Firefly Magazine: USC's Best Science Writing, Fall 2010

8/6/2019 Firefly Magazine: USC's Best Science Writing, Fall 2010

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firefly Best ScienceWriting 2010

A Tragic Swan Son

How Does It Feel

Science Education

in South L.A.

To Be a Neuron?

INSIDE


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firefly Best Science Writing 2Annenberg School forCommunication & JournaFantasy: I, the Neuron Holly VillamagnaIt used to be all I could do to keep up with the thunderstorm of signals, the jumble of new

memories, coming and going, but now I have time to rest and ponder my existence. Its ex-

actly what Ive always wanted, but it makes me feel uneasy.

Noticing: Silence and Sound Sharon TsengThe only two sounds I could hear were my heartbeats and breathing. Even so, I realized

how uneasy I became when my surroundings became silent.

Explaining: Crash Course Jeff CurtisThe bone-jarring collisions in football attract fans thirsting for violence. The Romans had

the Coliseum; we have Heinz Field and the Superdome. Big hits are replayed ad nauseam.

Yet all of these collisions come with a price.

Explanation: My Chemical Romance Laura J. NelsonAttraction, that burning desire to have babies, has been around since even before the first

land animals schlepped out of the primordial ooze. Millions of years later, our genes still

want us to breed, and breed now.

Commentary: The Tragedy of the Swan Jason KeheThere was nothing to do but stare. Our boozy rowdiness from seconds earlier gave way to a

perfect silence as we watched the swan poorly negotiate the cobblestones. It finally got within

a foot of us, its ruined grace on full display.

Noticing: Bug Off Alison BeckI heard a buzzing noise behind me. Turning, I saw hundreds of giant winged ants stream-

ing into my room

Feature: Science and Engineering Studio Comes to South Los Angeles Liz Warden

The goal is to help children become excited about how the world works and do that by build-ing, by experimenting, by discovering.

Commentary: Sultans of Steroids Jeff CurtisLargely ignored during the excitement of the home run chase was its improbability. Why

were baseball players suddenly hitting home runs at historic rates?

Noticing: In Defense of Shadows Laura J. NelsonCompared to the dollops of golden sunlight that warm my floorboards and flit across my

eyelids, shadows are the ugly stepsister.

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designed and edited by Laura J. Nelson


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The universe belongs to everyone, yet many students shy away from science coursesbecause theyre afraid of getting buried in problem sets. In Writing About Science,we approach science through writing and journalismlearning how to interpret the

unvierse on its own terms, how to write about science clearly and accurately and how tobecome smarter readers (and listeners) of science as its portrayed in the media.

Many of the greatest scientists are and have been popularizersincluding AlbertEinsteinand many artists and scholars incorporate ideas from science into their work.But communicating complex ideas can be tricky and requires an enormous amount oftranslation.

The writer has to provide context, learn to use but not abuse metaphor, distill without

diluting and answer the all-important question: So what? And all this in an engagingliterary style that invites the uninitiated to explore unfamiliar realms.Herein, a collection of some of the best science writing from my undergraduate WritingAbout Science class at USC, 2010 selected by the students. Special thanks to LauraNelson for a fabulous job of design and editing.

K.C. ColeProfessor


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2002Neurons are always in a bit of an

identity crisis.Tere are 100 billion of us in the

human brain, and each one of us syn-apses talks to, or exchanges infor-mation with many other neurons.

Like the people whose brains wereside in, some neurons are more so-cial than others. Some of us synapsewith as few as 50 other neurons; somewith tens of thousands.

For us, talking is accomplishedthrough chemicals, not words. Butdont think of our chats as quiet con-versations over coee. Instead, imag-ine a stadium at largest sports game orconcert youve ever been to. Before the

event starts, the cacophony of peopletalking and laughing all around canbe overwhelming.

Tink about trying to have conver-sations with dozens of these people allat once. Tats what we do, and we doit well I bet most people wish theycould multitask as well as we can!

But its hard to remember who you

are when you spend your whole lifereacting, sending messages along in adizzying game of telephone on a scaleeven the brilliant inventors of thatcommunication device cant imagine.

As far as Im concerned, I luckedout on location. I live in the hippo-campus, which is a region of the brainthat stores memory, organizing thethings the woman who belongs tothis brain sees and does into orderly

les so she can access them later.oday, she spent the evening stan

ing in the crisp November air, takpictures of the beautiful sunset.

Next month, when her friecome over for lunch and common the lovely photographs hangingthe living room, she will be able to them about the evening she took

photos thanks to me.

2003Something isnt right. We used

be called on to remember photogphy trips and lunches with friendsthe time, but now it seems little qeter in here.

