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How the Generation of Surplus Value Causes Capitalists to Assume the Risk to Kill
Get PDFCapitalism, the ideology that governs nearly every aspect of our lives, encourages capitalists to kill in order to protect their surplus value. Killing is not the goal of capitalism, however, capitalists assume the risk to kill for the sake of making a profit. The generation of surplus value is the driving force that causes capitalists to assume the risk to kill, and is intrinsic to capitalism. Capitalism also causes a rift in our relationship with nature, and if the way labor is viewed doesn’t change, capitalism will continue to foster death and destruction. The film Erin Brockovich and the book, The Radium Girls serve as two historically specific examples of big corporations killing several innocent community members. The unsafe labor conditions perpetuated by the Radium Dial Company led to the deaths of many Radium girls, and the lack of consideration for the environment by PG&E Hinkley further disturbed the relationship between man and nature, and killed several Hinkley residents. When confronted about their actions, these companies go through great lengths to avoid paying settlements to the people they negatively affected. These corporations cheated the people they were killing, attempting to silence their victims and defend their surplus value. In both lawsuits, the corporations were found guilty, and were forced to pay the settlements they worked hard to avoid. These lawsuits show that social movements and class struggle can yield positive change. Although environmental and labor regulations work within the capitalist system, they are able to contain the most destructive aspects of capitalism.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1033/thumbnail.jp
The University Under Capitalist Ideology: Knowledge Production, Radical Otherness, and Poetic Language
Get PDFUnder communicative capitalism, the University, a vacuum of information within modern academia, can be considered a legitimate marketplace for the production, consumption, and circulation of new forms of capital—language, signs, information, and knowledge. By focusing on open-access communication practices, it is revealed that knowledge production within the University lacks both use value and meaning entirely. This research establishes communicative capitalism as pure ideology, which manifests in the University through a need for comprehensibility, a unity of struggle, signs of progress, and a neoliberal fantasy of transparent mediation between activism and academia, which all militaristically tightens capitalist control. Understanding the ideological functions behind the University and its image as a safe space encompassing alterity is crucial to recognize its relationship with the Radical Other—those excluded from the University and western capitalism writ large—and, thus, to forge more ethical forms of communication and representation. The proliferation of information, despite the consequential destruction of meaning, violently reduces the Radical Other to difference, or dangerously similar. Meanwhile, Radical Otherness cannot be made known to the University as a means of avoiding co-option nor can it be represented on the level of content as it transcends hegemonic language. Thus, communication practices must emphasize form. In complement, this research also explores poetic language as a mechanism of subverting the University’s need to know. In employing strategies such as mimicry, parody, onomatopoeia, and nontraditional grammar and sentence structures, poetic language may be capable of circumventing ideology and demarcating space for the Radical Other.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1071/thumbnail.jp
Trump and the Coronavirus: Examining the Past to Improve the Future
Get PDFThere is no question that individuals across the globe have had to suffer and contend with the reality of the coronavirus pandemic; many lost family and friends, and felt as if their livelihoods were ripped apart as they had to suffer the shockwaves of unprecedented shutdowns and quarantine. Many within the United States must also grapple with the unanswered questions surrounding the pandemic, specifically at the national governmental level. A common sentiment is that former President Trump handled the pandemic poorly. This research argues that the former president contributed to a delayed and unsatisfactory response through decisions he made in rhetoric and policy. I assess decisions he made in handling the crisis through an examination of a variety of sources, including his own Twitter account and the responses of his White House Response Coordinators, most notably Dr. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. Other sources include opinions from medical experts, CDC guidelines, as well as accounts from reputable journalists across political networks. My analysis of this collective information will provide insight into how pandemic responses should be reformed in the future in order to meet national and global public health demands. This will help to not only clarify and uncover pieces of the past for Americans, but also serve as a benchmark for future success in healthcare outcomes as it pertains to pandemics. It is only through an analysis of past-pandemic catastrophe that we may have any chance of improving in the future.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1106/thumbnail.jp
Digital Manipulation on Social Media: How Deep Fakes Have Transformed the Cyber World into a Complex Breeding Ground of Disinformation
Get PDFTechnology and social media are a driving force within the present-day global society. Facts and figures can be spread to billions of people within minutes. Anyone can find a variety of information—both true and false—online with one simple click. With this rapid rise of the dominance of digital media comes a severe cost—an influx of disinformation campaigns in different forms. Although one may think that disinformation only appears in written works or visual images, the reality is that intentionally-modified videos are one of the most prevalent methods of disinformation attacks today. These altered videos, more commonly known as deep fakes, are one of the most damaging and misleading forms of disinformation. My research will focus on analyzing deep fakes of famous politicians, including American Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. I aim to provide insight into the spread of distinct deep fakes and their respective impacts on their naive consumers around the world. My study will focus on how the general public is constantly exposed to deep fakes on various social media platforms which results in their harmful belief of false narratives. My analysis will showcase how a deep fake’s online presence has lasting consequences on naive observers as seen through their massive global audience and how one’s perception of reality can be entirely skewed through one simple viewing.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1110/thumbnail.jp
High-Sugar Adapted Drosophila Melanogaster Display Differences in Feeding Behavior
Get PDFOvernutrition due to chronic high-sugar (HS) feeding has been shown to reduce lifespan and elicit type II diabetes-like pathophysiology phenotypes in Drosophila melanogaster. We are using an experimental evolution approach in large, outbred Drosophila populations using a HS diet as the selective pressure. This has produced rapid phenotypic adaptation including a significant increase in survival for selected flies on the HS diet. One mechanism by which flies might reduce the effects of a HS diet would be to reduce consumption. Thus, we hypothesized that there would be differences in feeding behavior between control and adapted populations. Four control and four HS-selected populations were separated by sex and fed either control (5% w/v sucrose) or HS (34% w/v) medium supplemented with 2% FD&C Blue #1 for two hours and spectrometry was used to quantify the amount consumed. Consistent with previous findings, females ate more than males. Some HS-adapted fly populations exhibited an overall reduction in feeding, whereas others showed a greater sensitivity to calorie content, compared with controls. In the selected population with the longest lifespan and healthspan, there was no difference in females’ feeding on control food, but a significant reduction was observed when eating HS food. This is consistent with the greater triacylglycerol (TAG) content in HS-fed control flies, compared with selected flies. Moving forward, we hope to probe the role of acetylcholine signaling in producing the feeding differences between the control and adapted populations.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1111/thumbnail.jp