I'm so proud to be a part of The Triple Helix, so I'm going to post something I wrote up for a publications award at Cal for TTH last spring.
The Triple Helix is an international journal that explores the interplay between science, society, and law. The journal was founded only three years ago, but now is the largest student run non-profit organization in the U.S. We have 27 chapters at the most prestigious universities in the nation and around the world including new international chapters in Australia, England, and China. At the Berkeley campus, students are introduced to various areas of the journal including writing, editing, finance and production within the club as well as in our DeCal course. In addition to learning about current topics in science and public policies, students are able to voice their own ideas about the most pressing issues in society today.
The style of writing is both academic and approachable. While we consider the articles research pieces, its readability and accessibility is reminiscent of that of Times magazine or Scientific American. On top of the background research and professional interviews that we require each writer to make, students also formulate their own conjectures on each topic. Hence, the style is anything but mere objective reporting. The information is presented in an objective manner, and each perspective is counteracted with another perspective; however, the way that students outline the viewpoints that they present in their article as well as adopting an active, inquiring voice are crucial to the interdisciplinary nature of the journal itself. Not only do we want to introduce the most pressing scientific and economic issues in the international scope, but we also want to show that no issue is independent of others, and that they all in some way, shape, or form have social and/or global implications and influences. The point is not to convince the reader of a particular argument, but rather to demonstrate that current issues in science, technology and bioethics are multi-faceted. In such a way, we hope that readers of our journal will gain a heightened awareness of scientific influences in society as well as acquire a new medium and forum for discussion.
As far as production goes, the face of the journal has rapidly changed within one year; the journal is now uniform across all chapters with set styles and templates. The body text is in Palatino Linotype, a common serif font that is both readable and cooperative with image manipulations in Adobe InDesign. The production team understands that too many fonts on one page look busy and unprofessional; as a result, we categorized our font styles into body texts and title texts. Body text is consistently Palatino while titles are all in Century Gothic, which is also a font that is versatile in its regular and bold forms, adding a more modern look to the journal on top of the very traditional serif fonts. The various blacks and greys amongst the pages make the best use of a mainly black and white modular-styled journal. In addition, we try to organize the journal in its most assessable form, as it is a compilation of articles from around the world. Therefore, we divided the journal into three main components: the cover feature, the International Features (which are articles that the Editor-in-Chief from each chapter picks from the international pool), and the local articles that are specific to each school.
Overall, The Triple Helix allows students to be published on campus if not internationally across many chapters; but more importantly, we hope that through the writing process, they will gain new insights into science and its social contexts. As a self-producing publication, students not only learn from what other students write, but they also feel a sense of ownership to the journal and what we hope to achieve as an organization.
Syllabus The Triple Helix: a journal of science, society and law 1 unit (P/NP) The Triple Helix is an international journal that explores the interplay between science, society, and law. The journal was founded only three years ago, but now is the largest student run non-profit organization in the U.S. We have 27 chapters at the most prestigious universities in the nation and around the world including new international chapters in Australia, England, and China. Students are introduced to various areas of the journal including writing, editing, finance and production. In addition to learning about current topics in science and public policies, students are able to voice their own ideas about the most pressing issues in society today.
Course description: This course is designed for students to learn about how The Triple Helix is organized and produced every semester. It's comprised of two parts: all students will be required to attend the first three weeks, which will be a general introduction to each of the three sectors of The Triple Helix (writing/editing, layout design and marketing/finance strategies). After the 3 weeks, students will be able to decide which sector they would most like to participate in; students are of course welcome to join more than one sector. Students will then meet with their respective group to work on either research articles, layouts or marketing projects. During your meetings, you will be given a more extensive training process for your section. Meeting times will be 2 hours every 2-3 weeks, but outside preparation work will be necessary to complete the tasks during class. Students who do not wish to be part of the DeCal are welcome to apply to be part of the club; however, they will not receive any unit credit for their work.
