Creative Thought Symposium

The Yellowstone National Park is a tourist attraction and beautiful feature of the United States. Were it to come to become an eruptive site as it once was in the past, it would compromise the hundreds of lives of its visitors and those who live in proximity to it. To address such a hypothetical situation, the Critical Thought Symposium group put together a theoretical response, on the part of the federal government, scientists who supply them with information, and various roles involved in the nation. We had heard about this interactive presentation as a great opportunity for the top students in the upper classes. To see it in action made all the difference in interpreting our perceptions of it. The Symposium was formal, but not too formal; there was a pleasant casualness within the presenters, as they were friends and peers as well as role players, and they kept things relatively interesting for themselves and the audience. The countering aspect was a slight hostility between the governmental roles and the scientist board. Whether feigned or actual, it was fairly open to see the dissent between the conflicting sides, where the governmental officials did not feel that the scientists were being of any help, and the scientists were not being understood by the officials. The one side thought the other was failing to provide substantial, decisive information, and they were depending on them to do so. The others were working to communicate their information without pushing the tide in one way or the other while still unsure of the accuracy of their postulations. This sort of contention is, however, likely a practical presentation of the reality of how a discourse like this would have worked, and it was interesting to see this demonstration of the events.

Radiation = Hero

The Hulk makes for a great movie for those who are fans of comics-based films. While it serves the obvious function of offering quality entertainment, it also makes for a great opportunity to discuss radiation! The whole foundation of the creature that is the Hulk lies in a radiation mishap, wherein a normal man who has spent his life suppressing his anger is struck by interacting Gamma rays. What goes down is that Bruce Banner is working on a nuclear weapon that he hopes will be a less devastating device than the atomic and neutron bombs that are the current options for waging war on the nuclear front. His gamma bomb-in-the-workings was going to function by generating a load of Gamma radiation, disturbing the atmosphere to cause quantum particles that occur in empty space to be more present and energetic, so that their interactions with organic matter would yield mass destruction. The distinction that set his Gamma Bomb apart from other bombs was the lack of hazardous rays in the aftermath, as it was meant to leave no fallout radiation, such that the area that was hit would be reinhabitable immediately. With this, it would still be a horrible weapon, but somewhat less horrible than the alternatives.
The event that transformed Banner into a wild beast of a giant was one of total selflessness, in which he put himself in a point of exposure to intense Gamma rays in an effort to save another person’s life, believing that his own body would be demolished as a result. The game changer here was that, after his years of research put into the Gamma Bomb project, his body had basically become extremely unstable, making it, in effect, a gamma generator. Consequently, when the blast from the Gamma rays he saved another from facing hit him, it interacted with the field from his own body, causing his organism to make up quantum particles like the unstable cells within him, which added to his matter to leave him a hulking, 1,000 pound giant man, with this effect connected to his rage levels, such that his anger became a trigger. The transformation process, then, occurred as the result of a positive feedback loop, whereby the rage he was feeling triggered the onset of the Hulk, which in turn contributed to a feedback loop to further raise his rage levels. While this is all good and interesting, the rationality of it is that the gamma rays would undoubtedly have destroyed Banner, and if his body was at the level of supposedly being akin to a Gamma effect generator itself, he likely would simply have died or been seriously ill from radiation poisoning. Still, leaving the mechanism to its intricate functionality, as is, allows for a superhero who uses his minutely present conscience to maintain the hero instead of a wild killer, which his enraged and enormous state could easily turn him into.

Digging for Gold

I have always wondered what it would be like to find treasure. I do not know what I would do with it except maybe spend it on college, but the thought of finding long lost treasure is such an appealing one. When I first saw the movie National Treasure, I honestly believed that almost everything in that movie could actually happen. After I saw the movie, I kept expecting to see on the news that the Declaration of Independence had been stolen. Needless to say I was a little let down when I realized it cannot actually be done. Not only can the Declaration of Independence not be stolen, but other scenes in the movie are historically wrong or impossible.

The treasure that is being searched for in the movie is called the Knights Templar Treasure. It is true that the Knights Templar society existed and they searched Solomon’s temple for treasure. People assumed they found it because they became wealthy and powerful. Eventually they left for Scotland because they were to be captured by The Pope and the King of France. However, no one knows where or even if the treasure exists. The treasure was completely made up for the plot of the movie. It tied in actual history and made the movie enjoyable.

There could be treasure out there for me to find, but unfortunately it will not be one that has a hidden map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

Excuse Me Ma’am, but I Think You Have My Identity

If there is a movie out with Melissa McCarthy, it is guaranteed to be outrageously funny. However, the movie is not guaranteed to be entirely correct. The most recent movie she starred in is called Identity Thief. In the movie, she plays a character that is an expert in stealing people’s identities. She targets one man, played by Jason Bateman, who has a good job, family, and also the name of Sandy, which is commonly thought to be a girl’s name. She gains access to his credit cards, spending a lot of his money on pointless things. He conveniently finds out as he is being promoted to his new job. His new boss thinks that Sandy may be a bad decision for his business, so he calls security officers to handle it. Sandy tries to assure the officers and his boss that his identity had to be stolen. The officers tell him he has no proof of that, so they would have to take him in. They end up striking up a deal where he promises to find the thief, capture them, and bring them to the police by the end of the week. Needless to say, how identity theft is portrayed in the movie is incorrect.

First of all, the thief and the person whose identity is stolen so not normally meet. Also, the thief does not need to be present with the victim in order for the police to make an arrest.  Typically the thief is found and arrested in the area where they live. Charges on identity theft are based on where the crime occurs, not where the victim lives. Crazy as it may seem, much of identity thefts do not happen inside the country. Typically, identities are stolen from the U.S. by other countries.

Next, she is shown stealing people’s identity by getting a hold of their credit cards. Currently, because the majority of banking is online and all you need is email and password to again access to the money, the identity thief does not need the victim’s credit card. The way Melissa’s character stole Jason’s identity is quite possible, but unlikely today because of online banking. Also, the movie makes it seem as if identity thief does not happen frequently. On the contrary it happens all the time. It is a never ending crime, and usually the identity thief gets away with it. Another thing, she holds onto Jason Bateman’s identity for a long time. Normally, the thief will use their money as quick as possible and discard the identity immediately after.

This movie may be funny, but identity thief is a serious problem. It is a crime that happens consistently, can be difficult to find the thief, and the victim can lose a lot of money. Overall, the crime is rather annoying because it is one that is hard to prohibit. The movie ended up a on a good notes though. Melissa McCarthy’s character finds love in Jason Bateman’s family and decides to turn herself in because she knew he was not going to. Sadly she ends up going to jail, but Jason Bateman and his family are frequent visitors.

The not entirely true story of “Argo” (Cont.)

Canada lost a great deal of credit from their part in the mission to save six members of the US Embassy staff during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. I have discussed primarily the falsity of the film Argo based on this lack of due acknowledgement, but there is still more to note, both on the part of Canada’s efforts and general incongruences throughout the movie.
Canadians had further purpose in the mission by getting involved with an active presence in the airport in Iran. They “scouted” the airport, and secured visas for the hostages, as well as “establishing random patterns” by sending people in and out of the country, and also buying them airline tickets. The hostages were supposed to be from Canada, in accordance with the false premise of the mission to rescue them from their holding in Iran. To make this more believable, Canadians even helped the six embassy staff members to talk like Canadians, “coaching” them in the nations’ manner of speaking.
Each of these forms of aid, varying in degrees of risk and exertion, are points that significantly culminated in the success of the rescue. Much of these was disregarded by the filmmakers, however. It is understandable that the movie had some purpose in renewing the truth of the executers of the mission written in history to the Americans. Because when the mission ended, the whole rescue was ascribed to the work done by Canada, the filmmakers took this recount of the event on as an opportunity to give back to America the glory of successfully completing such a rescue mission. To go so far in the other direction as to basically discount all of Canada’s role in the rescue yields a far worse result. Rather than have the true event reported as performed solely by the part of Canada, for the sake of CIA security and such valid reasons, instead making a movie that ignores the great work they did and puts all the acknowledgement on America alone for no particular reason than that it was an American film has a much less valid purpose and does actually insult the other nation by the circumstances that provoked the misplacement of credit.
To simply go back and discuss a bit more of the incongruences with the real rescue compared to how the movie portrayed the events, the film did what many Hollywood productions do- it heightened suspense far beyond probability for the sake of thorough climactic impact.This came up rather blatantly during the scene at the airport of the actual escape.The movie portrayed this culmination of all that had gone into the mission as a thrilling, adrenaline-pumping fight to the last moment to get the hostages out of Iran. A series of complications arose during the walk through the airport to their plane. First was the fact that the Americans had decided to call off the mission last-minute, which in the movie meant that the plane tickets might not even be waiting for them to pick up to get out of Iran. That didn’t stop them after all, and so they carried on- that is until they were stopped by some security guards. In response, a hostage decided to try getting them out of trouble by speaking Farsi with the guards, and it all works out yet again. –But then the carpet weavers that the Iranian government had hired to put together shredded documents cause more problems! Someone pieces together the face of one of the hostages currently en route to the plane terminal, and suddenly people are coming after the getaway team, chasing them down right up until the plane launches and they are on their way to safe lands. The wild thing is- not one bit of this really happened. In actuality, the walk through the airport went seamlessly. The tickets were purchased (by the Canadians, as I had mentioned) ahead of time, and the carpet weavers were really piecing documents together, but never ended up with the picture of a hostage, as occurred in the movie’s fairly ludicrous portrayal of the scene. These inaccuracies don’t really take away from the movie too much, though. They don’t give the Canadians credit for the tickets they purchased the team, but aside from that, they simply add a lot of thrill and excitement to a more quietly tense reality.
Although Argo is not specifically science related, it is a clear demonstration of the folly of falsehoods in films. A movie about an actual, historical event, without a true representation of the developments of the event, provokes problems for audience’s understanding of the events. When you walk into a theatre, set to view a movie of the same pretense and a similar level of intensity as the true story, it is easy to come away from the viewing feeling as though you have a proper understanding of what happened. When the movie is, in actuality, so far from the truth beyond the real premise and basic circumstances, this means a viewer has left with a very erroneous understanding instead.

A Beautiful Mind: The story of John Nash

The film A Beautiful Mind effectively portrays the life of a person living with schizophrenia and offers viewers several comments on the effects of mental illness. However, it doesn’t just limit the scope to simply this aspect. Being a genius does not preclude the possibility that someone has a mental illness such as schizophrenia, and such is the case in the character of John Nash, the mathematician and Nobel Prize winner portrayed in the movie, partially about abnormal psychology, A Beautiful Mind.

Probably the most compelling thing about this film is that it follows the life of a real man with a real disease. It has been considered to be one of the most accurate representations of mental illness in film.

John Nash has schizophrenia and suffers from severe mental illness, as he experiences most, if not all, of the symptoms that are required to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The symptoms the viewer of the film “A Beautiful Mind” notices include auditory and visual hallucinations, paranoid ideations, delusional thinking, and a distorted perception of reality.

The viewer of the movie A Beautiful Mind observes how symptoms of schizophrenia have an impact on various aspects of daily life. His relationships with his family, friends, and colleagues are disrupted by the intrusiveness of the symptoms of his mental illness, especially because he is perceived as being so smart and the bizarre behaviors he exhibits are so incongruent with the perceptions that others had of him. The strange behavior provoked by his disorder seem even more difficult to understand because the onset of his mental illness occurs at a later age than is typical. Schizophrenia generally emerges in one’s late teens or twenties, but in Nash’s case, the onset occurs in his thirties.       

