenthes, are carnivorous plants that use their pitcher-like shape and slippery inner lining to trap their prey in a pool of digestive liquid. Once prey touches the outer edge of their “pitcher” they can’t help but slide down the walls towards their imminent death.
The inner coating in pitcher plants is so slippery that it repels water, oil, honey and can even resist bacteria and ice formation. The unusual surface of these plants features a microtextural roughness that locks in a lubricating layer of water which repels oils on insects’ feet, so they slide to their end. This slippery inner lining served as inspiration for a materials science lab to create SLIPs, or Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces.
SLIPs is a surface consisting of Teflon nano-fibers infused with water and oil repellent lubricating liquid. Prior models for slippery surfaces had been lotus leaves, which utilized their shape and surface coating to repel water, but not all liquids like oils. SLIPs, on the other hand, repel all tested liquids of different compositions and viscosities. This new omniphobic material is also self-cleaning and self-healing. These surfaces are aimed to improve for biomedical fluid handling, for fuel transport, and as a surface that repels ice, which can be used to reduce energy consumption in refrigeration.
Building on SLIPs, there are new ideas in the field that extend this technology further to create a new glass coating that repels nearly everything. The technology is still being improved, but they currently prevent water, oil or octane from sticking to the surface, but it can also prevent fog from forming on glass. That means that systems that need to remain frost-free, like airplanes, power lines, and cooling systems, could be kept clear of frost in the winter. Solar panels can be coated to be more efficient, windows can stay clean indefinitely, glasses can be smudge-free and more difficult to break, and medical diagnostic devices can be coated to reduce the risk of infection and sterility.
Butterfly Wings and Solar Panels
The boom in solar energy that has come in the last few years marks progress for environmental efficiency, but it still has yet to reach its true potential. In order to maximize the efficiency of solar panels, scientists have looked to rose butterflies for the answer.
Rose butterflies are unique in that they are cold blooded, and thus need to be exposed to sunlight in order to fly. Wondering how evolution has maximized exposure to sunlight, Radwanul Siddique, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology, observed butterfly wings under an electron microscope and found that every scale on their wings had small, randomly distributed holes on them that help to scatter light and absorb heat.
With this in mind, Siddique designed a new type of solar panel that was porous on a nanoscopic level. The small holes are random in size, shape, and distribution, and have proven to optimize the amount of sunlight that the panels take in. This design is currently only in the prototype phase, but funding from the German Research Foundation may lead to mass production in the near future.
Rising Waters in Western Queens
Growing up, I considered the neighborhoods of Sunnyside, Woodside, and Long Island City to an extent to be my home. All of these neighborhoods will be affected as waters rise in the next 80 years. In the past, New York City has seen an average rise in sea level of 1.2 inches per decade, but scientists are now seeing that waters are beginning to rise faster, having more consequences for New Yorkers. The New York Academy of Sciences projects that by 2100, the waters surrounding New York may rise as high as six feet. Using this projection and the NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer shows that flooding will affect these neighborhoods drastically. Both Woodside and Sunnyside are marked deep red indicating that by 2100, populations in these areas are vulnerable to the effects of climate change through flooding. Additionally, one can see that rising waters may become an issue for Long Island City, but there is a park that is meant to serve as protection. This is especially interesting to consider because Long Island City is a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood filled with luxury condos. It makes me wonder how the area will fare in the next 80 years.
The Potential Permanent Loss of Southeast Brooklyn
With the way climate change is progressing, the imagery above may not be too far from reality in the near future, which is a daunting thing to think about. This map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “Sea Level Rise Viewer” depicts a section of Brooklyn in its southeast region that is highly at risk of danger–primarily to do with rising sea levels. Whenever there are hurricanes and emergency weather conditions, this particular region is always told to evacuate and for good reason given the location so close to the coastline and Atlantic Ocean. We can see that areas such as Coney Island that attract large crowds of people on a regular basis aside from its permanent residents may potentially be gone within the next century, an eerie possibility. Given that Brooklyn is New York City’s most populated borough, the idea that such a large chunk of the city may be flooded due to rising sea levels is a probability no one wants to picture.
The Procession of Staten Island Marshlands
It’s quite amazing how far inland the effects of worst-case-scenario flooding can reach. This image depicts central Staten Island, which is currently mostly occupied by reclaimed marshlands and a few relatively large shopping centers. The brown in this image represents land projected to be reclaimed by the marshlands in the event of heavy flooding, and the Heartland-Springville area is just about totally reclaimed. The Staten Island Mall, one of the main shopping centers of Staten Island, has been totally isolated by swamplands, and the Freshkills Creek has expanded so far that it distends to the Latourette area, considered to be the heart of Staten Island. Even this area, which is a decent distance away from the Staten Island coastline, is deeply and negatively affected by a rise in sea level.
