Horgan Seminar Blog

  Matthew Kearney Hoboken is Temporary In the face of climate change, Earth's climate is becoming more dangerous by the day. Dr. Philip Orton, a research professor in ocean engineering at my university of Stevens Institute of Technology, explains that as our global sea levels rise, whether increased by 1 foot, 5 feet, or 10 feet, Hoboken and many other coastal communities will face immense changes. All modern infrastructure, from roads to real estate, must be reconsidered for the long-term projections subjected by climate change. Like the rest of the world, Hoboken must prepare for these severe events to promote future public safety. I felt a sort of twisted feeling, being able to hear about such immense changes coming to my college city as it were, on this sunny, blue-sky day. It was a timely privilege. Had it been some years later, the Hoboken Pier C may not have looked, or even resembled as it did. Would I be able to touch the water then? Or would the pier even be here at all? O...

Triage is my first impression of healthcare and the public health system. Categorizing individual bodies by who can really help themselves in order to save the many, the political body, is the air healthcare providers breathe when it comes to mass casualties and disaster. The process of providing care through triage begins like this: check for airway and breathing, patients that can’t breathe on their own after two attempts to breathe for them are considered dead. Black tag. Check circulation and major bleeding. Red tag. Check their level of consciousness, can they follow directions? Can they walk to safety and bring others? Green tag. Triage in emergency assessment operates on detachment and relies on the forced health equality of the casualty at hand, but the public health crisis of climate change leverages emergency care against high risk populations that are threatened by the air we breathe.  The term enviromedics represents a new layer of emergency care from the negative impa...

  Christian Orizabal AI The Face Stealer On an ordinary weekday in the summer I decided to watch a video uploaded by a commentator youtuber named penguinz0, also known as Charles White. The topic of the video being about a video that was published, an AI deepfake of him that was released. The main point of the video was how scarily realistic the video was and how Charles himself questioned if it was one of his older videos. A video that is so realistic it makes you yourself even for a second question its authenticity is quite terrifying.  AI deep fakes are a tool that in recent times have been utilized as a tool for entertainment. Generating videos with some having the intent of being fun and silly for entertainment purposes like making celebrities do silly dances or say funny phrases. In recent times however, we have seen this tool being weaponized in malicious manners with the intent to harm the reputations of others. This issue has become such an issue that even Homeland Se...

  Samuel Schradin Cancer and the Climate: Concurrent Trends                Cancer etiology has been a multifaceted and debated topic, often overlooking the disastrous effects of climate change. With the incidence of cancer diagnosis on the rise, the external factors of our environment play a seemingly larger role on the overall public health than once thought. Stronger storms, rapidly spreading wildfires, the slow degradation of the Earth’s ozone layer, and many other consequences of climate change often correlate to the known causes of cancer. Environmental shifts from our warming planet have led to increased exposure to malignant cancer-causing carcinogens and risk-factors. A prevalent case to look at would be the increased rates of skin cancer, more specifically melanoma, within our society. According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, “Melanoma rates in the United States have been rising rapidly over the past 30 ye...

  James Flanagan HST401-A How Much is Enough? Fueling AI’s Energy Appetite Generative AI demands significant electricity. Driving a rapid increase in global data center power consumption. The International Energy agency reports that data center electricity consumption will rise from 460 terawatt hours in 2022 to anywhere between 620 and 1,050 terawatt hours by 2026. To put this in perspective, Russia’s total electricity consumption in 2021 was 996 terawatt hours. Generative AI is to blame for this rapid increase in data center power consumption.                 Google has been experimenting with AI and features generative AI responses on about 15% of its searches. This AI integration has substantially increased Googles power consumption. With 9 billion daily Google searches, Google will process over a billion AI requests. This is just the start of it, OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta have their own generative A...

  Wade Templeman About a week ago, my peers and I were asked to find a scholarly article on climate change for our seminar in science writing. I will begin by saying climate change is not something I frequently educate myself on. Reading about how our planet is being destroyed tends to bum me out. But, our professor, John Horgan, urged us to find an article that interested us, something that made us think about climate change in a different light. Thankfully, I stumbled across a Nature article about the Billion Oyster Project happening right outside my Hoboken backyard out in the New York Harbor. As a man of biology, I could not have been happier to learn about an optimistic project like this that utilizes living systems to accomplish such an ambitious task. The initiative has been seeding oyster beds around the harbor to take advantage of the mollusks’ reef making capabilities and construct a living breakwater of sorts. Their presence will also enhance water quality through incr...

Cara Leonard October 28, 2024 Seminar in Science Writing "Digital Deception: The Importance of AI Deepfake Regulation" Have you ever watched a video that made you question what’s real? Imagine a deep fake of a politician committing illicit acts, or a beloved celebrity caught in a fake scandal. With AI advancing so quickly, these scenarios are becoming possible. Without regulations, we risk a future filled with misinformation, privacy violations, and criminal activity. In fact, some extreme situations could arise if we don’t act to regulate this technology and discuss why it’s crucial to tackle these dangers before they spiral out of control.  The paragraph you just read was completely fabricated by ChatGPT, a form of generative artificial intelligence (AI). You most likely noticed a few indicators that it was generated, such as the oddly rigid sentence structure or robotic tone, but with a few changes in the prompt, this platform could potentially create a descriptive and c...