Course learning objectives: Students will be introduced to all parts of the journal production process, but may choose which part they would like to participate in for the semester. Below are short descriptions for how each section will be organized and specific learning objectives for each:
Writing/editing: Students will participate in workshop type activities to help them develop their writing and editing skills. Additionally, they will be given exercises to develop their ideas about a specific topic of their choice that relates to science in society. Students in this sector can choose to be either writers or editors. Writers will be responsible for producing one well-researched article about a given topic and will revise the article throughout the semester. Writing and research will take place outside of class; writers will spend the majority of class time revising. Editors will be assigned a minimum of two writers whom they will work with in revising articles throughout the semester (a minimum of four rounds of revision will take place). Editors should review articles and formulate comments outside of class time, so that class time can be used for discussion of those comments with the writers and assisting the writers with revisions.
Production: Students will learn the basics of publication design and will be trained to know how to use both Adobe InDesign and Photoshop. They will also learn how to take the most advantage of black and white layouts as well as match appropriate graphics to the specific articles. Students will work in small groups in various exercises that will familiarize them with the programs and develop an eye for good modular design and critique their own work. Class time will be mostly dedicated toward laying out the pages
General: http://www.splc.org/ http://thetriplehelix.org Evaluation procedures: Students will be evaluated based on attendance and completion of their assignments as well as meeting the appropriate deadlines for writing or production. All students will be permitted TWO excused absences, and all unexcused absences will be affect your final grade in the class. You are also expected to make all the edits and corrections to your assignments; failure to do so will result in a No Pass in the course.
Facts that will draw people's attention and important points to help people understand the virus a little bit better.
What are the key differences among hepatitis A, B, and C?
“Hepatitis” refers to any disease that results in inflammation of the liver, regardless of how that disease is contracted.
Hepatitis A is an acute infection that is transmitted through contaminated food and water. Infection can be prevented by receiving the hepatitis A vaccine.
Hepatitis B can be both an acute and chronic infection. It is transmitted through contaminated blood. Infection can be prevented by receiving the hepatitis B vaccine.
Hepatitis C can be both an acute and chronic infection that is transmitted through contaminated blood. No effective vaccine is available at this time.
Age of Infection
Percentage of Infected Patients that become Carriers of Chronic HBV (%)
0-1
90
1-5
60
Adults
10
What are some common myths and misconceptions about Hepatitis B?
Hepatitis B is NOT transmitted through food/water.
Hepatitis B is NOT transmitted through casual contact such as hugging or shaking hands.
Hepatitis B is NOT transmitted through kissing, sneezing or coughing.
Hepatitis B is NOT transmitted through breastfeeding.
Some questions to ask when interviewing for a new officer!
Name:
Position and Semester:
Questions:
1.Why are you interested in this position?
2.What do you think this position entails? How do you plan to add to that? (Really see if they are a good fit, are you qualified)
3.What skills/knowledge/past experiences have helped you do this (Maybe interest in medicine, portfolio of webpage screenshots, etc.; Again, are they qualified)
4.Let's say that you are working on a event, but one of your volunteers shows up late to their post, how do you handle the situation? An important piece of news just came out about Hep B, what do you do with that?
5.What extracurricular activities will you be involved with for the upcoming year?
6.How much time do you expect to be spending on Team HBV?
7.It is now midterm season, but an event is about to happen: do you finish the assignments you have already agreed to or do you skip out and study? (Phrase it in a way which isn't leading so you can see their real response. And if nothing else, at least we can say, well .. you promised you would stick with it.)
8.What do you do for fun?
9.What 3 words do you feel describe you best and why?
I'm looking at all the categories for blogs, and I'm really running out of ideas. A lot of us are posting stuff about how to run our respective chapters, the different strategies we can take up, and the different ways we can fundraise. But I also see "lives impacted story".
I don't have one yet, and I really want to post one. There is so much planning and what we could do, but I'm so anxious too to reach the end, to see the impact and see the results.
This is a spiel about the other organization I'm very active in. It's called The Triple Helix, or Science in Society Review. It's a completely student-run non-profit organization dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of science, society and law. We started off a few years ago as an undergraduate publication, but it has now expanded into science policy and recently, e-publishing.
