Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide

Biology                                                                                                       Michael Crawford

Current Events 2                       4/23/13

            This article was about the extreme weather that has been present recently in the world. It talked about how lately; there has been extreme weather throughout the world. There has always been extreme weather, but until recently there has not been as much extreme weather seen at the same time. As Omar Baddour put it, “ Each year we have extreme weather, but it’s unusual to have so many extreme events around the world at once.” Examples of these extreme weather events are seen all over the world such as the constant flooding in Britain in the recent 2000’s. The flooding in Britain has been so bad that one pub owner had his pub flooded eleven times in just two months. Also, in Australia, bush fires have been seen all over and the heat wave came after two of the country’s wetter years, which is strange that they came right after one another. The article also mentions extreme weather patterns in Northern Europe, Siberia, China, South America, and the Middle East. One thing that it also explains is that extreme weather isn’t only growing in frequency but in intensity. Extreme weather is becoming more dangerous and has resulted in deaths throughout the world.

            The topic of this article affects humanity gravely and worries me as a human. The topic that it is related to, global warming, is one of the most controversial and important topics of science at this time. There is so much that is said about our dangerous environmental conditions and this article talks about some of these conditions that should worry humanity. These conditions could occur anywhere and for that reason they affect everyone.

            I thought that this article was mostly written very well and was very interesting. The article talked about a topic, which interests me as well as most readers and gave information that interested me as well. The extreme weather example such as the one in Britain were all very interesting to read because of their oddness and irregularity. One thing that I think this article could’ve done better was I think it could’ve offered a reason for this extreme weather pattern that is occurring. It talked a lot about the pattern, but didn’t really explain why such a thing would happen. Also, after explaining a possible reason why it was happening, I would’ve liked to see a suggestion for helping stop these events because I believe that it is very important too. However, overall I think this article was interesting and well worth the read!

Works Cited

Janeiro., Sarah Lyall; Reporting Was Contributed By Jodi Rudoren From Jerusalem; Irit

            Pazner Garshowitz From Tzur Hadassah, Israel; Fares Akram From Gaza City,            

            Gaza;  Ellen Barry And Andrew Roth From Moscow; Ranya Kadri From            

            Amman, Jordan; Dan Levin From Harbin, China; Jim Yardley From New Delhi;            

            Anne Barnard From Beirut, Lebanon; Matt Siegel From Sydney, Australia; Scott            

            Sayare From Paris; And Simon Romero From Rio De. "Heat, Flood or Icy Cold,            

           

            Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide." The New York Times. The New York Times,            

            11 Jan. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.

            <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/science/earth/extreme-weather-grows-in-

            frequency-and-intensity-around-world.html?adxnnl=1>.

See-Through Mice Brain

Matthew Bettino                                                                                                        4/13/13

Biology Davies C

New technique gives see-through view into mouse brains

            I read an article that told of a new method scientists have discovered in the observation of the brains of mice. The new method is based around removing light-blocking fat molecules that surround the brains of mice. This new method allows scientists observe the brains circuitry in entirety. Before this new method was discovered, scientists had a surprisingly difficult time observing the brains of the mice they conducted tests on. Usually, a full or thin slice of brain is observed under a light microscope by researchers. However, the lipids in the brain scatter the light penetrating them, causing an unclear image. To overcome this blockage, Karl Deisseroth invented a new way to observe thin brain samples. First, the brain samples are soaked in a cocktail. When heated, the plastic-like substance stuck to everything except the fats in the brain. Once separated, the lipids are drained out. This leaves a clear, transparent brain. However, all of the important parts of the brain are left intact. This entire process is called CLARITY. Scientists are excited because they will be able to map out the entire long-distance connections of the brain. Also, scientists are hopeful that they will be able to use this method on other organs of test subjects. However, they are a bit concerned with the use of Clarity on other organs because lipids play more important roles in these organs.

            This breakthrough in the observation of mice shows obvious importance towards science. This ability to remove the light-blocking lipids from the samples of the brains of mice allows scientists to make more detailed and accurate observations in their work. The clearer brain image will also allow scientists to map out an image of how the inner circuitry of the brain of an animal functions. Even though this aspect is very interesting, there is a more important and broad importance of Clarity. Mice are used in many lab tests. These tests include the study of vaccinations, medications and other cures for high profile diseases in our society. Like Mrs. Davies told us in class, she and her lab partners use rats and mice in their studies of cancer. These mice are under close observation, and are the sole data of many of these tests. Scientists believe that they may be able to use Clarity or other similar methods to clarify the image of other organs in mice under a microscope. If these organs were able to be viewed more precisely, the tests of life saving medications and vaccinations could see improved accuracy. Improved accuracy only leads to better data. Better data leads to better end results. If the idea of Clarity could be applied to other lab tests on mice, scientists could improve the disease preventing and curing medications already in existence. Also, there is a possibility of some kind of cure being found.