Once he began his decent into illness, Nash had increasing difficulty relating to the people around him. Even before the onset of his mental illness, he admits that he was not a particularly personable individual, and he had always been more comfortable and satisfied with numbers and his work than with people. Nonetheless, he is able to forge several significant relationships, including a romantic relationship that leads to his marriage to Alicia and a son (who in real life also has schizophrenia). Over time, however, the increased frequency, intensity, and persistence of his symptoms prove to be incredibly distracting, and even dangerous, putting the people that he loves in difficult and unsafe situations. While experiencing a hallucination, Nash leaves his son, who he is bathing, in water by himself, and the child almost drowns. When he is not experiencing symptoms and when he can recognize that he has been hallucinatory, and he feels terribly remorseful about such episodes. However, characteristic of schizophrenia, when he is in the throes of a hallucination or other symptom, he finds it impossible to distinguish between reality and the state into which he has entered. This state proves difficult for people, even those who love him deeply, to understand. When he is symptomatic, the power of the hallucinatory figures who haunt him, and encourage him to harm his loved ones, and it is as if he never knew or cared about them. This condition is especially difficult for his wife, Alicia, who is affected most by Nash’s illness and who is in the difficult position of making painful decisions about his treatment for schizophrenia.       This real life story displays the severity of this disorder and the hardships that come along with it. A not well known disorder is brought to light in this film.

The not entirely true story of “Argo”

A recent movie came out about actual events, but the manner in which they were portrayed has been remarkably distinct from the actual. Argo is a film based around the story presented in the book The Master of Disguise, which a CIA operative (Tony Mendez) wrote, and in the article, “The Great Escape” (by Joshuah Berman). These works were composed around the premise of a rescue mission from the year 1979, in which the book’s author saved six US diplomats from the Iran hostage crisis. The movie recounts the incredible events of the ruse that saved the diplomats’ lives, but it takes a great deal of dramatic liberties along the way. To make the escape, CIA operative Mendez comes up with an idea to claim the people held hostage were actually working with a science-fiction film called Argo, rather than being US embassy staff. Under this ruse, Mendez got the hostages Canadian passports and fake identities to get them away.
Up to this point of the actual story, the movie maintains accuracy. Beyond this point, however, the plot strays quite a bit from the actual events. In particular, the impact Canada had on the whole development does not match up between film and reality. The US actually gave Canada all the credit for saving the hostages to avoid, “possible repercussions if CIA involvement was publicized” (Haglund). Consequently, the film “overcorrected” on this issue by giving the nation too little credit. Canada’s involvement was greatly excluded from the retelling in Argo, giving a false understanding of the role it had in rescuing six embassy hostages. People that do not know about how they did, in fact, help out are lead to disregard the facts of specific instances about people who made the mission possible. Among these are the people that historically hosted the hostages (Ambassador Ken Taylor and an embassy employee, John Sheardown), where the film only showed Taylor, and Sheardown was nonexistent. A main individual was entirely erased, a common practice in movies that rewrite history.
It seems insignificant, but if you think about the impact this has when people don’t aren’t given due credit, in a manner so close to the facts without actually being factual, it is clear how the audience would accept this dishonest information none the wiser. One would think how Taylor may feel uncomfortable with this undeserved allotment of credit, and how Sheardown may feel invisible. Even Taylor, himself, was robbed some glory in the film’s recount of the episode, where his hefty role in the mission was only fragmentally expressed. Not to say that either was or wasn’t expecting recognition for their actions; but to have your story told without getting to be a proper part of it would easily not feel great. As Ambassador Taylor is reported to have responded to the movie’s depiction of their participation in the mission, “[Taylor and Sheardown] are portrayed as innkeepers who are waiting to be saved by the CIA” (Haglund). To have put in so much and risked so much to spy for the Americans in an effort to save the lives of some embassy staff members, strangers to him, and yet be presented as a mere host with no greater purpose than that of an innkeeper, would understandably be awful. They would probably prefer not to have had their story told rather than to have millions of audience members see this version of it, hear their name, and think they meant so little and had such an insignificant part. I think it is especially demeaning that the movie made it seem that Taylor could do no more than host them and be awaiting the CIA’s rescue, as if he was in need of their assistance rather than having been a main contributor to the effort independently. And Sheardown, left wholly out of the picture, would find himself erased from history, or living history, as millions of Argo viewers would have no notion of his participation in the mission, either.

Haglund, David. “How Accurate Is Argo?” Brow Beat. Slate, 12 Oct. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2013.

“Hakuna Matata”

Everyone recognizes the unforgettable opening scene of The Lion King. The rising sun paired with the African singing and vivid pictures of different animals is truly unique and is loved by almost every person who has seen the movie. As strange as it may seem, The Lion King actually has some scientific meaning. It carries out a recurring theme that pertains to our everyday life. The first song called “The Circle of Life” points out the main theme of the movie. From an environmental and biological perspective, the circle of life is an important concept when it comes to dealing with Earth’s ecosystem. Throughout the movie, the theme is mentioned every now and again. Almost every main scene in the movie can be tied back to this theme of the circle of life.

To begin with, Mufasa, the king, further sets up the basis of this theme when he gives his son, Simba, a tour of their kingdom. He says to Simba, “We are all connected in the great circle of life.” He gives Simba the rundown of how their kingdom works. He tells Simba that even though they eat the antelope, they themselves will eventually die and become part of the grass and then the antelope will eat the grass. Therefore, they are all a part of the circle of life. Not one organism is meant to control all other organisms. The circle of life needs to be respected, and if it is disrupted there can be severe consequences, which is shown later in the movie.

This represents a healthy habitat and environement.

After Mufasa dies, Simba is exiled from the kingdom. He runs away and eventually passes out in a desert where Timon and Pumba take him under their wing and teach him the way of how they live. Simba only knows the life of a king, so this is a big change for him. He is introduced to a new way of living. He essentially goes from living at the top of the food chain to living at the bottom. Simba has to adapt to the way other creatures at the bottom of the food chain live. Without Timon and Pumba’s motto, “Hakuna Matata,” Simba may not have been able to live the way they taught him to live. In the end, he learns what the circle of life actually means, which helps shape him into becoming a noble king.

When Uncle Scar becomes king, the kingdom falls apart. Instead of being smart about the availability of food, he decides to hunt everything in the kingdom that can be hunted and eaten. His minions, the hyenas, help along with taking apart the kingdom by eating everything in the vicinity. Eventually, all of the food runs out. There are no animals left in the kingdom except for the lions, hyenas, and of course Zazu. The kingdom is vacant, dry, and corrupt. No animals are left to help the upkeep of the habitat they all live on. Eventually all of the animals had to die off or leave because they had nothing to eat.  As a consequence of no animals, the trees and grass die, because the balance of Earth’s ecosystem relies on every living organism. Each organism has to partake in their role for Earth’s ecosystem and habitat to be perfectly balanced.

The dessication of the Pride Land is done by Scar and the hyeans over consuming the resources.

This theme can relate to Earth’s current environmental problems. The difference is that in The Lion King, a dictator and his followers destroy the environment, whereas in today’s society, every human being is destroying the environment. Through our over consumption of Earth’s natural resources, the environment is paying heavily for it. We view the environment as something that needs to be conquered. We need to treat the environment like how Mufasa treats the antelope. They may eat the antelope, but since their bodies become part of the soil that enables the grass to grow, they are giving back to the antelope. Likewise, we may use the environment for things such as crops, but we should also be giving back to it. In the end, our “kingdom” can look like the one in this movie if something is not done about it.

Breaking Bad: Ricin Beans

The AMC television show Breaking Bad revolves around the story of Walt White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Concerned about the financial situation of his family, consisting of his pregnant writer wife Skyler and son Walter Jr., who has severe cerebral palsy, Walt partners with one of his former students (Jesse) to begin cooking and selling methamphetamine. Tensions break out as his family discovers his illness and he tries to hide his illegal activities from his brother in law, Hank, who is an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The show features a lot of science and chemical jargon. But is it accurate? The answer is yes, according to script managers and associate producers.

When Jesse and Walt want to kill local drug boss Tuco after he had threatened them, Walt’s mind jumps to ricin, a poison which induces flu like symptoms and will not show up on an autopsy or toxin screen without carefully looking for it.

Purified ricin is a real poison, resulting in symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, hypotension, and seizures. The LD₅₀ of the pure toxin is roughly 22 micrograms per kilogram — about 1.78 mg for an average adult. If the minimal dosage is ingested, it would be difficult to detect, though ricin concentrations may be found in blood, plasma, and urine.

The Southwest’s drug lord, Gustavo, spikes the drinks of his opponents in the Mexican drug cartels with ricin, and all keel over within three or four hours. This is unlikely, especially because oral exposure is far less toxic than inhalation, requiring about 20 milligrams per kilogram. In reality, an average toxic dose of ricin will cause death in three to five days.

A poisoned Don Eladio falls into his own swimming pool.

Walt and Jesse’s plan would involve chemical manipulation probably out of their ability. Walt procures about eight castor beans (the plant from which ricin is extracted). Though the former chemist knew how to synthesize the toxin, it requires specialized equipment that neither man had access to in Season 1.

Walt violently cautions Jesse against even directly touching only the beans, which was a bit of an overreaction – one would have to eat and thoroughly chew all eight castor beans to be exposed to the necessary dosage of ricin.

I am Legend ctd.: Power and the Virus

Any source of power, including hydroelectric and nuclear, would have ceased long before the three-year timeline of I Am Legend. So, Neville makes do using three small gasoline-powered generators. They allow him to power his lights, TV, stereo and laboratory during the day and twilight hours and, have done so for over 1000 days. “Three small generators can power a house and everything in it,” says PM’s senior home editor Roy Berendsohn. “If these are very fuel efficient generators, and he’s being conservative with their use, he’ll use maybe 5 to 9 gallons of gasoline a day.” That translates to a lot of fuel–5000 to 9000 gallons over 1000 days. Neville does have access to the below-ground tanks of the city’s gas stations, which, according to Berendsohn, could have between 3000 to 10,000 gallons each. Considering that New York has about 100 gas stations, Neville would have enough fuel to last him a long time.

Still, Berendsohn says, “chances are he’d have a difficult time with the generators as the years roll slowly by. The gas would not be fresh after nearly three years in the ground, and the generators would need service, such as spark plugs and so forth.” So, this part of the tale is plausible, if not entirely likely, Berendsohn says.

So the state of the city is relatively accurate, what about the virus and what it does?

In the movie they manipulated the measles vaccine into a retrovirus and then applied it to patients in a clinical trial. At first it cured cancer. Then, the patients begin to get sick. Most of them bleed out, but those who don’t become hairless, transparent, vampire-like mutants who are allergic to sunlight and crave blood. They spread the disease by biting others. When the virus mutates and goes airborne, it spreads rapidly, killing everyone on Earth except for those who are immune–and slowly, even they are picked off by the vampires, until only one man is left. Though the film’s press release claims “the possibility of a retrovirus spreading out of control is no longer just the fodder for science fiction stories,” Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, one of the world’s top virologists says the scenario presented in the movie doesn’t seem plausible at all. Viruses don’t just mutate and become airborne. They usually fall into a category like vector borne, respiratory, or STD. They don’t just change from tick-borne to pneumonic. Equally bizarre according to Lipkin is Neville’s immunity. “There are people who are resistant to retroviruses because they have mutations in receptors, but that’s a mutation that people have from the get-go,” he explains. “If someone had been exposed to a related virus and was immune to it, then they would carry that immunity, and that would be something that would occur over the course of their lifespan. But how this guy would have come into contact with such a virus is unclear, and certainly wouldn’t be explained in that way.” Lipkin also debunks the notion of him being able to create a cure from his own blood. It isn’t really possible for Neville to take a small amount of his blood and it make a difference in these people’s mutation. There are antibodies that could be protective, but they wouldn’t last forever. Also, Neville would have had to be infected to even develop the antibodies. Lipkin also thinks that the infected are quite bizarre as well. Just because you are infected with a virus you won’t become a vampire. They wouldn’t cause such a drastic change.

