Horgan Seminar Blog

  Yash Yagnik Professor Horgan HST 401 29 January 2025 Are We In The New Stone Age? Imagine standing at the brink of the 20th century, holding a stone tool in your hand, oblivious to the industrial revolutions and technological wonders that lie ahead. That’s where we are today with microchips. Smaller than your fingernail, these powerful squares of silicon are the engines powering artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cloud computing. And yet, few of us truly grasp their full potential or understand how they’ll shape not just our technology but our day-to-day lives.  Often underestimated, microchips are the backbone of AI R&D. Originally these microchips or GPUs were designed for rendering video game graphics by companies like Nvidia. Their ability to perform parallel computations makes them ideal for training deep-learning models that can analyze a variety of complex tasks, from interpreting medical scans to forecasting stock market trends. Consider thi...

  This is the first blog that I have ever written, and to be completely honest, I’m a little nervous about it and a tad stressed to submit it. There’s something daunting about putting my thoughts out there for others to read, critique, and even have the ability to comment on. The pressure to get it just right is probably what has added to the stress. This though is ironic, considering the field of science I’ve chosen to write about: Psychiatry. Mental health is something I’ve come to care about deeply, and the connection between my personal experiences and this scientific field made it an obvious choice for my first blog. Psychiatry excites me because it tackles one of science’s most complex and personal challenges. Understanding and healing the human mind. Mental health shapes every aspect of our lives, it impacts not just your mental health but also your physical health, yet it remains one of the least understood areas in science. From the mysteries of how our consciousness works...

          What comes to mind when someone says the word geology? Probably things like rocks, dirt, and the notion that geology is one of the most boring science topics. To most that view geology as boring, rocks are rocks and dirt is dirt. As a civil engineering student, I’ll admit that before I took a class on geotechnical engineering, I didn’t think too deeply into geology either. But having now completed most of my civil engineering coursework, I’ve learned to appreciate the critical role that geology plays in the design and long-term resilience of our infrastructure.            When designing any kind of infrastructure or solving a problem in general, you have to first consider the existing conditions or what is given. In the case of geotechnical engineering, this means conducting a series of soil tests before anything is designed. Not only do these tests help engineers gain insight into key soil properties suc...

     People who exist on the edges of the psychological spectrum are always involved in the most fascinating topics. The average person only does average things, and something interesting is not average. Any time something interesting happens, a lunatic is always responsible. Psychology is fascinating because unraveling a person requires understanding their knowledge and history. If domestic terrorism were an academic field, Ted Kaczynski would have a doctorate. Kaczynski opposed society's current relationship with technology and social conformity. So, just as the Average Joe might do, he used society's reliance on technology to lead a bombing campaign against anyone who thought electricity was better than a bonfire feast after the tribe leader killed a wild boar. However, unlike your next-door neighbor, he managed to fool the entire US government for 17 years. If you want to know why and how the Unabomber did this, you only need to watch a three-hour, thirty-four-minute,...

  Matias Lopez Carrete Science Topic of Interest 1/28/25   Is Pharma a Scam? Are all pharmaceutical companies corrupt? Do some of them do good? Do they try to rob the common man by selling a so-called cure to a sickness or disease? How do we address the drug prices in the US?    These are my genuine questions that I have been thinking about recently, and I think this is because of the presidential debate and Luigi murdering Brian. Which really sparked this, because me and my girlfriend had a huge debate on the healthcare system in the US and the Pharmaceuticals in the US a couple days after this happened.   To give you some background, my mother has been in the pharmaceutical industry her entire life and is now higher up in the ranks, which is probably why I sided more for the protection and support of these pharma companies, most likely for the fear in the moment that there would be some frenzy on healthcare and pharma leaders across the US.   But genuinel...

  Harrison Teele 29 January 2025 HST401 - Seminar in Science Writing Professor Horgan Why the Graviton Sucks There exists a food truck that is posted about everywhere on social media; everyone is talking about it. Despite the hype, it shows up once every 15 years and parks on the shoulder of I-95 somewhere between Boston and Miami. If someone happens to come across it, it will have been too late, and all they will encounter is the faint smell of a food truck. Obviously I am not raving about a food truck, but this seems to be the same fruitless chase that particle physicists are putting themselves through in order to detect a hypothetical particle–the graviton. This so-called massless fundamental particle has yielded nothing, and in fact only complicates our current understanding of gravity. The graviton sucks, so why do we put so much effort into finding it? Characterized as the particle that could further a “theory of everything”, physicists, including researchers right here at St...

I’m not really sure if it’s like a cool topic in science like Crispr or anything like that. I am always interested in Superfund sites–like it’s kinda cool to find out the place I might be currently standing above might have been a hazardous waste site. My highschool was mainly focused on Marine and Environmental science so I always opted into taking any extra research classes. However, we all had to take environmental science where we all kind of sit there listening to how terribly the government messages up the environment.  So you might be thinking, what exactly is a “Superfund Site”? According to the EPA’s official website its “Thousands of contaminated sites exist nationally due to hazardous waste being dumped, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed.” You also might be thinking now, “wow Michelle this is really what excites you when there is quite literally gene altering technology.” Yes, it is actually the history and learning about their cleanup and how t...

Manual Memory Management: Must or Mistake? By Ryan Monaghan Introduction In the online discourse among software engineers, the topic of memory management has come up countless times as a source of not only intrigue, but political controversy as well. Memory is a critical piece of a computer, and there are many different ways to optimize it, make it secure, and to manage it. According to Garry Kranz of TechTarget, even implementing a memory cache can speed up a computer “10 to 100 times” when compared to just memory alone. Hardware optimizations aside, in software there are techniques to improve memory usage to improve the speed of programs such as using stack vs heap allocations, garbage collection, and pointers. If you don’t know what any of those things are don’t worry, I’ll explain those and how memory management has become such a central part of the discussion on programming languages in the industry. Memory Management Techniques Programming languages that have been around for a v...

Maya Lapinski HST 401 - Paper #1 Hyaluronic Acid Can Offer More Than Just a Pretty Face Hyaluronic acid–chances are you heard about it through the cosmetic industry’s promise of its alleged ability to leave skin radiant and youthful. The desire for a wrinkle-less and plump face is what drives hyaluronic acid’s popularity within skincare. I wonder if people would be as excited if they found out that hyaluronic acid had a more important function than helping us combat our fear of aging. What if instead of focusing on looking younger, we focused on the possibility of helping thousands of people live better and longer lives?  Hyaluronic acid is an important biomaterial found within the human body. It is a glycosaminoglycan, and as Casale and Crane discuss in “Biochemistry, Glycosaminoglycans,” these sugars are known for their role in cell hydration within the body (2023). As a result, we have all probably heard of hyaluronic acid in relation to its ability to retain moisture, lead...

Cars Go Vroom Vroom! January 28, 2025 - Maribeth Suganuma There are so many success stories of scholars becoming masters in their field. Some prime examples are Steven Hawkings, Sheldon Cooper, and Marie Curie. These are people the majority of the country that study in their industry look up to. Even made up characters are looked up to. When I think of mastering a field, the thing that comes to mind is understanding the entire field. The goal is to become an omnipotent being in automotive engineering, that person everyone looks up to. I am going to be that guy who creates the next innovative, transformative technology. Since I was a child, drawing funny concepts of cars and dreaming of what the next car trends will look like is something I did staring out the car window. Now that I am entered in a race car design competition, I finally got the chance to bring my scientific studies and creativity together. A splitter in the front of the car reduces the amount of air that gets beneath ...