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Biology in the News (C)

hanhtrinh — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:32:16 CST

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Birth Control Pills Affect Women's Taste in Men Reference: URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=birth-control-pills-affect-womens-taste Written by: Melinda Wenner Posted date: December 5th Reviewed date: December 6th , 2008 What is this about? This article is about how synthetic hormones change desire in women- and their choice in mate. Nowadays, there are approximately 1 million cases of divorce each year in America. Scientists tried to determine whether birth control pills have anything to do with it. Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Recent researches found out that contraceptive pill, that many women use to prevent themselves from ovulating (by fooling their body into believing that it is pregnant), can greatly change women’s taste in men. Like some animals, men attract women with their scent (or smell) which reflects their major histocompatibility (MHC) genes. And why are MHC genes so special? The answer lies in its important role in immune system surveillance. Studies suggest that women prefer the scent of males whose MHC genes differ from their own. This can probably be explained or considered as a good way to improve the child’s chance of survival because the combination of 2 different genes would give the child a varied gene, thus a robust immune system. However, when a woman is on the pill, her preference shifts toward men who share similar HMC genes. This could lead to some serious relationship problems. Why is it interesting? This article is interesting because it gives us lots of surprising and useful information (maybe not now but in our future ^^). Before I read it, I’ve never thought that men’s scent could attract women (they often have different MHC genes, for the child’s sake) and that pills can change that preference. I bet the majority of women who are on the pill don’t have a clue about the effect of pills on their taste in men. I think this information should be published as soon as possible so that women won’t overuse birth control pills. This can help them to avoid unnecessary relationship problems. How is it related to class? I believe this article is strongly related to our class because we’re learning about sexual reproduction. Therefore, it would be a big help to know about the role of body’s smell and side effects of birth control pills.

Thank you for paying attention :D

Hope you have fun reading this review

Keep doing your best, everybody!

Made by Anh Vo
###################################### Genes that raise heart risks amplified in diabetics What is this article about? This article is about the fact that if there is a flaw in a certain type of chromosome, which is 9p21, that person with the flaw is more risky to get coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease is one of the main reasons of people's death. This disease is very dangerous since it might lead to heart attack and strokes. Scientists found out that this heart disease causing gene plays a role in developing the type 2 diabetic, which is a type of diabetic that is cause because of the high concentration of glucose in blood. The type 2 diabetic is common and is a risky disease also. Scientists say that further research is crucial but they claim that now the one fact is clear: flaw in 9p21 chromosome is relevant to both coronary artery disease and diabetic. Why is this article interesting? This article is very interesting since I'm very curious about the genetics and the heredity. Genetics is basically about how we, humans form. This is very interesting topic for me because it's not about other stuff, but me. Also, I always wanted to learn a little bit deeper about the genetic disorder and flaws in the chromosomes that might lead to genetic disease. Although this is not a genetic disease, still, it is quite amazing the fact that flaws in genes can actually cause two diseases to occur. Other thing is that my grandmother has diabetic and I'm always concerned about her health. I wonder if she has flaw in her gene 9p21. How is this article related to class? This is related to class since we are learning about the genes and the chromosomes. I think this article is the most relevant article to the class among the articles that I reviewed on. Since we are learning about genetics, I think and I hope we get to learn about how the flaws and genetic disorder might cause problems. Reviewed by. Stacie (Dawon) Lee ENJOY READING!

Discovery Questions Intelligence of Human Ancestor

Link: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112620&govDel=USNSF_51
Author: Zina Deretsky

What is this article about?
This article shows us the latest findings of scientists: they've discovered that our ancient human ancestor, Homo erectus, had a much smaller pelvis to Homo sapiens, but the female Homo erectus gave birth to babies with a cranial circumference very close to Homo sapiens. which are us nowadays. Homo erectus was previously thought to produce babies with relatively smaller brain capacity. But the latest findings showed that the cranial circumference of a newborn Homo erectus can be as big as 318mm, which is very close to us homo sapiens, with a cranial circumference varies from 320mm-370mm.

Why is this article interesting?
It's interesting how babies from more than a million years ago can have such a similar feature to us nowadays. I thought that most of the ancient human body was different to homo sapiens; I thought that a million year ago the human was still undeveloped and more like an ape still, but now I know I was wrong. The findings even showed that babies born that early can still be very smart, even though their brain is not as fully developed as homo sapiens' babies' brains.

How is this article related to class?
This is biology, and of course all things humane relates to Biology! We're learning about genes and genetic formations in class, so this relates quite well to that. We learn that through years, the human genes change a lot, which mean it is still changing as we live on. Understanding this helps us more with learning about genes in human and why we're all different.
Thank you and good luck in biology! (:

Posted Date: November 25th 2008, 6.58pm

Review by Kristin Ha.

-Yo yo yo, Kim[i]'s response time- ☆

Hey Kristin :]

☆I’ve got to say, I love your decorated review, it was first caught my eye.

☆What an interesting discovery! Honestly, I too, have always thought ‘homo sapiens’ to look more like apes, when actually they looked more like us!
Although, I doubt if the 'homo sapiens' would take this as good news. :P

☆Now I stand corrected. Can you imagine? Millions years ago, they were practically humans moving around, with only few details changed. It’s amazing yet somewhat of a paradox how they’ve evolved into us over the many years, but we actually didn’t change from them that much. If that made any sense…
Well, at least, our bodies did not change much. Maybe more height & less hair, but almost same brain sizes haha. I wonder if they were as smart as us now. If given the same environment they could have been exactly like us no?

☆I’m even more curious to learn about evolution, there must have been lots of crossing over’s to change those 'homo sapiens' into us, but not that much. Haha.
I really enjoyed your review, something nice to learn for the day.

Response by Kimi, :D
Tsk tsk, people are stealing my orange ☆.
♡
Enjoy!
Posted on December 3rd, at 7:30 ( 1:30 before due)

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A video game that’s so real, it may make you vomit http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=a-video-game-thats-so-real-it-may-m-2008-11-18 I read the article that is talking about that a video game can make us vomit, it says that if we play a video game and the video game is so real, then it will make us to vomit. The scientist said that if we play too much, then we can have an illusion just like we are the hero of the video game and if it is really serious we might jump down from the roof or something and if we play too much, then we cannot distinguish the real life and the game life so that we could be in a problem. I think this article is interesting because it has talked about the video game and my brother likes to play video games and I can tell him not to play the video games for a long time. I think this article is related to our biology class because it is talking about our mental state, and maybe we will talk about human mental state while we are in the biology class. I think we shouldn’t play video games too much and I think whatever we do, we shouldn’t do too much, and we should control us by ourselves. I hope everyone can enjoy this article, thank you for reading my review~ Posted on :Nov. 25. 2008 Review by: Joanne Lee

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Article: Can Green Tea Protect Brain Cells against Parkinson's Disease??? Science News
Authors: doctors: Shuhong Guo, Jingqi Yan, Tangbin Yang, Xianqiang Yang, Erwan Bezard and Baolu Zhao Link:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101406.htm
What is this article about???
This article above is about effects of green tea polyphenols, a group of naturally occurring chemical substances found in plants that have antioxidant properties in an animal model of Parkinson's disease. Recently, the authors of this articles discovered that green tea polyphenols protect dopamine neurons that increases with the amount consumed. They also show that this protective effect is mediated by inhibition of the ROS-NO pathway, a pathway that may contribute to cell death in Parkinson's.
Why is this article interesting???
Parkinson is a very dangerous disease. It is a progressive, degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, resulting from the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells, and there is presently no cure. So we should protect ourselves from this risky disease by drinking a lot of green tea. More over, many kinds of green tea are available in every supermarket and I think they are quite cheap. I used to drink a lot of green tea and never know its huge benefits before reading this article, but now I do. Hope green tea polyphenols will be developed into a safe and easily administrable drug for Parkinson's disease soon, this would be an extremely important advance. In addition, this article is easy to understand with clear explanations. Just take a look!!!
How is this related to class???
This article is related to class because we have studied about cells and in chapter 41 we’ll learn about nervous system. And this article mentions a lot about central nervous system and brain cells (neurons). Hope it will provide you some interesting ideas about what we’ll learn in the second semester.
Responder: Hanh Trinh

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Response to the Article: Can green tea protect brain cells from Parkinson's disease?
by Ana Bui.

Not very unforeseen, your work is always nice, Hanh! The topic you chose was very practical to our lives, indeed. In fact, Parkinson’s disease is one of the most frightfully mental disease in the world, a long with Alzheimer disease. And nothing sounds better than something that could decrease the risk of having that scary disease, with a price that is not costly.

To most people, green tea is their favorite refreshment, but not so many knows, that they have got a huge benefit for their health just by drinking green tea. No need to look so far away, my parents are among those people. You know, people in modern world, they are always so worry about themselves getting sick. They take expensive, chemical drugs that doctor recommend them, but they had never known that there are so many things that are very cheap, or they can even grow at home, that can prevent and cure several of dangerous disease such as Parkinson disease, as you mentioned, and even cancer.

As far as I know, tea can be made not only by buying tea packs in supermarket, but tea can also be made by serveral kinds of wild plants, such as mint leaves, Roman daisy, Echinacea daisy or dandelion. Don’t you know that tea made from wild plants can even makes you feel better in your life, control your temper and makes you feel happier with life? For something that won’t cost you much, that sounds like a pretty good deal, eh?

Doctors in ancient Asia used to pick wild plants to create medicine to save people lives. But as society go up continuously, that natural method of curing diseases had almost disappeared. Nowadays, chemical drugs and pills are being used widely in almost every household. I, believed that the natural methods are much better than the chemical one, but, in fact, I have never had enough patience to try. Though I’m not a fan of green tea, but, from now on, any time when I try to drink a green tea cup, I would start to think about the benefit it brings to my mental system and to my body. By the way, thanks for reminding me about how kind Mother Earth was, giving us so many of her creations to help us survive in an environment that is such too harsh.

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Kangaroo Genes Are Close To Human

Reporting by: Rob Taylor
Editing by: David Fox
Posted date: Nov 18, 2008
Links: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081118/sc_nm/us_australia_kangaroos;_ylt=Ap.VNdTXhDEZBN2QgEk0nrGJhMgF

Through the title, we know that scientists have a new discovery; kangaroo genes are close to humans, also, it may have
involved first in China. Recently, scientists compared the genetic code of the Australian marsupials to human; they were
really surprise about how similar the genetic codes are. However, there are still the differences, but the most important
things are they have the same genes and some of the mare even in the same order. At first, they thought there would be
a conflict between the genes, but what they saw is the human genome is staying right in the kangaroo genome. Plus, the
last time that kangaroo and human shared an ancestor was at least 150 million years ago. They also found out that kangaroo
first involved in China, then moved to Australia.

Anyway, I found this article is really interesting because it’s related to what we are going through in class, which is genetic.
Also, this discovery is really special because we’ve heard about human and chimpanzees have somewhat related, but never
heard of relation with kangaroo. It’s also a bit hard to imagine that human can be related to the kangaroos. Actually at some
points there are similar, such as kangaroo stands and walks by two legs. However, this article is obviously related to our class,
because we are learning about genetic. And what we learn from it is genetic is a really large system, so that every living creature
can be related to us even though it doesn’t seem like that.

Reviewed by: Wendy Wu
Posted date: Nov 24, 2008

Response to: Kangaroo Genes Are Close To Human
When I read this article's title, I felt interesting about this article because I like to watching kangaroo, but in real life, I never saw them before. Kangaroo is very interesting animal because they can jump really high and they keep their babies in their pocket. When I was young, I was watching animal show in television and I saw kangaroo in there, first time in my life. I never think that kangaroo have close genes with Human's genes. I knew that the monkey or chimpanzee have similar genes, but not kangaroo. Also, I thought that at first time, kangarro came from Australia, but when I read through this article, I found out that kangaroo first involved in China and moved to Australia. I wonder how they moved china to Australia and now, how come there are many kangaroo in Australia, not China? I agree with Wendy's idea that kangaroo can stand like human by using two legs. Maybe it can relate with human genes because not many of the animals can stand by using their two legs. I really enjoyed to read this article and know about new things from your aticle, Wendy. Thanks for posted good article. :)

By Jung Yun Choi

Fact or Fiction?: Cell Phones Can Cause Brain Cancer

What is the article about? - The scientists have started debating based on whether cell phones cause cancer or not. On one hand, some people argue that long term and frequent use of cell phones which receive and emit radio frequency may be associated with an increased risk of brain tumors. Recent studies suggest that people who have used cell phones for more than a decade may have as much as three times greater risk of developing brain tumors on the side of the head against which they most often hold their phone. However, on the other hand, some people believe that cell phones’ effects on the body appear to be insufficient to cause genetic damage. They said that cell phones do not release enough radiation or energy to damage DNA or genetic material, which can lead to cancer. Since the early 1970s, more than 400 experiments have been done to determine how cell phone radiation affects animals, cells and DNA. They also came up with conflicting results. Therefore, more experiences and studies are needed to judge whether cell phones cause brain cancer or not.

Why is the article interesting? - It was really striking when I read this article. Today, almost everyone has cell phones, even little children. This means that most people are exposed to cell phone radiation. If some scientist’ opinions are right, the cancer rate will increase rapidly and many people are going to suffer. I heard that cell phone radiation is bad for our health and it can cause headache, but I didn’t think that it could cause brain cancer. This article gave me a new thought and awareness of cell phones. Regardless of whether cell phones cause brain cancer or not, I thought that we seriously have to be aware of cell phone radiation because they affect human health anyways.

How is the article related to class? - During biology class, we learned about DNA and genes. The article tells that if DNA or genetic material is damaged by radiation, there can be tumors. The fact that damaged DNA can cause tumors is quite related to what we have learned. I think that it will be interesting to talk about DNA with radiation during our biology class. I also want to learn specifically how damaged genetic material can actually cause brain cancers.

Reference - November 21, 2008 by Melinda Wenner - http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=c5fbe180bd1bbf0ec1c46a6072da720e

Review by Joonwon Lee = Posted : November 24th, 2008

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Response to the article "Fact or Fiction?: Cell Phones Can Cause Brain Cancer

First of all, I really like the article you chose and your review which is fairly concise and easy to understand. Just like you, Joonwon, I’ve sometimes before seen or heard about bad effects cell phones have on our health. If I remember correctly, long term and frequent use of mobile phones damages our ears (thus lowers our hearing capability) and confuses our brain. Serious enough and this could lead to mental problems. I was very surprised to find out that people can become crazy if they use cell phones too much. But now, the new information your review provided utterly tear me apart. I’m really shocked, you know? Cell phones causing brain cancer is just unimaginable! Nowadays, cell phones have become indispensable in people’s daily life. We use it to chat, to text each other, to take picture or just to listen to music. Almost everybody has one (and I’m not an exception ^_^). So, if those scientists are right, then , we’re all exposed to the risk of cancer.@@ One important thing to keep in mind is that modern medicine still hasn’t found the cure for this disease yet@@. Such a horrible thought! I’m only 15 and I still love my life so much that after reading your review, I’ll restrict my use of cell phone for sure ^^. Finally, I think this useful information should be published widely –maybe on TV- to warn people, especially teenagers because we talk a lot. Everyone has to be aware of the risks of using mobile phones. By Anh Vo Thanks for giving us such useful information, Joonwon!!!

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_ Respond by Nam I really like this article because I did a researched on how the cell phone works a year ago. As I research on this topic, the thing that came up was cell phone leads to cancer. And it’s quite interesting because there are possibilities that the research might be true. And one of the article also said that there was a patient who got cancer from talking too much on phone. Also, this really concerns me because nowadays everyone has a cell phone and they usually use cell phone to communicate each other. For me, I talked on phone proximately 2 hours a day. sometimes, i even feels numb on my ear when i talked on phone too long. So to me, it seem possible that cell phone might leads us to get some horrible disease. So maybe I am in the risk of getting cancer. And if cell phone really leads cancer, most of the world population might be on the risk of getting cancer in their brains. Lastly, thanks for the very helpful information so that people would be aware of things that they never think it would harm them. LOVE IT!
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Repond to Fact or Fiction?: Cell Phones Can Cause Brain Cancer by Nick
When i first saw the title of t his article, it catched my attention immediately because cell phones is like something that people nowaday can not live without. I use my phone alot too. I've heard that talking on the phone too much could cause bad affect to your brain and ears because of the radiation signal but i was suprised that the radiation signal could even damaged your DNA and cause cancer. I've read that if you leave a working cell phone close to certain part of your body such as your head, chest..., it could cause bad affect on that part of the body also. Scientist had recommend that you shouldn't listen to the beep when calling someone, you could wait for that person to pick up the call. The reason why you shouldn't do that is because the phone release a large amount of radiation signal when trying to connect with someone. It's scary to hear that cell phone could cause cancer but probably it's not good for your brain to receive radiation. After reading this article I would be more aware of using cell phones and try not to over use it. Thanks for a great review and great imformation about this walky-talky.

****Always post new reviews here, above the previous ones. Thank you.****
Why Do We Panic?

URL:http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-panic

What is this Article about? This article is about a newly updated study from scientist about panic attack. Researchers have provided imformation to explain how does a person got panic attack? When stress build up to a certain critical level, a very small amount of stress can cause panic attack. At the result, the victim may suffersymptoms such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying. Some people even have genetic predispostion toward panic attack. If one of the indentical twins got panic attack then the chance the other twin would got panic attack would be 2-3 times greater thenfraternal twins because they have similar genetic structure than the fraternal twins.

I found this article interesting readibecause before ng this article I never though panic would be this serious which you could suffer painful and horrible symptoms such as losing control or even dying. Nowaday, stress is a big issue throughout the world. Everyone is overloaded with works and businesses. This is really dangerous if we look at stress in a scientific way. Stress could cause serious illness, depression, and also panic attack. In my opinion, if we understand more about stress and panic we could avoid it by relaxing, playing sport, going on vacation instead of working 12 hours per day on the paper desk. I hope that scientist will do more research about this article to let us know more about stress and panic. Being happy is the best thing you should do, stress could make you look older and probably reduce your life span.

This article is not really related to what we are doing in class but I thing it is very important for us to avoid stress. We should all spend some time playing sport, participate in different outdoor activities to make our body healthy and fit.

Review by Nick

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Response to the article: Why do we panic?
Second response, by Hanh Trinh
Well done, Nick!!! You have chosen a very interesting article that I really enjoy reading. Before reading this article, I don’t really get what panic is and how dangerous it can be. I thought panic is a state of mind when you feel terribly scared or anxious of something, and it will be over soon and you’ll be okay. In fact, that isn’t really true. Panic attack can be extremely dangerous that the victim may suffer from symptoms such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying. More perilously, some people even have genetic predisposition toward panic attack.
In today’s world, stress is a great issue that every body has to face. We work and study all the time that we can’t do what we want to, even spending time with our family and friends at the weekend. Only work and no play does not make us feel sick but also stress us out. This is dangerous because when stress builds up to a certain critical level, a very small amount of stress can cause panic attack, a sudden attack that cause intense anxiety and pain.
I often feel stressful and tired, sometimes I panic but I have never suffered from panic attack. But I should try to stay calm and relax because only a very small amount of stress can cause panic attack, which I’m really afraid of. To stay away from stress, I think we should spend at least half an hour everyday to do what we enjoy, for instance: playing sport, jogging with friends etc. anyway, I still hope that scientists will soon figure out some way to protect people from panicking.

Response to the article Why Do we panic?

I think this article is interesting because my friends often panic and I knew that if we panic, we might die earlier than we are supposed to. At the result, the victims can suffer the symptoms just like the heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying. I saw many people panicking, so first time I saw the review of the article, I got interested in this article. Before I read this, I’ve never thought that panic would hurt people or panic would be this serious, and after I read it, I was astonished. It also says that the stress will cause serious illness, depression and the panic attack. I think that we should think everything with a positive mind so that we couldn’t feel illness or some bad feelings. Nick said this article is not related to our class, but I think this article is related to our class because we are studying about biology things and there will be some chapters or something that about human’s feeling.(I’m not sure…=_=). Anyways, I enjoyed this review, and I hope that I can find this kind of interesting articles that I can enjoy. *:-) Thank you. Response by Joanne Lee Posted on Nov.18.2008

+Response to "Why Do We Panic?"

- First of all, I found this article really interesting and easy to understand. Before I read the article, I thought that panic just occurs when people are tired. The fact that the panic is cause by stress and there can be genetic predisposition to panic was quite interesting and new to me. My friends often panicked when they studied in one place for a long time and stood up. I just thought that they were weak or sick. In addition, I sometimes enjoyed panicking. It gave me some headache, but it was quite exciting when I could not see front and suddenly fell down. Now, I realized that it was caused by stress and it is really bad for our health. I think that sitting on the chair and studying for hours would be really bad for our health and would cause serious panic. So, as Nick mentioned, exercising, playing sports, taking a walk would be really heplful to reduce stresses. I will also try to reduce stress so that I don't panick anymore. I hope scientists research and find more causes of panic. I really enjoyed this article.

-Response By Joonwon Lee = 18/11/08

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RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLE "WHY DO WE PANIC"

I like this article because it's simple to understand and interesting as well. I learnt that panicking is a state of mind, when a person is terribly afraid of something. From Nick's review, I also learnt that if one of the identical twins has a panic attack, then the other twin has higher chance (2-3 times higher) of getting one as well. I didn't know this before. Another useful information is the results or the suffer symptoms of panic attacks. Now I know that these symptoms are heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying.

I agree with Nick that stress is a huge issue in the world today. People are working too much that they don't have the time to relax and do things they like, which are the cause of stress. Before reading the article, I wasn't sure that stress is a big factor of panic attacks. Now that I do, I will get to learn more about how to avoid stress and all that. One thing that I think Nick is misunderstanding though, is that panic attacks aresudden, discrete periods of intense anxiety, mounting physicalarousal, fear, stomach problems and discomfort that associate with more complex symptoms. Panic attack is a serious type of intense pain, which differs from just normal panicking. Normal panicking is caused from short-term fear of something, while panic attacks are caused by more complex factors, which can be something wrong that's in our body. But other than that, I really like the article and Nick's review is pretty good. Keep up the work (: - Response by Kristin Ha (November 19th 2008, 8.30pm)

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Cholera in the Congo: Fighting could cause disease outbreak

URL : http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=cholera-in-the-congo-fighting-could-2008-11-11

What is this article about? In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the latest fighting caused a serious disease outbreak. After the war, a severe human displacement and sanitation, or cleanness, declined, causing crowding and lack of safe drinking water in refugee camps. The article claims that this poor sanitation is bringing cholera outbreak to 250,000 people in the refugee camp. This is proven by WHO, World Health Organization, that there were 13,430 cases in 2005. The article then claimed another possibility about the causes of cholera. It's rapidly shifting weather patterns. This shifting weather causes increase in water temperature which end up with few catastrophes. This also affect the composition of the cholera bacteria.

What is interesting about this article? With its attractive title, it talks about the Congo refugee's severe sanitation problem that can cause cholera throughout the crowded people. As a member of Global Issues Group, this issue is extremely interesting. Throughout years, we've focused on UN's goal and poverty. However, we've not yet focused on health protection of people, adult and children. Using this information, we can start forming another discussive topic.

Related to the class? There aren't much direct relationship between this article and us. However, there is one interesting fact written on the article. "Shifting weather patterns -> influence on cholera bacteria". Classmates might be curious about why does only shift of weather affect much on bacteria.

Reference? Congo is located at the central part of Africa. Due to ample supply of minerals in that region, there are always fights over the owner of it. Refugees are made since 1995.

Review by Junho Lee

Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others in Pain

This is the link to the article: Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others in Pain

Title: Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others in Pain

Was posted on: NSF – National Science Foundation Homepage, on November 7, 2008. Research by Lahey and Dahey, assisted by University of Chicago students Kalina Michaslska and Yuko Akitsuki.

The article is about: a surprising discover of scientists in Univer of Chicago, that bullies- or aggressive, violent adolescents – find it enjoyable to watch others in pain. In their study, scientists used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with aggressive conduct disorder and eight matched adolescents without conduct disorder to draw out the conclusion: Aggressive bullies may actually enjoy when watching people in pain. During their study, they saw that an area of the brain associated with rewards increased its activity when the aggressive boys watched a video clip of someone inflicting pain on another person. The control group did not have the same response. However, further researches are needed to determine whether the reactions indicated enjoyment at seeing others in pain.

I found interest in this article because: Bullies are a serious problem of society and especially of schools. It is most fascinating to find out why bullies like hurting others so much. In this article, scientists also mentioned about their previous study, shown that most kids naturally feel empathy when watching people in pain. And may be some of them, during the time they grew up, social factors effected them and changed that empathy into enjoyment towards people’s pain, turned them into what we called “bullies”. As they feel that it is enjoyable to watch people in pain, they turned out to be more violent when seeing people avoid them. Slowly by that, they would be soon isolated with the world, commit crimes and become a burden of society. We cannot let it happen. By this research, we understand a part of a bully feelings. Hopefully, psychologists would find a treatment for bullies, other aggressive conduct disorder adolescents, or even antisocial teenagers and kids soon, and one day, there would be no more bully in schools as well as society. Bullies might be the ones that have the most problems in their lives, but no one shares and understand them. They might see it as unfair for people to live so peacefully while they carry so many untold problems. And may be, because of that, they hurt people to regain “fairness” in their point of view. I, myself, used to be bullied. And trust me, it’s not fun! And that’s why I care about this article so much.

This article related to the class because: I must admit that this article’s topic does not really relate to our biology class, but it does relate to the whole society and especially in schools, where bullies are not rare. I don’t think our school have any bullies, but who knows? Next time, when we see a bully, we could know that he had his own problems that makes him wants to hurt us, not just because he likes so.

Reference information: November 7, 2008 - Brain scans of young, aggressive bullies suggest they may actually enjoy seeing others in pain, according to a new University of Chicago study.

Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others, through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation.

Review by Anastasia Bui. Hope everyone enjoys it.

Putting Thoughts into Action: Implants Tap the Thinking Brain

Researchers are decoding the brain to give a voice and a hand to the paralyzed—and to learn how it controls our movements

By Alan S. Brown What the article is about?

This article is talking about the surgeon had invented a high technology device for implant into paralyzed patient’s brain. The device which called brain-implanted prostheses help the patient communicates his thoughts to a computer and translated them into spoken words. There are about 9 people who got the brain-implanted prostheses and they are able to pilot a wheelchair or flex a mechanical hand. The scientists expect that some day the implant would help paralyzed patients to be able to move their robot arms. One of the patient names Ramsey. He got into a car accident that led him to paralyze. He was completely paralyzed; he could not talk or move. The only way that he could communicate with people was moving his eyes up and down. In 2004, he got implanted in his brain. Now, he is able to speak some simple vowels. But the doctor believed that he could speak full range of speech by 2010. Why is the article interesting? The article is very interesting because I never think that scientist could invent such thing. It so unbelievable that now patient with paralyze could talk or move by implant high technology device into the brain to help them translate into words. Also, this would help many people with paralyze. Because at least they could talk to people and they might feel better about themselves being like that. It might give them hope of being able to move or talk again. How is this article related to class? This article is not quite related to the class. But paralysis is caused major by stroke, trauma, poliomyelitis, etc. Paralysis is the complete loss of muscle function for one or more muscle groups. Paralysis can cause loss of feeling or loss of mobility in the affected area. This might relate to the cell that might be dead or stop working so it cause the body to stop doing what they are suppose to do. By Nam http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=putting-thoughts-into-action

★Un-Netting Trade in Endangered Species: eBay Vows Crackdown on Illegal Ivory Sales

★ Yet another review by Kimi~

Hey everyone, time for another review by moi. Got your coffee?

☆ Here’s the address: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ebay-vows-ivory-crack-down

Larry Greenemeier wrote the article on October 21, 2008. Some 20 days ago.

☆ Some reference Information:

As you all probably know. African and Asian elephants are huge mammals in risk of extinction. It is illegal to hunt them.

Poaching refers to the illegal hunting of wild animals. See the link?

EBay is an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide.

☆ So, what is the article about?

To the make it simple, the article is basically about The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) charging the website eBay for failing stop Internet sales of endangered animal parts. According to these animal rights activists, about two thirds of the illegal trade of from poached elephant are done on eBay.com. Shocking isn’t it?

Since June onwards, eBay has agreed to ban all international sales of ivory and limit sellers to selling only in their own countries, if it was legal; in order to protect these endangered animals but still allowing legal ivory sales on the website claims their spokes person, Richard Brewer-Hay.

But he admits that this isn’t enough, (and almost impossible to enforce). EBay will find solutions to actually catch these people who sell illegal material.

☆ How is this interesting?

Well, by reading the article, I’m glad to learn that eBay is putting effort to stop these illegal trades and trying to protect these animals that desperately need help. Unfortunately, I also learned some mildly interesting, but shocking numbers.

Like how the wildlife black market is a $20 billion business; or how three quarters of illegal ivory are obtained from elephants; the IFAW has tracked more than 7,000 wildlife product listings on 183 Web sites in 11 countries.

☆ How is this related to class?

This technically doesn't have much to do with Biology per se, but it still involves the environment. It also kind of reminded me of a Day in the world’s shoes day. Maybe some people in difficulties, desperate not to live in slums, have to resolve into selling illegal material, even if it means hunting endangered animals or killing park rangers. So another solution to this illegal trade, is maybe offering more jobs to people?

My theory could be wrong, but tell me what you guys think. :]

Reviewed by Kimi (Kim Bruns)
On November 12th, 2008
At 12:25 AM (20:35 before due)
Enjoy the review, or else~ :]
I'm gonna copyright this orange ☆ or something. (;
Kidding~

Cheers
☆

RESPONSE TO_ UN-NETTING TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES: EBAY VOWS CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL IVORY SALES

First of all, I would like to thank Kim for writing a great review on an interesting article. The title of this article (and also the orange stars) caught my eyes because it was an article related to animals. Since I'm a big animal lover, I found this review, which is a review about the article related to endangered animals, very interesting.

I knew that these kinds of issues were big problems in world today but I did not know how and where it was taking place. By reading Kim's review, I found the answers and curiosities that lingered in my mind. Also, even though I knew that this problem was a huge issue, I was shocked again to see the actual price ($20 billion! HOLY!) of the black market. For centuries, illegal trades related to animals that are about to extinct were unceasable. Till nowadays, people tend to trade materials from the endangered animals, even though they know that it is illegal.

I hope that people realize that it is crucial to save endangered species. I'm glad that eBay is taking an action for this issue. I hope that this one step towards the ban of trade in endangered species to be a big helping hand to cease the issue of trade in endangered species. In addition, I hope other actions besides this because if there are more actions being taken, the issue would be easily solved. Again, thanks Kim for writing a wonderful article!

Response by_ Stacie(Dawon) Lee I'm the first one to write a response to Kim's article! Muhahaha :D

Life at the Poles: Eight Arctic Animals That Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change

Reference

URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=animal-strife-at-earths-poles

Written by: Susannah F. Locke

Posted date: November 10, 2008

Reviewed date: November 11, 2008

This article is about Eight Arctic animals face on the promise and peril of climate change. Many people give attention to Polar bears and penguins about global warming, but there’s more than large feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes. There are three kinds of species that don’t need ice to live on the sea to hunt, which are can live in hot temperature, can eat everything well, and don’t need ice when they do hunt for food. Some flora and fauna will go extinct in the coming years, but experts agree that the poles will not become a dead zone. There will still life in there, but the residents will be different.

It’s interesting for me because I also only knew that polar bears and penguins are getting extinct by global warming. They look cute and sweet. I don’t want them to be extinct in our planet. That will be really sad if they do. It’s really serious problem that ice get keep melting. Maybe few years later, most of the ice gets melt and polar bears and penguins will get extinct in our planet.

After I read this article I found out that many species need help from melting ice. They need a place to find peace. I think from now on, we should take care of extinct species in the pole. This article is related with our class because it’s about global warming and it causes from ozone layer. When we learned Primordial soup part, we learned about ozone layer. Also, I hope we can learn more about global warming in our class. :)

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy reading my article.