Check out our website if you want more info: http://thetriplehelix.org/
Similar to Team HBV, The Triple Helix has multiple chapters in the U.S., but we also have some international chapters including Cambridge, NUS and Melbourne to name some of our more active chapters. I think we're going to try to start some in China and South Africa, and I'm really excited :)
Currently, I'm the Executive Director of Internal Affairs, meaning that I faciliate how chapters communicate with the executive board. Over the summer, the CEO and I worked on our Google Site (which was why I was really excited when Team HBV also launched one at the conference), which is essentially a resource site for our chapter leaders.
Right now I'm planning our 3rd annual conference which will be held in San Diego in Feb.! Very close to home for me, which is great because I feel like I can connect more with the UCSD chapter leaders. Our conference will be held concurrently with the annual AAAS Conference. AAAS has been our biggest sponsor and they've been very kind of host a poster session for just Triple Helix members. I'm proud to say that Berkeley is sending ~12 writers to present their posters in SD :D
I didn't make an organization page for Triple Helix, because it's not completely service-based although we are working on outreach in some of the better established chapters. I think of us as more of an integration center, allowing students a forum early on in their academic careers to place research science, global issues and legal studies in context of society as well as being able to communicate those ideas with their peers and professionals in those fields.
I didn't have much time this year, but maybe next year I'll submit a poster for Hepatitus B :) wish me luck for my conference! ahhh
I just find it interesting that the hisory she plays on during her performance couldn't really be repeated in an American version is someone tried. I wonder what part of the history of this country that would make people cry in the audience like that, and really make the natives feel a sense of loss and suffering. It's great, no one should feel that way, and there's only a 200+ years of history to work with. But just a thought... history as told by the winners at its best. There's no suffering when it is not a tale of the ethnic minorities or the immigrants who suffered the consequences of moving to a new land.
An excerpt from this essay I wrote for a scholarship - I don't know how I did in that, but doesn't matter I kind of concocted this last minute... might sound a rant, but it's somewhat relevant for those of us who are looking to go into the medical field in the next couple of years:
The question is about how medical software can change the future:
The purpose of medical software is not to replace the need for human physicians but to aid in the efficiency and accuracy of their work. Efficiency is essential in speedy but also accurate patient care, and in that sense, medical software cuts time for fast analysis, and the time required determining if certain patients need to undergo surgery. In addition, data processing software can also compile a database of the patient’s history and success probabilities of various treatments, their relative efficacies, and their chances of survival.
Emerging medical technology and software in the future can greatly facilitate medical procedures in the least invasive method possible: they allow the physicians to do what they do best using less invasive ways of analysis. Technology such as fMRI scans uses biochemical trackers as a way of depicting body scans to diagnose without any chemical or procedural side effects. The most important improvement from past medical practices that could only rely on external tests to surmise a patient’s problem is the ability of modern medical software to produce an internal visualization of the same disease or perhaps, illuminate a less conspicuous illness that is at the core of the patient’s symptoms.
The future of medical software lie in the ability to code electrical and chemical signals to a topographical map that can be visualized, thus turning illnesses that are invisible to the naked eye, such as internal injuries or cellular dysfunctions, into images or graphics that can be seen on a screen and explored by the naked eye. In addition, those electoral and chemical signals measured temporally can then be turned into an analysis of a cause-and-effect relationship that the physician can quickly diagnose the appropriate treatment.
*example about trigeminal neuralgia*
Medical software is there to have a computational basis of trust between patient and doctor; in other words, the patients can be more confident of their treatment through the doctors’ knowledge of using numbers and images to correctly diagnose them and offer a precise solution to whatever illness the patients may have...... *I go on with other examples of technology and algorithms*
In the end, the ethics of the use of technology, especially that of medical software, rests on the extent to which physicians want and need to rely on machinery to do their jobs. If used appropriately in the context of increasing the efficiency and decreasing the invasiveness of surgery, the physicians and nurses will be left with the necessary human job, and that is to interact with the patients. It is important to note that efficiency does not equal compensation or replacement. Physicians in the future are thrust with even more responsibility to not only acquire the knowledge of how the human body works, but also decide the most appropriate use of the technology around them. However, they should be even more aware of the way they can offer the personal connection with their patients and with other medical personnel. Being both efficient and economical in today’s world is the key to survival and success. Now more than ever is the time for the investment in technology that will save costs in the long-run as well as narrow the medical field through the globalization of information.
