The Keith Dawson Project 2022

The Keith Dawson Project 2022 1

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Keith Dawson Project 2022 Distinction project – prize winners Contents Pupil Ishan Chag Saul Grenfell

Benjamin Kustrin Tharnan Nimalan

Title of project How has anti-intellectualism affected American society over time? (From the American Revolution – Modern Day)

Subject

How has our view of Tudor and Stuart history been used as a vessel for political philosophy?

History

Can we create a self-sustaining space station, now or in the near future?

Who were the winners and losers of Covid-19?

Page

Politics

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Science

14

Economics

21

Ollie Ockrim

Nature’s Remedy: an opportunity missed?

Biology

28

Saahil Patel

How does aesthetic emotion influence the perception of beauty?

Philosophy

38

Reuben Smith

How far can musical theatre affect culture in the modern day and the future?

Arts

Laksh Verma

Is it possible to create a civilisation on Mars?

Science

Why the Sahel Crisis Matters

Geography

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An investigation into computer vision applied to rock-paper-scissors

Computer Science

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Alexander Wasserstein

Isaac Winston

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How has anti-intellectualism affected American society over time?

(From the American Revolution – Modern Day) Ishan Chag 9H2

Why and how did anti-intellectualism become a familiar word in Americans’ vocabulary? It is time to explore what antiintellectualist thinking is and how it has entered America as well as why it occurs and its prevalence in American culture.

What is anti-intellectualism and why is it convincing?

The immediate concept of antiintellectualism is mistrust and hostility towards intellectuals and experts. This is a broad definition which well reflects the wide range of ways in which antiintellectualism is displayed across American society: from the rejection of scientifically proven, evidence-based claims to persecution of journalists and artists.

There are three main types of antiintellectualism which affect American society today as Richard Hofstadter, a 20th century historian, explains in his research: 1. “Unreflective Instrumentalism”: The opinion that progress and pursuit of knowledge is useless unless it can provide practical uses (e.g., financial profits, etc.)

2. “Religious Anti-Rationalism”: The opinion that religious and personal values can be used as a shield from logic and reason (e.g., the modern creationist movement which denies evidence of evolution) 3. “Popular Anti-Elitism”: The opinion of anti-elitism – rejection of the social/financial elite and intellectual elite (e.g., professors, field experts, etc.).

Anti-intellectualism is often regarded as a way for people to live whilst ignoring their own reality and the reality of the world they inhabit, believing things they want with little, uncertain or no evidence. Whereas,

in truth, anti-intellectualism is extremely dangerous, and authoritarian regimes such as Hitler, Franco and Pinochet have used these oppressive methods to censor information and mislead the public. Antiintellectualism isn’t just condemning intellectuals and denigrating facts it is also encouraging ignorance, slowing down progress and blocking the spread of information – both facts and statements, good and bad.

One important distinction that Hofstadter makes is the difference between the concepts of intelligence and intellect.

Intelligence he describes as an “abstract quality” eluding more to an intelligent mind being one who can think practically and utilize ideas in such a way, whereas an intellectual is a “critical and contemplative” mind that “looks for the meanings of the situation as a whole”. The concept of antiintellectualism favours intelligent minds, in such a way that intellectuals are ignored, and their ideas suggested as being irrelevant to the life of the American everyman. Those who acquire knowledge, intellectuals, are a threat to those in power because they have the capability of “turning answers into questions”. Hence why the promotion of anti-intellectual thought is used as a weapon to keep ahold of the ideas and systems protecting those in power through misinformation, etc.

The American Revolution and Evangelicalism The overarching concept of antiintellectualism has changed over time along with its effects. In America many would argue that anti-intellectualism can be traced back to the early 1950s during the Cold War among the paranoia about an internal communist threat, a period where the practice of McCarthyism begun 4

taking over America. However, a more compelling argument is that antiintellectualism entered American society during the American Revolution between 1775 and 1783.

When the first Europeans settled in America, they brought with them Evangelical-Protestant religious beliefs which greatly influenced the “Founding Fathers” of America. This religious influence has had a lasting effect on American culture and continues to do so.

Evangelicalism was a form of Protestant Christianity which stresses the importance of “personal conversion and faith as a means of salvation” – these were in many ways radical ideas to the Founding Fathers, and it was that which enabled them to create a “new world”, of freedom.

Their ideology forming the basis for the “new world” was that a man could come to America with nothing, but with hard work could become a wealthy industrialist – the “self-made man”. In contrast, intellectuals were considered to lack faith, conviction, and vigor which the Founding Fathers considered essential to both religion and business. Already the relationship between the working class and intellectuals was being pushed further apart.

Moreover, in the 1800s, anti-education and anti-elite rhetoric (an ancient art of using language for persuasive means) began emerging all over America with one prominent preacher even saying that: “I (Dwight Moody) will not read any book unless it helps me to understand the Bible”. This was a huge success for the anti-intellectualistic school of thought and was what led to another 150 years of antirational thoughts and more radical, antiintellectual ideas.

The progression of anti-intellectualism in the 1900s and its effects As America was approaching the 1900s after 100 years of anti-intellectual ideas it was becoming increasingly difficult for

religious fundamentalists to simply separate themselves from the intellectuals and academics by living in separate areas and small communities, because of technological advancements in transport.

Furthermore, orthodox religion was on a decline with many people seeing it as less desirable meaning that anti-intellectualism was at an all-time low. This was short lived. The rise of the Efficiency Movement in the late 1890s to early 1900s sparked changes in the US Government, to cut down on inefficiency and waste which meant that field experts (intellectuals) were appointed to identify these problems and consider solutions. Although this practice was beneficial to all and helped with the overall growth of the American economy it also reinforced the divide between intellectuals and the working class often with the intellectuals who were now responsible for improving labour productivity being given higher paying manager roles. This lit the fuse, and the divide eventually grew into a “culture war” between anti-intellectuals (the working class), who opposed new developments in society, against intellectuals. This culture war led the ideas of civil rights, women’s liberation, and the anti-war sentiment to be ignored and trivialized by anti-intellectuals who claimed such ideas were contrary to American patriotism and had a lasting effect on America between 1900 and 1990 slowing down growth and development for society as an entirety.

Modern anti-intellectualism and links to politics Today, anti-intellectualism poses an even bigger threat than ever before with digital democratization of information and shortform media consumption (people now tend to prefer slogans and summaries to essays and novels). This, when combined with social pressure makes it difficult for people to process information and make informed decisions. A 2020 analysis of American adults has shown that those using social media for political news are more likely to believe in false claims (or 5

“Fake News” as it is often called). When combined with social media algorithms which isolate the inbox feed to messages, tweets, and posts from those sharing similar views it begins to mean that Americans have a one-sided perspective which creates a false sense of confidence in often false claims. This then leads people to make their own posts/tweets without reflecting on what they are saying and simply mirroring the untrue messages of other people leading to a cycle of false information rapidly spreading across the internet.

American politicians have realized over the past 60 years that anti-intellectualism is an extremely effective method in appealing to certain demographics.

President Eisenhower was one of the first politicians (who became an American President) who was known for having used anti-intellectual rhetoric in his campaign. He referred to the intellectual as “ a man who take more words than necessary to tell more than he knows” and even as “failed businessmen who he did not want to work in Washington DC” (the residence of the President). In many ways this is entirely hypocritical considering Eisenhower himself was previously President of Columbia University and his father a college-educated engineer. This situation well encompasses the general aim of political candidates’ ambitions using anti-intellectualist thoughts: identify with the “common man” by reintroducing the intellectuals as a supreme class who posed a threat to the working class. Other American Presidents such as Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Johnson have employed similar tactics (the majority being Republican) with the intention of attacking the “educated elite” to draw the masses to their side. As I have previously stated these methods are no different to those used by totalitarian governments or regimes which emphasizes the dangerous precedent that this form of manipulation can entail.

The Trump Administration and COVID19 The consequences of anti-intellectualism when used by a US politician are best demonstrated by the Trump administration between 2015-2020. From the beginning of his campaign as he preached antiintellectualist rhetoric it became obvious that Donald Trump shared the same contempt of experts and intellectuals as his Republican predecessors, however possibly the worst instance of politically driven anti-intellectual thought in America’s history can be seen with the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This can be shown through Trump’s attempts to belittle Anthony Fauci (the Director of the National Institute of Allergy from 1984 onwards) among other experts. His own response to the virus was dismissive, refusing to accept the severity of the pandemic regardless of scientific data. As a result of this, Anthony Fauci ended up becoming the target of far-right citizens: receiving death threats and becoming the target of multiple online conspiracies.

Trump followed the same trend as previous successful Republican politicians by appealing to the everyman but this time many American lives were lost. He aligned COVID-19 with a violation of freedom which led the public to believe measures such as social distancing and mask wearing were impeaching on their rights and not effective or relevant. Far right supporters of Trump have been quoted saying that whilst they are

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“empathetic that anyone has to die ever, it’s the reality of our lives”. This meant that when Trump realized the severity of the disease and was forced to introduce the measures, people were unhappy with the President and began to ignore the advice of the government. This new wave of antielitism through the same trademark Republican political-manipulation methods by virtue of anti-intellectualism had a huge effect on American lives. Resultantly, with people failing to embrace the necessary protective measures America quickly hit huge death milestones – 100,000 cases between April and June and 300,000 cases between April and December in contrast to countries like New Zealand who took early precautions and hence suffered significantly fewer deaths. Of course, these deaths were in large part due to Trump’s initial use of antiintellectualism as a political tool to manipulate the public which left people confused or with strong, largely factually incorrect views on the practice of personal protective precautions like mask wearing.

American Education and its links to anti-intellectualism Whilst it is logical to assume that antiintellectualist families tend to raise their children in such a way that they grow up to also be anti-intellectuals or supporters of anti-intellectualism, it is surely nonsensical to believe that such a huge proportion of America’s society are so easily persuaded by these antiintellectualist beliefs. The reason that so many people become conscious/unconscious anti-intellectual supporters is because they are not just surrounded with these ideas at home and within their communities but also exposed to them at school. Since the American Revolution the aim for American schooling was to provide all students with a “liberal education”, as it is often described, where children are exposed to academic subject matter such as literature or philosophy.

However, for a myriad of reasons, it seems this message has been altered or even

ignored with the 20th century seeing a huge change in the perception of the study of academia. The purposes of schooling have become more about “intelligence” (someone practical who can utilize ideas) verses intellect (once again leading back to Hofstadter’s societal view). The quality of teaching for academia combined with perception in business that study of academia is simply a means to an end meant that in school the intellectual type was often excluded. In schools, children were no longer exposed to teaching of the academia from scholarly individuals but reduced quality learning.

In other words, children were not just leaving without a thorough worldview through study of academia but often left school with strong anti-intellectual support and without the aforementioned “liberal education” that the founders of America’s own school system aimed to provide.

Further, to limit creative or independent thought, especially in the mid-1900s censorship of literature and radical books reached an all-time high.

Books including those on the shelf which are censored in America can be easily acquired across Europe because of the interesting and relevant material they provide both in contrast to modern societal thinking and because they may be so ahead of their time. In America, however, anti-intellectual thinking keeps these books locked behind bars minimizing the chance for American students to have crucial conversations on topical issues like sexism, racism or war; leaving them unprepared for the future.

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Exploits of anti-intellectualism by corporations and Climate Change The uses of anti-intellectualism aren’t limited to the political side. In fact, arguably the worst examples of antiintellectualism stem from corporations.

These corporations utilize and exploit antiintellectualist, poorly informed Americans all for the sake of maximizing profits in the capitalist world of America. The best modern example of this exploitation is the current climate change crisis. For the past decade, corporations had been refusing to invest in clean energy production and bigger policy changes which can aid in the mitigation of climate change. These corporations instead choose to utilize false evidence and deploy anti-intellectual thinking to make claims that climate change is “not a big deal” or even reject its existence entirely. In other words, these corporations are utilizing anti-intellectual thinking to deny a scientifically proven, global issue and putting profits above public safety, hence putting millions at risk.

As the climate crisis has shown, corporations are willing to ignore logical thinking and reject scientifically proven facts (the very definition of antiintellectualism) regardless of consequence or overarching impact to accumulate wealth for shareholders and business owners – which is a form of Unreflective Instrumentalism (one of the forms of antiintellectualism Hofstadter describes in his research). This “social dilemma” as psychologists calls it, favors individuals who act selfishly rather than those who work to benefit the whole social collective.

To surmise, anti-intellectualism is a serious and pertinent issue in American society, originating in the late 1700s and continuing to hinder progress for Americans today. Modern American society is most affected by manipulative politicians who act on false information and try to appeal to the larger part of society simply to win elections; the exploits of large corporations who prioritize profits regardless of consequence; and the simplification/short forming of information and media today which makes it both difficult to process information whilst also supporting the spread of misinformation.

Bibliography Books Jacoby, Susan. “The Age of American Unreason” (12 February 2008) [Accessed: 2 Jan] Hofstadter, Richard. “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” (12 February 1963) [Accessed: 21 Dec] White, Theodore. “The Making of the President 1960” (1961) [Accessed: 5 Jan] Articles

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Baer, Nicholas. “American idiot: rethinking anti-intellectualism in the age of Trump” (openDemocracy, 27 August 2017, www.opendemocracy.net) [Accessed: 7 Jan] Bassett, Abigail. “The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism” (Shondaland, 30 November 2020, www.shondaland.com) [Accessed: 29 Dec] Berezow, Alex. “Anti-Intellectualism Is Biggest Threat To Modern Society” (American Council on Science and Health, 26 June 2016, www.asch.org) [Accessed: 23 Dec] Chen, Emily; Mosteller, Claire; Doresy, Jenny; Huang, Eric. “Understanding AntiIntellectualism in the U.S. and how it is literally killing us” (Studio Atao, 4 September 2020, www.studioatao.org) [Accessed: 21 Dec] Chan-Wyles, Adrian. “Ongoing McCarthyism and US Anti-Intellectualism – Recording America’s Decline into Fascist Stupidity!” (The Sangha Kommune (SSR), 2 September 2021, www.thesanghakommune.org) [Accessed: 23 Dec] Howley, Aimee. “Anti-Intellectualism in U.S. Schools” (16 December 1990) [Accessed: 13 Feb] Knox, Emily. “Books, censorship, and anti-intellectualism in schools” (Phi Delta Kappan, 26 March 2020) [Accessed: 16 Feb] Lee, Lawrence. “The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism” (Sites at Penn State, 16 February 2017, sites.psu.edu) [Accessed: 21 Dec] Luo, Michael. “The Wasting Of The Evangelical Mind” (The New Yorker, 4 March 2021, www.newyorker.com) [Accessed: 29 Dec] Masciotra, David. “Anti-intellectualism is back – because it never went away. And it’s killing Americans” (Salon, 30 May 2020, www.salon.com) [Accessed 7 Jan] Merkley, Eric. “Anti-intellectualism and the mass public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic” (Nature, 28 April 2021, www.nature.com) [Accessed: 13 Feb] Motta, Matthew. “The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the Unites States” (Sage Journals, 11 July 2017, journals.sagepub.com) [Accessed: 23 Dec] Neem, Johann. “Anti-intellectualism and education reform” (Phi Delta Kappan, 26 March 2020) [Accessed: 16 Feb] Peters, Michael. “Anti-intellectualism is a virus” (25 April 2018) [Accessed: 3 Jan] Videos and Podcasts Ellen, Schrecker. “What is McCarthyism? And how did it happen?” (TED-Ed, 14 March 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N35IugBYH04) [Accessed: 30 Dec] In Human Form – Social Psychology. “The Psychology of American Anti-Intellectualism” (16 January 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UerfJqJqxh4) [Accessed 19 Jan] Talking Science. “The Anti-Intellectualism Movement” (3 August 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJTxpwiuwd0) [Accessed: 1 Feb] Wade. “Why America is Losing Its Mind: Anti-Intellectualism and the Fortress” (Let the Bird Fly!, 16 February 2021, www.letthebirdfly.com) [Accessed: 1 Feb]

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How has our view of Tudor and Stuart history been used as a vessel for political philosophy?

