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by Jenna Shin
For Ukraine, war with Russia is not the only boiling conflict at the hands of political officials and its citizens. In the midst of a battling crisis, Ukraine has been reporting increased industrial pollution produced by the various iron and steel plants located in major cities. One of the reported areas is known as Maripaul, where residents have reported immense amounts of smoke and ash from these factory productions. These iron and steel plants utilize and function off machinery that produces mass amounts of smoke and ash into the air; where citizens of these towns are forced to live with life-threatening air quality. One citizen even reported that she was unable to have children recently, due to various thyroid problems that were caused by the mass production of harmful metals she breathed in. In 2018, studies taken from samples of the smoke revealed that metals such as lead, arsenic, and mercury were present. Metal toxicity is one of the most harmful pollutants that is prevalent in our environment today. These pollutants, when seeped into bodies of water or soil, can lead to extreme health concerns and illnesses. Risks include kidney damage, lung damage, brain damage, weakened breathing, anemia, an increased risk in cancer, and possibly even miscarriages; as experienced by a Ukranian citizen. Metal toxicity can be easy to spread to humans, especially for those who drink or interact from lead-lined pipes or work in factories as mentioned earlier in the article. Additionally, these pollutants can also be found in our food, in things like fish that some people eat almost everyday. Although the risks of being affected by heavy metal toxicity and pollution depends on background and history, it is fair enough to conclude that individuals living near heavy production factories like those in Ukraine should be considered high-risk. Unfortunately, Ukraine officials have failed to stay persistent in their efforts to reduce factory-emissions of pollutants and toxic metals. However, Ukraine citizens and residents have begun to put in place citizen-installed particulate matter (PM) monitoring stations, a local method of attempting to reduce emissions. Although this is a step forward in the process of saving Ukraine from pollution and toxicity, it is clear that a government or official mandated monitor of factory emissions would tackle the issue more efficiently.
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by Rylan Hoffius
In the modern age, we hold the power to change the face of our planet, split an atom in two, and even change our own genome. Genetic modification technology holds great promise for reducing suffering and inheritable disorders, including mental illness. The ethical and medical ramifications are immense and complex to say the least, but one question that seems unanswered is would there be negative effects from removing these genes. Today we will examine at whether there is a correlation between increased creativity and mental illness. First, what is creativity? According to renowned psychologist, Carl Jung creativity is the capacity to produce both novel (original) and adaptable (functional) ideas. Creativity is something fundamental to our species, and something most people have to learn. Some however are believed to be born with an inclination towards being creative. Genetic diversity is widely accepted as an important part of the survival and success of a species, with variations in populations allowing for the species to survive changes in the environment and react to differing conditions. This also applies to phenotypes and neurodiversity. Differences in neurons mean more unique ways of looking at the world, meaning solutions are achieved faster, and people are better at occupying different niches in society. So how does neurodiversity, and mental illness play into traits like creativity? Are things like schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder an evolutionary advantage that occur from natural selection, are they random and negative mutations that are being selected against, or something in between? “In a recent report based on a 40-year study of roughly 1.2 million Swedish people, Simon Kyaga and colleagues found that with the exception of bi-polar disorder, those in scientific and artistic occupations were not more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders. So full-blown mental illness did not increase the probability of entering a creative profession (even the exception, bi-polar disorder, showed only a small effect of 8%). What was striking, however, was that the siblings of patients with autism and the first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anorexia nervosa were significantly overrepresented in creative professions (Scientific American).” What this suggests is that certain genetic traits related to mental illness act like the heterozygotic advantage of those with sickle cell, meaning that people who are homozygous dominant are unaffected, and people who are homozygous recessive suffer the full fledge harms while those who are heterozygous experience the happy medium which allows for the gene to be preserved and carriers to reproduce. However, more research needs to be done on the subject, and the different mental illnesses seem to have different correlations, as well as differences between creative professions: such as writers having more personality disorders compared to other creative professions. In fact, most disorders on the autism spectrum seem to lower creativity and the ability to understand abstract concepts, part