Adults Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder are Five Times More Likely to be Suffering from Depression or Anxiety Disorders
More than 3.5 million Americans are currently living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Abdul, sixteen, is one of those people. If you were to ask his older brother, Rafaf, how this affects him, he’d tell you it just makes Abdul a little quiet. Rafaf has been struggling with moving his younger brother out of the special needs school he attends and into a traditional high school. If this transition were to occur, his chances of going to college and subsequently attaining a profession would skyrocket.
Rafaf’s hope for this lies in his belief that Abdul is a victim of the same problem that Matthew Hollock’s study reveals.
Matthew Hollocks wanted to address the hypothesis that adults with ASD are at higher risk for Depression and Anxiety disorders. With the lack of specific review of this correlation, he and his team decided to conduct a meta-analysis, a quantitative statistical review of several similar studies. Of the 1,661 papers reviewed that related ASD to Depression and Anxiety disorders, only 35 met the requirements of studying people 18 or older. These studies had 26,070 participants in studies analyzing anxiety disorders and 26,117 participants in studies analyzing depression. From these populations 27% are currently suffering from an anxiety disorder and 23% are currently suffering from some form of depression. However, all of the studies analyzed suffered from extreme heterogeneity, or variations among the subjects of the study. This caveat is important because it demonstrates that the majority of research isn’t systematically categorizing the severity of ASD in the subject. The lack of case-by-case analysis is exactly what Abdul is a victim of.
He found himself in a gray area, his meeting with a specialist diagnosed him with acute Autism, and his IQ test score of 73 put him a few points below the cutoff for intellectual disability. Instead of going through subsequent interviews or further testing, he was put into a special needs school. This is the kind of treatment that needs to change. Generalizing a specific group of people is what we’re taught against as children, yet this problem, as it tends to do, has still seeped into the treatment of ASD. The solution to this is a new systematic method of categorizing ASD led by scientists and health care workers. Scientists need to start differentiating the severity of ASD in research studies. Healthcare and social workers need to be willing to commit to case-by-case analysis of individuals suffering from this disorder. The lack of understanding of ASD should not be used as an excuse for the lack of better treatment, but rather motivation for future scientists and health care workers to lead this culture shift.
Rafaf is hopeful. A lawyer is finally reviewing Abdul’s case and the likelihood for his transition to a traditional high school makes his chance at a life not defined by ASD even more of a reality.
Forgotten Already? — A Study in Transient Global Amnesia
It is always difficult and scary to comprehend when a loved one starts to display symptoms of memory loss. Memory loss, often associated with amnesia, is typically divided into two categories: anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to develop new memories after the event that caused the amnesia while retrograde amnesia is the inability to access memories prior to the event that caused the amnesia. Transient global amnesia (TGA), a clinical syndrome of anterograde amnesia, has been studied in efforts to greater understand the link between the brain and amnesia, and in hopes to lessen the worries of those affected by TGA.
Symptoms of transient global amnesia may stem from repetitive questioning but may devolve into a more serious long-term forgetfulness. TGA affects patients who are middle-aged and older, but the older one gets, the more susceptible they are to TGA. Such symptoms may be concerning to the families of TGA patients, especially if these symptoms are not documented or diagnosed.
In a recent clinical study led by Dr. Tarun P. Jain, potential in addressing the concerns of TGA is on the horizon. To attempt to pinpoint the root of the problem, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used on 12 patients to analyze the hippocampus of each of their brains. These patients had TGA, displaying acute-onset confusion and amnesia. The study focused on diffusion weighted imaging in the MRI and any abnormalities that may have been discovered from the scans.
The results of the study found that each MRI scan of each patient displayed at least one abnormality in the hippocampus. Such abnormalities included punctate foci, which are bright spots on the MRI that signal cerebral white matter, which may be potentially harmful. This discovery allowed the research to, at minimum, correlate abnormalities within the brain to amnesia-related conditions such as TGA. Ultimately, the cause of TGA was not determined, but the study led to a greater understanding of TGA through the MRI scans of these various TGA patients.
Furthermore, the importance of understanding TGA and its symptoms lies in that TGA is often linked to other conditions such as strokes, epilepsy, and other head injuries. The research recommends that such conditions—ones that may produce transient amnesic syndromes—should be considered when patients visit their doctors. Routine MRI for strokes also may avoid the need for the protocols of TGA and repeat scans should symptoms return. TGA, although it is still classified as a clinical diagnosis, remains important to be diligent of should one display symptoms of this condition.
