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Nobelprize.org, The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 went to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy saving white light sources”(Press Release). Their discovery lead to the creation of LED light bulbs that combines red, green, and blue light-emitting diodes to create white light. LED light bulbs are more energy efficient and last longer than regular light bulbs. It is projected that LED light will help over 1.5 billion people that rely on solar power and other off the grid energy sources due to its low power requirements (Press Release).  

"Press Release." The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics -. 7 Oct. 2014. Web. 1 May 2015. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2014/press.html>.

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Seminar Extra Credit

Gregory Glasgow Seminar Report

Nathaniel Morra Nathaniel’s project revolved around the assessment of air quality in various locations around Harrisonburg. The purpose of these tests was to determine the air quality in indoor locations versus outdoor locations. To determine the air quality, Nathaniel used Draegr tubes. These are small devices that can be used to assess the concentration of a certain chemical in the air. The Draegr tubes that he used tested for NO2, formaldehyde, SO2, and carbon monoxide levels. Nathaniel’s experimental methods posed a few problems in how accurate they could actually measure. For example, many of his results stated that there were negative quantities of certain toxins in the air. In response to this, he interpreted the negative numbers to be an indication of a positive presence of the toxin. In conclusion, Nathaniel found that indoor air contained slightly more toxic than outdoor air. However, the differences between indoor and outdoor air were very small and it is not known if they would actually pose health risks.

Erin DeGutis Erin’s project revolved around monitoring the energy usage of solar panels through an app that she coded herself. She told the class that her project was inspired by one of her family members asking her about solar panels and how they could be used to offset the cost of certain household amenities. From there, she decided to further explore this issue and develop an application. The app itself was built on android. It involved entering in your location and number of solar panels owned to determine the amount of power you would most likely receive from them. Unfortunately, the application did not take temperature fluctuations and other factors that could potentially have led to different results then what her algorithm produced.  

Nathan Heyn + Serena Wong Nathan and Serena’s project came with some background material that needs to be understood before their lab work can really be discussed. The Chesapeake Bay is currently undergoing a massive wave of hypoxia. Excess ammonia (most likely from fertilizer from agriculture) is running off the land and into thy bay. This causes a spike in plant growth the bay itself. Unfortunately for the animals and plants in the bay, this causes a huge environmental hazard. The overgrowth of the plants not only consumes all excess oxygen in the water, but it also blocks out all of the sunlight. In the plants that are currently overgrowing, there is a symbiotic bacterium that grows in the nodules of the plant’s roots. These convert ammonia into nitrogen for the plant to use. The purpose of this project was to explore this symbiosis between the bacteria and plant and to determine if a lab grown strain of the bacterium could compete with the wild type. The exploration of the bacterial growth mechanisms was successful in the end, but they only had a 25% success rate of growing it in the lab, making further experiments very difficult. Also, just collecting and isolating the bacteria took one whole semester. Lastly, the plants that they were testing with this bacteria had a four week growth cycle before they could be used.

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Activity 2A, Greg Glasgow

Research Summary for the Technology and Natural Science Domain

  Gregory Glasgow, Section 001

  Questions

·         What is hydraulic fracturing? How does it work?

Hydraulic fracturing is a method of extracting natural gas from solid shale reservoirs typically found between 5,000 and 10,000 feet below ground level. To begin, a vertical well is drilled down to just above the reservoir. Then, the well is drilled horizontally so that it is as fully surrounded by the gas reservoir as it can be. Once the hole is drilled, the rock is mechanically fractured or “stimulated” by pumping thousands of gallons of water into the well. (U.S. Department of Energy, “How is Shale Gas Produced”) This releases natural gas that has been stored in the shale where it can be collected at the surface and sold.

  ·         Why is there so much gas in the Marcellus shale?

Marcellus shale can trap more natural gas than other rocks and minerals because of its relatively low density. This means that there are very small holes in the shale that can house deposits of natural gas. Materials with a higher density aren’t as porous and therefore cannot store gas. (U.S. Department of Energy, “How is Shale Gas Produced”) Also, natural gas can be found in Marcellus shale because organic matter was “compressed and heated…forming hydrocarbons” inside the rock itself. (Soeder, 2009)

  ·         How would a pipeline be built in the county? Where would it go? What effect would it have on land and animals?

Pipelines are built by utilizing multiple teams of people that have 30 to 100 mile stretch of land. Each team is responsible for digging a trench and physically laying the pipe into the ground. Any wildlife such as trees, foliage, nests of mammals etc. would be destroyed in the process. The total length of the pipeline can reach to over a thousand miles and can travel from Texas to the Northeastern United States. (INGAA, 2015)

  ·         How is the waste water dealt with?

