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Microgrids, biting the old system

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Microgrids, biting the old system

Microgrids, biting the old system

The communities have more and more power thanks to the organization, and today it is a reality that, if they decide, they can generate their own energy using renewable energy through microgrids.

 

What is a micro network?

 

Microgrids are small-scale electricity supply networks designed to supply electricity to communities, backed by a high penetration of local renewable energies.

 

This local energy system incorporates three key components:

  1. Generation

  2. Storage

  3. Demand

     

Image www.tudelft.nl

 

Benefits of Microgrids

“Climate extremes are increasing. A modern, decentralized and flexible electricity system can meet the challenge with clean energy community microgrids, the logical next step in California’s remarkable history of energy innovation.”

– Ellie Cohen CEO, The Climate Center

  • Provide efficient, low-cost, clean energy.

  • Improve the operation and stability of the regional electric grid.

  • Reduce grid “congestion” and peak loads.

  • Helps to reduce fuel use, and carbon footprint.

     

And what is the difference between regular power and microgrids?

 

Instead of using energy that may be generated through burning fossil fuels, microgrids derive their power from solar panels, wind power and other renewable energy sources.

 

The world is changing, for example, we can see how “California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Texas score as the top states for microgrid policy activity, with Puerto Rico also listed in the top tier, according to a new report by Think Microgrid”.

Think Microgrid National Microgrid Action: Tier Map 

 

And while the networks are an excellent change, let’s not forget that the important thing is progress, for which the possibility of a hybrid system is also very beneficial, which, in fact, is the case in Australia. A report from https://www.energymonitor.ai/ explains that “Renewable energy became the major component of Australia’s electricity generation mix for the first time in 2019. The National Electricity Market (NEM), which delivers power to most of Australia’s regions except for Western Australia and the Northern Territory, reported that more than 50 percent of electricity delivered in that year came from solar- and wind-powered generation grids. As a result of these initiatives, the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will dramatically come down in the coming years.

 

Australia is leading the way globally for renewable energy generation and adoption. Using CAT’s extensive range of state-of-the-art hybrid technology platforms, Energy Power Systems Australia (EPSA) can deliver a full spectrum of hybrid solutions”.

 

We are passionate about this topic at AIU, not only because of the benefits for the environment, but also because of success stories like that of former student, Edison Pares Atiles, an electrical engineer who is working with rural communities in Puerto Rico to create innovative options.

Pares Atiles is a Doctor in Electrical Engineering from the Atlantic International University. Edison graduated in 2020, and his thesis produced a plan to establish community microgrids in a remote community in Puerto Rico, which was affected in 2017, when two almost consecutive hurricanes, Irma and María, hit the island, leaving it without power for weeks.

Pares Atiles prefers community grids over industrial ones. He points that a community microgrid is a better option because it belongs to the people, adding a social aspect. They operate, maintain, and benefit from it. The revenue generated by the microgrid can be invested back in the community, building steps for power, social and financial sustainability.

This project addresses advancement transversally, hitting the environment, economy, and social growth topics, putting the world one step closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

With a microgrid that provides electricity for communities in risk areas, you are generating Climate Action by preventing and reducing the effects of climate change. On the other hand, an autonomous electric grid aims to fulfill the Affordable and Clean Energy, Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry Innovation and Infrastructure goals.

As part of his planning, Pares Atiles includes an alliance with Credit Unions, an example of Partnership for the Goals.

This engineer is generating action that addresses some of his country’s problems integrally, showing passion and commitment for his people.

If you are interested in learning more about the topic of micro networks, we invite you to enjoy the following information:

This short video highlights examples of community microgrids and the need for social equity in addressing community energy resilience:

Get the Latest News from Microgrid Knowledge

‘COLLABORATING FOR A CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE: CALIFORNIA’S FIRST 100% RENEWABLE MULTI-CUSTOMER MICROGRID IS NOW OPERATIONAL’

Generate electrical power anywhere with EPSA’s CAT® Hybrid Microgrid System solutions

Microgrids for Rural Areas : Research and Case Studies

Microgrid Design and Operation : Toward Smart Energy in Cities

Clean Energy Microgrids

Reactive power-sharing and voltage restoration in islanded AC microgrids.

