HRS177|Spring2014

B.R.E.A.T.H.E. Rings – Brain Reaction Evaluator and Tracker of Hormone Efficiency

Feelings of irritability, moodiness, forgetfulness, and isolation – what do they all have in common? Chronic stress. It seems like stress has become such a common trait of our human lives. NPR conducted a national poll with the help from associates at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health and found that “more than 1 in every 4 Americans say they had a great deal of stress in the previous month. And half of all adults say they experienced a major stressful event in the past year.

Art’s Intersection with Everything

Returning to Clarissa Ribeiro’s ideas regarding fundamental entanglement made me once again realize how two seemingly independent objects or ideas can be intimately connected in a way that is not initially obvious. There mere fact that Ribeiro’s understanding of such concepts as fundamental entanglement and quantum theory could be presented in the form of an art gallery is proof of art’s connection to a myriad of other disciplines.

Unfolding Clusters Exhibit

Today, I attended the Unfolding Clusters exhibit produced by Federico Vis and Giovanni Dothel in collaboration with Duncan Williams and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research from Plymouth University. The exhibit was a model of the ALS pathophysiology shown through music and visual media. It was held in the UCLA Art Science Center on the 5th floor in the same room we have visited in previous classes.

Dirt and the Quality of Wine

As I was reading everyone’s blog posts for Week 6 on the Eliie Harmon of the Dirt exhibit, I became interested to do some of my own research on dirt. I have always been curious about the soils in which wine grapes are grown on to influence the flavor, color and aroma of wine. I learned that the soiled composition o vineyard is essential to the production of high quality wine. The soil is the base that supports the root of the vine and impacts the drainage levels and amount of mineral nutrient supplies the vine receives.

 

The Power of The Evil Eye

During Week 5, where we learned about quantumentanglement we briefly discussed the power of the evil eye. It was explained that the great philosopher, Aristotle said that we have water all around our eyes and we have a certain flow of energy going to regions where we can affect the objects, animals, and people around us. Additionally, it was said evil eye was discussed in Shakespeare’s Midnight Summer’s Dream where the girl had poison in her eyes, which gave her the power to make someone fall in love with her solely by looking at them. 

Week 8: Earthlings and Strange Bonds

Anthrozoologists have tried to explain how our species bonds with other species of the animal kingdom for years. Even with a lot of the research findings about us loving other species that can make anthropomorphic expressions back at us, we can't explain just how strong these bonds get and what behaviors are exchanged between two organisms.

Decoding the Waggle Dance: Evidence for Animal Consciousness

The waggle dance is a form of communication used by honeybees to convey the location of food source. Honeybees manipulate two variables in their dance to accurately locate the food source: direction is encoded in the angle of the dance in relation to the sun (i.e., vertical direction), and distance is encoded in the duration of the dance, with one second waggle equating to a forging distance of 750 meters. Due to the great distance between the sun and the earth, the sun remained fixed relative to the bee’s motion.

Humans and the Superiority Complex

During last week’s meeting we discussed the connection between animals and humans. Many argue that one cannot draw comparisons because unlike animals, humans are emotional creatures with an intellectual capacity that is unmatched. Many philosophers, scientists and individuals who are keen to this idea use anatomy as their tangible evidence that humans are superior beings. They argue that because our cortex is much bigger than most other animals, we have the ability to carry out higher cognitive functions and perform the one task that no other animal could—reason.

Is it in the DNA?

I very much enjoyed what our presenter had to share last class as well as the discussion that followed near the end of class time. Our discussion started to revolve our ethics and whether or not animals should have the same rights as humans. This discussion inspired me to think about why we are more conscious and friendly to some living organisms, while we are perfectly fine with killing others. Does DNA similarity in our DNA have anything to do with it?

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