There are a few ways that waste water is disposed of. “10 to 20 percent” of the water injected into the ground is actually forced back up to the surface as more and more water is pumped into the ground. (U.S. Department of Energy, “Shale Gas 101”) Also, some of the waste water can remain in the ground and be “absorbed by the shale formation.” (U.S. Department of Energy, “Shale Gas 101”) The majority of the waste water actually is recycled and is pumped back into the ground. The final two options for fracking companies are simply pumping the waste water back into the ground and leaving it there, or they can treat it and dump it back into nearby bodies of water. (U.S. Department of Energy, “Shale Gas 101”)

    References

  "Shale Gas 101." Energy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. http://energy.gov/fe/shale-gas-101#faq_11

  “How is Shale Gas Produced.” Energy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/04/f0/how_is_shale_gas_produced.pdf

  Soeder, Daniel J. "Water Resources and Natural Gas Production from the Marcellus Shale."" (2009): n. pag. USGS. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

  "How Are Pipelines Built?" INGAA. Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, 2015. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. <http://www.ingaa.org/cms/65.aspx>.

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Blog 9

With risk comes reward. Well, that is what many stock market books say, but can that be applied to science as well. Innovation is the goal of many scientists, whether by money, success, awards, or a spot in the history books. The risk of disaster is always on the minds of scientists as they try new ways to innovate in their field. Disaster and Innovation seem to go hand in hand in new experiment because there is no way to 100 percent predict the outcomes. Innovations do not always warrant disaster but scientists must be aware that tragedy could strike at any time.

Einstein’s theory of relativity was an innovation that questioned the norm and that reached almost all fields of science.  It did not bring about collateral damage when he thought of the theory or when people tested the theory. To test the theory of relativity the scientists did not have to use dangerous equipment or put themselves in hazardous situations. This way of testing kept the experiments out of risk from disaster. The innovation helped bring about more innovations in the scientific world.

In other fields of science there is always risk of disaster. Space exploration is one of those fields that always has a risk for disaster due to the use of explosive materials and the lack of control of variables once one exits the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists and Astronauts know there is always a risk of disaster from the time the space shuttle launches to touching back down to earth. When the Challenger exploded the engineers and managers knew there was a risk with the O-rings, but they decided to continue with the scheduled launch. Exiting the Earth’s atmosphere was a profound thought even at the beginning of the 20th century, but through innovation Space programs have Astronauts now spending six months to a year in the International Space Station. The Challenger explosion was a disaster, but it showed that NASA was not invincible and that extra safety precautions should be added to the standard safety plan to keep the disaster from happening again.

Innovation and disaster seem to follow each other in every field of science, but without taking risks improvement in the scientific field and new discoveries cannot be made.

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Innovation and Disaster, Greg Glasgow

As humans continue to innovate, we are exposed to new opportunities to fail. As per the definition of innovation itself, for something to be considered an innovation it must be new. Because of innovations being new and their direct and indirect implications being relatively unexplored, we can only predict what we think the nature of the innovation will be and therefore are at a higher likelihood of experiencing a disaster. After time has passed though, we become more and more adept at handling the new technique, technology, or idea and continue to lessen the chances of unforeseen consequences. In other words, the more we know about something, the smaller the chance of us being surprised by it in negative or even positive ways. When researching early flight technology, the Wright brothers experienced years of failure before finally creating a design that worked. And even after that, we experienced problems flying that were due to the fact that we didn’t know about the physics of flying to the extent that we do now. Today, we rarely experience catastrophic failure of planes that are due to faulty engineering or manufacturing. That is not to say that it can’t happen, but we certainly were more likely to see technical problems with airplanes years ago. In the case of the Challenger shuttle, space travel was relatively young. We didn’t know for sure what would have happened when they launched the shuttle and I don’t believe that they could possibly have. Learning through failure is incredibly effective because it produces concrete and objective results, unlike speculation and simulation. Logistically speaking, NASA was about out of time to plan before they launched. They had extended deadlines and delayed the launch. To further impede their progress would have been a threat to their funding and consequently, a threat to future American space travel. Now that we know the O-rings fail under certain conditions, we probably won’t have any shuttles fail because of them anymore. Through exposure to this innovation and the disaster that has accompanied it; we have identified the problem and can address it in the future.