By Jung Yun Choi

Response to: Eight Arctic Animals that Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change

By Brittany Buchanan

I found this review to be really sad. I love polar bears and penguins so much it's not even funny. It's so sad knowing that they are going extinct by something that we could have stoped, or at least slowed down. Global warming is a really big topic now days, and it's terrible that people noticed these signs a long time ago, yet no one did anything to prevent it. Now some of the beautifuliest animals on earth are going extinct becuase of it! Its terrble. Ive also heard that the ice caps that are melting are even going to cause a lot of flooding later on, and pretty much the whole west coast of the USA is going to be under water, which is my home town!! I find it extreamly sad that global warming is happening.

-Brittany Buchanan

Response to: Eight Arctic Animals that Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change

This is the article that got my attention first by its title. I believe that global warming has already been a serious problem for a long time. We read on newspapers, magazines and understand how serious this issue is; however, no one takes action. The most important one and everyone mostly have heard about is the melting ice in Arctic. Through this article, I noticed the issue is being worse than ever, polar bears and penguins, which are living in the arctic, are now in a real danger. This is a really bad a sad news for me, because those animals are innocent, they just born to live in that kind of climate which now being threaten by global warming. Plus, they are type of animals that can only live in cold climate; they are going be extinct even though we try to keep their gene for heredity. Furthermore, climate change leads to the melting of ice, that is not only threaten the animals but also us, ice-melting lead to the level of water of sea raise higher, it might cause flood in some lower land area, or even tsunami if it is really serious. However, I believe that all of us can do at least the most basic actions to stop the global warming; we should try as best as we can.

By: Wendy Wu
Posted date: Nov 19, 2008

WHY DO WE FORGET THINGS?

Reference:
URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-forget-things
Written by: Edward K, Vogel (a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon) and Trafton Drew (a graduate student in the Vogel lab).
Posted date: November 4, 2008
Reviewed date: November 10, 2008

What is this article about?
Although it looks long, this article is all about answering the question “Why do we forget things?”. As we’ve already known, there are 2 primary memory systems in the human mind: a short-term memory providing sharp details about the few things we are currently thinking about; and a long-term memory providing a much fuzzier picture about lots of different things gained through a lifetime of thoughts and experiences. That’s what we always thought. But a recently published study of Timothy F.Brady showed that the enormous amount of information we hold in our long-term memory is also fairly detailed and precise. Then, if it’s so, why do we still forget things that we want to remember? The answer lies in our voluntary searching mechanism. In other words, we can’t remember things not because that information is not stored in our memory but because at that very moment, we can’t find it.

Why is this article interesting?
This article is really interesting to me because I’m a forgetful girl. Yesterday, I went to the kitchen to have some water, but when I got there, I totally forgot why I was there for!!!!!!!! And after standing still for a while, I started to remember the reason. Weird, right? Also, have you ever been in the situation where during a test, you couldn’t remember an important information no matter how hard you tried, and then, as you walked out of the testing room, it just popped into your head? I have, for so many times but I didn’t know why. Now, thanks to this article, I finally found out that the problem is with my voluntary searching system. I’ll find the way to start training it soon. (^_^)
@@@ If I’ll ever find an article that talks about an easy and efficient way to improve our memory, I’ll probably review it the next time so that we won’t have to struggle so much with tests and quizzes any more. ^^ @@@

Why is it related to class?
The article is related to class because we will learn about our nervous system in chapter 41 (hopefully if we have time). Although we won’t really talk about memory, it will be useful for us to understand the mechanism of how our memory works.

Thank you for paying attention :D

Hope you have fun reading this review

Keep doing your best, everybody!

Made by Anh Vo
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Response to the article: WHY DO WE FORGET THINGS?
Third response, posted on Nov13,2008
Responder: Hanh Trinh
First of all, the article that Anh wrote is extremely interesting and very easy to read and understand. Before reading this article, I always thought that if we try to memorize something such as information or data, and we talk about it a lot, we will always remember it even for years. But in fact, that’s not true. I guess that we all forget things sometimes or many times, right? There is one situation might happen to every body that when we take quizzes or tests, we always know that some key ideas are missing but we just can’t remember what they are, even though we usually spend a lot of time studying them. More interestingly, our memories aren’t fuzzy, and as Anh said the amount of information that stored in our brain are fairly detailed and precise. So, “Why do we forget things?” That is the question I ask my self many times, and now I got the answer. One explanation is that although the brain contains detailed representations of lots of different events and objects, we can’t always find that information when we want it. As this study reveals, if we’re shown an object, we can often be very accurate and precise at being able to say whether we’ve seen it before. If we go to the super market to buy food and try to remember what it is, we need to be able to voluntarily search our memory for the right answer—without being prompted by a visual reminder. We can’t remember things not because that information is not stored in our memory but because at that very moment, we can’t find it. Interesting, isn’t it? That might explain why I’m a forgetful girl. More importantly, I now understand why I sometimes forget what to do or what to write on my tests, so whenever I have low grades on tests or quizzes ,not because I didn’t study, I will explain to my parents so that they won’t yell or kick me out of the house!!!—just kidding, I won’t let it happen. Anyways, I still hope that scientists will find some solution for this problem soon. And….what did I want to say???.............Oh! Thanks for a very helpful article, Anh!!! Good job!!! (it took me 10 minutes to figure it out~haha**)
By: Hanh Trinh $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I - Ana Bui - am doing this: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112582&govDel=USNSF_51 - Bullies may enjoy seeing others in pain
Reserved for me, okay?

Repairing the Damaged Spinal Cord

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=repairing-the-damaged-spinal-cord

Posted: November 6, 2008 in Health

By John W. McDonald

This article is about the repairing of the damaged spinal cord. In this article, they have named many different types of cases that involved the damaging of spinal cords. In the past, doctors were had no hope of recovering damages at that area but now they have found a certain steroid called methylprednisolone that could prevent and minimize long term malfunctions to both motor and sensory functions if it was given at high doses within 8 hours of the incident. It is basically explaining to us how cells work during the injury and how they react to one another in step form.

I found this article interesting because day by day people are finding ways to prevent and cure things that we had no knowledge about in the past. The high defined explanations of how the spinal cord and the steps of the injury provided information that was both informative and hard to grasp. I also found it interesting that scientist could deliver extra help through genetic engineering.

This article is related to our class, as we know it has something to do with our body and the functions of our body. This is the second article i have done that is related in a way to the video we had watch at the beginning of the year. The injuries were caused from daily activities that we do that could scar us for life, but there is always a way to cure or lessen the damage caused.

Reviewed by : Leon Nguyen
(Mr. Mac, i did not get the WHOLE article because of the vocabulary and terms that they used, but this is to my understanding of it)

________________________________________

Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths

I'm Anastasia Bui from Biology-C and this is my review for the article I've read. (I’m very veeeerrrrryyyy sorry about the lateness for my old article had dissapeared in a very mysterious way, without my notice, and when I checked, which was today, there has been someone post a review for that article T_______T. I beg you to please open your heart this time, Mr. Handsome Mac T_____T)

This is the link to the article: Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths.

Title: Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths

Was written by: Kyoko Hasegawa Kyoko Hasegawa – on TueNov4, 3:31amET

The article is about: a new achievement of Japanese scientists - created a living animal via its frozen cell – which increase the possibility of resurrecting extincted species such as mammoths. By extracting a cell’s nucleaus from the organ of a dead mouse, scientist successfully created a new mouse. After this succeed, scientists strengthen their belief that they could resurrect mammoths by using their frozen cells, which they once thought that wouldn’t be usable for the cells had been seriously damaged during frozen process. Akira Iritani, a mammoth expert at Kinki University in Osaka, said it was only a matter of time before researchers could find a mammoth for a resurrection project. He also said that even if it is impossible to recreate a whole animal, the process could create cloned embryonic stem cells for extinct species, giving a boost to research on evolution and zoology.

I found interest in this article because: On our planet, there are many fascinating species that were extincted by many factors, such as dinosaurs and mammoths which lived a very long time ago, evem when human hadn’t existed yet. The idea of resurrecting them had been the inspiration for many famous movies and novels like Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton had. By this achievement, scientists have shown to the world that it is possible to bring that idea to reality. I was amazed of the thinking that one day, there would be giant mammoth, dinosaurs and other kind of extincted ancient species live, once more, on our planet. But, I also wonder if scientist can truly revived mammoths, how will the mammoths live in modern-Earth environment, which is so much different from the environment they once lived? Would they be extincted once more, for they could not fit in with the surrounding? How would Mother Earth react with their existence, which should have ended long ago? It would be incredible and amazable, but I still wonder about the consequences after

scientists successfully revive mammoths. And that is the point of why I am so interest in this article. This article related to the class because: Last unit, we learned about cell and features of it, but we didn’t learn how a cell could be used to breed a whole animal, or which feature of the cell contains the factors that could be use to created living creatures. It is such a fascinating topic to talk and know about, although I think it would be too early for us to find deeply about it. I hope someday we would know more about it, and may be, in the future, one of us will revived Siren and Mermaid? Oh, just kidding ^^.

Reference information: TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a mouse from a dead cell frozen for 16 years, taking a step in the long impossible dream of bringing back extinct animals such as mammoths.

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of the elephant family and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch from 4.8 million years ago to around 4,500 years ago and were believed to have extincted during the Ice Aged.

That's all. Thanks for reading my review. I hope you guys like it. And sorry again for the lateness. I beg for sympathy from everybody, especially Mr.Handsome Mac <sparkling eyes>.

Anastasia Bui.

Why Children Like to Share

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-children-like-to-share

Written by: Herbert Gintis

What is this article about? This article is basically about why people tend to share with others. Scientists claim that human beings are planned to share with others. Also, with results of some experiments, this article claims that people tend to share in order to reduce inequalities between people and also that children are inequality averse. However, according to the experiments, children that are aged below eight are selfish and do not tend to share. Because they are too young, they do not care about reducing inequalities and sharing. These experiments also indicate that as their age increase, this behavior of sharing also increases. Chimpanzees, the most similar animal of human beings, also care about each other. However, according to the reasearch, Chimpanzees are not inequality averse.

Why is this article interesting? This article is very interesting because this article discusses about human beings instinct with science. As people live, all people sometimes wonder why their instincts exist. These kinds of articles are types of articles that solves the curiosity. I was also curious about why people tend to share while they are selfish in somehow. I think this is very knowledgeble and interesting to get to know the things that I wondered by solving these wonders with science.

How is this article related to class? This article is related to class because both this article and our class talk about genetics. This article says that some scientists claimed that humans are programed to be both selfish and generous. This means that scientist claimed that there are selfishness genes existing in our body. Even though the article does not discuss about the production of genes as we do in class, it's still related because both the class and the article talks about the function of the genes.

Reviewed by. Dawon (Stacie) Lee

Hope you enjoyed it :D

RESPONSE TO WHY CHILDREN LIKE TO SHARE?
I really found this article interesting. It caught my sight from the very beginning when i saw the tittle. I think human instinct and behavior takes a very important role in our normal lifestyle. Based on the experiments that Stacie had mentioned, children in younger ages seems to be selfish and do not care about other people. This is really important to me because I always got problems with little kids when they always try to take advantage of me and I always have to let them win. After I have read this article, I realized that it's just because their brain and mind doesn't developed fully yet. Also, this could help me in behaving with kids, because now I know that it's natural for a kid to be selfish and not care of other people. I really found this article an interesting one and it's really helpful for me.
Nick Nguyen

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RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLE "WHY CHILDREN LIKE TO SHARE"

I really like this article and I found it very interesting because it's about humans, it's about us! I'm interested in learning about humans instincts, and how and why they exist. Well this article showed me a new perspective of this topic, which is to look at the relationship and the connection between human reactions and a mammal that is very close to us - chimpanzees, or monkeys. Scientists say monkeys are our roots, and I think this is completely true because there are many similarities between us and this mammal. Back to the article, scientists claimed that children under the age of eight tend to be more selfish and don't want to share. Although I don't think this is 100% true, but it's still correct in a way. I know many young kids who tend to be very selfish when they're playing with other kids, or even with adults. For example, they might not want to share their food, or toys, and they would get mad if they don't get the things they want. Stacie suggested that the experiments also indicate that as the kids' age increase, the behavior of sharing also increases. This means that children wants to share more as they grow. And it's interesting to know that this behavior also exist in chimpanzees.

The article is also useful because it's related to genes and biology, and this will help me long term in class. Great article and great information!

Response by Kristin Ha.

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Hope and the Fight against HIV

By John Rennie

October 28, 08

What is this article about?
This article is about the scientists who are trying to invent the vaccines against HIV. But they had failed. Some people might wonder what HIV is. HIV is stands for Human immunodeficiency virus. The virus could be passed from one to the other by infected blood, semen, or vaginal secretions come in contact with an uninfected person’s broken skin. Also, the infected pregnant women could pass along the virus to their babies. And now the new HIV affected so many people around the world. For example, in the U.S. the spread of the disease is by about 40 percent annually for the past 10 years or more. So this seems to be a very big deal to people who got HIV because if the scientists have not yet invented the vaccines, people would keep dying everyday. Scientists think that the way to cure the disease is to eliminate the virus from the body remains elusive. To prevent these viruses you need to have safe-sex education and condom-distribution programs. Lastly, the scientists are still working hard on inventing the vaccine to cure people with HIV.

Why is this article interesting?
The article is interesting because there are many people out there who got this virus and some of them are little kids who got it from his/her mother. So I was very surprised that there will be a vaccine that could cure the virus. And many people wouldn’t have to die. I heard that more than 25 million people had died and at least 35 million people were living with HIV. So that’s big amount of population. In addition, if scientist invented the vaccine, it would give them hope to survive in this world.

How the article is related to class?
Its related to class because HIV is genetic disease that could be passed down to the next generation. And we learned that when the cell reproduces, the next generation copied the mother exactly the same. So if the cell wasn’t perfect, the baby cell might not be perfect too.

Links http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hope-and-the-fight-against-hiv

By Nam

== Response to Hope and Fight against HIV

First thing I want to say is that this article is really awesome. I think that I prefer this article the most. The title, "Hope and Fight against HIV" caught my eyes. I am quite interested in HIV and AIDS. The fact that the disease has spread by 40 percent annually for the past 10 years was really surprising. I believe that we desperately need help for cure. When I studied at the previous school, my homeroom teacher once showed the pictures of people who get HIVs. He also told us about the number of people who have HIVs. So I was really impressed and asked my teacher if there is any treatment. He said that we do not have, so I was kind of sad. After reading this article, I am still sad about this situation. On the other hand, I am quite glad that scientists are working hard on inventing the vaccine to cure people with HIV. I think that people have to be aware and prevent these viruses as Nam mentioned. I really hope scientists find the vaccine to cure people so that the number of people dying from HIV decreases. I find this article really interesting .

=JOONWON LEE

Cold viruses activate killer genes, study finds

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081024/hl_nm/us_cold

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor_ Fri. Oct.24, 12:30 am ET

Posted on: Oct. 29. 2008 at 4: 25 p.m.

This article is about the result that David Proud found out, he found that the common cold virus can activates the immune system genes in the lining of the nose. David Proud said the particular interest is a gene that controls a natural antiviral called viperin. The viperin is discovered in the 1990s. David Proud did an experiment with several of valunteers who agreed to be infected with a cold virus. Hours after that, people scraped a little bit of the lining from inside the valunteers' nose and analyzed genes' activity. He also noted that people need a little bit of inflammation to have some protection.

I think this article is interesting because I didn't know that the common cold viruses activate killer genes and I didn't know that the common cold virus activates dozens of immune system genes in the lining of the nose. I am very glad that I learned a new thing about the science again. Everytime that I learn about science thing or something new about biology, I feel happy and interested. I also think the article that I read is related to our class because we are still learning about the genes and something like RNA or DNA in our bodies. I really love studying science things or something about biology. Mayby we will learn about this thing in the class later..(But don't know when and not sure if we will study about this thing or not..-.-) Anyways, I enjoyed reading the article that I found, and I also wisht that you can enjoy this article, too! Thank you for reading (*'-'*)

Reviewed by: Joanne Lee

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Common Cold Virus Alters Body's Genes

URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081024/hl_hsn/commoncoldvirusaltersbodysgenes

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter by Amanda Gardner
healthday Reporter – FriOct24, 12:03pmET

Posted Oct 28,2008

This Article is about a up coming cure that could prevent the common cold. Canadian and U.S researchers have found out that the long blaming cause for the common cold, HRV (Human Rhinovirus), was not the reason for all the commotion. The Ubiquitous virus is the cause for alternating genes in the human body. They say that this discovery may provide opportunities to modify the bodies response to the rhinovirus and future further research or possible medication that would reduce the symptoms and even go to preventing infection more effectively. It's said that the HRV causes 30~50% of the common cold that can also be worsen into a more serious condition such as asthma. The seriousness of the sickness varies among different people.

I found this article interesting because of the 2 viruses that i have never heard about (HRV and Ubiquitous) are present. I did not know that the common cold could worsen and become life threatening to us. I still wonder whether there are other causes to the common cold than just these 2 viruses. If there was a mistake in their research in the past about HRV being the main cause, maybe the Ubiquitous could be a mistake as well. If this were to be a mistake, how can we be ensured that the common cold could not be caused by something we have no knowledge about. I also wonder if there will actually be a world wide cure in the future for this and other sicknesses.

This article is related to our class because we have learnt about the humans dna,rna and how it works. We learnt about the 2 different bacterias that live in this world with us and the HRV and Ubiquitous bacteria are just 2 out of millions of different bacterias that could cause us to be sick. The altering of the human genes is also a big relation.

This article is by Leon Nguyen

Hope you enjoyed reading folks.

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Purple Tomato Extended Lives of Cancer-Prone Mice

Link:http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081027/hl_hsn/purpletomatoextendedlivesofcancerpronemice

Written by: Yahoo! Health (no specific reporter)

Article posted on: Sun Oct 26, 11:47 pm

Reference: Since last of researches have discovered that tomatoes have good effect on people's health. A new research have been done about tomatoes another healthy effect; however, in this time, the research is not about red tomato but about purple tomato.

This article is about a European study finds that tomatoes genetically changed to be rich in antioxidants called anthocyanins showed to extend the life spans of cancer-prone mice. The modified tomatoes were created by two genes, which are Delila and Rosea1, from the snapdragon flower. The anthocyanins gave the tomatoes a purple color. The scientists took out two genes that is responsible for snapdragon flower pigmentation. And it turned out to the perfect combination to produce anthocyanins. Also, they found out that a purple tomato has a very high antioxidant activity that almost three times better than natural fruit. The researchers fed the purple tomatoes to mice and these mice had an average life span of 182 days compared to 142 days.

This article is interesting for me because I didn't know that there are purple tomatoes and its help to extended lives of cancer. I think purple tomatoes will give a lot of help with cancer people. Many people, who have cancer, want to live longer. Also, cancer people's families don't want them to die because if somebody died, they will be really sad and it can give bad effects to family's life condition. Nobody wants to be a sicker and die early. Most of the people want to live longer than their span of life.

This article is related to our class because we learned about genes and pigmentation during the class. Pigmentation gave a lot of effect in this experiment. Pigment is one member of plant. The scientists used the snapdragon flower pigmentation to produce anthocyanins.

Anyways, I enjoyed reading this article and I hope you guys enjoy reading my article.

Reviewed by: Jung yun Choi

Response to the article "Purple tomatoes extended lives of cancer-prone mice" First of all, your review is amazing, Jung yun. You chose a really interesting article : “Purple tomato extended lives of cancer-prone mice”. Just like you, I eat red tomatoes everyday but have never seen a purple tomato. (The word “purple” caught all my attention) I wonder what it tastes like? ^^ . Anyway, the best thing about these purple tomatoes is that they can extend lives of cancer-prone mice. After reading your review, I found out that the modified tomatoes were created by two genes Delila and Roseal, responsible for snapdragon flowers pigmentation. Therefore, they are rich in anthocyanins which give them the purple color and which are capable of extending lives of cancer-prone mice. This is a big discovery because up until now, cancer is known as a fatal disease and many people are suffering and dying because of it. So, the production of purple tomatoes might very well lead to the invention of a cure for cancer. Millions of people would be saved !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Again, I really enjoyed reading your review, I like it a lot

By Anh Vo

China finds fossils of small feathered dinosaur

Article reported by: Tan Ee Lyn
Article posted on: October 22, 2008
Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=china-finds-fossils-of-sm

This article is great new discovery about dinosaur, a kind of animal which was already extinct million years ago. Recently,
archeologists in China have found the fossils of a pigeon-sized feathered dinosaur which they believe to be an ancestor
of birds. Ninety percent of it remains were completely found in northern China. Archeologists gave a supposition that it was
probably live from the Middle to Late Jurassic periods, or 176 to 146 million years ago. This type named as Epidexipteryx,
it had four long and thin tail feathers and a short tail, and it’s important that this kind was flightless. Plus, it only weighed
164 grams and had buck teeth resembling that of carnivores. However, scientists have no clues what it ate.

I found this article interesting because I like dinosaurs and I’m always curious about the life of it. Furthermore, Brittany had
found another articlebefore about a Canadian researcher who discovered the Northern America's smallest dinosaur name’s
Albertonykus Borealis. I believe that Epidexipteryx is much older and smaller than Albertonykus. Although our class haven’t
talked much about the evolution of dinosaurs but we already learned somewhat about fossils, a kind of record that preserved
from a previous geological age.

Anyway, I really like this article because as the scientists said this really gave an important evidence about the evolutionary
relationship between birds and dinosaurs. Or you may say that it’s the evolution of dinosaurs to the birds since dinosaurs
already extinct.

Reviewed by: Wendy Wu
Posted on: Oct 27, 2008

Article: Chromosome diseases
(Second review)
Reviewer: Hanh Trinh
Link: http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/genetics/chromosome.htm

First of all, what is this article about?
This article is about kinds and causes of chromosome diseases which are really dangerous. So what are chromosome diseases? Chromosome diseases are genetic diseases where a large part of the genetic code has been disrupted. Chromosomes are long sequences of DNA that contain hundreds or thousands of genes. Every person has 2 copies of each of the 23 chromosomes, called chromosomes 1…22 and the 23rd is the sex chromosome, which is either X and Y. Men are XY and women are XX in the 23rd chromosome pair.
Causes of chromosome diseases: Chromosomal diseases arise from huge errors in the DNA that result from having extra chromosomes, large missing sequences, or other major errors. These are usually caused by a random physical error during reproduction and are not inherited diseases (i.e. both parents are usually free of the condition).

Types of chromosome diseases: There are several common types of chromosome errors that cause disease. The effects of errors in the sex chromosomes (X and Y) differ greatly from errors in the autosomes (chromosomes 1..22). The following major classes of chromosome diseases can occur: Firstly, trisomy conditions: Most people have 2 copies of each chromosome, but some people are born with 3 copies, which is called trisomy. Trisomy can occur in chromosomes 1...22 (autosomal trisomy) and also in the sex chromosome (see below). Down syndrome is a trisomy affecting the autosome chromosome 21. Secondly, monosomy conditions: When a person has only one of a given chromosome, rather than a pair, this is called monosomy. These conditions are very rare for autosomes (chromosomes 1...22) because body cells without pairs do not seem to survive, but can occur in the sex chromosome (monosomy X is turner syndrome ). Thirdly, sex chromosome conditions: Typically men are XY and women are XX in the pair for the 23rd chromosome. However, sometimes people are born with only one sex chromosome (monosomy of the sex chromosome), or with three sex chromosomes (trisomy of the sex chromosome).

Secondly, why is this article interesting? I found this article is extremely interesting because chromosome diseases are unique and uncommon compared to other diseases (because they are gene diseases). More over, these diseases are exceedingly dangerous that scientists today are still trying to figure out some ways to treat some of chromosome diseases. In addition, people who have chromosome diseases look strange (although they look strange, we should discriminate them. Be friendly if you meet those people!!!).

Thirdly, how is this article related to the class? This article is related to the class because in class we will study about chromosome and this article provides you some conceptions and interesting information about chromosome diseases. This information might also be useful in the class and might makes you guy feel more interested as we study about this topic (chromosome and gene).

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Response to the Article: Chromosome diseases
by Ana Bui.

First of all, great job you did, Hanh! You chose an article that has a very interesting topic. I knew about this kind of diseases long ago but I actually don't know what is its name. Now I do ^-^!

Chromosome diseases are, as you said, extremely dangerous. Yet, there is no way to prevent human from it. You can easily see an example of chromosome diseases, especially in Vietnam. Thousands of children are victims of chromosome diseases, caused by the Orange Poison that American army dropped on our country. The Orange Poison had mutated the genes of their parents, that, later, affected their chromosomes even before they were born. Children who are victims of chromosome diseases have various symptoms: deaf, mute, blind, don't have limbs even before they were born, have mental diseases, mutated organs. . . Not funny, right? Down syndrome, as I knew, is also a chromosome disease. I've seen a film that talked about Down people. And I was startled when I realized that their face look almost exactly the same! These people are very lucky for having survived after they were born, but then they also have mental disease (hard to read, write, speak, learn etc.) as an affect of their imperfect chromosomes.

In my point of view, I don't think these people are ugly or strange. Imagine that we, normal-looking people, are they. You will never understand how they feel until you step in their shoes. They are considered burdens of their families, but the truth is their will to live are so strong, so strong that you have to admired them. I say that, because almost every children that were born with chromosome disease will not make it through the night after they were born. In fact, every time I see a child with chromosome disease, either on television or daily life, my eyes always wet. I don't know why, but I realize later that I admired them so much that I cried, for their will, for the keen of their families, more than pity.

Response by Ana Bui. Hope everybody likes it.

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S.Korea finds melamine in Chinese-made Snickers, KitKat

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=skorea-finds-melamine-in References: There has been so many articles about MELAMINE. They are found in many China made products. Therefore, many countries are now having tests to detect melamine from imported products. Article About? S.Korea has detected over 1 ppm in many FAMOUS food products including Snickers, M&Ms, and etc that was manufactured in China. S. Korea has finished checking 288 items. How is it interesting? Throughout these days, I've heard of MANY products in S.Korea contains melamine and is requested to be sent back. This article is interesting that there are more products that I've not known as a melamine containing products. It's also shocking to hear those FAMOUS products produced in chinese companies contained melamine. Related to the class? Yes. It's not directly related with our CLASS but our classmates. We, as people living in Vietnam have seen many products produced in China although the brand is not Chinese. We have to be aware of what food are we choosing for snacks and other comfortable foods. Also, as we are learning Biology, we can relate this topic to our CELLS that might get damaged by Kidney stones because they are to be removed which can harm our cells. P.S. It's not same article as the other class's Andi Shao did. By Joon-ho Leeeeee

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Response to article: South Korea finds melamine in Chinese-made Snickers, Kit Kat

Responder: Hanh Trinh

Second response

Firstly, I found the topic is extremely interesting. Recently, I have heard that The Ministry of Health of China reports that there are thousands of children who have sought medical treatment and have been hospitalized due to powdered infant formula contaminated with the chemical melamine. There have also been several deaths associated with this contaminated infant formula. In addition, dairy products made in China and exported to other countries have been found to contain melamine. More shockedly, according to Jun Ho’s review, melamine is also found in Snickers and Kit Kat which are very popular products that have been fond of by people around the world. I guess you guys also like them, don’t you? And I’m sure that those products have been exported from China to Vietnam. Many people say that bubble tea (the one with milk) which is a very tasty and tempting drink (especially for a hot and sunny day!!!) also contains a large amount of melamine. So we should not drink it even it is the most flavorful and yummy drink ever… (So sad!!).

Why shouldn’t we eat or drink products which contain melamine? Medical experts said that, as well as causing kidney stones, melamine could potentially cause far more serious complications by crystallizing and then blocking tiny tubes in the kidneys. Did you know that about “54,000”children, mostly infant, in China are suffering from kidney stones??? I wonder why people keep putting poisonous chemical in food to conserve it longer which would harm other people’s heaths. What do they do that for? Money? That’s such a guilty thing to do. I hope Chinese government will work more efficiently in checking the safety of the food before selling and exporting to other countries. We all want to have a healthy life. In order to achieve that, we need to have healthy food ,and the first essential thing to do is to eliminate poison out of our food. Hope you enjoy my response!!!!!! ****************************************************************

RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLE : S.Korea finds melamine in Chinese-made Snickers, KitKat

In Korean News, I heard and watched many things about melamine. When I heard about melamine at first, I wondered what was it about and asked questions to myself: 'Is it really bad for our health? If we ate just a little amount of melamine, do we die soon?' What sacred me after I researched about melamine was that if we kept eating large amount of melamine, we could get stones in our kidneys. Another information that I found, however, stated that if we ate just a little amount of it, we were not going to get kidney stones or die. Because kids were more vulnerable to melamine than adults, they shoud not eat even a small amount of melamine. I was also shocked about the fact that most of the foods or snacks that were produced in China had melamine. In South Korea, people were worried about melamine very seriously because it turned out that the melamine-contained foods were in everywhere; not only in China, but also in South Korea and all over the world. What really surprised me while I was reading this article was that even the famous 'Snickers' and 'Kit-Kat' chocolate bars contained melamine. If there were melamine in Snickers and Kit-Kat, what actually didn't have melamine in it? I felt like betrayed by everybody in the world. Now I don't even know what to eat from now on. Still, I'm shocked with this article and I hope South Korea to return the melamine-contained foods back to China. Furthermore, I think Chinese government should catch the people who have made this problem and give punishments to them. What we should do right now is to be careful of those melamine- contained foods in Vietnam because they are in everywhere, even in here. From now on, we should always check where the foods or snacks are come from before buying them to keep our body safe. Response by Jung Yun Choi

I love these articles!! Because I saw it everywhere and every site, they talk about the melamine in the food and snack from China (it’s like a new trend or something before it was global warming). Since they found the melamine in the milk in china and it led to many kid deaths. Plus, I love eating snacks and I don’t care where they are come from but now I have to be aware of what brand of snack do I eat. See if those snacks are in the list of the “banned” snacks. Or else I would end up sick! But you know what?!? They found melamine in very snack so I started to wonder if they are very harm our health. Because some of the snacks that have been found melamine inside are my favorite snacks since I was little. And I am still okay!!! Also, its kind of shocking that I can’t eat most of the snacks out there!!!!! Thanks for the great article!!! And I would be aware of the snacks that you’ve mentioned!!!!!!
by nam!

Newly identified cells make fat

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/10/04/newly_identified_cells_make_fat.html

References: As you all know Obesity is one of the biggest problems right now. People are fighting against it with a lot of effort. Some people even take medicines in order to lose fat. The reason they are doing this because of appearance and also for their own health.

What is this article about?

Since Obesity is such a big problem, I would like to talk about where does fat come from?

Scientist had discovered that there is a fat precursor cell that may in time change the amount of fat cell in your body and lead to obesity. This information is really helpful for scientist to identify a way to fight against obesity, because they had discovered one of the largest factor that lead to obesity. Scientist has hypnotized that the fat cells arepost-mitotic which means they couldn't divide, so there must be fat precursor cell in order to make new fat cell. In ordered to find out about this, scientist has put inside a fatless mouse these precursor fat cells. At the result, they had discovered that only one of the cells which have the scientific name CD24 cell-surface marker protein, which is the only cell produced fat tissue in side that fatless mouse. This really mean, even thought the mouse is fatless there were still ways to contributed fat inside the mouse by its own cell injected in by scientist. This discover gave us better idea about basic fat tissue inside living animal body, and help the scientist to study more about these calls and tissue. This gives us a brighter way to prevent obesity based on how we know the basic structure and the way these tissues make fat cells.

How is this interesting?

This article and the previous article I posted were all about obesity. The reason why I did this because obesity is one of the biggest worldwide health problems nowadays. Scientists are trying to learn more about this. This help us know more about fat cell, which fat is not only from the food we eat, it also come from our own cells and tissues.

