’EXTENDED ESSAY’ PRESENTATIONS II (Thu, June 15, 13:40 – 15:05): WARM-UP TEXTS

Sandro Compagnoni, Electro-mobility of different types of batteries: A ComparisonElectro mobility

Transportation today accounts for close to 19% of the world’s energy consumption. Energy demand for transportation is expected to rise substantially as a growing middle class in emerging economies demands greater access to transportation. But how will such demand be addressed in the years ahead?The MIT Energy Initiative has organized a multi-disciplinary team from across MIT to examine how the complex interactions between advanced drivetrain options, alternative fuels, refueling infrastructure, consumer choice, vehicle automation, public transit options, mobility-as-a-service business models and government policy will shape the future for mobility.

This study is currently underway with the support of industry stakeholders interested in these evolving dynamics. We are considering many drivetrains, conventional and alternatives fuels, new mobility business models, various policy types, and how people will behave in response to these options. To support this analysis, we are modeling the system at various levels of granularity. At the highest level, we have a global model to analysis economics and policy across all regions of the world. At the most detailed level, we have an agent-based model for urban areas to examine how millions of people will decide to travel in response to price signals and other government policies.

This integrated analysis covers the following major subtopics which are described in greater detail bythe project’s principal investigators.

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Yelena Cuenet, Creating a Van Gogh-Style PictureMissing

Chiara Fanchini, Creating a Vegan CookbookWelcome to vegan Switzerland!Eating outAlthough vegan gastronomy is not very established in Switzerland yet, restaurants will generally try to accommodate you. If, however, you don’t inform yourself about vegan options in advance, you could end up with a mere salad and steamed vegetables. To make your experience eating out as enjoyable as possible, try to plan ahead.Check out our own selection of worthwhile restaurants across the country that offer vegan food. Of course HappyCow.net is also a great reference. (Their mobile app is quite useful too.)Generally speaking, going out to eat vegan is easiest in the cities of Bern, Basel, Zurich and Rapperswil. There you’ll find the most vegan-friendly options and restaurant chains like Tibits, Hiltl, Hitzberger and Italian Molino that have vegan labels on their food items. At Starbucks there’s always a soymilk option for a coffee.

Especially in urban areas many people understand and speak some English, but in case you need help to communicate in any of the country’s three main languages (German, French and Italian), we recommend the vegan passport.Shopping for food

Switzerland’s two largest shopping store chains are called Coop and Migros. They offer lots of vegan food staples you can buy to prepare at home, but not many ready-to-eat vegan meals (except simple things like salads, breads and a veggie pastes). As of 2013 Coop has launched a vegetarian ready-meal product line called Karma, which includes quite a few vegan options such as sandwiches, salads and ready-meals.

In most cities and towns you will also find a “Reformhaus” or a “Bioladen” that offers mainly organic food. These smaller stores usually have a decent selection of vegan products like tofu, fake meats, soy yoghurts and sometimes even sandwiches and cookies and the staff will gladly assist you with any questions you might have regarding vegan products or resources.Got the munchies?Many of the fast-food stops have “Falafel” on their Menu. As the vendors often speak better English than German, just ask them about the ingredients and the sauce.

A type of bread sold by street vendors called “Bürli” (usually served with a bratwurst) as well as white bread typically served with a salad in restaurants are usually vegan. So are the large pretzels (if they’re without filling) from street vendor chain Brezelkönig, which can be found in or around many of the larger train stations.Many shops and even snack vending machines sell potato chips of the brand Zweifel. The varieties “Paprika” (orange packaging) and “Natur” (red packaging) are vegan and very readily available.In the pizzerias it is advisable to ask concerning the dough which may (rarely) contain milk or eggs.The land of vegan chocolate & cheeseDark chocolate is often vegan (but always check to make sure) and many of them are even organic and fairtrade. The largest selection of vegan, organic and fair trade chocolate is found in an health food store like a “Reformhaus” or a “Bioladen”.