I am Legend: Manhattan After Us

After watching Contagion in class the other day, I thought about the movie I Am Legend with Will Smith. It’s a similar sort of movie, but in this case the virus did actually cause an apocalypse instead of just the possibility. This movie depicts Smith as the sole survivor of a man-made plague, who happens to be a virologist. He is also the only one who is immune to the virus. The people who caught the virus either died or became creepy vampire-like mutants. He tries to create a cure using his own virus immune blood while the infected are starting to hunt him and set traps for him. Popular Mechanics magazine consulted with teams of scientists to determine what could happen and what certainly wouldn’t in a situation like this, a post-apocalyptic world three years after the destruction of the human population.

The first thing they discussed was the urban jungle being turned into an actual jungle with plants popping up through cracks in the sidewalk and a waist-high field of grass in Time Square. So what would really happen without us? According to Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us, “You’d certainly have a lot of plants growing up through cracks in the sidewalk,” Weisman says. “After three years, you might see some weeds that have made it waist-high in abandoned lots up in the Bronx, but if they’re showing a waist-high field of grass in Times Square, that’s a bit of a stretch.” After three years, as is the time line of the movie, the gutters would be clogged with leaves. This would be a breeding ground for shrubs and weeds and according to Weisman the sewers would also become clogged and within just two days the subway systems would flood. Without fireman the lightning strikes and gas line explosions would cause fires, leaving some buildings charred. The buildings still standing which should be a good majority of them would be a lot greener too due to the moss and lichens growing on them because of the lack of fumes in the city,unlike the normal brick buildings in the movie. Many of buildings would also have missing facing because without heat the pipes would burst causing water damage and any exposed metal would rust.

One accuracy though is the influx of animals back into Manhattan. Without people and automobiles and the like to scare them off certainly deer and other animals would creep back into the city, especially as plants started to grow in the city. Two types of animals you wouldn’t see in a post-apocalyptic metropolis, though, are roaches and rats, which both depend on humans to survive and are extremely common in a modern metropolis. “Roaches aren’t going to do real well if there aren’t any heated buildings,” Weisman says, and rats will starve without trash to gorge themselves on.

Murder 101: Bases, not acids

Walt and Jesse view the remains of their victim after the hydrofluoric acid eats through the house’s piping.

The AMC television show Breaking Bad revolves around the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Concerned about the financial situation of his family, consisting of his pregnant writer wife Skyler and son Walter Jr., who has severe cerebral palsy, Walt partners with one of his former students (Jesse) to begin cooking and selling methamphetamine. Tensions break out as his family discovers his illness and he tries to hide his illegal activities from his brother in law, Hank, who is an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The show features a lot of science and chemical jargon. But is it accurate? The answer is yes, according to script managers and associate producers.

Throughout the show’s five season run, Walt and Jesse use large quantities of hydrofluoric acid to dissolve the corpses of murder victims, whether from their own deeds or the acts of their drug lord boss, Gustavo. The acid, not usually considered strong because it does not completely dissociate in water, is shown not to react with polyethylene plastic. Jesse, in charge of disposing of the body of his former partner in crime in the first season, disregards Walt’s instructions to buy a plastic bin, instead using the bathtub in his home. After everything had gone down the drain and Jesse thought he was in the clear, his second floor collapsed because the acid had corroded the pipes, resulting in blood and organs falling to the floor.

In later seasons, bodies are placed in plastic bins and appear to have absolutely no remnants whatsoever.

Walt oversees the disposal of Gus’ right-hand man via hydrofluoric acid.

Though it undeniably made for good television, I was left with a burning question: would hydrofluoric acid really completely dissolve a body?

Probably not, say most of the sources I referenced.

The acid is corrosive and will eat through most metals – small amounts are used to etch metals – but it is known as the weakest of all the halide acids. The compound is typically identified as a contact poison rather than a corrosive; usually, human exposures to hydrofluoric acid results in cardiac arrest and hypocalcemia as the molecules pass into the bloodstream and react strongly with local calcium and magnesium ions. Direct contact with large amounts of highly concentrated acid will result in severe burns, but immediate medical attention (such as calcium infusion) would likely lead to a full recovery.

Dr. Anne Marie Helmenstine, About.com chemist, was surprised by Walt’s choice of body disposal, pointing out that the most well known method of dissolving flesh is a lye and water mixture. Animals, like deceased livestock and road kill, are sometimes disposed of in this manner, leaving only a brown sludge and brittle bones. Not to mention, lye can be much more easily obtained than hydrofluoric acid.

The Walking Dead- Could we really become that?

“The Walking Dead” has recently become one of the most popular television series out there. It is the story of Rick Grimes, a sheriff’s deputy, who wakes up from a coma to find a post-apocalyptic world over run with zombies or “walkers,” as they are referred to in the show. This show much like the movie “Zombieland,” revolves around a group of survivors trying to stay alive and find others who aren’t infected. In both the movie and the show, the zombies seem to be created through a virus like infection that is extremely widespread and devastating. According to a Discovery Channel program, the actuality of something like this actually happening is very unlikely. Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunization at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, John’s Hopkins University, Andrew Pekosz describes the type of virus that would be able to cause a “zombie apocalypse.” The virus would be one that infects a person, but does not display symptoms for weeks, but is still able to be transmitted from person to person. In a scenario like this, by the time anyone actually knew they were sick from virus; there would be hundreds if not thousands infected. A virus that acted in this manner would make it extremely difficult to enact any public health measures. It would be hard to act preventatively because many people would be infected long before they knew there was even a virus spreading and it would be impossible to head off the virus with vaccines because so many would be infected before they even knew the virus existed. According to Pekosz though this kind of scenario may be more than a virus can handle. Typically a virus causes an illness as soon as it enters the host, so to ask it to remain dormant, symptomless, while still spreading is almost impossible. He says that there could be a possible link between causing a disease and spreading the virus, much like with the flu. It may have to be passed through coughing or sneezing, which are symptoms that would alert the person of an illness. When asked if it was possible for such a virus to infect the whole population, he responds with a no. It would be very hard for one single virus to infect an entire population. Some people would simply not be exposed to the virus. If they live in a separated area with little to no contact with other people, they may not ever come in contact with the virus. Still others will build an immunity from a small does and just not react to it, but will be immune to a later infection. Others will have a natural immunity, like Matt Damon’s character in “Contagion.” Will all of this together, a good percent of this population would be not be affected by the population and most likely a virus that would cause a zombie apocalypse isn’t even likely. So for now, even though zombie shows and movies seem to be catching society’s interest, there isn’t really a way for something like the “Walking Dead” to occur.

An Alarmingly Efficient Virus

The movie, Contagion, offers some infectious thrill to a high-paced race against time to save the world from a deadly virus. When a woman travels to Hong Kong on business, she contracts an illness that starts as a cough, but ends up stealing her life. Though it does not affect her husband at all, their son also contracts this strange flu, and he dies, as well. The symptoms involve coughing at the beginning, which progresses into more severe hacking; there is profuse sweating and dizziness that increases in intensity until the afflicted hits the ground, possibly seizing, and dies. The film portrays the spread of this unknown illness from person to person, until it grows to a city, state, and international level.
This all goes down during the course of 135 days, less than half a year, and the CDC is all the while working to save the human population being rapidly stricken by this contagion. Because the film incorporated the actual scientific organization that reacts to a situation like the one portrayed here, it was able to discuss the real science behind illness during portions of scientists’ discourse. The information given at these intervals was fairly factual, and throughout the plot progression, there are practical developments that bring up several good points about the way the world, scientifically and societally, works today.
It is among the earlier scenes that a lot of the virology was communicated. The scientists talked about fomites, which are inanimate objects that can serve as transmitters of infectious agents. They even made us in the class viewing the movie self-aware and uncomfortable with their talk of how easily microorganisms can be transmitted by touching various typical objects. They point out the number of times the average person touches their face each day, which is how the microorganism with which one comes into contact find most easily get into our systems- at which point every one of us in the class took our hands away from our faces. The number was near 5.5 thousand times per day, between two-four times a minute.
While this fact was sound, though startling, the information on the spreading rate for the disease in Contagion did not maintain the same degree of accuracy. The film brought up the concept of R-naught or “R0,” which indicates the number of people to whom each inflicted will likely pass on the disease during the contagious period. They stated in the movie that the virus had an r-nought of 2, which means two more people become sick for every one infected with the virus. The man who said this then went on to give off a series of numbers that did not add up sensibly. He was trying to demonstrate the level of impact this disease would have, but instead of adding up the numbers by doubling each sum, he was squaring it. He exponentiated the amount of people infected with the virus, skipping the steps between to blow it up to a ridiculous degree, rather than expressing the illness’ severe but more rational danger.
Despite this confusion, the movie brought up some credible ideas about the developments that accompany an epidemic. The filmmakers portrayed a practical spread of disease, and an interesting and rather plausible relief response to such an epidemic. They showed how the Internet could become a major hindrance as a mode of expression for those who are anti-science by depicting a blogger gaining credibility in the eyes of the public, only to dissuade them from taking their best chance by getting vaccinated, and for his own personal profit. The other realistic dilemmas to responding in such a crisis had presence in the plot, such as the deliberation on who should be first vaccinated and how people would react to a sudden crisis that is dropping bodies everywhere and throwing societal norms and etiquettes out the window. I thoroughly appreciated the deep thought that went into producing the varied and complex effects of such a wholly, globally impactful phenomenon as an epidemic occurring today, despite it being something that has never rocked the modern world. Although the disease progressed with a somewhat unlikely rapidity, and the discussion about it made it seem larger than life as well, the other factors of the film made up for this scientific lapse that is to be expected in most any movie.

An Island of Crazies

Shutter Island–a man-made island specifically created for the institution.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a psychological disease where a person has two different distinct identities that can control their behavior and affect their personality. This disease can come about in three different ways. The way porteyed in this movie is that the the person makes up a different identity in order to avoid the pain and stress from past, traumatic events that haunt the person’s memories. The main character in the movie Shutter Island is supposedly suffering from this disorder. His name is Teddy Daniels, a 30-year old U.S. Marshal who visits a mental institution on an island off the coast of Boston. His task is to investigate the disappearance of a patient named Rachel who drowned her three children. Throughout the movie we see him interact with the patients and doctors as if he is a U.S. Marshal. In the end, we learn that he is actually a patient on Shutter Island suffering from a mental illness. The thriller almost accurately depicts a real-life patient that would be suffering from this type of disease. However, due to the goal of increasing the entertainment of this movie, the audience who watches this movie will leave with a few misconceptions on psychological disease, psychiatrists, and how mental institutions are actually run.

Although, the movie never comes out and says that the main character is suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, this is obviously his problem. At least the author of this novel the movie is based on and the directors of the movie actually portray a patient with an actual disease instead of a disease that is made up. However, the problem with actually portraying a real disease is dealing with the responsibility of portraying it accurately.

Throughout the duration of the movie, we believe that Teddy is actually a U.S. Marshal searching for a missing patient. As the investigation goes on, Teddy keeps on having different hallucinations and dreams about his wife dying in a fire which supposedly has already happened. She gives him information about the missing patient and about the man he is determined to find, Andrew Laeddis. Andrew is a man that was imprisoned for burning down his apartment and a school and then diagnosed to have schizophrenia. He also envisions dead people giving him information to help him out. Teddy also has the idea that the institution is trying to make him go crazy and that it does human experiments on the patients. In the end, we learn that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis and that he killed his wife after she drowned their three children. In order to deal with his trauma he creates the idea that he is a U.S. Marshal searching for a fictional patient. The staff decided to go along with his fake identity and fantasy in hopes that he would revert back to reality and realize who he actually is. In other words, they used a sort of reverse psychology on him. When the doctors realize they have failed, they lure him to the lighthouse to explain who he really is and that they have decided to lobotomize him, which is cutting connections in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain through the eye sockets.

Teddy making his way to the lighthouse. Why would doctors allow a patient to travel alone to a lighthouse that is located on a rock beside a cliff?

This is when he finds his children, after his wife (she is bipolar) drowns them.

Then he decides to shoot her thinking it will solve all of his problems.

