Horgan Seminar Blog

 Faye Gilbert  When we hear the term “organized crime,” we are conditioned to think of its most notorious. We might think back to Prohibition—of Al Capone and his multi-million-dollar criminal empire—or to El Chapo and the Mexican cartel, with its smuggling, turf wars, and murder. There is a reason we think of these people and groups: we know of them for their infamy. Cruelty of that level is often intriguing enough to make its way to the headlines. What is not so intriguing is trash. More specifically, the organized and illegal dumping of waste. This realm of organized crime is not lesser known for a lack of guile. In fact, its under the radar status could be attributed to it. Nor is it lesser known for its lack of cruelty. It is equally ridden with smuggling and turf wars and murder, just in a much less direct theatric manner. The smuggling of an old mattress, for example, from the home of some penny-pincher to Oakland, California is far less exciting than that of cocaine ac...

  Clayton Yun Professor Horgan HST 401 11 March 2026 Do We Know All The Factors: What Climate Models Tell Us Global warming, climate change, or whatever else you want to call it, the Earth is getting warmer. We always hear of the rising temperatures year by year, the melting of ice caps, and how much carbon emissions we produce. We even hear of climate models that simulate what will happen if things don’t change, even with claims that say if we don’t cut carbon emissions by 2030, we will be in the territory of irreversible damage and no turning back. But how do these climate models even work? How are they actually calculating these predictions? Current climate models simulate the Earth’s climate and run the predictions using physical laws like conservation of energy, conservation of mass, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics. They use them to describe variables like air temperature, pressure, the winds, water vapor, and the currents in the oceans. These models then divide the Ear...

Jack Caputo 12 Mar 2026 HST401 I pledge my Honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System ChatGPT: College's Smartest Unenrolled Student As a university student, I use ChatGPT all the time. Being a student of physics/math, I often turn to ChatGPT when I’m stuck on a problem. If I can’t figure out what to try after using my notes, lecture slides, the internet, etc., I feed the question into ChatGPT. I don’t blindly copy down its steps. Instead, I stop reading when I find something ChatGPT does differently, understand what it is/why it can be used, then try my hand at the problem again. Normally, these little “hints” are enough, and are great time savers. Instead of bypassing struggle, a key aspect of true learning, this method allows me to pinpoint the topic/technique and surrounding context without having to slog through other topics in a dense textbook. I also use it as a know-it-all problem solver, like a friend who’s really good at trivia. Want to find an incredibly niche ...

 Nolan Hatchell-McNeil Prof. John Horgan - HST401 12 March 2026 Artificial Intellegence as a concept is quite fascinating, using silicon to generate solutions, ideas, and conversations. Firing up data center computing tasks at a rate no human could fathom, this technology at its apex. Unfortunately the apex of technological advancement is profitable for those who stand at the precipice of capitalism. For those unfortunate enough to have the resources needed to create those silicon chips are experiencing an unrelenting plight, bending to the whims of tech giants in silicon valley. The advent of Artificial Intelligence in its current state is not only a reminder of capitalism’s exploitative nature, but as an omen for the shape of exploitation to come.   We can start at the metals needed to design the chips for AI data centers. Many of the needed precious metals to design chips come from the exploitation of Democratic Republic of Congo. The  Democratic Republic of Congo...

  Connor Hsuan Professor Horgan HST 401 7 March 2026 I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System. The Surveillance Future        When it comes to my AI usage, I do often use some Large Language Models, like ChatGPT or Claude, for general references. Most recently though, I have been researching and training object detection and facial recognition software for my senior design project. While my team did encounter several issues while working on our project, we are making steady progress with our machine learning model. However, through my research, I started learning about how this technology was being used at larger scales, such as being implemented with existing surveillance technology. While I understand some of the potential benefits to this technology, such as crime prevention or suspect identification, there are also a massive amount of concerns that come with this. With the continuous growth of the AI industry, many peop...

  Jillian Olear Prof. John Horgan  HST 401A Seminar in Science Writing- Paper #4 9 March 2026 I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System. The Unpredictability of AI In Healthcare One of my favorite television shows right now is The Pitt. It’s a medical drama that illustrates a day in the emergency room, where each episode is an hour of the day shift. One of the major plotlines right now centers around technology in healthcare. Not only is the hospital’s internet currently shut down because of threats of a cyber attack, but the new attending doctor wants to implement AI into the charting and onboarding processes for patients. Which isn’t being received well by the rest of the team at all. Through this, the show is representing one of the largest questions in healthcare right now, highlighting the debate on if AI should be used in healthcare, and if so, to what extent. The use of artificial intelligence in multiple fields has rapidly increased since its int...