Maybe I am just imagining thinMaybe we are getting more eciwith age we are more than six

Holly Villamagna

Fantasy

I, the Neuron


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cades old now and processing and

putting away memories more quicklythan before.

It used to be all I could do to keepup with the thunderstorm of signals,the jumble of new memories, com-ing and going, but now I have littlesnatches of time to rest and pondermy existence. Its exactly what Ivealways wanted, but it makes me feeluneasy.

2004

My favorite part of my job has al-ways been putting the puzzle together.Signals pour down on us like rainwa-ter slides over a window on a stormyday, and eventually they coalesce intosounds and sights and stories.

Te rst sound from this after-noon was crying. Te sight of a posterhanging in a doctors oce, cold and

impersonal, showing various regionsof the brain. Te soothing voice of anurse.

Ten, a neurologist with a diagno-sis Alzheimers disease.

2005

She read a book once about a fatherand son who were the sole survivors ofan apocalypse, struggling to survive in

a world devoid of help, warmth, and

life. I cant help but worry that this iswhere I am heading.

I watch it happen to my friendsand neighbors almost every day onemoment, we are sending informationback and forth like always, and soonafter, they are silent, wilted petalswhere a ower once stood.

I hate the idea of falling silent, butI fear the prospect of being the last

one standing even more. At least thefather and son had each other to clingto in a world turned upside down. Icould someday be anchored here, to-tally alone.

My friends have been savagelymurdered by barbarians, which makesthis situation even harder to accept.

In spite of the racket we used tomake, I have always thought that neu-rons are a remarkably polite group.

We reach out to each other throughdelicate projections, coming close butnever quite connecting, shy teenag-ers working their way up to holdinghands on their rst date. Tough wedont touch, our connections are closeenough to allow us to send chemi-cals to each other, creating a network,a family sharing news in a crowdedroom during a holiday.

Te invaders are lumpy structurefolded in on themselves over anover again without any of our delcate grace. Tey land on top of us anin the midst of our networks, likemovie villain cackling as he pulls tw

people reaching for each other aparSomething about the invaders toxic, and whenever they land on onof us, the neuron is killed.

I have all the free time I thoughtwanted now as those around me apoisoned by the invaders, one by onI dont have much to do anymore.

All these years, I thought my constant connection with so many others was taking away my identity. Now

I realize these connections were midentity.

2006

A tumbleweed moves down a deert highway at night, making a soscratching sound against the highwaevery few seconds. It should be a quet sound, but it is almost deafenincompared to the silence all around i

A woman whose family is stasleep turns o her hair dryer earin the morning, and the sudden slence that greets her rings in her earTats what it feels like here. So quieMost of my friends and neighbohave been smothered by invaders, foever silenced.

With them, the photographs, tlunches with friends, the days in thpark with the kids, have all died to

because we cant talk to each other retrieve them. Te few of us who aleft sit in isolation, the only inhabiants of a deserted island in a sea fallen comrades.

2008

Silence.

[email protected]


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I must have walked through cam-pus more than a thousand times, but Ihad never noticed the dierent kindsof sound surrounding meat leastnot until I took a class called musicas communication.

Te professor asked us to walkaround campus for 15 minutes and to

pay attention to every sound that weheard, recording each in a sound di-ary. At rst, nothing sounded dier-ent. Birds chirping, people laughing,the marching band practicing

But within minutes, I started totune out usual sounds and hear soundsthat I had never paid attention to.

Te sound of my footsteps becameclear, vivid and rhythmic. Te kolum-kolum sound of skateboards zipping

by, the crackling of leaves and thewhipping of a ag in the wind.

Behind these sounds, of course, wasthe ear that did the hearing.

Sound, by denition, is the sensa-tion produced by stimulation of thehearing organs through the vibrationstransmitted in the air.

Te eardrum and the brain have towork together to help us understand

a vibration as a sound. Te vibrationhits the eardrum, which then sendsripples across the three smallest bonesin the body (the malleus, incus andstapes). Tese three bones are calledthe middle ear.

Te primary function of the mid-dle ear is to transfer the vibration touid-membrane waves within thecochlea, a snail-like organ that rever-

berates into the auditory nerve, whichthen carries the vibration to the brain.

Te brain then recognizes it as asound.

So if a tree falls in a forest and noone is around to hear it, does it makea sound? Te answer is nosound isa subjective sensation that only occursin living beings through the coordi-nation of the eardrum and the brain.

But what if a hearing-impaired

person sees the falling tree? Doesthe concept of sound even exist forhim/her? Is silence a sound? What isthe dierence in the concept of soundbetween a person who was born withhearing impairment and someonewho had later become impaired?