A few misconceptions of this movie would include some of the symptoms involved and the actual handling of the situation. Teddy imagines up characters, stories and even objects. If he was a real victim of Dissociative Identity Disorder, this type of behavior would typically not happen. Patients with this disorder only create a different identity with different personality attributes. They do not create a completely different story. Next, he is seen to perform normally when doing typical day-to-day activities. Patients with the disorder do not function properly, often have no idea where they are, and do not recognize people they would normally know. Lastly, an entire hospital would not go along with a Dissociative-Identity-Disorder patient’s “role-playing” in hopes that they will get better. As psychiatric interventions go, Teddy’s role-playing intervention would be deemed unsafe to the other patients and the hospital staff. Typically patients would be put through therapies where they try to establish the differences in their different identities and finding a stable medium. At the end of the movie, his psychiatrists do try to explain who is, but in an aggressive manner, which would not be done in a normal hospital. Also, since Teddy is Andrew Laeddis, and Teddy days that Andrew was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Teddy is technically a schizophrenic patient. Commonly, people with the Dissociative Identity Disorder are mislabeled as having schizophrenia. Therefore, either the movie staff is making the common mistake or the intention is portraying the common mistake in the movie via either Teddy making the mistake or the doctors miss-diagnosing him.

Watching this movie, I was entirely confused. It made me think and wonder if Teddy is actually crazy or if he is completely fine, and that everyone else is crazy. Since I tend to be optimistic and tend to hate things that could be a bad or painful situation, I believed that he was totally normal and argued about it with the rest of my family. After doing research I sadly learned I was wrong. Although I did the research, I decided not to let my family know that they were right. I still internally hope that the movie is a trick on the mind and that Teddy is actually a healthy U.S. Marshal.

The End is Greatly Overdue

T.V. show on The Weather Channel that is focused on how the world could end. Each episode talks about a different possible scenario.

What would happen if Yellowstone erupted? Well, according to the show called “Forecasting the End,” it could essentially be the end of the world and life as we know it. The scientists on the show deem the volcano at Yellowstone a “Super Volcano.” This volcano does not look like a typical volcano, such as the one on Hawaii. Instead, Yellowstone is under the ground, hidden away. Scientists believe that this volcano is supposed to erupt every 600,000 years. The last time it erupted was 640,000 years ago, so it is about time it erupts again. The destruction from the Super Volcano is supposed to be unimaginable. Since no one has seen the eruption of a Super Volcano, no one knows what to expect. Therefore, “we should expect the unexpected.” The only way to predict what could possibly happen is to use research from the past volcano eruption. Apparently what scientists found was ash that had ended up as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Because of their findings, they predict that the volcano eruption could impact the entire United States and maybe the world.

Yellowstone is located on top of one of the hottest mantel activity spots in the world. It also has a large caldera. The way a super volcano erupts is a little different from a normal volcano eruption. Located under the crust is a magma pocket of actively-moving magma. The cold rocks of the crust act as a tough barrier against the hot magma. One day, that barrier could give way, and all of that pressure built up could cause the crust to explode. Scientists predict that it could have the same effects of an atomic bomb that will affect the surrounding areas. It could spew out enough ash to cover the entire U.S. The air will be thick with tiny bits of rock that is not breathable for a few days after the eruption. The ash will travel throughout the U.S. on the jet-stream and could suffocate our crops which leave us with absolutely no food. The air and atmosphere will be greatly polluted harming the environment and killing many organisms. The ruined ecosystems could take decades to recover and for the Earth to rebalance itself once again. Also, the ash cover could cause the temperature to drop nine degrees Fahrenheit. A drop that is equal to that of the last ice age. Forget global warming causing another ice age, we should be more worried about a giant volcanic eruption.

However, outside of the drama of this T.V. show about predicting the end, the actual possibility of the volcano to erupt in our lifetime is slim to none. Predicting a volcano eruption though is some tricky business. The activity under Yellowstone is regularly monitored for possible signs of an eruption and if this activity ever changes or escalates, the public would be the first to know. The main goal would to be to evacuate the people in the surrounding states. Although these people would safely be out of the vicinity of the volcano, escaping the ash is quite impossible. It is true that the ash could cover most of North America, suffocating our crops and polluting our air. However, that the eruption could end the world is a bit of a stretch. The eruption of Yellowstone could be extremely destructive, but with the right preparation and evacuation plans, humanity will be just fine.

 

Human Brain Project brings Doctor Who one step closer to reality

Promotional image for “Bells of Saint John”

Series 7 of hit BBC science fiction serial Doctor Who continued on Saturday, March 30, with the airing of “The Bells of Saint John.” In this episode, the Doctor again runs into another incarnation of his mysterious new companion Clara Oswin Oswald. After finding her, trouble brews when she is almost uploaded into the network called the “data cloud” like many denizens of London have been in the preceding weeks. The episode centers around the efforts of Clara and the Doctor to figure out what is going on and how to stop the virtual brain capers.

Although the show is (rightfully) labeled science fiction, I wondered to myself if such a notion were feasible in today’s increasingly digital world. Could the information in someone’s brain be taken – or at least replicated – in a virtual environment?

The Human Brain Project is making efforts in that direction. The study aims to create a virtual human brain to advance knowledge of neurobiology and neuroscience and general.

HBP’s first goal is to build an integrated system of six ICT-based research platforms, providing neuroscientists, medical researchers and technology developers with access to highly innovative tools and services that can radically accelerate the pace of their research. These will include a Neuroinformatics Platform, that links to other international initiatives, bringing together data and knowledge from neuroscientists around the world and making it available to the scientific community; a Brain Simulation Platform, that integrates this information in unifying computer models, making it possible to identify missing data, and allowing in silico experiments, impossible in the lab; a High Performance Computing Platform that provides the interactive supercomputing technology neuroscientists need for data-intensive modeling and simulations; a Medical Informatics Platform that federates clinical data from around the world, providing researchers with new mathematical tools to search for biological signatures of disease; a Neuromorphic Computing Platform that makes it possible to translate brain models into a new class of hardware devices and to test their applications; and a Neurorobotics Platform, allowing neuroscience and industry researchers to experiment with virtual robots controlled by brain models developed in the project.

— “Vision,” HBP

The project has yet to make significant strides, as the proposal was only submitted in October 2012. However, recent breakthroughs in the fields of artificial intelligence and logical programming indicate at least the possibility of promising results. For example, researchers at an Indian university have programmed a computer to identify different fruits and vegetables, down to specific strains, with 99 percent accuracy. The Human Brain Project was, however, chosen as one of the European Commission’s two major funding interests as part of the FET Flagship Program.

Clearly, modern science has a long way to go – if there is even a feasible destination – before it can functionally move neural information from a biological environment to an electronic one, or even fully recreate a specific organism’s knowledge and personality. A newly created virtual human brain is another story; only time will tell the status on that project.

For more information on the Human Brain Project, visit http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/.

Podcast #331 ctd. A Body Found

In the same podcast #331, at 50 minutes and 30 seconds, Joe Rogan starts to talk to Dr. Greer about a body that was found. It is about six inches in length. The body is actually pictured in the trailer for the movie SIRIUS that Dr. Greer helped create. He says that it is being studied at one of the world’s top universities, although he doesn’t say which one and it has been x-rayed, CAT scanned, and is now being DNA tested. They actually clipped two of the things tiny ribs to extract bone marrow to do the DNA testing. Dr. Greer isn’t at liberty to say who found it, but they do know that it is an organic creature found in the Atacama Desert in Chile, an area very famous for UFO sightings and where natives have supposedly seen creatures like the one found, but alive. The CAT scan showed lungs and it only has ten ribs instead of twelve. However the bone density tests have shown that it must be at least several years old despite its tiny stature. Even though the top scientists in the world don’t really know what it is they have determined that it isn’t human by a diagnosis of exclusion. It cant be human because the size of it would mean that it should be a fetus in about the 23 week of development and not a multiple year old organism according to the bone density. They even factored in the other primates and the possibilities of diseases causing the difference in bone density. They also determined that it could not be a fossil either because it contained organic matter, DNA material and organs. The top geneticist and diagnostic doctors say that there is no form of dwarfism or genetic disorder that could cause something this old to be this small. Dr. Greer also talks about some abnormalities in the actual structure of the creature like its lack of two ribs and the shape of the skull. According to Greer there is no abnormality that causes humans to only have ten ribs. He also says that he was the third person to ever handle it and did some of the initial testing. When asked how old the creature was he said that he didn’t know. The carbon dating on it is supposedly the next step but scientists wanted to be assured that the had enough genetic material to redo DNA testing if need be and they also didn’t want to damage the little thing anymore than they had to. Joe then asked him how it was preserved and Dr. Greer gave a small hint as to where it was found in saying it was in a desert climate. According to him the body is very desiccated and dried out and had no form of preservative on it. They do however know that the tiny creature died a traumatic death because its skull was crushed in behind its right ear, its jaw was slightly asymmetrical, and its right humerus was fractured. These damages are thought to be the cause of death. Dr. Greer says that everyone who has seen the creature thinks it looks like an ET and that the top specialist in bone abnormalities knows nothing that could cause it to look the way it does. What they are trying to figure out is, what is this creature?  If they figure out that it isn’t animal or human, what does that mean for society? Will it prove that there are extraterrestrials, something that many are very skeptical about?

Contagion mostly accurate, though it exaggerates

Contagion, starring Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, and Gweneth Paltrow, centers around a pandemic virus causing people to violently die of seizures. The disease kills several in Hong Kong before the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization begin to act on it. Eventually, the virus, dubbed MEV-1, causes so many casualties that large scale quarantines are introduced, food and water is rationed, and mass graves are formed. Matt Damon, husband of one of the first few to contract the disease, is thought to be immune to it. Within four months, a vaccine is manufactured and distributed worldwide after a researcher tests a compound on herself. All ends up being well, with the vaccine being distributed on a lottery system based on birth date and the CDC keeping a sample in its highest security lab.

The film’s chief science consultant was Dr. Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and “master virus hunter,” as called by the New York Times. He designed the MEV-1 virus for Contagion. Though the movie never explicitly states the meaning behind the acronym, it stands for Meningoencephalitis Virus. The virus was largely modeled after the real Nipah virus found in Bangladesh in 1999. Both are paramyxoviruses causing similar symptoms. In Contagion, MEV-1 causes meningoencephalitis, an inflammation of the brain and its surrounding tissues which can cause fever, tremors, and convulsions leading to death in roughly four or five days; Nipah, however, causes fever and headaches which lead to a coma in a span of over two weeks.

Apart from the virology, the movie strives to depict the CDC as naturally and accurately as possible. Filming actually took place on the CDC campus in the parking garage, front gate, and lobby of Building 19, which houses the center’s Visitor Center. Furthermore, CDC insiders met with the film’s director to build a set which “precisely reproduces” the Emergency Operations Center.

The public health jargon thrown around is on the ball too. Terms like BSL-4, R nought, and EISO are all positions and terminology used by CDC officials when investigating an epidemic. As Gweneth Paltrow’s character explains, the R-0 is the level of infectivity of a certain disease, with the 0 changing to represent how many are infected because of one instance of a virus – smallpox, for example, would yield about three cases for every one infected, therefore rendering its reproductive rate R-3. EISO stands for Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, one who goes into the field to gather information on an epidemic disease. Gweneth Paltrow’s character is an EISO, although no real life EISO has ever been recorded as dying because of the disease being investigated like she did. Finally, BSL-4 is a security storage level indicating the highest level of laboratory containment, used for highly infectious organisms for which there is no known cure; it is where MEV-4 is stored at the movie’s conclusion.

The Joe Rogan Experience #331

http://ec.libsyn.com/p/e/b/c/ebc8cbca7490c4f7/p331.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01ce8334d7c955c886&c_id=5456958

While I was home over spring break my uncle tried to get me to listen to a podcast. Being in the car with him, I kind of had to listen. I had heard both my aunt and uncle talk about Joe Rogan’s podcasts before, but this one in particular had my uncle all riled up. He really wanted people to listen to it so eventually I did.

Joe Rogan is an American martial artist, TV host, actor, and comedian. He is most well known for hosting Fear Factor, commentating on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and for his podcasts on the Joe Rogan Experience.

