Robots taking over traffic

By: Dori Jenkins

Huge robots have invaded the whole city of Kinshasa, but they’re not there to cause trouble. The robots are there to lend a helping hand by directing traffic.  Kinshasa is the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country in Africa. Last month, the city’s government installed three eight foot tall robots, named Tamuke, Mwaluke, and Kisanga, at busy street intersections. Along with them are two other robots from 2013.        
Each robot is equipped with surveillance cameras and traffic lights. These machines are being used in the place of police officers to watch for drivers who don’t follow the rules of the road. This should help make the streets safer for pedestrians and people who break the law. Kinshasa is a huge city with a serious traffic safety problem. About nine million people live there and its bustling streets are crammed with cars whose drivers often fail to obey traffic laws. In the past eight years, more than 2,000 people have died in road accidents in the city. Officials hope drivers will pay more attention to the hard-to-miss robots, resulting in less dangerous streets. A sophomore at Seckman High School, Caitlin Renwick, says, “As a new driver, I personally would feel safer knowing that there was an extra set of eyes watching as people drive and it will hopefully lower the amount of accidents that occur.”                                                                  
To monitor traffic, each solar-powered bot has video cameras in its eyes. The cameras record footage and transmit it to a police station, where officers review the information. If the police catch a driver breaking the law, they then issue him/her a ticket. The robots also have traffic lights in their hands, and their bodies rotate to signal when it’s safe for cars and people on foot to cross intersections.
What do Kinshasa’s human police officers think of their state-of-the-art counterparts? “These robots will be an important asset [something of value] for the police,” Celestin Kanyama, one of the leaders of Kinshasa’s police force, told the news agency.
The team that designed the robots is an association of Congolese female engineers. They have created another five of the machines for use in other parts of the country. The group would like to build 30 additional robots, with each one costing around $27,500 to make. A junior at Seckman High School, Kaci Reed, says, “I think that it would be much cheaper to just put cameras on the light posts instead of making that expensive of a robot to just do the same thing that a camera would.”                                                                                                                    
So far, people seem pleased with the robocops. “As a motorcyclist, I’m very happy with the robot’s work,” a Kinshasa man named Demouto Mutombo told a local news team.

Seckman's Wake Up Day opens eyes

By: Sadie Raddatz

As a member of SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions), I can proudly say that on Friday, April 24, SADD held our annual Wake Up Day. Wake Up Day is a day to have students “wake up” and realize what driving distracted or under the influence can do.

The members of SADD put together a fake car crash to allow seniors to see what could happen by being distracted or under the influence while driving. We bring in the big guys: police, firefighters, and the ambulance. They will explain and demonstrate the consequences of making poor choices while behind the wheel. When you are behind the wheel, not only is your own life at risk every time you start your car, but everyone else's life is on the line too.

Seckman High School also had many guest speakers come to talk about their organization, an experience they've had and even accidents caused by distracted or intoxicated individuals. These guest speakers were in classrooms throughout the school, sharing personal stories and useful information. Teenagers, and adults, often believe that nothing will happen to them, but the reality of that is harshly untrue. You can be hurt, you can go to jail, and you can be killed with one poor choice.

One text, one phone call, one beer and, in a flash, your life can change. You could lose scholarships, friends, a loved one, or even your own life. SADD’s goal is not to lecture or bore you to death, but to help students understand the dangers.

Rejecting the rejection letter

By: Bella Dalba

     High school seniors across America are collectively holding their breath, waiting to receive that one life-changing piece of mail: a letter of acceptance from their dream college.
     For some, the coming weeks will be filled with joy upon being offered admittance to the school(s) of their choice. For others, this time will be spent reevaluating every decision they made in their life that led to them to receive numerous rejection letters. Regardless of where seniors fall on this spectrum, the stress put upon students is enormous.
     For Siobhan O'Dell, 17, her dream school was Duke University. On April 1, Siobahn received her letter from the Duke Admissions Office, and read that dreaded sentence: “I regret to inform you that [Duke] cannot offer you admission into the incoming freshman class.”
O'Dell didn't make a fuss or throw a tantrum. She sat down and calmly wrote a letter back to the school:

“Thank you for the rejection letter of March 26, 2015. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me admission into the fall 2015 freshman class at Duke.
This year I have been fortunate enough to receive rejection letters from the best and brightest universities in the country. With a pool of letters so diverse and accomplished I was unable to accept rejection letters I would have been able to only several years ago.
Therefore I will be attending Duke University's 2015 freshmen class. I look forward to seeing you then."