This is it, the final stretch to the EV Thanksgiving points! I'm guilty of tallying up all the Berkeley points and sending it to our officers... hopefully we're all motivated to get more points in the next couple of days!
In terms of fundraising, Melissa said that we got about $130 from our Pho Me Now fundraiser! Which is really good for 3 days and a percentage of their orders for those nights :) I'm really hyped up for our basketball tournament, and we'll keep updating in the future!
The students and staff at UC Berkeley is currently having a 3-day protest against the proposed 32% tuition increase effective as soon as next semester. I was walking down Bancroft toward Shattuck, the main street of downtown Berkeley where people catch late-night movies or explore the many restaurants offered in its buzzing night life. But today, I was walking down toward Shattuck to go to my English class, which got moved off-campus in solidarity but also in keeping with our schedule. Imagine taking "Bible as Literature" and listening to lecture in a basement club/lounge... I thought it was pretty funny/ironic.
Anyway, I thought about the tuition increase and its implications on student groups on campus, and really while I have my reservations about the true effectiveness of having strikes and protests ON-CAMPUS (instead of actually going go the Regents office), I have to say I've never been so proud of my school. Yes, people protest for the sake of protest and may I say, excuse to not go to class? But still, a good amount care, because yes, we chose to attend a public university. We're receiving top-notch education for 1/4 of the price for in-state students and our campus has one of the most dynamic student life environments in the nation (present case included).
So where does this leave our little club among a big sea of hungry fishies? We power on. Because the last thing our teachers, our peers, our supporters would want is for the existing student life to die off because of some demanding bureaucrats. At the same time, I think it's important to recognize that we are limited, no matter how hard we try as full-time students to constantly look for more and more outside resources. We are trying very hard (see all the fundraising stuff we wrote up on), but time and money are great barriers in our direction to move forward. We can't afford to pay out of pocket for everything and we shouldn't have to. And yes, even with our fee increase we still pay less than most private universities. But consider the resources that are also cut back for us, and the extra costs that we have to pay even more now that are not included in our tuition. In the end, it comes down to personal choice, and the difference between us and private university students is that we didn't choose this, and we couldn't. That sense of powerlessness distinguishes our situation as more than just numbers. But it makes us more aware and we grow from that.
Here are some things I learned from Derek, our Marketing adviser, now part of the Team HBV advisory board. There are some tips from him as well as personal experience from the 2 semesters I've been involved with Team HBV.
1. Branding - It's really important to not only market the organization to other student groups and/or sponsors, but to be consistent with the way you market to others. For example, the Team HBV collegiate chapters now all have the same logo design, along with the same name "Team HBV at ___ (chapter name)" This ensures marketing consistency, and creates a bigger name for us in the long run since sponsors/organizations recognize that we are local chapters of a larger, national organization and see a sense of unity. Some sponsors may want to fund multiple chapters if they are big enough, and they will know that their sponsorship benefit chapters of the same organization and cause.
2. Be Concise - The bottom line to marketing to multiple sponsors or even pitching to potential members and other campus organizations is to not overwhelm them with a load of information. Officers and members alike should be ready with an elevator pitch (a 30 second spiel about Team HBV), and things to say to different audiences. One thing I got out of an exercise we did at the Conference was the various target audiences members may have. So for professors, you want to say that you are a student organization on campus aiming to create awareness and educational outreach. For friends, you want to tell them maybe a quick fact (leading cause of liver cancer, 1/4 Asians infected die if not treated, much more proliferant around the world than HIV, silent killer, etc.) and let them know how they can be involved.
This is all part of the training the executive board of each chapter should consider for their new members and veteran members in order to ensure that the way we describe the goals of the club and organization is, once again, consistent no matter what kind of a situation they are placed in.
3. Accessibility - In lieu with consistency and being concise about the way we market Team HBV, it's also important to provide the necessary information and outside resources when people ask for them. Sponsors want a written pamphlet/document that outlines the goals of our club and what we do so that they can keep a record of the organizations they choose to sponsor. In terms of recruitment, having brochures on-hand not only gives people something to walk away with but also legitimize our overall cause, letting them know that this is a national and international effort.