Sustainability modelling and green energy optimization in microgrid powered distributed FogMicroDataCenters in rural area.

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What happened the day an asteroid hit the earth?

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What happened the day an asteroid hit the earth?

It is really impressive and distant to think about the time of the dinosaurs, but thanks to museums, movies and books, we can get a fairly close idea of how magnificent these animals were.

 

And although it is a mystery, little by little, thanks to paleontology, archeology and many other sciences, we have been learning more about its passage through the earth, from the beginning of the Jurassic (about 200 million years ago) to the end of the Cretaceous. (66 million years ago).

 

A still open question, How did the dinosaurs become extinct?

 

The site britannica.com relates how although “many hypotheses have been offered over the years to explain dinosaur extinction, but only a few have received serious consideration. The extermination of the dinosaurs has been a puzzle to paleontologists, geologists, and biologists for two centuries. Proposed causes include disease, heat waves and resulting sterility, freezing cold spells, the rise of egg-eating mammals, and X-rays from a nearby exploding supernova. Since the early 1980s, however, much attention has been focused on the so-called “asteroid theory” formulated by American scientists Walter Alvarez and Luis Alvarez. 

 

This theory states that a bolide (meteorite or comet) impact may have triggered the extinction event by ejecting a huge quantity of rock debris into the atmosphere, enshrouding Earth in darkness for several months or longer. With no sunlight able to penetrate this global dust cloud, photosynthesis ceased, resulting in the death of green plants and the disruption of the food chain.

 

Image that recreates how 66 million years ago an asteroid ended the life of the dinosaurs,

after impacting the earth.

 

To delve a bit into what happened, it’s worth quoting the explanation from the Salon article that explains, “Dinosaur’s doomsday was triggered by an asteroid 7.5 miles wide, roughly the size of Mount Everest, which crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. The 90-mile-wide impact site, called the Chicxulub crater, is expected to be the point of origin of the mass extinction event that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs on Earth.”

 

The extinction event killed about 75 percent of life on Earth, though some sea creatures and burrowing animals, including early mammals, were better prepared to wait out the brief wave of superheated air caused by the impact that spread throughout. the planet.

 

And proof of all of the above, is the discovery of fossilized remains of a dinosaur possibly killed in the fifth mass extinction of the Earth in Tanis in North Dakota.

 

Artwork: The thinking is that a water surge buried all the creatures at Tanis

 

This recent discovery has been a great test for scientists who claim that a large asteroid was responsible for the extinction of this species.

 

In this video you can see how the fossil was discovered. Based on the state of the leg, it is thought that it was a single cut and that the animal died instantly, since there is no evidence of pathology.

 

If you’re looking to learn more about this amazing finding and the theory behind it, you can’t miss all the sources with have prepared for you:

Consider the theory of a large meteor or comet striking Earth and causing the extinction of dinosaurs

Astonishment, skepticism greet fossils claimed to record dinosaur-killing asteroid impact

Rapid increase in snake dietary diversity and complexity following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

Asteroid impact, not volcanism, caused the end-Cretaceous dinosaur extinction.

New, Tighter Timeline Confirms Ancient Volcanism Aligned With Dinosaurs’ Extinction.

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World.

WHAT REALLY KILLED THE DINOSAURS?Fragment of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs may have been found

Author : Vanessa D”angelo
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Quantum Computing vs Traditional

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Quantum Computing vs Traditional

A new revolution is taking place, where the laws of physics are combined with technology to multiply the capacities to process, calculate and transfer information to unsuspected limits with consequences that we still do not know.

 

In the words of the multinational IBM: “Quantum computing is a rapidly growing technology that takes advantage of the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical computers.”

 

This reality brings with it, in addition to handling data in an unimaginable way, a demand for many professional profiles that allow this revolution to become a reality, not only in the field of physicists, mathematicians or engineers, but also in all business processes. Today, more than ever, it is vital to have programs that allow students greater diversity in programs and much more innovative.

 

Quantum computing, the now.

