Author Archives: Charlotte

Cow bones can reduce global warming

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This past week at the Rose Café, Dawit Solomon spoke about his work on soil.  Soil is important for carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, farming, climate regulation, and water purification, among other things. Since 1950, the CO2 in the atmosphere has increased significantly and 25% of emissions are from soil being disturbed because of development.  The soil on the earth contains four times as much carbon as the atmosphere, and as soil is eroded because of bad farming techniques, rain due to climate change, or construction, it not only impacts the health of our planet, but also causes malnutrition.

In Ethiopia, soil is highly eroded and food insecurity and malnutrition rates are high. Dr. Solomon’s research group has been working on finding a solution to this issue and have recently produced their first batch of cow bone fertilizer.  Indigenous communities knew the importance of nourishing the soil and did this through spreading ash and char residues from cooking or harvesting on the ground.  This allowed the carbon to seep into the soil, enriching it for farming and preventing that carbon from going into the atmosphere.  This is the idea behind the cow bone fertilizer.  Cow bones are abundant, and Cornell is turning them into fertilizer by charring them, grinding them up into a dust, and then gluing the dust into pellet form with a small amount of molasses.  The pellets are cheap to produce and if they are effective, they will help reduce malnutrition and increase carbon sequestration, reducing global warming.

Before attending the Rose Café, I knew about the relationship between soil quality and food insecurity, but I was surprised to hear how much of a role soil can play in addressing global warming.  Dr. Solomon spoke about how the amount of carbon on earth does not change, it is the way it is stored that changes.  Nowadays, more of the carbon that was once sequestered in the soil is now in the atmosphere and by reversing this trend by employing novel techniques such as using bone fertilizer, we may be able to slow climate change.

Playing tennis for Cornell: equivalent to getting a medical degree and serving in the military simultaneously

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At the last Rose Café, Silviu Tanasoiu, coach of the men’s varsity tennis team at Cornell, discussed the challenges student athletes face in trying to balance academics with athletics.  He constantly emphasizes to players that being on the team is a huge privilege, after all there are only 48 players in the Ivy League and they are fortunate enough to be one of those 48.  He compared being on the varsity tennis team to trying to get a medical degree while serving in the military, a task that seems nearly impossible.  After hearing about the the practice schedule and game schedule that these players have to commit to, this comparison does not seem unreasonable.

I found Coach Tanasoiu’s own story about how he became a coach very compelling.  When he was very young, he was fascinated by people playing tennis at the local park and begged his father to let him play.  Once he started, it became the focus of his life.  He would even play in his apartment building, and ended up breaking his neighbor’s window 4 times!  He became a an excellent tennis player and was selected by his home country, Romania, to compete in the orange bowl in Miami.  His parents were so devoted to supporting his passion for tennis that they sold their one car to pay for his airplane ticket to the competition.  Along the way to becoming the Cornell tennis coach, he has had some incredible coaches and mentors himself, who helped him get to where he is today.

Coach Tanasoiu is always telling his team to be grateful for the opportunity to play, because it is something that very few people have.  He was a very inspiring person to listen to and has overcome many challenges himself, allowing him to empathize with students and motivate them to try their hardest every time they step on the court.

‘DREAMers’: an exclusive term

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This past Wednesday, I attended the Rose Café where GRF Esmeralda spoke about the DREAM act and DACA for undocumented youth in the United States.  She focused on the use of the term “DREAMers” to describe these youth.  However, with the Obama’s introduction of DACA (Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals), this term has become outdated and the youth do not like to be called “DREAMers” because it is exclusive.

Before hearing Esmeralda talk, I thought the term “DREAMers” was a positive one, since the DREAM act was helping out undocumented youth, however; the undocumented youth movement is trying to get rid of it.  The reason is that it does not encompass all undocumented youth and its focus is solely on education.  It only applies to students who go on to college so it creates a deserving/undeserving divide among the population. In addition, the term reduces an entire person into a student, when they are much more than just that. We looked at a poster about the DREAM act and the focus is clearly on higher education. The undocumented youth movement wants everyone to be included and wants get rid of the focus on education, but rather quality of life.