For Team HBV at Berkeley, I made a one-pager flyer that basically states our name, our mission statement (in one sentence: this can be your general spiel to the public), what we do on campus (list of our major events) and why we care (list of the most impacted, but proven, facts of the effects and consequences of Hep B)
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This is all for now. I'll update it more as more thoughts come to me :)
A rough transcript of what we talked about today regarding Hep B Day at UC Berkeley during this past May. The idea here is really to share this simple activity we tried out on our campus that was both interactive and educational. Rebecca or David can comment if I made any major mistakes:
History:
Team HBV National wanted all of the Team HBV collegiate chapters to hold an event celebrating World Hepatitis Day, so Team HBV at UC Berkeley decided to hold a Hepatitis B Day on campus. However, we had a couple of problems: World Hepatitis Day was during our summer vacation, we had to operate on a low cost budget as there was very little money in our account, and we needed a fresh idea that would show the impact of Hepatitis B Day on the campus.
Planning/Logistics:
For our Hepatitis B Day, we decided to hold the event a little earlier. However, this meant that Hepatitis B Day would be right before our finals and we knew that students would not be interested in an event that required a lot of their time. Therefore, our Hep B Day was held on the last day of instruction in May.
Method:
For an entire day, we tabled on Upper Sproul, the main pedestrian walkway on campus and asked people to write on our jade boards, what were their thoughts on Hepatitis B. There was no cost for tabling on Upper Sproul, which helped us keep our costs low. We felt that this method would be the most effective and efficient means of finding out how much students actually knew about Hepatitis B while only asking other students for no more than a couple of minutes of their time and requiring little resources on our part other than poster board and markers. During this event, we emphasized writing whatever they wanted to write about Hepatitis B on the board and tried not to give them any ideas on what to write. However, after they wrote something on the board, we gave them some quick facts on Hepatitis B such as how Hepatitis B is an endemic disease and often times, how many are unaware that they have the disease. If they had any questions, we would elaborate further.
Evaluation:
This event helped demonstrate that little is known about Hepatitis B on the Berkeley campus other than knowledge of the 3 necessary vaccination shots for admission into UC Berkeley. Many of the comments on our board were on general issues such as get tested, be safe, it is a disease and is horrible to have. However, there was a comment that really stood out in a meaningful way. A student wrote about how it is important to not see the disease as a label for a person, for a group, or for an ethnicity. We thought this was important because while most people may recognize the physical effects of the virus, we often forget the potential social stigmas that come with living with Hepatitus B.
Conclusion:
These boards really helped show us as a chapter that our work at UC Berkeley is far from finished. There are many people on the Cal campus that we can still educate and in our path to teach others, save lives in the process.
Overall, this event was very successful. It helped us test the knowledge of the Berkeley campus and come out with a result. It helped us as a chapter develop our communication skills by coaching members to garner audience participation as they were presenting Hepatitis B information. And we were able to keep this event meaningful, utilize a creative idea that was low cost and required little commitment of our audience.
Improvements and replication in the future:
In the future, some improvements may include increasing the number of boards for people to sign by going to different areas on campus to compare people's responses, standardizing our message in how we ask people to sign our boards and the information we provide when education them about hepatitus B, as well as providing some sort of reward as in incentive for people to sign our boards. We noticed during our event that some people dodged around our gigantic boards, and it's clear that they were in a rush or didn’t feel like signing our boards. So in the future we can attract offer a small favor such as a lollipop or tattoo or bracelet in return for signing the board.
Before holding an event like this, have a meeting to determine volunteer shifts, locations and the unified message that your team will tell its audience. Emphasize that not everyone will be willing to stop to sign the board, but they should not be discouraged and still be enthusiastic and mingle with the fellow pedestrians instead of just hanging out at the table.
This event would be very easy to replicate since it only requires poster boards, markers, enthusiastic volunteers and various walkways on campus that receive a lot of pedestrian traffic.We think that this event was successful in that it was interactive and allowed us to evaluate our own outreach success by seeing what people know about Hep B.