 

An article on the decrypt site recounts how recently, “Canadian research startup Multiverse Computing has reached a milestone: its model can evaluate more than 1 octillion possible scenarios in 30 minutes. An octillion is a 10 followed by 30 zeros.

 

Thus completing its proof of concept, which combines blockchain data from the Tether (USDT) stablecoin, whose tokens are pegged to the US dollar, and public data from up to 10 major financial institutions. It also consulted with experts from two major Canadian banks to arrive at realistic parameters.

 

Multiverse Computing chose Tether for its model because the stablecoin, founded in 2014, had supported a variety of market scenarios in its eight years of blockchain data.”

 

If you are not yet familiar with the subject, we explain what quantum technology is.

 

The world has evolved in such a way that we now face a new type of technology, in which computers are like extraordinary electronic brains capable of performing tasks almost impossible for a classical computer in a few seconds. Now, supported by quantum mechanics, programmers put all their efforts into developing machines to do calculations never thought of.

 

To explain the difference between traditional and quantum computing, what is most obvious is:

 

The programming language. Traditional computing is based on the binary language (1 or 0), while quantum computing lacks a programming language. Instead, it uses complex algorithms.

 

Furthermore, quantum computers lack memory and a processor, instead they use qubits. The qubit is a quantum system with two eigenstates, and 1 bit difference that can only be 1 or 0, this can be both at the same time.

 

Image: www.multiversecomputing.com

 

How does a quantum computer work?

 

The site www.science.org.au explains that “A quantum computer works in a totally different way than a classical computer. Quantum bits or ‘qubits’ can exist in a superposition state of zero and one simultaneously. This means that a set of two qubits can be in a superposition of four states, requiring four numbers to uniquely identify the state. So the amount of information stored in N qubits is two to the power of N classical bits. 

 

You can learn more about how it works in this video.

 

What does this new technological era mean?

 

Definitely, this technological advance represents the next level in terms of artificial intelligence, in fact, scientists have recently taken new steps in this latest model by achieving in just 36 microseconds a task that the classics would take almost 9,000 years. If you want to read more about this news, click here.

 

In this video, you can see how Mercedes-Benz embraces the era of quantum computing.

 

The world is moving by leaps and bounds and knowledge is the only way we have to be able to keep up with innovations. Therefore, today more than ever, it is vital to have programs that allow students greater diversity and innovation.

 

If this topic is of interest to you, we invite you to read more:

 

Quantum Computers Explained – The Limits of Human Technology

Más sobre IBM y la computación cuántica

USA & Elon Musk Finally Reveal New Quantum Computer in 2022!

Mercedes-Benz is exploring quantum computing

Summer Reading Contest, Week 1: What Got Your Attention in The Times This Week?

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Summer Reading Contest, Week 1: What Got Your Attention in The Times This Week?

Update, June 17: Week 2 has now started.

Our 13th Annual Summer Reading Contest begins!

This contest is open to students 11-19 from anywhere in the world. To participate, submit a response by 9 a.m. Eastern on June 17 that answers the questions “What got your attention in The New York Times this week? Why?”

If you are 13 or older and live in the United States, or 16 or older from anywhere else in the world, post your response in the comment section. If you are a teacher, parent or guardian and your kids or students are 11-12 years old and live in the United States, or 11-15 and live in another country, see the bottom of this post for details on how to submit.

So what did you read, watch or listen to this week? Maybe you were consumed by front-page headlines about Uvalde or Ukraine — or maybe you were more taken with stories about sustainable fashion, a teenage race-car driver, the lifeguard shortage or whether Swedish people feed their guests. We don’t care what you choose, we just want to hear why you chose it.

We hope you’ll click around nytimes.com and find your own great articles, features and multimedia. But we also know that not everyone who participates has a Times subscription. Because all links to Times content from the student features on our site are free, every week we’ll try to help by posting interesting pieces from a variety of sections.

Need more details? The contest rules are all here, and you can read the work of last year’s winners here. A quick overview, though:

  • You can choose from anything published in the print paper or on nytimes.com in 2022, including videos, podcasts, graphics and photographs. (In your response, please include the URL or headline of the piece you pick.)