Saul Grenfell

Figure 1- The controversial post box

In 2018, The National, a pro-independence Scottish newspaper, reported outrage sparked by a post box in the town of Dunoon inscribed with “EIIR” , as nationalists believe the current queen to be the first queen Elizabeth of Scotland, the crowns having been united after Elizabeth Tudor’s death, and Elizabeth I having executed Mary, Queen of Scots. There will no doubt be a similar response during Prince Charles’s future reign due to Scottish pride around the romanticised Stuart pretender: Bonnie Prince Charlie, the “real” Charles III. The historian Timothy Newark argues that the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon similarly pushes forward “romantic ideals to her followers”.

This is the phenomenon which this essay aims to explore and evaluate: the interpretation and application of Tudor and Stuart history by different political philosophies. This essay will first analyse ideologies attempted to label trends onto history, before discussing nationalist interpretations of the era and concluding why such frequent parallels occur.

I – MARXISM Marxism views history as the conflict between social classes at a particular time. In postfeudal England, the conflicting classes were the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Marxists view the English civil war as an “English Revolution” where middle-class merchants and parliamentarians rose against the King and nobles, driven by the “bourgeoisie and people against the autocracy”. Marxists see this as a step before the working class would eventually rise forming the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Moreover, Marx saw revolution as the “a locomotive of history”, but in fact the increased power of the bourgeoisie during the Stuart period was gradual, rather than revolutionary: as James Harrington said, 150 years before the civil war “the bourgeoisie … had been increasing in wealth at the expense of crown, church and peerage” . This was gradual because Charles limited trading companies, monopolising them and “excluding the mass of the bourgeoisie from sharing in the expansion of trade and industry”.

This, however, was not Marx’s ideal revolution where the oppressed class would gain “class consciousness” and awareness that religion was used to prevent them understanding their oppression. The “quasi-republican” bourgeoise Protectorate was extremely religious, forcing Puritan ideas on citizens, directly creating a “false consciousness”.

Separately, Marxists would see new emphasis on the rights of the poorest classes, foreshadowing Marx’s preoccupations with a revolutionary working class, seen in the Putney Debates within Fairfax’s New Model Army, drawing up a constitution for a new republic. It reads “The poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government 10

that he hath not had a voice to put himself under”. These parliamentarian movements were ‘speaking for the mass of the population”.

II – WHIGGISM The Whig interpretation of history aims to determine a clear narrative and linear pattern of history, proving the events of the past consistently point towards a liberal state of individual and parliamentary liberty as opposed to autocratic power in comparison to contemporary politics.

A Whig historian would view the divide between Roman Catholics and Lutherans as relevant in the present, as Protestantism emphasises individual freedom in a personal connection to God rather than through priests. Moreover, the Bible’s translation into German (and later English) shows movement to an individual understanding of religion. Herbert Butterfield, critiquing the Whig interpretation, wrote: “protestants will be seen to have been fighting for the future, while it will be obvious that the Catholics were fighting for the past”.

Victorian Whig historians viewed the civil war as another step towards a Protestant liberal state of democracy. Whig historian Thomas Macaulay believed Charles put “the personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown”.

More recently, Fukuyama writes that Cromwell’s parliament recognized “the modern idea that private and public interests are sharply separated” , painting a progression towards liberal values onto the period.

The Restoration of 1660 signalled the ongoing conflict between liberal Protestant and autocratic Catholic values, resolved in the “public myth” of the Glorious Revolution. William of Orange declared the wrongdoings of the British James II in October 1688, justifying his “invasion by invitation”, stabilising Protestant Britain against Catholic France. It was seen by Whigs as the “triumph of the liberal and tolerant spirit”. Whig historians apply their political values onto history to paint narratives and signpost the events of the past to align with their own ideology, “dividing the world into the friends and enemies of progress”.

III - HOBBESIANISM Thomas Hobbes was inspired by brutality of the English Civil War to prove that a society without a strong government would be barbaric with citizens’ lives being “nasty, brutish and short”. This therefore justified Charles’s “tyrannical” rule where parliaments were shut down at the wishes of the king in order to secure authority over the country, in his end of the social contract. Hobbes’s views on rebellion, according to Howard Williams, were that it was “an unwise or failed experiment”. The king’s authority “must be beyond question”.

Following disputes between parliament and crown, Charles I shut down parliament in 1629, triggering eleven years of personal rule. Hobbes saw the introduction of “ship money” to all in 1634, gaining the king £173,000, as a necessary move to ensure the stability of his reign, and the refusal to pay by parliamentarian John Hampden as disregarding a sovereign’s needed strength. Hobbes therefore wrote of the critiques of the king’s absolute monarchy as a cause of the civil war in his book Behemoth. Charles “did not endeavour anything more than to discharge his duty towards God” in his attempt to arrest 5 members of parliament.

Hobbes wrote that the Civil War was “nothing else but pure anarchy” with no definite, stable sovereign. The nine years of war, “every man against every man” had no benefit.

IV – PRAGMATISM VS PRINCIPLE In the Frick Museum in New York, two Tudor portraits by Hans Holbein hang. On the left is a saintly devout Catholic, Thomas More, whilst the right shows a figure turned away from the room, Thomas Cromwell. The two men’s’ opposing principles have been used, not least by the Roman Catholic Holbein, to highlight two different approaches to politics.

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More was strong and principled and the courage of his convictions that the Pope was the head of the church whilst the king’s divorce and the Church of England were not legitimate.

More held his Catholic values and his consciousness, even under extreme pressure from Henry at the risk of his life.

In direct contrast, Cromwell was pragmatic and flexible above fierce ideological dogma and divide, sticking to Henry’s side. This is the political conflict between dogma and humanism, the approaches having been depicted in two modern pieces of media, highlighting political values of the time.

First, the film A Man for All Seasons (1966) paints the mindset of sticking to one’s values in the face of tyranny onto the “pious More” . When Norfolk asks of the saint why he was willing to forfeit all he had for his belief, he replied heroically “What matters is … not that I believe it, but that I believe”. In the aftermath of the Second World War, sticking to one’s values was deemed honourable.

Secondly, the best-selling Wolf Hal (2009) novels depict Cromwell as honourable, his flexibility and measured attitude highlighting a human need to live life, as a blacksmith’s son rising up in the court. These values caused Elton to describe him as the “architect of the Tudor revolution in government”. There has been a strong reaction to dogma and division in recent times, where change can occur through pragmatism, values which Hillary Mantel paints onto Cromwell.

V – NATIONALISM SCOTTISH NATIONALISM As mentioned, the idealisation of the great figures of Mary Queen of Scots (immortalised in the Catholic Donizetti’s flattering opera of Maria Stuarda romanticising the Babington Plot) and, later in Stuart history, Bonnie Prince Charlie, have been used to provide an opportunity for Scottish pride and protest against a union with England. Tombs critiques the view of the Pretender, “Romantic nationalism casts him (wrongly) as fighting for Scottish freedom” and that his aim was “not Scottish independence but to seize the throne of the United Kingdom”.

IRISH NATIONALISM Irish nationalists have used Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland in 1649 to highlight English oppression of Ireland and spark nationalist ideology. An Irish government authority published Facts about Ireland (1985). The book interprets the events as “Protestant colonisation” , with the “confiscation of land” ensuring the colonists have all political power, “The Irish rebellion was ruthlessly crushed by Cromwell” . In March 1650, the town of Kilkenny paid £2,000 to avoid its citizens being killed. 40% of the Irish population were lost by 1655.

Its use in the Irish government book, less than 50 years after the republic was founded, clearly uses the events to determine itself as an independent nation and a victim of England to promote a nationalist ideology. Furthermore, the closing of cultural Gaelic schools under Cromwell promotes pride in Irish culture today and “plays a major role in the anglo-phobic Irish public myth” , as the horrific “cultural genocide” proved the presence of a national culture and identity.

In 1685, the Catholic James II ascended to the throne, unpopular among the English, Scottish and Ulster Scots. In the Glorious Revolution, the Protestant William of Orange contested the throne of Ireland, and fought in several battles, the most notable being the Battle of the Boyne. The Protestant William III emerged victorious against James’s 25,000man army. Almost all political conflict between republicans and unionists in Ireland are framed by this battle today, giving material for further nationalist accounts of history. On 12 12

July every year, the Protestant “Orange marches” occur in Ireland on the anniversary of the battle by the pro-British Ulster Scots, strongly resented by Catholic Irish nationalists. Stuart history is even present on the republic’s flag, with orange to represent the Irish Protestants from William of Orange.

ENGLISH NATIONALISM Tudor and Stuart history has been the foundation of British (and English prior to 1603) nationalism.

This began with England’s break from Rome and the Catholic church, prioritising national affairs over continental Europe. In a world where religion was central, determining eternal bliss or suffering and defining the lives of all in Tudor society, this move marked a notable schism between England and Europe, religious divides fuelling political ones. For some, this decision was seen as a battle against the corrupt nature of the popery and translating the Bible into English was a political act of rebellion against the languages of Europe. Thomas More saw the break with Rome as “an assault on the very foundations on which the English state was built” , writes Stephen Wall, an opponent of English nationalism. He concludes that More was like a “Remainer” of the time and Thomas Cromwell, who stood by the king’s side, was a “Brexiteer”. The Ecclesiastical Appeals Act of 1532 drafted by Thomas Cromwell shortly after states “The realm of England is an empire”, as a powerful independent state.

Historian Peter Marshall writes, “the sixteenth century break with Rome looks a lot like the twenty-first century bust-up with Brussels” . “The cultural and political divisions are still tangible across the continent”.

The anti-European sentiments were reinforced by both the Spanish Armada, where 130 ships launched from Lisbon with the aim to return England to Catholicism, and the Glorious Revolution proved it was necessary for Dutch William of Orange to take over Britain in order to resist the colonisation “of Catholic France”.

Ultimately, these events contributed to a strong English mindset of continental Europe being foreign, strange and potentially threatening, which England is different from and ideally independent. This mental picture fuels Euroscepticism and British nationalism today.

CONCLUSION Applying history to modern politics is timeless and is by no means unique to the Tudors and Stuarts, with Edward III comparing himself to King Arthur , President Kennedy’s White House being dubbed as “Camelot” and even Henry VIII displaying tapestries of biblical and ancient Greek legends to solidify his reign to be as great as those figures. However, the dramatic constitutional and religious change which occurred in the Tudor and Stuart era makes it the perfect period to apply political philosophy to. This causes a desire to use the period to promote political ideas, and model great victories on the past, showing themselves to be on the “right side of history”. Even the tension between conservatives and classical liberals within the Conservative party has been likened to the divide between Cavalier and Roundheads . The same has been done to the Johnson-Starmer divide and newspapers have likened Boris Johnson to Henry VIII in foreign policy . However, historians of the period note that the events are messier than the clean narratives portrayed.

Nevertheless, due to the plethora of the religious and political tensions in Tudor and Stuart history, comparisons are still made. Peter Marshall confirms that “the parallels, of course, are irresistible and the script seems almost to write itself”.

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Can we create a self-sustaining space station, now or in the near future?

Benjamin Kustrin Space stations are of huge importance to reaching out further in space exploration, but having a self-sustaining one could be potentially even better. In this project, I will discuss four main points – the benefits of having a self-sustaining space station, the engineering problems of making such a station, and considering both of these, is it feasible to create a self-sustaining space station, now or in the near future.

The benefits of a self-sustainable space station Quoting NASA, the creators of the ISS (International Space Station) the purpose of a space station is to make it “possible for people to have an ongoing presence in space ... allow crew members to do research that could not be done anywhere else ... [and] to prepare for human missions that reach farther into space than ever before.”1 These main goals are already partially met by current space stations, the ISS, and the Tiangong Space Station. The ISS has continuously been inhabited by humans for more than 21 years 2, completing the first goal. The second goal, completing research that could not be done anywhere else, is being completed, shown by some of the experiments, for example ISS-RapidScat, which uses its unique position in orbit for mapping large areas with microwaves to predict weather patterns (900 km scanning radius3 compared to the range limit of similar ground-based versions which is a single spot4). It can also prepare for human missions into deep space, at least in part, by being a technology demonstrator for future outposts such as the planned Gateway station, which will be a “staging point for deep space exploration5”. If a non-self-sustainable space station can do all of that, why need a selfsustainable one?

Self-sustainable space stations have a few significant advantages. Revisiting the first goal, a self-sustaining space station would not only allow an ongoing presence in space, but it would also allow humanity to survive, should Earth be destroyed by a war or asteroid, as a selfsustaining space station would not require supplies from Earth. The second goal, allowing crew members to do research that could not be done anywhere else, would be even cheaper on a station whose payload can be filled entirely with experiments and not just supplies.

Finally, the third goal, which is to prepare for deep space human missions, would also be improved by a large, self-sufficient station as one could utilise the large station as a ‘orbital construction shipyard’ for flights to Mars and beyond, as well as training astronauts to spend longer periods in space.

Engineering of such a station To be completely self-sufficient is to “able to maintain oneself or itself without outside aid” 6.

When considering how to, we should take account the resources needed to keep a person alive. NASA7 states that “Human beings have certain basic needs. We must have food, water, air, and shelter to survive.” Considering this, we should think about ways we can create them. Our system will be based around the most important: air and its production.

Air production One way to make oxygen, in a small space and with few moving parts or dependencies on plants and their survival, is a process involving Electrolysis and the Sabatier reaction. This process is currently being demonstrated on the ISS8 to produce breathable air, with this formula: 2H2O >electrolysis> O2 + 2H2 >respiration> CO2 + 2H2 + 2H2 >Sabatier reaction> 2H2O + CH4

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This initially uses electrolysis to split two water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is inhaled by humans and carbon dioxide is exhaled. The CO2 is added to hydrogen (half of which is from earlier, the other half is added). They are held at a high temperature, reacting to form two water molecules and waste methane.

Overall, it takes water, and adds carbon dioxide and hydrogen to create more water and methane9. The water is then fed to the beginning again. My diagram below illustrates the

process: When considering the self-sustainability of a station using this reaction, respiration would produce plenty of carbon dioxide, but hydrogen would still have to be added from tanks, as

on the ISS. However, by using methane pyrolysis (heating the methane at 1200°C to get it to thermally decompose), 95%10 of waste methane could have its hydrogen recovered (shown above).

These hydrogen atoms could be then inputted back into the Sabatier reaction, greatly reducing the hydrogen needed. The only waste product would be carbon forming on the sides of the methane pyrolysis reactor. This pyrolytic carbon could find use elsewhere on the station, either as a construction material, or it could be dumped overboard. The unreacted methane could be used for attitude control or reorbiting.