Although treatment is not necessarily required, as TGA symptoms generally go away within 24 hours, it is still frightening to witness one go through any level of memory loss. An apt and timely diagnosis would help to reassure not only patients, but their relatives, that TGA is a benign disorder. Even more so, if one displays uncertain symptoms, MRI findings of punctate foci in the hippocampus is nonetheless helpful to confirm or deny the diagnosis of TGA and most importantly, for peace of mind.
A New Piece in the Galactic Formation Puzzle by Aidan Subrahimovic
The study and understanding of radiation and how it affects our daily lives is a relatively young science that has not seen much of human history. However, computer simulations run by astrophysicists have suggested that stellar radiation is vital to the regulation of star formation in galaxies such as our own.
The observations made by astronomers in physical space, while informative, can be cryptic in finding the reasons that galaxies behave the way they do. To supplement their research, astrophysicists have used computer simulations of galaxies to understand more about their formation. The millions upon millions of years in a galaxy’s lifespan are compressed into a few seconds, and data on star formation rates are recorded for interpretation.
In most of these computer simulated galaxies, the majority of radiation present is generated by the deaths of stars in catastrophic events called supernovae. This, however, does not mimic the actual majority of radiation in real-life galaxies, which is generated by stars in the form of stellar radiation. For this reason, computer-generated galaxies can sometimes show an overabundance of stars that would not occur in nature.
With this in mind, a group of scientists with backings from Columbia University and the Flatiron Institute have devised a computer simulation that accurately simulates the amount of stellar radiation observed in real galaxies. The result was a computer-generated galaxy that had a fifth less stars than had been present in previous simulations, and a galaxy that more closely resembled those observed in physical space, demonstrating that stellar radiation plays a tremendous role in regulating star formation.
Stellar radiation is a phenomena that has been observed by scientists since the dawn of radiation science. Every active star in space emits tremendous amounts of energy every passing second in the form of radiation across the whole electromagnetic spectrum, which is then emitted into the vast empty space in between stars, referred to by scientists as the “interstellar medium,” or ISM. Our own sun emits massive bursts of radiation into the solar system in the form of solar flares, one of which containing enough energy to fully charge about ten billion iPhones.
Though solar flares seem harmless, they actually pose a considerable threat to various technologies we take advantage of daily. To humans on the Earth’s surface, even an extremely intense solar flare poses no threat, as the atmosphere serves as a protective barrier for the surface. From a technological standpoint, however, they can be quite disruptive, especially to telecommunicative technologies from cell phone service to air traffic control. In fact, the radiation can get so intense that high-flying airplanes run the risk of getting bathed in radiation if they fly too close to a solar flare. A solar flare in 1989 managed to leave a whopping six million people in the U. S. and Canada when it struck an electrical facility in Quebec.
The evidence found in this Columbia study suggests that stellar radiation is a necessary in regulating star formation in galaxies. Tons of scientific speculation on the origins of our galaxies have been validated by this research. It does, however, emphasize how deeply vulnerable our place in the universe is, and how the most natural processes in our galaxy can prove to be the most detrimental to humans.
Early Signs of Anxiety
Mental health has become a popular topic in recent years, and more people are being diagnosed with and receiving treatment for anxiety and depression than in the past. New research has been conducted in order to recognize early signs of anxiety in children and adolescents, which is extremely beneficial to our understanding of what causes these ailments and how they can be prevented.
Researchers distributed a questionnaire to parents and guardians of young kids in order to determine what their behavioral habits were like. These children were monitored from ages 6 to 12, and were tested for anxiety once they were older. It was found that children who displayed symptoms such as frequent crying, isolation, and bullying were more likely to have anxiety as an adult.
Anxiety is bad because it limits the person’s ability to do things that they encounter in their daily life. Consequentially, it has a great impact on the quality of their life. It can come as a voice which eats away at the person and prevents them from growing and enjoying life. It is no wonder that the formation of anxiety can be linked to early childhood.
Often if a child feels bad about the things going on in their life, they will need some form of comfort from a caregiver or friend. This comfort provides relief from the negative feeling and allows the child to move on. But if the child does not receive any comfort at all, or even more importantly, if they child does not receive the type of comfort they need, then they will not feel relief. This leads to a nagging feeling which, if it continuously is not addressed solidifies as anxiety.
The subjects that were involved in the research and observations were only female. This is worth noting because it is reported that anxiety and depression is more commonly diagnosed in the female population. It is suspected that if the subjects included boys, the results would be similar.
It is important for all of us to have a better understanding of where exactly anxiety comes from. Going forward with this better understanding, we can hope that parents and caretakers will take more caution in raising their children, going forward with a lot of empathy and patience in order to understand if their child’s needs are being met. This will help parents to see what is really going on with their kids during not only the times when they are most distressed, but also during the times when the storm is seemingly quiet.
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