Res Novae March 2017 Newsletter

RES NOVAE Monta Vista High School | March 2017 | Volume II Issue III

NASA has discovered a record-breaking seven potentially habitable Earth-sized planets orbiting a single star about 40 light-years away. Each of these planets could have liquid water on their surfaces, suggesting an opportunity to search for alien life outside of our solar system. To learn more, read NASA’s press release.

ABOUT US

Res Novae is Monta Vista’s student-run science and technology magazine. Every month, our dedicated writers publish stories about exciting topics in STEM, from cancer research to artificial intelligence.

THE MORALITY OF BECOMING SUPERHUMAN

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STAFF

EDITOR- IN - CHIEF

Kevin Li

LEAD EDITOR

Andrea Schlitt

LEAD WRITER

Shreya Parjan

DESIGN LEAD Ilena Peng

FIND MORE

ONLINE

M V R E S N O V A E . C O M SIRI, HOW DO I GET OUT OF THE TUNNEL?

ART LEAD

Carolyn Duan

PUBLIC RELATIONS Shriya Deshpande

TREASURER Neil Palleti

STAFF WRITERS

Adithya Embar Alice Lou Andrea Perng Angela Chau Aparna Manoj Bhakti Patwardhan Bhavna Sud Brenna Chen Charlotte Chui Daria Syskine Ellie Chen Haritha Shah Jeffrey Gong Jenny Chin Justin Chen Keerat Singh Nikhita Shanker Sangita Kunapuli Srijani Saha Surya Konkimalla

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LEARNING STYLES: HOW DO WE LEARN?

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA SHAPED THE WOMEN’S MARCH

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TABLE OF

CONTENTS BLUE LIGHT BEFORE BEDTIME

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THE MORALITY OF BECOMING 04

By Keerat Singh

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he Austin Convention Center in Texas is often filled with suits and ties as it plays host to conventions on education, business, medicine, and sales. However, late in January of this year it was filled with people a little more unconventional. While most of the attendees had nothing noticeably different about them, others had strange dark spots, blinking lights under their skin, bulky clothing filled with electronics, or even the occasional antenna. They also possessed unique abilities, like opening doors with a wave of their hand, sensing people behind them without turning their head, seeing in the dark, hearing colors, sensing magnetic fields, or an intuitive sense of magnetic north. But this isn’t science fiction- it’s bodyhacking.

As the term bodyhack would suggest, these people look to extend and improve human capability using mostly electronic hardware, though some go the biology route and use chemicals and special diets.

As Bob Parks writes for Popular Science, the movement started in 1998 with Kevin Warwick, a professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading in England. Warwick carefully implanted an RFID transmitter

in his hand after receiving ethical approval and enlisting a doctor’s assistance. The RFID allowed him to open doors and turn on lights and heaters just by approaching them.

SINCE THEN, the bodyhacking movement has moved on to even more impressive feats. The aforementioned BodyHackingCon, where companies showcased products meant for bodyhacking and enthusiasts came together to discuss new advances in the field, featured a performance from Moon Ribas, a dancer who has an implant in her arm that allows her to sense earthquakes from around the world, and a keynote by Neil Harbison, a color blind artist who has a camera that connects to his brain through an antenna and allows him to hear colors. There were also on-site RFID implants from companies like Grindhouse Wetware and Sensebridge, startups that create technology for bodyhackers. For example, they produce the North Star, a set of LED lights that can be implanted beneath the skin on the back of the hand. Sensebridge’s most popular product is an anklet that contains a circle of small vibrating motors. The motor closest

to north vibrates, and after being worn for a few weeks its wearer gains an intuitive sense of north.

YET DESPITE the amazing potential, bodyhacking can come with immense risks. Since doctors aren’t allowed to insert non-medical devices, nearly all hacks that require injections are done at body piercing shops without anesthesia, which means the process can be incredibly painful.

Additionally, since ideas are often traded online with little outside supervision there is little assurance that what worked for one person would work in the same way for another person.

Given these risks, it is not surprising that many beginner level hacks also have non-invasive equivalents, like a magnetic ring instead of a magnetic finger implant, which still allows the wearer to sense magnetic fields but does not inspire the same squeamishness. Many of these beginner level hacks are aimed towards convenience, like RFID implants that allow easy unlocking of phones, since people feel uncomfortable about large scale changes like those at BodyHackingCon.

