Tow #18 "When Pedestrians Get Mixed Signals"

In the NYTimes article "When Pedestrians Get Mixed Signals" Tom Vanderbilt explores the topic of jaywalking and whether the pedestrians or drivers should take the blame for the accidents that result. He argues that the pedestrians should not be blamed for jaywalking. Instead, through the use of citations, stats, and anecdotes, Vanderbilt claims that better walking infrastructure, slower car speeds and more pedestrians will increase the safety of the pedestrian and decrease the need for jaywalking. Vanderbilt introduces his article by explaining why enforcement and education about jaywalking is not working. He presents a counterargument by citing a Los Angeles police officer who says, "We're heavily enforcing pedestrian violences because they're impending traffic and causing too many accidents and deaths". Vanderbilt refutes the idea aggressive enforcement, by pointing out that the rules for jaywalking vary greatly between states and internationally and the lack of constancy is confusing for pedestrians. Jaywalking in Canada, Spain, Poland, Singapore and Australia is considered a harsh offense but in Scandinavia and Britain is not considered a big deal. In addition, he provides a general stat that attempts at educating teenage driving films and seat belt usage awareness campaigns have barely had an impact on lowering teen accident deaths. Vanderbilt then explains that he personally jaywalks with his daughter frequently because he feels it is safer then following the pedestrian light. "..the times we came closest to being hit by cars were when we had the "Walk" signal and a driver attempted to make a turn". Finally, Vanderbilt makes a claim of policy and urges that “rather than punishing people for opting out of the system, a more effective approach is to opt in”. He argues that pedestrians are more likely to cross against the signal if lights exist to tell them how long the wait is and encourages cities to be proactive by installing these lights for pedestrians. 

Tow #17 Pampers Ad

During 2010, Pampers advertised their product to the public with this advertisement to represent their slogan, "A baby that doesn't sleep well, doesn't learn well/ Keep your baby dry". In this ad, Pampers is trying to advertise their diapers as an effective product for babies for night use through the use of compare and contrast and cause and effect. On the left side of the ad, it shows a watercolor painting of a young girl playing on a chocolate raft in a fantastical Candyland like scene. This can be assumed to be a child's dream at night. The scene contrasts with the blank white sheet on the right side as if to show the fantasies and dreams of a child melting away as she wakes up. On the bottom right of the ad it says, "Their dreams don't have to stop."Appealing to pathos, the ad evokes a sense of disappointment from the audience as the sweet dreams of a child disappear as a result of not using Pampers. Pampers suggests that, babies will be able to get a better nights sleep by sleeping dry and uninterrupted with their diapers and therefore their dreams will not have to end abruptly. I think this was pretty effective in getting its point across to the audience by triggering their emotions and representing an innocent fantasy we all have had as young children. Through its use of contrast and cause and effect it probably appealed to many parents of infants.

Tow #16 "Modifying DNA Wipe Away Our Old Memories"

This article Sciencemag article was written by Nsikan Akpan talks about a new study that suggests a possible solution for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He explains new study with mice shows that it is possible to erase painful memories by modifying molecules that attach to DNA. To test this theory, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology created traumatic memories in the mice by putting them in an unfamiliar cage and giving them an electrical shock in their feet until they became terrified and froze when returned to the cage. Once the fear memory was instilled, researchers repeatedly returned the mice to cage either 24 hours or 30 days after the shock. The mice who were given the “behavior therapy” of 24 hours eventually stopped freezing suggesting that the memory of anxiety connected with the cage had been erased. But the mice who were returned after 30 days froze and remained afraid, showing that older memories were less forgettable. After studying the hippocampus, the mice’s brain region that is responsible for learning and memory, the researchers found that an enzyme, HDAC2 controls gene activity in the mice by nitrosylating to recall memories and therefore works as an on-and-switch for memory. When HDAC2 was switched off with a drug, older traumas were wiped away. 

Askpan's primary purpose of the article is to describe a new scientific breakthrough to the readers. Although he does explain biological processes to the readers, he uses a lot of scientific vernacular so the article is most likely directed towards an audience who has some background knowledge about biology. To prove his purpose he runs through the steps of the experiment and explains the connection between the scientists' theory and their results to verify the study. However, this article was more of a scientific report than an "opinion" article. 

IRB Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Near the end of the book, Mary Roach explores the topics of "alternative funerals" and begins with her visit the the Colorado State University Veterinary Hospital to see how death is dealt with when relatives of the cadavers are removed as a factor. There she explains in detail the Colorado State's method of "tissue digestion" where a human corpse an be reduced to 3% its body weight through pressure heat and lye. The remnants of the corpse are then flushed down through a drain. The detailed explanation of this whole process may make her audience a bit squeamish but Roach seems to have stopped trying to defend the topic of her book whereas in the beginning she felt the need to justify it with science to persuade hesitant readers to continue.  Roach does however, still use a humor to get through heavy  material and this remains her best device throughout the book. Some of her explanations become so dramatic, they are comical and therefore somewhat balance out the extremely gruesome descriptions. In the last chapter, Roach ponders what she will do with her own remains. At first she visits the University of New Mexico Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and contemplates preserving her brain in a jar and shelving it for later students to admire and study or plastinating her body and donating it to future scientifical studies. However, at the end of the book, Roach takes a surprisingly undrastic approach and admits that although she'd love to donate her body to science, she believes it's ultimately right to let her family decide what to do with her body. For the survivors "mourning and moving are hard enough. Why add to the burden?" Through the use of humor and her moderately turned down conclusion, Roach is able to entertain the audience with her witty puns and questions and build up her credibility as a knowledgable and experienced author.