The podcast my uncle wanted me to listen to was a nighttime special with Dr. Steven Greer. Dr. Greer was a former trauma doctor who quit his job to become a ufologist and begin work on the Disclosure Project. The Disclosure Project is Greer’s brainchild and his attempt to tell the public about secrets that the government is keeping. The podcast overall is very interesting and somewhat enlightening even though a lot of what the dear doctor says does seem to be a load of poop. Two parts in particular that seemed very highly unlikely to the scientist in me were one having to do with a time where he actually contacted extra terrestrials and another having to do with other dimensions that he has accessed. In the part about contacting aliens he says that he used some “experimental protocols,” developed by the Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind Initiative, to contact some vehicles and four UFOs appeared in the sky and they videotaped them, although not good quality video because it was about 15 or 20 years ago when they contacted them. After that though he was called in to brief the sitting CIA director because some higher up people had told others about the incident and it made its way up through the chain of command. I’m not sure how much of that is real, but even if he did have family as part of team that put people on the moon I feel like he would get to directly get to speak to the CIA director. I could be wrong, but with that statement directly following one about him contacting aliens, it seems kind of unrealistic. Joe Rogan though obviously felt a little disbelieving too because he asked Dr. Greer how and he responded that they have protocols, very controversial ones, that deal with nonlocality. Nonlocality is the concept that “the universe has various dimensions that you can move through to go form one star system to another.” This is where he gets into the other part that set off warning bells about what he was saying being a little off kilter. Dr. Greer says that the dimensions with higher resonant fields than “linear space time of electromagnetism” interface with coherent thought. He says that it is possible to travel from one star system to another just with very intent thought and technologies that switch and interface with that thought. These technologies will be phasing at multiple times the speed of light that help along with intent thought to get you to another dimension. His proof? He did it when he was a teenager. He had a near death experience that made him believed that all minds were part of one whole.  He then began to study meditation, which lead him to have contact with aliens. He was doing Scientific Remote Viewing, which supposedly army intelligence and the CIA are using, and ended up remote viewing deep space making contact with an ET ship which then materialized in front of him. I don’t know how much of this interview is real or if this man is crazy or he truly believes what he says, but either way: What is the government hiding from us? Why hasn’t anyone come out with a way to do this kind of remote viewing at home and why haven’t they told us they contacted aliens before?

Critical Thought Symposium a rare look behind the scenes

Thursday, March 21, was the date of the live scenario open to the public. The volcano located in Yellowstone National Park has shown increased activity. Does that mean an explosion? Will the explosion destroy half of the United States or only the immediate vicinity? The science team struggled, and ultimately failed to provide, an answer to these questions. Should we evacuate the would-be affected areas in Idaho and Wyoming? How will we provide humanitarian relief? The local government panel, demanding answers from the scientists, heatedly debated these questions. What should we tell the public? Will they panic? Riot, even? The presidential group wrestled with these concerns throughout the one and a half hour deliberation in the Duke Energy Auditorium, after which the (simulated) President of the United States gave an address to the nation in which he failed to delineate every possible outcome, yet diplomatically announced a raised level of concern.

The main lesson I learned from the debate is that a singular issue, and the response to that issue, can affect a vast array of people, agencies, and areas. The governor of Wyoming and director of FEMA desperately wanted to move their people to safety and provide them with everything they needed, though shared the concern of the White House Press Secretary about creating havoc in the public sphere. Meanwhile, the scientists cared about the raw data, frustrating themselves and their colleagues with the impossibility of providing a definite answer or even conclusive data.

All in all, the opening of the Critical Thought Symposium was an interesting and intellectually stimulating evening. I was inspired to apply for the opportunity myself, when it becomes available in a year or two.

Thinking Forward in The Day After Tomorrow

Rushing through climatic developments

The issue of global warming, or climate change for the nervous folks, has been on the mind of the American public for decades now. Presentations depicting the gravity of the matter and attempting to incur a national response through awareness have been made year after year. The movie, The Day After Tomorrow is one such presentation. With a cast including prominent actors like Jake Gyllenhaal, and the hype of graphic effects highlighting the dramatizations, this movie managed to put out the idea of how grave this problem is. However, there is concern as to whether this attempt at spreading awareness was actually more of a hindrance to informing the public of the need for their taking action.
The crux of such disdain lies in the incongruences of the progression of climatic developments in the film. There is disputable science intertwined with the plot of The Day After Tomorrow that provoke more overlooking than looking into global warming. Audiences see the barefaced aggrandizements of the weather disasters and perceive the real issue as less severe than it really is. A false sense of security ensues, as people observe the conspicuously implausible mass destruction presented in the movie, and they recognize that the events occurring in front of them are most certainly not about to occur in the real world. Knowing, then, that the consequences they could face due to climate change will not amount to the paramount heights faced by the cast in the movie, they could feel comfortable with not worrying about it at all. The overall sentiment that results from the viewing on the part of the general, not specifically knowledgable, public is one of comfort and relief, rather than one of inspiration to make changes. Why, after all, would anyone come out of an extremist, hollywood-enhanced disaster film with genuinely feeling a stimulus to act?
Science goes bad in the movie’s portrait of global warming due to the infeasible rapidity of the disastrous developments. Negative events transpire consecutively, one directly following its predecessor, with such haste as to imply an ice age brought on in the span of a few days. The unlikelihood of this eventuating at such a pace brings on the common speculation of how much attention should be payed to the issue. Fissures appear in ice at an arctic research site, and shortly afterward snow piles up to cover more than half of the Statue of Liberty. People, even without knowing much about how the climate functions, are fully capable of identifying the silliness of the science involved. There is no way they can sensibly infer from this viewing that the issue is as dire as the movie makes it seem. Despite it all, the film did serve as a good component of the semester’s viewings. With its decent acting, attempt at effects, and aesthetic cast, the picture as a whole was appreciable enough.

Paleoclimatology at its Finest

“The Day After Tomorrow” depicts a series of weather events that is caused by an abrupt climate change. The main character, Jack Hall, is a paleoclimatologist that uses evidence from the past ice age to predict what could cause another ice age. His theory is that global warming would cause the polar ice caps to melt, dumping fresh, cold water, into the North Atlantic Current. This messes up the balance and amount of fresh water and salt water, therefore creating a desalinization process. He predicts that this will create chaotic weather patterns which end in an ice age. Part of his theory is quite true, but for the most part, it is false.

For starters, temperatures cannot drop as drastically as they did in the movie. Yes, global warming could cause glaciers in the north to melt, adding more fresh water to the ocean. This could affect climates through the Gulf Stream because the North gets their warm water from the tropics. With the added fresh water from the melting of the ice, the climates in the north could drop a few temperatures. This could happen because fresh water is not as dense as salt water. If they mix, then salt water will not be dense enough to sink. In turn, this would slow down and possibly stop the Gulf Stream creating a drastic change in the temperature. However, this would take decades to hundreds of years because the oceans move the heat and cold a lot slower than the atmosphere does.

Additionally, the constant emissions of green-house gases cannot create a total ice age in the Northern Hemisphere. Because we emit so much carbon dioxide and other green-house gases, global warming is triggered. Global warming, however, cannot trigger an ice age. It can cool parts of the Earth through the changing current, but it cannot elicit a full-blown ice age that affects the entire planet.

As for the extreme storms, yes, storms would eventually happen, but not that fast or to that extent. In the tornado scene of Los Angeles, not enough evidence is presented from the past, because of recent technology, to predict whether or not extreme tornadoes are even possible. On the other hand, storms would become more severe due to more evaporation occurring which provides the atmosphere with more water vapor. The heat given off by water vapor that later condenses into rain is how hurricanes are essentially formed which brings us to another main part of the movie. Hurricanes do not form over land. They form over water and dissipate or become weaker as they pass over land mass. Also, the separate storms systems could not merge together to create one giant super-storm. Hurricanes typically bring torrential downpours of rain, not blizzards. Last but not least, the storm cells in the movie are seen rotating clockwise and counter clockwise. Not only is it not consistent, but part of their scenes are wrong. Hurricanes always move counter clockwise due to what is called the Coriolis Effect. This rotation is in itself caused by the Earth’s rotation.

Although the science in this movie is completely implausible, at least it passes on a nice warning. We consume the Earth’s natural resource. Through this consumption, we are destroying the environment. Americans especially take Earth’s resources for granted. Compared to the rest of the Earth, we currently use up the most. This movie is letting us know that if we do not act now, one day our future lineage will have to pay the price. The only problem is this: the message is passed on through a lot of unnecessary, falsified weather anomalies.

The Wizard of Hollywood

I recently wen and saw Oz the Greatand Powerful, and it got me thinking about the tornado. Both Oz from this movie and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz arrive in the land of Oz by travelling in a Tornado. The Wizard of Oz was always one of my favorite movies as a child and the tornado scene was one of the scenes that stood out the most because it just seemed so real. I knew, even as a kid that the movie was really old, but I didn’t understand how they actually did the filing until recently.

Most movies nowadays are done with CGI, or computer-generated imaging, where they use computer software to create special effects that used to actually be filmed. CGI is a very cool relatively new process, but it is not as inventive as the old way.  In his book The Making of the Wizard of Oz, Aljean Harmetz gives a fascinating account of how the tornado was constructed.

Arnold Gillespie was the special effects coordinator and inventor for The Wizard of Oz. He began with a budget of 8,000 dollars to design, build, and photograph the first tornado. Which in 1938, when the movie was filmed, was a lot of money even though it is nothing by today’s standards. It was a thirty-five foot tall rubber cone, but the cone was too rigid and wouldn’t move. So, Gillespie just tore it down and tried again and in this case second time was the charm. Even though he didn’t known much about tornadoes and obviously couldn’t just go toKansas and wait for one to pick up a house, he relied on his background as a pilot for his next attempt. A windsock. He realized ow closely they resembled tornadoes and so he decided to make a tornado out of muslin which was flexible so it could bend and twist and move from side to side. He built the thirty-five foot tapered muslin sock and attached it to a steel gantry suspended from the top of the stage. The gantry alone cost $ 12,000, way over budget and an exorbitant amount for 1938, and was specifically built for the tornado by Bethlehem steel. The gantry was a mobile structure similar to ones used in warehouses to lift heavy stuff and could travel the length of the stage. The bottom of the sock disappeared into the floor where a rod came up through the base of the tornado to pull it from one side to the other. By moving the gantry and the rod in opposite directions, it made the tornado appear to be snaking back and forth. The first one tore because it moved to violently, but they mended it with music wire.

To make the illusion more real they used a product known as “fullers earth”, powdery brown dust, and sprayed it into the base and top of the wind sock. The result= the boiling mass of dirt or could seen on screen. Dense clouds of yellow-black smoke made from sulfur and carbon were also injected onto set from a catwalk above the gantry to make the storm seem more real. However the stage hands didn’t have respirators and stayed up there breathing in the smoke until they were coughing up black-yellow mucous for days after the tornado was filmed. They didn’t have OSHA back then…

After the tornado itself was filmed they had to use rear projection to transfer the previously shot tornado image onto a translucent screen while actors like Judy Garland were placed in front of it. Wind machines provided then wind and debris and leaves were thrown in to obscure the fake tornado. The entire farm was also scaled down to make the scene work. It was scaled to ¾ of an inch toa foot.

This one tornado scene cost more than any other scene in the entire movie.

It is incredible to me hoe much work went into creating a scene like this especially with virtually non of the technology we have now. They had to MacGyver their way through a movie, and still made incredible, believable film in 1938.

What would filmmakers do now if all ofa sudden they could reply on a computer to create their effects anymore? How would the actors and stagehands take having to work in those conditions?

Argo Fudge Yourself

In the late seventies, six Americans were freed from the country of Iran through the fake production of a movie called Argo. With the help of Canadian Ambassador, Ken Taylor, and the hero, which is also the main character Tony Mendez, the Americans make it safely out of Iran. The Oscar winning movie, also called Argo, which is loosely based on the historical event, is somewhat false. The part of the movie that gets the most critique is the nerve-wrenching climax which makes some audience members end up in tears, including myself.