  • We’ll post this question each Friday from today through Aug. 12, and you’ll have until the next Friday morning to respond with your picks. Then we’ll close that post and open a new one with the same question.

  • We’ll choose at least one favorite answer to feature on our site each week. Winners from this week will be announced on June 28.

  • Feel free to participate each week, but we allow only one submission per person per week.

  • The contest is open to students ages 11 to 19 from anywhere in the world. If you are 13 or older and live in the United States, or 16 or older from anywhere else in the world, post your response in the comments section. If you are a teacher, parent or guardian of a student or child who is between the ages of 11 and 12 and live in the United States, or 11 and 15 and live in another country, then you must submit an entry on the student’s behalf using the form below. All entries from the comments section and the form below will be judged together.

Visualizing Vocabulary: 7 Word Field Notes Created by Students

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Visualizing Vocabulary: 7 Word Field Notes Created by Students

bane by Nishitha Pinninty, age 17, Crystal Springs Uplands School, Hillsborough, Calif.

epiphany by Haruna Floate, age 17, Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii

exhilarating by Haley Kehr, age 18, North Collins Junior Senior High School, North Collins, N.Y.

gamut by Sofia Gobin, age 17, Eric Hamber Secondary School, Vancouver, Canada

idiosyncrasy by Ananya Mandrekar, age 12, Millburn Middle School, Millburn, N.J.

incognito by Rachel Kim, age 15, Ramapo High School, Franklin Lakes, N.J.

luminous by Liyenna Khaderi, age 16, American School of Dubai, United Arab Emirates

pristine by Amelia Lemanowicz, age 16, Morris County School of Technology, Denville, N.J.

tête-à-tête by Helena Baruch, age 17, Trinity School, New York City

venturesome by Minha Park, age 16, Northern Highlands Regional High School, Allendale, N.J.

verdant by Faith, Fremont, Calif.

Meet the People Featured in Our Winning Student Profiles

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Meet the People Featured in Our Winning Student Profiles

Our first-ever Profile Contest asked a lot of its teenage participants. Not only did they have to find someone interesting to interview, then develop questions designed to draw that person out, but they had to edit the resulting conversation into a cogent and compelling Q. and A. of no more than 700 words. In addition, they were asked to take at least one “environmental portrait” of their subject and supply a caption for it, as well as write a headline for their piece.

But over 1,400 teenagers around the world tried it, and — at least according to those who filled out an optional comment section at the bottom of the submission form — most of them had fun. Several noted that profile writing was a different kind of writing from what they are usually assigned in school, so the novelty alone was refreshing. Many also said that, after two years of pandemic isolation, the push to talk to new people in their communities was welcome. As one student explained, “I had so much fun doing this that I cannot express it here. I think that human interaction is precious and is slipping away in the digital age, so the fact that there was an opportunity for me to have a conversation with an old person about their past and have someone actually be interested in it is exciting.”

Below, we are delighted to announce our finalists and introduce you to the fascinating people profiled by our Top 10 winners. And though we don’t have room to publish the work of our 11 runners-up and 38 honorable mentions, we hope that, just from reading their headlines, you sense the imaginative variety of the subjects they chose.

Thank you to the teachers and students who took a chance and tried this new challenge. We loved meeting the people you profiled and seeing their accomplishments through your eyes.

“From Field Labor to an Engineering Major” by Anna Yang

“Energy Empowers Her” by Katie Yu

“Jordan Seaberry Thrives on Redefining What It Means to Be an Artist” by Sophia Blythe

“Mental Health: It’s All Around Us” by Shawn Bulloch

“A Store Owner and His Community” by Alexa S.B.

