Social Aspects of Getting Drunk

Fry, M. L. (2011). Seeking the pleasure zone: Understanding young adult’s intoxication culture. Australasian                 Marketing Journal (AMJ), 19 (1), 65-70.

            The research focused on the the culture surrounding drinking.  It used interviews to quantify how often young people went drinking, and what the nature of the outing was, between going to get drunk and have a leisurely drink with friends.  The results of the study found that most young people went out to get drunk about two or three times a week, and it was almost always immediately preceded with alcohol consumption.  The research implicates that the culture around drinking is growing more reckless, and peer pressure is increasing.  

            These results are not extremely alarming, as I can see the culture of drinking in full force at college.  It is a bit unsettling to know that the trend of young people drinking recklessly is only getting stronger.  However, the trend has been growing for several decades, and the ultimate goal would be to find a way to make alcohol consumption as safe as possible, as there is almost no way to stop it.

            This research methodology was good, but it was a bit flawed.  The researched asked young people about their drinking habits, taking their word as the input.  While this is a most feasible solution, it would be better to have somebody objectively observe them, getting exact numbers on the amount of alcohol intake as opposed to rough estimates.  

            This is an extremely significant issue among young people, especially college students, because the drinking culture is so strong and well established.  It is very important to at least have the information available to young people.  Although it will be nearly impossible to stifle the drinking culture, the only viable route is to educate young people over the potential consequences.

            This article presented information in a way that didn't show any disrespect toward those who drink.  This is useful in knowing who the audience is.  If the article seems to be preaching to the audience, there will be very little connection between the two.  But by respectful information, this article can hold a readers attention long enough to inform them of important information.

Fighting Deafness

APA Entry

Wan, G., Gómez-Casati, M. E., Gigliello, A. R., Liberman, C., & Corfas, G. (2014). Neurotrophin-3 regulates                ribbon synapse density in the cochlea and induces synapse regeneration after acoustic trauma. eLife, 3.

            This article was focused around the process of enabling deaf mice to hear again.  In this study, the scientists would give a certain gene to one set of mice, while leaving the others alone.  They then observed brain activity in the mice, noting that the mice that were given the gene suddenly had a heightened activity level in the area of their brain associated with hearing.  These results show a very early positive step that may enable humans to cure deafness in other humans.  This research does note that it is still very early in the research process to be thinking about human subjects.

            This research is very interesting to me.  Fighting sensory deficiencies is a topic that always intrigues me, as me and my mother are both anosmic, meaning we have no sense of smell.  Although this article was about deafness, the overall topic still interests me.  This is very interesting research, as we are beginning to be able to manipulate genes with great control.  This would seemingly open the door to more intensive forms of therapy via gene manipulation, for genetic diseases such as ALS.

            This research appears to be very well done.  There are many sources cited, signalling that these researchers did extensive research before conducting their own experiment.  This gives the researchers great validity.  The methodology of measuring brain activity based on whether the mice had received the gene treatment or not was the most logical way to conduct that research.  This gave the results that meant the most for the researchers purpose.

            This research shows that, through careful gene manipulation, there is a way to cure deafness.  While the results are momentarily limited to mice, there is hope to eventually it will be able to be applied to humans.  The findings on mice give researchers a rough blueprint of how they would begin to apply this treatment on other animals, and eventually on people.  

          By reading this article, I learned the process humans are taking in order to cure blindness.  Although early, there are promising signs that we can one day reach this goal.  This article written in heavy jargon, with many of the words being meaningless to me as I wasn't an expert in the field.  It is important to both have enough jargon to establish oneself as a reliable researcher and to keep the research simple enough for somebody only mildly familiar with the field can read and understand the topic.

How close are we to invisibility?

APA Entry

Choi, J. S., & Howell, J. C. (2014).  Paraxial Ray Optics Cloaking. Cornell University Library             (1037-1042).  

            In this article, Choi studied the science behind a cloaking device.  First, he defined invisibility as certain aspects that have to be present for it to be usable, such as the device would be the object's space behave the same as if the invisible object was not there.  He then used ABCD matrices to express visibility in terms of math.  Then, by using terms of zero and infinity, he attempted to find a real life solution that would satisfy invisibility mathematically.  Though he found no perfect solution, he found that using a four lens system was easily the closest to the ideal equation.  In order for his findings to be advanced, Choi also listed the limitations of his findings, such as they were using an ideal environment and usually looking through the lens at a zero degree angle.  With any significant change in the angle, the invisibility was ineffective, showing the object around the edges of the lens.

            Invisibility is a very interesting topic.  Considering all the difficulties scientists face, many people don't understand how truly hard it would be to create a cloaking device.  I personally was a bit ignorant to several hurdles, such as the definitions of invisibility listed in the article.  This form of invisibility, using only lens, would not be extremely useful for many circumstances other than concealing things.  However, the findings of this research could lead to a greater scale use, such as the plane cloaking systems shown in science fiction movies.

            The researchers in this article did most of their own math and research.  They used some established equations and principles on the subject, but they were mostly independent.  This lends a high degree of validity to their work.  Their methods were very logical, as they disregarded theoretical solutions and instead pursued real life solutions that approached the perfect equation.  They experimented with the two best theories currently, being the three lens and four lens systems.  Overall, this research was very convincing and seemed well done.

           There are no major advancements in this field of study as a result of this research, however, this research, along with several other projects, could lead to a much greater overall understanding about how invisibility works scientifically.  The models they laid out are well established, but their research found that a four lens approach was much more effective than a three lens approach.  This could lead other researchers to continue this evaluation of the three lens approach, and even possibly try to conquer some of the limitations listed by Choi about his own research.  

            I learned about how complicated manipulating optic fields can be.  Humans tend to oversimplify the eye, when in reality it is quite possibly the most complex part of the human anatomy.  I further learned how to read a difficult article.  I have very little understanding about the eye or optic fields.  I further don't understand the physics of light.  This article was written almost completely in the language of this field however, forcing me to slow down and make sure I understood.  After several reads, I was often able to break a complex statement down into small bits of information that I could understand.  

Narcissism and Facebook

APA Entry

Mehdizadeh, S. (2010). Self-presentation 2.0: Narcissism and self-esteem on Facebook.

             Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 13(4), 357–364.


            This article used data gathered from a college study to answer several hypothesis about how closely narcissism, self-esteem, and Facebook are connected.  Most of the hypothesis were correct, as the study found people who are more narcissistic and have lower self-esteem use Facebook much more frequently than others.  It also studied how certain groups presented themselves, through either photos, descriptions, or other means.  The overall results showed the there is a strong positive correlation with people's egos and their Facebook activity.

            This topic is actually one I have written several essays about throughout high school and into college.  I feel the overwhelming presence of egomaniacs on social media has led many people, including myself, to stay away.  Most Facebook interactions that I observe are simply very cheap compliments being given in order to maintain a false and shallow friendship.

            This research was overall done very well.  The researchers used scales established by various people and applied them to college students.  They then checked the correlation between these scores and their various Facebook activities.  While subjectivity could have been reduced, their methodology seemed to be among the best realistic options.

            The results of this research essentially suggests that most college age users of Facebook tend to be narcissistic and have low self-esteem.  By citing this correlation, the goal would be to allow the users to realize their severe self-obsession and return to reality.  This is a significant problem because, as many people begin to believe their every thought is important due to Facebook feedback, their behavior in reality could begin to mirror such tendencies.

          Through this article, I have learned how research can be read and evaluated in order to come to conclusions.  I also learned how to put said findings into an easy to understand format.  By making the research procedures transparent and repeatable, the author gains credibility within the scientific community.