In the heart-stopping climax of the movie, the Americans barely make it. First, the American government has to approve the purchase of the plane tickets for the Americans to safely get out of Iran. When Tony Mendez first walks up to the counter to ask about their tickets he is denied. In that same moment the plan tickets just so happen to be approved, allowing the Americans to enter. Originally, the American government stopped the rescue plan because of it being so risky. However, at the last minute, the main character decides to go through with the plan and discreetly contacts the American government, forcing them to approve the tickets. But the suspense is not over…

As they go through the airport, the group is stopped by security guards because Iran is currently on the lookout for the six missing Americans. One man in the group decides to speak Farsi to the guards in order to explain the movie’s plot and what they were doing in Iran. After his explanation, one of the security guards decides to call the director’s number in which the director of the movie reaches in the nick of time. As the director answers, the security guard is about to hang up. Once the security guards are sure that the movie is real, the Americans are set free to get on the plane. However, the audience is relieved for only a second…

Finally, the Americans are settling themselves in and the plane is getting ready for takeoff. Little do they know that the shredded elements of their pictures, from the American embassy, of their faces are pieced together at that exact moment. When the Iranians figure out who the American escapees are, they automatically call the airport. The security guards break their way through the gate, jump in a military vehicle and chase down the airplane. Just as they reach the plane, the plane takes off into the sky. One of the Americans notices the security guards and starts to silently panic, but the Americans safely make it across the border where they get up and celebrate.

Did all of this really happen? No, it did not. In fact the whole ordeal in the airport went down quite smoothly. Although the climax of the movie is completely stressful and rewarding, it is only made up for mere entertainment. The part of this climax that is factual is that the Iranians forced women and children to put together the shredded pictures of the Americans. However, they never finished the pictures in time to actually capture them.

Another factor to the movie that is comedic and is, yet again, portrayed wrongly in the movie is the title, Argo. An ongoing catchphrase that is used between the director and Mendez is, “Argo (derogatory word that sounds like fudge) yourself.” In reality, Mendez came up with this title based on his favorite knock-knock joke which goes like this: “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “Argo.” “Argo who?” “Argo…” you get the picture. Thanks to this joke the name Argo is now famous and Tony Mendez is finally seen as a public hero.

Can we trust scientists?

I can’t help but love the TV show The Big Bang Theory. The dynamic characters, awkward situations, and nerd humor are right up my alley. The show revolves around the lives of four young scientists Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, and Howard, aka Wallowitz. These guys are all in their twenties working as physics researchers at Caltech with PhDs. When I watch the show I wonder how much of it is really that realistic. Come to find out a lot more than I expected. When I looked into the show on of the first articles I came across had to do with the scientific consultant on the show, the very well known David Saltzberg. Saltzberg himself has a bachelor’s in physics from Princeton, a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago, and did his post-doc at CERN. When he isn’t doing science consulting he teaches a full course load at UCLA. So, he could pretty much fact check the show with one eye closed, down to the equations on the whiteboards in their offices and their apartments.

 

            Since his main field is physics, he isn’t technically qualified to consult on the biology in the show, however lucky for him the actress that plays Amy Farrah Fowler, Mayim Bialik, has a PhD in neuroscience, and can according to Saltzberg “back him up on the biology.”

 

            Although the script writers themselves are pretty good with science Bialik and Saltzberg both work on checking the facts that the writers put in. Saltzberg even uses equations he’s working on in the show. One in particular was the season premier where he put up equations Saltzberg himself had been working on for weeks. The stuff on the whiteboards that most people wouldn’t really pay attention to was about a particle called an axion and a new way to find it.

 

            Reading the article was very enlightening to me, because although I knew a lot of movies had science consultants, I hadn’t really though of The Big Bang Theory having one. Let alone a highly qualified UCLA professor who has worked at CERN. Knowing that there was a consultant on the show also made it a lot more credible to me. Yes, it’s a comedy show, but the fact that there is such a highly educated man working on this show makes it seem much more realistic. I loved the science jokes and humor, as well as the nerdy interactions, but now I know there is actually truth behind what they are saying.

 

            But, this leads to a problem too. Having a science consultant makes people trust what is being said much more. A guy with credentials like Saltzberg seems very trustworthy, but his consulting only goes so far. What the writers want is what goes into the show no matter if it is wrong or right. It may seem wrong to do that and I agree, but science doesn’t always make a good movie or show and the writers know that.

 

            Even though The Big Bang Theory is both hilarious and accurate many movies and or shows that seem to be trustworthy might be a hoax with a science consultant mentioned so as to give credibility. Even though it is often easy to believe what a movie tells you, especially a smart person in said movie, be wary. Question it. How much is really accurate?

 

Breaking Bad: Thermite a dynamite way to burglarize

Jesse and Walt prepare to make a drug deal.

The AMC television show Breaking Bad revolves around the story of Walt White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Concerned about the financial situation of his family, consisting of his pregnant writer wife Skyler and son Walter Jr., who has severe cerebral palsy, Walt partners with one of his former students (Jesse) to begin cooking and selling methamphetamine. Tensions break out as his family discovers his illness and he tries to hide his illegal activities from his brother in law, Hank, who is an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The show features a lot of science and chemical jargon. But is it accurate? The answer is yes, according to script managers and associate producers.

After partnering with the resident drug lord rather than dealing meth in small quantities, Walt and Jesse begin to make exorbitantly higher profits. The profit, however, requires more of the drug to be cooked. Walt proposed two pounds a week, a plan to which the boss Tuco readily agrees. Jesse has objections to Walt’s demands of creating so much meth, pointing out that his smurfs could not possibly purchase the required amount of allergy pills to fuel the need for pseudoephedrine. In response to this issue, Walt comes up with a new method for producing meth: reductive amination of phenylacetone with methylamine.

Reductive amination is a valid way to cook meth, though it is not in common use. Methylamine gives off a strong odor of fish, so most labs using the method are quickly busted.

Another problem arises when the duo realizes that methylamine is a controlled substance. Therefore, they concoct a plan to steal a barrel of the chemical from a chemical supplier warehouse. Walt has an epiphany about how to go about the task when he sees an old Etch-a-Sketch in Jesse’s garage.

By mixing the aluminum powder in the drawing toys with a metal oxide – probably iron(III) oxide due to its easy availability – Walt makes thermite, which he uses to melt through the padlock at the chemistry warehouse.

Walt and Jesse make thermite from Etch-a-Sketches.

Though thermite is not explosive, it will reach very high temperatures very quickly when heat is applied. The chemical reaction occurring is as follows: Fe₂O₃ + 2Al → 2Fe + Al₂O₃ + heat. The reaction will yield temperatures of roughly 2500 degrees Celsius. Though the use of thermite to burn through a simple steel door is realistic, it is unlikely that the two would-be robbers standing next to the door would not get burned.

While the chemistry is accurate, the producers of Breaking Bad may want to brush up on their history. Walt mentions that thermite was used by an Allied commando to destroy the Gustav Gun, a gigantic cannon the German military used in World War II. No such incident is recorded; rather, the Germans destroyed it in 1945 to prevent it from being taken over and used by the Allies.

A Valiant Cause Gone Wrong

In the movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, scientists face the age-old problem for old age folks: Alzheimer’s. They concoct a potential cure for the disease, a disease in which the afflicted progressively lose hold of their memories, generally affecting solely the elderly. Before the cure is offered to the public, it is tested on animals to ensure the safety of its use on humans. The animal of choice is that closest genetically to humans, apes. The cure, as well, involves genetics, as it is a gene therapy meant to enhance the afflicted’s ability to retain memories by introducing to the body a virus with helpful genes.
As you might imagine, the plot starts to complicate as the apes start to rise to power. This occurs by an unanticipated effect on the apes of becoming exceedingly mentally advanced. Not only did the cure develop to the point where, when applied to the apes, it did not kill them; beyond that, it brought them, intellectually, to a whole new level. In fact, to a fairly human level. This is where the events that pass become rather scientifically questionable. Therefore, this is where we set off looking into the science in the movie.
Realistically speaking, gene therapy of the sort discussed in the movie is not at all up to the feat of bringing an animal mind to the intellectual capacity of learning English and developing human thought processes. It is a relatively new method utilized mainly in remedying children’s immune and autoimmune disorders by providing one or two new genes that are either missing or nonfunctional in the patient’s body. Rather than offering a functional gene, the therapy changes the functioning of the apes’ brains entirely in the movie.
More silly science in the film comes about in the simple application of the cure to the test species. The virus would, in the real world, be injected into the body so as to access the brain. A respiratory exposure, on the other hand, where the apes are forced to inhale the cure as it is pumped as a gas into their cells, would not make its way to express the genes in the brain. The purpose this therapy’s research truly has had for bettering the brain has been to develop temporary fixes and would express the good genes there, but even therapy targeted at the apes’ brains would not bring them up to speed with, and then beyond the level of human intellect. The only times such methods have been tested on humans have been in cases of fatal immunodeficiencies, where the test patient would die without taking any action. One more thing is that the real therapy involves the use of defective viruses, those that can act only as vehicles for transmitting the genes in the patient’s body and not persisting as a functional virus like in the movie.

Source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/10/22956/

A True Crisis

While it is, by genre, a science fiction movie, The Bay provides an accurate depiction of a real problem. The entire film is based upon the issue of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, the movie was produced in an effort to inform the public about the matter. While for some members of the audience, it may appear to be of no more purpose than yet another disaster film. Yet, to the better aware public, such as we represented with our insight on the part of Harley’s information, the movie presents a wakeup call. A call to action, a cry for help on behalf of the Bay and those lifeforms affected by it. This cause is the heavy contamination of the Chesapeake, a cause that has greater magnitude by way of the vast degree of impact it has because of the array of uses made of the Bay.
The movie touched on some of these possible usages, as it indicated the regular goings on of the affected city. In the movie, the townspeople utilize the Bay as a water source for a number of functions. They drink the water, they supply the pools with it, they live off of it. Something else that goes on between the city and the Bay is the runoff of waste from surrounding farms into its waters.
Contaminants like algae, nutrient runoff, mercury, endocrine disruptors, and Viagra have severe impact on the Bay because of there abundant presence. This impact includes a dead zone that has spanned as much as forty percent of the Bay, as was mentioned during the movie. When these pollutants are introduced into an aquatic habitat like this, they deeply damage the life in the waters. Creatures like oysters, fish, and crabs face fatal consequences when dissolved oxygen reaches dangerously low levels as a result of the pollution. Though official reports have been unable to pinpoint specific sources like a chicken farm right alongside the Bay, the movie has the right idea in general as waste these farms does make its way into the waters and hinder life there.
The movie presents accurate information about the dilemma throughout the storyline. For example, there is a moment twined into the picture where the doctor and health officials are discussing some patients who had come in with leg ulcers. They note that this could be due to wading into the water and unknowingly coming into contact with a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus that is able to cause skin rashes and can be deadly. The primary threat in the movie are far greater in size, however, and come in the form of enlarged isopods. These creatures ravage the city, parasitizing countless inhabitants that come into contact with them through use of the city water. In reality, these creatures are encountered in settings like the Bay, but they are much smaller and latch onto fish gills and the inside of fish mouths. They do not pose a threat to humans, though. Still, the movie clearly portrays a real issue of how pollution can have magnified impacts and damage life on multiple levels. By intertwining accurate science with a clearly fictitious plot, the film brings to a large audience a true issue that would otherwise not so broadly see the light.

Source: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-11-02/features/bs-gr-bay-film-science-20121102_1_chesapeake-bay-dead-zone-nutrient-runoff

Breaking Bad breaks out meth tutorial

Walt White, chemistry teacher turned meth cook, stands in the desert by his cook site amid fumes.