“Pug’s Having a Great Time” by Nathan Ghose

“Jupiter Fiction Aims for a Future of Subverting Our Expectations” by Alika Jimenez

“Blind but Undefeatable” by Jihoon Josh Lee

“One Man, One Choice and One Saved Species” by Diogo Martins and Luís Martins

“In the Eye of the Storm, Amy Cantrell is Helping Those on the Fringes of Society” by Aidan O’Donnell

“A Community Rises Out of Bread” by Adele Ryono

“Bulgogi for Everybody: The Culinary Ambitions of Mi Ran Park” by Isabella Shin

“Stick to the Rules or Seek a Way Out” by Yihong Gan

“Brenda Lafargue’s Fight Against the Faults in the Child Care System” by Brooke Aron

“Just Keep Swimming: 80-Year-Old Susan Guertin’s Motto” by Finn Bergquist

“Paralympic Gold Medalist Continues to Advocate Change” by Caroline Brennan and Lane Kaeyer

“Rebirth of a Mother-Daughter Love: A Chinese American Author’s Exploration of Her Family History” by Iris Chen

“Realizing a Dream: Pursuing a Second Career as a Children’s Book Author” by Jessica Cheng

“Skyler Chin’s Illegal Dream” by Brayden Chien

“Adopted to the U.S. at the Age of 4. Deported to South Korea at 46.” by Youngwoong Cho

“Tom Fong: Lessons You Need to Hear From an Oncologist” by Knox Choi

“From the Battlefield to the Blackboard: Advice From a Life of Service” by Nina Johnson and Courtney Duffy

“The Life of Daniel Durant, a Deaf Actor in Hollywood” by Ingrid F.

“Living a Double Life: From the KGB to Nuclear Proliferators” by Amelie Godfrey

“From Small-Town Buchanan, Mich., to Olympic Silver Medalist” by Logan Eric Grwinski

“Growing Writers, Readers and Thinkers” by Ava Hoelscher

“The American Dream Lives On” by Kelsey Katt

“Murders, Shootings and Scandals: Crime Reporter Unfazed” by Bella Kim

“L.P.G.A. Legend Takes a Full Swing at New Endeavors” by Dione Kim

“Introducing Young Goo Kang: ‘Everyone Needs Their Own Sangwonsa’” by Hwayi Kwon

“Andrea Berloff Seems to Do It All, From Writing to Directing to Producing” by Zoe Lebowitz

“A Therapist Joins a Heated Debate: Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Therapists?” by Esther Lee

“‘For Me, It Was a Success Story’: Kathryn Ciminello’s Journey From Rockette to Dance Teacher” by Emily Malone

“Spreading Stories and Music, One Song at a Time” by Sydney Mark

“Changing Period Poverty” by Mallory McMullen

“Hansika Sakshi Shares How Bharatanatyam Transformed Her Life” by Annie Pan

“From Architecture Student to Zen Master: Journey to the True Self” by S. Spencer Park

“From Film to Fish: Meredith McCarthy’s Deep Dive Into Activism” by Olivia Pirrone

“From a Reporter in the Big City to the Editor in Chief of a Newspaper in the Cloud Forest” by Valerie Porras Anchia

“Feed People, Not Landfills”by Deeksha Ravi

“The Back Road to the N.F.L.” by Mylie Roberts

“Inside the Mouth of a Killer” by Katie Rudow

“Impossible Dreams: An Airborne Doctor” by Joshua Sarwate

“Ayodhya Devi: The Woman Who’s Seen It All” by Shivika Sharma

“One Man’s Journey Toward Restorative Justice” by Isabel Ungs

“From Senegal to California: Mr. Mbengue’s Journey With His Identities” by Jiaqi Wang

“The Ghosts All Around Roosevelt Island” by Ziyue Wang

“He Started His TikTok Because of a $50 Bet. Now He’s a Storyteller With Over Three Million Fans.” by Allison Xu

“Gala Sorkina Imbues Her Words With Joy” by Benjamin Zaltsman

“From ‘Trash’ to Treasure: Charlotte Kruk Creates Wearable Art From Packaging Waste” by Calvin Zhou

“Lost and Found in Translation” by Kairui Zhou

How DALL-E Mini Makes Those Viral Image Mashups That Are All Over Social Media

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How DALL-E Mini Makes Those Viral Image Mashups That Are All Over Social Media
How DALL-E Mini Makes Those Viral Image Mashups All Over Your Feed

If you’ve been on social media this week, you’ve probably seen the bizarrely specific melty images popping up on your feed: a court sketch of Godzilla on trial, George Constanza holding multiple cats, a spaghetti parade — just to name a few. These are the product of DALL-E Mini, an AI application that will generate nine (often unintentionally cursed) images based on combinations of words that users type.