Food There are three methods considered here in terms of feeding the crew – lab-grown meat, fungi, and plants. Lab grown meat is a method of making meat by taking a small number of cells from animals on Earth and growing them in special chambers to produce muscle and fat cells. A company, Mosa Meat, has managed to create a system that takes 0.5 grams of cells 15

and creates “80,000 burgers” from it12. However, this method requires a huge input of sugar and oxygen to feed off, as each of the cells still respires as usual. Also, the process is highly experimental, still in development, and also requires precise conditions to grow. Fungi is also used on Earth already, for example in Quorn, the common meat substitute. However, it also has waste products13 and requires a lot of glucose too. The third option is plants. Unlike the other options, plants actively scrub the air, and produce glucose for us to eat, without also needing air, so they could fit into the system well. See the below diagram: This updated system would instead use plants to recycle human carbon dioxide, and the Sabatier reactor will finish what the plant does not take in through an electrically controlled valve.

The plants would take in water from a water recycling system (which we will discuss next) and carbon dioxide from humans and

photosynthesise, creating glucose and oxygen. We will breathe the oxygen and eat the glucose (in the form of plant leaves or tubers). Then, when we excrete, water will be reclaimed from faeces, urine, and the water vapour we exhale, and carbon dioxide will be used by plants and the Sabatier system.

Water recycling The water recycling system is also an important part of the station. Plants depend on it for photosynthesis, and we depend on it to survive.

Water from urine can be recycled, as around 91-96%14 of urine is water. Faeces are around 74.6%15 water, and so an efficient system would be able to reclaim a most of the water inside. This kind of system is already in place16 in the ISS WCS system, which recycles water vapour in the air, and all urine and wastewater from taps, sinks, etc. In terms of urine, it was designed to recover 85% of water from urine. However, a known effect of free-fall is that there is more calcium in astronauts’ urine meaning in practice it can only recycle 70% of water from urine. It works using distillation and uses a centrifuge to simulate gravity. All exhaled water vapour from is recovered as it has no contaminants17 and washing water recovery rates are also 100%18. About 93.5% of water is recovered by the ISS overall19. In a new mission, Nasa plan to send a “Brine Processor Assembly,” which will further remove water leftover from the from the WCS, meaning a 98% recovery rate of water20.

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Applying the technology to our space station, the mechanism would be quite simple. This would be especially true as the BPA was designed after the WCS and integrating the two would mean a simpler and lighter mechanism. However, there would still have to be a water tank to make up the 2% which is not recycled.

Power Production All of the other systems we have discussed require power. Power would be used to heat the Sabatier reactor, power the electrolysing process, grow the plants and spin the pumps of the water production system. Looking at different power production methods, there are a few main types used on spacecraft.

• • • • • •

Batteries Fuel cells Solay arrays Solar dynamic devices RTGs Nuclear reactors.

Batteries are not sustainable, as they cannot be charged without one of the other methods.

Fuel cells require hydrogen and oxygen to turn into water, however the Sabatier reactor depends upon using all of these, so we can rule the first two out.

Solar arrays are a generally light (in mass) method of getting electric charge, however their efficiency is often close to 10%21 and with a maximum of 1400 Watts per square meter falling on the panels22, only 140 Watts can be produced. The panels degrade over time - they can run at about 70% power output after 10 years23 in good conditions. They also only produce electricity in the bright side of an orbit and even then, the 1400 Watts available changes based on how the panels are angled (at the sun).

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Solar dynamic devices are basically a large collection of lenses and mirrors that reflect and refract light into a sphere of water, which is turned to steam and drives turbines. This power method is more efficient and was considered for space station Freedom (the concept station that led to ISS, shown by this picture24).

However, Solar Dynamic Devices have a few problems – they weigh a lot, are flimsy, and also produce large amounts of drag.

RTGs are a reliable long term power supply. They are basically a casing for nuclear fuel, surrounded by thermocouples that generate electricity from the heat. However, they do not produce much electricity, suitable only for powering computers rather than powering high temperature reactions etc.

Space nuclear reactors are essentially like the nuclear reactors on earth, but scaled down and optimised for Zero-G. Their power production is in the thousands of Kilowatts25 However, they are very heavy, as well as needing many permits to launch nuclear fuel on a highly explosive carrier rocket.

Using a nuclear reactor would be ideal for the space station, as high power would constantly need to be produced. However, any reactor would need refuelling. A fuel pellet has 3,900,000 Megajoules of stored energy per gram26, as opposed to wood which has 16 Megajoules of stored energy per gram27. As a result, one pellet can produce heat/ electricity for one to two years28, requiring practically no refuelling.

What such a station might look like, if one is possible A station simply interconnecting all of these subsystems would not be complete, as we have only touched upon the main systems needed, and we have not considered the possibility of a failure in one of these systems. Neither have we considered other aspects, such heating, radiation, redundancy, a medical lab in case a crew member is injured.

A station can never be truly self-sufficient, as all of the reactions are not 100% efficient. An example is the methane pyrolysis - 5% of hydrogen required would have to be added externally. Another example is the water recovery - 2% of water would have to be inputted from supplies, in a best-case scenario.

So in conclusion, a completely self-sustaining station is not possible. However, our design can be expected to last about a year without a supply mission. This calculates as about 600% better than the ISS. Expanding on this, similar concepts utilising space mining for supplies and/or having the station on the planetary surface could increase this percentage.

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Bibliography 1. Nasa.gov, audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-the-iss-58.html, 2020, “The space station has made it possible for people to have an ongoing presence in space.

Human beings have been living in space every day since the first crew arrived. The space station's laboratories allow crew members to do research that could not be done anywhere else. This scientific research benefits people on Earth. Space research is even used in everyday life. The results are products called "spinoffs." Scientists also study what happens to the body when people live in microgravity for a long time. NASA and its partners have learned how to keep a spacecraft working well. All of these lessons will be important for future space exploration.”

2. Nasa.gov, oct-31-2000-launch-of-first-crew-to-international-space-station, 2015: “On Oct. 31, 2000, a Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome” 3. Wikipedia.org, ISS-RapidScat, 2021: “It could collect data between 51.6 degrees north and south latitude, with a swath 900 km wide (560 mi).”

4. Wikipedia.org, Scatterometer, 2021: “Their main drawback is that the measurement is done over the very small volume of air between the transmitter and the receiver” 5. Nasa.gov, gateway/overview, 2021: “The Gateway will be an outpost orbiting the Moon that provides ... a staging point for deep space exploration.”

6. Merriam-webster.com, Dictionary/self-sufficient, 2021?: “able to maintain oneself or itself without outside aid : capable of providing for one's own needs.”

7. NASA, PDF 162514 on Human Needs, Unknown date: “Human beings have certain basic needs. We must have food, water, air, and shelter to survive. If any one of these basic needs is not met, then humans cannot survive.”

8. Nasa.gov, mission_pages/station/research/news/sabatier.html, 2017: “Currently in operation on the station, Sabatier is the final piece of the regenerative environmental control and life-support system” 9. Wikipedia.org, Sabatier reaction, 2021: “The Sabatier reaction or Sabatier process produces methane and water from a reaction of hydrogen with carbon dioxide at elevated temperatures” 10. Wikipedia.org, Sabatier reaction, 2021: “the loop could be further closed if the waste methane was separated into its component parts by pyrolysis, the high efficiency (up to 95% conversion) of which can be achieved at 1200 °C: (diagram) 11. Wikipedia.org, Sabatier reaction, 2021: “The released hydrogen would then be recycled back into the Sabatier reactor, leaving an easily removed deposit of pyrolytic graphite” 12. mosameat.com, growing-beef, Unknown date: “0,5 gram sample taken under anaesthesia Standardized veterinary procedure Selection of 33.000 myosatellite cells 80.000 burgers from one sample” 13. researchgate.net, figure/The-Quorn-fermentation-process-A-continuous-supply-ofmedium-is-fed-into-the-fermenter_fig5_340498918, 2008-2021 (?), (Diagram), also description: “The Quorn™ fermentation process. A continuous supply of medium is fed into the fermenter and the broth is harvested simultaneously. The harvested broth is heated to a temperature that destroys proteases but leaves RNAses active, allowing the RNA content of the mycelium to be reduced to less than 2%, which is a regulatory requirement. Once the broth has been heat-treated, the mycelium is spun down to form a paste, which is mixed with binders and flavouring agents before being shaped, cooked and frozen. The supernatant from the paste is currently sent for treatment as wastewater, but active research at Marlow Foods is looking into how the 1.5% solids in the waste can be recovered as a food grade coproduct.”

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14. nih.gov, pmc/articles/PMC4500995/, 2015, “Urine is composed of 91–96% water” 15. nih.gov, pmc/articles/PMC4500995/, 2015, “Feces had a median pH of 6.64 and were composed of 74.6% water” 16. Wikipedia.org, ISS_ECLSS, 20201, 2021, “The American segment has a Water Recovery System installed during STS-126[3] that can process water vapour collected from the atmosphere and urine into water that is intended for drinking.”

17. WIkipediea.org, Cellular_waste_product, 2021, “Cells undergoing aerobic respiration produce 6 molecules of carbon dioxide, 6 molecules of water, and up to 30 molecules of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is directly used to produce energy, from each molecule of glucose in the presence of surplus oxygen.”

18. nasa.gov, feature/new-brine-processor-increases-water-recycling-on-international-spacestation, 2021, “...processed through the Water Processing Assembly (WPA), which recovers 100% of the water it processes” 19. nasa.gov, feature/new-brine-processor-increases-water-recycling-on-international-spacestation, 2021, “As a result, our overall water recovery is about 93.5%.”

20. nasa.gov, feature/new-brine-processor-increases-water-recycling-on-international-spacestation, 2021, “With this new brine processor assembly, we’ll recover additional water from the urine brine produced by the Urine Processor, such that the overall water recovery is closer to 98%” 21. Graham Swinerd, How Spacecraft Fly, 2008, “Solar arrays for space ... have an efficiency of around 10%.”

22.drb-mattech.co.uk, uv map.html, Unknown Date, “The generally accepted solar constant of 1368 W/m2 is a satellite measured yearly average.”

23. Graham Swinerd, How Spacecraft Fly, 2008, “After 10 years of operation in GEO, the electrical output from a solar array can be reduced by around 20% of its beginning of life performance.”

24. The American Society Of Mechanical Engineers, Solar Dynamic CBC Power for Space Station Freedom, 1990, Picture (Cropped) 25. Graham Swinerd, How Spacecraft Fly, 2008, “They are used only for applications requiring large amounts of power – on the order of hundreds to thousands of kiloWatts” 26. energyeducation.ca, encyclopedia/Energy_density, 2021, (Table)

Uranium-235 Nuclear

27. energyeducation.ca, encyclopedia/Energy_density, 2021, (Table)

Wood Chemical 16

3 900 000

28. xceed-eng.com, nuclear-reactor-refueling, 2021, “With Nuclear Power, sites generally refuel every 1-2 years, depending on the design of the plant.”

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Who Were The Winners And Losers Of Covid-19?

Tharnan Nimalan

In December 2019 the Coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China and rapidly spread across the world. It has resulted in 5.43 million deaths and has had many effects in the world, resulting in many winners and losers11. In this essay I will discuss several winners including IT, the environment, delivery services and gaming companies and the losers who were students, the economic sector, frontline workers, the tourism sector and patients.

Firstly, delivery services were a winner of the Covid-19 pandemic because restaurants did not allow visitors during lockdown which increased the demand for online services through delivery apps. The four main services (Doordash, Uber Eats, GRUBHUB and Postmates) made 5.5 billion dollars in combined revenue from April to September 2020 whereas in 2019 during the same period, only 2.5 billion dollars were made.. In the short term, many restaurants shifted to an online delivery service with these apps so they could continue to make money. However, a Cowen & Co. survey of 2500 consumers showed that in July, 52% of people still said that they would not go to restaurants and bars even following the lifting of restrictions. This suggests that many people were scared to go to these places and this would now make restaurants reliant on the delivery apps over a long period of time and would result in delivery apps gaining even more revenue.

Graph showing how much money each of the 4 main delivery services made(marketwatch.com)

Uber Eats was the biggest winner of the four main services where their bookings rose 135% , and its revenue increased by 125% to 1.45 billion dollars.

Environmental benefits also emerged because people were not allowed to go outside, resulting in less travel which decreased emissions and air pollution due to lower fossil fuel emissions. As well as a reduction of fossil fuels, there is also a reduction in greenhouse gases such as nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide3.

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In addition, factories would not have been in work during the pandemic so harmful gases have not been going into the air and this would further improve the air quality. Despite these environmental benefits, the increased demand for delivery services has increased demand for materials to package items. These materials include single-use plastic and paper which are bad for the environment. The pandemic also lead to a demand in protection against the virus such as masks, gloves, gowns, hand sanitizer etc. and this would require lots of resources which are bad for the environment. Therefore these environmental benefits are slightly counteracted but there is still an overall environmental gain.

Moreover, IT was a winner due to lockdown where there has been a surge in the use of electronic devices. During April 2020, adults spent an average of four hours a day online which is an increase from September 2019 when it was three and a half hours4. The use of IT would have increased greatly due to every school in the world doing their lessons online through apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. This would have caused these companies to gain lots of money. For example, Zoom’s owner Eric Yuan came into the ranking of top 100 richest people in 2020. His zoom shares are worth almost 17 billion dollars5.

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Apps used for entertainment also increased greatly such as Twitch which saw their visitors increase from 2.3 million in January 2020 to 4.2 million in April 20204. This would have given many streamers on Twitch an opportunity to make lots of money. For example, famous Twitch streamer Nickmercs made 1,737,535 dollars in 20206. This shows us that Twitch and many of their streamers would have made so much money due to the lockdown.

Another winner from Covid were gaming companies. Due to people not being allowed to go outside, people have been bored at home and have decided to try new things like gaming.

The global time spent on video games increased by 39% during the Covid pandemic7 and this would therefore provide more money for gaming companies and making companies more successful (statista.com). An example of a company is EA Sports which made 1.49 billion dollars in 2020 which is a 120 million dollars increase from the total revenue last year8.

There would also be a much higher demand for gaming consoles such as the Playstation or Xbox during the lockdown so children did not get bored as they had so much more free time.

For example, the number of Nintendo Switches sold in 2020 was 9.37 million units9. This shows us that a great amount of money was made from the usage of console as well as the purchasing of consoles. Not only was time spent gaming on consoles but was also spent on Phones and PCs. There were 2.2 billion mobile gamers in the world in 202010. (techjury.net).

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On the other hand, frontline workers such as the NHS were losers during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the lockdown, these workers had to manage a huge influx of patients who had contracted the Covid-19 virus, causing them to work in very high-pressured environment.

Despite the longer working hours and stress induced on the NHS, this was not reflected in the wages received by doctors and nurses as they earnt 8% less than the other employees12.

This shows us that the workers were not just doing it for the money but also to help and save lives and therefore makes the frontline workers heroes as you could say they were running the country. This high pressure environment also led to many workers having mental health problems due to the overload of work and stress and would have an effect in the long term.