One night, I tried to put myselfinto a sound-proof cocoon. I put inearplugs and walked around. Te only

two sounds I could hear were heartbeats and breathing, and I reized how uneasy I became when surroundings were silent.

In our culture, silence seemssignify death. We expect a new-bbaby to cry, a child to speak anhealthy person to laugh. We avoidlence when we are with other humabecause silence creates awkwardn

embarrassment and confusion.So we keep ourselves saturated

sound. Tats why we keep ourseloccupied on the phone, or with muor doing anything that makes noisekeep us feel comfortable. I hum soin my head when I am alone to kmyself lled with sounds, with mu

After walking in silence that nigthough still humming in the insit became clear to me that sou

has integrated to an essential partour lives; were almost inseparablesounds.

Whats more, only we as humbeings can experience this tight lationship with sounds, music anoise. Te animals may hear soubut they could never appreciate ahum a piece of music as humans d

[email protected]

Sharon Tseng

Noticing

Silence and Noise


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Explaining Jeff Curtis

It can start as early as Pop Warnergames.

Like most snaps at this level offootball, the play ends with a clusterof small bodies swarming toward the

football like ants at a picnic. At thebottom of the pile, one young play-er is squished. Not wanting to looksoft, he picks himself on wobbly legsas soon as the pile clears and tries toshake away the cobwebs.

Football players learn early thattoughness is their sports most pre-cious commodity. And like the littlekid at the bottom of the pile, manyput themselves at risk by downplay-ing injuries. After all, Ronnie Lottcut o his nger to avoid missing adown of football.

How can they sit out a play just be-cause they got their bell rung?

Lott just might be the nastiestplayer to ever strap on shoulder pads.

In many ways he embodied theidyllic view of football players: vio-lent and tough as nails, modern-day

gladiators waging battle in pads andhelmets. Te San Francisco 49ers safety

used to tackle opponents so hard theylost their will to compete. Lott oncetold people about curious how hardhe actually hit to have a friend beatthem with a baseball bat. Tat wasthe closest parallel he could think of.

In 1985, Lott mangled his leftpinky tackling an opponent during a

playo game. Rather than miss timenext season recovering from surgery,he chose to have the tip of his ngeramputated.

Indeed, the bone-jarring collisionsin football attract fans thirsting forviolence.

Te Romans had the Coliseum; wehave Heinz Field and the Superdome.

Big hits are replayed ad nauseam.Yet all of these collisions come with

a price. Scientists are just beginningto measure the destructive impactplaying football has on the brain.

One posthumous study found evi-dence of chronic traumatic encepha-lopathy (or CE) in six former NFLplayers who died from self-destructive

behavior. Te study revealed brown tang

scattered throughout the players bratissue consistent with what might found in the brain of an 80-year-o with dementia, even though four the six players studied were betwe30 and 40 years old. Tree of tplayers in the study died young a

The hard-hitting costs of playing

Americas favorite contact sport

CRASH COURSE

continued on page 9


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ter long bouts with depression. Onedied of an accidental gunshot woundto the chest. Another died of a drugoverdose. Another player committedsuicide. Mike Webster, who playedbefore modern helmets were intro-duced, was one of the players in thestudy who struggled with depression.

He also suered from dementia,living in his pickup truck and trainstations after retiring from football.

Some doctors estimated Websterhad been in the equivalent of 25,000automobile crashes over the course ofhis football career.

Another study has shown that re-tired NFL players with a history ofthree or more concussions have high

rates of depression and mild cogni-tive impairment. CE is also knownas dementia pugilistica or boxers de-mentia, due to the number of boxerswho develop the syndrome.

Sudden collisions, like a left hookto the jaw or a helmet-to-helmet hit

in football, can cause the brain to slosharound in its skull. Te syndrome iscommonly referred to as being punchdrunk.

Te size and speed of modern foot-ball players is putting them at risk.Oensive linemen used to weigh 200pounds. oday, they can weigh up to

350 pounds.Scientists measured the force of a

pulling block by Maryland left tackleBruce Campbell at 272 pounds, simi-lar to the impact of being run over bya Pamplona bull during the Runningof the Bulls.

Te eects of CE are mainly neu-rological and manifest as an inabilityto maintain relationships, depression

and, in some cases, suicide.Chris Henry, a troubled receiverwhose career was marred by a stringof run-ins with the law, died last yearafter he fell o the back of his an-ces truck during an argument. Anautopsy found evidence of CE in

the 26-year-olds brain.Te NFL has instituted rules o

lawing helmet-to-helmet tackles aplaying with concussion symptobut players still put their futures upcollateral for the right to compete.a league where multi-million docontracts can be dissolved by tea

on a whim, it can sometimes semore dangerous to report a concsion than miss a game.

