" 2ECP
Communication Skills" is
the 2nd year of a 3 year "Communication Skills" course
I'm taking over the 3 years of my degree. There are 3 main tasks for
this 2nd year of the course: The first is to write a Scientific
Review on a topic of my choice (Terraforming Mars).
The 2nd is to choose a report ("Cannibalism in the American southwest" in
my case) and write an Abstract and
Summary for it as well as an essay on the Ethical
Implications of the topics relevant to the report,
and the 3rd is to present a poster and
give a brief talk relating
to the report.
Missions
to Mars have provided data suggesting that while cold and arid
today, Mars once possessed a warm and wet climate. It is thought
that the warm climate was created by a strong greenhouse effect
caused by a thick Carbon Dioxide atmosphere. It is believed that
much of Mars’ volatile inventory is still present on the
planet either as part of the polar caps or the Martian regolith
and that the volatilesmay be released by planetary engineering.
Carbon Dioxide could be released by planetary warming and as
the Carbon Dioxide atmosphere thickened, positive feedback would
accelerate the warming trend and render the planet more hospitable
for extremophiles and diverse anaerobes necessary for the production
of Oxygen and Nitrogen. It is concluded that while individual
techniques as outlined in this paper are unlikely to be sufficient
a synergic use of terraforming techniques together with long
term economic investment could render the red planet habitable
for humans.
"Biochemical
evidence of cannibalism at a prehistoric Puebloan site in
soutwestern Colorado." Richard A. Marlar,
Banks L. Leonard, Brian R. Billman, Patricia M Lambert & Jeniffer
E. Marlar
To
view larger readable versions of the panels click on each individual
panel. Alternatively you can view or download the full-size poster
(1m x 1.2m) here (large
file: 1375Kb so be patient). The additional information
concerning the Biochemical processes mentioned in panel 3 can
be found here.
Below
are the slides I used for the talk i gave relating to this report.
Clicking on each slide will open a full size PDF version.