How does this related to the classroom?

We have been learning about cells so far, this article gives us a function of a cell which we couldn't imagine. Its make fat inside our body. This is one of a strange function that a cell could actually do. And I want to find out more about it!

Nick Nguyen

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Killing 'Angry' Immune Cells in Fat Could Fight Diabetes

References: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/10/07/killing_angry_immune_cells_in_fat_could_fight_diabetes.html

Article written: October 7th , 2008 Does Not Mention Author.

As you may know, many people have diabetes today. People all over the world have to take their blood tests everyday to make sure their blood sugar is to high or to low. And they always have to carry around medication just incase something bad happens, and their cells become weak. Well, there just might have been a solution to diabetic peoples problems. Which is that there just might be a diabetes cure.

This article is about a theory that has been tested on obese mice, to see if they can fight off diabetes. In October 2008, recently, there was a finding of the Cell Metabolism. It suggests that ‘treatments aimed at specific subsets of the so-called macrophage cells might offer a very effective new antidiabetic therapy.’ How did it happen? Well the scientists used a genetic ‘trick’, that they don’t tell us what it is, that kills macrophages and insulin resistance simply reversed itself. But there are still augments about there being inflammation later, causing diabetes, especially to those who are obese. But when the insulin resistance happened faster then they thought it would cure diabetes. With-in 24 hours the mice that were operated on, turned out as normal mice, yet still obese of course. But they were pretty much diabetic free. Not only that, but they also found out that there was less fat in the obese mice’s liver, which is a very positive outlook on the treatment. They also mentioned “they produce high levels of proinflammatory chemicals that are linked to the development of obesity-associated insulin resistance.” Olefsky and Neels found the findings of fighting diabetic cells, along with their team.

I found this article interesting because I think its amazing that you can find cures for just about anything, if you look really close and focus on your work. Hopefully, their diabetic cell fighting doesn’t damage anything in the body later on. But I still find it pretty great that they can take a macrophage cell and place it in with the diabetes cell, and slowly the diabetes will disappear. Along with fat loss in the liver.

This article relates to class because at the moment were looking into cells. And maybe later on we will be looking at how cells would react around other cells.

- Brittany Buchanan (around 7 PM, Oct. 8th.)

Response:

I think this artical is amazing! I can't really befieve that they found a cure for diabetes. I have a friend that is diabetic and she has to take blood tests every other hour and also has to eat spacific things depending on her sugar level. Its pretty annoying. I was wondering if this cure is only for over weight diabetes. Or is it also for the other one? I think that this article is very interesting and that I totally agree with Brittany

Hannah Zimmer

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★Why do we like to dance--And move to the beat?~

★A review by Kimi, who else?~(:

Yo, hey everyone, let’s get this started ~ (:

☆Here’s the address:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=experts-dance
The article’s written by neurologist John Krakauer, on September 26th 2008, about 2 weeks ago.

☆Some reference information: Music rewards us with pleasure by stimulating our orbitofrontal cortex, the brain part right behind our eye that’s responsible for decision making, and the ventral striatum, a midbrain region; as well by activating the cerebellum, the base of our brain, which aids us in our coordination and timing of movements. ↵ [Important]

☆So, what is the article about?
I remember at some point during dance class, Mrs. Mason asked us why we like to dance. I was unable to answer by then, but this article’s a nice attempt to answer the question, scientifically of course.

So, how exactly is dance pleasurable?
Basically it all falls down to the brain, and by combining two of our other greatest pleasures: Music and Movement. Or M&M lol, x)

Firstly, we all dance with beats or with rhythms, which is just as close to music [See reference to know why music is pleasant].
Secondly, some of our rewarding parts of the brain are actually linked to the motor parts of our brain, while some sensitive parts are activated when certain movements are both made and observed:
Mirror neurons, cells that are fond in the orbitofrontal cortex, activate when we are watching an action preformed by someone else as well as performing the same action ourselves, the activation is somewhat enjoyable because they are linked to rewarding parts of our brain. Apparently, music and dance are perfect ways to activate these neuron cells.
Another thing, when we are watching someone dance, we are unconsciously predicting what their next move based on how we would do. Evidence shows that it is satisfying when we see someone performing an expert move that our brains can’t predict, because we want to do the same.
This does not only apply to dance, but also to watching other actions as well, such as fighting scenes and car chases. How trilling would it be if we could preform the same?

☆How is this interesting?
Well, by reading this article I’ve learn a lot more about our brains and its different parts, and it’s something we should be able to discuss about in class. It’s such a mysterious yet powerful organ. Plus, I think everybody loves to dance ❤, more or less than each individual.

☆How does this relate to class at all?
Okay, I realize we didn’t discuss anything about brains in class yet, but let’s recall the concert last week, ah yes, the Dance competition.
If you were there, you’d remember the cheers from the audience when the dancers dance, especially when they perform something unpredictable. Did you ever ask yourself why we enjoyed it? Well, here’s a scientific answer for you guys (:

★Again like last time, I bold'ed the important words for your advantage x3
Keep it simple and casual~

★Reviewed by Kimi, (Kim Bruns)
★Posted at 2:30 AM, On October 8th 2008 <~ my birthday yo ^0^
(18:30 hours before due)
I really need better time management, gotta sleep now x.x
Cheers~
☆

Response to Why do we like to dance? - And move to the beat?

This article was attracted me first by the time I went through those reviews. Dance is really an activity that seems so familiar
to the all the people, especially teenagers. Actually, same as many other people, I always wondered that how can we move so
naturally whenever we hear a song or a beat. This article gives me the answer that is nearly close to my guess; I think that
the cells or some systems in our brain receive message which is the beat and start to make order to our muscles that make
us start to follow the song and dance.

Furthermore, what I’ve learned in this article is mirror neurons and I really like it because this is the first that I heard about
mirror neurons, the kind of neuron that allow ourselves to copy and perform naturally or act same as the thing we are seeing
or listening. Anyway, it would be great if our class is going to talk about brain cell or the systems in our brain that help us receive
and react to the outside environment. Plus, I like the relation that Kim made, obviously, our class hasn’t talked about brain cells
and systems yet but I still look forward; and the dance competition is a great example for this article because our brain receives
the music or the beat from the songs that are playing and release the neurons to let us feel enjoy it.

Response by: Wendy Wu
Posted on: Oct 13, 2008

One Quarter of World's Mammals Face Extinction

What is this article about? Recent statistics reveal that the populations of mammals are extremely decreasing. 1,139 mammals on the earth are threatened with extinction. Also, populations of about 50 percent of mammals are declining rapidly. Only 5 percent species are recovered. Mammals such as banji dolphins, orangutans, bats, monkeys, Hainan gibbons, polar bears, and harp seals are threatened with many factors. The major cause of declining population is deforestation. In addition, humans often gather food and hunt animals. To stop the declining population, people have to conserve the endangered animals. However, a lot of money and large space are needed. People working on threatened species are looking forward to a way to stop and reduce the extinction of mammals.

Why is the article interesting? When I first read the title of this article, I was really surprised. I knew that many animals are endangered and extinct, but I did not know that it was over 50 percent. It was so interesting that people could not conserve well because it takes a lot of money. The fact that 50 percent of species are decreasing and only 5 percent of them are recovered struck me. I thought that people had already started conversation of animals and more than fifty percent were recovered. When I finished reading this article, I was kind of scared that there might be no animals left on earth if we do not care about it. Therefore, the article was really interesting.

How is the article related to class? Since we study Biology, the extinction of mammals is really important to discuss. The extinction of mammals involves deforestation and environmental ills. These are the things that we already learned or we will learn later during biology class. We learned about the cells and the function of the organelles. If the animals are extinct, it will be difficult or impossible to observe the animal cells. Also, possible ways of conservation can be discussed during the class.

Reference - October 6, 2008 by David Biello - http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=one-quarter-of-worlds-mammals-face-extinction

Review by Joonwon Lee

Leon's Response to "One Quarter of World's Mammals Face Extinction"

All i can say is wow. To know that 1'139 animals are threatened to be extinct on this earth is unbelievable and 50% of the population of animals are declining is breath taking. To just imagine that the reason for this all is mainly based around our behaviors and the way we treat the forests. The reason for the cutting down of trees is to build buildings for various reasons. Even if the reason was to benefit a country, we are destroying our planet. It's bad enough that we have been through the process of deforestation but to think that we are affecting animals and at such a drastic scale as well. The protection of animals that people have been trying to enforce has been a very big thing for a quite a long time. We see TV ads showing us what we are doing by purchasing products that hunters are hunting animals for. A very famous saying on the TV was " If the buying stops, the killing will". After reading this article, I have sympathy towards animals. The importance of this article, I think, is to pass a message out to people about what we are doing to our world. For me, the relation to our class and this article is if animals become extinct, the chances of evolving animals in the future is not possible, therefore our studies for the near future will not be possible.

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Beetles Get by With a Little Help From Their Friends Link: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112319&govDel=USNSF_51 Author: Zina Deretsky Written Date: October 2nd 2008 Reference Information: Beetles are the group of insects with the largest number of known species. Beetles can be found in almost all habitats, but unsure to occur in polar regions or sea habitats. Beetles may display extremely intricate behaviour when mating. Smell is thought to be important in the location of a mate. What is the Article about?: This article is about a complex relationship of dependence and competition between beetles, two fungi, mites and a bacterium. Researchers have shown that just like humans, many microbes, plants and animals benefit from 'friendly' associations surrounding them too. They revealed that adult beetles have a specialized compartment in their bodies which is used to store two other organisms: a slow-growing beneficial fungus that serves as a food source and a bacterium that produces a unique, newly discovered antibiotic. The interesting thing is that the antibiotic inhibits the growth of a different fast-growing competitor fungus but does not affect the slow-growing beneficial fungus. Cameron Currie, an evolutionary biologist of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "There are perhaps 10 million species of insects on the planet, so if insects associate with bacteria like this more generally, then there's potentially a huge number of new places to explore." The study of these interactions could also help us to find new antibiotics for medical or agricultural uses in the future. Why is this Article interesting?: This article is interesting to me because I love animals, and even though bugs are kind of scary to me, I still like to learn about the animals world. It's also interesting because it's surprising how bugs can produce antibiotics! This is unpredictable. How is this Article related to class?: This article relates to class in quite a few different ways. First it's about living things, so it is definitely related to biology. At the moment we're learning about plant cells and different processes in cells, but later on we will learn about animals and bugs. So I'm sure this is helpful for us some time later. And it's about cells and microbes and chemicals, which we will study later on. Have fun and good luck! Review by Kristin Ha Reserve Date: 3.50pm October 5th 2008 Posted: 8.33pm October 8th 2008

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Ask the Brains: Why do we laugh when someone falls???

Reference:

URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ask-the-brains-why-do-we-laugh
Written by: William B. Keith, Houston (a psychiatrist and laughter researcher at Stanford University)
Posted date: October 2, 2008
Reviewed date: October 5, 2008

What is this article about?
Well, this article is an attempt to answer the weird question in red above (Why do we laugh when someone falls?). According to William B. Keith’s suggestion, the 2 crucial elements required for this phenomenon to take place are the play frame, which puts a real-life event in a nonserious context, and the incongruity, strangeness because not in harmony with the surroundings. When the conditions are satisfied, for example when we see a person stumbling to the ground, the mirror neurons in our brain duplicate the patterns of activity in the falling’s person brain, our brain is “tickled” by a neurological “ghost”. As the result, the incongruity perception is reenforced and mirth will obviously ensue.

Why is this article interesting?
I find this article extremely interesting because first, although the laughing phenomenon mentioned probably have happened to me at least once (either I was the observer who laughed or the victim being laughed at), I never took time to think about why I (or people) laughed and what is so funny about seeing others falling. Secondly, this is the first time I have ever heard of “mirror neurons”. Pretty cool eh! $$$$ The article is quite brief and fairly easy to understand, take a look at it, it won’t take too long!

How is this related to class?
This article is related to class because we will learn about neurons in chapter 41: Nervous system ( hopefully if we have time ^_^ ). But anyway, since we’re learning about cells and its functions, I think it is useful to know a bit about mirror neuron ( a really cool cell !!!)

Thank you for paying attention :D

Hope you have fun reading this review

Keep doing your best, everybody!

Made by Anh Vo

Joanne's resoponse to the article why do we laugh when someone falls?

I think this article is very interesting to me, because as Anh said, we have the experience like this article. So many people laugh when someone falls. I have the same experience, too. I've never think about it either even this thing have happened to me before, I didn't even know the reason that why people laugh when someone falls and I didn't even try to find the reason. But now, I got the reason. The reason why we laugh when someone falls is because of mirror neurons in our brain.
I think the article that Anh found is very very interesting and funny. Also, this article is related to our class, too. Because we are going to learn about the Nervous system later. Actually, I've learned about the nervous system already in the P.E class, at that time I was not interested in the nervous system, but after reading the article that Anh found, I got intereted in the nervous system. I have not heard about the "Mirror neurons" before, so after I saw this, I really want to know more things about the Mirror neurons. I think if I laugh again next time when a person falls, I will still remember the reason that why I laugh, and also I will tell other people the reason why people laugh. If someone get mad at me because I was laughing, I will tell him or her the reason, then he or she will understand that why I was laughing, then they will not get angry at me.Haha :D Anyway, I will try to find more information about the nervous system, because I am very interested in nervous system and this article! :) GOOD -_-b...!!!!!!!!!!!!! Posted on Oct. 14. 2008 9:50 P.M Response by Joanne Lee

Stacie's response to this article

First of all, I would like to say that it was very nice review with catchy title. I found this article very interesting because I always wondered why people laugh when one person might got hurt badly. I was always angry at people laughing at me when I fall and thought that those people are so mean. However, after reading Anh's review, now I know that people don't laugh at me because they are mean but because of the "mirror neurons". As Joanne said, we learned about neurons in PE class. However, we didn't learn specific things about neuron. We just learned that neurons carry message in our body to make up a reaction to a certain situation that we are in. I always thought about situations such as neurons carry message when people touched something hot. I never thought of neurons carrying message to the brain to make people laugh. Therefore, I was astonished when I read Anh's review. Also, I knew that it was part of human instinct but didn't know what part of human instince that makes people laugh when people fell. However, now I know it's part of your nervous system that makes you laugh. Thanks to Anh, who told me this news in very easy and brief way. Nice Job :D
P.S I won't blame you if you laugh at me when I fall one day :)

Response by. Dawon (Stacie) Lee

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Powering Our Automotive Future with--Pond Scum

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=powering-automotive-future-with-pond-scum
Written By: David Biello
Written Date: September 23, 2008

Reference information algae is an aquatic organism with no real leaves, stems ro roots. algae grow in or near water. A good example of algae is seaweed.

What is this ariticle about? What this article is talking about is that algae will play a huge role in our future fuel needs because algae can produce gasoline. Algae stores oil because it's energy dense and wants to use it for fuel. Also, algae is good at producing chemicals because when it receives chemical energy, it actually turns the chemical energy into a chemical. Because of the fact that algae is the key for our future fuel needs, there are several companies that are planning to invest money to produce oil from algae. For algae to produce gasoline, a certain enviroment is required. First, for algae to produce oil, there has to be a CO2 producer because algae pull CO2 out and change it into protein and oil. Also, algae needs water. However, it does not matter how clean the water is so algae can actually produce oil with wastewater or salty water. The purity of water does not matter because algae is an aquatic species. Except for the fact that it costs a lot to make algae produce gasoline, algae is a good solution for our future fuel problems.

Why is this article interesting? This article is very interesting because right now, fuel is one of the main issues of the world. Most of the people are dealing with oil price that's going up unceasingly. People are saying that we need to find an another solution for fuel because oil that's underground is disappearing quickly. I think this article is suggesting a good solution for this fuel problem.

How is this article related to class? This article is related to class because in class we talked about the use of energy in the Sodium Potassium pump. In class we talked about the pump that shoots the Sodium out of the cell to make the sodium carry 1 glucose back into the cell. In this article, it also talks a little about energy. It says that algae stores chemical energy and turn it in to an actual chemical. Even though it's different use of energy, it's related because both the class and article is about the use of energy.

Review by. Dawon(Stacie) Lee
ENJOY READING =D

Kimi's response ^o^

Hey Dawon~,
First of all, your review was really enjoyable to read. I love the different colors. Haha. :)

And wow, this article really appealing. How interesting those algae can create gasoline and fuel. If you think about it, nowadays' solution to fuel problem was just right under our noses, or may I say, under our waters.
This is an amazing discovery; I can already picture people making “algae farms”. And not only that algae produces fuel, it also captures CO2 right? So they’d make our atmosphere a tad cleaner. And yes, this relates to energy I suppose, even though the process might be a little different, it would be interesting to discuss this in class.
I just hope these algae-fuel-aquaculture or whatever they'll call them won’t create anymore environmental issues. Like how forests being deforested for wood. And I hope this won’t slow down our conversion to use of solar energy. Otherwise, again, this is a great breakthrough in science, we should be proud of our scientists. Or am I exaggerating? xD

Thanks Stacie, for the wonderful review. Two-Thumbs up. :) _b

Posted on 1/10/08 at 3:50 (17:10 hours before due)
what the?!...I should sleep now, haha.

By Kimi~(: (Kim Bruns)

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Researcher Finds Tiny Dino in World of Giants

URL: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre48mbj3-us-dinosaur-science/ Written By: Jeffrey Jones Article Written Date: September 23, 2008 at 5:31 pm EDT I posted Article on: September 24th, 2008, 6:30ish PM This article is mostly about a Canadian researcher who has recently discovered the Northern America's smallest dinosaur, a “70-million-year-old chicken-sized beast” as he had said. The name of it is Albertonykus borealis. It had a bird like feature. Its legs are small and thin, had jaws like pincers and stubby arms with big claws. It is very similar to a bird, but with arms. Scientist think it is very different to dig up such a small dinosaur, since we always think of big massive monsters when we think dinosaurs. The Albertonykus is about 2 ½ feet tall, and researchers believed that they were very fast at running. It is also believed that Albertonykus Borealis’ ate off of Beatles and termites. I find this article very interesting because for one, I like dinosaurs; they are different then things we see today. And its cool learning about things that existed way back when they were walking on earth. Also, its really interesting to know that it is possibly the smallest dinosaur in North America. But how could such a small dinosaur stay alive while all these big carnivores were walking the earth at the same time? We will probably never know. I also find it interesting that we keep finding more and more odd look creatures that we would have never of thought of existing! Some are really creepy looking, and some just look like fun to have as a pet. This article is related to class a little bit because just before our new unit, we were learning a little bit about fossils. The only way to see what kinds of things existed in the past is by digging really deep into the dirt to find new discoveries. Also, since were learning about how life formed, I thought it would be an appropriate article since the Albertonykus Borealis was a part of life a long time ago, but not today. It was just another form of something that probably evolved into a smarter or better animal today. Article "Researcher Finds Tiny Dino in World of Giants" Reviewed By : Brittany Buchanan

Response to Researcher Finds Tiny Dino in World of Giants

I find this article is interesting because dinosaurs always made people curious and want to learn more about them since they are
no longer exist in the modern day. First of all, this is a great discovery because most of the people who had learn a bit about dinosaurs
would probably think they all were giants. I think Albertonykus was too small in that giants’ world and it couldn’t live for a long time
such as the other kind of dinosaurs, so researchers had spent a pretty long time to find them. Also, the reason that Albertonykus are
ound out later is they couldn’t protect themselves in front of other dinosaurs that was much larger than them, so they were in the
deeper part of fossil because they died and gradually disappeared early before the others. Since our class had learnt about fossil,
we know that fossils represent the ages of human so the deeper Albertonykus was found out, the longer they lived before the earth
worst disaster which killed all the dinosaurs.

Anyway, even though our class didn’t talk a lot about fossil but there are still some relation between this article and us. More importantly,
as Brittany said, Albertonykus was part of life long time ago and we had talked about how life was formed.

Response by: Wendy Wu
Posted on: Oct 1, 2008

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Shrimp fossil tells of once (and future?) temperate Antarctic

URL: http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=shrimp-fossil-tells-of-once-and-fut-2008-07-24

Written by: David Biello

Article posted on: July 24, 2008

Basically, this article talks about researchers reported in the British Journal Proceedings of the Royal Society b that 14 million years ago, a fossil of a tiny crustacean had a relatively toasty clime. In eastern Antarctica's Dry Valleys area produced the fossil of a shrimp, which called ostracod, in an ancient Antarctic lake. The crustaceans needed liquid water to survive and it's totally impossible to live in Antarctic now because water is too cold and water is freeze every time. maybe, it was possible eons ago because it was warmer than now. The ancient critters don't get closer to Antarctica than the surrounding seas, but when they looked at the fossil, they can found in landscape. maybe because once was warm enough to have water in Antarctic.

This article was interesting to me because I thought creatures can't live in Antarctic because it is too cold to live in the water. Maybe all fishes got frozen. But, I realized that my thought was wrong after I read it. I think fossil can tell most of the things that happened before, which is good things to discover about it. Also, I found that there was liquid water to survive the tiny crustaceans a long time ago. But, I think it will become a big problem that if temperatures of Antarctic get change because all the ice will get melts if it gets warmer and density of the water will get increase.

It's related with what I learned during the class. We learned about fossil beginning of the class time. By using fossil, we can find out a lot of things about past time. For examples, we can know what animals lived long time ago or climates. Also, we can guess how much time passed by looking at the fossil.

I hope you guys enjoy my article. :)

By Jung Yun Choi

RESPONSE BY MEEEEE~ JHo

Okay.. Basically, I really injoyed having a look on this article. This was about a shrimp fossil found in Antartic area. The scientists were fascinated about this new disvoery because this proved that the antarctic areas were made out of 'liquid water.' It means there were "CLIMATE SHIFT" that is what we are facing as a challenge nowadays.
This article is very interesting for me to have a thought about GLOBAL WARMING. There're are myths about extinction of human beings due to this. However, if this discovery PROVES about the climate shift, there must be a possibility of us surviving. Anyway, it was just my fantasy idea and I wanted to say that this article is very related to what we 'were' studying about. Evolution and Fossils.
In conclusion, I liked this article and your review about this. Yes. It is a big problem if the ice in Antarctica melts. Anyway, ThANks For A GoOD ARticLe

2nd Response by Joey

Alright, out of all the articles I believe this is the one I prefer best. I'm totally crazy and obsessed with keeping our planet green, the ozone layers and global warming, as JHo said in his review (we worked on a global warming project together). But again, from some theories I read and saw on National Geographic were saying that the Earth undergoes through many changes every billions of years. Where the Artic and Antartic poles get frozen, and unfrozen..like a cycle. This is very facsinating because if these scientists found this shrimp fossil that actually lived in the Antartic, this could prove the theory that at more than one point in time, the artics were unfrozen and that life was possible down, or up there. Besides the discovery of a new fossil, this could bring up many news showing that maybe we might be able to overcome the "global warming" problem and the fact that the ice in the polars are melting is just a natural process.

Not to copy what JHo mentioned in his response, but I also believe that somehow this actually is related to what we studied. One day we talked about what fossils are and how to find out how old they are. Layer by layer...and with this sort of information we can determine how old this crustacean or shrimp is...and hopefully we can predict when the ice caps are going to re-melt and we'll have long long winters...which we should really need here in Vietnam! he he

Joey Gulizzi

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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

What is this article about?

This article includes fifteen answers to creationists’ arguments. Many creationists argue and talk about the fallacy of evolutionism. For example, the creationists say that nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. The article answers that it is really rare to see the speciation. Nevertheless, it tells that scientific literature contains reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. The article also mentions that creationists dishonestly took scientists’ comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. So, this article is basically the discussion between evolutionists and creationists.

Why is this article interesting?

This article is really interesting because the voice of the author is really clear and intense. Even though creationists give the strong arguments, the article answers with well explained and fully given reasons. However, some answers include emotional expressions. Some sentences made me feel that the article mocks the creationism. Regardless of that, I could also learn about new facts of evolution. For example, I thought that we descended from monkeys. However, we actually have same ancestors as monkeys. This article brings readers into the argument and makes us decide which theory we think is right.

How is this related to class?

Recently, we learned about the origin of life in biology class. We talked about primordial soup, bubble model, and endosymbiosis. These are based on evolutionary theory. From the perspective of creationists, these might be something to debate and discuss. If we learn about the origin of life based on creationism, we might learn something different. This article tells us about the reasons why evolutionism is correct. Therefore, I think that it is related to our biology class.

Reference

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist

= Article Written by John Rennie

= Review by Joonwon Lee

Response : That was a most fascinating review, Joon Won. My last review was about an article related to Creationism, and now, your review is about the same related topic as mine. How interesting to me!

Had we known, Creationism and Evolutionism had been fighting over centuries. Creationism might be nonsense to the scientist, but it might be not to religious citizens of this world. A lot of people put so much faith in Creationism, although, it sounds nonsense to some. I, myself, think of both theories as equal. Everybody in this world has a belief of their own. Evolutionists ‘answered’ the questions of Creationists, but really, I think they were mocking Creationists. They would like to prove that they were right, but I think they don’t need to. People can choose their own belief, no matter what they say. Although, Evolutionism sounds more realistic, Creationism belongs to religious faith. Both theories are important, none is less than the other. We should respect Evolutionism as they tried to prove their realistic and scientific theory to people who trusted in Creationism. But Creationism is also deserved to be respected. After all, Creationism has a longer history than Evolutionism, and it was quite impressive for our ancestor to think of such a theory, however nonsense it was, right? To come up with such an idea of how life begins was definitely not easy at that time, and it had played as an important role in our society and history over times, a theory that was much too fascinating and religious. Do you think like I think?

Response by Anastasia Bui. I hope that you guys feel pleasant with it :)

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Too Good to Be True?: Fat That Keeps You Thin

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fat-that-keeps-you-thin

Author: Nikhil Swaminathan

Written Date: September 18th 2008

Reference Information: Obesity is usually defined as being more than 20% above ideal weight. The body mass index is helpful in determining whether you are obese, and can also flag your risk of related diseases, such as diabetes.

What is the Article about?: This article suggests that researchers have found a new way to keep us thin. Researchers at the Harvard University's School of Public Health had found in human body palmitoleate, a newly discovered hormone produced by fat cells. This hormone turned out to be a fatty acid as well. What does this have to do with keeping us thin, then? Well the researchers believe that if they can increase its production, they may be able to stave off metabolic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease. They also suggested that it may aid in weight loss as well. So how can u lose weight...using fat? "The best kind of fat is the kind that you produce on your own from your fat tissue.", said Gökhan Hotamisligil, a professor of genetics and metabolism.

Why is this article interesting?: I think this article is very interesting because it's kind of weird in a way. Like you wouldn't imagine losing weight by adding fat to your body. And the interesting thing is that this hormone has always been in our bodies, and we never knew about them before. Thanks to the hardworking scientists now we know that our bodies have really amazing cells :)

How is this article related to class?: This article relates to our Biology class because first, obviously it is about biology- about living things and the human body :D . Second, we're learning about cells and the different functions, uses and all the cells relationship, so this article helps us a bit to understand more about cells, and expands our knowledge of cells as well.

Good luck with biology! :D

Review by Kristin Ha

Posted: 9.18pm September 23rd 2008

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RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLE " FAT THAT KEEPS YOU THIN"

I was truly shocked when I saw your review !!! ^^ . The article you chose is a really interesting one ( especially for girls) : “Fat that keeps you thin”. This sounds just impossible! In fact, all of the dictionaries state that “fat” and “thin” are antonyms, or opposites. Up until now, I always thought that a person is fat because he has too much “fats”. But after reading your review, I’ve found out that fat cells in our body can produce palmitoleate, a kind of hormone which turns out to be a fatty acid as well. And therefore, if we can increase its production, we can lower the risk of having metabolic diseases and also lose weight. Nowadays, many people are struggling trying to lose weight. Some are so desperate that they fast days and end up exhausted or worst (dead). So, if our scientists can find the way to produce that hormone, it would be much easier for everyone to maintain good shape without hurting themselves. Finally, this discovery may well lead to the invention of an effective cure for heart diseases.( Kristin, I really like your review! Good work ^^ ) !

By Anh Vo

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Response to: Too Good to Be True: Fat That Keeps You Thin
First of all, I love this article because I personally love reading articles about obesity. Because I always think that I am too fat! And It makes me feel like I have to go on diet everyday!!! I feel like I am totally obsessed with my weight!
Anyways, it’s so interesting that fat helps you to get skinnier?!?! Because I always think that I CANNOT eat fat because I will become like a pig! But now scientist just discovered that in our body has the fat that can make us skinny??!? I was so surprised when I first read it. I was like what?!?! Are you serious?! If so, I wish that I have lots and lots of those fats in my body so I could look like a model!!!!(LoL). So I don’t have to starve myself anymore!!! Moreover, I can’t believe that those fats are inside of our bodies but we never know it! Also, this discovery maybe leads to other things to help/cure people with obesity or heart disease. This might help many people around the world who have these problems. It would help them to decrease the risks of their lives.
THANK YOU FOR THIS AWESOME ARITICLE!!! LOV IT!

By Nam

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Response to:Too Good to Be True: Fat That Keeps You Thin
When I first saw this article, I was a bit confused. How does fat makes you thin? That's sound kind of weird and impossible. After reading your review Kristin, I was amazed by our own body, which provide a good solution for what we have been asking ourself: How to stay in shape? Nowaday obesity is one of the biggest problem in the world. For most developing nations, obesity has emerged as a more serious health threat than hunger. There are about 20% of the world popuplation are overweight.. As far as I know there are a lot of strange way of diet such as eating a proper amount of chocolate could help you loss weight and reduce diceases risks. This is probably a good news for people who have overweight problem.
I’m always try to loss some weight and this could be something new that I should try. :D
Good stuff !!

By Nick

Fish Gave Us the Finger

Reporter: Karen Hopkins

URL: http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=fish-gave-us-the-finger-08-09-22

This article is about where fingers came from. In the 1990’s scientists were very curious about this question, but all they could conclude was that fingers were invented by the first tetra pods( a critter with 4 limbs) They concluded so because an ancient fish that they had researched on didn’t have any fingers or distances between its pectoral fin. Tetra pods that were evolved from fish on the other hand, did. Some scientist did not agree or found it to be confusing because they have unearthed some evidence and the evidence suggests that the ancient fish does indeed have fingers in its fins. The researchers also come to conclude that CT Scans on the specimen is about 380 million years old. The other researches then thought that they had made a small error before coming to their conclusion which was that the sample that they have collected, the fingers were hidden behind marks left by the fish’s scales. So fish do have incipient fingers as well.

I found this article interesting because when I was young I used to question myself about my hands and feet. Such as where did they come from? Why do they look so funny if I stare at them for a long time etc and there was a time that I came to ask when fingers first “discovered” but I were was a child then and had many questions. Another thing that is cool is that I love to eat fish so the connection is kind of cool knowing that fingers might have originated from the food I eat. OH! And I broke my finger not to long ago. Cool.

This article relates to class because I remember watching a video in class about doctors being able to grow bones and skin with tissue with a small sample mixing it with a type of chemical to be able to grow almost 1000x its original amount or more.

