A 1000 word report on the shoes UP students wear and what they SHOULD wear

Shoes and you

A Student Report on the State of Shoe Technology

by Group 8: Fr∞ts and Vegetables | STS THY

Abstract

Science and technology has allowed us to progress in a multitude of ways, and our footwear is not an exception. However, development in shoe technology has been so rapid that choosing footwear has become a task that requires more than a simple glance. Footwear manufacturers resort to unusual and arcane terminologies and claims of better performance, vogue fashion, and unparalleled comfort and convenience, all to make their product stand out.

This paper will tackle one aspect of footwear technology -- performance enhancement. It will also attempt to tackle the correlation between claims of shoe manufacturers versus those who actually use them. Introduction A brief history of footwear

The first footwear were made by the ancient civilizations that was dated to be around 10,000 years ago. They used animals skin or fur to wrap around their feet for warmth and protection. They invented the sandals which at the time was leather stuffed with straw and it became the most popular footwear in the early civilization.

The modern sport shoes (with the present standard of modern humans) probably started with the “Plimsoll”, a lightweight rubber-soled shoes that would one day be known as the sneakers. It can be seen as early as in the early 19th century. The plimsoll used a manufacturing technique called  vulcanisation to meld rubber and cloth together using heat. These shoes became increasingly popular quickly because it provided comfort and style, were lightweight and allowed the user to move around silently unlike the old shoes they had back then.

{sources:

www.footwearhistory.com
http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/technology/the-evolution-of-athletic-shoe-tech#slide-1}

Shoe Technology: What exists now Footwear technology Today

Three things: Lightweight, Ergonomic, Modern.

Based on the survey that we have conducted, at outstanding 80% of respondents said that the shoe brand they recommend most is Nike. Nike is widely known for its sports-casual themed shoes due to comfort, durability, and style, also as agreed upon by our respondents. Since Nike shoes are also known for their innovative shoe technology, let us take a look at three of their top shoe innovations.

Perhaps the most famous shoe innovation that Nike has introduced is Nike Air. This “air cushioning technology” was introduced by Nike way back in 1979 and is still used today. This technology features small pouches or bubbles of air inside the shoe to add comfort. In every step, the shoe is somehow compressed and it recovers on the following stride.

The next one is the up-and-coming Nike Flywire which is featured in almost all the latest Nike sports shoes. These Flywire are made of special braided polyester similar to what is used in the making of Kevlar. These filaments act like support as if cables on a bridge and they are strategically placed to help minimize the use of fabric, thus lightening the product.

Lastly, one of Nike’s latest innovations is Nike Lunarlon. The name is inspired by the concept of astronauts walking on the moon, as if walking on marshmallows. According to Nike, this new cushioning foam is 30% lighter than their usual foam, thus making the shoes lighter, softer and more comfortable. Ultimately, when wearing shoes with Lunarlon, the impact of the landing is decreased significantly.

There are certainly more shoe improvements and innovations from other brands and style of shoes and this is a testament to the rising popularity and significance of footwear science and technology in our society.

{sources:
www.footwearhistory.com
http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/technology/the-evolution-of-athletic-shoe-tech#slide-1}

Case Study: What the UP Diliman students choose

Analytics here.

Nature of the Study

We conducted a small, online survey on what footwear UP students use and prefer. We garnered 68 respondents over the course of less than a week.

Our respondents were asked so to choose which footwear they usually wore in school, and were requested to pick one which they wore the most. We then asked them the reasons why they chose that footwear over others.

Demographic

The majority of our respondents were freshmen (49%), and were female (53%). 57% hailed from the College of Engineering.

However, there are alternatives for people who don’t like shoes. The survey showed that around 30% of UP students actually wear slippers and sandals in school, citing comfort as the main reason why they prefer them. Hot days and long walks almost every day(although sometimes are the slippery roads during rainy season) can cause a lot of discomfort and sometimes pain for our feet, and wearing comfortable open footwear lessens that nuisance.

Results

The ideal shoe (for UP students, mostly from the College of Engineering and College of Music) is…comfortable (fit to your foot), durable, functional (in UP’s case, for walking from building to building and enduring the scorching heat from the sun). Also, 43% of the people who answered the survey believes that the brand matters, and it takes time before buying the perfect shoes. Maybe the fact that the reputation of the brand makes it credible, and trustworthy to be bought. Apparently, the brand that is most favorable by UP students that they think delivered this function is Nike that garnered 38% of the votes in the survey, followed by Adidas (22%) and other brands.

