Welcome back to PRISM, the SCISOC newsletter! In this week's newsletter, we present to you our incoming 2022 Executive Team! We also have an online event, Psychometric Squid Game so channel your competitive spirit and sign up! In our Science News, we talk about the dire effects of COVID-19 on global warming and as spooky season is upon us, for our Fun Corner, we take our audience back to 1692, the Salem Witch Trials.

UNSW Science Society Executive Team 2022

Despite the circumstances that affected the latter half of 2021, SCISOC continued to flourish and grow, keeping the community alive and well. And with that, following our recent AGM, we proud to announce our new executive team for 2022!

President: Benny Ouyang

Vice President of Marketing: Adam McCabe

Vice President of Socials: Victoria Huang

Vice President of IT/Publications: Hilary Cao

Vice President of Externals: Alex Nguyen & Michelle Huynh

Treasurer: Paul Parackal

Secretary: Erica Mai

Arc Delegate: Lily Chapman

Congratulations to the incoming executives, we are excited to see where you take SCISOC in the coming year. To the greater science community of UNSW, thank you for a fantastic year: we have thoroughly enjoyed enhancing your university experience. And to the Science Society team of 2021, we thank you for your amazing work this year, and will miss working alongside you.

Thank you everyone for an incredible year!

Signing off,

2021 Executive Team

UNSW Interfaculty Presents - Psychometric Squid Game

Looking for a quick way to win 45.6 billion won? Or a sure way to EARN it?

The VIPs have arrived and the games are ready! SCISOC, EngSoc, MathSoc and DataSoc are glad to present Psychometric Squid Game.

Psychometrics are a series of tests and games often used in recruitment to examine aptitude or personality traits and determine whether candidates are suitable for a given company. More STEM-based companies are beginning to adopt this recruitment software, and the use of psychometric testing during the recruitment process is seeing an increase of 10-15% each year. As a lesser-known and much less understood portion of the recruitment cycle, roughly 60% of candidates don't make it past this stage.

Our Inter-faculty collaboration will dive into what makes psychometrics fun, giving you a taste of the games and puzzles that really stand out! As an introduction to the event, our guest speaker will very briefly break down the psychometric process, what psychometrics are and what they entail. We’ll equip you with the insider knowledge to beat the games and win over those recruiters. Then let the games begin!

Grab your best gganbus and sign up BY TOMORROW here in teams of 3-5 to compete in various rounds of trivia and games! Each round will be fully immersive and based off of a different portion of psychometric testing, drawing from your favourite elements of Squid Game to up the stakes! Teams will compete until only one team is left standing to win the grand prize! Click going to our Facebook event page to keep up to date!

Details: 6:00 - 8:00PM | Wednesday, 3rd November 2021 | Zoom

Remember to follow us on our SCISOC Facebook page to keep up to date with our upcoming events!

The annual United Nations (UN) Emissions Gap report released on Wednesday 27^th October 2021 and the dire effects of COVID-19 on global warming that the report outlines are very alarming.

As per the Paris Agreement, the target is to get warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, however despite greater emissions reduction targets, the world is currently on its way to hit 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100.

The report states that the in order to limit warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, targets needed to cut a further 28 gigatonnnes of greenhouse gasses per year, which is practically equivalent to halving global glasshouse gas emissions by 2030.

A separate report issued by the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) indicated that global average atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new high of 413.2 parts per million in 2020, greater than at any time in the preceding 2 million years. However, as countries try to recover from COVID-19, 2021 is likely to be a record-high year for global emissions.

Despite the shortfall in the commitments discrepancy in promises, the report stipulates that if all nations retained their net-zero pledges and aligned their 2030 plans with those pledges, warming might be reduced by another 0.5 degrees Celsius this century. Prime Minister Scott Morrison commited Australia to a target of net-zero emission by 2050 last Tuesday.

However, even though global annual emissions dropped 5.4 per cent in 2020, greenhouse gas emissions are cumulative and therefore the COVID-19 decline has little slowed warming. Contrary to widespread opinion, the post-COVID-19 economic recovery strategy to help drive a transition to low-carbon infrastructure has not been properly executed. According to the Emissions Gap study, only 17-19% of total recovery investments were spent on projects that will reduce glasshouse gas emissions between May 2021 and May 2022.