- Leon

Response to article Fish gave us the fingers

I think this article is very interesting because the fingers are very important part to everyone. We use the fingers everyday in our life, we use them when we are writting something, carrying something, playing something and so on.Specially, I play the piano very often, I play the piano in the church's prays team. If there were no fingers, then I would not play piano too. This is related our class too, because we are learning about the things like this.We already learned that how the life began. I think these are related to each other. At last, I enjoyed this article, and now I am interested in the articles like this. I think I will look for this kind of article.I can't imagine that my life with out the fingers. Fingers are very very important, if there were no fingers, maybe this world is not exists. I think we have to thank to the fish if this article is the true.Haha! P.S* Leon, I enjoyed your article. This is very interesting! I like it >_< Responsed by: Joanne Lee

Cylindrical Solar Cells Give a Whole New Meaning to Sunroof

Reference:
URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cylindrical-solar-cells-give-new-meaning-to-sunroof
Written by: David Biello
Posted date: October 7, 2008
Reviewed date: October 12, 2008

What is this about?
This article is about the new invention of “Fremont, Calif- based Solyndra, Inc.”: the cylindrical thin- film solar cells. These solar cells, made from copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS), are wrapped into a cylindrical shape and then encased in glass. The purpose of doing this is to seal out moisture ( the cells are encased in glass), to collect light from all angles, even diffuse light ( cylinder shape) and to have the glass act as a sunlight concentrator which funnels photons onto the thin film. According to what the company said, their products (solar cylinders) when paired with white roof for better sunlight reflection can collect 20% more sunshine than the conventional flat counterparts. So amazing! (if it’s true ^^). Not only that, these solar cylinders can also be installed without affixing them onto the roof à reduction of installation cost and time but can still withstand up to 130 miles per hour winds.

Why is it interesting?
This article is interesting because solar energy has always been an unlimited source of energy which doesn’t pollute the environment. However, mankind still haven’t found the way to collect and harness that energy wisely. That’s a big waste because there are approximately 30 billion square feet of expansive, flat roofs in the US, an area large enough to collect the sunlight needed to power 16 million American homes. And now, scientists have come up with a new way to collect more sunshine and reduce the cost (pretty interesting, right?)

How is it related to class?
This article is related to class because we’re studying about the light reaction, a part of photosynthesis, which has similar mechanism with these solar cylinders. They both use sunlight to produce energy. So I think it’s useful to know a bit about the improvements of solar cells.

By Anh (Vo)
Thank you for paying attention (^_^)

Space Suits Them: First Animal That Can Survive in Orbit

September 8, 2008

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=first-animal-that-can-survive-in-space

This article is about a new finding of a creature that can survive out in space without having its lungs to expand. Just like bacteria and lichen, these “water bears” can tolerate the subtraction of pressure the severe cold. These water bears are microscopic. They are as big as 1.5 millimeters to 0.05 millimeters. Some of the water bears can survive as long as 100 years without moisture. They have many abilities to not get any damage from the sun’s ultraviolet rays which harm many people and other types of animals. Only 10% of the water bears exposed to vacuum and radiation when it is to be returned to the water environment. The water bears are to also to have some cellular mechanism that fixes radiation or desiccative damage. This is why it is very important that there is finally an animal that can survive in outer space. I find that this is connected with what we are learning right now because now we are learning about cells and we have also learned a bit about ultraviolet rays and how bad it is to us. I also know about bacteria and it is interesting to compare an animal and a bacteria.
Joanne Lee

Response To The Article Space Suits Them: First Animal That Can Survive in Orbit

I found this article very interesting because this article is related to space, one of the frontiers around the world. I was always interested in sapce because it's full of mysteries and wonders. When I think about the space, I always think about a place that no organisms live in. However, I think this article played a huge role in changing my bias about space.
I think this discovery is a huge step for both science and technology. This new finding would help lots of researches related to space. I think this finding works as a great chance to research and find further more about space. Also the fact that there is an animal that has abilities such as the ability to avoid lung expansion, that humans don't have is interesting.
Over all, I enjoyed reading this article. I think this article would be interesting for the people who are interested in space. I think it's also going to be interesting to people who don't really know much about space because this news is about space, the other world that we are not living in, and the world that is full of wonders and mysteries.

(Great Article Joanne, I enjoyed reading it :D)

Response by: Dawon(Stacie) Lee

Are We Eating Cloned Meat?

URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-we-eating-cloned-meat

Written by: Frank DeFazio, Sudbury, MA

Posted date: September 9, 2008

Contacts: U.S. Food & Drug Administration, www.fda.gov; Center for Food Safety, www.centerforfoodsafety.org; American Anti-Vivisection Society, www.aavs.org.

reference information for the article Cloning is a process of making an identical copy of something. In this case, that 'something' is indicating to an animal. Cloning something isn't the 'modern day technology.' There were attempts in 1800's of cloning a sea urchin. Also, there was a successful cloning in 1951, when clone of a frog egg was created.

what the article is about Article is about the global safety issue of eating cloned meat. Since January 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed cloned meat to be sold in real markets. This actually seemed to help both farmers and economic companies. However, before the approve, University of Connecticut had came up with a research report that none of the milk produced by cloned cows contained healthy nutrients. It was on 2005. Also on 2006, DC-based center for Food Safety stated that cloning contains too much of health risks. Therefore, starting from September 2, 2008, those 20 top best meat-selling companies decided not to sell those products but only the ones that are offspring. As an impact, citizens got aware of it and they are now opposing Mc Donald to sell cloned meat.

why the article is interesting The article is dealing with both biological and social issues that 'we' would have to deal with later in future. According to their efforts on researching about clones, someday there would be time to clone animals and human beings with exact same functions and nutrients. This article would be one of the conflicts between people who agree on cloning and people who disagree on cloning. It was interesting to know that the biology is actually in high level of study right now, and that science do always get conflict with human morality.

how the article is related to class
Someday, one or more people in our class will eat those cloned meat. Or, they might be already eating it. How would it feel like to eat cloned meat? I just was so curious about this.

Written by Junho Leee

Response To The Article Are We Eating Cloned Meat?:

I really find this article interesting because I didn’t even know that people cloned meat and actually sell it as food. When I think of cloned foods, I think “Woah I would never eat something that has ever been cloned..,” You don’t even know for sure if something bad might have happened through the cloning process, that could lead to illnesses and other things that us humans don’t need more of.
If I had to say, I’d say that cloning things such as meats isn’t right, it just gives people more and more ideas about cloning humans, and that’s probably the last thing we really want to do is have doubles of people around the earth. Plus it adds on to population, which eventually effects global warming, which I have a huge interest in helping global warming from not happening so quietly.
So over all, its a great article to read about, becuase for some people, like me, don't even realize that there is colned food out there that we don't even relize has been cloned.
[Junho good article!]

-Response By Brittany Buchanan

Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind

Links: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=intelligence-evolved
Written by: Ursula Dicke and Gerard Roth
Article posted on: August, 2008

In their article “Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind,” Ursula Dicke and Gerard Roth talk about how the intelligence of the animals is related to our human brain cells. All the scientists had been gone through many experiments and researches to prove that why humans are smarter than animals, even though there are many animals have exceptional brainpower.

Intelligence is work that formed by a three-pound mass inside of our skulls. And for a long time, scientists make a supposition that human and human mind are the evolution of the chimpanzee, which means that we and them are sharing the same ancestors that walked the earth for seven-billion years ago. For this reason, scientists are trying to figure out the unique features of human brain that could be the evidence for our superior intellectual abilities, even though our brains are almost the same as the chimpanzees’.

As we know, no dogs can speak, no dolphins can sing and no parrots can read and solve the easiest equations; only human can do that, only we can solve those complex works that we need our brain to perform such intellectual. May be it’s because human are truly smarter than animals in our own definition for “intelligence.” In this article, Ursula and Gerard give us some reasons to prove that definition. First of all, they think that human brains are lack of conspicuous characteristics that might account for humans’ superior intellect. However, there is an issue because scientist couldn’t find the correlation between the absolute and relative brain-size of humans and other animals, which means there are some animals might have the same brain structure of the conspicuous characteristics so they will have a diversity of human like social and cognitive skills.

On the other hands, those researchers also found that there are some microscopic clues to humanity’s aptitude on smaller scale; we have more in our brain’s outermost layer than other animals do. The insulation around our nerves in the brain is thicker and it’s let the insulation to control or reflex affection more rapidly. This makes a suggestion that human intelligence has a better cognition.

Anyway, I found out that this is a pretty interesting article for me to read and learn because I always wondering about the intellectual between monkeys and human. I think this article doesn’t have too much relative to what our class is studying but I think there will be some points that are going to be in our lesson such as brain cells, and how they help us or humanity to become unique compare to those chimps.

After summarizing this article, I found out that whether humans’ brains are more special than the animals, those animals are having their own unique brains too. Because we just trying to prove that human are smarter than animals but that doesn’t mean animals are not smart. For example, a test show us that pigeons can discriminate between male and female faces and among paintings by different artists; they can also group pictures into categories such as trees, selecting those belonging to a category by pecking with their beaks, an action that often brings a food reward. However, scientist are still searching for more information and evidences to prove their supposition that human’s brain contain more special abilities than the other animals.

Reviewer: Wendy Wu =D
Posted on: Sep 10, 2008

Using a Poison to Turn Sunlight into Food

Hey it's Kimi~ and this is my review of an article, woohoo~
The title’s above in case you didn’t notice.

Here’s the address: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=using-a-poison-to-turn-sunlight-into-food

Written by David Biello, on August 18, 2008, that’s about 3 weeks ago.

A little reference information: This article’s mostly about photosynthesis, if you don’t know what that is then you’re obviously not ready for Thursday’s test, haha. You should know however, that they are “family trees” of photosynthetic bacteria, some have had photo-systems that did not produce oxygen, such as purple bacteria.

Well, what is it about? Basically, in Californian hot springs, Scientist have discovered a new type of extremophile bacteria who can conduct photosynthesis in arsenic, a deadly poison that would have normally killed cells and bacteria. These bacteria steal 2 electrons from arsenic, turn them into arsenate, and use that energy to convert carbon dioxide into food.
More for the curious: [Note that these, however, aren’t the only bacteria relying on poison. Bacteria from the genus Ectothiorhodospira create energy from another poison, toxic hydrogen sulfide.]
Anyway, scientists believe that, apparently, this new type of bacteria goes back for at least 3 million years, which suggests that arsenic-based photosynthesis could have existed before oxygen-producing photosynthesis like that of the cyanobacteria we’ve learned about.

Dude, how is that interesting? Well, this is interesting for 2 main reasons. First, I shall quote biologist Donald Bryant, who reviewed the paper:"It is an interesting case in which nature has taken something that is normally quite toxic and made good use of it for growth." Enough said, I suppose.

Secondly, it’s also interesting because it relates much to what we’ve learned in class. Since we've been learning about photosynthetic cells and stuff, I just wanted to add a little something. It proves that our textbooks don’t have everything and new things are being discovered everyday, thus the reason of this activity probably?
I think future editions of biology textbooks would or should mention these bacteria though.

Well, I had mildly fun writing that, but I hope you have lots of fun reading it. I 'bold'ed the important parts for your advantage.
I know the review doesn't sound 'formal', but that's how I like it: simple and casual.
Enjoy~ :)

Kimi~ (Kim Bruns)
Submitted: 10/9/2008 At 9:58 (23:02 hours before dead-date)
I should sleep now, goodnight~

Response to the Article: Using a Poison to Turn Sunlight into Food

I found this article interesting because firstly, the title itself made me so curious and secondly, the article is related to photosynthesis and all that, which is helpful because we’ve been discussing about this in class. I have never known before that we can use something so poisonous and turn it into something plants can digest!

The poison is called arsenic, and it is a deadly poison that would have normally killed cells and bacteria. Well the scientists discovered that extremophile bacteria steal 2 electrons from arsenic, turn them intoarsenate, and use that energy to convert carbon dioxide into food.

Scientists believe that this kind of bacteria goes back for at least 3 million years, which is a very long time ago. And this suggests that arsenic-based photosynthesis (this poison-to-food process we've been talking about) could have existed before oxygen-producing photosynthesis, which is the 'original' food-making process in plants we've been learning about. This means that we've found something extremely important - that there are many other things we haven't known about out there.
I think this is a good article because it is interesting, and it helps students in a way, since we’re learning about cells, the history of cells and photosynthesis, etc. in class at the moment.

Response by Kristin Ha

Evolving Creationism In The
Classroom - Review

I'm Anastasia Bui from Biology-C and this is my review for the article I've read.

This is the link to the article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=evolving-creationism-in-the-classroom

Reference information: Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the Universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities, whose existence is presupposed. In relation to the creation-evolution controversy the term creationism (or strict creationism) is commonly used to refer to religiously-motivated rejection of evolution.

Posted on September 10, 2008

Title: Evolving Creationism In the Classroom
Creationists cast themselves as proponents of "academic freedom"
Written By JR Minkel

Overview In-Depth Report: Creationism Vs. Evolution
Infographic Map: Creationism Controversy: State-by-State

The article is about: the idea of teaching the creationism in classroom or not. Have you ever wonder how did our world create? One theory is Creationism, in which said that God created Earth and its life form, which is very antiscientific. But, many politicians such as Sarah Palin, feel that it is necessary and not harmful if creationism be taught in school. The article also said that evolution has its own weaknesses and things that made it doubtful, so that if someone who study both evolution theory and creationism, and can find weaknesses of evolution, that means he or she had promoted creationism without saying the word. The interesting thing is that this article said that to study both evolution and creationism is a zero sum game, which is a game with no winner nor loser. It's mean there is no harm to study both thing, but only advantage of having know more about different theories of how our world was created.

I found interest in this article because: I have interest in religious myths such as the creationism but it had never been taught at schools, so that I don't really have a chance to find out more about it. And this article mentioned exactly about this matter. In fact, to know both religious myths and scientific studies have no harm at all. I hope someday the creationism would be taught at schools, so that students would know so much more knowledge about theories of how the world begins, not only in science but also in religion, which both are very important matters in the world.

This article related to the class because: Our class talk about how life begins, so I think someday we will study about how human evolved from animals to present-day human, so that think it would be more exciting if we study both the theory of evolution and creationism and compare them. Religion is a very important matter to the world like I just said, so why not? It would only bring us more knowledge and a chance to think and compare the aspects of two very different theories, by that express our thoughts about the world.

That's all. Thanks for reading my review. I hope you guys like it.

Anastasia Bui.

Response to the Article, Evolving Creationism In The Classroom

As a Christian who believes in Creationism, I find this article really interesting. I thought that only evolution was taught in the school. Now I know that some schools also teach Creationism.
I believe that the beginning of life is really important to learn in science. While evolutionists state that humans evolved from a few simple life forms, Creationists believe that God created the universe. I often got confused when I learned about evolution. When teachers talked about it, I was like, 'What about Creationism?'. I think it would be really good to study both Evolution and Creationism in the school. It would be fun to debate on the evidences of them during science class. As Anastasia mentioned in the review, we will get more chances to think and compare the aspects of two different theories.
I believe that this is a good and interesting article that provides the new information of creationism taught in the school.

= Response by Joonwon Lee

Can Exercise Overcome Genes?

URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080909/hl_time/canexerciseovercomegenes

Written by: Alice Park
Posted date: September 9, 2008

Some Reference Info: People with a genetic predisposition are most of the time going to have to face some troubles because unlike people with normal genes, these people are set to automatically grow a bit bigger (in size of fat) than the average of people. This sometimes could be a problem when working out as well, because your Genes might be working against you. Kind of like a "I don't want you to do that" situation.

So what does this article talk about?
Well, studies in Maryland have shown that people with genetic predisposition might - and probably will - get some trouble while trying to loose weight or stay fit, because their genes could work against them.
Dr. Soren Snitker at the Univ. of Maryland with the Univ. of Miami conducted an experiment with 704 Amish men and women. Why is that important? Well, Amish people (or usually caucasians) are usually known to have some of the FTO gene, which is usually known for obesity and high body mass index or for those who dont know, percentage of body fat.
But researchers have put these people to the test, setting one group up with physical exercise, and one group with the daily life of an american who doesnt participate in physical activities.
Results? Apparently it doesn't matter whether you have the FTO gene or not. Exercising will keep your BMI at a normal rate. Meanwhile, the other group of people who weren't exercising obviously got obese overtime.

Well how does it make it interesting?
Personally, I find this interesting because it re-emphasizes the fact that fitness can and does play an important role in our daily lives, and even if you are physically predisposed or have as we say genetic predisposition, being able to still stay fit is possible. And I believe that even if you didn't have this problem, staying physically active is important in daily life.

Wait, so how can this relate to the classroom?
Interesting question. To start off we're all teenagers and I'm sure since most of us (not me) are Asian, we don't have this problem. But even without that specific issue, it's still telling us to get exercise everyday as something we should do. And I personally think this article is something pretty important for us teenagers to follow. You wouldn't want obese children running around the school now, wouldn't you? Haha. (Just joking! Seriously..)

That's about it...Enjoy! = )
Joey Gulizzi
Response to the Article : Can Exercise Overcome Genes? When I read this article, I thought this article is fill out with interesting things to learn. Mostly, I like the title of the article, which is Can Exercise Overcome Genes? Before I read this article, my answer of the question was yes because when we are not doing exercise during our life time, we actually get fatter and fatter which is really sad. After I read this article, I was correct.=) Because it said unlike people with normal genes, they are set to automatically grow bigger and fatter than the average size of people. Also, researchers had little experiment about physical exercise. One group with no exercise got fatter than before. But, if they do exercise, they will get more balence in their body and will keep their BMI at a normal rate. It can be sounds unfair and scary to people who doesn't have normal genes because they will get fat everytime in everywhere! But, if they keep doing exercise everytime in everywhere, they will get slim. I wonder why usually caucasians are known to have some of the FTO gene. Maybe because they like to eat fastfoods.

I learned more about genes and I'm happy that my hypothesis is correct. I hope I learn more things about this question during the class time.=)

Response by Jung Yun Choi

THE NEW NANOTECHNOLOGY

Source :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_technology

What is this article about?

This article is about the new technology calls Nano technology or Nanotech. It is a new technology in creating things out of molecules. With this technology, scientist can re-create almost every thing appear on earth inside the lab. This is a new technology which have very high percentage of success.

Nanotechnology(nanotech) refers to a field ofapplied sciencewhose theme is the control of matter on anatomicandmolecularscale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures 100 nanometersor smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size. There has been much debate on the future of nanotech. Nanotech has the potential to create many new materials and devices with wide-rangingapplications, such as inmedicine,electronics, and energy production. On the other hand, nanotech raises many of the same issues as with any introduction of new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials. A lot of scientist concern about this technology because of its effect to the environment could be unexpectable. It's still in the debate but a lot of experience is still going on.

It's seem complicate and useless but I'm really interrested in this new technology. I want to know how they make things out of molecule, just like the origin of life that we have learned. It’s makes up from simple molecule to more comlex molecule. I want to know more about this technology even thought it’s pretty complicate.

But how can this relate to the classroom?

Well, as you all know that we had learned the origin of life which all of the stuffs that appear nowaday is probably made up from molecule. This is technology theory is pretty similar to what we have learned. All of the stuffs that scientists build up inside the lab are also from simple to complex molecule. So in the 50 years future, if you could live in the city that build up inside the lab, isn't cool??

That's my review about nanotech. hope someone will post a response to it!! :))

Nick Nguyen

Article: Do sun radiations affect our skin cell and gene?

Reviewer: Hanh Trinh
Posted date: September 22, 2008
Links:http://www.epa.gov/SUNWISE/uvandhealth.html
http://www.who.int/uv/faq/uvhealtfac/en/index1.html
http://www.nutramed.com/skin/uvradiation.htm
What is this article about?
This article is about effects of sun on our skin (especially the skin cell) and our gene. First of all, there are two kinds of sun radiation that affect our skin: UVB radiation (affects the outer layer of skin, the epidermis, and is the primary agent responsible for sunburns) and UVA radiation (a major contributor to skin damage). Both UVA and UVB radiation can cause skin damage including wrinkles, lowered immunity against infection, aging skin disorders, and cancer. Some of the possible mechanisms for UV skin damage are the formation of free radicals, gene expression, interfering with DNA repair, and inhibiting the immune system.
Effects on the formation of free radicals: Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that have only one electron instead of two. Because electrons are found in pairs, the molecule must scavenge other molecules for another electron. When the second molecule looses its electron to the first molecule, it must then find another electron repeating the process. This process can damage cell function and alter genetic material. Free radical damage causes wrinkles by activating the metalloproteinases that break down collagen. They cause cancer by changing the genetic material, RNA and DNA, of the cell.
Effects on gene expression: UV light changes the behavior of skin cells by changing the expression of genes and/or damaging DNA. UV radiation causes cyclobutane phyrimidine dimers, 6-4 photo products and single strand breaks. UV increases synthesis of transcription factor proteins that enter the nucleus, bind to genes and increases production of the protein transcribed by the gene. Protective substances in cells such as p53 can repair DNA damage and stop cells from proliferating. Imperfect repair leaves permanent mutations with changes in the growth characteristics of the skin and risk of cancer. In addition, UV radiation also interferes with DNA repair. UV radiation can affect enzymes that help repair damaged DNA. Studies are being conducted looking into the role a specific enzyme called T4 endonuclease 5 (T4N5) has in repairing DNA.
Effect on immune system: The body has a defense system to attack developing cancer cells. These dermis immune system factors include white blood cells called T lymphocytes and specialized skin cells in the called Langerhans cells. When the skin is exposed to sunlight, certain chemicals are released that suppress these immune factors.

Why this article is interesting?
Nowadays, many people think that sun radiations are harmless and tend to have tanned skin by going bathing regularly. Although sun radiation can provide a lot of vitamin D, its negative effects are considerable. For instance, Australians have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. With only 0.3 per cent of the world’s population, we manage to account for 6 per cent of all the lethal forms of skin cancer diagnosed globally. About 1200 people die each year in Australia as a result of skin cancer. The skin cancer rate is likely to increase when many of the ‘baby-boomers’ who loved the sun in their youth enter their 50s and find that cancers have developed. In addition, ozone depletion in the stratosphere is increasing the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the ground over Australia, thereby worsening the risk. In future, the skin cancer rate may fall as the understanding of the link between sunlight and cancer becomes more widespread and people protect themselves more.

How this article related to class?
In class we are studying about cell and going to study about gene (RNA, DNA) and this article also mentions about the sun radiation’s effects on cell and gene’s structure and function. So I hope this article might provide you some helpful information not only for your study in class but also in reality.

By: Hanh Trinh

Article: Vigorous Exercise Aids Those with Obesity-Related Gene
Responser: Hanh Trinh
Source: From Nam's review
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity
I found this article is very interesting because obesity is a really dangerous disease that nowadays many people have. For the first time in human history, the number of overweight people rivals the number of underweight people, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based research organization. While the world's underfed population has declined slightly since 1980 to 1.1 billion, the number of overweight people has surged to 1.1 billion. And about 45 percents of them have obesity.

This disease has many negative effects on our health. Firstly, obesity negatively affects cardiovascular system (ischemic heart disease: angina and myocardial infarction; congestive heart failure: 12% attributable to obesity; high blood pressure: present in 85% of those with BMI>25; high cholesterol; deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism). This disease also has bad effects on our musculoskeletal system (causes hyperuricemia; immobility and low back pain) and also our neurologic system by causing stroke; meralgia paresthetica; headache; carpal tunnel syndrome; dementia and idiopathic intracranial hypertension. It can also destroy your respiratory system by causing: obstructive sleep apnea; obesity hypoventilation syndrome ; asthma and complications from general anaesthesia. More dangerously it can also cause cancer.

Although obesity is caused by genetic mutation, there are still other reasons that lead to this health risk. A sedentary lifestyle (people do less physical activities) plays a significant role in obesity. Researchers have found that obese people are less active than those of normal weight. For example in Canada, 27.0% of sedentary men are obese as opposed to 19.6% of active men. Normal weight people are more fidgety then their obese conterparts. This relationship is maintained even if normal weight people eat more or the obese person loses weight. In addition, in the period of 1971-2000, obesity rates in the United States increased from 14.5% to 30.9%. During the same time period, an increase occurred in the average amount of calories consumed so not having a balance diet also lead to obesity.

However, there are still chances for people who are obese to have a normal life. Firstly, those who are obese should diet which means they have to eat less and the food they eat needs to be low-calorie, low-fat, low-carbohydrate. Daily exercise also works too, due to the large size of leg muscles walking, running, and cycling are the most effective means of exercise to reduce body fat. People with obesity can also be treated with medication and bariatric surgery.
Thus, balance diet + daily exercise = Healthy life.
By: Hanh Trinh

Biology in the News (H)

Vivian_Nguyen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:03:58 CST

MIT engineers show how tiny cell proteins generate force to 'walk' MIT researchers have found out that cell motor proteins exerts the force to move, which enables cell functions like cell division. A motor protein called Kinesin that carries neurotransmitters could “walk” along microtubules. The MIT team has found that kinesin could generate the force that is needed to travel along the microtubules. Understanding how kinesin work is very important because it involves the machinery of cell division and it could also develop therapies for diseases about out-of-control cell division, and eventually cancer. The protein has two “heads” and one “tail, they travel about 800nm per second. This article is interesting to me because I have always been wondering about how a cell or protein could move if they want to, and now I have the answer. It is also very interesting that understanding kinesin could help to find therapies for cancer. This article is related to class because kinesin is involved in organizing the machinery of cell division, and currently we are studying about how cells divides through the process of mitosis and meiosis. Reference: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/11/25/mit_engineers_show_how_tiny_cell_proteins_generate_force_to_walk.html November 25, 2008 12:31 AM (author unknown)
By Joseph

Vaccination for Cancer? This article is mainly about a new vaccination for treating cancer. It is a pretty big thing since no cure for cancer has actually been found yet. In biology class, we talked about cells that multiply too fast and become cancer cells. Under normal circumstances, the body’s immune system would be unable to properly detect and destroy these cell; so many healthy cells would be killed in the process. But, this new vaccination will help the body’s immune system to detect cancer cells better. There seems to be a good chance that cancer will have a cure in the future. By: Ian Chow URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081124/hl_nm/us_antigenics_brain_cancer_1;_ylt=Ai3TUHS_rBB3mb6iRcAZx1kR.3QA

Response to Ian's Review.
Ian has introduced very interesting article. In the article, it stated that new vaccination for brain cancer was discovered. The name of this vaccination is Oncophage. When the brain cancer patients were vaccined with Oncophage, they lived in average for 10.5 months. On the other hand a historical median survival post-surgery was 6.5 months. This show that the new vaccination is very advanced and helps the patients to survive fewer more months. This vaccination is designed to reprogram the body's immune system to target only cancer cells bearing the fingerprint of the patient's particular cancer. This is an essential discovery because it can give hopes to the brain cancer patients that they will be able to live several more months compared to the patients who did not got the vaccination. In addition, the Oncophage will help the patients to think that someday they will be able to get rid of brain cancer by having more advanced vaccination. Like what Ian has said, I also agree that there seems to be a good chance that cancer will have a cure in the future.
Catherine Shon

Vivian's respond to Ian's review:
this article is very interesting to me because lots of people in my family have cancer and some of them had past away :(. this article had shown that there's a new vaccination for treating cancer. the percentage of people who died because of cancer in the world nowadays are very high. So like Ian said, if there is a cure for cancer in the future, less people would die and they won't have to cut off parts of their body because of cancer like my grandma anymore :D.

.

Friendly bacteria reduce hospital infections Have you ever thought that bacteria reduce the cause of infection? This article is about the new way to prevent patients from the complication by using breathing machine in the hospital. It is called Probiotic treatment. When you go to the hospital, you might see many people lying on their bed with some kind of mask placed over their mouth and nose to supply oxygen. After one person use it, they n0eed to antiseptic the mask to kill all the harmful bacteria. But the researchers compared antiseptic with “friendly bacteria”, and the result was shocking. This treatment was as effective as antiseptic; which means instead of killing “hostile bacteria”, we could use “friendly bacteria” to reduce the cause of hospital infection. First, I find this article interested because I’ve never heard about “friendly bacteria” before. And it was amazing that they could prevent us from infections. This article is related to class because we have studied about bacteria in the “Origin of life” section. I hope this will support your understanding about bacteria. By Khang Ton (Ni)

Edwina's respond: Before reading this article, i never think of there's a relationship between the two disassociated words, "bacteria" and "friendly" because bacteria always give me an "evil" impression. However, this article totally change my mind of bacteria because there's actually a friendly bacteria exist in this world which is quite surprising. In addition, our biology class discussed and studied about the origin of life, prokaryotes, and eubacteria. All of them are related to bacteria. I really agree with Khang that maybe this article can help us with our understanding of bacteria or give us more inspiration about bacteria and maybe we can come up with new ideas about the origin of life.
By: Edwina Chan :)

Genes that raise heart risks amplified in diabetics Heart Disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. It is caused by a flaw in a gene on chromosome 9p21. This same gene that causes heart disease in the general public causes it in diabetics. Except diabetics have a higher chance of getting it than the general public. Test done by Dr. Alessandro Doria of Harvard Medical School have shown that most type 2 diabetics have two genes with flaws and good blood pressure have twice the risk of heart disease. They also found that type 2 diabetics that struggled with having good blood pressure and had two genes with flaws had four times higher risk of heart disease. The discovery of what genes cause heart disease and how to find who has these flawed genes will help doctors pinpoint patient who are at a higher risk of heart disease and be able to treat them faster and more effectively. This article is of interest to me because my grandfather has diabetes and I could possible have the risk of getting it when I am older. Also we have been studying genes and chromosome in class. Jake Yahoo News-

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081125/hl_nm/us_diabetes_heart

Min Joo’s RESPONSE to Jacob’s REVIEW

Jacob’s review about the chromosome 9p21 was very surprising. According to my father, one of his uncles passed away after suffering with coronary artery disease and heart attack. Applying the fact with the article Jacob chose, it means that my father’s uncle had a genetic flaw in a gene on chromosome 9p21. However, interestingly, none of his siblings and children has suffered with that disease before. Since Dr. Alessandro Doria of Harvard Medical School hasn’t mentioned about this disease passing down the generation in the article, it might not be something that one should be scared and be worried about only by the fact that his or her relatives had flaw and suffered with the disease. Moreover, Jacob’s review was closely linked to the study that we do in the class because we learned that one chromosome contains more than one type of genes (alleles) that have different genetic information.

It was an interesting article for me to read because it was somewhat related with my future career. I am very interested in hearts and hope to be a surgeon in the future. Since heart disease and diabetics are leading causes of death in not only US but also in the other countries in the world, more researches about the chromosme 9p21 would be crucial for the later medical field.

Triple Helix: Designing a New Molecule of Life--Andy Shao

I believe that RNA and DNA are very familiar to us. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, which is used for storing genetic information. It has two strands, also known as double helix, Scientists nowadays just came up with a new idea of triple helix. Scientists are trying to make drugs based on a synthetic molecule called PNA, a PNA can combines information like RNAs and DNAs together. They are also trying to combine a mixture of chemicals to make a new species, and indeed, PNA is one of the ingredients. Scientists consider PNA as a special chemical because it shows signs of a primordial molecule.

I find this article interesting because all humans, animals, and all living things evolve in a very slow pace. But this project will allow us to create an alien or a n advanced species. This makes the pace of evolution much quicker.

This article is related to our biology class because since we are learning about reproduction and chromosomes. They are about genetic and hereditary information such as why his hair is orange, or why her skin is white. They are all because of meiosis, which led to genetic variation, but this project could make the variations enormously huge, and if you were the one experimented, you may end up with no similar trait of that of your parents. If the project successes, the next generation may be sitting in the classroom learning about TNAs or QNAs after 20 years or so.

Reference information: Scientific American, December, 2008, By Peter E. Nielsen.
URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=triple-helix-designing-a-new-molecule

KYUREE's RESPONSE to Andy's review: This article posted by Andy was somehow related to the review I did last time. Mine was about choosing genes in order to ‘design’ perfect babies, and this article was about ‘Designing a New Molecule of Life,’ which was similar in some ways. The information about triple helix was very fascinating. So after I read his review and the original article, all these questions started to pop inside my head. How would crossing over of chromosomes occur if DNAs are no longer double helix but triple helix? How would this new discovery affect our reproduction and passing genetic traits? As I mentioned briefly in a question written above, DNA in our body is double helix, and people pass their genetic information from generation to another generation by crossing over of those genes. Thus, for me, it seemed like an impossible thing that PNA (triple helix) genes exist. Also, since the scientists are working on putting PNA and other chemicals together in order to make new species, this amazing discovery would lead to a further diversity in genetic information, as Andy stated in his review. If it really makes the pace of evolution in a quicker way as he said up there, I wonder what would happen to the lives of humans, animals, and other organisms in the world. Again, all these discoveries are amazing and hilarious, however, I don’t really think it is a good thing to do further research. Humans should leave the nature as what it is like right now. This means that in my opinion, something like changing pace of evolution is not a very good thing to do.