            I thought this article was very well written. The author got to the point right off the bat, explaining how Clarity works and how it is important to the scientific world. However, there are two things that I believe the author could have added to make this article even better. First, I would have liked to know a bit more about the direct and specific impact of Clarity. The author did say it would help scientists map out a better circuitry image of the brain of a mouse but why is that important? Also, I would have liked to know a bit more background about the topic at hand. The author gave the reader no idea of what a pre-Clarity brain sample would have looked like. This would have enhanced the readers understanding of why Clarity is so important to science. However, with these two comments aside, I did find the article to be both informative and interesting. The article really showed me how such small breakthroughs in science can have such a profound influence on our society.

"New Technique Gives See-through View into Mouse Brains | Genes & Cells | Science News." New Technique Gives See-through View into Mouse Brains | Genes & Cells | Science News. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. <http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349560/description/New_technique_gives_see-through_view_into_mouse_brains>.

Two Locally Extinct Sharks Revealed

Jack Braumuller                                                                                                          4/16/13

Two Locally Extinct Sharks Revealed                                               Core Bio Current Events

            In this article, the author writes about the discovery of shark tooth weapons in the Gilbert Islands in the South Pacific, and how the discovery of these weapons led to the realization that certain shark species once lived in the surrounding water.

The islanders only used the teeth of certain types of sharks to make their weapons. Weapons were important because battles for land were frequent on the small  island. Of the approximately seventeen shark species whose teeth were used for weapons, two of the teeth were recognized as the teeth of species who were not known to have ever lived in the area. The spot fin and dusky sharks had never been known to live in the water surrounding the Gilbert Islands until the analysis of the weapons.

This discovery does not seem like a major or important discovery, but it allows scientists to better understand the wildlife in the Gilbert Islands area. If these sharks have gone extinct, why not others? Now scientists must find out why the spot fin and dusky sharks went extinct and how to keep other sharks from following suit. Shark populations grow very slowly and are difficult to control, but they are a key part of the habitat in the ocean and especially the food chain in a reef setting.

Overall, I liked the article just because it was on an interesting and exotic topic. My critique is that the way in which the teeth in the weapons was discovered was not given in great detail. I would like to know why scientists were analyzing the weapons in the first place.

Than, Ker. "Shark-Tooth Weapons Reveal "Lost" Shark Species." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 03 Apr. 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.

Silas White                                                                                                                                      4/15/13                  
Bio-C Block Davies

Citation: University of Michigan. "Building better blood vessels could advance tissue engineering."ScienceDaily, 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 5 Apr. 2013.
One of the major obstacles of growing human tissue is the difficulty of keeping the blood vessels that nourish them alive.  Andrew Putnam is a researcher at the University of Michigan, and he and his colleagues seek to find the solution to this problem.  He and his team believe research into building better blood vessels could lead to curing disease that affects the circulatory system, such as diabetes.  The most common reasons lab grown blood vessels fail is that they are unstable and leak blood.  Putnam demonstrated how adult stem cells could fix this problem.  Traditionally, researches have used and developed drug compounds that would signal existing vessels to grow into new tributaries, but other researchers including Putnam and the University of Maryland team are using a cell based method.  “This technique involves injecting cells within a scaffolding carrier near the spot where you want new capillaries to materialize. In Putnam's approach, they deliver endothelial cells, which make up the vessel lining and supporting cells. Their scaffolding carrier is fibrin, a protein in the human body that helps blood clot,” as directly stated in the article.  According to Putnam, this new process is as easy as injecting the cells and then in a few days new capillaries have grown.  Of course, it isn’t that simple.  While it is easy to grow capillaries using this new cell based method, the vessels don’t always thrive.  Of order to remedy this, or at least collect helpful data, Putnam designed an experiment where he mixed four different blood vessel solutions that were each identical to each other, but one had cells from lung fibroblasts, one had adult stem cells from fat, and one had adult stem cells from bone marrow.  The fourth solution acted as a negative control, and therefore had no supporting cells at all.  They injected these solutions into mice, and found that the control and lung fibroblast groups produced leaky misshapen capillaries, and both groups containing different types of adult stem cells produced healthy capillaries, that didn’t leak blood.  Putnam envisions that in the near future, doctors will be able to take these support cells from the patients themselves and use it to inject them where the new blood vessels are needed.

Finding out how to effectively grow human tissue is a very important field of biology because it can lead to curing disease and being able to easily perform organ transplant.  For example, doctors could perform kidney transplants without needing a kidney donor because they could just grow the kidney themselves.  Being able to grow blood vessels only is a far cry from being able to grow a fully functional organ, but it does bring them one step closer.  According to Putnam, we may even be able to cure diabetes using this research, and that would be very exciting news!

       One critic for this article is that it was hard to comprehend at times because it used a lot of scientific terms that are hard to comprehend for someone without an advanced understanding of biology, but I also understand it may be hard if not impossible to explain something this complicated without using a lot of language specific to biology.  For the most part though, the article was easy to follow.   This article seems promising and hopefully Putnam’s research is expanded on soon.
     