Coming to the conference really does do strange things to my sleeping pattern, not that it was particularly regular to begin with... but anyway, I realize that this is probably one of a million blogs having been posted or are being posted (hello fellow nocturnals) about the conference... so I'm going to deviate from the norm and save you the summary for Day 2 of the conference. My reflection is based off of a real "late night" conversation I had with some of the China chapter representatives. I couldn't resist to practice my 3rd grade level mandarin again, this time with Lei Chuang, mr. chinese celebrity and performance artist!
Sitting in the Stanford Park Hotel lobby, lounging in the rustic perfection of probably the most perfect hotel couches I've seen, we inevitably recognized the imperfections of our communication. Lei Chuang asked me if his presentation earlier today was "understandable" or did I understand because I was looking at the slides. In all honesty, I told him that it was probably a little of both. You can't really separate a man from his words even if it is on powerpoint. Just from my family background and the many lectures from very fresh off the boat professors at Cal (trying to teach organic chemistry lab nonetheless), I really couldn't say much more than "I got it. I got what you mean" and hoping that he'll believe me. Comprehension is a matter of perception anyway and maybe it's better off that we can appreciate him simply for his art if not anything else.
Lei Chuang and I share uncanningly parallel connections. He was an undergraduate from the same institution as both my parents, and his Masters program now in Shanghai mirrored my family's move years ago from my small home town to the big bad metropolitan city. Yet I think besides passing comments about his philosophy on performance arts, our obligatory "so where are you from... when did you move... what's that word in chinese...?", and our love for asian card games, we both know that to carry on a conversation about politics, philosophy or even our detailed goals and visions for Team HBV is like finding needles in a haystack... the exact words that we are thinking of in our heads are lost in a conglomeration of messy circumlocutions, some awkward pauses and our mutual chinglish.
So we didn't even go there. What did we talk about for 2 hours with some other fellow conference members?
床前明月光，疑是地上霜。举头望明月，低头思故乡 - an old poem by Li Bai........... I don't remember how we got on the subject. Nevermind, moving on.
We talked about the differences between chinese and american schools. Whereas he had the courage to e-mail the chancellor at his university and post in the university forum that the chancellor would be rude not to give him a response, I think of all the protests and tree dwellers we have at Berkeley every week. The level of public participation and what we consider "bold" is starkly contrasted by the mere nature of our culture and the political structures in both countries. Whereas a student would not even consider holding a performance art in Beijing (close to government headquarters), we have so many demonstrations that one newscaster can spend a lifetime covering such events, running around Sproul. One performance art act could make a huge impact on a community because such audacity is almost impossible to find in a culture where strict abidance to rules and social propriety is of utmost importance. On the other hand, I'm just jaded (no pun intended) by weird people wearing god-knows-what costumes everyday, which I assume have some symbolic significance that my simple mind can't bend around. Maybe I'm just not hippie enough for it.
Lei Chuang joked that people told him he should not have been born in China for all the visions he has for bold public performances. But maybe that's his place to have his impact. As limited as his freedom may be across the Pacific, I was once again humbled by how much I take the U.S. constitution for granted. Since when did rights become a privilege I don't know, but it added to our barrier toward fully understanding each other's positions.
My conclusion for the night: I'm a cultural hybrid by birth and circumstances I'm not consciously aware of till recently. My counterparts from China are educational hybrids seeking to consciously change their circumstances. They say that opposites attract, but in this case, I think the opposing forces are within us, and that charged energy (I'm so full of puns today) can be channeled toward something global. I guess that's why we're here.
It's 4:41PM PST, and we've been at the conference for almost 8 hrs at the Stanford campus. I'm practicing multi-tasking by blogging this update (for once in a while) and listening to a very entertaining presentation by Lei Chuang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, part of the China HBV group :)
Some revelations from today that will continue as the thoughts come to me:
1. I have officially connected with the very core of my roots which is partly refreshing, partly inspiring and just simply hilarious (in that I never expected to speak so much mandarin in one sitting)
2. It's great to see the different events from different schools; I especially took detailed notes on UPenn's basketball tournament since that's something our chapter is hosting in about a month.
3. Raccoons can climb trees by day (highlight of lunch in a little outside courtyard!)
4. Volunteering and educating for the better good really is a universal goal and even across various language barriers, innovation is ubiquitous and allows for interactive feedback from people achieving the same goals (albiet via some translations and cultural barriers).