James' Response to Andy's Review: I was fascinated by Andy’s article, when I was scanning through the selection of articles to respond to, because of the word’ “Triple Helix.” At first, I was thinking that this may be related to DNA, which might go to a similar article called “Designer Babies” also mentioned by Kyuree. But when I started reading the actual article, I was awestricken when the article talked about scientists trying to make synthetic organisms using “PNA.” I, on the other hand, believe that creating synthetic life-forms is bad because, just like what andy brought up, it may drastically change the way we, including other living organisms, live. From what I’ve learned in the past, controlling the natural flow of life is very bad because organisms evolve in different speeds. For example, bacteria may develop quicker than monkeys or lions because bacteria are much simpler than the monkeys and lions. Therefore, it is easy for their genes to adapt to their new environment. As a result, they are still found in every corner of the world. If we look at our situation today, perhaps creating many different things using PNA may sound good if it helps us develop quicker to produce better things like reduce carbon emissions and save other life-forms or make a chemical that would absorb all of the carbon in our atmosphere or we can create a substance to substitute the use of oil as our main fuel. However, there may be huge consequences to this since everything we do today will be accounted for in the future. So if I were these scientists, I would just stop wasting time on creating new species of anything and focus more on lessening the problem of global warming for the reason that these “aliens” may end up putting our current existence in grave danger.

The Scent of a Warbler:
Birds May Use Sense of Smell in Mating

Have you ever thought that birds might use sense of smell in mating? When I first read the title of this article I thought “Hey! If this is true, then what was all those discovery channel I’ve been watching until now?” Because every time there were birds and their mating on discovery channel, all they said was “The male bird cleans and decorates itself to tempt the female bird in order to success in mating”. This article is about two, recently- held experiment and study that proves birds not only use sense of sight but may also use sense of smell in mating. Researchers reported that blocking the nostrils of male Japanese quail before they copulate disrupts the activity of a master gene, called c-Fos, expressed in the brain during sexual reproduction. However, this result might not be trust worthy because the study leader Jacques Balthazart, a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, says "By blocking the nose you interfere with the birds' breathing, which might change brain activity" Therefore Balthazarts says he would like to conduct a follow-up experiment in which he would sever the quails’ olfactory nerves of anesthetize their nasal mucosa and observe the effects on c-Fos activity in the brain during mating.

Another latest study about crested auklets is pretty reasonable. The crested auklets are small seabirds that live in cold, northern water which produce a tangerine-like odor from their feathers. Biologist Julie Hagelin of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania believes the tangerine-like odor may serve as a mating signal for auklets, because they produce the smell almost exclusively during their breeding season.

This article was very interesting for me, because until now, the videos all about birds and their mating which I saw on discovery channel, never taught me that birds may use sense of smell. So, I think this is a very interesting and fresh study. I would like to know more about the experiment that the researchers are going to sever the quails’ olfactory nerves of anesthetize their nasal mucosa and observe the effects on c-Fos activity in the brain during mating.

This article is somewhat related to class because we’ve learned meiosis, monohybrid crosses and dihybrid crosses which is related to the reproduction of sex cells and the possibility of characteristics of the next generation. Both what we’ve learned recently and this article is about the process of reproduction, which is very important for all species on earth and is the final goal to exist. Scientific American November 24, 2008 Adam Marcus URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=birds-smell-mating Jody Kang

Daniel's Response to Jody's Article: Jody’s article was pretty interesting to me. As Jody watched in the Discovery Channel, the common thought about the mating of the animals is that the males attract the females using their physical looks. Using smell for mating seemed new to me and surprised me. I knew that the dogs use the scent as their mating signal, but this was because most of the dogs’ eye sight is not good and because the dogs’ noses are exceptionally more developed than most of the other animals including humans. It would be very interesting if the birds also used the smell as their mating signal, because birds have very developed eyes. This theory of birds using the sense of smell to signal their mating period is not fully proven, but if this theory gets proven to be true, it would certainly change the Discovery Channel. Daniel Kang

How Plants Become Annuals vs. Perennials This article is about the annuals, which are plants that live for only one growing season, are being genetically modified to turn them into perennials. Annuals tend to grow very quickly in order to produce seeds quickly. The perennials, on the contrary, produce structures that can later be built into as a part of the plants later. Perennials are more effective since they can produce more plants than the annuals which die very quickly. The scientists now can genetically modify the annuals to inactivate the "blooming-induction genes," which start the flower growth of the annuals. This will allow the plants to build more vegetation, thereby turning it into a perennials. This article is very interesting because it shows how developed the genome technology has become. This may also be included in the people's debate about the genetically modified foods which many people believe to be dangerous. This is related to our class because few days ago we watched a video of genome technology, which is benefiting both humans and the plants. Also, we learned about meiosis in class, which is when many genetic diversion occurs. How Plants Become Annuals vs. Perennials. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081110/sc_livescience/howplantsbecomeannualsvsperennials. Yahoo! News. Jim Dawson. November 10, 2008. November 12, 2008. Daniel Kang

Woman has twins from cancer survivor's 13-year-old sperm
FriNov7, 10:39pmET
URL:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081108/hl_nm/us_taiwan_twins;_ylt=AlrBkxZ2VudYP6bLudD9O9KWSbYF
(Reporting by Ralph Jennings; Editing by Jerry Norton)
This article is mainly about a Taiwanese woman who has given birth to healthy twins using the 13-year-old frozen sperm from a testicular cancer survivor. The sperm was taken from a man surnamed Chen, then 23, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer and told chemotherapy could make him infertile. He was in good health but he can’t produce sperm naturally. He has got his wife pregnant with two of the four embryos used for artificial insemination. Last month's delivery followed a 37-week pregnancy. This is the first time a case involving such a long period of time between the freezing of male sperm and procreation been reported in Taiwan. As the video we saw at school, this is also related to the class. I was very impressed because I never knew that we can frozen sperms for 13 years and it still work perfectly especially sperms from a person who have testicular cancer. Maybe we can also frozen eggs too. Or in the future, maybe scientist can frozen babies, or even adults (just like in Austin Power haha )
VIVIAN NGUYEN Sanghyeok: Respond on Vivian's review This article interests me by how the frozen sperm makes a woman pregnant. I can’t believe how 13 years old sperm is able to make a woman pregnant. This development may give impact to two regions of science. First, the medical process, the frozen men, where they get froze to get better medical service in future. Second, as Vivian has mentioned the technology where we saw in the video in class. Anyway back to why I’m interested in this article. Few days ago, I have seen an article that contains about the frozen men, about 30 men totals? Being froze until they develop better medical service to heal the diseases. The process was extremely complicated. Such as taking away all the bloods out of the body, maintaining the body temperature in same degree of Celsius. .

This article is very interesting to me because I always read in comics that people freeze themselves or others to preserve their bodies and be still fully functional a hundred years in the future. This article has become proof that such a thing is possible. There is no way sperm can live for over a decade long, but its being frozen allowed it to still be functional long after its life-span. This might eventually become a scientic breakthough. Instead of leaving behind objects for future generations, we might be able to leave someone, e.g. a clone.
By: Ian Chow
Cord Blood Stem Cells May Help Repair Babies’ Heart Defects

Have you ever seen young children who have hard time breathing in and out, depend themselves on oxygen masks, and stay in the incubators? Their chests rise randomly like balloons, and their bodies are full of electrical codes connected to electrocardiogram (ECG) machines. Although I haven’t seen them in the hospitals, I saw them through TV dramas and documentaries. They were not the only people I felt sympathy of. Their parents, who slept late at night, looking after the children, were pitiful and lived in pains. As science and technology developed, they gave good news to the suffering people. On November 10th 2008, one cardiac surgeon named Ralf Sodian in the University Hospital of Munich found out that the children, who have heart defects, can be healed through transplanting stem cells that existed in the umbilical cord that aren’t derived from human embryos. Usually, surgeons transplanted new valves from human or animal donors, or artificial materials on the hearts. However, those works were very inefficient since they were periodic and gave hard time for children to transfer them again in the future. Furthermore, side effects occurred and suffered people. To solve the inefficiency, Sodian and his colleagues conducted experiment, collecting umbilical cord blood from infants and isolating stem cells that are essential in heart valves. Among them, eight valves worked as natural heart valves and suggested this experiment could carry out. According to Sodian, more experiments are needed, and he said “The scaffolds will dissolve over time, leaving behind a fully formed structure made from the cells.”

This was an interesting article for me to read because the experiment Ralf Sodian conducted foreshadowed bright future of medical field. Since I love to watch dramas that dealt with surgeons’ lives, I saw many of the scenes in which hearts were transplanted into the human bodies during the operations. The skills surgeons used were pretty difficult but interesting. In my opinion, if Sodian’s work becomes popular world wide, people wouldn’t worry about finding the hearts that fit in their bodies but rather relieve and become healthy. Furthermore, unlike George W. Bush, the former president of United States who limited federal funding for embryonic stem cells research, president Barrack Obama may undo the Bush restrictions and improve scientific research on embryonic stem-cell. I was happy and anticipated by the fact that medical field can improve.

This article is related to the studies we do in the class because this experiment was about cells that may heal illnesses. Like the video we watched in the class, cells can now work to prevent and heal disorders. Similar to designing babies, children may overcome their problem and grow healthy. I really hope more experiments to be conducted to heal all the illnesses in the world.

Reference Information: Waters, Rob. Cord Blood Stem Cells May Help Repair Babies’ Heart Defects. Bloomberg. November 10, 2008. <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aWRs4Rf8yvjY&refer=home>.

Min Joo Kwon

Migraines or Breast Cancer Risk? Choose it yourself

Breast Cancer is one of the most popular disease of woman. Also, migraine is also a common disease that make people suffered form headache(only one side of your head). Recently, a a survey that involved 2,000 post-menopausal women with breast cancer and 1,500 post-menopausal women with no history of breast cancer shows a really surprising result. The result is that women who said they had been diagnosed with migraines at least once in their lives were 30 percent less likely to have developed invasive breast cancer, which means the risk of having breast cancer is lowered if you have migraine. The doctors, researchers, and experts tried to think of ideas that lead to think shocking result. First, they think that the pain killers or medicine that people use for killing migraine may contained some ingredients that may lower the rate of having breast cancer. After that, they came up with another idea that really makes sense, which is the women who suffered from migraine may go to the doctor and do body check-up more often than others. Eventually, they will be healthier than the other people who are not suffered from migraine because they don't go to the doctor that often.
I think this article is interesting because migraine and breast cancer seem like they are not related. However, it turns out that having migraine will reduce the risk of having breast cancer. I think after reading this article, many women or girls will be really happy or glad that they have migraine! (therefore the risk is lower!)
I think this article is related to our biology class because we learned about the cell cycle and we knew that people have cancer because the cycle is disordered. Since breast cancer is one of the popular cancer that women have, so i am thinking that maybe the migraine change something in our cells which avoid them from disordering.

Reference: Susannah F. Locke. Do Migraines Lower Breast Cancer Risk?. ScientitficAmerica . November 6, 2008.. November 12, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=migraines-breast-cancer-estrogen

By: Edwina Chan

Jody's RESPONSE to Edwina's REVIEW Wow! It is astonishing that women with migraine have lower possibilities to have breast cancer than women who doesn’t have migraine. Before I read Edwina’s review, I hardly ever thought that there might be a connection between migraine and breast cancer. But, come to think about the “idea that makes sense”, that women with migraine has less possibility of breast cancer because they often go to the doctor and do body check-up, it is kind of funny because breast cancer and migraine isn’t “biologically” related. However, now we know that these two illnesses are in a special relationship. I really wonder if the pain killers or medicine that people use for killing migraine really does contain some ingredients that may lower the rate of having breast cancer. I hope the researchers can find out pretty soon. If the result says that pain killers for migraine do contain ingredients that lower the possibilities of having breast cancer, it is going to be a great discovery and it will be a huge help to lots of women who suffer from breast cancer!

Khang's RESPONSE to Edwina's REVIEW Nice work, “daughter”! Breast Cancer is one of the most common type of cancer, about 10.4% of all cancer incidence. Well first, let’s take a look at how breast cancer begins. It starts when cells of the breast are disodered in the cycle. Appearently, there isn’t any connection between breast cancer and migraine. But the survey’s result was surprising. This article interests me because there might be a new treatment for cancer. I hope in the future, scientists will be able to develop medicines to cure or prevent human from cancer. But I think we all need to see the doctor every month to do body-check up. Excercise regularly is also a good way. I have a resentment with cancer and I wish we could prevent ourself from this illness. Keep it up Ed, xoxo Your “daddy”.

Contest Inspires Limb Regeneration Research
Reviewed by James Tarrobal

This article is mainly about two scientists, named Wei Zhu and Gerald Pao, who wants to learn more about some human and animal cells being able to change from normal cells to stem cells. An example in the article of this change is the salamanders ability to regenerate lost limbs. This is being researched by two different scientists whos names are David M. Gardiner and S. Randal Voss. When they heard that they may get a chance to recieve some help on their investigations, the four scientists mentioned above quickly gathered their data and entered in a contest in Roche Biosciences in Palo Alto California. Pau and Zhu entered a proposal that could help them learn more about how salamanders can regenerate their limbs and if it is possible for humans to do the same. After they have won the prize of free squencing, they extensively worked on this project focusing mostly on the early stages of the regeneration of the limb. From what they have found, the steps in regenerating a foot is similar to embryonic stem cells. Since they have found a lot of information, they wanted to learn more, which in the end, may even lead to further knowledge about embyronic stem cells. However, this would require them to study more of the molecular studies of salamanders.

This article is particularly interesting to me because in class today, we watched a video where a mom wants to have a new "perfect" baby that in turn would save her first born. Since her first born is very ill, she was very desperate to save her life. Even though manipulating the genes of a baby sounds unethical, i thought that in this case, it should be excused because it was for a good cause. That video was very similar to this article because Pau and Zhu want to figure out a way so that humans can regenerate new limbs if they ever get severely injured. It may not only stop at making new limbs, they might even find a way to regenerate new organs if it contained cancer or any other kind of life threatning disease. Although this idea sounds cool, I don't think that the people who can regenerate new limbs may be called humans anymore since these people no longer have 23 pairs of chromosomes. In order for humans to be able to do this, scientists would have to copy a certain string of DNA that stimulates and controls this process and that would mean that these people would no longer have 23 pairs of chromosmes.

In class, we are currently building more knowledge on how living organisms prepare their DNA for reproduction and similarly to the video that i just talked about, heredity is important in learning how we become very unique from each other. The scientists in this article basically wants to "create" better human species who can regenerate limbs if they get extremely injured. This would require some more tempering in our genes and the salamander's genes, thus creating a half-human and half-salamander kind of creature. The only thing that makes me dubious about this topic is that, we humans get genes from salamanders, would there be a possibility for a human get a baby that looks a little bit like a salamander?
Soares, Christine. "Contest Inspires Limb Regeneration Research." Scientific American. 11 Nov. 2008. 11 Nov. 2008 <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=contest-inspires-limb-regeneration>.

Designer babies: Creating the perfect child
REVIEWED BY: KYUREE KANG

Have you ever thought about designing your own baby? How would you design if you can choose your baby’s gender, height, skin color, hair color, smartness, and characteristic? Tall? Short? White? Brown? Smart? This interesting article talked about changing genetic cells and designing babies the way people want to. Until several years ago, choosing or designing a baby seemed to be an impossible thing. However, since our technology is very developed, people would be able to modify the genes in egg cells and sperm cells to design their own babies in few years. In addition to modifying the genes and designing a baby, people would be able to eliminate diseases passing from one generation to the next generation by getting rid of those genetic materials. Even though our technology is coming to the end of this research, people are still debating on this issue. Of course, it is good to eliminate vulnerable diseases, but still, it is a question if people should use this technology or not. It is because there are always people who misuse them. Also, people disagree because this designing a baby would cause further racism. For instance, still in some countries, girls are treated differently from boys. Then, in those countries, boys will be over populated, and girls will not exist in the number that used to exist. Thus, although this technology is very much advanced, people are still questioning if we should use this technology or not.

Currently in our biology class, we are learning about how cells divide their DNAs in to half and create another cell. Also, since biology itself includes the study of human genetics reproductions, I thought my article is pretty much related to our class. In this topic, people are not creating another cell for reproducing, but they are modifying the genes contained in DNA for their next generations.

I think this article was very interesting and significant at the same time. I never imagined designing a baby the way I want to, but now, it became possible for all humans. Moreover, I liked the fact that people can get rid of genes that contain diseases, because I know several people who died of the diseases passed from the early generations. However, since this technology is likely to eliminate pregnancy, I think this technology will put the world into chaos. If people start using machinery objects to have a baby, then there is no point of marrying. Also, if people can choose their babies, who would not want them to be smart, pretty, and perfect? Then, I think people would feel like they are raising robots rather than babies. In my opinion, one of the goals of humans is to raise their babies successfully, having challenges and obstacles while they are growing up. If babies are all born to be perfect, then I don’t think there is any point of raising them.

Reference: Steere, Mike. Desinger babies: Creating the perfect child. CNN news. October 30, 2008. November 1, 2008. h ttp://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/30/designer.babies/index.html

^_^Andy's response to *_* Kyu Ree's article
This article is the most unbelievable and yet, may lead to a very significant change to our society.
The article is mainly about that scientists have come up with an idea that allows parents to choose what kind of son or daughter they would like to have by modify the genes in the egg and sperm cell. This is very helpful to the world because many diseases like AIDS are spread from parents to offspring. If we could modify the bad genes and change them to the good ones, we can greatly eliminate the spread of diseases. Moreover, modifying genes also allow the parents to "choose" what kind of baby they want to have. This may evolve human beings at a much faster pace, but on the other hand, just like what Kyu Ree said, because of racism and sexism, there may result in an unbalanced diversity of people. In addition, I think that this operation costs a lot of money, rich people will just make their babies smart and pretty, but poor people won't be able to afford it, so their babies are still going to be the same, but what's for sure is that there are going to be more pretty and smart babies than currently, which means that it may lead to prejudice and discrimination against "natural" babies. I agree with Kyu Ree that she says that there's no point of having a baby if the parents modify the baby's genes to make him/her better. Then i think the parents would no longer be considered as parents anymore, since parents not only mean the people who born the baby, but also the people who gave both the positive and negative traits to their son or daughter.

Joseph's response to Kyu Ree's Review
It is amazing how fast our technology is growing day by day, and now there are even possibilities that we are able to make a “perfect” baby! In just a few years we might be able to modify the gene of the sperm or egg so that you can actually choose the traits of your future baby. This is no different than designing your own baby! The advantage of this technology is that you can get rid of the possibility of getting certain diseases from the baby. This might also be good because you would create perfect looking and genius children. This might even lead to another Einstein or another star singer. But this also leads to another problem about humanity, is it good to go against nature? We have modified our environment many times and so far we are not getting a good result. Another problem about this technology is that if the baby will look perfect, then it would look like their parents; would you want a son or daughter without others to be able to recognize that you are their father or mother? In conclusion, I think it’s good to use this technology on eliminating diseases and other natural imperfections, but I think it is not good to just use it to change the appearance of the baby. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW BY MASAKAZU IWASAKI
As we know, all biological reactions within human cells are depending on enzymes because their job is to work as catalysts to speed up biological reactions. Good example is the enzymes which are used in biological reaction is photosynthesis. As we leaned, the enzymes between thylakoid membrane are used to split H₂O　to 2H and O₂ which is when the oxygen is released from plant. However, we don’t know how slowly these reactions would proceed in the absence of enzymes. Fortunately, one scientist called Richard Wolfenden had found and reported that without an enzyme, a biological transformation in creating blocks of DNA and RNA would take 78 million years while enzymes can make that reaction happen in milliseconds which was excessively interesting and astonishing.
It is related to biology class because we just learned about photosynthesis that it has significant function to split some molecules in the reaction. In my opinion, the enzyme is essential for both plant and animal life on the planet that without catalysts, there would be no life at all, from microbes to humans.

Reference:Les, Lang Without Enzyme, Biological Reaction Essential To Life Takes 2.3 Billion Years Article posted 11 Nov 2008 - 5:00 PST
URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/128931.php

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Doornobs and TV remots are germ hotbeds Researchers had found out that cold sufferers most often leave their germs on refrigerator door handles and TV remotes. There the germs could survive for two days or longer and the other people would have the risk to pick up the germs and get sick. Researchers did a test with 30 adults with early symptoms of colds and recorded what they had often touched in the next 18 hours. The results were that all 3 of the salt and pepper shakers were contaminated, 6 out of 18 doorknobs; 8 of 14 refrigerator handles; 3 of 13 light switches; 6 of 10 remote controls; 8 of 10 bathroom faucets; 4 of 7 phones, and 3 of 4 dishwasher handles. Wearing masks also would reduce the risk of getting a cold, research said that the group of people who used masks reported 10%-50% fewer cold symptoms. Even though there are no proof that the remnants can infect, but their existence would cause a risk. I think this article is interesting because we don’t realize how many germs are on our daily life objects, and maybe there are a lot of germs right on my keyboard that I’m typing on now! It is also good to be aware of the germs around us. This article is related to class and biology because germs are also life, and all life is connected with biology. We study the germs to keep us from getting sick from it.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081029/ap_on_he_me/med_catching_colds;_ylt=Ao95Lp3UlK8JOt77ay5.nKfVJRIF
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
Published on Oct. 29
Accessed on Oct. 29
By Joseph

James' Response to Joseph's Review:
I believe that this article is very interesting since the majority of our student body is usually infected with a cold. Also, I believe that every single one of them who are sick dont want to be sick since they already have a bunch of hw to do and if you are sick, you tend to work slower. However, I don't think that we cannot eliminate the existence of these germs because if we do, the niche in our society might dimish because we may never know that there are some organisms out there that may need these germs to survive. In addition, these germs are also living organisms and from what we have learned in biology class, the most simplest of all living things can survive the longest compared to the most complex of all living things. Therefore, us humans are just wasting our time trying to extinguish the germs when we know that they will still be around no matter what.

Daniel's Response to Joseph's review: This article interests me beacuse it shows similar result of the lab I did in 7th grade. I got how many bacterias there were on doorknobs, computer keyboards, water tap, and tables. As in the article, I found so many bacterias that I was unable to count how many there were. Even though we realized that the bacterias are living on the things we touch everyday, it is impossible not to touch them since we actually HAVE to touch them everyday. I think washing hands could be the way to reduce the chance of getting ill. We are exposed to germs everyday, and how easily we are in contact with germs still surprises me. The reason that so many bacterias are around us is because of its fast reproduction. Therefore, I think we can relate this article to the cell reproduction we are learning in class now.

Aritcle Response to An Article Review:
This article first struck me as really unsual because it can be absolutely hazardous for anyone to be living in close proximity to a sick person. However, when any of our family members are down with a cold, we don't really care whether there are germs lying on that TV remote or hanging from the refrigerator door. This interests me because even though we might be living together with a sick person, we still carry on with life as we would when no one is sick. Why? Cause we are in reality living with these prokaryotic bacteria. They live on our skin, they live on the food we eat, and they live inside us. Bacteria are everywhere. There's no piont in trying to remove them. In science class, like Mr. Mac said, these guys are so simple that they reproduce so fast and forever ensure the survival of their species.

By: Ian Chow

25 Years Later: The AIDS Vaccine Search Goes On Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-aids-vaccine-search-goes-on By David I. Watkins In 1984, the virus that causes AIDS has been identified. Margaret Heckler, then the U.S. secretary of health and human services told a group of reporters that the scientists will develop a vaccine to prevent AIDS in approximately two years. But after twenty-five years of isolating HIV, they still have no effective vaccine. One year ago, a major clinical was shut down because it became obvious that the vaccine was not working and might even be doing harm. This past summer, another vaccine was shelved and its trial canceled before it could begin because there was no reason to believe its results would be any better. They had soon realized that they need a new method of making vaccines (some unusual creative approach that has yet to be imagined or some new insight into the virus itself that might reveal vulnerability) because the old one didn’t work against HIV virus. Every failure in the past 25 years has revealed tricks this virus uses. Those lessons are already spawning fresh ideas and bringing scientists together to attack remaining unanswered questions about this unique virus. The two examples of Albert Sabin vaccine and The annual influenza vaccine represent the basic principles vaccines that have been the mainstay of defense against infectious agents over the past 50 years. But the methods of inducing antibodies and tcells have failed to protect against HIV Everything about HIV seems almost perfectly adapted to evading or disabling that very system of natural immune responses.. HIV will rapidly reproducing itself inside the host’s cells after infecting the host. After one month of infection, infected individuals can have 100 million viral copies per milliliter of blood plasma. Normally the first line of natural immune defense is the innate, or “nonspecific,” immune system, made up of cells that patrol the body for invaders. Some of these will destroy any virus-infected cell they encounter on the spot, although in most people this system is probably overwhelmed by the initial onslaught of replicating HIV. Innate immune cells known as antigen-presenting cells, however, are also busy engulfing some of the viral proteins so that they can later show them to more specialized immune system components with the aim of inciting a response. I always care about orphans. And a lot of them were left behind by their parents because of HIV. So this article is very interesting to me. When will we discover a vaccine which helps people that is infected by HIV and those poor children with no family and no home. vivian nguyen

Jake's Response to Vivian's Article
This article is of interest to me because I live here in Vietnam which has a lot of HIV victims. The failure of the previous HIV vaccine has now allowed scientist to find other weakness in the HIV virus.A lot of money is spent each year trying to find a vaccine. The discovery of a vaccine would let the people who have donated a lot of money have the feeling rewarded. It would also give hope to HIV victims, that were unwillingly infected, a better life. Although there have been no recent breakthroughs in research for the vaccine I think that very soon there will be. This article is also interesting because we have been studying structure an the organelles that fight diseases. I hope that the HIV vaccine will be found in the future so that the victims will have a longer and better life.

Hope and the Fight against HIV: The battle must continue, even if 25 years of research have disappointed
This article is mainly about people to cheer up to fight against the HIV AIDS, process of the vaccine, and short description about the HIV AIDS. John Rennie have announced that ever since the HIV was first been observed by human in 1984, they have failed to make a vaccine. He also said that the researchers may have to return back to basic to fight back. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have presented that the new infectors in U.S. are underestimated for 40% more out of previous 10 year. Basically HIV AIDS not only kills immune cells, but they also conceal one-self in the nervous system, and tissue waiting for a chance to assault the human body. Rennie also recommends people a safe-sex such by using condom, creams or gel. In addition that circumcision may prevent the HIV by 60%. Toward the HIV infectors, the treatment that they are being treated is known as the HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy). This article has interested me because not few months ago, I have seen a person getting infected by a HIV in drama which had made me in to awareness of it, and even sometimes when I get scratched by some sharp things, I was little bit scary because I wasn’t really sure what HIV and how it was getting infected. However this article had gave brief information about HIV and how they are treated. This article didn’t told us in which variety ways can HIV become infected, but still gave me a confidence in living. This article relates to our class discussion about mitosis. First, I thought that the HIV spreads by the mitosis process, however since it isn’t a cell, but a virus, I believe that it does not do that. Second, last time we had observed some cells on the microscope, but why not the viruses? I heard that known of the human have ever seen the HIV virus, therefore why not some other viruses. Third, as everyone knows, HIV occurs when a safe-sex isn’t going on, and it will end up with HIV virus. Same as the mitosis, since the process of the mitosis is the reproduction of the cells, would they get infected by some harm viruses as all humans does too?

Reference: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hope-and-the-fight-against-hiv
"Hope and the Fight against HIV:The battle must continue, even if 25 years of research have disappointed" by John Rennie Posted on October 29, 2008 , accessed on October 29, 2008 By Sanghyeok Koh

Min Joo’s RESPONSE to Sang Hyeok’s REVIEW

Although many people say that technology and science have developed so quickly that they helped people to live more comfortably and efficiently, poverty and diseases, which still can’t be healed, exist and suffer the humanity of this world. Like what Sang Hyeok had already stated in his review, scientists and doctors couldn’t yet find the solution to heal HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). A year ago, I saw one Korean drama that had protagonist as a young girl who suffered with AIDS by the mistake of a doctor. She collapsed, left alone among her friends, and had to move to countryside that had good environment. However, her endeavor to bear her weakness that she had AIDS, gave hope and self confidence for people who were suffering with AIDS. I strongly believe that this article had also somewhat helped those poor people.

While I was researching for Model United Nations’ topic: The enhancement of multilateral efforts to prevent human trafficking and to improve the prosecution of traffickers, I found out that there are countless of people worldwide who were living as sex slaves and had to suffer with HIV. If doctors and scientists find the solutions to heal HIV as soon as possible, the number would soon decrease and save humanity of the world.

Science of Snacks: Thinking Makes You Hungry
Students at SSIS often complains that the lunch hour is too late, and most of us are hungry before lunch, and sometimes we already want to eat after the first class. It was understandable if you had classes such as swimming or PE, but now, I understand that even that you are sitting in a classroom taking notes, as long as your brain is thinking, you are using energy, and this makes you hungry. The article is basically about an experiment on how much food can people eat by doing different things for a certain amount of time. The activities include sit and relax, a series of memory and attention test, and read and summarize a text. Apparently, the people who completed the test were offered with a buffet, and the ones who completed the last two activities ate more than the people who were relaxing. It shows that it takes energy to for doing mental works. However, it does not burn as much calories as doing physical exercise.
I find this article interesting because when I watch a movie all day long, I don’t eat so much compare with when I study for final exams. I think that it is true for many others too. This will be also useful for fat people, or the ones on diet. They may really want to eat a lot after using their brains, but they have to control themselves. Now I think that they can eat more than usual because when they use their brain, they burn calories. This is related with our class because we are investigating cells, and how they make food, known as cellular respiration. I’m still curious about how the body will distribute the ATPs to our brain, and how do our body use them to perform mental tasks. It also suggests us to eat a lot before

Reference: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-of-snacks-thinking-makes-you-hungry
"Science of Snacks: Thinking Makes You Hungry" By Steve Mirsky posted on October, 2008, accessed on October 26, 2008

By Andy Shao

Edwina's response to Andy's article: According to Andy’s article, it suggests that mental works, for example thinking, requires energy even though those mental works don’t burn as much calories as physical exercises do. I think this article is really interesting because I never know that thinking requires energy because we don’t need to do any physical movement while we are thinking. All we have to do is sit down and use our brains. Actually, I had a question – why I always feel hungry while I am writing a test or writing an essay? Now, I think this article answered my question in a detail way with an experiment. This article also suggests me an idea that why eating breakfast before we go to school is important because the breakfast provides us energy that we needed for the classes we take before break or lunch break.
By: Edwina Chan

JODY's RESPONSE to ANDY's ARTICLE I usually get really hungry when I study hard, so I knew that thinking made me use more energy than relaxing. But still, I thought thinking would make me hungrier then exercising, which now I know I was wrong. When I saw my seniors from my last school, I was able to see a wide difference between them “then”, and them “before” they had become seniors. I could see them gaining weight every day. I always wondered, “Why are they getting so fat when they become a senior?” I thought they should be losing weight if they are studying so hard, because they have to use so much energy and burn calories when they study, so they won’t be able to get fat. As a result, I thought that the ones that got fat were the ones that didn’t study hard enough. However, Andy’s review has solved my question, and now I know the seniors are getting fat because their body does not burn as much calories as doing physical exercise than studying. This article was very interesting because it gave me the answer of my question. I should be feeling sorry for the seniors that I thought they weren’t studying hard even if they did. :P By. Jody Kang *￢*

Purple Tomato Extended Lives of Cancer-Prone Mice We all seek and do for anything that might helps to make our lives longer. However, most of us　need to fight against many opponents such as disease. As we get older and older, our bodies start to lose a tolerance to an illness. Cancer as a good example, there is not much of reliable medicine to cure patient after being cancer that it is considered as the highest death rate in world wide. As I have known, tomatoes are rich in antioxidants called anthocyanins which counteract a toxin in a blood that helps to protect against cancer. In addition to this fact, European study had found extension of the life of cancer-prone mice which appeared to be because of the powder (anthocyanins) which was obtained from the purple tomatoes to feed the mice. By looking at the result, I become aware that purple tomato has a very high antioxidant activity that it is almost tripled compared to the ordinary fruit which was beyond my expectation. However, the scientists informed this is just a beginning and much more research is needed to be done before human trials in order to make efficient medicine to cure cancer which hasn’t maid by anybody yet. But in my opinion, there is no need of waiting for the medicine to be invented. Fortunately, we are all surrounded by abundant tomatoes! As long as we take diet containing antioxidants, we can decrease the probability of being cancer. It is related to class because cancer has connection with genes and DNA which we are studying right now in the class. Cancer results from damage to a small set of genes that limits the ability of cells to divide. Also, it damages DNA too. Reference:http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081027/hl_hsn/purpletomatoextendedlivesofcancerpronemice

"Purple Tomato Extended Lives of Cancer-Prone Mice" is posted on SUNDAY, Oct. 26 by Nature Biotechnology.