Another challenge the frontline workers had to face was delivering care without spreading the virus. This included having to wear lots of protective equipment such as masks and gloves and many other parts of equipment. Many frontline workers had to also work in wards which they had never worked in before therefore they would be in an unfamiliar setting and they would have to work in a different way. Not only did they have to work in unfamiliar wards, but they also had to work with a lack of equipment such as ventilators which would cause a rise in stress across the whole of the NHS. This would mean that some patients might have not been able to receive certain resources whereas others might have not. Across other countries, there was a growing incidence of stress, burnout, depression, drug and alcohol dependence and suicide across all groups of health professionals13 and this emphasises how difficult it was for frontline workers.

Secondly, students had a negative impact from Covid-19 because GCSEs and A levels were cancelled so teachers had to predict a grade in which their student would get. A student could have received a lower result when they might have got a higher result in the exam.

This would have a long term effect as this might prevent a student from getting into a university which could further prevent them from getting a certain job in the future. This shows us that these skewed results could affect a student’s whole life. Another problem students have had to face is having their lessons online. This would disrupt their education and would mean they would miss out on learning opportunities. In the long term, this missed out education would not prepare them for future years of learning. Some people from a lower socio-economic background would have not received an education at all as they would be able to access ipads and laptops for online learning14. This increases global inequality. A child’s health would also be a worry during lockdown as some might be inside all of the time so they would not receive any vitamin D from the sun which is important for a child’s 24

cognitive development and academic performance and is essential for bones and teeth.

Some children might not have a garden so they would not be able to engage in outdoor activities which would cause weight problems. A Chinese study by Chen stressed the need to maintain a regular physical activity to avoid behaviours that lead to inactivity15.

Furthermore, the economic sector was another loser of Covid-19. In 2020, GDP declined by 9.7%16. This means that the UK economy would have lost lots of money due to the market value of goods and services going down. Employment was down by 47%17 and this was caused by many businesses going out of business because their total revenue was less than the money they lost during the lockdown. An examples of a business which has closed down is Monsoon where 545 jobs have been cut and 35 stores are expected to close18. This indicates that many shop workers would have had a negative impact from the pandemic as they might have lost their job.

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Fourthly, the tourism sector was a loser. In July 2020, 20% of rooms were occupied whereas in 2019 in the same month, 90% of rooms were occupied20. The main reason for this is that there were travel restrictions therefore people were not allowed to travel and then stay in hotels. These travel restrictions have meant that tourism was one of the most affected sectors in the lockdown and has meant that the tourism sector has lost 935 billion dollars which is equivalent to a loss of 900 million visitors21. This shows us how much of a disaster Covid has been for the tourism sector economically. An example is Heathrow Airport where the passenger number have reduced by between 80%-90% a month and has led to Heathrow losing about 3.4 billion dollars22. Due to this loss in money, they have had to

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change the way in which they did business and cut their spending. This shows us that this loss of money has caused airports to make even more changes.

Finally, patients had a negative impact from Covid as many patients who did not even have Covid could not have a checkup. For example, if someone needed to check if they had cancer, they could not check and therefore the cancer could not be caught quickly. This means that the cancer would get worse and would not be treated at the beginning. This implies that the pandemic would not only cause deaths from Covid but it would also cause deaths from other illnesses. 10% of patients reported that they were unable to get an appointment23. Hospitals were focused on treating patients with Covid but they could not even treat all of them due to the lack of equipment such as beds and ventilators .In January 2020, there were 4.4 million patients on the waiting list and there were about 730,000 people who had to wait more than 18 weeks24.

In conclusion, there were more losers than winners and I believe that frontline workers were the most affected. They had to work extra hours to not even get a fair wage and some were affected a lot mentally leading to depression. As a student, learning how to use new online platforms like Microsoft Teams was challenging at first but became easier and I felt that online learning was an interesting experience for me as we had to adapt to doing things such as homework in many different ways. However for many, I know that online learning has been a stressful experience for them, especially younger students who would have missed out on lots of education. Looking forward, I hope to see a world without a disease like Covid19 and to see a recovered economy. As well as this, I would want schools to always be open so many students do not need to struggle and feel like they have missed out on education so they can be prepared for the future.

Bibliography

1. Office for National Statistics (2021) Deaths due to COVID-19 registered in England and Wales 2020 2. Sumagaysay.L (2020) The pandemic has more than doubled food-delivery apps’ business. Now What?

3. (2021) Global Energy Review. The International Energy Agency 4. (2020) UK’s Internet Use Surges To New Highs During Lockdown 26

Novet J.(2020) Zoom’s Eric Yuan became one of the world’s richest people in 2020 as Covid sent people rushing to meet on video 6. Hogerheide R. (2020) Highest Paid Twitch Streamer Of 2020 7. Clement J. (2021) Covid-19 Impact on the gaming industry worldwide statistics& worldwide 8. Kenmare J. (2020) The Mind Blowing Figures Behind EA Sports’ Net Revenue From Ultimate Team 9. Sujay Valishery L. (2021) Unit Sales of Nintendo Switch Consoles in U.S 2017-2020 10. Dobrilova T. (2022) 23+ Mobile Gaming Statistics 11. Witowski W. (2020) Videogames are a bigger industry than movies and North American sports combined, thanks to the pandemic 12. (2020) Should NHS Workers Be Paid Than A Footballer?

13. (2021) Improved Mental Health Support For Frontline Workers Urgently Needed 14. Montacute R. (2020) Implications for Covid-19 Crisis For Educational Inequality 15. Gupta S., Jawanda M. (2020) The Impacts Of Covid-19 On Children 16. Harari D., Keep M., Brien P. (2021) Coronavirus: Economic Impact 17. (2021) The Employment Situation 18. Grahns A. (2020)Monsoon Accessorize to permanently close 35 shops-full list of stores revealed 19. (2021) Coronavirus and the impact on output in the UK economy: August 2021 20. (2021) Coronavirus and the impact on the UK travel and tourism industry 21. (2020) Impact assessment of the Covid-19 outbreak on international tourism 22. Covid-19 Recruitment Impact at Heathrow 5.

23. Charlesworth.A, Watt.T and Thorlby.R (2020) Early Insight Into the Impacts of COVID-19 on Care for People with Long-term Conditions 24. Charlesworth.A, Watt. T and Gardner.T (2020) The Health Foundation: The Scale of the Challenge Pre-COVID-19

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Nature’s remedy: an opportunity missed?

Oliver Ockrim Introduction In 2019, the world faced huge challenges. Increasing concern was being expressed about climate change and biodiversity. Population growth was out of control and the ageing demographics was putting enormous strain on the economic resources of societies. No one knew the best ways to manage these geopolitics and the crises seemed insurmountable.

Despite popular support for change, coordinated solutions from governments around the world seemed to be beyond reach. Then coronavirus came…

This essay discusses the balance between the nature’s forces of natural selection, and the advances of human technology to overcome disease. This has led to a moral dilemma which has deep implications for the future of mankind and the planet.

SECTION 1: The Human Factors 1.

Overpopulation and Population Density Overpopulation is, ‘The existence of more people than the available resources can support’ (1). Since the 19th century improvements in hygiene and medicine, and particularly the understanding of bacteriology and virology vectors that cause disease, has allowed a proliferation of the population across the world. The exponential surge of the world’s population is shown on Graph 1.

The industrial revolution also resulted in mass migration of populations from rural settings to cities. In 2010 it was announced that over half the world’s population lived in urban areas (2). As a result, population density has rapidly increased as shown in Graph

2.

The theory of population imbalance, was discussed in Thomas Malthus’ book the ‘Malthusian Law of Population’ (3). A rising supply of labour inevitably results in lower wages. Growth in population and increased population density leads to poverty and ill health if associated with governmental under development and insufficient funds.

Whilst small independent communities scattered in the rural settings limit the spread of infectious disease, the ghetto living of modern cities offers a perfect medium for uncontrolled disease spread. The ability of vectors to spread disease rapidly from community to community is facilitated by modern commuting, and internationally by modern travel.

Without intervention, COVID would have likely struck down a much larger proportion of the global population. The death rate of unrestricted COVID transmission was estimated between 9-10 times that of the vaccinated population (4).

3. The Ageing Society In the developed world, industrialisation has generally been matched by wealth distribution and protections from biological poverty. Life expectancy has improved significantly as shown in Graph 3. However, population ageing comes with negative implications. The older a population, the less employed people there are in a country, leaving a much higher percentage of the population in need of financial support (pensions). As the ageing populations is predicted to grow more and more this century, governments will have to find ways to deal with the massive financial impact that this has on healthcare services, pensions and future labour supply. This is a huge issue for the world’s economies, most of the elderly population have little to no income meaning a very small amount of tax is paid by this increasing percentage of the population.

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COVID mortality is primarily correlated with age and co-morbidity. Allowing COVID to run its natural course would have primarily affected the elderly or those who have underlying medical problems, correcting this age discrepancy.

4. Energy Consumption Energy consumption since the beginning of the industrial revolution has increased dramatically. Population expansion and energy consumption have increased in parallel, compare Graphs 4 and 5. Exponential energy requirements require massive burning of fossil fuels and rising costs with depleting resources. Fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, now drive international economies and geopolitics. The recent fuel crises and war in Ukraine has shown how unstable these markets are and the very real risks of increasing risks of energy politics and energy poverty expanding. Many families in the United Kingdom already have to be make choices between heating and eating on a daily basis.

With population reduction, there would be less energy consumption and this issue would at least temporarily regress.

5.

Climate Change Most of the energy consumed in the world in 2022 is generated by fossil fuels. In developing countries such as India and China, fossil fuel usage continues to increase to support increasing demands of industry, transport, and personal usage (houses heating and lighting, etc). Less developed countries argue that is unjust for them to have to lower their dependency on fossil fuel when they are dependent on this for development. Their argument alludes to the fact that countries which have already passed through their industrial revolutions, did not receive any consequences for their use of fossil fuels during that time.

The impact of fossil fuel use has now reached a critical tipping point with air and sea temperatures now increasing as shown in Graph 6.

The simplest solution to slow climate change is population control. A smaller population will cause less greenhouse gas production, and allow better use of greener energy alternatives.

SECTION 2: Nature’s Remedy 1. The Cycle of Population Balance The process of evolution by natural selection was first described by Charles Darwin in 1858 (5). He described how nature selects individuals with survival advantages to breed the next generation. The population of this species then expands.

It is understood that all populations rise and fall over time, termed the population cycle.

Species that have access large resources and well balanced habitats, allows population growth. Competitors evolve in parallel to predate on this abundant prey, then limit numbers and keep the ecosystem in balance. This is called the carrying capacity of an environment. If a survival advantage suddenly incurs then an individual species sometimes expands out of control until the ecosystem ‘catches up’. When resources are running low, malnutrition and diseases are spread killing large numbers of a species population. This then allows that population to rebuild with its strongest members and this cycle repeats. The organism will evolve to be better adapted to its habitat.

An example of this in practise is myxomatosis and rabbits. Myxomatosis is a highly infectious and usually fatal virus. It was efficient at reducing the European rabbit population. This eventually slowed down, and the rabbit population has increased as 29

they became myxomatosis resistant. The myxomatosis also evolved into attenuated (less virulent) variants (6). This process is now used as a classic example of hostpathogen co-evolution when species and pathogen evolve in parallel.

The organisms that control overpopulation, most rapidly, are bacteria and viruses.

Bacteria and viruses are constantly present in the environment, and evolve incrementally alongside their environmental hosts. However, if a genetic mutation gives them an evolutionary advantage, they have the ability to multiply and spread at great speed to take advantage of the selection bias. A plentiful host allows this to occur. If the new variant also has a virulence factor, causing illness or death of its hosts then a percentage of the hosts end up dying, bringing the overpopulated species back into line.

The only way hosts can defend from viruses and bacteria is the gradual development of immunity. Once immunity develops the surviving individuals will then breed to confer this advantage to the species as a whole, and the balance is reset. An epidemic where the disease spreads rapidly through (new) populations then settles back to its endemic levels within the population.

2.

Pandemics of the past The Black Death The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic which killed 75-200 million people. It took four years for the Black Death to spread from Central Asia to the Middle East and eventually the most Western points of Europe (Britain). The first pandemic wave of plague hit Europe in 1348. Small epidemics continued until a second wave in the late 1500s. A more potent form of the disease was seen in a third wave in the 17th century until the last major outbreak of the plague died out in 1666, just before the Great Fire of London.

Mortality from the Black Death occurred in the peasant classes as the majority of the population, in overcrowded communities with poor nutrition. After the Black Death, the decrease in peasant population caused by the plague, meant that labour and artisan skills were in short supply. Landlords had a lack of workers, and the peasants could demand an increase in wages and improved working conditions. Peasants were liberated from serfdom, and the standard of living for peasants across Europe increased and the economy of these nations improved, See Graph 7.

The Spanish Flu The Spanish Flu was the deadliest pandemic in history, infecting an estimate of 500 million people worldwide, about a third of the current population in 1918 (7). At the time, there were not any effective vaccines or drugs to treat this deadly strain of flu. The flu was spread rapidly by the transport of young soldiers across continents with the first world war, Nature showed how powerful it can be as the infectious virus easily surpassed the death count of World War One. The war killed nine to fifteen million soldiers, whilst the Spanish flu struck down estimates of twenty to one hundred million victims worldwide.

In contrast to COVID, the majority of victims of the Spanish Flu were aged 15-40. This caused a significant shortage of workforce (‘labour supply shock’) (8). As a result the world’s economy suffered rather than bounced back after 1918.

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SECTION 3: The Ethical Dilemma The Advancements of Science For most of its time and earth’s history, no single organism has been able to control natural biology and evolutionary processes. However, now in the modern era, humans have been able to halt and eradicate disease via vaccines, improved healthcare and medicines.

The understanding of how bacteria are spread by contact and how vaccines may be created to limit viral transmission was recognised by Edward Jenner in 1796, leading to huge leaps in medical science and survival.

Vaccines against deadly epidemics including smallpox and subsequently polio and measles changed the natural history of such diseases and their impact on human populations in the 19th and 20th century. Most people would consider the eradication of these diseases a huge scientific success, and would little criticise either the motivation behind their development or the impact they have on the carrying capacity of the human environment.

1. Breaking of Biological Control In the last decades, development of molecular and genetic modification has led to concerns of humans controlling and altering natural selection processes particular related to childbirth (choosing designer babies), and food sources (genetically modified crops).

However, these developments have now allowed scientists to rapidly develop vaccines to counter epidemic spread and evolution. In 2020, as a response to the COVID pandemic, the first genetically engineered vaccine (Pfizer Biontec) has allowed humans to rapidly create an ‘artificial’ vaccine from scratch to halt a pandemic and evade natural systems of population control and balance.

Humans can thus evade the natural world’s mechanisms to control over population of a single (dominant) species. Is preventing this natural process morally correct?

2. The Rights of Individuals versus the Needs of Society The global pandemic has aroused strong feelings around the world.

The vaccinated population in the UK is 93.4% less likely to die of COVID-19 (9). This leads us to make an educated prediction that the overall COVID deaths would be significantly larger without the restrictions and preventions which were placed across the globe (See Graph 8).

Is the right of a society to continue to function politically, as well as economically and socially, more important than the rights of individuals to be protected against the risk of becoming significantly unwell from a disease. Was it correct to close all of society down in (repeated) lockdowns to protect a small minority from the chance of becoming fatally sick with the virus?