Switzerland is known throughout the world for its (non-vegan) dairy and cheese. But there’s also some amazing Swiss vegan cheese, which is available in some health food stores and always available in online shops. Check out the Swiss cheese manufacturer Vegusto for more information or order online from Larada.MeetupsCheck out our event calendar to see if there’s a local meetup taking place in your area (a so-called vegan “Stammtisch” usually happens once a month).On Facebook you can also find a bunch of regional vegan groups with members that will gladly give you information and advice for travelling in that particular area of the country.We hope you will enjoy your visit to Switzerland and we assure you that the Swiss Vegan Society will continuously make an effort to increase the available vegan options in the near future 🙂Source: https://vegan.ch/unsere-ziele/welcome-to-vegan-switzerland/

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Nadja Fuchs, Biofilms – increasing the activity of bacteria with sugar

The combination of sugar with antibiotics may hold hope for treatment of persistent bacterial infections

Researchers at Boston University (MA, USA) have found a low-cost and effec- tive way of improving treatment for chronic bacterial infections, includ- ing Staphylococcus and infections of the urinary tract, using sugar. It was discovered that the compound dra- matically improves the effectiveness of first-line antibiotics.

Some subpopulations of bacteria are capable of surviving antibiotic treatment in chronic and recurrent infections and are known as ‘persisters’. They enter a metabolic hibernation and essentially shut down completely, enabling them to survive antibiotic treatment. Therefore, a patient can often think they have recovered after intensive antibiotic treat- ment, but a few weeks or months later these persisters will reanimate, often in a more aggressive form than in the initial infection, causing the patient to relapse.

Notes:

In order to effectively combat infec- tious diseases, this persistence of bacteria needs to be overcome to prevent infec- tions lasting for extremely long periods of time and to eliminate the possibility of the infection spreading to the kidneys and other organs.

Lead author of the research, James Collins, and colleagues have discovered that these persisters can be stimulated into an active state using sugar combined with an antibiotic, which renders them just as vulnerable to the antibiotic treatments as the rest of the community who were unable to switch off, resulting in their death. The team applied this combination of sugar and antibiotics to the treatment of Escherichia coli infection in the urinary tract and found that 99.9% of the bacteria were killed in 2 h, compared with no effect when sugar was not included in the treatment. The combination treatment was also as effective in Staphylococcus aureus infections.

People who suffer from persistent, ongoing infections may now potentially have a hope that the combination of sugar with their antibiotic treatment may perma- nently cure them. In addition, speeding up and increasing the efficacy of the treatments will reduce healthcare costs substantially.

The researchers are going to investigate the potential use of combining sugar with tuberculosis treatments, to improve effi- cacy. When asked to comment on the work for Future Microbiology, Collins said, “Our work establishes an inexpensive metabo- lite-based method for eradicating persis- tent bacterial infections. We are hopeful this approach will be relevant to a wide range of troublesome infections, including persistent tuberculosis.”Sources: ScienceDaily: www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/2011/05/110511134215.htm; Allison KR, Brynildsen MP, Collins JJ. Metabolite-enabled erad- ication of bacterial persisters by aminoglycosides. Nature 473, 216–220 (201

Combining sugar with antibiotics may increase the efficacy of drug treatments for persistent bacterial infections, whilst considerably cutting healthcare costs.

1Fabio Hehli, Testing the effectiveness of adhesives used for medical purposes

How forces make things stick

Knowing what something is called is a far cry from knowing how it works. That was a lesson the Nobel-Prize- winning American physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) often used to teach. So let's forget all about

adhesives, acetates, and acrylates and try to figure out why one thing will stick to another. If you want a short answer, the word is "forces."