Tow #15 "Remembrance of News Past"

The NYTimes article "Remembrance of News Past" is written by Claudia Hammond, a British author, TV presenter, and BBC World Service radio presenter. Hammond is the author of the books Emotional Rollercoaster and Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception. Both books are about  human psychology and have won her British Psychological Society and Mind Media awards.

In her article, Hammond talks about how exactly people remember events. She explains that we as humans don't remember specific events due to their objective importance, we remember them depending on how we heard, where we were, and what we was happening in our lives at the time. Hammond introduces this theory by asking the readers how many details they remember from the Newtown shootings and Boston Marathon bombing and then how many they will remember in a month or a year from now. By using a significant topic that many people can connect to Hammond captures the readers attention and smoothly transitions into her argument. Next, she presents her evidence by citing statistics and experiments by other psychologists. She proves that in other experiments location and the way you get the information are signifiant in remembering certain events. She cites psychologist John Neil Bohannon's experiment, where he asked college students and alumni from 1942-1945 about Pearl Harbor and found that "if they heard it on the news or read it in a newspaper, they remembered more facts about the event". She also talks about peoples' struggle to remember the timing of an event, an issue that is probably relatable to her audience. This is in fact, a phenomenon called telescoping, where its especially difficult to figure out when events happened because we always think that they happened more recently than they did. She then provides a anecdote of an event in her own life as an example.

By using credible sources and significant events that readers are likely to connect to Hammond is able to write an interesting article that explains the psychology behind remembering the past that informs and entertains her audience.

Tow #14 "Humans Causing Jellyfish Takeover"

The highly credible author of this CNN article, Lisa-ann Gershwin is an acclaimed marine biologist that has been researching jellyfish for more than 20 years and has discovered more than 180 new species. She not only was awarded with a Fulbright Fellowship to study jellyfish blooms and fossil jellyfish, but is also the director of the Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Services and Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean. In this article, Gershwin argues that humans are causing a vast growth in jellyfish populations from our carbon dioxide emissions that are warming as well as polluting the water. In this environment, fish and krill especially are dying but jellyfish are thriving and disrupting the whole ecosystem. Gershwin continues to warn that a small increase in jellyfish may cause no harm but a huge surge that is occurring right now is not only forcing emergency shutdowns of nuclear power plants and destroying fisheries but it has also completely flipped the food chain upside down and are now dominating the fish deprived oceans. After discussing the cause and effects of the jellyfish takeover, Gershwin brings her argument full circle and indicates that all fingers are pointing at us. We caused the problem so isn't it our responsibility to fix it? Answering her string of rhetorical questions, Gershwin reaches out to her audience and demands that we need to invest in research now and slow down the damage occurring rapidly in the world. However, despite the urgency and desperation apparent in her tone, Gershwin ends with the thought that "in all likelihood we will go down in history as the generation that could have saved the ocean but chose not to... It makes me cry, because I fear it is true".   Despite the optimistic talk of others, she gives readers a dose of reality and reflects her disappointment in today's generation itself.

Tow #13 "Are Today's New Surgeons Unprepared?"

For some, capping the number of work hours for employees might seem like a relief. However, for others, particularly surgeons, Pauline W. Chen declares this is not the case. In this New York Times article, Chen, a surgeon, author, and columnist argues that the effects of minimizing the work hours of training significantly impact surgeons' performance and skill.

Chen first starts off with an anecdote to emphasize the importance of time and practice in honing one's skills. She describes an encounter with a friend who had started out like them, as "a lowly resident of the medical center" but returned 10 years later as a dexterous surgeon with refined skills and could easily operations in a single hour that took others three or four. When asked what his secret was, he describes to Chen the hundreds of operations that he had completed over and over again, to the point of familiarity where he could of done the operations with his eyes closed. With her short anecdote of how her friend was able to succeed in his profession only through years and years of experience, Chen effectively sets the background information for her argument.

In the second paragraph, Chen addresses the recent problem that has been affecting surgeons all over the U.S. In response to pressure from politicians, unions and sleep experts, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has worked to limit the number of hours residents are allowed to work.  The recent 2011 limits specifically, have reduced work hours to 80 hours for all in-hospital work. Chen argues that with the number of hours lost, surgeons suffer an impact detrimental to opportunities to perform more operations, especially new trainees who need it the most and are only getting "two maybe three operations each week". Calculating the total hours lost, Chen says that young surgeons-to-be are missing as much as a year's worth of valuable experience. And the results sure show it. After a year or two of training, recent residents have been incapable of "operating or making clinical decisions on the their own. Nearly a third can not perform even the most basic operations like a gallbladder removal on their own". By listing these consequences , Chen convinces the audience that the surgical field is in grave trouble as a result of these working limitations. With hours being cut just as the skills surgeons need to know expanding more than ever before, Chen adamantly urges the hour confining laws to be overturned.