THIS ISN’T SCIENCE FICTION – IT’S

BODYHAC

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MOST PEOPLE at Monta Vista fall in this category, and simply do not see the point of making large and potentially risky changes to their body unless there was some concrete benefit.

“It would depend on what exactly I would be augmenting”, said junior Kristy Maanavi. “To enhance myself even more would feel unnecessary, but … something to make my life a little simpler, I would be okay with.”

Freshman Jaspreet Singh agreed, saying “I just think … I wouldn’t be that comfortable with it.” Since there are a lot of risks involved in bodyhacking, Singh felt that for him, the risks would not be worth the potential benefit. However, for people who have a clear vision for their augmentations, it can be a useful addition to their abilities, especially if they are not satisfied with what they currently can do. Even for those who simply want to streamline their lives, bodyhacking provides a simple way to accomplish that.

Mannavi, who sees potential benefits with bodyhacking, also recognizes the moral issues with making such changes.

“Something to listen to music all the time would be bomb,” she said. “[But] the idea of a superhuman enhancing of your senses is immoral because it tips the balance in an already unfair system. …

If they can’t afford it that means they’re already at a disadvantage to you, so if you enhance yourself some more you have even more of an advantage over them.”

SIMILARLY, as Tony Salvador, who works at Intel studying how social values affect technology, told NPR, “Sometimes, technology moves too fast and outpaces accepted social boundaries -- not to mention laws.” In such a situation, where bodyhacking ideas move past laws and social agreements, it would not be difficult for such exacerbated inequalities to occur.

“It creates a social misunderstanding,” said Salvadore. Without enough time for society to process and normalize the technology, people’s first instinct will always be uncertainty and perhaps revulsion.

“If [bodyhacking] is widely available to

everybody that might be okay because we’re all together as a species or an organism rather than a few people gaining the power and becoming greater than the rest”, said Maanavi. But at the same time, “People could go power-trippy over it.”

Despite initial uncertainty and personal reluctance about biohacking, freshman Jaspreet Singh thinks that people should be able to decide on their own whether they agree with biohacking or not.

“Everyone has their own reasons, so if someone’s willing to go through with it, then, sure,” he said.

surprising. In anticipation of this growth it would be prudent to seek answers to the larger questions that must be answered for bodyhacking to be accepted — how far should a person go with technological augmentation? Should this movement be encouraged as a way to bring humankind forward or should it be resisted in order to maintain the sanctity of the body? In short: how far are we willing to go for the sake of progress? X

TO ENHANCE MYSELF EVEN MORE WOULD FEEL UNNECESSARY, BUT … SOMETHING TO MAKE MY LIFE A LITTLE SIMPLER, I WOULD BE OKAY WITH. - Junior Kristy Maanavi

ON AN individual level people have the right to do whatever they want to their bodies, but when they start taking undue risks or face danger it could become more of an issue. Even if the bodyhacker is okay with changing their body drastically, other people may not agree. Already violence motivated by this disagreement has become an issue: in an NPR article on bodyhacking, Neil Harbison, the keynote speaker at BodyHackingCon earlier this year, said that people have tried to remove his augmentations. He has since founded an organization called Cyborg Foundation to deal with these issues.

Ultimately bodyhacking is currently viewed similarly to other body modification like piercings — while some people don’t agree with them, they are increasingly becoming more accepted.

Though bodyhacking currently favors some people more than others and is not widely practiced, as the movement spreads, the larger availability could have unforeseen effects. On an individual level those effects are risks taken willingly by the bodyhacker but on a larger scale, the collective changes to society could be

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HOW SOCIAL MEDIA SHAPED TH

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n January 21, 2017, hundreds of thousands marched the streets of cities around the globe, participating in one of the most historic events in U.S. history.

The women’s march was a protest not only against the new president, but also against the general discrimination that women and other minorities face today. Yet what made this protest different from numerous others is that for the first time for an event this large, the march itself was promoted mainly through social media, combining modern technology with the agenda of achieving social justice.