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Blog 7, Gregory Glasgow

Credibility and trust plays a huge role in science, especially as scientists continue to become more specialized in a single field. It would be practically impossible for anyone to become an expert on any scientific subject that they wanted to debate about. The anti-vaccine movement is a very good example of how a single set of publications can have a massive ripple effect on how society perceives, discusses, trusts, and forms opinions on a specific area of science that the public themselves might not be trained in. In 1998, a group of scientists wrote a small set of papers that suggested that the MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) vaccine caused autism when administered to small children. Similarly to the cold fusion article, the scientists work was less than perfectly credible. In both cases, the experimental methods used were found to be insufficient at creating data that supported their initial hypotheses. One of the key differences in these cases is that in the case the cold fusion article, the main researcher wasn’t an expert in physics. He was an expert in sociology. From day 1, his claims were seen as questionable and eventually his experiments were eventually, after being unsuccessfully tested and retested, were seen as a fluke. Since then, few people still reference these experiments and even fewer believe them to be credible experiments. On the other hand, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, publisher of the anti-vaccine papers, has been denounced in the scientific community, yet his initial claims that vaccines caused autism have only become more popular. It seems that the “credibility,” or social momentum that has been awarded to him in the past 5 years has only been given from the general public and have very little knowledge of the subject. Despite the fact that the researchers of cold fusion and Dr. Wakefield’s’ publications have since been retracted, Dr. Wakefield’s’ claims have remained and resonated throughout society today. It seems like the public is more likely to trust and assign credibility to a claim that is seemingly trying to benefit them as well as scare them. I believe that a lack of knowledge on the subject is the cause of this and that it simply could be a detrimental effect of the specialization of scientists.

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Reblog 6

The medical field is always changing with new technology and discoveries. There is not a standard that has not been changed and improved in the medical profession. Doctors and researchers must keep up to date with new medicines and techniques to help their patients. Medical professionals do not always agree with which treatment is the best for patients, and these disagreements can cause a rift in the field. A major argument in the medical field is weather or not “alternative medicines,” such as vitamin supplements and plant medicines, are helpful in the long run to patients.

           “Vitamins and Supplements: Do They Work?” is an article in the U.S. News and World Report that cited studies done throughout the country on the use of certain types of vitamin supplements.  The newspaper article states that studies have concluded that many of the supplements that were recommended to prevent cancer, such as antioxidants and vitamin E, actually slightly increase a person’s risk of certain cancers. Other supplements, such as Calcium and vitamin D, have been found to strengthen bones and increase life expectancy.

Though the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will not state its opinion on multivitamins, many researchers, such as David Schardt, say that multivitamins are "a very inexpensive insurance policy”. 1 Others disagree and state that multivitamins can cause an increase risk of cancer.

The back and forth debate on supplements is similar to the Vitamin C debate in Chapter 3 of Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch’s book Dr. Golem: How to Think About Medicine, “Alternative Medicine: The Cases of Vitamin C and Cancer.” Dr. Linus Pauling believed that Vitamin C supplements were a cure all way for cancer. When he tried to publish his findings, he was met with resistance from the medical community. The medical professionals in the medical field did studies about the effects Vitamin C had on cancer patients, but the studies came up inconclusive. Though they disregarded his research, Dr. Pauling maintained that vitamin C is helpful for humans to maintain a longer and healthier life.

The newspaper article illustrates how the alternative medicine debate is still going on in the medical community, and how studies are trying to determine conclusive data but are coming up with conflicting results.

 1.     Vitamins and Supplements: Do They Work? (2012, May 10). Retrieved March 16, 2015, from http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2012/05/10/vitamins-and-supplements-do-they-work-2.

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Blog 5

Wetmore and Winner have many corresponding and conflicting arguments to how artifacts are used in daily life. The two authors agree that technology has had a profound effect on all cultures. They agree that technology is needed to improve and advance human life. They both state that humans put different values and politics on technology and other artifacts. This is about the closest they come to agreeing between the two articles.

Wetmore writes about how the Amish have separated themselves from the “English” culture of technology and only use the bare necessities of technology to maintain a living. Winner does not mention limiting technologies, but how political parties have put values on certain artifacts. Wetmore writes how the Amish use certain technologies to keep the community together, while Winner writes about how certain inventions have completely changed some fields of work, especially in the agriculture sector.

These similarities and differences enhance the concept that artifacts will only have value if a person puts meaning towards it or a price tag. Diamonds are a precious stone because there is a limited supply and humans think they are pretty to look at. A Vulcan from Star Trek would think using diamonds for jewelry would be illogical because they can be used for more industrial reasons. The same would apply for the Amish philosophies towards certain technologies in the “English” culture. The next iPhone is only valuable to the person who owns it. The Amish believe that phones will separate their community while we, the “English,” believe that they bring us together. Winner describes how bridges in certain parts of New York City were purposely built so that buses could not drive under them in the 1920s to the 1970s. This would mean that only cars could drive under them. The builder valued this because only rich people, who were usually white during that time, could drive under his bridges. Overtime his values have faded into the past and his engineering feats have just become part of the backdrop. This shows that humans can change the value of artifacts from just person-to-person. The Amish value diesel-powered technology over electricity, while we value both in different ways. Artifacts may hold our values in this generation, but these values change from culture to culture and will either gain or loose meaning in the next generation.