General Douglas MacArthur osaid, Old soldiers never die; they jfade away. Te same could be said former athletes. We remember thas thoroughbred racehorses, paragoof tness and skill. Teir endurimage is an electric touchdown run

ngertip catch.Yet athletes lives go on after thplaying days are over. And the loterm eects of playing football dofade away. Its time to decide whetthe thrill of the game is worth it.

[email protected]


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My friends had just forced theirway through the thongs of drunk broswhen I saw him: a tall blonde guy ina black V-neck, leaning against a tree,watching the keg stands with a lop-sided smile.

Our eyes locked. My heart thud-ded. And as he walked towards me,my brain whirred into overdrive.

Luke* introduced himself and Isubtly looked him up and down as webegan chatting.

He was that clean-cut, intellectualEast Coast type I like so well, the kindwho wears polos and football jerseysequally well. He was funny, interest-ing and single?

I thought Id chosen Luke fromacross the crowded room. But in real-

ity, my attraction to him was uncon-scious and biological.

My crush was triggered by a burst-ing oodgate of chemicals that lledmy body with an instinctive desire toget closer to this boy.

And boom. I was smitten.A crush begins with the primal

instinct to mate and reproduce. At-traction, that burning desire to havebabies, has been around at least since

the rst land animals schlepped out ofthe primordial ooze.

Millions of years later, our genesstill want us to breed, and breed now.

Tat desire for children is particu-larly strong in females, who only geta few rolls of the reproductive dice intheir lifetimes.

Men, on the other hand, can anddo produce millions of sperm.

For women who like me arentin relationships, that urge to havebabies becomes what college kidscall the single and ready to minglemindset.

Female brains put women on theprowl, to attract a man and mateimmediately. Every girl whos beenthrough puberty is at the mercy of herrampaging hormones, even if (likeme) she doesnt consider herself aman hunter.

Seeking out attraction is a procof the ve senses, starting with aud visual and olfactory cues. My b which knows Im single, kicks overdrive to nd me the best mpossible whenever Im in the copany of men.

Te rst cues are visual: bshoulders, a barrel chest and bearms. A guy built like that could c

more meat and kill more lions ththe scrawny kid in skinny jeans. When Luke got close eno

his deep voice sent shivers down spine and drew me in even more.

Te deeper the voice, the higthe testosterone levels and, perhathe higher the attractiveness, studhave shown.

Scientists at the University of Abany recently asked 149 volunte

to listen to recordings of mens awomens voices, then rate those voon a scale from very unattractivevery attractive.

Te scientists found that the mvoices rated as more attractive wphysically attractive as well. For mthat means broad shoulders achests. For women, a curvy silhoueand a low waist-to-hip ratio.

Biologically, looks count scent, like the crisp, spicy scent dring from Lukes collar, may be evmore important.

Women drop $100 on bottleChanel No. 9 and middle school bdouse themselves in Axe Body Spnot merely to mask the bodys bodors, but enhance the good, or nural, ones. Tose scents signal to opposite sex that its wearer would

Laura J. Nelson

How we develop crushes and why we choose who we do

My Chemical Romance Explaining

*names changed to protect the unsuspecting

That urge to have babiesbecomes what college

kids call the singleand ready to mingle

mindset. Female brainsput women on the prowl,

to attract a man andmate immediately.


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a good genetic match.A gene called MHC (major histo-

compatibility complex) is responsiblefor many of the good scents the hu-man body produces, researchers at theUniversity of Bern found.

MHC is part of the immune sys-tem and controls tissue rejection.Conceiving with a partner whoseMHC is too similar increases the riskof miscarriage and stillbirth.

o show this, scientists at the Uni-versity of Bern asked females to smell-shirts worn by anonymous malesand pick the ones that smelled best.Every time, the women chose shirtswhose owners had dierent MHCs.

Te sights, smells and sounds Iassociated with Luke kick-started aood of hormones in my body.

Hormones are chemicals, producedby cells, that zip through the blood-stream like tiny chemical carrier pi-

geons, delivering instructions to dif-ferent parts of the body. Hormones

control everything from kidney func-tion and digestion to menopause,pimples and crushes.

When I started crushing on Luke,a hormone cocktail coursed into apart of my brain called the rewardsystem.

Tis mix of neurochemical path-ways, buried deep in the unconsciousbrain, controls my behavior by teach-ing me what I like and what I dont. Te system produces dopamine, achemical that triggers the rush of ela-tion associated with gambling, shop-ping sprees or cocaine highs.