Two nations that decided upon different philosophical and political decisions were the United Kingdom and Sweden. Sweden, unlike most European countries, did not impose stringent lockdowns, and allowed society to continue to function with only limited (voluntary) restrictions. Many people believed that Sweden chose an immoral path, because it allowed deaths which could have been prevented, to occur.

However, when you analyse the data of the opposing models closely, you will realise, that not having a lockdown, did not cause the excess deaths that many people believed. Although, Sweden had a higher prevalence rate (number of cases per 31

million), compared to the UK, it had less deaths than the United Kingdom (Graph 9); and Sweden’s idea of protecting the economy by not enforcing a lockdown was very successful. Sweden only had 2-3% drop in GDP compared to the other European countries which neared 10% (10) (See Graph 10).

3. Pragmatism versus Idealism It may be considered a philosophical ideal to keep an individual alive for as long as it is medically possible, but the costs of prolonging life with advanced medical therapies, and the social costs of long term care are very high. The reality for most societies is that finances are finite and resources have to be distributed according to affordability, and that which best serves the society as a whole. If substantial resources are consumed by a minority, this can lead to the detriment of other sections of society both at present, and in the future.

Ideally we could protect everyone whilst the whole of society continues to function.

However, in order to isolate the elderly and medically unfit society was closed for everyone during the lockdown periods. This was an impractical solution for the majority of society and could be argued lead to financial, political, social and psychological damage of many more.

4. The Changing Perceptions of Life In the new millennium it is increasingly clear that quality of life should have equal status to the quantity (length) of life. Many people with chronic, progressive medical conditions and elderly suffer with disability, depression and dementia - existing rather than enjoying life. There is now open discussion about the choice of individuals - and society- to allow legal termination of life in such circumstances. In Switzerland, severely unwell patients have the option of euthanasia, to actively end life, to relieve suffering. For the first time in the United Kingdom the British Medical Association recently changed its opinion from opposition to a neutral stance (11).

However, most individuals in society fear death and personal (family) loss. Whilst many may support the principles of choosing quality over quantity of life, and the principles of advantage for the many in doing so, they would not allow their loved ones to suffer or pass away when they know there are ways to prevent this occurring.

Conclusion If COVID was allowed to spread as natural selection and epidemiology would have allowed, then the (elderly) human population would have reduced. The problems of population control, population density, ageing society, economic distress, climate control and energy consumption may have been significantly addressed.

It is perhaps counter intuitive to allow a disease to run unchecked when science can offer protection. The moral adjustments for society and the political fallout were not possible to ignore in this age, and the majority of the developed world took steps to alter biology and prevent the virus run its course, rampaging across the globe.

However, taking a scientific or economic approach, you may agree with the statement, ‘an opportunity missed’.

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References 1. https://www.reference.com/world-view/negative-effects-population-growthdef69cd31022be9a 2. https://populationeducation.org/population-cities-impacts-increased-urbanization/ 3. Reisman, D. (2018). The Law of Population. In: Thomas Robert Malthus . Great Thinkers in Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01956-3_3 4.https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/ bulletins/deathsinvolvingCOVID19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween1janu aryand31december2021 5. Darwin, C. (2011). The origin of species. William Collins.

6. MacLachlan, J (2017). Fenner's Veterinary Virology, 5th Edition. Elsevier. p. 168 7. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic 8. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-economy-after-spanish-flu-pandemicswarnika-ahuja 9.https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/ bulletins/deathsinvolvingCOVID19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween1janu aryand31december2021 10. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-COVID-and-lockdown-a-look-at-the-data 11. https://thestreetjournal.org/uk-medical-association-adopts-neutral-stance-oneuthanasia/#:~:text=UK%20medical%20association%20adopts%20neutral%20stance%20on %20euthanasia,its%20annual%20representative%20meeting%20held%20on%20September %2C%2014.

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Graphs

Graph 1: The exponential surge in the world’s population since 1800

Graph 2: Number of Cities with a population over one million (population density)

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Graph 3: Life expectancy in England and Wales between 1840 and 2016

Graph 4 and 5: Comparison between human population and energy consumption between 1800 – 2019

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Graph 6: Global Fossil Fuel Consumption 1800 to present day

Graph 7: Economic Growth and Population England 1270-1700 relating to the impact of the Black Death

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Graph 8: Mortality Rate from COVID unvaccinated versus vaccinated population by age

Graph 9 and 10: Deaths and economic impacts from COVID across Europe

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How does aesthetic emotion influence the perception of beauty?

Saahil Patel (9M1) Aesthetic emotions are emotions that have been associated with and felt during aesthetic experience: one’s encounter of beauty and processing of it (Lyas, C., 2002). They arise in response to aesthetic objects: for example, paintings, dances, music, and literature or anything that has the capacity to be recognised after being sensorially experienced aesthetically (Munroe, T., & Scruton, R., 2020). Notable examples of aesthetic emotions that tend to be almost always exclusive to aesthetic experience are sublimity, kitsch, and ‘being moved’. Menninghaus et al., (2019), in particular, who argued, “aesthetic emotions are the intermediary through which art does its work”, investigated aesthetic experience and have remained steadfast in arguing that they are a key factor in aesthetic evaluation and how we perceive beauty. However, there is still debate on whether they truly are worthy of recognition, irrelevant, or even a hindrance to experiencing beauty altogether.

For an object to be recognised as beautiful, it has been identified that medium to high levels of pleasure need to be elicited as a reaction to it and the experience of the object must match internal models of what beauty should be like, highlighting the subjective qualities of beauty (Perlovsky, L., 2014; Skov, M. & Nadal, M., 2020). As a result of these unique internal models, influenced by significant events, self-view, and the environments one spends their time in, beauty is experienced differently in accordance with the unique tastes and preferences of a person that constitute a significant amount their perceived identity. The object itself may not affect the response, but simply the associations resulting in unpleasant aesthetic emotions that may be preconsciously drawn upon from the object of appraisal or any of its characteristic features.

Considering the scenario of judging a painting of the sea, Subject A may find the piece to be beautiful, entranced by the harmonious shades of blue and the atmosphere it brings about; however, Subject B, who had a near-death drowning experience many years ago may find the piece disturbing and even traumatic. Whilst this supports the theory that beauty is subjective, Subject B may still have the ability to find the painting beautiful by removing themself from their experiences with the sea and appreciating the scene from a ‘psychically distanced’ perspective, hindering the negative affect1 of their memories and the traumatic emotions they arouse (Lyas, C., 2002). The theory of psychical distancing was proposed by Edward Bullough, where one steps away from reality when considering the aesthetic object and judges it objectively by putting metaphorical ‘distance’ between the object and themselves, thereby allowing their aesthetic experienced to not be hindered by reality and the memories, emotions and context that comes with it. In the previous scenario, Subject B may understandably not be able to completely detach themselves from their experiences, but viewing the aesthetic object even in the most basic form possible (for example, looking at the painting’s individual lines and colours to see a harmonious, smooth assortment of forms and colours, as opposed to appreciating that the painting depicts the sea and drawing this association to what is being represented), if necessary, significantly increases the way one perceives beauty. While recognition of beauty certainly is affected by personal taste, many objects have the potential to be considered beautiful more objectively than they have been given credit for, setting in motion the idea that beauty may not necessarily be in the eye of the beholder if unpleasant responsive aesthetic emotions, arisen through association, can be accounted for.

Aside from appreciating beauty from a psychical distance, alternative sources of experiencing beauty are fascination and a similar emotion: interest. The most common reaction being simply experiencing the pure novelty of an object or feeling curious about unfamiliar features in it that hold attention, both occurring as one tries to process the information presented before them (Cupchik, G, C., & Gebotys, R. J., 1990). By investigating In psychology, ‘affect’ (used as a noun) refers to (often underlying) emotions or desires that influence behaviour.

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sources of interest or fascination, pleasure can be induced through the satisfaction produced through exploration of the source and the eventual understanding of, or realisation drawn, from the object, on the condition that the aesthetic experience of the object meets the expectations of the ‘reward’ (in this case, the overall experience, usually expected to include a profound sense of wonderment or awe) pre-set by oneself, consciously or unconsciously, to incentivise the appraisal and to continue to look deeply into the aesthetic object.

In the same paper, Cupchik and Gebotys (1990), also believed that pleasure was found in the “meaningful interpretation” of aesthetic objects during the period of contemplation, where the observer deems the experience of the aesthetic object as personally valuable or worthy of appreciation to them or not. At first, this may involve considering the individual elements of a piece, and eventually, mentally integrating the information into an interpretive whole, where the relationship between each element comes into play, layering the affective responses and interlinking the different meanings2 found in the individual aspects of the piece or stepping back and experiencing a spontaneous response to the aesthetic object and contemplating its immediate effect on you. In this scenario, aesthetic emotions are often elicited during the contemplation, or processing, of the aesthetic object and experiencing ‘the big picture’ of different “narratives” that come about during the experience (Brady, E., & Haapala, A., 2003).

The harmony of the relationships between the different elements contributes to a more powerful overall affective response in appreciating the object as a whole, playing a significant part in understanding the depth and full form of its beauty.

When perceiving beauty, aesthetic emotions add more intensity and meaning to the experience in order to help one “connect” to the aesthetic object, as opposed to simply considering, for the sake of example, a drawing, with a glance, simply taking in the forms and colours without realising the message trying to be conveyed (Marković, S., 2012). While what is physically presenting is important in aesthetic evaluation, the inherently rewarding sensation is rooted in what we feel by experiencing the elements of an aesthetic object, be it a dynamic one, like a dance, or stationary, like a sculpture.

When aesthetic emotions come into play, rather than being mundane emotions, like the anger or sadness experienced in Figure 1: Results from an investigation into the affective nature of being “moved” in 3 ontologically different scenarios. everyday life, they are usually more (Retrieved from Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Hanich, J., intense, often interlaced with each other, Wassiliwizky, E., Kuehnast, M., & Jacobsen, T. (2015). and both result and are resulted by high cognitive engagement3 with the object to get the most out of the experience. Aesthetic emotions like melancholy, being ‘moved’, and sublimity are quite difficult to explain, though their common features often include a complex, “dual nature”, a degree of reflection or contemplation involved, and shades of other emotions like joy, sadness or longing blended in the ‘base’ emotion to produce a “refined”, characterful experience (Brady, E., & Haapala, A., 2003). Research into this phenomenon revealed that the most “moving” aesthetic objects

2

The meanings found in aesthetic objects are not necessarily identifying symbols (for example, like Vanitas artwork) or a clear definition of what is being conveyed, but the personal significance of the object or one of its features and the way we perceive it.

3 Cognitive engagement refers to the focus and level of attention that is given to the object and is not to be confused with arousal. For instance, when listening to ‘Clair De Lune’ by Claude Debussy, the expressive melody, and gentle dynamics of the composition may lull one into a peaceful, relaxed state but still induce high cognitive engagement with the piece, but with low levels of arousal. The arousal is the energy expenditure linked to an emotion, not the cognitive engagement (American Psychological Association, n.d.).

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produced a mixed affective response of both positive and negative4 emotions infused together (see Figure 1) (DebateFilms, 2015). The black and white whisker plots denote the levels of negative and positive affect, respectively, for each of their corresponding bars: the overall emotions are determined by the affect of higher influence (a higher negative affect resulted in an overall sadly moving event and a higher positive affect resulted in an overall joyfully moving event). The results show that in fictional events, which aesthetic experience is often a response to, there is a very high percentage of being sadly moved by beauty in comparison to being moved with joy (the reason why will be discussed later in the essay).

What is fascinating about the results is the relationship between the positive and negative valences in the sadly moving fictional event bar – the high negative affect contributed to the overall sad ‘colouring’ of being moved, yet the positive affect was unusually high when considering the pattern shown in the other bars. The fact that the highly moving fiction bar had very close levels of both affects is a reason that the experience was so prevalent in aesthetic experience – the power of aesthetic emotions like the ones mentioned in the introduction stems from the blends of emotions they have. The remaining question is why sad aesthetic emotions seem to be more memorable, impactful, and attention-grabbing.

Baumeister et al. (2001) found evidence to suggest that negative emotions indeed leave stronger marks on our memory and hold deeper, and sustained attention so people spend more time trying to escape bad moods than producing good ones. A study into the nature of sad (but beautiful experiences) managed to theorise that art that has lower levels of mixed emotions can seem shallow and uninteresting in comparison to artworks that evoke great emotion.

These aesthetic emotions can allow one to find beauty even in seemingly simple objects if the right conditions are met. For instance, when Subject C is browsing through a confectionary store, they might find themselves attracted to some Ferrero Rochers: the soft glint of light on the foil wrapper and warm brown and golden colour scheme might attract their eye. However, if the aesthetic object was personal, the emotions rooted in the memories and experiences may arise when appraising the object. If Subject C has a fond memory, like sharing some of those sweets with their mother, as a child, the joy of that love felt could be reinspired in them during the aesthetic experience before the emotions of the ‘narrative’ are tinged by sadness and longing, bringing to light how much Subject C misses those times and values them. This type of beauty is perceived almost solely through aesthetic emotions and would still be regarded as an aesthetic experience as, though not fully sensorially induced, the perception of beauty was induced by recognising the aesthetic object which itself produced its own story. Expressing sad aesthetic emotions is a means of catharsis, a release5 of repressed feelings or emotions, leaving one with relief from having expressed them. During sad aesthetic experience, it is argued that catharsis plays a significant in experiencing positive affective response directly after a negative one.

To conclude, aesthetic emotions are affective responses to objects of aesthetic appraisal.

They vary depending on the unique internal models of each person that determine how they recognise beauty and respond to it and come from deep within. They can both intensify and hinder perceived beauty as well as affect the personal significance of the aesthetic object through drawing upon associated experiences and memories of the aesthetic object or ones triggered by it. Such aesthetic require one to emotionally detach from the object, so they do not experience associated feelings in response to the object of representation. While sad aesthetic emotions (affective responses with negative hedonic tone) have higher access to memory and attention, experiences of both positive and negative affects have been shown to have the highest impact in perceiving beauty, with one dominant emotion and an underlying one to give the beauty depth and meaning.

The use of the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ refer to the hedonic tone of the emotion (also known as ‘valence’) – whether it produces a favourable affect or disagreeable affect, respectively.

5 The concept of catharsis was originally introduced in Aristotle’s Poetics. While the ‘release’ of emotion can be physiological, like crying, or even wailing, in response to an emotional event, the episode of catharsis could also release repressed emotions through facing them head-on by reflecting upon them during or after experiencing a sadly moving event. The acceptance of these emotions allows them to be released and unburdens one from them.

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Bibliography American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Arousal. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://dictionary.apa.org/arousal Bain, A. (1859). The emotions and the will. Parker.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good.

Review of general psychology, 5(4), 323-370.

Brady, E., & Haapala, A. (2003). Melancholy as an aesthetic emotion. Contemporary Aesthetics, 1(1), 6.

Brielmann, A. A. & D.G. Pelli. 2019. Intense beauty requires intense pleasure. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2420.

Cupchik, G. C., & Gebotys, R. J. (1990). Interest and pleasure as dimensions of aesthetic response.

Empirical Studies of the Arts, 8(1), 1-14.

DebateFilms. (2015). Winfried Menninghaus - What does it mean to be moved by an artwork?

[Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7762R1_FOnM. Fingerhut, J., Gomez-Lavin, J., Winklmayr, C., & Prinz, J. J. (2021). The Aesthetic Self. The Importance of Aesthetic Taste in Music and Art for Our Perceived Identity. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 4079.