The Washington women’s march Twitter page, for example, has more than 428 thousand followers, while 621 thousand were invited to the event on Facebook.

Yet as many noticed after the march, social media did more than it was intended to — and not necessarily in a good way. On one hand, it encouraged people to unite against discrimination, but on the other, it worked as a way to spread anger and disunity about details such as the purpose of the march and who was participating.

THE ROLE OF ANGER Social media may have contributed to a lack of unity in the march, spreading anger and division rather than integration.

Anger is, scientifically, the most viral emotion on the internet. As researchers from China’s Beihang University found, anger spreads more quickly than any other emotion on social media. These researchers measured the amount of times posts on Twitter were retweeted or mentioned in a comment based on the emotion they represented, and they found anger spread more than four times faster than disgust, twice as fast as joy, and 25 percent faster than sadness.

MV French teacher Melanie Barker, who attended a local march with her family, said that despite her goals in going to the march, social media spread unnecessary negativity about it.

“Social media did a good job of spreading the news of how many different marches there were — I think that was exciting,” she said.

“However, there is some criticism [online] of the march that the goals weren’t unified, or there were too many white women, and too many people were doing selfie-type photos and not really taking it seriously.”

Emma-Louise Boynton noted the same idea in her New York Times article, writing that before the march, debate on social media about what the purpose of the march should be worked against the goals of the march itself. While the march was meant to protest

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unfair treatment of all minorities, social media worked to divide people into groups based on what issues they felt should be addressed, from racism to transgender rights.

PROMOTING THE MARCH But social media deserves a couple likes as well. Despite the negativity that social media brought to the women’s march, it also worked positively to increase awareness of the march both before and after it, as well as spread important messages about women’s rights.

MV junior Ananya Bhat, who attended the march in San Jose, thought that social media helped spread her happiness for participating in the march after she posted on Facebook about it.

“I RSVP’d to the event, and right after that, I posted on Facebook,” she said. “In all caps, I wrote ‘I’m going to the women’s march in San Jose!’ with lots of exclamation marks. I definitely got excited by seeing a ton of my friends post, not just about it, but after they attended.”

For Bhat, social media was a positive influence in making people aware and excited about the march. Indeed, social media’s main purpose for the march was simply spreading information about it — as Paul Farhi explained in an article on the Washington Post, “Taken collectively, the Women’s March on Washington and its many affiliated ‘sister’ marches were perhaps the largest single demonstration of the power of social media to create a mobilization.”

Barker utilized the helpful aspects of social media in the march as well, explaining how it helped her spread information about her participation in the march.

“I wanted to ‘check in’ to that event to give them an accurate view of how many people were there,” she said. “I shared it as well for anybody who lived in the area wanted to attend so they could see that we were there.”

Barker brings up an important point — despite the disagreement that erupted on social media over the march, it was extremely effective in spreading information and excitement about the event. Anger may be the most viral emotion on the Internet, but social media works to spread other emotions, albeit slower, as well. Social media, when looked at overall, worked mainly to spread information about the women’s march, creating one of the largest online revolutions in history. And ultimately, whether it helped the overall goals of the march or not, it is hard to deny that without it, the march may not have happened at all. X

E WOMEN’S MARCH

By Bhavna Sud

All photos used with permission of Ananya Bhat

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BLUE LIGHT BEFORE

BLUE 10:30 PM. THE FACEBOOK

AND GRAY CHAT BUBBLES OF POP UP REPEATEDLY ON YOUR PHONE. YOUR FINGERS FLITTER ABOUT THE PHONE’S KEYBOARD, PRESSING “ENTER” EVERY FEW SECONDS. THE “DING” SOUNDS ARE NONSTOP.

11:00 PM. Your friend continues to send messages and your urge to reply is irresistible. You know you have to put your phone away for the night, but you simply cannot.

11:30 PM. Your phone runs out of battery and dies, forcing you to put it down and go to sleep.

We have all had an experience like this before, whether we like to admit or not. It is late at night, you have finished all of your homework, and are ready to go to bed. However, you get the feeling that you just have to peek at your phone one last time, to check your messages or to watch one more YouTube video. Then those few minutes you meant to spend turn into a hour, and you end up going to bed much later than you could have.