     O’Dell’s letter took the impersonal nature of university correspondence with prospective students and reversed the message to target Duke's student admissions department. It was an effective parody of what a college blog referred to as "Admissions Speak."
     “I just realized how much power these universities have over the lives of students, and what they have to say is pretty much the end all,” O’Dell told the Duke [University] Chronicle. “So I thought, ‘What if it wasn’t? What if students had the final decision?’”
     This year, Duke accepted 2,650 of the 28,000 applicants from its regular decision pool, resulting in an acceptance rate of just 9.4 percent. This is the third time in the school's history that the acceptance rate reached single digits, and the second consecutive year. “The rates of admission are insanely low,” says Keith Mayer, a guidance counselor at Seckman Senior High School. “Schools that weren’t previously considered selective are now falling into that category, and the odds of being admitted to one of the notoriously difficult schools -- the Ivies, Stanford, Wash U, etc. -- have become astronomically miniscule.”
     Cristoph Guttentag, Duke's Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, had no comment on O'Dell's application when he was contacted by ABC News. The university, however, wrote back to O'Dell: “I understand how disappointed you are that we were unable to offer you a space in our incoming class. I want to be honest with you and let you know that it’s very rare that we learn something that leads us to change our decision." The letter went onto say that for the last century, 500 rejected applications asked to be reviewed for a second look, and only four of those applicants were granted admission. “How does this letter not encourage [Duke] to review Siobhan’s application? She’s clearly too good for them,” Claire Kinkead, a senior at SHS, says while laughing.
     O'Dell apparently maintains a similar mindset, and refuses to dwell on her rejection from Duke. She recently posted on her Instagram account that she was accepted by the University of South Carolina, where she plans to major in biology and minor in mathematics.
     The idea of writing tongue-in-cheek college admission essays is not new. Many in college circles are familiar with a now-infamous college essay from a New York University applicant that makes outlandish claims, like the author being able to make 30-minute brownies in 20 minutes, as well as the ability to throw tennis rackets at small objects with "deadly" precision, among a litany of other claims. The piece was written by Hugh Gallagher, who was accepted to NYU and graduated in 1994, though it wasn't his actual application essay: he merely used the piece to apply to writing programs in college. Gallagher's essay was one of the most virally forwarded emails in the early days of the internet, according to an article on About.com.
     However, O'Dell's such outward rejection of rejection just may have landed her letter in a class of its own. She thought after sending the note to Duke Admissions that would be the end of the saga, but it was not to be. “My dad saw the letter on Facebook [on Wednesday] and texted me, ‘I see you’re trending today!’”