Conclusion: Recommendation

Shoes all over the world, like jobs, have been specialized for various specific tasks. The kind of shoes one wears depends on the kind of job or activity that he does, the comfort he wants to feel or sometimes just for the outfits they want to wear. In the survey on what kind of shoes UP students wear, for example, we can see that most students prefer wearing either rubber shoes or slippers, probably because it takes a lot of walking when going from one building to another.

Shoe Technology: is it worth investing in?

Our walking bipedal nature has been one of the evolutionary characteristics of our species and with us, the shoe technology has also evolved in its own way. From a bunch of leaves to haystacks to what we now have… a wide variety of comfortable and user-friendly shoes that will adjust to each and every type of people out there. So definitely! Why shouldn’t our shoes evolve with us?

References:

{sources:
www.footwearhistory.com
http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/technology/the-evolution-of-athletic-shoe-tech#slide-1}

{sources:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/technology/the-evolution-of-athletic-shoe-tech
http://www.footlocker.com/striperpedia/article/5000742/cushioning}

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmZKJv7pQOxmdEkxNnZLdk83VTRVV0RtRUxsb2JMckE#gid=0 FORM -> summary of responses

Special Project

By; Fidel Delos Reyes
      2009-31842

An interview of Dr. Ernesto P. Sonido about Geophysics.

El Psy Congroo: Time Travel in a Japanese Animated Series

Erwin Dennis Umali

2010 - 23119

Initial disclosure: I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of time travel. In fact, back in high school, I’ve watched (and was mesmerized) by the Naked Science documentary shown in class already, leading me to research more into the subject than I initially expected. Especially appealing to me was the concept of a multiverse -- a span of infinite timelines branching on every possible combination of circumstances. This effectively destroyed all notion of time paradoxes; since every possible outcome was already plotted out, ‘travelling in time’ essentially meant going to and from different timelines.

What’s especially interesting to me is that this concept, combined with time travelling, black holes, and a dash of fantasy, was used in depicting a compelling story in contemporary Japanese media. 

Warning: while I tried my best, this paper will still contain some spoilers regarding Steins;Gate. It won’t be too revealing, but you have been warned.

99% Science, 1% Fantasy

Originally slated as a visual novel on Windows PCs, the Steins;Gate anime revolves around a ragtag team of Tokyo college students who somehow create a device that can send messages to the past. This opens up a thrilling, melodramatic story that, personally, is well worth the time. However, the intriguing thing about Steins;Gate is how it delved deep into the intricacies of time travel, both in popular culture, and in its scientific aspects.

Different theories

The initial clincher for Steins;Gate was how it actually tackled several time travel theories -- and debunked each of them. It discussed string theory, wormholes, black holes, and how each could be potentially used to traverse the fabric of spacetime; but each of those needed a humanly impossible component, so, initially, one would think that, indeed, time travel would be impossible, even in that fictional universe.

John Titor

However, someone makes a virtual appearance in an online forum, claiming to be from a dystopian future. He introduces himself as John Titor, and explains various aspects of time travel in his ‘time machine’, that were considered to be impossible.

It was interesting to note that John Titor actually ‘existed’ in our real world, with the same claims to fame on time travel. While his claims were mostly debunked, his ‘appearance’ became a cultural phenomenon, and many time travel buffs still attest to his authenticity. It was nice to see this referenced and tackled in the show, bridging the story not just scientifically, but culturally as well.

However, in the show, the John Titor the protagonist knew about did not match any records in his world. Somehow, the history the protagonist knew was different from everyone else’s. This was explained through an interesting concept which the show called world lines.

World Lines and Attractor Fields

This was probably one of the most interesting aspects of the show for me. Steins;Gate revolves around the existence of an infinite multiverse. Each of these universes has a path, or a world line, which it follows a specific, minute set of events. Slight variations of events exist in slightly different world lines. Similar world lines are bundled into what was called an Attractor Field. Major events set attractor fields apart from each other -- in one attractor field, for instance, World War II might not have occurred, so they diverge greatly in terms of events.

Steins;Gate uses these concepts to its full extent, and destroys the notion of paradoxes along the way, enabling viewers to further suspend their belief (and awe at the concepts as well, I suppose). 

So then, who makes time travelling possible? Well, interestingly, Steins;Gate features a pretty well known organization...

CERN/SERN

… the creators of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN -- or, rather, SERN, because copyrights might pose a problem to the producers. In the show, SERN is secretly developing a method to travel through time for the purposes of ruling the entire populace. Interestingly, SERN plans to do it through the LHC, or the Large Hadron Collider.

But what could an unbelievably large particle accelerator do? Well...