King, A. Aesthetic Attitude. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://iep.utm.edu/aesth-at/. (Accessed on 5 January 2022).

Kraxenberger, M., & Menninghaus, W. (2017). Affinity for poetry and aesthetic appreciation of joyful and sad poems. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 2051.

Kul-Want, C. (2014). Introducing aesthetics: A graphic guide. Icon Books Ltd. Latest Thinking. (2019). The Different Types and Values of Beauty [Video]. YouTube.

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaJO4tEZ05U. Lyas, C. (2002). Aesthetics. Routledge.

Marković, S. (2012). Components of aesthetic experience: aesthetic fascination, aesthetic appraisal, and aesthetic emotion. i-Perception, 3(1), 1-17.

Martín, E. S. R. (2020). Can everything be beautiful? Pan-aestheticism and the Kantian puzzle of the free play of the faculties. Con-textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy, (12), 292-313.

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Menninghaus, W., Schindler, I., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Hanich, J., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2020). Aesthetic emotions are a key factor in aesthetic evaluation: Reply to Skov and Nadal (2020).

Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Hanich, J., Wassiliwizky, E., Kuehnast, M., & Jacobsen, T. (2015).

Towards a psychological construct of being moved. PloS one, 10(6), e0128451.

Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Schindler, I., Hanich, J., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2019). What are aesthetic emotions? Psychological review, 126(2), 171.

Moran, R. (2012). Kant, Proust, and the appeal of beauty. Critical Inquiry, 38(2), 298-329.

Munroe, T., Scruton, R. Aesthetics. Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/aesthetics. (Accessed on 7 January 2022) Muth, C., Briesen, J., & Carbon, C. C. (2020). “I like how it looks but it is not beautiful”: Sensory appeal beyond beauty. Poetics, 79, 101376.

Perlovsky, L. (2014). Aesthetic emotions, what are their cognitive functions? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 98.

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Stamatopoulou, D. (2004). Integrating the philosophy and psychology of aesthetic experience: Development of the Aesthetic Experience Scale. Psychological Reports, 95(2), 673-695.

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How far can musical theatre affect culture in the modern day and the future?

Reuben Smith Whether it’s a classical opera such as the Marriage of Figaro or modern musicals such as Hamilton or Heathers, musical theatre is a diverse art form that can be appreciated by all walks of life, but how far can they shape modern culture or even culture in the future especially as a significant part of culture itself? In this essay, I will reflect on how musical theatre has affected culture as opposed to how it is a part of it throughout history as well as how the modern musical has affected culture in the 21st century to determine whether they still have the potential to change millions of people – even in an age of entertainment able to fit in the palm of a hand.

One of musical theatre’s oldest art forms is opera with the first work viewed as a modern opera dating around the end of the 16th century6 , which is reminiscent of the modern musical since it uses musical theatre’s properties of dance, drama, and vocals to create a narrative that is followed throughout the piece, with one of the most influential being Puccini’s La Bohème. The opera tackles themes of bad health conditions surrounding tuberculosis in poverty in women as demonstrated by the main female lead Mimi. The problem of tuberculosis was prevalent in both the time that the play is (the 1830s) as well as the time that Puccini wrote the play (the mid 1890s) although the opera was prefaced by multiple operas about female tuberculosis deaths, a theme frequently depicted in other operas such as La Traviata and the Tales of Hoffman7. The trend became so common that the term Tuberculosis Heroine was made to describe the helpless woman that became the victim of the tragedy. However, the link between tuberculosis and poor living conditions was only first shown in opera in La Bohème even though Robert Koch, a pathologist, had proved his renowned postulates regarding the tubercle bacillus fourteen years beforehand8.

The opera goes beyond a simple point of romantic tragedy about a couple falling in love, taking time apart then coming back together just before the woman dies. It is a romance full of tropes that still withstands the test of time staying relevant for over a century. The opera combined tropes of its setting, art and poverty to stay heard of and spoken about. The text, origins and musical content had been continuously and consistently been written about for astoundingly long9 even if the earlier time period it was written poses a difference in its relevance. This link shows the strong connection between musical theatre and culture with musical theatre in some ways reflecting culture and in other ways musical theatre can change the minds of the people that watch it with its influential content which in turn affects culture.

Another past piece of musical theatre that shows the trends of musical theatre reflecting the problems prevalent at the time of release is the musical West Side Story, a musical that has recently been revamped into a modern film to solidify its part in history. The musical followed two rivalling gangs in 1950s New York since the narrative was written to be a modern Romeo & Juliet. Following the iconic tragedy’s storyline, two lovers – one from each of the rivalling groups – find each other at a party and follow the trope of falling in love at first sight. They then result in a loss of their love through death and the tragedy ends with a truce between both Sonneck, Otto G. ““Dafne”, the First Opera. A Chronological Study.” Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 15.H. 1 (1913): 102-110 7 L Arosio, L Pellegrini, G Cesana, MA Riva “The death of Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème: not an ordinary tubercular heroine.” The Lancet Respiratory Medicine 5.8 (2017): 617-618 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(17)30257-6/fulltext 8 Greenhalgh, Trisha. "La Bohème." (2008). https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2282.full 9 Wilson, Alexandra.

Puccini's la Bohème.

Chapter 2 Oxford University Press, 2020. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MeMJEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=la+boheme+affectin g+culture&ots=DQlmrNcNJ5&sig=Q8FJBWszN-5KJN7O2wseFyX4oig 6

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sides of the quarrel. The main difference in West Side Story is that the rivalling gangs are more culturally relevant as they reflect the fights between white Americans and Puerto Ricans that happened in New York at the time.

The musical is one of the most influential modern musicals since it is still spoken about for its significance with racism, sexism, and teen violence that can be seen throughout the piece, even with the musical brining to light the racism towards Puerto Ricans that had been prevalent at the time. Despite this, it still provided a racial prejudice as the play was written by Robbins – a white man – with no latinx representation on the producing team. However, in the 2021 movie remake, Spielberg made sure to make the portrayal and representation was authentic and respectful. He changed the actor of Maria, the female love interest of the Puerto Rican gang, to the actor Rachel Zegler, who was originally played by Natalie Wood and voice by Marni Nixon neither of which were latinx as were many of the movie’s cast. Spielberg also made sure that all Puerto Rican characters were played by latinx characters too10. This need to make the remake so respectful shows that there is a high demand for content relating to it even 70 years later as well as that the themes in it still held up over time and it was still able to influence modern day culture. Musical theatre stays timeless in this way, even in musicals where the topic is inspired by the setting and events of the time and the same can be said about La Bohème where the musical continues to be written and spoken about.

The parallels between the two pieces of musical theatre don’t stop there. However, as both are affected by big problems in culture and late aid the effort to eradicate the problem in the first place. The musical was originally meant to be named East Side Story between Catholics and Jewish groups on the East coast of USA but was changed to West Side Story after Robbins looked through headlines of the day and found an increase in teen gangs and changed it to what it is known as today11. This quick change really brings to light how much culture can affect musicals; the simple rise in teen gangs made the whole premise of the musical different (even if the story line stayed mostly the same). This type of big change from a small thing is a phenomenon that greatly changes how we predict the future so it could be hard to even make a solid prediction; there is such a high chance of something seemingly insignificant starting even the writing of a whole musical something that will be explored later with a more modern piece.

This piece also provides a way to think about possible futures. Whilst we cannot predict the future, there are aspects of our current life that will no-doubt be used and kept throughout history, namely the internet. The internet has been ever growing and improving over the years and with somewhat complete confidence it can be said it will continue to do so. This means that a future in which technology dominates all forms of socialisation is quite probable.

Furthermore, this may seem like a threat to the integrity of musical theatre since it requires a stage space which could prove challenging without accessibility to physical communication.

However, this may not be the case when looking at past events. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a large majority of the population to isolate for large periods of time with musical workers being a part of this group, so whilst it is not perfect, as we have no way of knowing what restrictions or advantages modern technology will provide, the COVID-19 pandemic is an interesting time that allows for a prediction of to a future where socializing is purely digital – regardless of how advanced digital technology becomes. Moreover, musicals were made and shown over the pandemic, but one stands out as interesting: Ratatouille the Tiktok musical.

Over the autumn months and early winter of 2020, Ratatouille: The Tiktok musical was created after a single 15 second video was posted on the 11th of August 2020 simply comically proposing a song written for the finale of an imaginary musical12 – an event that would seem unremarkable – and quickly grew into an online live stream broadcasted on New Year’s Day on the Tiktok app. The musical featured music and lyrics created by a wide variety of Tiktok users, choreography by Ellenore Scott, set designs by Blake Rouse, and key art by Jessica

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https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/11/entertainment/west-side-story-puerto-ricans-cec/index.html https://artsandculture.google.com/story/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-west-sidestory/FgKCnpKSh0WDIA 12 https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLdqFA7X/ 11

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Siswick13On the first day of 2021, the stream was aired and gained 350,000 viewers in total – raising 2 million dollars for the Actor’s Fund14. Such a large sum of money was shocking from a project created and shown on a social media app. This shows just how much musical theatre can affect culture even when no-one is able to get together in a physical theatre. In this case, it was able to show how it could provide charity to support the creation of more musical theatre.

Moreover, this showcases the idea of a butterfly effect – in a time where there was a substantial lack of musical theatre content being produced – that kick-started something so much larger than its first event.

The design of the app allowed for amateur songwriters to submit their own original songs and all the work towards the musical was done online which yet again showed how the community still found advantages with working without a physical theatre that would affect more with it cultivating the creativity of young people by encouraging them to perform. This also allowed for so many more advantages that would not be present in a face-to-face producing process since artists that would normally get the spotlight could have that opportunity if the algorithm pushed it forward. To expand on this, audition processes could be cut down to near nothing since most songwriters performed their own songs. Furthermore, the entire musical was made in under 4 months, a time that would have not been possible without it being produced digitally.

This point gives hope that technology is greatly aiding musical theatre rather than hindering its growth. However, the fact that the algorithm will sometimes not show quality videos and the struggle to find videos under tags15 proves some aspects challenging (although Tiktok is not the only social media app).

Musical theatre has and continues to affect culture. To expand, musical theatre picks up on problems that are prevalent when they are written and are on multiple occasions shaped by them in a way that in-turn produces solutions to the problems albeit without much success that inspire the content of musical theatre pieces. With what we know now, these trends seem like they will continue to flourish even if socialization becomes digital as seen by the success and effects of Ratatouille: The Tiktok Musical. The inspirations that affect the musicals can also be a result of very small events that turn into big changes in the source material and creative output of people that was seen in the past in La Bohème and Ratatouille: The Tiktok Musical This also means that a future where technology means that we cannot communicate face-toface would still have the possibility of musical theatre making the effect on culture it has done so well in the past. If we are going into a world of digital socialisation, musical theatre will still make the impact it has done so significantly in the past.

Cuskey, Lusie. “Not Writing New Rules, Merely Rat-ifying”: Musical Theatre Goes Digital in Ratatouille: The Musical” PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research 4.1 (2021) https://partakejournal.org/index.php/partake/article/view/989 14 https://www.playbill.com/article/ratatouille-the-tiktok-musical-raises-2-million-for-the-actors-fund.

15 Cuskey, Lusie. “Not Writing New Rules, Merely Rat-ifying”: Musical Theatre Goes Digital in Ratatouille: The Musical PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research 4.1 (2021) https://partakejournal.org/index.php/partake/article/view/989 13

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Is it possible to create a civilisation on Mars?

Laksh Verma The script below is what I wrote to speak in the project, not the actual project. The actual project is a video which is linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKCRC4sHNOY LAKSH (V.O) So, can we live on Mars? It has been asked multiple times before, and I’m here to give you some answers. Let’s start off with the basics.

VIDEO PLAYS OF MARS LAKSH (V.O) Mars, the ‘Red Planet’ is a 4220-mile-long planet, whereas earth is 7,917 miles wide. Mars has a rocky surface. According to the official NASA website, (nasa.gov) Mars’ surface consists of ‘canyons, volcanoes, dry lake beds and craters all over it’, and red dust covers most of the surface, hence the name, Red Planet. Mars has 2 moons, Phobos and Deimos.

PICTURES OF PHOBOS AND DEIMOS DISPLAYED LAKSH (V.O) Mars’ average temperature is around -45 degrees centigrade, or -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

(Information from universetoday.com) GRAPH WITH THE ABUNDANCES OF GASES ON MARS (www.sciencedirect.com) LAKSH (V.O) Mars’ atmosphere consists of a high proportion of Carbon Dioxide (95.32%), as you can see on screen here, followed by nitrogen, argon, and then oxygen, which only has a 0.13% abundance on Mars. Earth has a 21% abundance of oxygen, and only a 0.04% abundance of Carbon Dioxide. Now, you may ask, how will we get breathable oxygen if there is hardly any existent on Mars? Well, that will be explained later. So, now we know the basic compositions of Mars’ atmosphere and some other useful facts. But this still leaves the question unanswered: Can we live on Mars?

SLIDESHOW OF ROCKETS DISPLAYED LAKSH (V.O) Firstly, how will we get to Mars? The Jet Propulsion Laboratory from NASA explains this. In the past, we have used powerful rockets holding lots of fuel to escape Earth’s gravity, therefore it should be easy to escape the atmosphere now. The rocket must also launch at the right time, as Mars and Earth orbit the sun at different speeds and distances. Sometimes they are far apart, and other times they are at a much closer distance, so that is theoretically when we should launch. Every two years, Mars and Earth are closest together to get to Mars using a minimal amount of rocket fuel. The journey is 300 million miles through space. The aim is also a key factor. You cannot aim at Mars directly, because you will miss it by the time you reach. You must aim to where Mars will be when you reach.

QUESTION DISPLAYED ON SCREEN LAKSH (V.O) So, now that we know how to get there, what do we need to live there?

This question is put on screen LAKSH (V.O) Of course, this only consists of the basic needs, not wants.

PICTURE OF SOMEONE BREATHING LAKSH (V.O) So firstly, we need oxygen, to carry out respiration, and keep ourselves alive. We will also need food, water, and shelter. A temperature which is suitable for our bodies will be required as well.

VIDEO OF MARS LAKSH (V.O) But Mars does not have many of these things. Mars, as we said earlier only has 0.13% oxygen on its planet, and there has been no discovered edible food items on Mars. As well as the temperature being well below -40 degrees, a place where humans would suffer in its cold climates.

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But we can tackle these problems. Here is how we will solve the oxygen problem: PICTURE OF MOXIE DISPLAYED (credit: mars.nasa.gov) LAKSH (V.O) According to mars.nasa.gov, the official NASA website for Mars, they stated this: “The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment is better known as MOXIE. NASA is preparing for human exploration of Mars, and MOXIE will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing.”

LAKSH (V.O) So, what is this MOXIE that they are talking about? MOXIE is a device that produces oxygen from Mars’ high carbon dioxide consistent environment, which as we know from earlier, was 95.32%.

CUT TO EARLIER GRAPH LAKSH (V.O) MOXIE is currently on Mars right now, inside the Perseverance Rover, (image will be on screen during this.) which landed on Mars on 18th February 2021. The oxygen production rate is 10 grams per hour, according to NASA, which seems extraordinarily little, but in the future, this could be improved with the right equipment. So, how exactly does Moxie work?