Adhesive and cohesive forces in glues

What does all this have to do with adhesives? Adhesive and cohesive forces are also at work in glues. Let's say you want to stick together two bits of wood, A and B, with an adhesive called C. You need three different forces here: adhesive forces to hold A to C, adhesive forces to stick C to B, and cohesive forces to hold C together as well. The first two are pretty obvious: the glue has to stick to each of the materials you want to hold together. But the glue also has to stick to itself! If that's not obvious, think about sticking a training shoe to the ceiling. The glue clearly has to stick both to the training shoe and to the ceiling. But if the glue itself is weak, it doesn't matter how well itsticks to the shoe or the ceiling because it will simply break apart in the middle, leaving a layer of glue behind on both surfaces. That's a failure caused when the adhesive forces are greater than the cohesive ones and the cohesive forces aren't big enough to overcome the pull of gravity.

Jam sandwiches may not be the first thing to spring to your mind when you think about adhesives, but the jam is working as a kind of glue. It's made of sugar and water: a classic adhesive recipe used since ancient times. If you use fairly strong bread, you can pick up a jam sandwich by just one corner of one slice and the whole thing will stay together in your hand—thanks to the jammy glue. Jam has pretty high cohesive forces (that's why jam can be hard to dig out of the jar with your knife), but its adhesive forces are high too. If you butter two pieces of bread and cover one slice with jam, then close up the sandwich, then peel it apart, you'll find there's some jam left on both surfaces. As you pull apart the sandwich, you'll find the jam breaking itself in two in lots of little strands. That's because the adhesive forces are stronger than the cohesive ones. Your jam sandwich "fails" due to a failure of cohesion.

Photo: When you put Marmite (or jam, if you prefer) on a single slice of bread, make a sandwich, then peel the sandwich apart, you'll find there's some Marmite on both slices. This ground-breaking scientific experiment demonstrates a catastrophic cohesive failure of Marmite as a glue. Unlike most experiments, it also tastes good.

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Anja Hügli, Being an Orphan in Swaziland

No other African nation is as affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic as Swaziland. Tens of thousands of children lose their parents to the disease and grow up without parental protection. The life of most Swazis

3is marked by high levels of poverty and joblessness. SOS Children's Villages has been supporting the country's young people and children since the 1980

Little boys smiling for the camera -‐ photo: G. Bie

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Some facts about SwazilandThe kingdom of Swaziland is a landlocked country situated in Southern Africa. The majority of the country's population live in rural or semi-‐rural settings and follow traditional ways of life.

HIV/AIDS pandemic affects tens of thousands The kingdom of Swaziland is one of the poorest countries in the world. Over 40 per cent of its population live in chronic poverty.

Because of unfavorable climate conditions and low agricultural productivity, extreme poverty predominantly affects the country's rural population.While the standard of living continues to decline, unemployment is going up. Tens of thousands lack access to potable water, decent housing and sanitation facilities. Food shortages are widespread, particularly in rural areas, and a large number of school-‐aged children do not receive an education. The school enrolment ratio is low at only 60.1 per cent and 20 per cent of Swazis do not know how to read or write.Swaziland is heavily marked by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. At a prevalence rate of 26 per cent, the extent to which the disease affects the population is beyond comparison, even for African standards. AIDS profoundly depletes the country's labor force as many Swazis die in their most productive years. In this tiny African nation of only 1.3 million, 180,000 citizens are HIV-‐positive. Due to the heavy toll that AIDS has been taking, life expectancy has plummeted and stands now at only 47 years. As a result of heavy social stigma associated with the virus there are no statistics on the exact number of AIDS-‐related deaths

According to reports, Swaziland is both a destination and source country for women and children subjected to forced labor, including commercial sex work and domestic servitude. Thousands of children, in particular girls, are "exported" to South Africa and Mozambique. Swazi boys are exploited within the country's borders through forced labor in agriculture and street merchandising. At the same time, many Mozambican boys have migrated to Swaziland. They wash cars, herd livestock or engage in other agricultural activities. Some of these boys have become victims of forced labor. Although the government of Swaziland has taken important steps to protect trafficking victims, a lot remains to be done in order to root out the problem.