Tis system too has its roots inevolution. Te brain keeps the bodyalive by triggering survival instincts.For example, eating sugary foods andcarbs gives the body energy to keepmoving, while picking a genetically

well-endowed mate means more bbies down the road.

With the help of my eyes and nomy brain analyzed Lukes genes good t for me, apparently and mreward system said, Tis is the oyou want!

My body reacted accordingly, ooing my body with dopamine. Trush of feel-good chemicals ratchetup my heart rate and my blood presure, making my cheeks ush and mheartbeat irregular.

Our friends pulled us away with10 minutestime had own!bfor the rest of the party, I couldkeep my mind o the guy.

None of us knew him, my frientold me. And we didnt even thinkwas that cute.

But what could I do?Evolution told me otherwise. [email protected]


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For summer school students at

Cambridge University, every nightmeans the same thing pubbing andclubbing.

Underage Americans are the worst.Unused to the European nightlife,they nd liberation in libations andcarouse about town well into the weehours. Come morning, memoriesare foggier than the early-morningstreets.

I cant remember much from those

nights, except a vague sense of a goodtime.

In fact, theres only one memory an image, really that I can recallwith any clarity.

But such clarity that I will neverforget what I saw.

Tere were ve of us. It was late,and the air was thick with the kind ofmist that precedes rainfall. We werestumbling down the wet cobblestonestreets of Cambridge, crying out to noone in particular and playing leapfrogover curbside bollards.

Ten, out of the corner of my eye,a ash of white. Something was inch-ing toward us from the other end ofthe street.

With some eort, I tried to focuson the creature. As the shape materi-alized in the distance, I realized what

it was: a great white swan.My rst day in Cambridge, I had

seen a family of swans paddling downa rivulet near my college. I had wishedthen that I had gotten closer.

Now there was one was walkingright toward me.

But as the swan staggered forward,I realized something was wrong. It

moved as though sightless, tripping

over its own feet. Its feathers weresplotched with mud, grease and tar an ugly duckling all over again.

By now it was raining, and the rain-drops rolling down the swans slenderface gave an impression of tears.

It was confused, lost, alone.Tere was nothing to do but stare.

Our boozy rowdiness from secondsearlier gave way to a perfect silence aswe watched the swan poorly negoti-

ate the cobblestones.It nally got within a foot of us, its

ruined grace on full display.Ten, as suddenly as it appeared, it

rounded a corner and was gone. No

one dared follow it.Later that night, a friend said to

me, I think it was looking for a placeto die.

Te next morning, conversation atthe breakfast table centered on themysterious swan. It seemed everyonehad seen it. I recoiled at stories ofkids chasing it down the street. King

among birds, reduced to a mere pl

thing for the drunk.Over the next couple of weeks, image of the swan itted in and of my thoughts, ever wandering tfeatureless street.

Always the question remainWhat was it doing?

I began constructing stories, emore miserable than the next.

It took a wrong turn on its whome.

It got separated from its duckliby bad weather.

Its whole family was run over bspeeding car.

It was the saddest creature in all world.

Weeks later, most of my friehad forgotten about the swam Oh yeah, they said when I remindthem.

Why couldnt I get that pictthat anti-poetic vision of abject loliness, out of my head?

Why was I sympathizing with iTen I got rational:Its just an a

mal, I told myself.It cant be heartbken. Should I even be sad for it?

Similar thoughts no doubt mtivated the perverse actions of thpeers of mine who chased the swdown the street, taunting it w

mock warbles and showering it wpebbles.

Animals dont feel. Tey have stincts and they can get spooked, those arent feelings, at least as think of them. Te swan I saw washappier or sadder than the next o it cant even comprehend hapness or sadness.

Jason Kehe

Commentary

As the swan staggeredforward, I realized

something was wrong.It moved as though

sightless, tripping over

its own feet. Its featherswere splotched with mud,grease and tar an ugly

duckling all over again.

The Tragedy of the Swan


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Tis was the real tragedy of thisswan, my swan.

Nobody really cared.In all likelihood, we were respon-

sible for its condition: We tarred itsfeathers with our onrushing cars and

muddied its wings with our pollutedsewers. When I had seen that family of

swans drifting down the river my rstday at Cambridge, how I wished Icould have gotten closer. Now I wishthey were as far away from people aspossible.

Can swans get sad in the sensethat humans do?

We cant know, but we do knowthat animals feel certain core emo-tions rage, panic, separation anxi-ety, fear.

Denying that animals feel thatchickens cooped up in small cages or

dogs ghting in pens dont get stressedto the point of wishing for death isits own kind of animal cruelty.

As emple Grandin, one of the na-tions foremost interpreters of animalemotions, puts it, Some people mightthink thats being anthropomorphicto talk about animal emotions. No, itsneuroscience.