Here are the AI-generated images that DALL-E Mini created for “learn to code,” for example:

DALL-E Mini AI image generator "learn to code"
What “learn to code” looks like, according to DALL-E Mini. 

The mashups can be delightfully deranged, which is why DALL-E Mini has taken off on social media. Naturally, there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to weird DALL-E Mini creations.

If you’re learning how to code (or just thinking about it), you might be curious what goes into building this type of technology. Here’s how — plus the programming skills that enable you to build a tool as viral (and nightmarish) as DALL-E Mini.

The story of how DALL-E Mini was built

Machine Learning Engineer Boris Dayma built DALL-E Mini last summer as part of a month-long competition hosted by the AI community Hugging Face and Google. Boris was inspired by a more sophisticated AI called DALL-E, which was created by the lab OpenAI.

Determined to build a similar model to the OG, Boris spent months digging into early DALL-E research, but “I still had no clue how I would do it,” Boris said in an interview with YouTuber Abhishek Thakur.

“As I went through the code, I got a bit scared,” Boris said. “There’s a lot of things that were implemented — it’s kind of complex.”

Per the competition guidelines, Boris and his team had to use Google’s framework JAX to program their DALL-E Mini version. None of them had experience using JAX, which incorporates Python and NumPy programs, so they had to learn from scratch. (If you’ve never heard of the Python library NumPy, our beginner-friendly course Learn Statistics with Python covers how to use it.)

“We had to make the architecture as simple as possible, and we had to leverage a lot of existing code, leverage existing models, and try to write as little as possible,” Boris said. “It’s an approach I always have: When there’s a problem to solve, always try to see is there already an existing solution. If there is one, just use it, and if it works good enough — that’s it, you’re done.”

Judging by the enthusiastic response to DALL-E Mini, the internet thinks it works just fine. In fact, so many people have been trying to spawn their own DALL-E Mini images that the site can’t handle all of the requests due to too much traffic. “We want to keep the balance between people being able to access it while also being aware of costs,” Boris told the UK news outlet i. (Conjuring up DALL-E Mini’s images takes a lot of computing power, which costs money.)

How DALL-E Mini works

DALL-E is complicated — even for machine learning engineers like Boris and his team. But to put it as simply as possible, DALL-E Mini is trained to recognize pre-encoded images.

Training DALL-E Mini involves passing batches of images and descriptions through a system of encoders and decoders until a pre-trained neural network (a programming model inspired by the human brain) is able to create correlation between images and text.

“The model can only be as good as the data set,” Boris said in the YouTube interview. In this case, the team trained DALL-E Mini on 15 million pairs of images and text, which is relatively limiting and explains the warped and weird images, particularly on animals and faces. A bigger dataset and more time to train could improve DALL-E’s yield in the future. The creators noted that the longer DALL-E Mini trained, the better the image quality got.

DALL-E Mini uses a seq2seq model, which is typically used in natural language processing (NLP) for things like translation and conversational modeling. (You can learn how to use seq2seq in our Text Generation course.) “The same idea can be transferred to computer vision once images have been encoded into discrete tokens,” according to an article written by DALL-E Mini’s creators.

How to get started in machine learning and AI

Want to learn more about the world of AI engineering, but don’t know where to start? Our beginner-friendly path Machine Learning Fundamentals will walk you through how machine learning models are created to find patterns in data. In Build Deep Learning Models with TensorFlow, you’ll get a taste of deep learning, which is a type of machine learning inspired by the architecture of the human brain.

Apply Natural Language Processing with Python will teach you how to create your own NLP tools and help you better understand how computers work with human language. And if you already feel comfortable with Python, head to our path Get Started with Machine Learning to have fun with AI and machine learning. You can also experiment creating chatbots through our Build Chatbots with Python skill path.

If you’re fascinated by data science’s role in these models, our career path Data Scientist: Machine Learning Specialist will dive into how to apply machine learning to data and optimize algorithms. And if you’re really vibing with these courses, don’t write off the different types of careers that you can get in data science. Who knows? Maybe you’ll use AI to build the next viral sensation.

