 Illustration by Tiffany Qian By Thilina Balasooriya
For centuries, philosophers have contended that one fundamentally unique quality of humans is their innate creativity. Often paired with intelligence, natural artistry—the ability to conjure emotional and imaginative ideas, often from thin air—is often said to distinctively define humankind. For instance, Socrates believed that poets were divinely inspired, while Imannuel Kant asserted that the imagination and genius of artists followed no rules. However, Aristotle had a different theory; he believed that the poet was rational and goal-oriented in his execution, using almost algorithmic precision to evoke the desired response from the audience. This idea, though unpopular at the time, is taking new meaning in the present-day. A new dilemma is emerging concerning this seemingly inherent human characteristic: can artificial intelligence be creative?
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  Illustrations by Nina Kornfeld By Ramya Subramanian Artificial intelligence permeates most aspects of our lives. The device you're reading this article on probably uses some level of artificial intelligence. Whether using google maps to navigate, scrolling through TikTok, accessing gmail, or watching the “recommended section” on Netflix, these programs require AI to create an optimal experience for the user. But, what exactly is AI and how does it improve experiences for us?
By Jianna Martinez
For many people with depression, standard antidepressants have become the only viable treatment option. However, antidepressants are not always effective at treating depression, especially in the long-term. A study by Northwestern University reported that more than half of people on antidepressants, here being SSRI’S, don’t get the relief they need, with 33% experiencing a return of depressive symptoms after taking this medication for a long time. The study highlighted that developers of standard depressants believed that depression is caused by stress or trauma. Therefore, the medication was developed to target aspects of the brain affected by stress or trauma instead of targeting the underlying source of depression among neurons.
Illustration by Summer Renck By María Valerio Roa
Have you ever watched a movie and felt super scared? Maybe even crying, shivering, and wanting to pee every time you see Coraline’s mom? Wait – I might have gotten a bit too personal there. Putting this out there before even starting: TMI Warning!
Written By Isabela Téllez
Edited By Nicholas Tan You walk down Broadway on a Fall afternoon, thinking about the Halloween costume you will choose this year. Will you be a Winx Club fairy, a sexy cowboy, or one of those giant inflatable dinosaurs? You finally decide on a sexy cowboy… then you spot a black cat staring at you as you turn the street corner. You suddenly start overthinking your costume choice. Is this a bad omen? It can’t be a coincidence that you saw a black cat at the same time that you chose the costume. Maybe sexy cowboys are bad luck. You decide to go with Winx Club’s Bloom instead.  Illustrated by Sreoshi Sarkar By Eleanor Lin There are 7,000 languages spoken around the world, each one unique in the ways it encodes meaning. Translation is thus a challenging task for humans and machines alike. How do you find the right words and grammatical constructs to accurately transfer the sense of a message in the original language to a different one?  By Aparna Krishnan According to the UK’s Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), more than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines before 2023, if at all.
 Illustrated by Yi Qu By Sydney Wells Algae: it’s green, slimy, and possibly the future of food. The waterborne microorganisms present high potential for being cultivated as one of the main sources of protein in the human diet; it’s more environmentally sustainable than and has similar nutritional value as currently existing protein sources. It is highly flexible and can be incorporated into foods in many different ways, such as powders or nutritional bars, which only adds to its potential.
 Illustrated by Megan Zou By Jenna Everard
Though the idea of a cryptocurrency had been proposed before, the concept first gained mass attention in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the unknown founder(s) of Bitcoin, published their paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System.”  By Taylor Briggs
From waking up to an alarm in the morning to making it through another full day of school or work, we rely on the consistency of time. Every hour, minute, and second passes just the same, no matter what, right? When the physics of the subject is considered, however, this proposition breaks down entirely, and we find that time is not constant. |