Animal emotions may be simpli-

ed or more instinctual, but are less real.

I wont ever know what that sw was thinking as it hopelessly stgered by in the middle of the night

But I do remember what I felt

a primal urge to reach out, wipe tcrud from its eyes and help it nd way home.

[email protected]


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Te goal is to help children becomeexcited about how the world works anddo that by building, by experimenting,by discovering, said ara Chklovski,who founded Iridescent four years agowhen she was earning a doctorate de-gree in aerodynamics engineering atUSC.

Iridescent, so far, has trained morethan 300 engineers to mentor 4,800children and parents in not only LosAngeles, but other inner-city areassuch as Oakland and New York City.

On October 16 of last year, Iridse-cent opened a new science studio on23rd Street within blocks of USC andDowntown Los Angeles.

Vanessa Garza, who serves as Iri-

descents regional director in Los An-geles, hopes to help close the historicachievement gap in math and sciencetest scores between minority students,who are in fact the majority of SouthLos Angeles students, and their Whiteand Asian counterparts throughoutthe US; the reasons for the gap includepoverty, poor schools, and the stressesof living in inner city communities.

I have no doubt that our students

are from .... low income households,said Garza.

Te Science Studios cover a widespectrum of topics like Kevins lessonon cardiovascular mechanics, but allrelate to engineering or are somehowscience-based, according to Garza.

During Iridescents summer engi-neering boot camp, one of the manyprograms it oers, mentors taught stu-dents how to create a roller coaster outof insulation tubes that exhibited theconcept of potential and kinetic en-ergy and the conservation of energy.Te children used a sling shot to shoota ball through the top, or hill, of thewindy roller coaster and watched theball convert potential energy (stored inits height) to kinetic energy (motion).

Iridescents hands-on approach alsoallows mentors to test out the eec-

tiveness of experiments theyve put to-gether for the students. At the studiolaunch science fair on October 16th inLos Angeles, students were allowed totake things apart and try to put themback together - from fans to toast-ers, pet tools by learning how to nail

down wood and y a remote controlairplane to learn about aerodynamics.More than 600 students attended theevent, waiting in line at various boothsto test out these activities.

Te biggest hit at the fair - a blow-up pool with submarines the size of ahuman head - attracted students of allages. Small children gathered aroundthe pool with their parents. High

school students grabbed control ofthe remote and drove the submarines, which made buzzing noises as theyplowed through the bright blue wa-ter. If a student pressed down on thebutton, the miniature submarines evenblew bubbles into the water as if it wassubmerging for the rst time.

Te goal of the underwater roboticsubmarine is to keep the students in-terested and possibly want to buildsomething of the same nature in thefuture, according to mentor JereyCui.

Its just a way for kids to explorethe underwater environment using adevice and its also to help them buildan object like this using engineeringtechniques, he said.

Iridescent believes a hands-on ap-proach to learning about science is es-

sential because it will help foster childrens interest in the subject as tmove into higher education, accordto its main Website. Te nonprot abelieves parents, who may never hbeen exposed to science, should given the same experience as childrexperiments are designed so both

parents and students can work togeer and learn. o this end, Iridesctranslates all activities into Spanish

Fernando Izaguirre tarted to tralate for Iridescent after serving amentor the previous year. He remebers struggling to translate a compulesson with a basis in mechanical gineering.

A lot of the concepts are h

to translate but I became mcondent...I wanted to experiesomething that was less technical thengineering, he said.

Garza said that Iridescents famscience workshops and other eventsfer minority students a way to get in the neighborhood and get valuaexperiences unavailable in their neiborhood schools many of which hexperienced sta lay-os and bud

cuts; many of these children are virally house bound due to fear of criin the area.

By publicizing events at schools aindividually calling households, nonprot hopes to engage even mstudents and add weekend workshoscience lm screenings and oppornities for students to use high-tequipment for larger projects.

Such projects are expensive. Te ence studio and equipment includscience books, microscopes, buildblocks, magnifying glasses for the LAngeles location was funded by a $million grant from the Oce of NaResearch to boost its SEM (scientechnology, engineering and math) ucation outreach in inner city neiborhoods.

Dr. Kassner, director of ONR, s

The goal is to helpchildren become

excited about howthe world works anddo that by building,by experimenting, by

discovering.


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that the Navy spends about $5 milliona year on SEM education; Secretaryof the Navy Ray Mabus has recentlydoubled the budget.

Te White House is acting to ad-dress this issue through funding worklike Iridescent so the technology of

Americas armed forces will still becompetitive with other countries anddoesnt fall behind for years to come.