The AMC television show Breaking Bad revolves around the story of Walt White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Concerned about the financial situation of his family, consisting of his pregnant writer wife Skyler and son Walter Jr., who has severe cerebral palsy, Walt partners with one of his former students to begin cooking and selling methamphetamine. Tensions break out as his family discovers his illness and he tries to hide his illegal activities from his brother in law, Hank, who is an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The show features a lot of science and chemical jargon. But is it accurate?

The answer is yes, according to script managers and associate producers, as well as Dr. Anne Marie Helmenstine of About.com.

The method for producing crystal meth on the show is on point. Writers consulted DEA agents when producing the script, and detailed instructions on producing the drug found via Google corroborate the claim. The show does not outline exactly how to make meth, but the general process shown and ingredients necessary do match what is actually done by dealers in meth labs, though Walt’s chemical expertise yields crystals of the highest purity that many in his New Mexico town want to buy.

Crystal meth

Methamphetamine is made by reducing pseudoephedrine or ephedrine, often from cold and allergy medications. The tablets sold over the counter are not composed entirely of the chemicals needed, however, so cooks go through a process to extract the necessary ingredients. They then combine the pseudoephedrine with red phosphorous and iodine. It is common to throw in additives to make the batch go farther, resulting in low purity meth on the streets.

The dangers of meth labs are highlighted in the show when Walt intentionally produces phosphine gas in an attempt to kill two drug dealers his partner, Jesse, brings to their cook site. The gas is produced by white phosphorous reacting with sodium hydroxide, so the risk of exposure to the very toxic gas is a real threat. Although not featured on the show yet (I have only watched the first season), white phosphorous is unstable and can explode easily. Other toxins to which one may be exposed in a meth lab are vapors of chloroform, ether, acetone, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, methylamine, iodine, hydroiodic acid, lithium or sodium, mercury, and hydrogen gas.

The negative side effects of meth use is depicted in the series, although to a lesser extent than probably should be. Jesse, the two dealers that Walt kills, and the drug kingpin show none of the traditional effects of meth abuse, although a prostitute that Walt’s DEA agent brother-in-law introduces to Walt Jr. to scare him away from drugs suffers from “meth mouth,” a condition whereby one’s teeth rot and fall out as a result of drug use.  More typical symptoms of the drug include brain tissue and nerve damage similar to that suffered by Alzheimer’s patients and long-lasting behavioral changes. Dr. Helmenstine believes that some issues, like meth mouth, are a result of impurities of street meth, as pure methamphetamines have legitimate medical uses.

Re-writing Science in “The Core”

In this class so far, we have watched some questionable movies. Scientists have either not been utilized fully or not employed at all in the making of the films. The movie in which a lapse in scientific accuracy is most notably evident would have to be The Core, a movie in which simple common sense is similarly absent. The picture abounds with wild circumstances and even wilder solutions, all for the sake of adding hype and suspense to a ludicrous plot. Though a complete discussion of the erroneous nature of The Core would take more than half a thousand words, we can safely skim across the sea of falsehood by focusing on geological incongruities with which this movie presented us.
To pass through the evident lies in a chronological manner, let’s begin with the entire pretense of the events to follow: the notion of the outer core ceasing to move due to human interference. The movie starts out with a global crisis instigated by an experimental event referred to as Project DESTINI, in which seismic waves were propagated through the Earth’s core so that strategically planned earthquakes could put a nation’s enemies at a loss. Rather than developing a successful weapon, the project’s directors affected the core in such a way that it no longer rotated. As a consequence of this stagnation, the magnetic field surrounding the Earth deteriorates and ceases to maintain proper climate patterns across the globe. Nuclear weapons are the most powerful tools known to mankind at the present, yet to propose that their impact could be so magnanimous as to put the outer core at a standstill is pretty absurd. The dimensions of the core are such that our comparatively miniscule power of explosion would have no means to interfere with the inner workings of the planet in this way.
To first present in the film the effects of these bizarre geological events, the opening scene displays a number of people dropping on the spot due to pacemaker failures. This occurs as the magnetic field is unstable, and its fluctuations cause the pacemakers to malfunction, resulting in several hearts’ failure. For this to occur, the field would have to be so far gone as to permit the excess passage of microwave radiation, yet the idea of this loss of the magnetic field is purely science fiction.
Further consequences of the magnetic field’s new weakness include the mass deaths of birds. A scene composed of the event of dozens of birds launching from the sky into windows, statues, and streets depicts this. This was to be based on the proper fact that birds’ migratory patterns rely on the magnetic field for help in navigation. In the scene, then, as birds fly through the sky and the field fluctuates, they are thrown off, to the obvious effect that each mid-flight bird descends abruptly, running into any and everything. The question this provokes is, how would the loss of a helpful navigation tool cause birds to simply fall out of the sky? Why would being less able to determine the general direction of their flight paths result in their total giving-up and complete loss of the ability to even fly anymore? This happens to be a particularly absurd moment in the movie.
To end on another absolute-nonsense moment in the movie, one of the several tragic deaths that occur in the film includes that of the noble Dr. Brazzleton. He draws the straw that signifies his chance duty to expose himself to 9000ºF in order to allow the rest of the ship and its few remaining occupants to carry on in the mission. The truly unbelievable nature of this scene’s absurdity lies in the fact that the man, himself, sets out with the note to his fellow members on the mission that the suit he has on could protect him from half the heat he is about to experience. In other words, he straightforwardly informs the audience that it is utterly impossible for him to make it out in that heat of the Earth’s inner depths, and he does so right before the movie presents him doing just that. He goes and walks about and completes the supposedly impossible task, all the while showing signs of mere wearing down, rather than positively melting. True, to show him melting away would be not be all too agreeable for the audience, but it would be biologically accurate. A mistake like this doesn’t require a scientist’s expert mind to detect. Nor do many of the mistakes presented throughout the movie. The film is rather deserving of all the backlash as the most inaccurate sci-fi movie put out, to date.

The Happening on a real life scale…

The Happening is a movie written and directed by the very well known M. Knight Shyamalan. However, it is ridiculous.  It starts out rather interesting with Mark Wahlberg’s character teaching his high school science class, being funny, and asking for theories on why all the bees have gone missing. Coincidentally while this talk is taking place a bunch of people in Central Park begin to act very strange and actually end up finding very creative ways to kill themselves. School is released midday and the kids go home, but more bad things start happening in the city. People think there’s some kind of terrorist attack so they flee the city, but all hell breaks loose throughout the northeast. People are just going crazy and killing themselves all over the place is because of the plants. The pants are releasing chemicals to mess with the self-preservation center in the human brain and people are just killing themselves.

That’s where the movie gets ridiculous. Plants can’t communicate with humans and tell us to kill ourselves. Even if they could release a chemical to turn off our self-preservation center, it isn’t going to cause us to kill ourselves it will just make it a lot more difficult for the sympathetic nervous system to kick in and help with the flight of fight response, the response that either causes us to run from danger or face it, an instinctual response.

Just because plants can’t necessarily tell us to kill each other doesn’t mean they can’t do other forms of communication. Plants can communicate amongst themselves. One group of plants when attacked by some sort of herbivore can release chemicals that attract predatory insects to eat the herbivores or that make the plants themselves less tasty. However, intercommunication between species isn’t great. Plants can communicate with close relative but the more distantly they are related the less communication that can occur. Chemicals released in exorbitant amounts can affect one species immensely while not affecting a more distantly related plant at all.

However communication between related plants is really good. This could be due to a need to further one specific plant’s genes. One plant can’t help everybody out. Survival of the fittest as Darwin put it.  Being family specific with their reactive chemicals keeps eavesdroppers from listening in and give plants with similar genes a better chance of survival. Even when planted in a too small pot, according to Susan Dudley, related plant species won’t fight as hard to monopolize space as they will with an unrelated species.

So, the only possible way for The Happening to happen would be if plants could communicate extraordinarily well and quickly between species, something that at this point in our worlds evolution just isn’t possible at all. A pine tree can’t communicate with grass and tell it to release the same chemical needed to cause people to go crazy. A chemical not even known to exist. Oh and plants would have to communicate through the Ocean too. I get they are angry for us polluting their world, but really how can a tree in the American northeast communicate with a tree in Paris?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23164-plants-listen-more-closely-to-kin-than-strangers.html

A Fascinating Place and Awkward Dance

Sanjay Gupta came to Charlotte to lecture in the Knight Theater as one of the Queens Learning Society’s semi-annual speakers in its lecture series on Wednesday, Feb. 20. I found the topic of his presentation to be relevant not only to life in general, but specifically to this class. “To Be Fair or to Scare: Science and the Media” was the formal name of his speech.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

As both a reporter and medical doctor, Sanjay Gupta is uniquely qualified to comment on the intersection of science – specifically, medicine – and the media. His expertise is in news reporting, as the chief medical correspondent on CNN, as opposed to forms of media meant to entertain which we have been studying in class. He described the crossroads as “a fascinating place to be” and “an awkward dance sometimes,” which succinctly depicts the truth of the beast’s nature.

One point that Gupta stressed concerned the very limiting time constraints imposed upon science journalists, especially in the world of television. The two- or three-minute window given to interviewed expert sources or journalists themselves for one topic is, the doctor said, the source of most public misunderstanding of scientific concepts. What might otherwise be a workable timeframe is further narrowed by the necessity of engaging viewers. Gupta said that information given on the air has to be interesting and “actionable” – that is, captivating enough to prevent someone from continuing to flip through the channels and sufficiently frightening or rewarding to inspire them to change a behavior. More unskilled journalists, as well as those who might want to show a biased report, usually don’t know exactly what is the right level of interesting and inspiring. The result, we see, is viewers incorrectly piecing unrelated pieces of evidence together or quickly jumping to false conclusions. This scientific illiteracy is only compounded when such misinformation is communicated via social media and inaccuracy is forsaken for entertainment value in films and television shows.

As a journalist myself, I concur with and wholeheartedly endorse Dr. Gupta’s commentary. Reporting on events is difficult, even for a newspaper. An article in the Queens Chronicle has to adequately place a reader at the event being covered, engaging him or her as fully as possible – all within a roughly 500 word limit. Having worked at the Courier-Tribune, Randolph County, N.C.’s daily periodical, articles not to be featured often have a much shorter inch count imposed upon them. I cannot begin to describe the amount of times I heard the Healthy Living editor grumble about having to edit out “useless information” – usually important background for diseases or bodily functions – even on stories downloaded from the AP wire or official press releases. All, as the copy editor said, has to be done for spatial limitation.

All that is needed to properly educate a mostly scientifically illiterate society of media consumers is a journalism field willing to do so. Of course, informational content isn’t the most compelling and may take up valuable space on the page…but isn’t the outcome greater than the sacrifice?

CDC—Just a Skype Video is Needed to Save a Town

Do you ever wonder what would happen if a hospital is so swamped with an unknown disease that the doctors do not know what to do? To be honest, the possibility that this can actually happen is a little frightening. The movie we watched last week called The Bay got me thinking what hospitals actually do in a crisis like the one portrayed on screen. In the movie the main doctor of the hospital in the small town skyped with doctors and researchers from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Is that what a hospital would normally do in an emergency like the one seen in this movie? The answer is partially yes and partially no.

Yes, the doctor would contact the CDC over phone or even skype. However, once the CDC is contacted about an emergency this serious, the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response would automatically dispatch an emergency response team to the location of the disease outbreak. Their organization states that it would take them less than two hours to contact a dispatch team and less than six hours for help to be administered to the area. It would take less than eight hours for a team to show up for help. Since this particular emergency would be deemed as critical, I suspect the time it would take for a CDC team to get there would be less than eight hours. Therefore the probability that the only help a doctor can receive from a higher power on this particular event through a skype session is small.

Although, you may argue that CDC’s response plan is different now than when this movie was supposed to take place. Yes that is true, but this movie took place in 2009. Not much has changed in the CDC’s plans since then. It may have taken longer or even shorter for a team to respond to the emergency, but all in all, experts and helpers would be there on the scene sometime during the day. According to Maine’s fact sheet in 2009, it would have taken a team 120 minutes to respond to the emergency. Additionally, the public in Maine would automatically be notified about the incident.