Kerr black holes

It can create mini-black holes. At least in theory, particle accelerators can generate what is called a Kerr black hole, a special gravitational anomaly that, when traversed a specific way, can make you come out before you came in -- essentially transporting you to the past.

This is an actual, legitimate, scientifically-backed time travel theory, and what’s interesting is that the show finds a way to use this to the fullest. But, of course, matter wouldn’t survive in a black hole, much less escape from one, so how does time travelling actually happen? Well...

The miracle exception

The “1% fantasy” in the show, then, is how the time traveling happens. To deal with the problem of survivability in black holes, the show resorts to sending data through them instead. 

So, somehow, the protagonist can make a call with his cellphone, and all his memories (terabytes of it, mind you) are extracted, get perfectly compressed into mere kilobytes, is sent through an artificial Kerr black hole created by a humongous CRT (which is technically a mini-particle accelerator), and ends up some place in the past, routed back through a phone call, which, when answered, ‘overwrites’ the receiver’s memories. By all means, this sounds like utter science fiction, because it is.

Also, the protagonist has the ability to discern which world line he’s in, which, by our current understanding, should be an impossibility, since there isn’t a ‘vantage point’ you can stand on to view all the world lines, much less determine which is which.

However, apart from this, everything in the show revolves around concepts and theories we already know about time travelling. What’s amazing is that Steins;Gate manages to create a compelling story on known science, as well as educating the viewer a lot on our collective knowledge on time travelling.

All in all, Steins;Gate excited my inner time traveller, and educated me further into the intricacies of going around the fabric of spacetime. It did an excellent job raising questions regarding the ethics of time travel and humanity’s motivations behind it; will time travelling be just another avenue for power and dominance? 

It also becomes a philosophical quandary -- if we’re able to prove that there’s an infinite number of universes out there, each depicting every possible outcome, does what we do even matter? What does that make of the human struggle if you know that, possibly, in another world line, in another attractor field, the rest of humanity is content and happy?

Needless to say, I’d recommend Steins;Gate to any sci-fi fan in a heartbeat.

Asimov's Nightfall: Darkness Arousing

by Dennis Betito Jr.
2013-14724

There is a flow in our everyday lives. We know that everyday for as long as our generation lives, the sun will rise from the east and set in the west. But what if it wasn't like that?

This is the world that Isaac Asimov imagines. He creates Lagash, a planet surrounded by six nearby stars. As a result, the whole planet is perpetually bathed by sunlight, and the citizens of Lagash have never seen the stars, until now.

The radioplay opens with scientists pondering the possibilities that could arise from darkness engulfing about half of the planet by the aligning of the stars and the planets. They are afraid of the darkness: the unknown.

The plot is very interesting, and I would like to see it portrayed on stage or in film. The fear of the unknown is instinctive in humans, or at least to me. I'm very impressed with the imagination Asimov expresses. I'm a frustrated fiction writer, and the though process behind creating science fiction has always impressed me.

All The Time in the World

by Dennis Betito Jr.
2013-14724

"All the Time in the World" really hit home with me. I am a big reader. I'm reading on the jeep, on the plane, on the MRT, while I'm in class, while I'm home alone, basically almost all the time. The fact that the main character missed the end of the world while searching for a silent spot to read was really awesome, and I can identify with that struggle. Coming back to the surface and seeing his city empty must have been confusing, but he kept on with this desire to read, even without the presence other people. I don't know how I would've reacted if the world ended as we know it and I was hiding underground looking for a place to read, but I know I wouldn't have been as calm as him.

I personally know for a fact that words and books can be one's company. Loneliness is doused by the story conjured by ink on paper. It allows us distance from the real world, and gives us the perspective of a person, or a being, to whom life was given by the author. Reading about someone is similar to speaking to them, and  the unfortunate happenstance that his glasses broke must have been heart-wrenching, especially since he doesn't have any people for company, and has lost his ability to read his books.

The Bride of Frankenstein

by Dennis Betito Jr.
2013-14724

I've heard various versions of the famous Frankenstein story. As a kid, I always thought the monster was Frankenstein himself, but I found out later that he was actually the scientist that created the monster. I've read about it in comics and books, but I've never actually seen a film or a play about Frankenstein's monster. Until I saw the Bride of Frankenstein.

The Bride of Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, begins at a crowd cheering at the monster's apparent death. After some time, somebody wanted to see for himself the monster's bones, but is strangled by the actually-alive monster. The monster also attacks and kills his wife, while another one runs away in terror.

The monster roams around, eventually hearing the sound of a violin playing. He locates the source of a sound: a blind priest inside a cottage.