Review by MASAKAZU IWASAKI

KYUREE's RESPONSE to masa's review: This article was very interesting to me because it was related to a book that I read few days ago. A part of the reading that I did was explaining about ‘super foods.’ According to the book, there were some foods with super powers, so they give humans more energy and ability to protect themselves from various types of disease. And, one of the foods was tomatoes. It stated that tomato lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of cancer because it contains antioxidant, just like the article that Masakazu reviewed stated. So, I was really happy that there are several researches dealing with the relationship between tomatoes and cancer. I’m not trying to be critical, however, this experiment was only held with animals, so there is no evidence for humans. Thus, I’m kind of wondering if tomatoes would really work for humans, too. Maybe, it is possible since mice and humans have the same cell structure. I hope scientists quickly have an experiment with humans and come up with helpful conclusion for humans. :D

KHANG (NI)'s response to MASA's review : I am interesting in anything realated to cancer, so I will respond to this review. I had never liked tomatos before. First, because on October 30, 2006 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that tomatos might the the source of salmonella (a disease) that caused 172 illness in 18 states of the U.S. Second, they do not taste really good. But acording to this review, antioxidants are rich in tomatos and lower the risk of cancer. In additional, oxidant is a kind of chemical reactions that damage cells. Antioxidants are soluble in both water(hydrophilic) and lipids(hydrophobic). In general, water-soluble antioxidants react with oxidants in the cell cytoplasm and the blood plasma, while lipid-soluble antioxidants protect cell membranes. You can also find antioxidants in Vitamin C,E in even in other junk foods such as: chocolate, tea, coffee, red wine and cinnamon. After reading this article, I realized how important fruits and vegetables are (I eat salad and drink smoothie everyday :] ). I think all of us should always have vegetables in our meals.
By the way, world record for the heaviest tomato ever was 3.51 kilograms
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How long can humans stay awake? Have you ever wondered, ‘how long can humans stay awake?’ When I stay up all night doing my projects and homework, I sometime get curious about how long humans can stay awake. This article gives us the answer. The simple experimental answer is 264 hours (=about 11days, wow!_!) In 1965, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old high school student, set this apparent world- record for a science fair. Several other people participated in this experiments resulting awake for eight to ten days. None of these individuals experienced serious medical, neurological, physiological or psychiatric problems. On the other hand, all of them showed progressive and significant deficits in concentration, motivation, perception and other higher mental processes as the duration of sleep deprivation increased. Another experiment with rats, conducted in Allan Rechtschaffen’s sleep laboratory at the University of Chicago, shows that lack of sleep can cause death. Some medical disorders can make a person awake for several months, causing some problems like muscle twitching, pain, excessive sweating, weight loss, periodic hallucinations, and severe loss of sleep (agrypnia). This disorder is named the Morvan’s fibrillary chorea of Morvan’s syndrome. Morvan’s syndrome has been attributed to serum antibodies directed against specific potassium (K+) channels in cell and nerve membranes. I thought this article was very interesting because this crazy and terrible, yet surprising experiment showed how lack of sleep has influence on human being, which sometimes I wonder about. This article is somewhat related to what we learned in class because we have learned about the neuron which is one part of nerve system. The medical disorder that causes insomnia has been attributed to serum antibodies directed against specific potassium (K+) channels in cell and nerve membranes. Wilse Webb, a prominent sleep researcher, called sleep the gentle tyrant: It can be delayed but not defeated. I greatly agree with his thought. ^^* URL : http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-humans-stay&page=2 J. Christian Gillin "How long can humans stay awake?" May 5, 2002 REVIEW BY JODY KANG

This article was the most interesting topic that I ever seen within the wiki. I also have wondered how long people could stay awake because I feel like I’m wasting time while I sleep. This article scared me a bit because the article said that the lack of sleep might lead someone to a death. However, the part I don’t understand the most is, that if someone had stay awoke for about eight days and didn’t suffer any psychological pain, how can it lead to death. Wouldn’t the death cause more by a complication that is caused by those medical disorder which lead people to stay awake for several month? Anyway even though you don’t suffer any medical disorder or psychological pain, you should get enough sleep to avoid death which is caused by lack of sleep.
Responsed by Sanghyeok Koh

Respond to Jody’s article by Vivian: This article had really impressed me because I never knew that a person could stay awake for 11 days. One time I stayed up all night, the next morning, my head start spinning and I can’t do anything at all. So how can those people stay awake for eight to ten days without any neurological, physiological or psychiatric problems? I think maybe in the future, the scientist will create some kind of medicine that could help people stay awake for months without causing problems like muscle twitching, pain, excessive sweating, weight loss, periodic hallucinations, severe loss of sleep (agrypnia), or worst: death. But right now, everyone should get enough sleep everyday to work more efficiency.

Response to Jody's article:
It is amazing to know that someone could stay awake for 11 days without sleeping, and I can’t even really stay awake for 24 hours. It is more surprising that they don’t suffer from serious medical problems and even death as I would expect. But on the other hand, the decrease of the ability to concentrate and focus over those sleepless days is predictable. Still, if you don’t get enough sleep, you would still suffer from muscle pain, weight loss, and etc. I also want to know what would happen if we had too much sleep, once I slept for than 12 hours and I felt kind of dizzy after I woke up, I also felt that I don't have the same strength as usual. So I wonder what sleep really does for our body, and what happens in our body when we sleep? What makes it so important in our daily routine?
By Joseph Chiang

Ulcer-Causing Bug May Also Prevent Cancer
By: James Tarrobal This article is mainly about an ulcer-causing bug that helps prevent esophageal cancers. There two different kinds of esophageal cancers and they are called squamous cell carcinoma and esophageal adenocarcinoma. Squamous cell carcinoma affects mainly the flat cells in the lining of the esophagus and the esophageal adenocarcinoma affects the mucus-producing cells near the lower part of the esophagus. The bug is called H. pylori and it is usually found in the stomachs of ten year old children. As our sanitation improves and the use of antibiotics went up, the presesnce of H. pylori went down. Since H. pylori went down, esophageal adenocarcinoma cases went up. This urged scientists to begin some tests in the US, Europe, Iran, China, and Japan. All of these countries are very different for each other so the testing pool is very huge. What the scientists have found is that H. pylori didnt really affect squamous cell carcinoma but it did with esophageal carcinoma. I think that this article is very interesting since I never knew that there a lot of different kinds of cancer for many parts of our body. Furthermore, scientists are finding many different ways to preventing us from getting these very horrible diseases using natural organisms, bacteria, etc. instead of artificial medicines. I believe that this article is some what related to our class since we are currently learning about cells and its structures and how the organelles in a cell work. If one of those organelles doesn't work properly, then it may become the cause of some kind of disease. Juncosa, Barbara. "Ulcer-Causing Bug May Also Prevent Cancer." Scientific American. 6 Oct. 2008. 8 Oct. 2008 <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ulcer-causing-bug-may-also-prevent-cancer>.

Using Math to Explain How Life on Earth Began This article is about the possibility of revealing the truth of the origin of life by using mathematical formulas. Martin A. Nowak’s computer simulations were used to predict how cancer evolves and spreads and now he is trying to model the origin of life. He is trying to create formulas for explaining selection, mutation, random genetic drift, and population structure. It would be very hard to actually build the model in the laboratory even if the formula is made. When the model is built with his mathematical formulas, we would be able to actually see the origin of evolution. This article is interesting because there have been arguments about whether evolution theory is the truth or the Creationism is the truth. I believe in Creationism because I’m Christian, but I still want to know whether the evolution theory is a valid theory. All the people have the curiosity to find out the truth of the origin of life, and Martin A. Nowak’s formulas could model how it was like when the life originated. This article is related to class because this article is about explaining the origin of life. We quite recently learned about the origin of life. We learned the best version of the theory and his formulas might lead to new discovery and better explanation about evolution theory. This model of the origin of life could show whether the bubble model is true or not.

Reference: Wax, Heather. “Using Math to Explain How Life on Earth Began”. Scientific American. October 7, 2008. October 8, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=can-math-solve-origin-of-life Daniel Kang^^

Respond by Masakazu Iwasaki When my eyes first met the title, this article stole my heart. I was always wandering and seeking for clear evidence that can prove when and how the life was started. We learned 2 major theories of the origin of life. One is the primordial soup model and the other one is the bubble model. Unfortunately, there is no clear proof to solve this undefined question that we are still relying on uncertain theories. But , as a Daniel said, there is a high possibility of revealing the truth of origin of life by using mathematical formula which Martin A. Nowak is now focusing on creating it which might find new discoveries. If this formula succeeds, it will definitely help other theories to prove whether the theories are right or not, although this might be complex formula with unfamiliar mathematical signs….. In addition to this benefit, the formula is holding a key to open the treasure box that contains the answer to solve the mystery of origin of life which has not been determined by anybody yet.
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A SWITCH to TURN OFF AUTISM?

Autism and schizophrenia both are some common and diseases that may lead to a serious consequence. Everyday, our brains are trying to strike a balance between too much and too little nerve cell activity and Autism and schizophrenia occur when the balance is lost or is disordered. Luckily, the scientists discovered and pinpointed that a gene in the brain that can calm never cells that become too jumpy, which may cause the lost of the balance. In addition, some researchers discovered that a gene called Npas4, a gene that produce a lot of protein that keeps neurons from being over-excited when they communicate with one another by synapses (connections). On the other hand, Gina Turrigiano, a neuroscientist indicate that Npas4 may not be the ONLY GENE that does that because mice can still live without Npas4 (although those who have shorter lifespan than the normal). Although they discovered many useful information about autism, they said that they are still in the beginning. Therefore, they have new task now. They are working hard for identifying people who will probably have higher risks to lose the balance, and help them prevent and treat it by developing new drugs.

I think it’s interesting because I don’t think there’s anyone has figured out that a gene can calm nerve cells that become over-excited. Also, we always think that protein is a valuable nutrients and only good for our health. However, this article suggests that there's a kind of protein that keep us away from neurological disorders, because the protein keep our neurons from becoming over-excited.

I think this article is related to our class because we are learning some knowledge about human cells now. After our class read this article, we can know that how important our brains are because they have to control the activity of cells, strike a balance between too much and too little nerve activity, in order to keep us away from those neurological disorders.

Reference information: Susannah F. Locke. A Switch to Turn Off Autism? Scientific American. September 25, 2008. October 8, 2008.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-switch-to-turn-off-autism

By: EDWINA CHAN

Response to Edwina's Review:

The article that edwina has reviewed says that everyday, our brains are trying to strike a balance between too much and too little nerve cell activity and Autism and schizophrenia occur when the balance is lost or is disordered. Fortunately, the scientists discovered a solution for this problem, which is that they had discovered a gene in the brain that can calm never cells that become too jumpy, which may cause the lost of the balance. Also some researchers discovered that a gene called Npas4, a gene that produce a lot of protein that keeps neurons from being over-excited when they communicate with one another by connections. It also said that there could be other genes like this because mice don't have them and they still survive without them.

It was very interesting because it is amazing to have humans discovering a gene that can calm nerve cells that become over-excited therefore, we won't get those diseases. Also like what Edwina had thought, we always thought that protein is a valuable nutrients and only good for our health, but we could learn that there's a protein that keep us away from neurological disorders, because the protein keep our neurons from becoming over-excited. This article is related to our class because we just learned about human cells.

Catherine Shon
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I will review this: Using Math to Explain How Life on Earth Began
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=can-math-solve-origin-of-life
Daniel Kang

I am going to review this :
How long can Human stay Awake?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-humans-stay

How long can humans stay awake?

JOdy Kang : )★

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Specific Gene Found In Adolescent Men with Delinquent Peers

Do you think that the abnormal or peculiar people, who are especially smart, dumb, kind, or delinquent, have very different forms of genes from the normal people? In my opinion, the special people would have different forms of gene since it is a unit inside a cell which controls a particular quality in a living thing that has been passed on from its parents. Recently, criminologist Kevin M. Beaver from Florida State University (FSU) and his colleagues: John Paul Wright and Matt DeLisi, conducted experiments on 1,816 boys in middle and high school. Then, they discovered the common and specific gene or ‘a particular variation (called the 10-repeat allele) of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT 1)’ that exists in adolescent students who are belonging to the delinquent peer groups. However, the three researchers also concluded that not all the adolescent men, who have this special gene, showed the same reactions or statistic relevant affinity to each other. Thus, they believe that the individuals’ reactions might vary based on their home backgrounds, past, constant stress, or amounts of love they received from their parents and other family. Lastly, Beaver also added “As a result, we now have genuine empirical evidence that the social and family environment in an adolescent's life can either exacerbate or blunt genetic effects."

This was an interesting article for me to read because more discoveries about the relationship between people’s genetic materials with their personalities and intelligences are found. Like what Beaver and his two colleagues have found a special gene called the 10-repeat allele, I saw a news article yesterday that mentioned about the people’s IQ depending on the thickness of their brains. Scientists said that people who have thicker brains have higher IQ because they have more areas to save memories. I am really glad that more and more genetic and biological ideas are studied. As the studies related to these amazing fields unveil, people would have more knowledge about human science and develop quickly. Furthermore, I am agreeing with Beaver’s idea about humans’ personalities changing based on their backgrounds. I’ve seen many people from various backgrounds. Some of them were from high risk families but overcame by the help of teachers who treated them nicely and as real humans. This article would be the combination of anthropology and science.

This article is related to the studies that we do in the class because the discovery of Beaver, Wright, and DeLisi was related to the gene. Now in the class, we study cell’s organelles like nucleus, mitochondria, vacuole, lysosome, cell membrane, ribosome, and etc. We learned that nucleus is the most important organelle of all because it controls all the affairs going in and around the cell. It contains chromosome, DNA, and gene which are closely related to heredity. Later in the course, we will study more about genetic materials.

Reference Information: Kevin, Beaver. Specific Gene Found In Adolescent Men with Delinquent Peers. ScienceDaily. October 2, 2008. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081001130004.htm>.

Min Joo Kwon

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Article: When Cells Go Bad Do you know that when cells go bad, they suicide and start down the road to cancer? This article is about how cells kill themselves and new ways to treat cancer. Cells have chromosomes, each chromosome has two ends. But when they lose their ends (called telomeres), cell kill themselves. To protect an organism against cancer, most cells with broken or missing telomeres undergo "apoptosis," also known as cell suicide. But Kent Golic, a professor of biology at the University of Utah found how fruit fly cells with a missing telomere sometimes avoid suicide and instead continue to divide and develop early characteristics of cancer. "The essential point is that loss of a single telomere may be a primary event that puts a cell on the road to cancer,". When a chromosome is damaged, the cell turns on a gene named p53 to kill itself. But when p53 fails, it becomes a cancer-causing gene and is found in most human tumors. Kent Golic also found that p53 and proteins named Chk1 and Chk2 are required for the suicide of fruit fly cells with a missing telomere. A cell avoid suicide because chromosomes in the cell's offspring regain telomeres. But when Cell Suicide is Blocked, Cells Start on the Road to Cancer. So if we found out the way to kill all of the damaged cells, there would not be such thing called cancer. I found this article interesting because my grandpa died because of cancer, he just passed away few days ago. I only visited him twice but I can tell that he was the best old man ever! He had been fighting with cancer for 3 years; but he did not even care about it, he just wanted to have fun, telling jokes to everyone. During the treatment, he went to Las Vegas many times to gamble! Well as you know, we have been talking about cell a lot (membrane, diffusion, poster…) Everything is made from a whole bunch of cells, so I think this article would be helpful for class. By Khang Ton (Honey, Ni)!

Date published : October 1, 2008 12:40 AM

Date accessed : October 8, 2008 7:49

Source : http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/10/01/when_cells_go_bad.html

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Specialized Brain Hemispheres Provide More Efficiency

Lesley Rogers and her colleagues at the University of New England recently studied the reactions of magpies when they are faced with a threatening

predator. They put an Australian magpie and a stuffed monitor lizard in the same area and observed the bird’s reaction. They noticed that before the bird fled

from the lizard it looked it over with its left eye and then left. The right hemisphere of the brain controls the left eye and interprets what it sees. They also saw

that before the bird moved closer to the lizard to investigate it, the bird would look it over with its right eye. This is controlled by the left hemisphere of the

brain. The experiment showed that the right hemisphere of the brain in a magpie processes danger or interesting things while the left hemisphere processes

more methodical things. Human brains also do this because the brain works more efficiently. Most animals do not do this, but this experiment show that

some do.

I think that this experiment was useful because it showed that humans aren’t the only creatures that have adapted to work and process thing more

efficiently.

Jake Black

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=specialized-brain-hemispheres

A Switch to Turn Off Autism

website:http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-switch-to-turn-off-autism
review: i am going to do it later, but then just want to tell everyone that i am doing review for this article:)

By: Edwina
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How do Cells move?
A research found that a complex of three proteins directly regulate the myosin network within a cell. As a result, a force to propel the cell forward is created. The research as led by Dr. Thomas Leung and his team under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). I think that this short article is closely related to our study of cells because the team of researchers has claimed that their finding is an important part in learning about how a cell responds to its environment. There is an implication that this discovery can reveal a lot about cells in areas such as cancer growth and spread, wound healing, learning and memory, and developmental biology. The newly discovered protein complex is known as myosin. A different form of this complex is evident in the muscle cells and is responsible for its elastic and contractile properties of muscle. The similarity between the two complexes suggests that cell movement must work in more or less the same way as the movement of muscle cells. Experts say that this system has the potential to reveal more about the mechanism that cells use to migrate. Review By: Ian Chow Assessed on the 6th of October Article Link: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20081005/tap-267-a-star-scientists-landmark-disco- 231650b.html
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Bar Code of Life: DNA Tags Help Classify Animals

reviewed by: KYUREE KANG >U<

Mainly, this article was about a new method that scientists found out for classifying plants and animals. 250 years before, when biologists started to classify things, they used color, shape, behavior, and other characteristics to classify living things. Later on, scientists developed and started to use genetic information in DNA to classify organisms. However, both of the methods were still taking so much time and needed highly skilled people. Until now, scientists had classified more than 1.7 million species, but they would all have limits to it. To classify organisms, appropriate experts for each field are required, and again, it’s time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, biologists are now estimating that there are about eight million more species to be discovered, so with the technology that scientists had before, he could be pretty hard. Thus, this new way of classifying animals and plants is more effective and welcoming. The name of this method is barcoding, just like the ones in supermarkets. This new way of classifying organisms work by examining a small portion of the DNA. When this small portion of an animal or a plant goes into a barcode reader, the device would give back the name of the species, photograph, and description.

This article was very interesting because I’m learning about biology which includes species of animals and plants, and scientists found another way of classifying them. Also, the idea of ‘barcoding’ made this new method even more interesting because barcodes are what we see in everyday life, and it being used in sciences in the same way. Without the discovery of this new method scientists in the later generations won’t be able to work very easily for classifying the left out 8 million species, but since scientists these days came up with this new idea, they would work more efficiently.

These days, our class is learning about cells and we’ve also got a project related to it, too. Since DNA is something that every cell has, I thought this article was pretty much related to our studying. Also, last month, we learned about how RNA and DNA work out to pass down genetic information, and this article talked about how scientists are using a part of DNA to classify animals and plants. If I have a chance, I really want to learn more about how this barcoding method specifically works.

Reference information: Mark Y. Stoeckle and Paul D. N. Hebert. Bar Code of Life: DNA Tags Help Classify Animals. Scientific American Magazine. October 2008, October 3, 2008. Medical News Today. September 9, 2008. September 10, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bar-code-of-life

Response on Kyu Ree's review by Andy Shao

The most commonly known terms that we use to classify animals are mammals, wildlife, domestic animals, and etc. In Kyu Ree’s review, she says that scientists had just come up with a new way of classifying different species of animals. The traditional way of classifying animals mentioned in the review is first, classifying by their physical appearances and behaviors, the second way is classifying by their DNA. The new way that scientists just came up with is classifying animals by barcoding. The information of a species is saved in the data and you can access these animals easily by just put their DNA in the barcode reader. I think that this is very helpful when people catch a species of animal but they aren’t sure whether the animal has already been explored or not. Now just by taking a portion of its DNA, you’ll get the answer immediately. This will be very useful as scientists are going to investigate more and more species since the more they’ll investigate, the less species will be left over for to investigate, thus the more species we’ll get that we’ll be unsure whether it’s new or not. By using a barcoding to check whether it’s new or not will save a lot of time.I disagree with Kyu Ree about that she mentions that it is a new way for classifying animals, I think that it’s more like new way to record the species that an animal belong to, because she mentioned that the new barcoding method is still based on an animal’s DNA, just like the previous method. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Too Good to Be True?: Fat That Keeps You Thin

reviewed by: CATHERINE SHON >U<

This article was saying that the scientists have discovered a chemical in the body that could one day prevent or reverse diseases that is connected to obesity.
The researchers in Harvard University's School of Public Health found out that palmitoleate (a newly discovered hormone produced by fat cells) is also a fatty acid. I never knew that most hormones are proteins. They believe that if they can increase its production, they may be able to stave (= to make it disappear, to break) off metabolic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and so-called fatty liver, an often asymptomatic(= showing no evidence of disease) disease, which can lead to a damage in the organ and also a cancer. They also think that it may also help with losing weight. (Yeah!)

While reading this article I had to agree with the professor Gökhan Hotamisligil. He said that "Fat is a huge soup of many many chemical entities. You can't treat fat like one kind of thing. It's a combination of many different kinds of molecules."

How the Palmitoleate could help to cut down the fatness is that because it is involved in a process known as de novo lipogenesis, the production of fat molecules by fat cells. The fats that are formed naturally appears to have the opposite effect of fat that are formes from food. They keep fat from accumulating on the liver and prevents insulin resistance.
Hotamisligil also warned that high palmitoleate levels may only guard against metabolic illness and not obesity itself. Because the experiment was tested on mice, he isn't sure that the hormone has the same effect on humans. He also noted that the pathways involved in mice and humans are almost identical.

I chose this article because last week I read Edwina's review on an article about reducing fats by putting "brown fats" into the place where there are most "white fats" is. I thought this article would be related to her artlcle, but as I read mine I realized that it is not. But it is about reducing fat! :)
I think this article is related to what we are learning in our class because right now we are learning something related to cells.

Currently, many scientists seem to find several solutions to get thinner without getting excersize, but I can't believe, eveytime they come up with them, sadly they are not sure it will work perfectly. I guess we can only lose weight by excersizing.

Respond:
In Catherine’s article, it suggests the idea that, one day, scientists can help people who cares about their weights (just like me) to loose way and more importantly, scientists maybe can also keep us away from obesity, and other diseases that caused by obesity, such as diabetes, high blood pressure….etc by increasing the production of Palmitoleate, a fatty acid that involved a process (de novo lipogenesis) which can keep fat from accumulating on the lover and prevents insulin resistance, in order to keep us fit or used for healing obesity. I think this article that Catherine did is interesting because last time, i also did an article that is also deal with fat and health. My article suggests that injecting brown fats near to the white fats, so that the brown fats can burn the white fats up. However, i think the method that Catherine introduced seems more efficient than mine because palmitoleate is something that we can find in our bodies (unlike brown fat, we need to inject brown fat in our bodies), so i think the side effects or adverse metabolic effects will be fewer. In addition, i think this article is really useful because nowadays, obesity is quite a big problem and it also causes many diseases, like, diabetes, high-blood pressure (Those diseases can led to death). However, we neglect the more important reason that causes obesity, which is heredity. If we solve the obesity problem, those people who are suffered from obesity because of heredity can be helped now.

By: Edwina Chan

Response:
In the article, it said that palmitoleate are able to cut down fats, and I think this is a very important discovery. In the United States there are a lot of people suffering from diabetes caused by eating too much fast food and junk food. With this discovery, those people might not even need to worry about diabetes because they just need to increase the production of palmitoleate in their body and it will help them to cut down the fats. But how do you increase the production of palmitoleate? Or do you just inject palmitoleate into your body? I think palmitoleate is also important because it could cure many diseases other than diabetes, like heart diseases. It seems that palmitoleate is a very helpful thing for us, but is it actually healthy if we have too much of those in our body?
By Joseph Chiang

Therapy extends life in rats with nerve disease

The article is about the treatment with genetically modified stem cells which let rats with paralyzing disease live much longer than the rats which were not treated with genetically modified stem cells. The U.S researchers found out that rats with ALS that were treated with the gene-engineered stem cells lived 28 days longer than untreated rats. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease attacks nerve cell called motor neurons, which waste away and die. The researchers used stem cells as a way of delivering a growth factor to keep the motor neurons alive, rather than replacing them as the treatments were used to be. They injected the rats with adult nerve stem cells that were engineered to release a growth factor called glial cell-line derived neurotrophic factor(GDNF). Many studies in rat, which were done before, showed that injecting nerve stem cells with GDNF into the spinal cord helped spare some of the motor neurons, but it did nothing to help the rats live longer. I found this article interesting because this study, which says that treating with gene-engineered stem cells let paralyzed rat live longer, is also said that it could one day help humans. While reading this article I remembered a famous dancer in Korea who is not able to dance now. He used to be very popular because of his creative dance movements, but now both his legs paralyzed because of the motorbike accident a few years ago. I hope people suffering from paraparesis can walk again through the treatment mentioned in the article. This article is related to class because we have been studying about cells. We have also seen a video that showed us transplanting skin made with engineered stem cells. (which I thought it was amazing yet gross… : P) The treatment in the video was treatments for skin and the treatment in this article is the treatment about nerve system, but I think it is still related to what we learned in class because it is a treatment with genetically modified stem cells. Jody Kang ^.^ URL: http://news.yahoo.com/story//nm/20080923/sc_nm/us_stemcells_als

Response to Jody's article:
Jody's article is about how genetically modified stem cells kept a rat with a paralyzing disease alive 28 days longer than an untreated mouse. This success in keeping the rat alive longer is significant because experiements before did keep some motor neurons alive but did not spare the life of the rat itself. This article seems significant and important to all of us because paralyzing diseases are found very often in old people, and we are one day going to be old. Few weeks ago, my grandmother went to the hospital because she had signs of paralysis. Though the modified stem cells only kept the rat about a month longer, I feel relieved that this treatment is made and could be used to keep someone alive longer. I hope to see this treatment used for humans soon and not only extends one's life for a month but spare his or her life. Daniel Kang^^

Fish Gave Us the Finger

Basically this article was all about telling people that our fingers are from the fishes. The scientists back in 1990s had a plenty of thought where it was from. They thought it was from the first tetra pods, which are the animals with four hands or leg. The reason is that because the ancient fishes didn’t had any fingers. However on September 21, they have announced that it was strange. Furthermore they have announced in fact that fishes had fingers in their fins. Unlikely, they had CT scanned a well preserved right fin of a fish that was 380 million years old. They have said the scientist back than had possibly missed it because it was hidden. This article interests me because since I’m a Christian, I believe in the Creationism however this article made me to look in to the evolution theory by the different aspect. Also I have found out where my fingers were from and should be thankful to the fishes and respect them instead of torturing them. This article relates to our class with the evolution of the cell that we have learned few weeks ago. This might give some hints toward the real answer of origin of life, between the evolution and creation theory. Or could be the cells that are contained in the fishes might had moved or migrated to human cells to live better. In other words the endosymbiosis, however I’m not sure about it. Reference: http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=fish-gave-us-the-finger-08-09-22 Published date: September 22, 2008 Accessed date: September 24, 2008 By: Sang Hyeok Koh

Article : Honey effective in killing bacteria that cause Chronic sinusitis As you know, “Honey” is very sweet and delicious, it also has a very beautiful color that you might just want to drink it all. But do you know that honey may transform into toxin-producing bacteria, leading to illness and even death. Most micro-organisms do not grow in honey because of its low water activity. However, Honey is very effective in killing bacteria in all its forms, especially the drug-resistant biofilms that make treating chronic rhinosinusitis difficult. biofilm is a structured community of micro-organism, which is very important, and Chronic sinusitis is a complicated spectrum of diseases. The causes are multifactorial and may include allergy. What they have just found out is so unbelievable; Chronic rhinosinusitis affects approximately 31 million people each year in the United States alone, costing over $4 billion in direct health expenditures and lost workplace productivity. I find this article interesting because people thought that honey is a very good kind of medicine, not just a syrup. But the truth is an opposite, honey could kill all forms of bacteria. And since my nickname is Honey, it would be very helpful. This article is related to class because we have studied about the origin of life, and bacteria plays a very important role in the revelution of the Earth. Source : http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/09/23/honey_effective_in_killing_bacteria_that_cause_chronic_sinusitis.html Published date: September 23, 2008 11:57 AM Accessed date: September 24, 2008 5:40 PM By your honey : Khang Ton

****Always post new reviews here, above the previous ones. Thank you.****

Respond by MASAKAZU IWASAKI When i read this article, I was interested in this because I never thought about the sweet liquid, honey can be harmful for human being which even can lead us to death. On the other hand, it has role of medicine to kill bacteria!(which becomes my new knowledge.) In saying that, honey was more successful in killing both plank tonic and biofilm-growm forms of bacteria than other antibiotics which are commonly used against bacteria! i was surprised that this daily product can be used as a medicine which is more efficient than common medicine! Against Kang's opinion, I believe that honey may hold important medical influence in the treatment of headstrong disease such as chronic rhino sinusitis which affects more than 30 million people and over $4 billion on spending for health care each year only in the United States. So, if the honey becomes significant medicine against headstrong disease, i am sure that many people around the world and financial situation in each countries will be saved by this sweet liquid, Honey.

Respond to Honey's review by Vivian: I was very interested in this article because i love honey and i eat them every day =]. After i read this article, i knew that honey,which i just ate 5minutes ago, can kill bacteria in all forms,especially the drug-resistant biofilms that make treating chronic rhinosinusitis-affects approximately 31 million people each year in the United States alone, costing over $4 billion in direct health expenditures and lost workplace productivity. And thats also the reason why people use to eat honey when they are sick and they use honey to put on wound. But on the other hand, if honey kills all the bacteria, this could include ythe bacteria which are helpful to our body and play a very important role in the revelution of the Earth. So i think every one should have honey in their house and eat honey more often for better health.

Three More Blind Patients Helped by Gene Therapy

Leber congenital amaurosis is a disease that damages the light receptors in the retina. The loss of sight begins at an early age and by the age of 30 it causes blindness. It is caused by a mutation in a gene called RPE65. LCA has been a candidate for experimental gene therapy for a long time. Gene therapy is the replacement of faulty gene with new genes.