Engineering solutions aren’t always enough

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Last night, I attended the Rose Café where house professor Garrick Blalock presented about the challenges he has faced in getting people in Uganda to adopt new, cleaner, cookstoves which would benefit their own health and the health of the environment.  4 million people die from the smoke created by the traditional three stone cookstoves every year.  So why are people still choosing to continue cooking the traditional way when their health and the health of their children is at stake?

There is no clear answer to this question, but Prof. Blalock and his fellow researchers have been working on this issue, and have found ways to increase adoption of newer cookstoves. However, fours years after introducing the technology to families, 50% of the families no longer had the cookstove and 0% were still using them.  They had reverted back to the traditional three stone cookstoves.

Prof. Blalock used the analogy of buying a car to clarify this problem.  In the US, most people want to make the world a better place and know that driving a car is damaging to the environment.  Most people also understand that driving a Prius is better for the environment, but very few people actually own a Prius. For Ugandans, these newer stoves cost more upfront, even though they save money on fuel in the longterm, just like the Prius. Even when the economic barrier is reduced and people are allowed a free trial and financing, there is no longterm adoption of the technology.

As an engineering student, when I think of the problem of women and children dying from lung damage due to stoves that produce a lot of smoke, I automatically think of designing a cleaner stove and making it available to these people.  However, in this case, a technological solution is not sufficient.  It is not a lack of technology that is the issue, but cultural and economic factors that are preventing adoption of the technology.

The Human Side of Tech

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2007 doesn’t seem that long ago.  It has only been 9 years, and our everyday lives have completely changed.  In 2007, the first iPhone came out, and since then, smartphones have taken over.  The Jacobs Institute at Cornell Tech seeks to teach students how to be leaders in this evolving technological world by teaching them skills in leadership, management, technology, and entrepreneurship.  Their goal is to teach students the human side of technology so that they can communicate with people outside of the tech world to be most influential.

I am studying engineering and I can see how important it is to be able to explain ideas to people who have never taken a technical course, because a product designed solely by engineers without input from the people who will be using it probably won’t meet their expectations! I am interested in engineering devices for use in a healthcare setting where the human side of the technology is a major component.  The Jacobs Institute has a offers an MS in IS focused on Health Tech in which students learn about creating healthcare technology to promote better patient experience and outcomes.

Another aspect of the Jacobs Institute that I found appealing was that students work with companies on real projects.  In this way, they get a sense of how tech companies operate and are ready to get a job and be successful after they graduate.  Adam Shwartz’s presentation on Cornell Tech was interesting and informative.  I will keep it in mind for the future!

 

Laughing at yourself

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At the Rose Café this evening, Professor Aaron Sachs brought up an interesting tactic for getting people to listen to what you say – laugh at yourself.  Environmentalists are usually the serious type, using tragedy as a mechanism to convince people to take action against climate change.  However, according to Prof. Sachs, tragedy can often just lead to despair and no action.  Comedy, on the other hand, could potentially help garner support for environmental movements without leaving people too depressed about the future of the planet.

Lots of environmental comedy already exists, but for the most part, it is making fun of environmentalists, not the people ignoring climate change, like coal companies.  We watched an clip from a Modern Family episode, a fake Prius add, an a clip from a West Wing episode, all of which portrayed environmentalists as a group that doesn’t care about people and will do whatever it takes to save the planet, even if that means killing off all the people.  Prof. Sachs suggests flipping this around and using comedy as a way to engage people in supporting environmental causes.

I thought it was a very interesting approach to bring comedy to environmental efforts. The most surprising thing that Prof. Sachs said was that if environmentalists started laughing at themselves more, they could get more people on their side.  This seems very counterintuitive.  Wouldn’t laughing at yourself bring more attention to your faults?  But Prof. Sachs says that laughing at yourself can be a powerful tool and perhaps it could help get rid of the negative image of environmentalists as serious people who value environmental issues above all else and are unwilling to negotiate.  It seems quite challenging to come up with jokes about the environment but if done well, this strategy could reach a large audience.