The starless night

By: Josh Leach

Where have the stars gone?  Most urbanized countries have practically no visible stars in their night skies.  Light pollution from cities extends into the atmosphere, where the light is diffracted and scattered over hundreds of miles.  The result is that the sky no longer gets dark, but rather takes on a grayish hue.  In fact, in London the full moon is completely invisible, bleached out by urban lights.
Light pollution seems insignificant compared to the destructive power of air or water pollution, but scientists have only just begun to discover its impact on the environment.  According to Globe at Night, a website devoted to promoting light pollution awareness, “Light pollution poses a serious threat in particular to nocturnal wildlife, having negative impacts on plant and animal physiology. It can confuse the migratory patterns of animals, alter competitive interactions of animals, change predator-prey relations, and cause physiological harm.”  Josh Kurosz, a senior at Seckman High School, commented by saying, “Yeah, you don’t expect something like light to have a significant effect on the environment, but apparently it can.”
Since the very beginning, life has experienced the change from day to night.  Organisms have evolved to rely on the transition from light to dark to direct their biological cycles.  Many plants, for example, use photosynthesis during the day, then resort to cellular respiration at night.  Disruptions in this natural process may have a severe effect on these plants.  The US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health reports, “Prolonged exposure to artificial light prevents many trees from adjusting to seasonal variations.  Research on insects, turtles, birds, fish, reptiles, and other wildlife species shows that light pollution can alter behaviors, foraging areas, and breeding cycles, and not just in urban centers but in rural areas as well.  Sea turtle hatchlings normally navigate toward the sea by orienting away from the elevated, dark silhouette of the landward horizon.  When there are artificial bright lights on the beach, newly hatched turtles become disoriented and navigate toward the artificial light source, never finding the sea.”
Scientists are also finding health effects due to light pollution.  Most people are skeptical that there is enough artificial light at night to impact health.  However, Verlyn Klinkenborg, a journalist for National Geographic, writes, “Now most of humanity lives under intersecting domes of reflected, refracted light, of scattering rays from overlit cities and suburbs, from light-flooded highways and factories. Nearly all of nighttime Europe is a nebula of light, as is most of the United States and all of Japan.”  To truly understand how much light pours out of urban areas every night, compare it to the most rural places on the globe.  Klinkenborg goes on to write, “In the south Atlantic the glow from single fishing fleet— squid fishermen luring their prey with metal halide lamps—can be seen from space.”  Believe it or not, there is enough artificial light to impact people’s health.  Globe at Night states, “Many species, especially humans, are dependent on natural body cycles called circadian rhythms and the production of melatonin, which are regulated by light and dark.  If humans are exposed to light while sleeping, melatonin production can be suppressed. This can lead to sleep disorders and other health problems such as increased headaches, worker fatigue, medically defined stress, some forms of obesity due to lack of sleep and increased anxiety. And ties are being found to a couple of types of cancer.”
Perhaps the greatest consequence to light pollution is how a starless sky impacts our humanity.  Humans have always looked up at the stars.  For thousands of years, nomads would hunt during the day, then gather around a fire and look up at the night sky.  They would discuss their place in the cosmos and question the origin of everything.  This was where philosophy was born.   Abby Aldridge, a senior, said, “We have lost our beautiful night sky and we will probably never get it back.”  Artists from throughout history have received their inspiration from the night sky.  The world may owe Van Gogh, Holst, and Shakespeare to the stars.  The last two generations of Americans, however, have grown up with a light polluted sky. According to US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, “When a 1994 earthquake knocked out the power in Los Angeles, many anxious residents called local emergency centers to report seeing a strange “giant, silvery cloud” in the dark sky. What they were really seeing—for the first time—was the Milky Way, long obliterated by the urban sky glow.”

A cell phone crisis?

By: Dori Jenkins

Many students carry around their own cell phones with them. You see them everywhere and people are sometimes more focused on their phones than anything else. In fact, 95% of teens, ages 12-17, have a phone available to them, and 81% of them use some kind of social media. The amount of students who own cell phones just keeps on increasing as they become more popular.
A cell phone has become such a reliable source of communication that people use every day. Some people have become so attached to their device that they don't pay attention to what is going on around them. Smart phones fall below only the Internet and hygiene when ranked by level of importance to peoples’ daily lives, according to the survey done by Bank of America Fund. Almost 91% said their phone is as important as their car and deodorant! A freshman at Seckman High School, Sydney Penrod, says, “I don’t think that my phone is more important than deodorant or actual necessities, however I do think about my phone way more than I think of other necessities.”
If a student was asked to go a full day without using his or her cell phone, chances are they could not successfully complete that task. Not that it is impossible because there are people in this world who survive without a phone, but the majority of American children don't know a world without technology and would not know what to do with themselves when they become bored. Most people can say that they even sleep with their phone right by them every night. A sophomore at Seckman High School, Lexie Leiweke, says, “Looking at my phone is last thing I do before I go to bed and the first thing I do whenever I wake up.”
According to a study done by students at the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, for most students the problem of going a full day without their phone was not having music. Today’s students have a soundtrack to their lives; they are always plugged in and they listen to music throughout the day. Not having music when they walked to class, when they exercised, or when they studied dramatically disconcerted many students. There was an up-side, however, that several students noted:  their lack of music actually forced them to have conversations with people they did not know. Although not having a cell phone for a full 24 hours may sound horrible, you may get to meet people or see something you've never noticed because you were too busy just staring into your phone. A senior at Seckman High School, Tenecia Clemmons, says, “One day I left my phone at home and I had a day full of less drama and I had more conversations with people I don’t often have a chance to talk to.”
Overall, most of the people in this world have become way too attached to the technology we have and don't realize the important things they are missing in life. As a young adult, a phone should not already be taking over your life, but sadly this happens. People don't realize how addicting phones can be and should limit their usage of them.