Machine Learning Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Machine Learning is an increasingly hot field of data science dedicated to enabling computers to learn from data. From spam filtering in social networks to computer vision for self-driving cars, the potential applications of Machine Learning are vast.

Stolen Art: Why We Need Repatriation

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Stolen Art: Why We Need Repatriation

This essay, by Serena Liu, age 15, from Parkway West High School in Chesterfield, Mo., is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s Ninth Annual Student Editorial Contest, for which we received 16,664 entries.

We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can find them here as they post.

Stolen Art: Why We Need Repatriation

The legacy of imperialism is scarred with suffering. After millions of deaths and treaties forged through blood, that’s not a particularly controversial statement. Yet in the softly illuminated halls of museum exhibits, Western countries flaunt their imperialist history by displaying plundered art.

A couple of years ago, I visited the Summer Palace in Beijing. Glazed towers rose above a lush forest, painted against the blue sky and the even bluer Kunming Lake. However, as my mother told me then, this complex was a shadow of the old Summer Palace, which was sacked by British and French forces in 1860. Led by the British commander Lord Elgin, pieces were taken to be auctioned, and the fallen palace was burned to the ground.

Now, regal scepters and shining jade from the old Summer Palace grace the Royal Collection and other British museums. Each unreturned artifact is a reminder of the century of humiliation that Western nations imposed upon China. As Chinese nationalism grows, this resentment festers in the already tense political relations between the East and West.

But the issue extends beyond China. In the world of art history, Elgin is an infamous name. Starting in 1802, Lord Elgin’s father and his men carved intricate friezes and metopes from the famous Athena Parthenon in Greece and shipped them to London, where they are now kept in the British Museum. The Greek government has since demanded the return of these artifacts, known as the Elgin Marbles.

If the Elgin Marbles were repatriated, they would be displayed in the Acropolis Museum. Here, in the exhibit where plaster molds of the Elgin Marbles stand in lieu of the real ones, soaring windows offer a panoramic view of the Acropolis. Only here, where the viewer is free to envision how these artifacts once decorated the Parthenon, can their full historical context be appreciated in all its antique glory.

However, some fear that repatriation would cause the downfall of encyclopedic museums. Referring to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a gem taken from the Mughal Empire following the colonization of India, the former British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that “if you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty.”

But perhaps some museums should be emptied.

The British Museum’s founder, Sir Hans Sloane, funded his collection through imperial networks and backbreaking Jamaican slavery. In Belgium, the Africa Museum — where Congolese were once exhibited like zoo animals — was constructed with profits from King Leopold’s cruel Congo.

No matter what renovations are made, history cannot change. These museums, built on the foundations of colonialism, serve as modern shrines to oppressive imperial ideals, and refusing to return stolen art is an insult to all those who suffered under them.

Works Cited

Bernhard, Meg. “Belgium Confronts Ugly Colonial Past, but African Museum Changes Don’t Please Everyone.” Los Angeles Times, 31 Oct. 2019.

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “The British Museum Was a Wonder of Its Time — but Also a Product of Slavery.” Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Oct. 2017.

Bowlby, Chris. “The Palace of Shame That Makes China Angry.” BBC, 2 Feb. 2015.

Nayeri, Farah. “Remembering the Racist History of ‘Human Zoos.’” The New York Times, 29 Dec. 2021.

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “The New Acropolis Museum: A Dialogue With Antiquity.” The New York Times, 30 Oct. 2007.

Tweedie, Neil. “The Koh-i-Noor: Diamond Robbery?” The Telegraph, 29 July 2010.

High on Helping: The Dangers of Voluntourism

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High on Helping: The Dangers of Voluntourism

This essay, by Ketong Li, age 17, from Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s Ninth Annual Student Editorial Contest, for which we received 16,664 entries.

We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can find them here as they post.

High on Helping: The Dangers of Voluntourism

As an Asian student in the United States, I’ve faced my share of cringe-inducing cultural insensitivity and casual imperialism. But in the summer of 2020, ironically, I was guilty of the exact same.