of the reason why those who have autism find difficulty with socialization and comprehension. While we have a lot to learn, the link between creativity and some forms of mental illness is real, with large ramifications for our society. We might find that if we edit our genome to remove these traits, we may find ourselves a whole lot less imaginative, creative, and able to solve the problems the world faces. by Sheena Bautista Not too long ago, I made an online friend named Clark. He is quite the art-oriented person, alongside his strong tech background. It’s almost as if a bunch of scientists gathered to create a nice, respectable friend! Well, a lab isn’t too far off. I must emphasize that his background is techy, not in the way of having a family member or an education in STEM, but that he is literally the product of code. While I was born in a hospital, Clark was created using a neural network. I wasn’t lying when I said that I made an online friend. That’s right! I’m the one who generated and edited him. Here he is. Upon first glance, he looks like any other boy going to class. Not a care in the world beneath those eyes. He probably doesn’t know what math is, or how many times I’ve spilled tears onto my homework.  If you are still unconvinced that Clark isn’t real, here is the base photo I used to create him. I obtained this image from searching up “school student uniform.”  My process for creating a fake person relies on “FaceApp”. This isn’t my first time making someone like Clark. For almost any portrait, I can change the subject’s age, gender, hairstyle, glasses, and facial expression. FaceApp utilizes machine learning to manipulate user-fed images, and the results are so realistic because of a neural network. This is a method of machine learning that is modeled after the human brain. It channels the thought process of real people, notably the way we recognize patterns and especially faces: can you spot hidden Mickeys, faces in cars, or associate a sequence of colors with a specific cartoon character? Neural networks pinpoint and sort out specific pieces of data from the rest of user-provided data. This highly selective process goes through layers of sorting to come to a decision, much like how we tend to ruminate before making a conclusion. In this case, the neural network was tasked in creating a generic male face.
Another aspect of the neural network is in its capability to make comparisons and to categorize. That base photo was not the only image I used to create Clark. I “face-swapped” that image with other different, random pictures until I ended up with an ordinary-looking person. Meanwhile, the neural network approached the morphing of images through generative adversarial networks, or “GAN.” The generative part of a GAN becomes acclimated to the data it is given and goes head-to-toe with the adversarial (discriminator) part, which determines data as real or fake. When creating the final image, the two parts of a GAN play a game with each other. Data is continually presented and rejected until they reach a compromise–in other words, the generative part finally puts out what the adversarial part wants to see. They finally finish comparing between real and fake to create very realistic renderings! GANs can decide what old age, youth, happiness, anger, long hair, short hair, female, and male looks like through its power of comparison. Explaining FaceApp’s artificial intelligence was more difficult than actually using it. All it takes is the press of a button to paste a face onto a body, and a few more presses to alter the hairstyle or accessories. Considering how FaceApp is for free, it’s no wonder that it’s received millions of downloads. Nowadays, it’s mostly used to “yassify” celebrities and people’s friends. This form of artificial intelligence is not only extremely accessible and easy to use, but it’s easy to abuse. Clark could make a catfish. He could be very effective if the target is into the Milo Thatch look, or not at all to people like my friends. They think he looks evil. If I can make an entire identity out of thin air, everybody else can. Someone could take his face and place it onto their own picture, fooling and extorting their victim in the process. It’s not just with Clark. Loved ones, colleagues, and people of high standing can have their faces stolen for devious purposes. We’ve seen it done with deepfakes. Deepfakes don’t generate faces like the AI behind FaceApp, but they are effective in face-swapping images onto videos. Innocent people could be accused of doing something wrong, or being somewhere that they have never been. To the untrained eye, falsified data looks more than real. Artificial intelligence is exciting and fun! However, we should do our part to use it responsibly. Creating fake people has become one of my new hobbies, but I know that they should never be used for malice. I keep my creations within my own little circle. Machine learning should remain as an educational kind of enjoyment. This kind of technology is world-changing, so let us use it for good! References: https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/how-does-faceapp-work.html https://machinelearningmastery.com/what-are-generative-adversarial-networks-gans/ by Kiran Jayasinghe