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have test gene therapy on three LCA patients. The therapy has produced better sight and restoration of color in all three of the patients. It has also produced better night vision as well. The three patients were all under the age of 20, which means they were not totally blind. “It’s like wearing three deep dark sunglasses on top of each other,” said Artur Cideciyan of the University of Pennsylvania, “What our treatment does is it basically removes two of the three (pairs of) sunglasses in one part of the eye.” The entire eye has yet to be completely treated with the therapy because some of the photoreceptors are damaged. The therapy only last for about three months. Safety and efficiency has held back research in the field of gene therapy. Early experiments with gene therapy caused the deaths of two French boys and the death of a teenager in Arizona due to gene therapy. Even though the patients haven’t been healed completely scientist are one step closer to finding a cure for LCA.

I think that gene therapy could heal many people and that it should be research and experimented with further. It could lead to the cure of many disease and possible even cancer. I also think this is important because a few weeks ago we studied RNA and DNA and are now currently studying cells.

-Jake- url: http://news.yahoo.com/story//nm/20080923/sc_nm/us_stemcells_als

Response to Jake's review By James: I believe that Gene Therapy should be looked at more and that the government and health institutes should help fund this experimental procedure. Since being able to test only three subjects is incredibly bad when you are talking about science. Yes, in the past they had three unsuccessful tests which led to their deaths, but I believe that these shouldn’t be frowned upon because those volunteers accepted the experimental procedure in the hope of curing their illness. If they do manage to get a breakthrough on this new kind of therapy, I’m pretty sure that they can start saving a lot of lives from people who have genetic problems just like this one. I fully agree with Jake. This should be supported and you will never know if this therapy might be our answer to curing cancer. So far, its statistics are saying that this new method is not worth testing since 50% of the test subjects died and the rest were successful and are still in testing. But I think that they do need more people or volunteers for their testing and research. If not every one tries to pitch in, then how can they help us?

Neural Light Show: Scientist Use Genetics to Map and Control Brain Functions

URL: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/biology/~3/401469563/article.cfm

Written By Gero Miesenböck

Basically, this article is talking about new theory to stimulate neural circuits by field of optogenetics. So far, neuroscientists studied the function of brain from the activity of nerve cells. However, this is indirect method, so neuroscientists had difficulty to understand specific ones. In 1937, neuroscientist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington thought about the brain signal during sleeping which seems like lights and Milky Way. He did not realize what it is and how important it is at that time. After decades, now scientists found out that Sherrington’s idea contained the fact that brain signal revealed optically. Therefore, they combined genetic engineering and neuron in order to emerge the field of optogenetics. Scientists hope that this can open the new world of neuroscience.

I think this article is very interesting, at least, to me. I never thought about neuroscience before I read this article. I heard somewhere that the brain is the most mysterious part in our body. And scientists yet discover any information about the brain no more than 10% among the whole. This new field, optogenetic may give us more information of brain, which can be used to cure a lot of mental diseases. Also, it can be the solution to find out what is the cause of fatal diseases which considered as incurable in modern day (not only mental illness but also other kind of diseases).

It is somehow related to our class. We will learn about the nerve system, especially neuron, soon. If I remember rightly, the neurons are related to cellular respiration (I am not sure...). And this article gives some extra information about our future class, and it is not harmful, is it?

Anyway, thank you very much for reading my review : )

Review by Myungchan Jung

Article: The Debate about Cloning by Sam Vaknin http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-30-2002-19417.asp This article is basically about cloned babies and whether they should be considered human beings. I found this article interesting because technically, clones are not people, but biologically, they are alive. I thought that since we are studying about cell structures, this article would relate to class about how clones are made. There are two types of cloning, one involving the harvesting stem cells from embryos (therapeutic cloning), and the other of which requires an egg cell (human) and a nucleus from any cell of a donor. The nucleus of the egg cell is removed and replaced with the donor’s cell nucleus. The new cell is then placed into a woman’s womb and is born a biological replica of the donor. The question that comes up is whether the egg cell should be considered alive. If so, then the cloned baby has been borne at the expense of the person who was the egg cell and the woman who gave birth to it. One could almost say that the cloned baby caused the death of another. That rouses another question: Should the cloned baby be considered human? Because the scientists are unable to change any of the baby’s traits, it is still a copy of the donor. If cloned babies are to be considered human, then scientists are causing murder every time they experiment. The reason is that only one out of twenty cloned embryos is successfully borne. So, should cloned babies be considered human beings? I think they should be, because no matter what, they are living things. Review by: Ian Chow

China Vows Export Crackdown Amid Milk Crisis

What would you feel like if you get illness from milk powders you bought in supermarkets? It actually just happen in China, tons of babies got kidney stones because of infant powders.

This article is about a very serious event on toxic milk. Factories put melamine in infant milk powders. Melamine is a chemical that’s usually used as fertilizer or to make plastic. When it is put in milk powder, it can artificially increase the protein level of the milk powder, and it is also found in sweets, bans and carton milk. Because of the toxic milk powder, an estimate of 54,000 infants are sick, 13,000 kids are in hospital, 104 kids are in very serious situations with kidney stones, and fours kids have died so far. Melamine is found in 10% of dairy products in the major Chinese dairy companies. The agricultural minister stated that dairy companies purchase fresh clean milk from farmers, and they put chemicals in milk to make more money. The government is working hard to check the safety of dairy products, and they are working on a food safety law, too. Hope they can end this tragedy and send the people who are responsible about it to prison.

I find this article interesting because kidney stones are usually found in adults or old people. It is special that even little kids can get it, and it is all caused by chemicals. I wonder what chemical reactions happened between melamine and milk. This article is also very concerned by most people in the world, since a lot of power milk around the world is made in China. Parents would all be upset if their children got kidney stones. Preventions from powder milk are very necessary and indeed, we are the ones who may be infected if we don’t care about it.

This article is related to class because we are learning about diffusion and how to make energy with what we eat. Milk is one of the fundamental food in our life, when we intake milk, it interacts with the molecules in our body and provide us with energy. As we learn more and more about cells and our body, we may be able to know how melamine in toxic milk interacts with our body, and it is interesting to know why they can make our kidney useless and form kidney stone in our body.

Reference Info:
Author: Chris Buckley
Site Name: Scientific American
Date Published: Sep. 23. 2008
Date Accessed: Sep. 23. 2008
URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=china-vows-export-crackdo

By me............ :Andy Shao ^_^

Response to andy's review by KYUREE KANG: During the last several months, I read lots of stories about some Chinese making fake foods. They made paper dumplings, eggs with chemicals and pigments, and they even made a fake radish. However, none of them was as shocking as this article. When I first saw this news about China’s fake milk powder in newspapers, I was very surprised. How can people cheat on buyers with foods just to earn couple of more dollars? Now, when I read Andy’s review, I felt so sorry for those people who bought the milk powder because I exactly learned happened to those poor babies. I have done some research to find out about kidney stone. It was a formation of hard rock inside the kidney of a human body and it mostly happens to grown up white men. There were lots of symptoms: vomiting, fever, blood in the urine, and etc. They were all happening because there was damage to inside wall of kidney. I also found out that if the stone is small enough, then it would be treated my taking medicines, but if it’s larger than 10mm, it has to be removed by surgery. I hope the babies take care of themselves well and survive from kidney stone.

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Min Joo Kwon’s Response on Andy’s Review:

It is no exaggeration to say that the year 2008 was for China, one of the biggest and powerful nations in the world. Despite of the earthquake in Si Chuan Province, China’s Beijing Olympics of 2008 was successful, making many people around the world to concentrate on their culture and history. People, who had bad prejudices about China, were surprised at the nation’s thriving developments, changing their attitudes. However, China’s repeating sensations of food once again disappointed everybody, and their reputation dropped gradually.

Like what Andy and Kyu Ree said, China had many fake food problems like dumplings of agricultural chemicals (insecticide), rotten pickled radishes, fake eggs, Kim Chi that exceeded the period of circulation, and etc. Many countries, especially Japan, recalled all the inferior foods imported from China but couldn’t stop properly. Although more and more people became sick because of those foods, they couldn’t stop buying because of their cheaper prices. Then, from last week, the entire world wide news reported that China is using melamine as milk power which is very harmful for people’s health like what Andy said on his review. Many food products sold around the world like coffees, chocolates, cookies, and cakes use milk, milk power, and condensed milk imported from China. The funniest thing is that China closed their mouth about this issue while many organizations like EU (European Union), WHO (World Health Organization), and FDA (Food and Drug Administration) want to deal it as soon as possible. I couldn’t also surprise after knowing that this chemical is really harmful for little kids’ kidneys. I really wish China from now on not to use bad chemicals and sell rotten food for their good. This problem should be solved as soon as possible for the sake of all the people around the world’s health.

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For Stem Cells, a Role on the Battlefield

This article is about by using human embryonic stem cells to make red blood cells that could be used for transfusion. The military is very interested in this development because it is hard to find red blood cells in the battlefield. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is starting a "blood pharming" program that could make red blood cells from progenitor cells on the battlefield. These kind of cells might one day supply the blood donations, an advantage of such cell is that it could be free of infectious diseases that might be in donated blood. These blood cells could be used to treat Parkinson's disease, heart attacks or diabetes. A disadvantage of these cells is that it might need a lot of money to produce large amounts of red blood cells and on the other side the blood donations are free. This technology have not yet been tested on animals or humans and it still has a lot to overcome.

This artilce is interesting because think about make red blood cells in a lab! Now the technology is increasing rapidly and if we can make body parts in a lab, then we can replace the sick or damaged organs with a healthy one.

This article is related to biology because it's about life. In the past few classes we have been watching a movie about making livers in a lab, and now we might be able to make blood cells in a lab.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/health/09bloo.html?ref=science
By Andrew Pollack
Published on Sept. 8, 2008
Accessed on Sept 11, 2008
By Joseph

Response: I was very interested in learning that one part of a human can be used to make another. Mr. Macury showed us a video about using, for example, “good” parts of our body to grow and replace bad parts (e.g. our skin). In this case, it is using stem cells from the inner cell mass of a human embryo (about 4-5 days after fertilization) to make red blood cells. It made me even more interested to think that the military might be using this technology some day. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is starting a program that uses progenitor cells (which are a recent discovery and are similar to stem cells) instead of embryonic stem cells to make red blood cells during war. Although blood donations are much cheaper than using embryonic stem cells, these cells will not have infections, and it can be used to treat Parkinson's disease, heart attacks or diabetes. When I see technology we have now and compare it to technology a few decades ago, there is such a large advancement in technology that we might not be just making blood. We might be making brains or even a heart!

By: Ian Chow :) :0 :! ;) =p
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Could We Lose Weight by Injecting Fat into Our Bellies?

You may wonder why injecting fat to our bodies can loose weight, instead of leading to obesity. In the article, the idea of “brown fat” is introduced. The fat that we want to inject to our body is not the “white fat,” which leads us to obesity, but “brown fat,” which can release the energy that it captured and burn the calories in our bodies. Brown fat is a kind of fat but it’s not bad for our bodies, the cells that infects us become heavier is the white cells because they can release free fatty acids.That’s how it works, if there is an obese person, we can transplant the brown fat cell into his/her abdomen (where the white fat is found), in order to carry out the calorie-burning processes. However, most brown fat disappear shortly after birth (because they were used for keeping a newborn’s body temperature stable), and mature brown fat cells are only few and far between in the human body. Since our bodies don’t have much brown fat, scientists started finding the way to produce brown fat. One of those scientist found that when the levels of the biological switch are raised, the cells which are proteins that determine whether a young cell will grow into a one or the other, mature into brown fat. However, when it is lower than normal, those cells become muscle. They were quite surprised that brown fat is part of the muscle lineage. Currently, they had a new target that determine proteins whether they are able to include the formation of brown fat in obese mice, stimulate calorie burning and cause no other adverse metabolic effects. However, they still suggest that the best way to lose weight is having a good diet and exercise.

I find this article is interesting because i think in the past, we mislead the concept of fat. We always think that fat is a bad thing and it can only make us be fatter, rather then help us to be skinny. However, after reading this article, i know that actually fat can burn calories! Brown fat can help us with losing weight by burning calories! I think it's quite amazing. Also, in this article, it talks about the brown fat is in our bodies when we were newborn and it is used for keeping our temperature stable, and i have an idea that, if we inject some brown fat into our bodies, is it mean that we can always keep our temperature steady? No matter in winter or summer, our bodies' temperatures won't change a lot?
I think this article is related to our class because in our class, we talked a bout human cell, and in this article, it mentions that there's a special kind of protein that can determine whether a young cell will grow into. Brown fat cell or the other kind of cell. Also, it mentions that the scientist want to intend some treatment for the population that is genetically predisposed to be overweight. As we learned something about RNA,DNA, and heredity in the class, now we can also know that overweight sometimes is also cause by heredity.

reference information:
Swaminathan, Nikhil. Could We Lose Weight by Injecting Fat into Our Bellies?: Scientific American: Scientific American. August 21, 2008. September 11, 2008 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=lose-weight-by-injecting-fat-in-belly

By: Edwina Chan :)

Response....
The article basically is talking about two different kinds of fat. On is the common one that makes us fat called the white fat, and the other one is called the brown fat, which can burn calories so it actually can make people skinnier (amazing).
I’ve learned that different types of fat have different effects to our body from the article. I find this article kind of interesting because there’s a new discovery, and I think that obesity is a very concerned topics by billions of people. I agree with Edwina that it’s going to be fun if we can have a stable temperature by injecting some brown fats. Then we won’t need heavy coats in winter and we won’t sweat as much under the sun in the summer. I also think that it was interesting that Edwina said that obesity is caused by heredity; it seems true that most kids inherit the metabolism of their parents. However, fat kids can’t blame their parents-it is still possible to get skinnier by doing exercises and by having a diet. On the other hand, a lot of kids today that are fat and are not because of the heredity, it is all because of junk foods! There are more and more fat people in this world today, and I think the number of fat people is enough. Although we may be able to get rid of obesity by intake brown fat, who knows whether it has side effect or not? The best way to be away from obesity is to control how much calories we intake, and we should do a lot of exercises.

As our technology improves rapidly, we can make our face prettier by getting plastic surgery, and soon, we’ll be able to get rid of obesity by intake brown fat! However, we shouldn’t only rely on that, as the article said, the best way to lose weight is having a good diet and exercise.
By me............ :Andy Shao ^_^

RESPONSE:

This article is basically introducing the “Brown fat,” which is not familiar to us, and how it contributes to burn calories. It is quite interesting, but I think it would not be helpful to people who want to loss their weight by injecting the Brown fat. Calorie is the amount of energy one contains, I think. As the Brown fat helps to burn the calories, it may not save extra nutrients which can be saved as fat. However, since the Brown fat does not use saved fat to make energy (Brown fat may use new nutrients which we eat), the weight will not be affected by injecting. Anyway, Edwina’s opinion about adjusting body temperature by Brown fat is really interesting :) it would be absolutely comfortable if we did not have wear clothes to control the body temperature.

As Andy said, technology developed a lot. However, I am not sure that it will benefit to us. By plastic surgery, we can be prettier and more confident about our appearance, but it also causes serious problems such as side effects, mental illnesses, and financial issues. I thinkg the Brown fat injecting will bring similar problems : people who like easy and fast way until the change will try this for sure. Even though the Brown fat injecting is enthusiastic, but it would not be good if we rely on such technology without our effort.

By MyungChan Jung ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

RESPONSE :)
In this article, the idea of “brown fat” is introduced. The "white fat" is the one that no one in the world wants. The fat that they tried putting in the belly is “brown fat,” which can release the energy that it captured and burn the calories in our bodies. I was shocked to hear that "Brown fat" aren't the bad and evil fats that we get so stressed with even they are called "FATS". How the planning works is finding a person with a lot of fats. Then they transplant the brown fat cell into place where the white fat is found so that they carry out the calorie-burning processes. However, they don't last long.

Like what Edwina had said, I alwasys thought that all the fats are bad and make everyone so stressed (except some people who don't mind *my brother*). It would be nice if the science gets more developed and we can always have nice body shape only by injecting the "Brown Fats".
On the other hand, I also agree with Myung Chan. I want to give her a plause for coming up with such an idea. She said that there might be some serious problems after we use the "Brown Fats" like using plastic surgery. In addition, like what the scientists and Myung Chan has said, I also believe that we have to exercise by our own to loose weight instead trying to use those kinds of injection.
But why can't we hope or dream about having a simpler way to loose weight? Espcially, I am a sensitive girl, who worries about losing weight. :)

Catherine Shon

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Smashing Big Bang Experiment Gets Turned On

Have you ever wondered how the universe was created? People around the world would have variety of answers to this question because they believe in different gods (religions) and may have different ideologies. But, most of the scientists around the world usually claim and suggest that the universe was created with the single large explosion, Big Bang. The article I read from Reuters is mainly about the “Big Bang” project that began from the scientists of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on Wednesday, September 10th. As many people regard this project as one of the large in scale experiments from the historical point of view, eyes of the world are now centered on it. The purpose of this project is to probe origins of everything, including origins of the life. Building a gigantic machine LHC (Large Hardon Collider) and setting it under the ground (100m), energy particles are shot in a 27 km tunnel and collide at the speed of light. However, many people and skeptics oppose this experiment, saying it may create black holes and suck the planet. CERN, on the other hand, states the LHC safe. As great amount of money was spent for this project, the experiment would continue for a year under 10,000 scientists.

This was an interesting article for me to read because the experiment CERN doing now is the one I have never expected of. I just thought that finding a theory of the Big Bang would occur later and later in the future. It was pretty amazing that the smart scientists gathered up and actually began the experiment. Though many people around the world worry and fear of Earth’s downfall, I only wish their great success and find a real answer to the origin of the universe. From the other articles, I read that a young Indian girl suicide after hearing the news that “The earth may downfall during the experiment of the Big Bang.” However, if the kingdom of science may make a progress by the results of this project, our science may grow much rapidly in the future.

This article is related to the studies we do in the class because this experiment may give another new theory about the origin of the life. In the past, many scientists have struggled figuring out how the life on the earth began. The two big examples we learned are “Primordial Soup Model” and “Bubble Model.” If this experiment is prosperous, the question about the origin of the life will be solved. I really wish Swedish’s success on the project.

Reference Information: Evans, Robert. Smashing Big Bang Experiment Gets Turned On. Reuters UK. September 15, 2008. <http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKL846768920080910>

Min Joo Kwon

Respond :That was a very nice Intro, Min Joo. People sometimes ask themselves: “Why am I here?”, and they always try to find the answer. I am a religious person too, I read the Bible and I do believe in God. But I also interesting in some other answers for the origin of life, like this article. Because Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe that is best supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. According to this article, many scientist around the world gathered up and starting the “Big Bang” project. This might take them years to finish, and I am sure that many people are thinking about the result. What would happen when the project is finished? Will it creat black holes and suck the plannet? Or a great success? This is a very risky project and I think that scientists should consider carefully. Science is such an amazing thing, there are so many things that human have not discovered. Hopefully, in the future, we will find out the truth. By your lil man : Khang Ton (Ni, Honey)

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Evolving Creationism in the Classroom

Overall, this article is about how creationism is getting to be taught at schools. Before, the evolution theory was taught at schools, but creationism was not. In fact, creationism could not be taught in public schools because teaching it would violate the constitution. Creationism is a theory that explains the origin of the living organisms based on the bible. Creationism explains that the God created the Earth and all the living organisms. Creationists have petitioned that the teachers should be allowed to teach students the stengths and weaknesses of the Darwin's evolution theory at schools. This is already allowed in Louisiana and soon will be in many others states.

This articles is interesting especially to me because I am a Christian and I believe in creationism. I read books about creationism separately because I wanted to learn about creationism but all I learned from science class was the evolution theory. I always felt bad because the schools seemed to be rejecting the God and I felt as if I was forced to deny my belief. This article is very a good new to me and Christians because now we can learn about how God created us and the Earth.

This article is related to our class because it suggests another theory of the origin of life. Creationism is a theory that explains the origin of life and origin of life is the exact topic that we are learning about. The scientists have been to trying to explain the origin of life within the evolution theory and we just learned the best theory that is based on the evolution theory. Within few years we might be able to learn about the origin of life in a totally different perspective.

reference info:
Minkel, JR. Evolving Creationism in the Classroom. Scientific American. September 10, 2008. September 11, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=evolving-creationism-in-the-classroom

Daniel Kang^^

Respond: Basically it seems like now people in the States are following the study of bible. By the information that I know, I heard that there were many controversy between the creationism and the evolution theory. Even more I heard that the creationism theory is mostly taught in Christian school, and most of the university/college will not accept the applications from the school which have taught the creationism. This information interests me because since I’m a Christian too, like Daniel, I have believed in the creationism theory and have had also many debates with other people who have believed in the evolution theory. Many people have won the debate against me; however I think I might win the next one in few years later. This article interests me even more because we just have finished learning the origin of life in the class. The text book has said that they haven’t found the correct answer yet, but in my perspective, Louisiana has found the answer to that question. If many states accept the idea of the creationism, I think that the followers of Christian will increase rapidly by the impact of it.

By. Sang hyeok Koh

Response:For me this article is interesting because I am a Christian. I think that having more than one view on the origin of life is great way to expand a students understanding of how we got here. I also think that just teaching evolution limits the student’s ability to develop critical thinking skills. Now Christian students won't be as afraid to stand of for their views on the origin of life. Louisiana took a bold step in allowing Christianity to be taught in schools, but i think it was the right thing. Now, hopefully, people won't just believe in evolution so that they can pass their science class. I also find this article interesting because just a few weeks ago we studied the origin of life, maybe in the future when students study this very same chapter they will also study Creationism.

By, Jake Black
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Can Exercise Overcome Genes?

This article talks about the studies of professors from University of Maryland and the University of Miami. They tested about 704 Amish men and women. They have found in that about 67% of these people have a copy of a gene called FTO, which is related to being obese, and as a result, they are 7 lbs. heavier than a person who doesn't have a copy of this FTO gene. What they have done is they tracked the physical activities of their volunteers through accelerometers. They had discovered that the people who were more physically active managed to keep their weight and Body Mass Index in the healthy zone for an average person and for the less active people gained weight. This shows that the so called "wrong" genes may be controlled. Now people can keep this in mind because if they make a tiny mistake on their decision of what food to eat or if they should exercise on this day or not. If you think that these decisions doesn't matter that much, then you are wrong since every single decision counts.

I think that the article is interesting because as an athlete, it makes me feel better that i can control my body weight IF if have the FTO gene. Especially since I'm a little fat myself. However, this may also be interesting to other people because they might not know that they have this FTO gene and they constantly keep track on the food they eat, but they don't really do much exercise, then they are probably wondering why they are gaining weight even when they take the right food choices. Now this could be the answer to their questions.

I believe that this article is somewhat related to what we have learned in class is because we had a glimpse of how RNA and DNA works. In this article, they talk about specifics on how genes can make a difference on people's appearance and we all know that genes are usually permanent. But now, we know that some genes can actually be controlled.

James

Park, Alice. Can Exercise Overcome Genes?. Yahoo News.Tuesday, September 9, 2008. Wednesday, September 10, 2008. http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080909/hl_time/canexerciseovercomegenes;_ylt=Al6ebgxzdkzPrxuYttof9zKJhMgF

I thought this article was very interesting because, every time I hear that I should exercise, I usually just ignored it, because I didn’t really understand why I had to. However, now I know that enough exercise, can prevent me from being obese even if I have two copies of the heavy FTO gene. It is pretty obvious that exercise prevents you from being obese, but in the other hand it is amazing that people discover these facts related to biology. This simple trick, exercise, can help lots of people with one or more copies of the heavy FTO gene, who think they are obese. Therefore, I hope lazy people like me, would try to exercise a bit more for their health. Jody Kang
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kyuree Kang

RNA 'Snippets' Play Big Role In Blood Vessel Formation, Yale Scientists Find.

Basically, this article talks about what scientists in Yale University found about small snippets of RNA, called microRNAs. According to the scientists’ research, microRNAs are extremely important and essential for the formation of blood vessel. By this finding, now, people can gain lots of benefits. Firstly, this finding would help to find other ways to detect diseases such as cancer and stroke. Another way it benefits is that these small RNAs might help the growth of blood vessels when needed. Furthermore, microRNAs can contribute to make new cancer therapies.

For me, this was an interesting article because what the scientists at Yale University had found could actually make a progress to finding new remedies for cancer. Until now, people who got cancer mostly died, except some cases where they found their symptoms early at the first place. Also, some of my family members had died in cancer, so I know how it feels like when someone had died of cancer. Thus, if the scientists could work out something more with further discoveries related to these tiny snippets of RNA, then the number of people suffering from cancer and people suffering from their passed away families would decrease a lot. Moreover, before I read this article, all I knew about RNA was that it gets genetic information from DNA and helps a organism to reproduce. However, after reading this news, I learned that RNA actually does more than just working as a part of reproduction process, and also RNA is a critical thing to the formation of blood vessels. Therefore, this article was very interesting.

During the last couple of weeks, our class had talked about cell membrane structures and the origins of life. While we were learning about these, we also learned about RNA, and why RNA is the origin of the heredity. Since this article talks about many different things about RNA snippets, such as the fact that RNA snippets can be helpful to find new ways to diagnose diseases and therapies for cancer, it would help us to have more background knowledge when we later on learn more about it.

Reference information: Sessa, William C. RNA 'Snippets' Play Big Role In Blood Vessel Formation, Yale Scientists Find. Medical News Today. September 9, 2008. September 10, 2008. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/120763.php

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Japan's stem-cell pioneer grapples with pressure of success
Posted on September 10, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080910/sc_afp/healthstemcellsjapanhongkongscienceprize

This article is about Yamanaka, who changed his occupation from surgen to stem-cell researcher. This Japanese scientist who succeeded with producing stem-cells, which are used for reparing damaged cells, was awarded with Shaw Prize, because his successful research might be able to cure a patient's extreme damage on their skin or organs. This article also mentions about the first scientist who cloned a sheep, Dolly, who changed his majors from cloning to stem-cell research after this discovery.
This is about a Japanese scientist who had a new discovery. I am a Japanese so I was convinced by this article. Also, the specific reason of being interested in this article is that these stem-cells can cure people with extreme damage on their skin and organs. Also, this is interesting because it mentions that they are actually using these cells but aren't sure about the result after five years.
We watched a dacumentary video which is about cells during biology class. The video was about a thin layer of bacterias or cells that can repair damaged cells. I think that these stem-cells are actually similar or same as those. Therefore, i chose this because of this reason.
As refrence information, stem cells are found in multi-cellular organisms. They can reproduce them selves through FISSION in extreme speed and amounts. It also differenitates into many types of cells.

Written by masakazu

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Chloroplasts - Show me the Green

The article is about chloroplast. They are only found in plants and protists. Plant converts energy from the sun to create sugar and the byproduct of that process is oxygen. They use a process called photosynthesis to get the job done. In a chloroplast, stroma is the area inside where reactions occur and create sugar. There are chlorophyll molecules on the thylakoids surface which uses energy from the sun to combine carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). The molecular reactions create sugar and oxygen (O2). Plants and animals then use the sugars (glucose) for food and energy. We also use the oxygen from that process to breathe.

I found interest in this article because we get to know what’s inside a chloroplast and how the process works to made oxygen and sugar in a plant.

How is it related to class? Because we’re studying about the origin of life on Earth and chloroplasts is one of many cells that helps create most of the cells on Earth today.

Here’s the link: http://www.biology4kids.com/files/cell_chloroplast.html

Sep 11 08
Vivian nguyen

SSIS Biology Home

Mr.Mac — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:30:17 CDT

Welcome everyone! Thanks so much for your help in exploring the uses of the "wiki"! I am very excited about the opportunities this may bring us as a class and hope very much that it will be helpful for your studies. The goal of this wiki is to provide an alternate platform for course material that can easily be accessed from home, as well as to provide each of you with an opportunity to learn from each other in order to be as successful as possible in your biology course.

Activity #1:

"Biology In The News"

Biology is the study of the world around us; and as a result, biology related issues are always making the news. Below you will find links to "biology in the news" (although students are welcome to use other sources to find articles of interest - so long as they are related to biology). Throughout the semester, students will be assigned specific days on which they must either review an aritcle, or respond to a classmate's review (please scroll down to see the schedule). Each review must include; the title of the article; what the article is about; why the article is interesting; how the article is related to class; and the reference information for the article. Each response is a student's opportunity to express their thoughts and opinions about the biological issue (remember, students are not to criticize other students). All reviews and responses must be posted before 9:00 pm on the Wednesday identified in the schedule found below. Don't forget to include your name at the end of your review/response.

Reviews will be graded based on completion of the tasks identified in the paragraph above, as well as using the "organization" and "sentence fluency" criteria from the 6 + 1 Writing Traits rubric.

Criteria	Level 4 (A)	Level 3 (B)	Level 2 (C)	Level 1 (D)
Completion /5	Review includes all of; article title; what it is about; why it is interesting; how it is related to class; and reference information.	Review includes 4 of the 5 requirements identified in Level 4..	Review includes 3 of the 5 requirements identified in Level 4.	Review includes only 2 of 5 requirements identified in Level 4.
Organization /5	All requirements (title, description, interest, relation to class, and reference), are clear and separate for ease of reading.	Most requirements (as identified in Level 4), are clear and separate for ease of reading.	Some requirements (as identified in Level 4), are clear and separate, while others are blended and difficult to follow.	Few requirements (as identified in Level 4), are clear or separate; most are blended making it difficult for the reader to identify the sections.
Sentence Fluency /5	It has an easy flow and rhythm, using a variety of sentence types to draw the reader to key points.	It sounds natural, has some variety of sentence type and has few weaknesses.	It is somewhat choppy with some weakness in sentence structure and as a result may slow the reader.	It is quite choppy with weak sentence structure but can still be read, although with some difficulty.

Total = /15

Responses will be graded based on the "ideas and content" and "word choice" criteria from the 6 + 1 Writing Traits rubric.

Criteria	Level 4 (A)	Level 3 (B)	Level 2 (C)	Level 1 (D)
Ideas and Content /5	Ideas are detailed and focus is clearly related to the review.	Ideas are somewhat detailed and focus is mainly related to the review.	Ideas are somewhat detailed but the focus strays from the review.	Ideas are slightly detailed and the focus is not clearly related to the review.
Word Choice /5	Response is original and the chosen vocabulary is rich making it more interesting for the reader.	Response is mainly original and the chosen vocabulary is functional making it somewhat interesting to read.	Response is accurate and the vocabulary is appropriate making it satisfactory to read.	Response is somewhat accurate due to a weak vocabulary choice making it somewhat confusing.