It appears to me to be a very con-stant shift with the White House, sothis is a national push, he said, speak-ing of engaging youth with SEMeducation.

ONR stresses that the nonprotteaches students subjects that involve

water like hydrodynamics or under-water robotics. Te Navy plans to es-tablish a presence at Iridescent, bysending over present or retired person-nel, or even members of Navy ROCat local universities, Dr. Kassner ex-plained.

We hope that [the students] re-member that the Navy made some ef-fort to make sure they were interestedin science.

However, Garza said that althoughIridescent may cultivate lesson plansgeared toward Naval themes like thephysics of sailing, theyre not pushingthe children into a military career.

Our whole vision is that they ma-jor in their eld and make it a hobbyonce they are an adult.

But for young students like Kevin,all that may really matter is the op-portunity to participate in a hands-onexperiment, something he nds fun

and exciting and keeps him attentivbecause he gets to build his own experiments

Or, as he says, I get to investigathings!

[email protected]

Iridescents family scienceworkshops and otherevents offer minority

students a way to get outin the neighborhood andget valuable experiences

unavailable in theirneighborhood schools many of which have

experienced staff lay-offsand budget cuts; manyof these children arevirtually house bounddue to fear of crime in

the area


18/2218

Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosacaptured the nations attention in1998.

Locked in a race against history,the two baseball stars took turnsblasting home runs into the upperdecks of stadiums. Records that hadstood for decades fell without resis-tance, pounded into obscurity with

each mammoth swing of the massivesluggers bats.Largely ignored during the excite-

ment of the chase was its improbabil-ity. Why were baseball players sud-denly hitting home runs at historicrates?

It takes less than a half-second fora major league fastball to travel the6 feet, 6 inches from the pitchingmound to home plate.

In other words, batters dont havea lot of time to think about a pitchbefore they have to swing at it. Notmany people can hit a major leaguefastball. And fewer still can consis-tently hit one out of the ballpark.

For much of baseballs historyregistering 50 home runs in a singleseason was the greatest measure of apower hitter, reserved for the biggest

names in the sport.From 1900 to 1994, only 11 playershit that mark. Since then, 15 dier-ent players have risen above the once-special plateau.

Why was there one Sultan of Swat(Babe Ruth) in the rst 100 years ofthe sport and one on seemingly everyteam in the two decades since?

Various explanations have beenused to justify the sharp uptick in

homers, from smaller ballparks andstrike zones to improvements inweight training, but the obvious an-swer is also the most satisfying. Ste-roids.

Unless youve been living in a self-imposed media blackout the last veyears, you probably know that steroidsand baseball went hand-in-hand forthe better part of the last two decades.

Admitted steroid cheat Jose Can-

seco (who, along with Mark McG-wire formed the power-hitting BashBrothers tandem in the 80s) estimat-ed 85 percent of major league baseballplayers take performance-enhancingdrugs.

Skeptics wanting evidence of ste-roid use need look no further thanmajor league clubhouses.

Players return from oseason

training with cartoonish muscles andsuitcase-sized heads.Veins ripple across their bodies like

raging tributaries, pounding againstthe restraint of their skin.

Once-svelte outelders pack on 35pounds of lean muscle mass in threemonths.

Players respond to questions abouttheir chiseled physiques with evasiveanswers about new workouts.

On that front at least the playersare being honest. Sort of. Gainingstrength requires hard work, no mat-ter what people put in their bodies.

But simply using steroids will notresult in muscle growth.

Unlike Popeye the Sailor, regularpeople dont see immediate progressafter eating spinach or taking steroids. What steroids do is help people re-

cover from workouts faster by proving their cells with added testoster

Anabolic steroids, which are sthetic steroid hormones used to stulate muscle and bone growth, mithe eect naturally produced testerone has on the body. estosterswitches on receptors in muscle cand causes them to increase prosynthesis.

Muscle growth occurs when

rate of muscle protein synthesigreater than the rate of muscle ptein breakdown. Put simply, testerone tells muscles to grow. Mtestosterone leads to more growth

But how does added strength hthese players hit baseballs fartherit were purely a question of strenNFL linemen and Olympic weiglifters would double as home run

ters.Roger obin, a physicist at University, calculated how much oimpact steroids could have on playability to hit home runs.

He found that steroid use couldcrease muscle mass by up to 10 pcent. Tat added muscle could ha baseball player swing his bat percent faster than before, causingball to jump of his bat four perc

faster when he connected than it previously.

Four percent added velocity msound negligible, but applying slight increase to a scatter plotbaseball reveals it can boost horuns by 50 percent.