DIAGRAM OF MOXIE LAKSH (V.O) According to wired.com, MOXIE produces oxygen by running it through a current, a process called electrolysis. Electrolysis is the process by which ionic substances are decomposed (broken down) into simpler substances when an electric current is passed through them.

(BBC Bitesize) As Carbon Dioxide is made of 1 carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms, it is broken down into oxygen, therefore allowing oxygen to be produced. Now onto our second problem, water.

So, how will we get water on mars? According to space.com, water appears to flow from some steep, warm slopes on the Martian surface.

SLIDESHOW OF ICE CAPS AND RECURRING SLOP LINAE LAKSH (V.O) An article from space.com referred to features known as recurring slope lineae (seasonal flows of water on Martian Slopes) were first identified in 2011. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera took pictures of dark streaks, which appear in a seasonal pattern. These were later established to be salty water. Ice caps were also discovered in the north and south poles.

Scientists found an area of ice as large as California and Texas together in a region between Mars’ equator and its northern pole. This all confirms that water, in the form of ice, exists on Mars. Even though this is saltwater, this can be treated or filtered to create drinkable freshwater.

But, what about food? We could just carry food from Earth, and just resupply from Earth, but that would waste many resources, and if the trip goes wrong, then there is no hope. So, we need to have a sustainable food source. In a video from the Houston Museum of Natural Science, they take part in an experiment to see how plants would grow in Mars soil compared to normal Earth soil. Mars soil consists of perchlorates, which would normally kill plants, but this can be drained with water. Pre-grown tomatoes were shown to be grown well in Martian soil and were edible. However, there was significantly more yellowing in the Martian soil, which means that Martian soil requires more fertilizer. Carrot seeds were also growing slowly in Martian soil, showing with the right temperatures, we can sustainably grow plants on Mars.

Now, we need to figure out shelter, and temperature. These two needs can actually be solved with one answer. Underground caves. Natural Geographic interviewed scientists of the Mars Society in a video posted on YouTube (link will be displayed on page), which said that the underground caves in Mars are the perfect shelter for our human bodies to live in.

Stephen Petranek, author of the book: “How we’ll live on Mars” PICTURE OF BOOK FOLLOWED BY SLIDESHOW OF MARS’ ICE CAPS LAKSH (V.O) Mentions that you cannot live on your ship for exceedingly long, as the cosmic radiation and the solar radiation will penetrate the ship after a couple days. Jim Green, from the planetary 47

science department of NASA states that there are “regions of Mars that have an extensive network of underground lava tubes”. These tubes were home to Mars’ volcanoes once, but now have been drained from the lava and created a rune type structure. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, then explains that these underground lava tubes will protect you from radiation through their structure and protect you from temperature extremes. Robert Zubrin, the president of the Mars Society mentions that we will need to move onto the surface eventually, and explains his theory of inflatable transparent domes, for plants to grow from natural sunlight. Inside the base, we can also make devices that control gravity and temperature, but would still need to invent such a thing, in the future.

Pictures of the theory put on screen, credit: Natural Geographic The scientists also mention that these would have to be built and tested by robots before humans eventually land on mars, so technology would have to be developed.

So, now that we have covered all the points, it is time to finally reveal the answer. Looking at the information I have collected, it is not possible to live on Mars yet. We are close, and in the not-so-distant future we will be able to live on Mars, but in order to do that, we should have prebuilt bases as we cannot build the bases ourselves. This would require teams of robots, which would need time to build and program.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Mars Overview| NASA Solar System Exploration, Author – Not Listed https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/#:~:text=It’s%20red%20beca use%20of%20rusty,icy%20dirt%20and%20thin%20clouds (Published on September 17th, 2021) 2. Ten Facts About Mars| Universe Today, Author – Elizabeth Howell https://www.universetoday.com/14853/interesting-facts-about-planet-mars (Published on February 3rd, 2015) 3. Mars Atmosphere| Science Direct, Author – R.M. Haberle https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/martian-atmosphere (Published 2015) 4. How to Get to Mars| NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Author – Not Listed https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-how-do-you-get-tomars/#:~:text=If%20you%20want%20to%20send,at%20different%20speeds%20and%20dist ances.

(Published 29th April 2015) 5. 2020 Mars Perseverance Mission| NASA Mars, Author – Not Listed https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/moxie/ (Published 2020) 6. Nasa’s MOXIE Experiment| WIRED, Author – Eric Miller https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-moxie-experiment-is-making-oxygen-on-mars/ (Published 20th May 2021) 7. Water on Mars: Exploration and Evidence| Space.com, Author – Nola Taylor Tillman https://www.space.com/17048-water-on-mars.html (Published August 18th, 2018) 8. How to Grow Food on Mars| Houston Museum of Natural Science, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYZyiZf85D4&t=173s (Published 23rd July 2020) 9. How we’ll Live on Mars, Author – Stephen Petranek (Published 2nd July 2015) 10. How to Survive on Mars| Natural Geographic, Author – Many https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYZyiZf85D4&t=173s (Published 8th October 2016) 11. Video| Author – Kindel Media https://www.pexels.com/video/grasses-on-dry-land-7624427/ (Published April 23rd, 2021) 12. Videos Author – Pixabay 48

https://www.pexels.com/video/view-of-mars-856359/ https://www.pexels.com/video/planet-856857/ (Published May 29th, 2017) 13. Video| Author – Mattia (Creative Commons 3.0 Unported) https://www.videvo.net/video/mars-and-sun/2990/ (Publish date: Unknown) 14. Pictures of Phobos and Deimos| Author – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_(moon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deimos_(moon) 15. Videos| RODNAE Productions https://www.pexels.com/video/a-person-planting-a-plant-8474870/ https://www.pexels.com/video/an-astronaut-sitting-and-looking-around-8474590/ (Published June 25th, 2021) 16. Video |RODNAE Productions https://www.pexels.com/video/a-plant-beside-a-space-helmet-8475060/ (Published June 25th, 2021) 17. Video| NASA-Imagery https://pixabay.com/videos/rocket-launch-thrusters-nasa-236/ (Published August 10th, 2015) 18. Why 3 Spacecrafts for Mars must leave within Days or Miss their Chance| Jamie Carter https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/07/08/mars-alert-why-threespacecraft-must-leave-for-the-red-planet-within-days-or-miss-their-chance/ Picture by Mohammed Bin Rashed Space Center (MBRSC) (Published July 8th, 2020) 19. Image Time Out https://www.google.com/search?q=oxygen&rlz=1C1CHZN_enGB936GB936&sxsrf=A Pq-WBtsApja9-AN6nO6_TDTfy4YP1oMg:1644922250688&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2 ahUKEwjmq73zxIH2AhX4knIEHb0mDYMQ_AUoAXoECAMQAw&biw=1366&bih=625 &dpr=1#imgrc=1-RqQNxtH15_lM (Published: Unknown Date) 20. Image|Trout55, Getty Images https://www.google.com/search?q=water&rlz=1C1CHZN_enGB936GB936&sxsrf=AP qWBsDxxqoErI8reNOyTpJA6_rs_5NJQ:1644922327497&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa= X&ved=2ahUKEwjevY2YxYH2AhVRiFwKHfJsBoMQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1366& bih=625&dpr=1#imgrc=F41SpWW6c4ZSFM (Publish Date Unknown) 21. Image| Eugenegurkov, Shutterstock https://blog.frontiersin.org/2021/07/20/tomato-fruits-send-electrical-warnings-to-therest-of-the-plant-when-attacked-by-insects/ (Publish Date Unknown) 22. How to survive on Mars: Building Shelter| NATGEO https://www.natgeotv.com/za/shows/natgeo/mars/videos/bigthinker-buildingsheltermars (Publish Date Unknown) 23. Video | mdherren, Pixabay https://pixabay.com/videos/space-mars-planet-sky-science-39663/ (Published May 27th, 2020) 24. Amazon Thermometer |Amazon https://pixabay.com/videos/space-mars-planet-sky-science-39663/ 25. Nasa Logo| NASA 49

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-developer-for-rocket-to-retrievefirst-samples-from-mars 26. MOXIE Diagram |NASA https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/6490/mars-oxygen-isru-experiment-instrument-formars-2020-rover-is-moxie/?site=msl (Published July 21st, 2014) 27. 360 Degree View of Perseverance Rover | David Tully, Pexels https://www.pexels.com/video/360-degree-view-of-perseverance-rover-6156511/ (Published December 11th, 2020) 28. Moxie on Mars| MIT https://news.mit.edu/2021/aboard-nasa-perseverance-mars-rover-moxie-createsoxygen-0421 (Published April 21st, 2021) 29. Video| RPX Studios, Pixabay https://pixabay.com/videos/mars-running-space-sun-solar-system-15298/ (Published April 3rd, 2018) 30. Recurring Slope Linae| Eos https://eos.org/editor-highlights/after-the-dust-cleared-new-clue-on-mars-recurringslope-lineae (Published 8th April 2021) 31. Mars Ice Caps| NASA https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/pia13163.html 32. Mars Video | Nick Animations, Pixabay https://pixabay.com/videos/mars-planet-3d-red-planet-82990/ (Published July 21st, 2021) 33. Plant on Mars| Samuel Van Der Hoeven https://www.humanmars.net/2018/04/first-plant-on-mars-by-samuel-van-der.html (Published 2nd April 2018) 34. Humans Should Become Cave Dwellers on Mars| Forbes, Author – Ethan Seigal https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/08/24/yes-the-first-humans-onmars-should-consider-becoming-cave-dwellers/?sh=6bd59c2d5505 35. Mars Underground Caves| Live Science https://www.livescience.com/64318-mars-life-deep-biosphere.html (Published 16th December 2018)

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Why the Sahel Crisis Matters Alexander Wasserstein

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Part One: A brief background of the Sahel

The Sahel. It is often referred to as the coast of the Sahara; even the word ‘Sahel’ derives from the Arabic word for coast, or shore. Politically, the term ‘Sahel’ usually includes what are known as the G5 Sahel countries: Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad.

Geographically, the word can refer to parts of many more countries on the southern edge of the Sahara: Senegal, southern Algeria, northern Nigeria, the very north of Cameroon, central Sudan, and Eritrea.

The geographical Sahel is a very flat, semi-arid region, mostly sitting between 200 and 500 metres above sea level.

Topographical map of the Sahel (Source: researchgate.net)

Usually, more than 8 months of the year are dry with a three to four month rainy season in June, July and August. Droughts are a constant problem; some last years and during these times famine spreads rapidly as even the most drought resistant of crops, like the millet and sorghum most commonly found in the Sahel, struggle. Even during the times when droughts are not depriving the region of rain, a food crisis still rages on - and it’s getting worse.

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Vegetation in the Sahel region is typically semi-arid, consisting of scattered trees, bushes and grasses (https://www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36538648262, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/35898272123, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36569506061)

Politically, the situation is not any less fragile as terrorist groups plague the region with constant violence and governments struggle to control their own countries. France and the United States have troops in the region while China looks to instead fight a diplomatic war with the so-called Belt and Road initiative. There is a refugee crisis, with thousands of people fleeing their homes every day and, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2.7 million people have fled violence in the region (1).

The region is home to large numbers of different peoples and cultures as well - and while the majority of the people of the Sahel are Muslim, there are the Tuareg in the north, the Soninke in the west, the Malinke who are also mostly concentrated in western Mali and Senegal, the Songhai in the south, and the Fulani and Hausa in Niger and Nigeria (2). The sheer number of ethnic groups in the environment of the Sahel means that conflict between them is inevitable.

These issues perfectly fit the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a crisis - ‘a time of intense difficulty or danger’. The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel is one of the world’s biggest and most severe.

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Humanitarian Crisis

Political Crisis

Environmental Crisis

2.7m

18,000

80%

People have fled violence in the region. 1.8m people have been displaced. (1)

The number of peacekeeping personnel from MINUSMA. 260 have been killed. (6)

Of the region’s land is degraded. (12)

Part Two: Political Issues One of the biggest issues in the Sahel is the terrorist groups throughout the region, which is covered in violence; not only with groups such as Boko Haram and Al Qaeda, but with nomads, such as the Tuareg, fighting for the creation of their own state. The issue arose due to European colonialism. When Mali became independent from the French, it was demographically heavily divided, roughly by the Niger river, between the Tuareg nomads in the north and the wealthier south. The central Government provided (and still does) far more funding to the southern regions than the northern ones and oppressed the Tuareg people, and since then there have been multiple outbreaks of violence. While the situation has improved, there is still a heavy sense of division in the country which can give rise to violence.

The United Nations (UN) has described the situation in the Sahel as ‘extremely volatile’ (3), and the regular terrorist attacks support this statement. Although in 2013 the UN approved the creation of a 12,600 member peacekeeping force, known as MINUSMA, based in Mali, the terrorist attacks around the region did not cease. An example was the Kano attack in 2014, by Boko Haram, in which an attack on a mosque in the Nigerian city of Kano resulted in the deaths of 120 people (4). There have also been attacks on soldiers; an ambush on a military encampment near Lake Chad killed 91 people (5). In 2014, the situation had become so bad that 4,500 French troops arrived in the region, vital for the uranium mines in countries such as Niger. The G5 Sahel countries also put together a combined force of around 5,000 military personnel, police officers and border patrol officers. More recently, in 2020, after President Macron of France convened a summit to essentially ask for help, other European countries have begun to commit troops, including Denmark, Czechia, Estonia, Sweden, and the UK, who sent more than 400 military personnel. Additionally, the French sent in 600 more troops (6).

By November 2021, the peacekeeping mission MINUSMA had over 18,000 personnel, according to the UN, and 260 fatalities. This gives it one of the highest mortality rates of any UN peacekeeping mission (7).

All the terrorism and violence contributes to another big political issue not only for the Sahel but for Europe - migration. 2.7 million people have fled the violence in the Sahel. 1.8 million people have been internally displaced; in Burkina Faso it’s 1 in 20 people - 5% of their population. 845,000 people have fled across borders, 650,000 of whom in the last year alone 54

(8). This means that large city-sized populations are crossing international borders every year.

Most migration in the region is legal - most states in the Sahel region and in fact West Africa follow ‘free movement procedure’. However, for the migrants trying to reach the shores of Southern Europe, this migration is illegal after departure from Niger into Libya towards Africa’s north coast. This route is extremely dangerous and few can reach the north coast, let alone make it successfully to southern Europe. The incoming refugees matter not only for the domestic politics and foreign policies of countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, but also make a statement as to the dire situation in the Sahel; so dire that people are willing to risk their lives for just a chance at the life that hundreds of millions in Europe take for granted.

There are things being done, however, to help refugees in the Sahel. The UNHCR has commissioned multiple housing projects in countries such as Niger to aid internally displaced people as well as providing veterinary care for some of the herders’ animals. There is also increased help being provided in terms of food and medical care (more details in part 3).

Another factor is China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. China has planned a railway line from Dakar to Bamako. During his term as Senegal’s foreign minister, Sidiki Kaba said that “the Belt and Road Initiative…will bring opportunities for development of all countries in the world” (9). However, China has invested noticeably less in the western part of Africa than the eastern part. I interviewed Katherine Rowe, a Director at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, about this and her response was that ‘[China] invests in countries where it can get something out’ (10). She explained that while the Sahel countries do have some natural resources, they proportionally do not have a large amount and therefore China’s big projects have been in places like Djibouti, which has direct access to the ocean, unlike many Sahel countries.