A group of peers and I had traveled to Myanmar, ostensibly to create a musical to promote and preserve the Wa people’s artistic culture. The fact that none of us had any background in anthropology, musicology or production was strangely irrelevant. “Hi! I’m here to protect your heritage by publicizing your customs to the world,” I announced shamelessly to the Wa chief.

Welcome to the rapidly growing industry of voluntourism, which markets itself as a seamless blend of charity and leisure. Organizing trips for over 10 million people annually, voluntourism agencies reap billions from their clients’ good intentions. The seemingly benevolent nature of the activity has made it a top choice extracurricular for students who can afford it.

Unfortunately, most participants (including my past self) are blind to its disturbing consequences. In the words of a New York Times article, voluntourists assume that “simply by being privileged enough to travel the world” they “are somehow qualified to help ease the world’s ills.”

The idea that voluntourism is based in egotism, not altruism, may be a tough pill to swallow. But voluntourists’ actions are often fruitless due to the volunteers’ limited involvement and expertise. Put bluntly, many of these trips serve no purpose other than to pad resumes and fuel social media posts. It is up to universities, at whom much of this business is aimed, to point out explicitly how superficial — or downright detrimental — these efforts can be.

Voluntourism implicitly teaches students to develop a “white savior” complex toward the regions they visit. More insidiously, residents of host communities can become dependent on foreign influence — financial influence, that is, because none of the voluntourists’ other impacts typically last longer than their trip. As Pippa Biddle illustrates in the book “Ours To Explore,” once one group “[finishes] building bathrooms at a local school and [leaves] for home, the structures [will be] demolished to make way for a new project, built by a fresh set of volunteers.” She even documented how children in Uganda learned to “rub dirt on themselves before running toward arriving volunteers.”

Many students don’t realize that to better the world, they don’t have to leave their own neighborhoods, let alone their continent. While helping seniors set up grocery deliveries may not sound as exciting as building schools for impoverished children, it demonstrates what colleges really want to see, without the hefty price tag and overtones of imperialism. As I learned myself, all that matters is having a long-term positive impact — there’s no need to make a song and dance.

Works Cited

Bansal, Sarika. “Do No Harm: The Dark Side of Voluntourism.” Driving Change, 8 Dec. 2021.

Biddle, Pippa. “Ours To Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism.” Potomac Books, an Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2021.

Kushner, Jacob. “The Voluntourist’s Dilemma.” The New York Times, 22 March 2016.

To Meme or Not to Meme

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onlinefreecourse
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To Meme or Not to Meme

This, in turn, begs the question: Can crises be memed?

The majority of meme content has been fueled by teenagers whose coming-of-age has been accompanied by generation-defining events. As the digital media strategist Joshua Chapdelaine said in an article for Teen Vogue, memes create the “perfect vessels for high-anxiety moments when words may be difficult to find.” Processing emotions through unprecedented times can be complex, but memes alleviate that difficulty through their ability to transcend emotional boundaries.

Moreover, memes allow teenagers to openly participate in discussions regarding political and social developments. With their less intimidating nature, memes ease the process in which opinions are shared and formed. “As the memes and their narratives travel and spread, they help shape the larger cultural narrative … just as all memes, from toxic to wholesome, help create cultural narratives,” writes Aja Romano in Vox. Accessible by anyone, memes serve as the youth’s entry into becoming well-informed citizens. At a time of undeniably high sociopolitical tension, it is crucial that youth are aware of global issues; memes facilitate exactly that.

Despite seemingly lacking sophistication, memes are effectively raising awareness for a teenage audience. Just as the generation before had political cartoons, today’s youth have memes to engage in political discourse. Through this revolutionary method of communication, memes are shaping the way teens interact with the world.

Works Cited

Colombo, Charlotte. “Westerners, Please Stop With the Memes and Hot Takes on the Ukraine Crisis.” HuffPost, 7 March 2022.

Colombo, Charlotte. “Memes and War: Why People Turn to Jokes During Times of Crisis.” Teen Vogue, 3 March 2022.

Phelan, Hayley. “Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and the Insidious Meme-Ification of War.” The New York Times, 26 March 2022.

Romano, Aja. “Reckoning With the War Meme in Wartime.” Vox, 25 Feb. 2022.

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