James Blogs

  Week 9 | Space + Art | Blog Assignment James Hepp 5/24/22 Astronomy and space is still mostly undiscovered, but this does not prevent us from learning or wanting to learn more about it. Planets and stars have been study since the ancient astronomers. These points in the sky (planets) have been given roman names. All the roman names pertain to gods and goddesses.  Even comets and asteroids have been studied since ancient times. This demonstrates the amount of interest we have about learning more about space.                                                         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System The first thing that stood out to me and deepened my understanding of space and the technology that goes along with it is the invention of the telescope and where the word is derived from. Telescope is ...

  Week 8 | Nanotechnology + Art | Blog Assignment James Hepp 5/20/22 Nanotechnology is so revolutionary and interesting because it affects almost every aspect of science. Nanotechnology refers to a billionth of a meter. This form of technology has the ability to create incredible medicinal and manufacturing  advancements. Nanotechnology is of great importance to our society because of the frequency and necessity  of it. Without this revolutionary nanotechnology, our society would not have the advancements in science that we have today.                                                   https://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5385 Something that stood out to me was the scanning tunneling microscope invented by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer. Because of this invention, they received the Nobel Piece for physics. This sho...

  Week 7 | Neuroscience + Art | Blog Assignment James Hepp 5/13/22 The brain and neuroscience research is fairly new in our society. It was hard to study this part of the body with the lack of technology. Over time, neuroscientists have been able to make some amazing discoveries about the human brain while learning the overall function. Our interpretation of the function of the brain has not always been the same and has drastically developed over the course of our history. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-a-human-brain-unique/ One thing that stood out to me was how the understanding of the brain has changed over time. Aristotle believed that the brain was the cooling system of the body. He thought the brain cooled the blood and prevented the body from overheating. I thought this was pretty interesting because of our understanding of the brain in modern society. Considering now that we know that the brain controls the whole body. It wasn't until electricity and ...

Event 2 - Jessica Irish James Hepp 5/12/22 For my second event, I attended Jessica Irish's talk about her documentary film, The Mortal Plastik . This documentary film was about the insurmountable amount of plastic being used in our world today. At the beginning, it really focused on how we went from a society with no plastic to a society that truly relies on plastic. I think this related to DESMA 9 because we are learning about the development of certain kinds of technology over time.   https://thenewschoolcollaboratory.org/2018/03/14/jessirish/ I would have highly recommended this event to any of my classmates. This talk/documentary really went in to the depth of the plastic issue in our land and how our environment is being negatively impacted. From this event, I was also made aware of microplastics. These are plastics that can't be seen by the naked eye. These microplastics are in almost everything now. From water, to food, and even in our rain. There are microplastics in o...

Week 6 | BioTech + Art | Blog Assignment James Hepp 5/5/2022 Bioart and biotech has been extremely controversial for very obvious reasons. Bioart and biotech is controversial because of the immorality and lack of ethics demonstrated when doing research studies on live organisms. Many people have suggested that this type of research is unethical. But it wasn't always controversial. People have began to realize the impact that this kind of research has on the living organisms.  https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/history-biotechnology-genentech/ One part that stood out to me in the lecture video was the testing they did on the hearing of rats and what sounds/noises affect them the most. The reason why we test rats in laboratories is because they are very similar to humans on the evolutionary tree. Therefore, we are able to do research about humans without having to do any physical harm to humans. Transgenic rats are genetically engineered to be tested on so that specific research is ab...

  Event 1- We're All Living in the Estroworld 4/22/2022 - James Hepp For my first event in this class, I was able to attend a virtual zoom meeting titled, We're All Living in the Estroworld run by Mary Maggic.   From this meeting, I was able to take away a lot of valuable information. Before the meeting, I read the bio of what the meeting was going to cover, and a lot of the information sounded new. Mary has done many experiments in society that has deepen her understanding of estrogen which made her very knowledgeable about this topic. I was impressed by how much of her time she has devoted to learning and researching this topic.  One of the experiments she conducted was taking urine samples of patients and offering a new way to create transgender medication. She said that she was able to make a video that explains ways to create this substance through the estrogen found in urine. I thought this was very interesting because I didn't know that was possible.  One thin...