Mrs Rowe also mentioned that being landlocked is a big disadvantage for many of the Sahel countries. Not only does it cut off a nation from fishing and other maritime resources, but it also prevents direct access to the world’s shipping lanes. This results in less profit from exports and makes it more difficult to develop.

For now, however, what is really necessary for millions of people across the Sahel is peace.

Peace in the Sahel would mean that rebuilding efforts can take off without the fear of terrorists ruining houses and killing or taking livestock. The Sahel needs peace.

Part Three The Environmental Crisis The Sahel has a distinctly irregular climate; the region is and has always been vulnerable to major droughts, the most recent one being in 2010. During this time, according to the Guardian, almost half the population of Niger at the time - over 7 million people - faced food insecurity (11). Thousands of animals also starved to death as people ate the fodder themselves. 2010 was not the first time; it is likely that these droughts will get more common as climate change gets worse and this could result in yet more difficulty for the region. For example, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley wrote that if things keep on going as they are, temperatures in the Sahel will be 3-5o Celsius warmer by 2050 (12). This also, therefore, means that extreme weather events will become more common. Moreover, it makes land degradation worse - the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that over 80% of the region’s land is degraded. However, a significant amount of this does come from deforestation (13).

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Even when droughts are less of an issue, there is a food crisis in the region. In 2018, more than 1.3 million children across the G5 Sahel countries and Senegal required treatment for severe acute malnutrition, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (14). Some children are left permanently disabled due to this disease. This is compounded by the fact that severe acute malnutrition makes children more vulnerable to other prevalent diseases in the area, especially water borne diseases such as malaria.

There is a difficulty in growing crops due to a constant race against the weather (Source: www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8655300226)

The most common crops grown in the Sahel depend on the part of the region. In the drier, northern part, millet and sorghum are more common as they are more drought resistant crops. In the slightly wetter, more southern part of the Sahel, maize is more common.

However, the difficulty here is not the crops themselves but the difficulty in growing them.

Contextnet quoted that farming in the Sahel is constantly a ‘race against the weather’ with crops such as Sorghum needing to be harvested as soon as possible to minimise bird damage (15). Additionally, seeds, often damaged by disease, must be kept over to be planted the next year due to little disposable income. Farms, often smaller than 1 hectare, sometimes barely produce enough to feed the owners and their families. Therefore, there is often very little product to sell, let alone make significant amounts of money from (16).

Part Four A Conclusion and Why it Matters

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So why does the Sahel crisis matter?

It matters because millions of people in the region are suffering from preventable diseases such as malnutrition every year. It matters because terrorists are destabilising countries and killing innocent people in the region every day; not only the Sahel countries but the countries around it. Côte d’Ivoire, for example, has a strong tourism industry, but that will break down if terrorist groups appear there. It also matters because these issues could cause a refugee crisis with many fleeing towards the north.

The crisis matters because it shows to what extent factors such as conflict and bad governance can limit a country’s development. Paul Collier in his book The Bottom Billion writes that there are four main poverty traps that prevent development: conflict, natural resources, being landlocked, and bad governance (17). All four of these factors apply in the Sahel, and they all link to each other - for example, bad governance leading to conflict. This therefore means that it will be extremely difficult for the Sahel to develop.

However, there is a bigger issue. The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel matters as it acts as a case study for the human effects of climate change which could affect the entire planet; hotter temperatures and more frequent droughts could become an issue in many countries across the world. These effects, as have been seen in the Sahel, could make it so much worse, especially for developing countries. The Sahel crisis matters because it proves just how much global warming matters.

Sources (1,8): Sahel Crisis: Aid, Statistics and News | USA for UNHCR (2): https://www.worldatlas.com/regions/sahel-of-africa.html 57

(3): Situation in West Africa, Sahel 'Extremely Volatile' as Terrorists Exploit Ethnic Animosities (4): Sahel - Wikipedia (5,6): The Power Of Geography by Tim Marshall (2021) (7): MINUSMA | United Nations Peacekeeping (9): China's "Belt and Road Initiative" Arrives in West Africa (10): Rowe, K (2022) Interview with Director at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office regarding the Sahel. Interview undertaken by Alexander Wasserstein on 19/01/2022.

(11): Millions face starvation in west Africa, warn aid agencies | Niger | The Guardian (12,13): The Sahel: One region, many crises | Africa Renewal (14): About Us | UNICEF USA (15,16): https://contextnet.com/farming-on-the-edge-smallholders-in-africas-sahel (17): The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier (2007) Images All images are licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0.

(0) Edited version of: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_sahel_2.svg (1) www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8655301546 (2) www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36538648262 (3) www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/35898272123 (4) www.flickr.com/photos/cifor/36569506061 (5) www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/7074065999 (6) www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8655300226 (7) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8328854107 (8) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/8329912494

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An investigation into computer vision applied to Rock-PaperScissors Isaac Winston Abstract: In this project, I trained a computer to play rock-paper-scissors through gesture recognition from a webcam feed. I did this by segmenting skin from the video, and then feeding the result through a classifier that decides whether the current image is rock, paper or scissors. The computer randomly chooses a gesture itself and decides the winner. Provisional results show that the images are classified with an accuracy of ~91%. In the future, I want to add a tactics engine to infer what the user is likely to pick next based on past actions. Adding a robotic arm to show the computer’s choice would make the game more interactive.

Introduction Rock-paper-scissors Rock-paper-scissors (RPS) is a two-player game, where players secretly choose rock, paper or scissors before revealing their choice using a hand gesture. Each of the items (rock, paper or scissors) beats one other specific item, loses to one other specific item, or draws if the opponent picks the same item. In this project, I aim to use computer vision to recognise the RPS hand gestures so that a computer can act as the second player.

Computer vision/AI Computer vision is a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. It aims to let computers process (“look at”) images/videos and interpret them for further processing such as decisionmaking. Here, I aim to train a computer to look at a video feed and decide if a person is playing rock, paper, or scissors.

If I imagine my brain playing RPS, I first look at an opponent, then separate the hand from the rest of the image, work out what gesture the hand is showing, and finally work out who won. On a computer, we will use a similar set of processes.

Neural Networks Neural networks are a type of Machine Learning, which is a type of AI technique as illustrated in Figure 1.

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Neural Networks

Figure 2: Terminology in the hierarchy of AI techniques16

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Image idea source: Neural Networks from Scratch (nnfs.io), by Harrison Kinsley and Daniel Kukiela P. 11, Published 2020

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Figure 3: The inner workings of an individual neuron in a neural network

They provide a way of using computers to solve problems that are hard to solve by writing rules out manually. They work by having lots of “neurons” (so-called because neural networks resemble aspects of the way the brain is structured) that are connected. Each neuron holds a value, which is calculated as the sum of all of its inputs multiplied by their associated weight. A bias is added to the value to give the neuron’s output (Figure 2). On top of these weights and biases, each neuron’s output gets transformed through an “activation function”. There are many types of activation function, for example Figure 3 shows sigmoid and linear activation functions.

Figure 4: Sigmoid and Linear activation functions Figure 4 shows my code (implemented in Python) for a forward pass of one “layer” of neurons (one vertical column in Figure 5). This code calculates the neurons’ output by multiplying the inputs by the weights and adding the biases.

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Figure 5: The code (implemented in python) for the forward and backward pass of a neural network layer The neurons are connected together in layers to form a neural network. Three main types of layers form a neural network: input layers, output layers and hidden layers. Typically, there is only one input and one output layer. Hidden layers are in the middle of the network and if there are more than two hidden layers, the neural network is considered ‘deep’. Figure 4 shows a simple neural network with one input layer, a single hidden layer and an output layer.

Input layer

Hidden layer

Output layer

Figure 6: A diagram of a simple, 3-layer neural network The weights and biases are tuned in a process called optimisation. In optimisation, input data for which the true result is known is used (“training data”), e.g. we show it a picture of “rock” and see if the network thought it was a “rock”, “paper” or “scissors”. We then measure the “loss” of the neural network, which is a metric of how close we are to the desired output. In the optimisation process, we aim to minimise loss, meaning the meaning the network is generating accurate predictions, and this is done by changing the weights and biases to move the performance of the neural network closer to the correct answer. Derivatives are used to see what a small change in the weights does to the output, and then we calculate the gradient over those small points. A piece of code (“the optimiser”) looks to see if the changes make the neural network behave more or less optimally, by comparing the target outputs to the current outputs that the neural network offers. The weights and biases are then changed accordingly. This process is repeated lots of times until the network behaves in a way that is optimised. If the optimisation process results in more accurate expected outcomes, then the neural network has trained successfully.

The backward pass code (Figure 3) is similar to the forward pass, but here we change the weights, so we can calculate the gradient.

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One of the other common problems in machine learning is ‘over-fitting’. This is where the neural network memorises the training data, so it thinks it is doing well, but in reality it is not – when it is tested on new data that it has not seen previously, it fails. The way I mitigate this problem is with batching (dividing up the data and running lots of versions of the neural network at once), and with dropout. Dropout randomly resets weights and biases, and according to this paper17, it works!

Methods: Overview In this project, when I was planning the overall workflow, I divided it into sub-problems: Camera reader → Skin segmentation → Classifier to classify masks → Game engine → Interface The first step is to obtain the data from the computer camera. I next thought it would be important to restrict the image to only the parts which are skin as this will remove any background that could otherwise distract or confuse the classification of the hand as showing “rock,” “paper” or “scissors.” Segmenting the image into skin and non-skin will give a “binary mask” (a special type of image where ones are skin and zeros are everything else) and this will be classified as “rock,” “paper” or “scissors.” This decision will be fed to a game engine which chooses what the computer plays (before seeing the camera result) and works out who won.

The camera reader (step 1 above) is relatively simple, as the Python plugin ‘opencv’ has a VideoCapture18 function that lets the computer access a webcam feed. The other problems have their own dedicated sections below.

Skin Segmentation

Figure 7: Colour Distribution of skin and non-skin pixels in RGB. Each pixel in any colour image can be considered as a combination of red (R), green (G) and blue (B) intensities.

Here they are plotted according to those three values and divided into skin (yellow) and nonskin (blue)

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Dropout: A Simple way to prevent Neural Networks from overfitting. [Accessed 17/1/22] (https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~rsalakhu/papers/srivastava14a.pdf) 18 Read, Write and Display a video using OpenCV. [Accesed 17/1/22] (https://learnopencv.com/read-write-anddisplay-a-video-using-opencv-cpp-python/)

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When looking at this problem, I first took pictures of hands showing the three poses and drew around the outline of the hand/arm to manually define which image pixels showed skin and which were non-skin. I then plotted Figure 6, which shows the colour distribution, in RGB (red-green-blue), of the skin and non-skin pixels. There is clearly some separation, so I trained a neural network using my IAW_AI neural network library, that flexibly implements neural networks in python. Using this, I tried to classify the skin versus non-skin pixels. After looking at the results, I decided to try the colour space LAB (Figure 7), which seems to separate skin from non-skin pixels better, hence I retrained the neural network on pixels that were in LAB colour space and could now get more reliable masks. Masks would sometimes have small holes in them, and small separate parts of the image were incorrectly classified as skin, so I added a post-processing algorithm to take the masks, fill the holes and then take the biggest object to be the hand. This cleaned up the masks considerably. This processing workflow is illustrated in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Colour distribution of skin and non-skin pixels in LAB colour space – it is easier to see the separation of skin and non-skin than when the image is represented in RGB

Figure 9: Skin segmentation processing workflow Another problem that needs to be worked on within skin segmentation is racial discrimination, such that I do not only train data on one skin colour. Avoiding this bias in the neural network would require including hands of a variety of skin colours in training data. This is a really big problem in computer science, particularly in machine learning, as otherwise we

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end up with unintentionally “racist” neural networks. LAB colour space may also have some further advantages for skin classification over RGB colour space19.

RPS Classification Once I had masks, I worked on teaching the computer to classify these masks. If the images were 100px by 100px (close to their original resolution), then the neural network would have to have 10,000px inputs. This is impractical as the computer needs to process lots of images in quick succession. Hence, I settled on resizing the images to 20px by 20px and found that I could still easily classify them manually, so I trained the neural network based on these.

To account for rotation, I programmed a function to directly find the ‘true centre’ of the image, and then calculate the orientation, so I could rotate an image to be pointing upright in one step (Figure 9).

Figure 10: Image mask auto-rotate function I programmed a function to crop the images to the hand (so scale would not be an issue), and then add blank space to the edges as needed (“pad” them) so that they were all 20px by 20px.

To train a neural network, a training dataset is needed. To create this, I first captured video footage of family members and me doing the RPS hand gestures. I then sampled every 20th frame from this footage, and manually marked it as rock, paper, or scissors. This created my training dataset.

When training the neural network classifiers, I also flipped all the images in my training data, so that it would accommodate for both left-handed and right-handed input images.

RPS Game

Figure 11: RPS if statements

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J. Montenegro et al, A comparative study of color spaces in skin-based face segmentation, 2013 10th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control (CCE), 2013, pp. 313-317

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The RPS game is simple. The computer chooses randomly from rock, paper or scissors and follows a group of “if” statements that decides who won (Figure 10). The user interface of the game consists of two interface panels, one that lets the user set left/right-handedness and data-display preferences, and the other panel is the game window. The game window shows a live webcam feed with a box for the user to keep their hand in, and the box colour shows the result (Figure 11).

Figure 12: RPS main interface Conclusion In conclusion, I think that this was a worthwhile project, and highlighted for me some critical issues in AI including human biases in training data. It also taught me a huge amount of array manipulation in python. In the future, I want to improve it in several ways: 1) adding a better interface 2) enhance the classification as it is incorrect around 10% of the time 3) make the classification more robust to challenging environments with imperfect lighting or a noisy background 4) make the computer’s choice non-random, e.g., based upon the players’ historical choices 5) make the game more interactive by having the computer express its choice with a robotic hand The skin segmentation ended up working really well, and I am very happy with it. In the future, I want to try bypassing this step, and see how well it performs just with one neural network doing all the processing. The RPS neural network could be improved by adding more layers and improving how it loads into RAM (during training I was experiencing memory leaks, so I started to make it more efficient but this could be implemented more professionally).

Bibliography: • Read, Write and Display a video using OpenCV. [Accessed 17/1/22] (https://learnopencv.com/read-write-and-display-a-video-using-opencv-cpp-python/) • Dropout: A Simple Way to Prevent Neural Networks from Overfitting. (2014), (15).

Retrieved 17/1/2022, from https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~rsalakhu/papers/srivastava14a.pdf.

• Harrison Kinsley & Daniel Kukieła Neural Networks from Scratch (NNFS) https://nnfs.io • J. Montenegro et al, A comparative study of color spaces in skin-based face segmentation, 2013 10th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control (CCE), 2013, pp. 313-317 65

Further resources used: • Useful introduction to the maths behind neural networks: But what is a neural network? | Chapter 1, Deep learning. (2017). From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk. • Introduction to calculus: The essence of calculus. (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUvTyaaNkzM • This series was very useful to explain computing problems, and it helped me understand lots of critical concepts in how to write fast, efficient code. It was also a great resorse to look information up in: Knuth, D. (1997). The art of computer programming. Addison-Wesley.

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