Category: Fall 2021

Magic or Malice? Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Graphene-Based Materials By Bryan Kim  From the Stone Age to the contemporary Silicon Age, materials have defined and transformed human civilization. But, every new material must have its side effects well-understood in order to avoid environmental disasters. Environmental mismanagement of promising materials has happened before. Plastic, a…

Does Weather Affect Pain? By Nethra Koushik  If you ask a fibromyalgia patient whether changes in weather affect their quality of life, their answer is likely to be a resounding “Yes!” However, if you ask a doctor the same question, they would probably say something like, “That’s just a placebo.” Why is that?  In order…

Time: Slowing Down and Speeding Up By Katherine De Lange Clocks govern our daily lives, the 5 minute morning snooze, the 10 minute bus wait, the hour-long lunch break. However, regardless of how many seconds pass in a given event, our perception of time differs. Multiple factors such as emotion, attention, drug-use, and context affect time…

Antimicrobial Resistance in the COVID era: A New Potential Crisis? By Shreya Ramesh The beginning of the pandemic was certainly crazy, to say the least. Obsessively buying hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, and even toilet paper led to an extreme shortage of such items in stores for months to come. Buying these items certainly may have provided…

In the Shadow of Self Esteem: Self Compassion By Leighton PuSelf esteem is overrated. Psychologists touted it as a method to maintain psychological well being, establishing its legacy as a positive psychological model. In accordance with knowledge at the time, mentors, role models, and teachers around the globe promoted, and continue to promote, self esteem…

Unraveling Intergenerational Trauma By Evelyn Kong What is the relationship between memory and the self? For years, most scholars would have referenced anything from W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness to Émile Durkheim’s concept of collective trauma — all schools of thought that examine memory and the self in their most abstract form. Now,…

Music and Mood Regulation By Nethra Koushik For many, your teenage years are when you begin to explore your interests. Some indulge in sports, others in poetry and reading. But one thing that remains common among all teens is music. During the turbulent times of one’s teenage years, music becomes a kind of solace. It has…

Photochemistry: How Photons Fuel and Fracture the World By Noah Bussell For many, light is an abstract entity—intangible, and seemingly lacking any physical might. Sure, it allows us to marvel at the night-time flickering of the Manhattan skyline or to save the good times as photographs, but these novelties aside, it is reasonable at first glance…

Why the Great Lakes Aren’t Getting Better By Rebecca Hebert In California you often hear about drought, water conservation, and fires. The problem with water is the lack of it. However, in the United States midwest they don’t have fires or droughts or anything that seems like they should be worried about their water. However, the…

The Incomplete Nature of Math By Mark Ortega Mathematics has been studied globally for millennia. Mathematicians have always held the intuition that math is an ideally whole and complete system. Plato, for example, proposed that mathematical concepts originate from a perfect and divine reality distinct from the world he experienced. An implication of this view is…