Baseball players skilled enoughput the barrel of their bat on a mleague pitch were now hitting th

Jeff Curtis

Commentary

Sultans of SteroidsPerformance-enhancing drugs have permanently tainted baseball

*


19/22

farther. Suddenly, players knockingin 12 home runs a year saw their to-tals spike to 18. And players hitting35 or 40 home runs a year started

chasing Roger Maris record-setting61 home run season.On Sept. 8, 1998, McGwire

blasted his 62nd home run of theseason. At the stadium that eveningwas the family of Maris, a slender,sweet-hitting lefty who set the oldrecord in 1961.

As McGwire lumbered aroundthe bases, his St. Louis Cardinalsjersey pulled taut around unnatu-

rally broad shoulders, one has towonder how Maris family felt as hislegacy was wiped away.

Sosa ended up with 66 home runsthat year. McGwire nished with70.

Tree years later even his recordwas broken.

[email protected]

**


20/2220

My bedroom is barely bigger thanmy bed.

I knew when I moved in that Id becramped, but it was too late: Id alreadyfallen in love with the light streamingfrom the west-facing window.

Te plate glass is huge, and it bringsthe world in: the familiar hum of bike

tires against the bumpy pavement, thecool kiss of the evening breeze on mycheeks and the ever-shifting shadowsthat dance across my dusty shades.

I seldom notice those sinuous sil-houettes. Compared to the dollops ofgilded sunlight that warm my oor-boards and it across my eyelids, shad-ows are ugly stepsisters.

Shadows are the absence of light,

the absence of warmth and in myview, vastly underappreciated.Even the word shadow carries

a negative connotation. Any self-respecting horror movie includes atleast one shadowy hallway or darkeneddoor. Cowards are afraid of their ownshadow. A disease can ravage someoneuntil he is a shadow of his former self.And the word foreshadow doesntmean happier days are coming.

Despite that reputation for be-ing harbingers of gloom and doom,shadows are formed by the light thatbrightens my mornings and warms myoors.

For example, the nearby oaks ut-tering leaves that cast jitterbuggingshadows across my bedspread?

Tat shadow begins with light from

the sun.Te sun emits miniscule packets of

energy called photons that stream to-ward the Earth in straight lines some-times called rays. Te photons rockettoward Earth at the speed of light un-til they hit something. In this instance,thats the tree. Te photons bounce othe trunk and the leaves.

Because the tiny energetic packetscant pass through the opaque tree, anabsence of photons an absence oflight appears on the other side in theshape of the object the photons hit.Tats a shadow.

But shadows come in shades of gray.If shadows could be created by one ray,then each shadows outline would becrisp, like a ballerina standing in front

of a single, hard spotlight.

But every shadow is made up ofmultitudes of shadows cast by thou-sands of rays. Tat creates blurrieroutlines more like the many-edgedshadow of a ballerina whos illuminat-ed by a row of footlights.

But photons generally come from somany directions and so many dierentlight sources that almost all shadowpaths are partially illuminated.

Whether fuzzy around the edgesor crisp and clean, shadows are nevertangible.

Peter Pan of the famous childrensstory nds this out the hard way whenhes accidentally separated from hisshadow. He tries unsuccessfully tostick it back on using soap, before -nally allowing Wendy to sew it back

on. Perhaps I should have ironedshe says thoughtfully.

Teres only one catch: shadows cabe ironed or kissed, slapped or caugAnd although theyre always there, unlike Peter Pan dont think mabout the shadows that follow us erywhere.

Still for centuries, shadows h

been a fulcrum for cultural and socichange.

Egyptians rst told time by usshadows and miniature sundials, amining where on the disc face shade of the needle fell.

Te Chinese entertained themselwith shadow puppet shows, a morened version of a childs bunny earfront of the movie projector.

And some scientists think Nederthals created the rst cave paiing while tracing the shadows of thickering res.

All those shadows come from ligwhether its the sun or a campre.

Im growing to appreciate the shows that play across my apartme window and their relationship wthe light that lls so much of my lif

I notice how the dewy sunrise po

through that wall-to-wall windowrest in pools of golden morning on pillow but also how my pillow thcasts a soothing shadow across sleeping face.

How I kick o my shoes in the afternoon, step into a patch of mten sunlight and feel a gentle warmseeping through my toes but ahow I step into the cooler shadowhen the sun gets too hot.

How every night, the same rosy bathes my wooden oors in the majtic blush of sunset but also how lengthening shadows meld with darkness as our planets own shadenvelops Los Angeles.

[email protected]

Laura J. Nelson

Noticing

In Defenseof Shadows

They cant be ironed orkissed, slapped or caught.

And although theyrealways there, we dontthink much about the

shadows that follow useverywhere.


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Firefly Magazine: USC's Best Science Writing, Fall 2010

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