Situation of the children in Swaziland

Roughly 100,000 children in Swaziland are orphans and grow up without their parents. The vast majority have lost their parents to AIDS, a disease which affects the country's youngest segment of population most of all. Most parents of children who are HIV-‐positive cannot afford retroviral therapy. Many of these children are cut off from basic health services and education. Nonetheless, Swaziland has been quite successful with regards to the prevention of mother-‐to-‐child transmission of HIV.

Young boy during a reading lesson at school -‐ photo: G. Bieringer

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Throughout the last ten years, a number of programs targeting child health, education and protection have been introduced. Although there has been noticeable progress, the country's under-‐five-‐mortality rate of 73 per 1,000 live births continues to be fairly high.Many families are struggling to put food on the table for their children as nearly one in ten children is severely undernourished.Owing to HIV/AIDS and high levels of poverty, the phenomenon of children raising children is quite common in Swaziland. This explains why many young Swazis miss out on a decent education. In Swaziland, about one out of every five primary-‐school-‐aged children is not enrolled in primary school.

While bringing more children into local schools has been a clear aim of the Swazi government, many children continue to engage in child labor.According to a survey, approximately one in three young women had experienced some kind of sexual violence and abuse during childhood. Nearly one in four had experienced physical violence.Child abuse and child trafficking are often closely connected. Thousands of Swazi children have become victims of human trafficking. Many of them, in particular young girls, end up in slavery-‐like conditions both within and outside of Swaziland.

Source:http: //www.sos - ‐ child r en s villa g e s.or g /w he r e - ‐ w e - ‐ help / af r ica/ sw aziland

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6Laura Kapceviciute, The Isolation and analysis of the chemical ingredients of …Endocannabinoid system

The endocannabinoid system has been recently recognized as an important modulatory system in the function of brain, endocrine, and immune tissues. It appears to play a very important regulatory role in the secretion of hormones related to reproductive functions and response to stress. The important elements of this system are: endocannabinoid receptors (types CB1 and CB2), their endogenous ligands (N-arachidonoylethanolamide, 2- arachidonoyl glycerol), enzymes involved in their synthesis and degradation, as well as cannabinoid antagonists. In humans this system also controls energy homeostasis and mainly influences the function of the food intake centers of the central nervous system and gastrointestinal tract activity. The endocannabinoid system regulates not only the central and peripheral mechanisms of food intake, but also lipids synthesis and turnover in the liver and adipose tissue as well as glucose metabolism in muscle cells.Rimonabant, a new and selective central and peripheral cannabinoid-1 receptor (CB1) blocker, has been shown to reduce body weight and improve cardiovascular risk factor (metabolic syndrome) in obese patients by increasing HDL-cholesterol and adiponectin blood levels as well as decreasing LDL-cholesterol, leptin, and C-reactive protein (a proinflammatory marker) concentrations. It is therefore possible to speculate about a future clinical use of CB1 antagonists, as a means of improving gonadotrophin pulsatility and fertilization capacity as well as the prevention of cardiovasculary disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Drugs acting as agonists of CB1 receptors (Dronabinol, Dexanabinol) are currently proposed for evaluation as drugs to treat neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases), epilepsy, anxiety, and stroke.Notes:

Francesca Luccarini, The economic and cultural developments in the Ticino in the last few years

World's longest rail tunnel begins regular service in SwitzerlandRegular passenger trains start using the 35-mile Gotthard Base tunnel, which took 17 years to build

7A passenger train enters the south portal of the GBT on Sunday. Photograph: Samuel Golay/EPA

Regular rail service through the world’s longest tunnel has begun, carrying passengers deep under the Swiss Alps from Zurich to Lugano.

The famed Gotthard Base tunnel (GBT) was given a ceremonial opening in June, attracting European leaders including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, François Hollande, for its first ride.

Sunday marked the start of normal commercial traffic through the 35-mile (57km) GBT, which took 17 years to build, at a cost of over 12bn Swiss francs (£9.3bn).