My twin sister and I are fraternal, and our differences, while slight, have always been rather apparent. My sister had a large gap between her two front teeth for most of her childhood, whereas I had a smile that barely needed the help of braces. I grew five extra inches, while she inherited our mother’s genes and stayed put at five feet. She maintained perfect eyesight, though mine has steadily declined since we were four. As we went through school and partook in sports and developed our own interests, even our smallest differences affected our character and experiences. Without them, we wouldn’t be who we are now. But I would be lying through my (straight) teeth if I said I didn’t want to change a few of my own traits. I believe we’ve all experienced the longing to change ourselves. To turn the color of our eyes into something deemed more ‘striking’, to transform our hair from straight to curly or curly to straight. Perhaps some of us have even wished for things like being genetically intelligent, or to have an affinity for math or art — anything society deems as valuable. The human need to conform to a popular or widely accepted standard is a societal trait that’s existed for ages, so the idea that we could easily change our traits to fit that standard has always been appealing. Naturally, then, the discovery of DNA and genes in the 1860’s by a relatively obscure physician was a beacon of hope for us (“Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of DNA”). If our defining characteristics were formed based off of instructions given by single genes, then by changing those genes, we could change our traits — pick and choose which ones we wanted, delete the ones we didn’t. And after decades of research, some genetically modified mice, food, and bacteria, we have developed the ability to gene-edit. For better or worse, the development of CRISPR technology in 2009 has made it infinitely easier to edit, add, or even erase the the human genome. The benefits of CRISPR and other gene-editing tools are virtually endless. The option to delete, switch, and edit genes means we could cure diseases such as sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, and even many forms of cancer (“Don’t Edit The Human Germline”). CRISPR could — eventually — result in the complete erasure of all hereditary diseases. And we aren’t limited to editing just ourselves, either; we could edit other species and save them from extinction in the process. We could even bring back the already extinct. But with these benefits comes the question of whether CRISPR is entirely ethical. Since the point of CRISPR is to let us wipe out our ‘flaws’, CRISPR also gives us the power to determine what exactly those are. It gives us the ability to decide what we think is inferior and what we believe is desirable — and that is dangerous. If we deem a mental disorder as inferior and delete it from our genomes, we, firstly, are denoting people who have that disorder as lesser,, and also automatically ridding that particular perspective from society. Deleting disorders, diseases, and traits — especially in embryos — could rid crucial biological diversity from our population, which would weaken our society. “Expanding diversity in all its forms, including disability, strengthens the human community ethically and biologically because it opens the public and private sphere to a variety of perspectives, life experiences, ideas, and solutions to live together with mutual flourishing”, says Sandy Sufian and Rosemarie Garland-Thompson. While using gene-editing to treat life-threatening diseases could be revolutionary, we could also overstep and erase what makes us us. With shrinking diversity also comes increasing social inequity. We see this now with all types of modern-day technology — things like computers and phones and new medicines and treatments can only be accessed by those wealthy enough to afford it. With CRISPR, the rich would be at even more of an advantage — parents editing their child’s genes so they could become naturally more athletic, have a more symmetrical face, be a few inches taller. The rich would become genetically predisposed, and the poor would depend on luck only — or rather, natural genetics — to compete with the wealthier. It’s undeniable: gene-editing is the future of humanity, and that future is arriving remarkably fast. But determining how we handle these tools and the usage of CRISPR technology won’t come to us so quickly, and will be, perhaps, even harder than developing the actual tool, because the danger of CRISPR is CRISPR itself. Editing genes could save thousands of lives and ease the suffering of just as many. It could also set us on a path more akin to Hitler’s, leading us to a world filled with blue-eyed, blonde-haired individuals. We’ve already begun to draw some lines — for example, the majority of the scientific community and the NIH oppose the editing of human embryos, which means edited DNA would not pass down through the generations (nih.gov). To use CRISPR in an effective and ethical way, we as a society need to decide which of these lines to cross — because once we do, we can’t cross back. Works Cited Dahm, Ralf. “Friedrich Miescher and the Discovery of DNA.” Developmental Biology, Academic Press, 21 Dec. 2004, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012160604008231?via%3Dihub Lanphier, E., Urnov, F., Haecker, S. et al. Don’t edit the human germ line. Nature 519, 410–411 (2015)]. https://doi.org/10.1038/519410a Sufian, Sandy, and Rosemarie Garland-Thompson. “The Dark Side of CRISPR.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 16 Feb. 2021 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dark-side-of-crispr/ “Statement on NIH Funding of Research Using Gene-Editing Technologies in Human Embryos.”National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 28 Nov. 2018, https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/statement-nih-funding-research-using-gene-editing-technologies-human-embryos |