Another argument against the CDC’s possible arrival to the scene is that the outbreak in the town was sworn to secrecy. No one can ever know what happened in the small town of Claridge, Maryland. In reality, a disease this massive cannot stay undercover for that long. Word about it would get out somehow during the event. As stated above, the state of Maine has an action plan for letting other residents in the state to know about the disease. Also, since something like this could potentially become a national security issue, I am pretty sure President Obama would get on that and warn the nation about something this dangerous.

The science in this movie may have been surprisingly accurate, but the execution of how the event was handled is not accurate. The CDC would not have been so nonchalant about the ordeal and focus on keeping it a secret. Their main goal is to keep hospitals and doctors prepared for a catastrophe. And when everything seems to get out of hand, the CDC would be there on the scene. After all, it is their job to do so.

50 First Dates- Romantic Comedy or Realistic Portrayal?

The first Romantic Comedy I ever saw, 50 First Dates, with Adam Sandler and Drew Berrymore, actually has a surprising amount of real psychology in it. The basic plot revolves around Berrymore’s character who is involved in an accident which causes “a loss of her short term memory” as described by the film. Because of this, her memory only lasts a day. Every night as she sleeps her brain reboots back to the day her amnesia began. Sandler’s character falls for her, but has to continuously reintroduce himself to her thus causing them to have their first date over and over, hence the title.

So, what about the movie is realistic? Most of it actually. The name of her disease in the film, Goldfield’s Syndrome, is totally bogus and made up, however the disease is real. It is a condition called anterograde amnesia. It is a condition cause by some sort of brain damage, most often to the hippocampus, the area closely associated with memory storage. Berrymore’s character’s condition began the day of her car accident and continued from there. When people have this condition, they get stuck in time just like she did. Their brains can encode new memories and store them, however they are unable to access those new memories, only the ones they ad before the damage occurred. So, the person doesn’t realize the memories exist and perpetually believes it is the day the amnesia began.

Another amnesia victim in the movie is also portrayed, although comically, very accurately. “10 second Tom” had the same condition that Barrymore’s character does, but much more severely. Though it leads to some funny thing, the condition is actually very sad and very realistic despite seeming ludicrous. People really can have a condition like this. The most famous case id an English man named Clive Wearing who could essentially only remember for 7 seconds. He had to be hospitalized and his family eventually quit visiting him because he didn’t recognize them anymore or acknowledge any of their past visits.

What about that cheesy, adorable Hollywood ending where Berrymore’s love is real and she paints pictures of Sandler despite not being able to remember him? Anterograde amnesia patients do encode memories; they just can’t actively retrieve them. They can still be affected by these memories though even though they can’t necessarily recall them. In Clive’s case, he didn’t recognize his children, but he did recognize his wife despite her aging twenty or thirty years. He also never showed surprise that she had aged whenever she visited him. He also never showed surprise when he looked in the mirror and saw that he had become an old man. However, when his condition first began he was continually scared, angry, and forlorn, but seemed to get used to it as it progressed for years.

Even though the ending is super cheesy and the film overall is cheesy as well the portrayal of anterograde amnesia is actually pretty accurate. Barrymore’s character could somehow unconsciously remember Sandler’s character and her love for him.

If Men Took Estrogen…

Whenever I watch the movie John Tucker Must Die I am always interested in the scene where the girls sabotage the character John Tucker by adding in crushed-up estrogen tablets into his muscle-inducing formula. Although I’ve seen this movie tons of times I can’t help but wonder if the effects that were portrayed on the screen, when John took the estrogen, actually display what would happen in real life. I didn’t start wondering this though until I started this class. In the past, I just accepted that what happens in this movie is what really happens in reality. But now I wonder whether or not that is what really happens when men take estrogen.

If you haven’t seen the movie, here’s just a quick summary. The character John Tucker is the most popular kid in high school. Every girl wants to be with him. He uses this to his advantage and dates multiple girls at once. Only none of his girlfriends know about his other girlfriends. That is until the new girl, Kate, lets them know that he is cheating on all three of them. She brings up the idea of getting back at him and they all want to get in on the plan.

One of the plans they hatch up is to put estrogen supplements into his muscle-inducing powder. After one of his girlfriends adds the estrogen to the mix, she tells him that he needs to double up his dose if he wants bigger muscles. Later on at one of his basketball games, he becomes emotional and tells the opposing players to stop being mean. He complains that his breasts are really sensitive, craves a lot of chocolate, and is worried if he has big thighs. When he falls down on the ground, his coach asks him if he can finish the game. He starts to cry and complains about how his coach doesn’t really care about him. Then, he runs crying out of the gym while the crowd is dying of laughter. Do estrogen supplements really affect men that much?

The hormone estrogen doesn’t just play a role in woman’s bodies. Men also produce the hormone too. However, when the estrogen level is too high, some men can have emotional and physical side effects. If a man took estrogen, he would grow breasts, gain weight in the thighs and hips, become increasingly depressed and agitated, have a decrease in libido, lose a lot of hair, and his testicles would decrease in size. The movie turned out to be relatively accurate. The only thing that seems to be off is the craving for chocolate. Estrogen does not seem to be the main cause of that. Maybe that’s just a girl thing.

The Core? Pssshh… More like The Birds

Do animals such as birds depend so much on the magnetic field that if the field were to disappear they would drop out of the sky dead? Birds indeed do seem to rely on the magnetic field for navigational purposes. Birds have been deemed to have a “biological compass.” How they use the magnetic field is still relatively unknown. One suggestion is that they can somehow “see” the magnetic field through their eyes. A theory suggests that they absorb the light on their retina and induce chemical reactions that enable them to see the magnetic field. Additionally, a discovery has been made on how pigeon’s brain cells are somehow turned in specific directions of the magnetic field. They can “sense” the magnetic field and follow the right path to get to where they need to go. However this theory suggests it is because of their inner ear and hippocampus, not because of their eyes. Birds are not the only ones who use the magnetic field. Mice, moles, and bats also seem to have a sense of the magnetic field. If taken away from their home and given different magnetic pulls, they can always find their way back.

Now the probability of these birds falling out of the sky if the field were ever to disappear or flip is highly unlikely. Studies on what the effect would be on birds are hard to test. NOVA scientists point out that the experiments they have tried on the birds proved very little. They put the birds under a different magnetic force. At first, the birds flew in random directions, but within a few days, they adapted to the change. This goes the same for all other animals. They will adapt to change. In the past, there is no evidence pointing to the extinctions of any animals during the switching of poles or when the field has disappeared momentarily. Even if the field disappeared, there are other forces and fields with the same amount of strength that the animals can use as a guide for their migration patterns. It may take some animals a while, but eventually they all should become accustomed to the change in the magnetic field. However, scientists do not really know in-depth what would happen if the magnetic field actually disappeared. Based on their observations, they can only guess. Although the magnetic field is getting weaker, it is unlikely to disappear over the next thousand years.

Why is this important to movies? The Core has a scene where, as a result of a weak spot in the magnetic field, birds fall out of the sky, forcefully hit statues and buildings, and automatically die. Now I know they did this for entertainment purposes, but it got a little excessive. For one, birds cannot break a window just by running into them. I recall a moment at my house where a bird ran smack into the window and actually slid down the glass until it fell to the ground. Did the window break? Of course not. The window breaking is unlikely unless some evil human decides to chuck a bird at the glass. Another thing, how birds physically fly is not because of the magnetic field. They only use the magnetic field for navigational purposes. The magnetic field disappearing would not stop the birds from flying. It would only make them confused. Thanks to this movie, some will have the misconception that when the magnetic field starts to disappear, a scene from The Birds will be one of the first signs.

Errant Depiction of Psychosis in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is married to a physician who subjects her to a period of rest and taking in air as treatment for her recent outbreak of “temporary nervous depression with a slight hysterical tendency.” Isolated in a top room with dated wallpaper of perplexing patterns, the woman descends into madness, becoming obsessed with the wallpaper, seeing the pattern move by the efforts of women trapped behind it, and finally being possessed by one of the wall women after hysterically tearing off portions of the paper.

Psychosis is defined as “a mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate an impaired contact with reality.” A Canadian clinic and mental health advocacy group, Early Psychosis Intervention, conducted a study regarding the causes of psychosis, ultimately discovering that such severe mental illness is caused by a combination of genetic vulnerability and environmental factors, though stressing the role of genetic predisposition.

In the story, the narrator is portrayed as a healthy, vibrant young woman until the stressors of patriarchy and domestic life cause her to suffer from anxiety and depression. More or less a typical case of ineffective stress confrontation, the inadequate psychiatric understanding at the time called for a rest cure. As part of this, the patient is isolated from her newborn baby, her family members, and often from her husband so as not to excite her too much in her fragile state. Being ostracized from society at large, her child, her work, and her writing (which her husband strictly forbade) would logically augment behaviors associated with major depressive disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, both neuroses which can be developed at any point in life by environmental factors or by heredity, from which the protagonist seems to be suffering. However, neither of these disorders are diagnosed by audio or visual hallucinations, which the character displays near the end of the work.

The fact that “The Yellow Wallpaper” does not indicate any sort of manifestation of a psychosis, such as paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder, prior to the narrator’s temporary depression precludes the possibility of a psychotic illness, whose symptoms tend to appear much earlier than middle age. A break with reality does not just spontaneously happen, even if there are intense stressors like insomnia, stress, isolation, feminine oppression, and repression of anger. Though perhaps in part due to an insufficient understanding of mental illness in the age in which the story was written, the narrator’s disorder does not align with reality in its cause nor its symptoms.

Sources:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/psychosis?s=t

http://www.psychosissucks.ca/whatcausespsychosis.cfm

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” American Gothic Tales. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates.

Errors as old as “10,000 BC”

The movie 10,000 BC is based around the desperate efforts for love of a man who loses his woman to a group of person-snatching strangers. Set in the time indicated by the movie’s title, this film identifies various prehistoric features of a young world. This is one of those movies where it is clear that the filmmakers were not after total accuracy, and where the audience is assumed to have no consideration for the actual facts of the world as we know it. Though many such aspects from the picture certainly do predate the aged world we know today, they do not all quite go back as far as 10,000 BC. The very means by which our main character was separated from his lover do not coincide with the known developments of early civilization. Though the hero had his girl stolen away by horseback riding hooligans, the time of utilizing horses for transportation is far in the future to come for this movie’s setting; horseback riding is understood to have begun closer to 14,000 B.C. Tools presented in the movie brought up a similar incoherence with researched records. Metalworking of any sort did not come about until more than five centuries later! A particularly bizarre error that flies right in the face of all conception of a mentally processing audience comes at the very start of the movie. The writers wasted no time in clarifying the lack of effort towards timely accuracy. In the first scene, one of conflict and some violence, one of the tribe members reacts with surprise to the angry events happening before them with the whispered phrase, “Jesus.” The falsehood so plainly evident in this film put it down as a ridiculously inaccurate movie, one not even worth viewing in our class alongside movies as erroneous as Absolute Zero and The Core.

The Decline of Society: Nazi Germany vs Children of Men Prt. 5

History and current films portray the depravities that humans are capable of committing against one another. In times of national stress, mob like reasoning takes hold, which often replaces the conscious with irrational self interest. However all of the acts of horrid human evil, truly just and kind actions still surface. The acts of kindness and of evil in this world are at a standstill, balancing each other. The determination of human will creates the ability to restore society, to improve life, and to learn from the past. This determination of will is neither a good nor a bad thing, in fact it is both. It was Hitler’s desire to improve the German state that led to the extermination of the Jewish population of Europe; this is the same will that inspired the Jews to rebuild in the ghettos. It has both a positive and negative side.  This will also shows its two faces in the film. The determination of man to improve the world led to the invention of nuclear energy; later destroying the global civilization. This determination also inspired the characters to continue on in hope of improving the world by protecting Kee. With the positive and negative sides of the determination of human will a question must be posed. “Who’s will shape the globe next?”