But there’s an even bigger problem - now your eyes burn from looking at a bright screen for too long, and you have trouble falling asleep. What is really happening when you stare into the radiance of your device?

THE POWER OF BLUE LIGHT It may not seem like it matters, but that extra time you

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are spending on your device right before bed is harming your sleep - not only the quantity, but the quality as well. This is due to the “blue light” that your device is emitting, whether it is a phone, laptop, or television. Blue light has a variety of natural and artificial sources - it is present everywhere from the Earth’s sky to fluorescent bulbs.

However, in this era of technology, blue light has many new sources that surround us for almost the whole day: our devices. It is likely that your devices use LED backlighting, a technology that improves visual media quality. The device screen may be brighter and clearer, but this enhancement comes with a cost, as LEDs are a major source of blue light.

Blue light does have its benefits - it heightens alertness and improves memory. So our bodies certainly need blue light, but only during certain times of the day. As you may guess, the middle of the night, right before going to bed, is not one of these times.

What makes blue light so hazardous is its ability to lower melatonin, the hormone that establishes your “body clock”, formally known as your circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is the cycle of your body’s daily routines, such as

E BEDTIME waking up, eating, and sleeping. Your body follows this “clock”, so it knows what time each of these activities should take place.

If your device usage falls within an hour of your bedtime, it is likely that your melatonin production is being suppressed, disrupting your circadian rhythm and making it more difficult to fall asleep.

How exactly does this work? During the duration of the day, your melatonin levels are relatively low. As your day winds down, and your bedtime approaches, more melatonin is produced. In the middle of the night, when you are asleep, your body’s melatonin quantity reaches its maximum.

Of course, melatonin levels reflect your individual circadian rhythm - each and every one is unique. It is still important, however, to allow your body to naturally produce melatonin based on your sleeping patterns. If you are being exposed to blue light before bed, this cannot happen.

When your body has lower levels of melatonin than it should, your circadian rhythm causes your body to feel the need to stay awake longer. Until your melatonin levels return to normal, your circadian rhythm will not be restored, and your sleeping time will be delayed.

HOW TO DEFEAT THE BLUE LIGHT MENACE Unfortunately, the solution is not as simple as turning off your device a few minutes earlier than usual. For many MVHS students, nightly screen time is a necessity for relaxing. “I spend about an hour with devices before bed,” said junior Justin Yee. “Usually, I check social media on my phone, or watch YouTube videos on my laptop.”

For the average, sleep-deprived MVHS student, every minute of rest is invaluable. With device overuse delaying their bedtime, not only is their quantity of sleep affected, but their quality of sleep is harmed as well, through prolonged

HOW DEVICE USAGE AFFECTS SLEEP

By Surya Konkimalla exposure to blue light.

Students like junior Noah Tsou know that there are solutions. Tsou uses f.lux, an app that lowers the blue light that his laptop screen emits. The app will adjust the device display so that it displays “warmer” colors, substituting blue light with red and orange light. The idea is that at night, your device screen will emit light that is similar to the lighting inside your room. That way, when you’re using your device at night, you will no longer feel like you’re staring into the Sun. The app turns on after a time set by the user, which is 7 PM in Tsou’s case. The device display will change accordingly until the next morning. However, without blue light, the screen will look different as a result. Tsou was able to solve this problem with an additional browser extension, which removes any visual artifacts, errors that affect pixel colors and cause media to be displayed incorrectly. Now that the effects of the app are minimized, he can enjoy YouTube videos at night.

After using it for seven months, Tsou says the difference is remarkable. Not only is his eyesight no longer strained by the excessive blue light, but he is able to fall asleep more easily as well. “Whenever I turn off the app, the screen becomes so bright it is hard to look at - it has become such an important part of my daily life because of how effective it is,” Tsou said. He feels the app is extremely useful and would definitely recommend it to other students.

Many of us, like Yee and Tsou, simply want some time to unwind after a tiring, stressful day. Using social media or watching YouTube videos offers a way to destress, but with a cost. Rather than being exposed to blue light and harming your sleep patterns, it would be better to avoid technology within an hour of your bedtime. Or, if absolutely necessary, an app like f.lux can help - as long as you don’t mind your screen looking a bit different. X

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