 

A lab where you’re allowed to eat the experiment

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Who knew we had a lab devoted to cooking at Cornell?  I had no idea!

At the cooking workshop event this afternoon, we walked to a lab in MVR and then got to work baking, sautéing, chopping, and mixing as we put together 10 simple dinners. The workshop was meant to give us some ideas of easy and cheap dinners to make when we no longer have a meal plan, and we cooked up quite a variety of dishes.  Included in the menu were salmon filets with ginger-garlic soy sauce and quinoa stuffing, beef chorizo tacos with cabbage slaw, stir-fried tilapia, dill and scallion lettuce wraps, among other deluxe but easy-to-make meals.

I absolutely love to cook, so this Rose Scholars event was my favorite one so far.  I find cooking relaxing and fun, but I rarely have a chance to make anything during the semester.  In addition to the hands-on part of the workshop where my partner and I made beef chorizo tacos with cabbage slaw, I also learned a couple new cooking skills.  Prof. Emily Gier demonstrated the best way to chop an onion so that the pieces are the same size, how to ensure that biscuits are the right texture, and how to make the perfect omelette.

This event was the highlight of my week, and I look forward to making some of the recipes when I’m here over the summer.

The Power of Love

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Love – it’s something that we hear about in songs on the radio, see on television, and feel for ourselves, but what really is it? During the dinner conversation with Dr. Alvarez, we brainstormed ways to define love and thought of what it means to us. These definitions/associations included warmth, God, “to will the good of another,” happiness, and others – a full whiteboard full of ideas. Often when we talk about love, we are actually talking about “socially constructed love” as Dr. Alvarez put it. This is love as defined by society and depicted in romantic comedies and love songs. But love can take on many forms and is not always pink and bubbly, but can be painful too.

To demonstrate the various ways people can experience love, Dr. Alvarez read us a few poems, one of which he wrote himself. These depicted love as something very complicated and a different experience for everyone.

One point that Dr. Alvarez brought up that I found interesting is that we don’t talk about love enough because society views talking about love as a sign of weakness. However, Dr. Alvarez believes in using the power of love to make a global difference.

Before listening to Dr. Alvarez, I, too, talked little about love. But after this dinner conversation, I am interested to learn more about what love means to different people and how it impacts their lives.

The levels of corruption

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When I hear the word corruption, I think of officials high up in a government stealing from the citizens and preventing the country from developing.  However, according to Professor Nicolas van de Walle, there are different levels of corruption that exist in African countries.

There are two types of corruption that Prof. van de Walle discussed: high level corruption and low level corruption, and these do not always go hand in hand. There are some countries with high level corruption but not low level corruption and vice versa.  van de Walle defined high level corruption as the “bad” type of corruption, which is politically driven and impacts operation of the government, such as an official taking half of the health budget.  Low level corruption, on the other hand, is not devastating like high level corruption. This is day to day corruption, like an official charging someone five dollars to get cell service. In most places where this happens, the officials have low wages and there is little or no taxation. People are able to accept low level corruption and pay the officials the minimal fee.

I found it interesting to hear about the different levels of corruption and their impact a country’s citizens.  I was also surprised to hear that when Prof. van de Walle first started working for the UN, he was not allowed to mention corruption.  Nowadays, high level corruption is heavily considered when countries are deciding which governments to give aid to.

A taste of winter

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I’m a huge fan of winter activities: sledding, skiing, snowshoeing, and of course, ice skating.  So while many people are are happy that we haven’t had to walk through the snow to class this year, I have my fingers crossed that we will get a blanket of snow on the ground soon.

Ice skating at Lynah was the perfect way to spend a snowless winter afternoon. SA Caitlan gave us a brief history of Lynah rink and then taught us the basics about skating. I have been skating since I was young, but I have never had a lesson, so it was helpful to learn how to skate backwards and stop in a way that doesn’t involve crashing into the wall.

Caitlin told us an interesting story about why Lynah was built.  The hockey team used to always play on Beebe lake, but one year it was too warm to skate on so they had to miss the entire season!  Thanks to Lynah, they have been able to win many championships since then, even in years when the weather doesn’t cooperate like this year!