The Swiss news agency ATS reported that the first regular passenger train to use the GBT pulled out of Zurich at 6.09am (0509 GMT) and arrived in Lugano at 8.17am, with the tunnel passage shaving 30 minutes off the previous travel time.

“It’s Christmas,” Andreas Meyer, the chief of the Swiss national rail service, SBB, was quoted as saying by ATS after the journey was over.

The ambitious GBT project has been praised across Europe for its pioneering efforts to improve connectivity from Rotterdam to the Adriatic.

The Swiss-funded tunnel was largely made possible by technical advances in tunnel-boring machines, which replaced the costly and dangerous blast-and-drill method.

The GBT has surpassed Japan’s 33.4-mile (53.9km) Seikan tunnel as the world’s longest train tunnel. The 31-mile (50.5km) Channel tunnel connecting Britain and France has been bumped into third place.

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Sven Pfiffner, Experimental Mathematics: Analysis of the Monsky Theorem

Experimental mathematics is an approach to mathematics in which computation is used to investigate mathematical objects and identify properties and patterns. It is used for:

Discovering new patterns and relationships. Using graphical displays to suggest underlying mathematical principles. Testing and especially falsifying conjectures.

8 Exploring a possible result to see if it is worth formal proof. Suggesting approaches for a formal proof. Replacing lengthy hand derivations with computer-based derivations.

Confirming analytically derived results.

Paul Halmos: "Mathematics is not a deductive science—that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork. You want to find out what the facts are, and what you do is in that respect similar to what a laboratory technician does."

English Germanapproach Ansatzcomputation Berechnungproperties Eigenschaftenpatterns Musterunderlying Zugrunde liegendfalsifying Verfälschenconjectures Vermutungenlengthy hand Langwierigderivations Ableitungenderive Ableitendeductive deduktiv

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_mathematicsmathworld.wolfram.com/ExperimentalMathematics.html

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Luna-Giuliana Ris, Art BrutArt Brut

It is self-taught creators who produce Art Brut, people on the fringes of society who harbor a spirit of

9rebellion and tend to be impervious to collective standards and values. They create in total disregard of public acclaim or other people's opinions. They seek neither recognition by others nor public acclaim: any universe that they create is meant exclusively for themselves. Using generally

unprecedented means and materials, they are in no way obligated to any artistic traditions, preferring to avail themselves of highly singular figurative means.The concept of Art Brut stems from the French painter Jean Dubuffet who, from 1945, assembled a collection of objects created by the inmates of various psychiatric hospitals and prisons—solitary or outcast persons. In their creations, he saw "an entirely pure, raw artistic operation that the creator fully reinvents in all its phases , as spurred uniquely by his own impulses." The idea of Art Brut is thus based on certain social characteristics and aesthetic peculiarities.

Definition of Art Brut by Jean Dubuffet

"By this [Art Brut] we mean pieces of work executed by people untouched by artistic culture, in which therefore mimicry, contrary to what happens in intellectuals, plays little or no part, so that their authors draw everything (subjects, choice of materials employed, means of transposition, rhythms, ways of writing, etc.) from their own depths and not from clichés of classical art or art that is fashionable. Here we are witnessing an artistic operation that is completely pure, raw, reinvented in all its phases by its author, based solely on his own impulses. Art, therefore, in which is manifested the sole function of invention, and not those, constantly seen in cultural art, of the chameleon and the monkey."Excerpted from Jean Dubuffet L’art brut préféré aux arts culturels, Galerie René Drouin, Paris, 1949.

https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/art-brut/what-is-art-brut

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Larisa Vuksanovic, The Educational Development of Muslim Girl Refugees in CH over the last ten Years

Refugee Girls Often Left Behind Without EducationBy: Ashley Shah February 3, 2017LIKE TWEET   EMAIL PRINT MORE

1EDISON, N.J. (WOMENSENEWS) — When Noor left her home in Damascus, Syria, last May, the 16-year-old abandoned many valuable things to start her new life at a refugee camp in Jordan. Though she left behind her friends, her house and her favorite bracelet, the thing Noor misses most is school.