Ways in which countries can prevent the downturn of COVID-19 include carbon trading programmes that are well-regulated, for example, ensuring that developing nations are financially rewarded for maintaining carbon-sink ecosystems like rainforests.

And of course, world leaders must push for more countries to increase their emissions reduction targets so that the world does not falter again in global warming.

Spooky season is upon us, and with it brings hordes of little children all dressed up as the masked people from Squid Game, eager to rob us of our candy bought with our hard-earned cash. Or it would be if we were in America at least. Australia doesn’t celebrate Halloween. There is no such thing as Halloween. I asked multiple friends how they spent their Halloween and was met with a blank-faced stare followed by the question: “It was Halloween…?”

But I digress.

Since it’s Halloween-but-not-really, I thought it would be somewhat interesting to take a dive into the infamous Salem Witch Trials, despite their only connection with Halloween being witches. ‘Witches’. Because the Salem Witch Trials were a sham, of course, and not a single person who was hanged was actually a witch.

The Salem Witch Trials began in 1692, an explosive consequence of the rising tensions in the town caused by politics and family feuds, and further egged along by mass hysteria, but let’s take it back a little further. Reverend Samuel Parris had just become Salem’s first ordained minister, although he was heavily disliked by the people. Already, the people of Salem were starting to think that the quarrels breaking out over this situation were the work of the Devil himself. This escalated when, just a few years later in 1692, Reverend Parris’ daughter, Elizabeth, and his niece Abigail began suffering from severe fits, which the local doctor would blame on the supernatural. And thus, the witch hunt began.

Illustration of Tituba by John Ehninger

Three women were initially accused of being the bewitcher; Tituba, the Parris’ family’s slave, Sarah Good, a homeless beggar, and Sarah Osborne, an elderly woman. Good and Osborne would deny any accusations thrown at them, however, Tituba would later go on to confess to witchcraft after being beaten by Parris, despite initially pleading ‘not guilty’. She stated that she didn’t do the deed alone, however, and had help from witches from within the community, including Good and Osbourne.

With the ‘knowledge’ that there were witches who were eager to cause harm to the community hidden throughout the village, the mass panic began to set in. Accusations were thrown left and right, with over two hundred people being accused of witchcraft by the end of the trials. Bridget Bishop was the first to be convicted of witchcraft, and was hanged on June 2 in 1692. Another 18 people would be found guilty of witchcraft over the following year and hanged, with 1 more person (Giles Corey) pressed to death with stones after he refused to plead guilty or not guilty.

Picture of Gallows Hill, the location of the 19 hangings.

In short, the Salem Witch Trials were brutal, efficient, and the overall epitome of the injustice of the legal system. Many over the course of the year would try to stop the Salem Witch Trials. 5 days after Bishop’s hanging, the respected minister Cotton Mather would write a letter asking the court to not allow ‘spectral evidence’ – that is, dreams and visions – to be used as proper evidence. The court would reject his request and continue on with their series of bogus trials. Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, would try again a couple months later, stating that “it were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned”.

Governor Phipps, whose wife had just become the newest member of the list of accused, listened to the pleas and put a stop to further arrests while also releasing all those being held in prison for practicing witchcraft. Of course, by then it was too late. With nineteen hanged, one killed during torture, and many more who’d passed away while being held in prison, the Salem Witch Trials had already traumatised the people of Salem and left its black mark on history.

On January 14 in 1697, years after the Salem Witch Trials were over, a day of fasting would be held, and the leading judge Samuel Sewall would publicly apologise for his part in the tragedy. It wasn’t until 1957, however, when the state of Massachusetts would formally apologise for the incident.

All in all, the Salem Witch Trials would go on to become a perfect example of how corruption breeds, with many false accusations thrown out due to family feuds and neighbourly fights, and how the court played along and held sham trials while convicting many with inconclusive evidence further propagated mass hysteria. Many were killed unfairly, most of which people whose only crime was not adhering to the Puritan standards of the time, and I think we’d do well to remember that the next time we dress up as witches for Halloween.

UNSW Science Society is proud to announce our continued partnership with GradReady through 2021. GradReady provides GAMSAT Preparation courses for anyone looking to pursue Medicine after they graduate.
This process starts earlier than you think, so if you’re studying medical science or just have that passion, check out what they have to offer!