Total = /10

Schedule: Semester 1

Date	Reviewers			Date	Responders
Date	Bio.C	Bio.D	Bio.H	Date	Bio.C	Bio.D	Bio.H
Sept. 11, 2008	Kim, Ana, Joey, Joanne, Joon Ho, Nam, Nick, Wendy, Anh	Minh, Yen, Chang Duck, Kun Ho, Huy, Phuong Anh, Tracie, Quyen, Ray	Edwina, Masa, Daniel, Nic, Min Joo, Vivian, James, Joseph, Kyu Ree	Sept. 17, 2008	Brittany, Jung Yun, Kristin, Stacie, Joon Won, Leon, Hanh, Hannah	Simon, Bo Ra, Jessie, Ashley, Mike, T, Karla, Jasmine	Ian, Myung Chan, Jody, Sang Hyeok, Franny, Catherine, Ni, Andy, Jacob
Sept. 24, 2008	Brittany, Jung Yun, Kristin, Stacie, Joon Won, Leon, Hanh, Hannah	Simon, Bo Ra, Jessie, Ashley, Mike, T, Karla, Jasmine	Ian, Myung Chan, Jody, Sang Hyeok, Franny, Catherine, Ni, Andy, Jacob	Oct. 01, 2008	Kim, Ana, Joey, Joanne, Joon Ho, Nam, Nick, Wendy, Anh	Minh, Yen, Chang Duck, Kun Ho, Huy, Phuong Anh, Tracie, Quyen, Ray	Edwina, Masa, Daniel, Nic, Min Joo, Vivian, James, Joseph, Kyu Ree
Oct. 08, 2008	Kim, Brittany, Joey, Kristin, Joon Ho, Joon Won, Nick, Hanh, Anh	Minh, Simon, Chang Duck, Jessie, Huy, Mike, Tracie, Karla, Ray	Edwina, Ian, Daniel, Jody, Min Joo, Franny, James, Ni, Kyu Ree, Jacob	Oct. 15, 2008	Ana, Jung Yun, Joanne, Stacie, Nam, Leon, Wendy, Hannah	Yen, Bo Ra, Kun Ho, Ashley, Phuong Anh, T, Quyen, Jasmine	Masa, Myung Chan, Nic, Sang Hyeok, Vivian, Catherine, Joseph, Andy
Oct. 29, 2008	Ana, Jung Yun, Joanne, Stacie, Nam, Leon, Wendy, Hannah	Yen, Bo Ra, Kun Ho, Ashley, Phuong Anh, T, Quyen, Jasmine	Masa, Myung Chan, Nic, Sang Hyeok, Vivian, Catherine, Joseph, Andy	Nov. 05, 2008	Kim, Brittany, Joey, Kristin, Joon Ho, Joon Won, Nick, Hanh, Anh	Minh, Simon, Chang Duck, Jessie, Huy, Mike, Tracie, Karla, Ray	Edwina, Ian, Daniel, Jody, Min Joo, Franny, James, Ni, Kyu Ree, Jacob
Nov. 12, 2008	Kim, Ana, Jung Yun, Joey, Joon Ho, Nam, Leon, Nick, Anh	Minh, Yen, Bo Ra, Chang Duck, Huy, Phuong Anh, T, Tracie, Ray	Edwina, Masa, Myung Chan, Daniel, Min Joo, Vivian, Catherine, James, Kyu Ree	Nov. 19, 2008	Brittany, Kristin, Joanne, Stacie, Joon Won, Hanh, Wendy, Hannah	Simon, Jessie, Kun Ho, Ashley, Mike, Karla, Quyen, Jasmine	Ian, Jody, Nic, Sang Hyeok, Franny, Ni, Joseph, Andy, Jacob
Nov. 26, 2008	Brittany, Kristin, Joanne, Stacie, Joon Won, Hanh, Wendy, Hannah	Simon, Jessie, Kun Ho, Ashley, Mike, Karla, Quyen, Jasmine	Ian, Jody, Nic, Sang Hyeok, Franny, Ni, Joseph, Andy, Jacob	Dec. 03, 2008	Kim, Ana, Jung Yun, Joey, Joon Ho, Nam, Leon, Nick, Anh	Minh, Yen, Bo Ra, Chang Duck, Huy, Phuong Anh, T, Tracie, Ray	Edwina, Masa, Myung Chan, Daniel, Min Joo, Vivian, Catherine, James, Kyu Ree

Specialized Repiratory Systems (E)

tina_huynh — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:03:20 CDT

Skin Respiration

As we learned, the followings are three essential factors for gas exchange to take place:
- Long, thin surface area
- Moist environment
- Transport systems
Skin respiration means breathing through the skin. It is a special respiratory system which occurs in many organisms such as sea cucumber, snake, sea horse, star fish…These animal have to rely their skin as a respiratory organ because they have low metabolic rate.
Our group will explain how the three requirement of gas exchange take place in skin respiratory

Moist environment
As we all notice, the examples given above for skin respiratory organs are often live in water or wet environment like soil. External systems play an important role to these living organisms. They must remain moist at all the time in order for gas exchange to happen. These animals use its moist outer skin as their respiratory organ, because they do not have much respiratory surface as lungs or gills.

An example is earthworms, they have to stay in the soil during the day when air is dry

Transport system

Worms used cilia on their skin for better water movement into their body.

In their body,they have capillaries, which are the thin walled blood vessels. This will help to enable more efficient diffusion. The blood cell carries oxygen throughout the body.As seen in the picture on right, the blood vessels are located closely to the skin surface, which will help them to diffuse with ease.

AAARespirel; Peter Fauth; Hartwick College, April, 18, 2008
users.hartwick.edu/fauthp/AAARespireI.ppt

worms.jpg, April, 16, 2008
://www.worldbook.com/wb/worldbook/cybercamp/assets/images/worm.jpg

AAARespirel; Peter Fauth; Hartwick College, April, 18, 2008

Respiratory System; April 18, 2008
http://faculty.clintoncc.suny.edu/faculty/michael.gregory/files/Bio%20102/Bio%20102%20lectures/Respiratory%20System/respirat.htm

Large,thin surface area
Some Annelids, amphibians, mollusks, etc don't have any respiration organs.They have the external system which diffuse oxygen into their body. Without using internal respiration , to occur an efficient gas exchange. These animals survival are based on their long and thin surface of their skin. Amphibians eliminates carbon dioxide faster through their skin than through their lungs.Also, some animals have lots of legs to maximize the surface area over limited volume.

Spiny-Seahorse-300.gif; April 18, 2008
http://www.linnean.org/fileadmin/images/Merchandise/Spiny-Seahorse-300.gif

Respiratory System , April 16, 2008
http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookRespsys.html#Diseases%20of%20the%20Respiratory%20Sys

Rate of Diffusion

Thin skin
Sea_cucumber.jpg; April 18, 2008
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/Sea_cucumber.jpg

Lots of legs

f1.gif; April 18, 2008
http://z.about.com/d/composite/1/0/D/6/f1.gif

Fick's law of diffusion stated that rate of diffusion increases as the area of respiratory surface, increases difference of concentration on either side of respiratory surface, or decreases distance over which gas must travel.
Some animals have lots of legs in order to increase surface area of respiratory surface or have thin skin to decrease distance that gas must travel.
This law has simply applied to many skin respiratory organism, which help them to "breath" better

AAARespirel; Peter Fauth; Hartwick College, April, 18, 2008
users.hartwick.edu/fauthp/AAARespireI.ppt

OTHER EXAMPLES Most amphibians are found to have skin respiration system such as frogs and toads, five examples are shown in the pictures below.

Specie which uses coetaneous respiration (skin respiration) is frog. There are total of three respiratory surfaces which means that they can breathe through three different areas of its body. When frogs are in a wet environment, they use their skin to exchange gases with the environment around them. There are also amphibians such as Caecilian and Typhlonectes, which are usually mistaken to be reptile by their appearances. Both these species have lungs, and also use lung respiration, however, only for a brief period of time.
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/images/animal-kingdom/amphibians/examples-amphibians_2.jpg
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080310104222AAkVfeE
Tracheal Respiration

Gases exchange is very important for the living things. Like human, we breath from our mouth and nose, however; for insects, they exchange respiratory gases throught their tracheal tubes by using the diffusion. The tube is very important because it helps decreasing the diameter or the surface area. Insects also have air sacs because they help reserving air inside their bodies. When the cilmate gets too hot and they can't take much oxygen in, those air will be used as temporary air supply.

http://www.carolguze.com/images/organsystems/insectexch.gif

Respiratory System

In Tracheal Respiration, they should obtain O2 (oxygen) from their environment to survive. When they get oxygen inside, oxygen and hydrogen react each other and produce water, then releases energy that captured ATP in the phosphate bond.
The respiratory system transports sufficient oxygen into the cells and removes carbon dioxide that is made as a waste product of cellular respiration. Tracheal system is a complex network of tubes that transports oxygen to every cell of body. Air enters the body through valve-like openings. When it opens and closes, it controls moisture levels within the body. After air passes through, air enters the tracheal trunk. then diffuses throughout a complex branching network of tracheal tubes that divides into smaller diameter. At the end of each tracheal branch, tracheole, a special cell, provides a thin, moist interface for the gas exchange between air and a living cell. In tracheal tube, oxygen first dissolves in the liquid, then diffuses into cytoplasm. While oxygen dissolves in, carbon dioxide diffuses out of the cell(body) through the tracheal system.

INSECTS DON'T BREATHE WITH LUNGS!

What Is Tracheal? & How does Trachea work? Tracheal respiration is used by for example insect. According to biology class, Trachea is branching tables within the body providing a gas exchange surface. In order to live, they have to attain O2 from their environment; they transfer oxygen to cells and carbon away from the cell.
How does Tracheal Respiration benifit the three conditon of Gas exchange? Tracheal respiration benefit the three condition of gas exchange by branching the tracheae it make the surface large or/and thin. Spiracles or internalized, it helps make the environment moist. Finally the tracheae contact cells to transport system.
Ann Ha

http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/classes/bio100/Lectures/Lect16/lect16.html
Biology 100: General Biology Dr. Lee McClenaghan
April 17

Just like most other living organisms, insects must obtain oxygen from their environments into their body and bloodstream in order to survive. Just like other animals, insects use reactions like glycolysis, the Kreb’s cycle, and the electron transport system to change their food into energy known as ATP. To release the energy provided by the ATP, oxygen atoms in the insect’s body react with hydrogen to create water.
Unlike small insects, that can get oxygen in and carbon dioxide out of their bodies, large insects sometimes need to use ventilation in their tracheal system when too active or under stress. Larger insects are able to use ventilation by closing certain spiracles and closing others while using the muscles to increase and decrease their body volumes. –Hélène Decamps

Respiratory System

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/cours...

All insects are aerobic organisms -- they must obtain oxygen (O2) from their environment in order to survive. &#160 They use the same metabolic reactions as other animals (glycolysis, Kreb\'s cycle, and the electron transport system) to convert nutrients (e.g. ...

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/tutorial/respire.html

Gill Respiration
Gill Respiration is found in a variety number of animal groups, but usually in aquatic animals. The type of animal groups are amphibians (Ex. Frog), fish(Ex. Salmon, Gold Fish), annelids (Ex. Earthworms, Leeches, Polychetes), and arthropods including some terrestrial animals (Ex. Shrimp, Crab).
The amount of oxygen in water is only 1/20 comparing to the amount of oxygen contained in the same volume of air. Therefore what the gill does is it extracts oxygen from water and excretes carbon dioxide. Gill is a row of gill filaments, and it is located between the fish's mouth and cheek. When a fish swims, it always opens and closes its mouth constantly to get water into their mouth, then to the gill in order to get oxygen. The water flows through the gill filaments, and the oxygen is diffused from the water into the bloodstream, and the carbon dioxide diffuses from the bloodstream into the water. After that, the water flows out through the gill split(an opening at the back of the cheek cavity) to the outside.
To make the diffusion more efficient, water has to flow the opposite direction as the blood's flow, and it's called counter current flow.

.:Structure of gill:.

http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_audesirk_bloe_7/17/4460/1142010.cw/index.html

io.uwinnipeg.ca/~simmons/lb8pg10.htm http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/Biology/Harbour/SPECIES/PERCH/RESOURCE/GILL.JPG

http://bio-isu.tripod.com/id3.html

How fish breathe?

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/Grzimek_fish/structure_function/v04_id131_con_gillfun.jpg

The respiratory system, by M.J. Farabee, Text © 1992, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, April 16, 2008,
< http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookRESPSYS.html >
Biology-principles & explorations-, copyright © 2001 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, printed in the United States of Americas, April 16, 2008

Counter Current Flow
When water flows over the gills maximized by the counter current flow, the blood flows in the opposite direction of the water by gill capillaries where gases are exchanged. Oxygen is carried by bloods to other parts of body, and carbon dioxide is passed from the blood through the gill into water. In the counter current flow, the oxygen diffuse from the water to the blood because of concentration gradient, and the carbon dioxide diffuse from the blood to the water, and it will keep diffusing like that, and the fish will get enough the oxygen it needs.
What if it is Con Current Flow?
But what'll happen if it is the concurrent flow? When the blood flow and water flow is same directions, there's still the diffusion of oxygen from the water to blood and carbon dioxide from blood to water. HOWEVER, it will stop when the concentration gradient of oxygen in the blood is higher than the concentration gradient of oxygen in the water. According to the concentration gradient, it that can lead to the problem that the oxygen diffuse to the water and go out of the fish. And it's not good for the health of the fish. The diagram below help you take a better look about the concurrent flow and counter current flow.

Wikipedia. January 4th / 08. Countercurrent Exchange. April 18th / 08
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countercurrent_flow

Here are more specific explantion of each essential factors of gill respiration

Large, Thin Surface Area - The larger the surface area is, the more air the fish can get. Many gill filaments located on the gill allows more gas exchange to happen. Gill filaments have very thin membranes and there are many small folds on each filament's surface that maximizes the surface area, which allows oxygen and carbon dioxide to diffuse easily. The surface area of the gill is commonly 10 to 60 times larger than the surface area of the fish's whole body.
Moist Environment - The moist enivronment prevents the respiratory organ from dryness and helps diffusion to occur more easily. Fish usually live in water or other moist areas. This aquatous environment also stores the amount of oxygen that fish need.
Transport System - By diffusion, there is about 0.1 seconds to diffuse the oxygen through a small cell, and for a big cell, it takes about 10 seconds. According to this statistical information, it would take a very long time to transfer the oxygen through the whole body just by diffusion, so the transport system is really essential. In fish's respiration system, blood is the transport system. Blood cells carry oxygen to the other organs and brings carbon dioxide away into the water.

Fish Respiration, April 17, 2008, < http://bio-isu.tripod.com/id3.html >

Gas Exchange and Specialized Respiratory Systems, by Mr. Mac, April 2, 2008, April 17, 2008

< https://www.edline.net/files/c4eea00364c447b23745a49013852ec4/1_PP1_Gas_Exchange_and_Specialized_Respiratory_Systems.ppt >

Lung Respiration

The lung is one of the important respiratory organs in air-breathing creatures, such as amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds and mammals. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located in the chest on either side of the heart. Their most important function is to transport oxygen from the air out side of the body into the blood cells, and to release CO2 from the blood cells to outside of the body. This exchange of gases is made in the mosaic of specialized cells that form millions of tiny, exceptionally thin-walled air sacs called alveoli.

Lung. 2008-04-17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung

A large, thin surface - ALVEOLI
A moist environment - INTERNAL SYSTMEM
A transport system - BLOOD

Large, Thin Surface

The lung's volume is relatively small comparing to the system it needs to support. So in order to have enough surface area for gas exchange, the lung house hundred millions of tiny, exceptionally thin-walled air sacs called alveoli. The alveoli itself consists of some spherical bubble called alveolar sacs. All of them are hollow, providing an impressive amount of surface area of about 80 square meters (about the size of a tennis court) for a volume of about 4 litters (as for adult human). Gases are exchanged by diffusion through the thin walls of the alveoli and into the many tiny blood vessals tightly warped arround the alveoli.

Transport System

Blood carries oxygen from lung to the cells and carbon dioxide from cells to the lung. Air through all the way from the upper respiratory system, bronchi, and bronchioles comes to the alveoli and diffuses into the blood vessels. Once in the bloodstream, this oxygen-rich blood moves back to the heart, which pumps it through the arteries to oxygen-hungry parts of the body, and moves into the cells.

Lung Structure and Function.Apr.16
http://www.ort-inc.com/lung_02.html

Dr Nia Whiteley. BSC1017 Ffisioleg Ddynol (Biofeddygol). Apr.16http://biology.bangor.ac.uk/images/bsx1009/fig15-3

Specialized Respiratory Systems (A)

julia917 — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:29:32 CDT

Skin Respiration

What Is Skin Respiration? Skin Respiration simply means the organism using their skin as the gas exchange surface, or in another word to say, the animals “breathe” through their skin.

- The main organism using the Skin Respiration system is usually the one that easily loses a lot of water from its body, so that skin of these organisms is always wet. To stop their bodies from drying out, they must live in a moist environment. In addition, animals, those use the Skin Respiration system, may have a very thin skin which allows gases to pass through their skin easily.
- Example of organisms those using Skin Respiration system are: Annelids (Earthworm), sea cucumber, sea stars, sea horse…

+Let's go a little bit more detail about Skin Respiration system:

- As we know blood helps to transport the oxygen through out all the cells in the body as well as bringing the carbon dioxide out the body. Therefore, Skin Respiration system oganisms need to have their blood vessels moving close to the skin so that the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from the blood by diffusion is easier. The oxygen and the carbon dioxide disolve into the topmost slimy layer where the gas exchange actually takes place. For example the earthworm diagram below has its blood vessels stay under the skin.

"Earthworms", © Merriam-Webster Inc., 2006, April 18, 2008, http://student.britannica.com/eb/art-70905/Body-plan-of-an-earthworm
[note: this picture has been edited]

Requirement of Gas Exchange and How does Skin Respiration satisfy the requirement?

As we have learned, the Gas Exchange only occurs in organisms if the following three conditions are met:
1. A large, thin surface

They use their entire body (which is long and skinny) for oxygen absorption and carbon dioxide removal. The blood stream itself is close to the surface so that the oxygen and carbon dioxide have easy access from the skin to the body. These characteristics helps the organism to maximizing Surface Area and Volume ration.

2. A moist environment

The organism either lives in water (example: sea star, sea horse, sea cucumber) or they live underground when on land (example: earthworm). Both the water environment and soil environment (which provided when dew and rain gets trapped underground), satisfy the moist environment's requirment.

3. A transport system

They use blood as the transport system to carry oxygen throughout the cells and bring carbon dioxide back out.

The picture below shows a simple process of Oxygen absorption and Carbon dioxide removal in a earthworm's body.
*Note: Since a worm is more than a few cells thick, diffusion is not fast enough.

(picture was drawn by A La Kim)

[The Skin Respiration Organisms]

However, the four specialized respiratory surfaces are: skin, trachea, gills, and lungs. Let’s review the “skin respiration.”

“The organisms that use skin respiration use their skin as the gas exchange surface; they breathe through their skins.
They need three conditions, which are:
1. These organisms live in a moist environment.
- their body looses water very easily
2. These respiration organisms have thin and long body.
- the thin skins help the gases pass through their skin easily;
their skinny and long body helps to remove the carbon dioxide and carry in the oxygen.
3. The transport system – they use blood vessels to carry the oxygen (IN) and the carbon dioxide (OUT).

**** Here are some examples of organisms that use skin respiration system.

Amphibians – they use skin respiratory system.

Ex.). Annelids (Earthworm), sea cucumber, sea star, sea horse…

Frog: sends out 2.5 times more carbon dioxide pass faster through their skin.

Fish: our humans pass only 1 percent of the carbon dioxide through our skin, but the fish passes 60 percent of the oxygen through their skin.

Worms: use skin as a gas exchange surface. They have very thin skin.

Respiration System”, @ Wikipedia, @ April, 16, 2008,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/respirationsystem

"Earthworms", © Merriam-Webster Inc., 2006, @ April 16, 2008,
http://student.britannica.com/eb/art-70905/Body-plan-of-an-earthworm

[Picture]
"Fish” Copyright @1998-2007 Kidport, @ April 17, 2008
http://www.kidport.com/RefLib/Science/Animals/Images/Fish.JPG

"Worm” Posted by Stuart on October 17, 2006 5:26 P.M. @ April 16, 2008
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/skin1/images/red-wiggler-worm.jpg

"Frog” @ April. 17. 2008
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/biog105/labs/deuts/media/frog2.jpg

Tracheal Respiration

WHAT IF AN ORGANISM DOESN'T HAVE A LUNG, CAN IT BREATHE AND BE ALIVE?
OF COURSE IT IS!! INSECT DOESN'T HAVE A LUNG BUT IT CAN BREATHE BY THIS !!!

TRACHEA is a common term for an airway which respiratory air transport takes place in organisms. It is commonly known as the windpipe, the trachea extends between larynx and bronchi. Trachea is a stiff structure formed of rings of cartilage to aid keep the airways open, it is lined up with mucus membranes so it could add moisture to air as it goes through the trachea. The trachea is lined with cilia and it sweeps up mucus and small particles back up into the airway. The trachea which is in the human is the airway of oxygen and carbon dioxide from the throat to the lungs. However, tracheal respiration doesn't happen in human's body. Tracheal respiration takes place in insect which has no lung such as beetle, grasshopper, and bee.

What Is Tracheal Respiration?

http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/lifescience/GeneralBiology/Physiology/RespiratorySystem/MethodsRespiration/insectexch.gif

See diagram on the right side :
The tracheae, which are thin pipes, spread out from the spiracles to reach the whole body,
with the smallest tracheoles contacting single muscle cells individually. In most insects the
tracheae are all linked through a series of longitudinal pipes called trunks and many smaller
connections

www.earthlife.net/insects/anatomy.html

Tracheal respiratory system is responsible for supplying sufficient oxygen to body cells and for removing carbon dioxide (CO2) that is regard as a waste product of cellular respiration. For instance, grasshopper has many spiracles which are holes on its skin. The spiracles are not always open, it can be closed whenever neccesary. The spiracles are valve that open and close to prevent excessive water loss. One spiracle is connected with trachea and trachea ends with many air sacs. The oxygen goes into the body through spiracles and trachea. As oxygen pass through the trachea, many thin hair in trachea clean the dusts that are contained in oxygen. The oxygen moves along trachea tube and reaches at the air sac. When the oxygen arrives at the air sacs, it diffuses into the blood and carbon dioxide diffuses out from the blood. On the other hand, carbon dioxide which diffuses out of the blood on the airsac goes to exterior of body through trachea.

=

http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~simmons/images/lb7fig8.gif http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/975/15004772.JPG

The Principle Of Gas Exchange in tracheal respiration is concentration gradient of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The gases always diffuse from a area of high concentration to a area of low concentration. If two substances has similar or same concentration gradient, the gases diffuse equally between two substances, so there is no change of concentration gradient. In tracheal respiration, when the oxygen goes into the air sacs through trachea, air sacs has more oxygen than blood vessels. It means airsac has higher concentration than the blood. Therefore, the oxygen diffuse into the blood vessels from airsac because of concentration gradient. On the other hand, as blood vessels has more oxygen, the concentration gradient of carbon dioxide in blood becomes lower than air sac. Therefore, carbon dioxide diffuses out from blood to airsac and goes out to the outside of the body through trachea.

concentration gradient	movements of oxygen and carbon dioxide
If the amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide in airsac are simmilar to the amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide in blood	Oxygen and carbon dioxide diffuse equally to either airsac or blood.
If the amount of oxygen in airsac is much greater than the amount of oxygen in blood	Oxygen diffuses into the blood because airsac has higher concentration gradient of oxygen than blood.
If the amount of carbon dioxide in blood is much greater than the amount of carbon dioxide in airsac	Carbon dioxide diffuses into the airsac because blood has higher concentration gradient of carbon dioxide than airsac.

The Three requirements for tracheal respiration :

1. Thin and large surface area :
As we know that, the more surface area the more air we can get. The insects have many spiracles and branching tubes within the body, so the branches can contact with more muscle cells. That's why more surface area can provide more air to the cells.

2. Moist environment :
Moist very important for respiratory system. It keeps the respiratory organ from ariditty and more efficience in gas exchange. Tracheal respiration takes place in the body. So the moist environment moisten this system.

3. Transport system :
Transport system helps gas exchange faster than diffusion itself. The air goes into the trachea directly, so trachea provides a direct path for air to cells.

GILL RESPIRATORY SYSTEM

Fishes are really smart, even though there is nothing special about this marine organism. One thing that makes it special is their respiratory system,which is their gills.Their gills make a wonderful job in exchanging gas with the environment to help maintain their existence.

How fish breathes under the water, and how effective the gill works in the Gas exchange.
Keep reading and explore the whole new, interesting knowledge with us.

http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookRESPSYS.html

..::What is gill?::..

Organisms in aquatic environment such as fishes uses complex organ for respiration which is known as gill. The gills are located just behind the fish's head on each side. Gills are special because their method of exchanging gases are efficient.

..::What are the gills made of?::..

The Gills are made of several gill filaments which looks like thin plate-like structure. This structure is important because it helps the gas exchange process faster and more of the process cold take place in the gill.

..::Gill structure::..

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/canwaters-eauxcan/bbb-lgb/creatures-animaux/images/gill.gif

pictures are taken from http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookRESPSYS.html

Gills,Wikipedia contributors, April 9,2008, April 10,2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill

..::Does gill satisfy 3 requirements for the respiratory system?::..

1.Surface Area - The gills contain several number of filaments for gas exchange which help maximize the surface. So more of the gas exchange can take place in the gill.

2.Moist environment - Organisms that have gills live in an aquatic environment

3.Transport system - Red blood cells are use as transport system for the gill respiration. It carries oxygen to cells and carries carbon dioxide out of the cell.

In gill Respiratory System, the water which has many oxygen (as the air to some other Systems) enters the gill through fish’s mouth, and flows out of the gill as it gets out the gill through the gill slits after the Gas exchange takes place.
Reference: Textbook Page 747

This Diagram shows how that happens:

http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/classes/bio100/Lectures/Lect16/Image266.gif

..::Counter-current Flow::..

When the water enters the gill, the blood flows following the counter current flow and through the process, they gain more 02 (oxygen) and less C02 (carbon-dioxide) along the concentration gradient.

These diagrams show how the Counter-Current Flow works in the gas exchange.

..::The Percentage the amount of 02 and C02 in the blood and in the water::..
(in the Counter-Current Flow)

We can see how the Counter-Current Flow works in the gas exchange process. When the blood reaches the gill, oxygen fills the blood and carbon dioxide start to diffuse out of the blood. This happens during the movement of the water come in contact with the gills in opposite direction. This helps maintain the concentration gradient between the blood and the water, in which the amount of oxygen in the water is always higher than in the blood, while the amount of carbon dioxide in the water is always lower than in the blood.

..::The Percentage the amount of 02 and C02 in the blood and in the water::..
(IF the current flow is in the same direction)

What if the flow is in the same path? As you can see in the diagram shown here, the concentration gradient will not be maintained and will reach to a certain point of equilibrium where oxygen in the water and the blood are equal to the carbon dioxide in the water and the blood. And they will stop exchange gas between blood and water. This is not really a good thing because it won’t provide enough oxygen for the fish efficiently.

Joe. "Countercurrent Exchange." Wikipedia. 4 Jan. 2008. 16 Apr. 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countercurrent_exchange>.

..::The diffusion of O2 and CO2 in the Counter-Current Flow::..

Recall
O2: Always diffuses into the blood due to the concentration gradient where the oxygen level in the blood is low. This is created in the Counter-Current Flow by the oppsite directions of the Blood and the water.

CO2: Always diffuses out of the blood due to the concentration gradient where the carbon dioxide levels are low outside the blood. This is also created in the Counter-Current Flow by the oppsite directions of the Blood and the water.

Interesting Fact to know

Trivia- the reason why sharks are constantly moving is because they need to provide a steady flow of water that contain enough oxygen to supply for the gills. Other than that, their gills are different from the normal fish because instead of having a hard cover for the gills which is useful for pushing out water out of the gills, they have several gill slits which is not really good at creating force over the flow.

Shark exploration, March 2005, April 16, 08 www.aqua.org/downloads/pdf/Sharks_March_2005.pdf

Lung Respiration

Introduction:

Every organism can't live without the air. Even we humans can't live without breathing. Do you know what is exactly happening to your lungs every time you breathe? Your lungs are working all the time even when you are sleeping and taking a rest. Ventilation is an important keyword to know before we actually get into the lung respiration. The ventilation is to oxygenate (blood) by exposure to air in the lungs or gills. And that’s what happening during the process of lung respiration.

The Structure of the Lungs:

"Lung Diseases." About.Com. 16 Apr. 2008 <http://lungdiseases.about.com/library/graphics/basic_lung_anatomy.bmp />
"Your Medical World." MedicaLook. 16 Apr. 2008 http://www.medicalook.com/diseases_images/lung-diseases1.jpg

The structure of lungs is a pair of big air sacs in the chest. They are a pair of sponge-like organs that contains the branches and bubbles with the air inside. Everything inside the lung includes the bubbles tends to increase the surface area. The lung that is located on the left side is slightly smaller than the one on the right because they have to share space with the heart (the left lung only has 2 lobes while the right has 3 lobes).

Basic Concept of Lung Respiration:

The lung respiration system is beneficial in mammals and some fishes. In mammals the two lungs are in the chest in the left or the right side of the heart. The main reason for lung respiration is so that oxygen can be inside the body while carbon-dioxide is out of the body. The alveoli is the “air sacs” in the lung and they make up the lungs. They are essential because they maximize the surface area.

"The Lungs" @ CancerLine.com © AstraZeneca 2004-2007
April 17, 2008
http://www.cancerline.com/CancerLinePAT/10250_26429_0_0_0.aspx?mid=117

"Anatomy of the Human Body" - "The Trachea and Bronchi" @ bartleby.com
April 17, 2008
http://www.bartleby.com/107/237.html

Gas Exchange (E)

Mr.Mac — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:50:56 CDT

Gas exchange is an essential mechanism for all living organisms. Animal-like organisms must have the ability to supply their cells with oxygen to drive cellular respiration as well as the ability to remove carbon dioxide produced by the same reaction. Plant-like organisms use a similar, but opposite, process of supplying their cells with carbon dioxide to drive photosynthesis while removing oxygen produced by the reaction.

In class, we have discussed how diffusion is important for gas exchange in unicellular (single-cell) organisms. Since cells are so small, the distance gases must travel is short enough for diffusion to be efficient. Beyond this, we examined the three requirements for gas exchange.

A large, thin surface - a large surface increases the amount of diffusion that may occur (more oxygen IN and more carbon dioxide OUT), and a thin surface reduces the distance over which gases must diffuse.
A moist environment - enables gases to dissolve, increasing the rate of diffusion through membranes.
A transport system - a means of moving gases to areas of need, and away from areas of excess.

Upon examination of a unicellular organism, we can identify how these three requirements were satisfied...

Large, Thin Surface

Unicelluar organisms depend on their cell membrane to provide a large, thin surface through which gas exchange may occur. Although the cell's surface area increases as the cell grows, so too does its internal volume. This 'scaling' results in a decreased surface area to volume ratio, thereby reducing the effeciency of diffusion. The diagram on the left illustrates the changes a cell undergoes as it grows, and the subsequent change that occurs when it divides. Not e the change in "surface-to-volume ratio" for the middle and right column.

Chen, P. 2005. Biology 1151: Principles of Biological Science. April.01, 2008.

http://bio1151.nicerweb.com/doc/class/bio1151/Locked/media/ch06/06_07SurfaceVolumeRatio_L.jpg.

Moist Environment

Unicellular organisms typically inhabit wet environments (e.g. ponds, soil, living hosts), which provides the necessary moisture. As was mentioned above, this moisture enables the gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide) to dissolve, which improves the ease by which they are able to diffuse through the cell membrane.

Garimella, U. 2004. Introduction to Biology 1. April.01,2008.

http://www2.volstate.edu/UGarimella/BIOL1010/BIOL1010lab_files/image005.jpg.

Gas Exchange (A)

Mr.Mac — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:43:05 CDT

Gas exchange is an essential mechanism for all living organisms. Animal-like organisms must have the ability to supply their cells with oxygen to drive cellular respiration as well as the ability to remove carbon dioxide produced by the same reaction. Plant-like organisms use a similar, but opposite, process of supplying their cells with carbon dioxide to drive photosynthesis while removing oxygen produced by the reaction.

A large, thin surface - a large surface increases the amount of diffusion that may occur (more oxygen IN and more carbon dioxide OUT), and a thin surface reduces the distance over which gases must diffuse.
A moist environment - enables gases to dissolve, increasing the rate of diffusion through membranes.
A transport system - a means of moving gases to areas of need, and away from areas of excess.

Upon examination of a unicellular organism, we can identify how these three requirements were satisfied...

Large, Thin Surface

http://bio1151.nicerweb.com/doc/class/bio1151/Locked/media/ch06/06_07SurfaceVolumeRatio_L.jpg.

Moist Environment

http://www2.volstate.edu/UGarimella/BIOL1010/BIOL1010lab_files/image005.jpg.