Noor is one the 8.7 million girl refugees worldwide, including 4.9 million refugees from Syria, 2.7 million from Afghanistan and 1.1 million from Somalia. Only 30 percent of these girls are in school, according to the Women’s Refugee Commission, which means there are nearly 6.1 million girls who have been torn away from their homes and aren’t getting an education.Diya Abdo, founder of Every Campus a Refuge and an English professor at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, said refugee girls already face a host of obstacles when trying to successfully resettle into new countries. Denying them an education creates a further gulf between natives and refugees.Noor, one of six children, left Damascus after her town was bombarded by rebel groups for multiple nights. She told Teen Voices that as they left, the soldiers aimlessly shot at her family through the smoke and rubble. Upon arriving in Jordan, Noor spent two months in a refugee camp with her family where she waited to hear from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as to whether she would be allowed to travel to the United States.

Limited EducationDuring that time Noor and her siblings received limited education. While Noor was welcome and safe at the refugee camp, she was not completely accepted into school. According to her younger sister Joy, Noor, “could not go to school with the Jordanian kids and had to wait until after the Jordanian kids were done to attend school” with some teachers who were kind enough to stay longer. Since only a few teachers stayed behind and there were hundreds of kids, all of different ages and calibers, most students weren’t able to receive the appropriate level of education.Moving is difficult for any young person, but often much more so for girls leaving a war torn country.“Whether a girl finds herself in Jordan [or] Damascus…their education will be impacted in some way or another,” said Maria Melchor, president of the Yale Refugee Project. “Ultimately, every refugee girl will find herself facing a very unique and complicated set of challenges in finding good education.”The Yale Refugee Project has resettled countless families and worked with plenty of young girls to find homes for refugee families where there are already similar families to give the girls a feeling of community and acceptance. It’s just one of the many organizations dedicated to facilitating the journey of refugees and helping them rebuild their lives in a new country. Another is GirlForward, which has offices in Atlanta and Chicago and provides refugee girls with opportunities for leadership and participation in educational programs.

New ObstaclesWhile education is one of the reasons Noor’s family came to the U.S., according to her mother there are still obstacles Noor faces in her new home in New Providence, New Jersey. Since she can’t speak English, Noor was placed in lower level classes, rather than the equivalent of her grade level in Syria, and spent portions of her day in ESL. Despite being brilliantly adept at math and receiving the highest grades in her current class, she is unable to advance because she cannot understand what the teacher is saying.Refugee families often have to start from scratch since many arrive with nothing. So beyond the problem of attending school, Melchor said, “This generation of refugee children may need more time to complete their education, not just because they may not have access to a new language in their new homes. They may have to work instead of study full time to support their families, or have to redo years of school that are not recognized in places outside of their former homes.”As young refugees learn English their families tend to depend on them to communicate with the outside world. That’s why it’s important to use “the aid of replacement agencies to place them in communities that they are comfortable in to facilitate their assimilation,” Melchor said.Notes:

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PRESENTATIONS ‘Extended Essay’NAME + TOPIC:A) CONTENTStructure(see 1)Quality of inforelevant,complete, coherentlevel appropriate for audience

Intro Focus Aims/Challenges Methods

B) PRESENTATION 1) ClarityVocabulary helpUse of visualsSignposting …

2) Presentation techniquesattitude, pace,eye contact …

3) Interaction with audienceInvolving audience (text)

4) Time management accurate timing

LANGUAGE1) Fluency2)Pronunciation

Notes only:

3) Accuracy Mistakes Bad/basic mistakes!

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4) RangeVocabulary Structures

’PRESENTATION’ ASSESSMENT G5b IIGive a mark out of 10 for ’Content’, ’Presentation’ and ’Language’. Note a strong / a weak point of the presentation.Name Content Presentation Language Strength / WeaknessSandro

Yelena

Chiara

Nadja

Fabio

Anja

Laura

Francesca

Sven

Luna

1

Larisa

1