Catching Fire

by Dennis Betito Jr.

2013-14724

The Hunger Games was a tremendous movie, garnering awards and nominations from different groups. The second installment seeked to one-up the first movie by adding an intricate plot centered around political upheavals demanded by the masses.

Catching Fire had a high standard to reach, set by its predecessor, and it did not disappoint. The political turmoil involving the poorer of the twelve remaining districts and the elitist Capitol was the center of this film. The movie featured Panem's 75th Hunger Games, or the 3rd Quarter Quell. It is a Hunger Games with a different arena and more competitors. The rebellion against the Capitol leader President Snow actually used the Quarter Quell to spark the revolution, centered around the triumph and survival of their beacon of hope, the protagonist Katniss Everdeen, portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence.

The movie had amazing graphics. The arena set-up was beautiful, with a weather-changer, artificial beaches and forests, as well as ships and stadiums that look like they are far from being constructed in the real world. It is truly amazing how much more imaginative directors and designers have come from cult science fiction films such as the Matrix.

Catching Fire did not disappoint in terms of acting, editing, and writing. It's safe to say I will be looking forward to the third installment, Mockingjay.

Blade Runner: The future of the past

by Dennis Betito Jr.
2013-14724

I am, and have always been, a film enthusiast.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been watching movies. I grew up watching films like Toy Story, Back to the Future, and Star Wars. These movies made me yearn to be a jedi or a time traveler, and I wished I had moving toys and lightsabers. Later on, I will be into books and movies like Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia, and these have fueled my imagination and hopes for the future.

Blade Runner is a film that foretold the future. Set in Los Angeles on November 2019, the movie revolves around police officer, and 'Blade Runner', Rick Deckard, portrayed by Harrison Ford. His job is to hunt down 'replicants', bioengineered beings, and to 'retire' -read kill- them. However, he falls in love with one of the replicants, and he is stuck in quite a predicament.

The movie is extremely imaginative and innovative for 1982. I was impressed with the technology they created in the film. The movie wasn't critically acclaimed, but it managed to gain a mass following and I feel like it was one of the first movies to feature acceptance of bio-engineered beings or robots. Now that artificial intelligence and such are more accepted, I don't think Deckard would be persecuted if he lived in this era.

Very few movies of this generation have the same vision as the writers and directors of Blade Runner, and same as this one, not all of them are recognized by the public.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a, according to Wikipedia, 1982 American dystopian science thriller film directed by Ridley Scott. For a 1982 film, I can say that the film was very creative, fresh, unique and exciting for of course the people during the 90’s. I liked the concept very much. And even if the replicants were supposed to be the enemy, I found myself liking them a lot. They were kick-ass and fantastic, I could almost wish I was one. The way they were designed to be extremely smart and super strong made them even more interesting. Let’s not forget about the Blade Runners who were made to retire or kill rebel replicants who want to stay on Earth. Though humans, I am quite amused how the blade runners still manage to complete their task and retire the super strong robot replicants.

What I don’t like about the movie was the pacing. In my opinion, the pacing wasn’t steady, some parts were pretty fast paced and some just took too long. If only it were arranged in such a way that the viewers would understand end enjoy the pacing but of course no one can do anything about that anymore. Nonetheless, it was a pretty enjoyable 2 hours. I would recommend it to fans of futuristic films.

Krystine Pearl Robles 2013-70142

The Rhetoric of Cancer

by Dennis Betito Jr.
2013-14724

Cancer, medically known as malignant neoplasia, is one of the few diseases I really fear. Part because my family's history on both sides (My mother accrued thyroid cancer when I was about 4 years old.), part because of my sheer awe for the extremely unique way it can destroy a person's body. Cells growing and dividing uncontrollably felt like an ironic - if not poetic, way to die.

Of course, my interest in cancer pushes me to learn more about its diagnosis procedures and medications. Rhetoric of Cancer tackled this really diverse topic and gave it a simple voice. It tackles the apathy people display towards the cancer in themselves. Technically, cancer is a part of them, and we know about how everybody wants everyone to learn to accept themselves. People accepted the cancer, and wondered why they ever fought it in the first place.

On a similar note, I would like to quote John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, a heart warming/wrenching book about teenage cancer patients: "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war with a predetermined winner." Cancer is almost always terminal. When it's "cured", the patient has to undergo medication for months, and sometimes, even years. Maybe succumbing to it, accepting it, and just continuing to live is the best option.

Of course, I may never have to make a choice between living with cancer and living on medications for the rest of my life. I hope I will never have to.