CSTD

Hi all, We're glad to announce that our committee will be hosting a professor on the morning of Saturday the 3rd to give a micro-lecture to our committee about genetic engineering, it's potential, ethical implications, and potential areas of regulation. The professor's name is Dr. Urnov, and he's an adjunct professor of genetics with in UC Berkeley's molecular and cell biology department and an  Associate Director at the  Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences, and worked in biotechnology for a number of years. We're honored to have him join us and are sure his presentation will be informative and assist debate. But I wanted to make a post about genetic engineering to give you a better background on the topic than the topic synopsis did, just to make sure that no one is confused by what Dr. Urnov is presenting if he discusses material above the level of the topic synopsis.  Genetic Engineering Techniques: Traditionally: Traditional genetic engineering,...

Good evening everyone!  Although it is online, I wanted to highlight our committee's technology policy here.  We are going to be an "unmod tech" committee, which is defined below.  Please let me know if you have any questions! "Unmod tech committees WILL allow the use of technology for the purpose of writing and collaborating on resolutions, but strictly in unmoderated caucuses. Delegates should have all of their research in a physical form (printed or written) for them to access during all other parts of committee. This type of committee also allows for one member of a dual delegation to be using technology outside for resolution writing and another inside during the procession of committee. For example, delegates will be able to type on a laptop/tablet during unmoderated caucus, but unable to access their devices at all during moderated caucus. Specific situations will be left to the chair's discretion. In a dual delegation committee, one delegate would be al...

Hi all, I just wanted to make a post about some the basics of understanding why data and the information economy, and computer science in general, are so central to our daily lives. It's a bit of a long post, but I really hope that you'll find it worthwhile. Something to know: there's currently so much data being collected daily that most of it will never actually be seen by people. A computer might use it, but the chances of an individual person actually looking for and seeing this data are extremely small. Want to understand how much data there really is? Consider these facts: There's enough memory in digital cameras to hold all every word of every book in the entire Library of Congress one hundred times over. So much data is being transferred over email that in every ten minutes the full text of the Library of Congress has been transmitted. So much disk storage is being produced every year that it could be used to record a page of information, every minute...

One of the most hyped developments of 2017 was the sharp rise of crypto-currencies; but the more interesting development actually lay in how people are embracing the underlying technology: Blockchain. On a basic level a Blockchain is a place to store information in such a way that the information cannot be tampered with. This is why it has made crypto-currencies possible: the Blockchain ensures that no one can cheat and pretend that a transaction never occurred; the "money" after all is just a bunch of binary code - so making sure someone can't just keep a copy of those ones and zeros and use it again later is critically important. Blockchain solves this problem through public key cryptography, and maintaining public ledgers where people store the information. Thus when a transaction is complete, there is a publicly available record of the change that anyone can go back and consult to see who really owns those ones and zeros - and anyone who wants to pretend it never happ...

Hi all, Looking back at the topic synopsis, I realized that the picture provided of how CRISPR-Cas9 works could be confusing. Even I didn't really understand how it worked just by looking at that. But as a molecular and cell biology major, my curiousity was peaked, so I wanted to better understand that for myself and share it with you. Please note: this is in no way required for committee, just trying to help those who were curious like myself find resources that do a good job of explaining how the technology works. Many sources online either over-simplify and focus on wild speculations, or favor jargon too heavily, to the exclusion of novices. So I've compiled a list of videos and a few articles that explain CRISPR to a satisfying extent(at least for me), but know that there's a lot more out there and an expanding body of academic work on CRISPR that might be unaccessible without a very sold foundation in biology. Also note: the sources I have focus only on CRISPR, so if...