Welcome back to PRISM, the SCISOC newsletter! In this week's newsletter, we have updates regarding our camp leader applications - they have been extended. We also wrap up the year by recapping our events of 2021! In our Science News, we explore what the Mars rover 'Perseverance' has discovered, and for our Fun Corner, we delve into the story behind the princess of Japan revoking her royal status. This is the final newsletter of this year, so we hope you all enjoy your summer holiday and take care! |
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UNSW SCISOC Presents: Camp Leader 2022 Applications [EXTENDED] Looking for an opportunity of a lifetime? Apply for SCISOC Camp Leader! Due to the recent COVID-19 developments, all interview applications are now temporarily paused. Application due dates have now been extended by one week, the camp leader application form is now due on 11:59 pm January 3rd, 2022. |
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SCISOC RECAP 2021 We hope everyone is staying safe and enjoying a well-deserved break from a hectic year. It was great seeing every one of your lovely faces at our face-to-face events, as well as our online ones! To wrap up 2021, we’d like to take a moment to look back at some of our 2021 SCISOC highlights. |
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2021 Operation Camp Our Annual Flagship Camp started the year off with a blast, inviting many skilled agents to take part in many missions in a 3 day and 2-night stay at Camp Yarramundi. We had over 200 hundred students participating in team challenges and games led by our camp leaders. It was a great opportunity to build new relationships, socialize, and for a fun time. Don’t worry if you missed out...our next camp will be right around the corner! |
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Boba Crawl During the year we hosted a Boba Crawl which turned out to be a great success! With attendees put into groups to visit different bubble tea locations such as The Alley, CoCo, Chatime and many others, it was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know one another and fight over which bubble tea topping is truly the greatest. For one lucky group, they had the chance to see two of the SCISOC subcommittee’s best dancers battling it on Dance Dance Revolution at TimeZone! With that wrapping up Boba Crawl, it was great to see everyone bonding over one of the staple drinks for a uni student and we’re looking forward to hosting something similar again in 2022! |
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Ready Player 2 On the 2nd of July, we ran a Games Night which offered attendees a variety of games to participate in, from light-hearted games such as Skribbl.io and Jackbox to more competitive games such as League of Legends and Valorant. This was a great event for anyone who wanted to play games they have a passion for while bonding with others that share similar interests. The event was a great success where many attendees had many options to choose from, while at the same time other students were able to just ‘chat and chill’ until late at night. Look forward to more events like this coming in 2022! |
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If You Are The One Despite the loneliness we all experienced during the lockdown, SCISOC brightened up our days with our very own dating show inspired by the popular TV series: If You Are The One. This was live-streamed through Facebook, where one bachelor and ten bachelorettes battled their ways to determine who truly is the king and queen of UNSW, leaving the show with their true love. We all had our favourite contestants, although they may not be the one for our bachelor, they became the one for many of us, ending the night with some very deep impressions… |
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With that wrapping up some of our events this year, keep an eye open and stay updated to see what events we'll be having in 2022. We hope you all stay safe and enjoy your uni break! |
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Since landing in the Jezero crater on Mars in February 2021, the Perseverance rover has been surveying the surface of Mars to reveal to scientists the geological processes that created and modified the martian crust through time. This search may also bear clues as to whether there was water on Mars and if organisms had inhabited mars in the past or present. |
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Scientists recently discovered that the surface NASA’s Perseverance rover was treading over had volcanic origins. They also found that rocks in the Jezero crater (about 45km in diameter) had interacted with water particles numerous times in the past and contained organic molecules. Using PIXL, the planetary instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry they successfully identified chemical elements from samples of rock in the area named ‘South Seitah’. In November, Perseverance stumbled upon a rock composed of a large number of olivine crystals engulfed in pyroxene crystals. This structure indicates the rock formed when crystals grew and settled in a slowly cooling magma. |
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Dr David Flannery from The Queensland University of Technology who helped build the analysis software that led to NASA’s latest discovery stated “We can get the date of the surface of Mars for the first time”. This is because all volcanic rocks are datable, which can be used to trace back the history of the planet. Besides this, the Perseverance rover has been leading the search for life on mars by gathering samples and analysing them with its built-in laboratory or saving them for return to Earth where scientists can study them with more powerful lab equipment. It holds 43 sample tubes, of which six have been sealed so far - four with rock cores, one with Martian atmosphere and one containing ‘witness’ material to observe any contamination that the rover might have brought from Earth. The perseverance rover is working in tandem with NASA's SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) to carry out the Multi-Mission Mars Sample Return campaign over the following years. This instrument has its own laser that can detect concentrations of organic molecules and minerals that have been formed in watery environments. Together, SHERLOC and PIXL produce high resolution maps of elements, minerals and molecules in Martial rocks and sediments that astrobiologists can review and determine which to keep. |
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It should be noted that the presence of organics does guarantee that there was once life in the Jezero crater since both biological and nonbiological mechanisms can create organics. The key is to look for biosignatures within the Jezero crater that could be hiding within carbonate minerals that are especially good at preserving certain kinds of fossilized life on Earth. |
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In the list of extraordinary things that have happened in 2021, the princess of Japan revoking her royal status to marry her college sweetheart is probably not at the top of your mind.
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Mako Komuro, formerly Princess Mako of Akishino, was born on the 23rd of October, 1991, to Crown Prince Fumihito and Crown Princess Kiko. She lived the life fit for an imperial highness, having been educated in Japan in her younger years before studying abroad in Ireland for English, as well as at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Leicester alongside her degree at the International Christian University in Tokyo for extensive education in the arts and overall cultural history. |
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She met her future husband at the International Christian University in 2012 and in 2017, they were set to marry. Imperial court rule states that female members must forfeit their royal titles upon marrying a commoner, while male members do not have to. However, since meeting Kei Komuro, Mako had known of this and told the press that Kei was irreplaceable and this was the only outcome that could have happened. |
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Kei suffered from his own public scrutiny, from his unconventional ponytail upon returning home from America to his mother’s scandal in 2018 that inadvertently put their wedding on a halt. His mother had a debt of four million yen (approximately fifty thousand AUD) to her ex-fiance, some of which had been used for Kei’s education. |
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Word of this got out by Japanese tabloids, leading to the postponement of the wedding with no new date in sight at the time. The princess made a statement to the public, admitting that they rushed too quickly into things, while Komuro and the imperial family stayed mum about the financial straits that their daughter’s future in-laws were supposedly in. |
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In the same year, Kei moved to New York to pursue his law degree and eventually released a 28-page document in 2021 detailing everything, including disproving rumours and affirming truths amongst said rumours. He and his mother were under the impression that the money was not a loan although his mother’s ex-partner had paid for some living expenses. Kei had stated he intended to pay all of it back, despite getting through his school years on scholarships, however, the damage had already been done three years earlier. |
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| Additionally, the princess had been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and this was announced alongside their new wedding date for October 2021. It had developed under the stress and intense media scrutiny of not only her partner but the imperial family as a whole that she felt she could not escape. While there are lasting scars since she met her husband all those years ago, they happily and quietly wed on the 25th of October and Mr and Mrs Komuro now reside in New York, where Kei works at Lowenstein Sandler as a law clerk. |
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We hope for nothing but the best for the newlyweds and will again, ponder the question of what is really enough to impress your parents and/or in-laws, let alone the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan. |
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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! |
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