One Sinkhole Killed, and Many others opened, but experts counsel not to panic.

Ariel Sachtjen

Bio current event

Sinkholes seem to be occurring more and more everyday.  A sinkhole is a natural depression hole in the Earth’s surface cause by sudden and severe shifts in the earth’s surface. Sinkholes can vary in size from 3.3 feet to 2,000 feet both in diameter and depth. However, sinkholes usually only occur in large landscapes shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock. The most recent sink hole occurred in Waterloo, Illinois.  On the fourteenth of March, forty three year old Mark Mihal was golfing and got swallowed into a sinkhole. The sinkhole was no bigger than a Hula Hoop, but it was more than ten feet deep. Fortunately he was able to get out with the help of his friends, but dislocated his shoulder. Sinkholes don’t only happen in Illinois. In Massachusetts a seventeen foot sinkhole was discovered early  in the morning.  The most dramatic and alarming sinkhole appeared two weeks ago in Florida.  While a man was sleeping in his bed a giant sinkhole opened up under his home’s foundation.   Before he was able to react, the man and his bed were swallowed up into the sinkhole, which collapsed around him before help could arrive.  Despite these scary and dramatic examples, one scientist was quoted as saying “ I don’t believe we’re having anymore today that we’ve had before.”

Sinkholes have a huge affect on humanity. Scientist have been trying for years to figure out a way to determine when they happen. However, sinkholes usually occur in layers of soluble bedrock. Most of this bedrock is located around the southern states. It is very scary, and unusual that a sinkhole occurred in Massachusetts. It would be very rare that a sinkhole could occur in New York due to our rock soil composition.  Sink holes generally occur in urban areas like New York due to water main breaks or sewer collapses when old pipes give way. However, if i lived in Louisiana there would be a greater chance that there could be a sinkhole. Sinkholes can also form from human activity. For instance a collapse of abandoned mines. 

I thought this article was really interesting. However, I think the author could have elaborated more on the different sinkholes. The author would only state one or two facts about the different incidents of the sinkholes. I had to do outside research for the causes and the different occurrences.  I did think there were some good points to the article. For instance, I  thought it was interesting how the author interviewed a scientist. It was interesting hearing his point of view on the sinkholes, and how he thinks that they are not typically a big deal nor are they occurring more often than in past years.  

Wines, Michael. "One Sinkhole Killed, and Many Others Opened, but Experts Counsel Not to Panic." One Sinkhole Killed, and Many Others Opened, but Experts Counsel Not to Panic. N.p., 15 Mar. 2013. Web.

Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years

Gregory Mo
Block C - Davies
3/12/13

Global warming may seem to some people like just a little recycle symbol on your water bottle or some blue bins, but really global warming is a global event that is occurring as I write this. Everyday our environment becomes warmer and warmer and is at its warmest point today than it has been in the past four thousand years. It has been recently predicted that our earth is getting so warm that in the next few decades it will become the hottest temperature levels ever seen on earth. Unfortunately, even with the lowest possible human activity we could do, the temperature will still increase and be warmer than hottest time of the Holocene, or the modern geological era. Scientists like Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University and other earth scientists, have studied the global temperatures over the past nearly 10,000 years, nearly the whole Holocene  period. The climate change of earth is not all because of human as the temperature depends on the distribution of sunlight, the earths orbit and other events that have happened in the past and are out of our reach. However, we are definitely to blame for a portion of global warming. Interestingly, without humans the Northern Hemisphere probably would have frozen over in the next few thousand years but the large amounts of greenhouse gases from people might stop that. However, graphs of the climate change that scientists are studying show that the modern rise has recreated old temperatures and on the time scale, temperatures like in the Holocene time are expected to be felt again. Even though there are geological affects on global warming, humans still have their part. You should still recycle your bottles and take care to follow all of the rules we now have had hammered into us for years, such as walking when you can to avoid gas and using public transportation, because what you do, no matter how little for climate change, can still matter.

            Life is affected by global warming and how global temperatures are rising and are at their heights since thousands of years in the past is frightening. With high climate change comes struggle for life as plants and other types of species will be injured from the changes in temperature. Also mentioned in the article is how past climate changes have been steady and slow allowing different organisms to evolve and adjust to the new climates, but the new changes in temperature expected will be fast and put tension on numerous species including humans as we are a part of nature as well. Plants and animals we eat or use for food goods or other material might die out due to these severe changes in climate and ultimately there is no good to come out of these fast climate changes.

            I found the article to be fairly clear and concise which I praise. It is definitely hard for a scientist or someone who is familiar with a scientific study to put it into terms the every day person could understand as you need to put it into words that make sense and also make sure the topic makes sense. This article mostly did this well as I was able to follow along with the article and understand what it was talking abut but eventually the article moved too quickly and started jumping around with what it was talking about. An example of this is when it mentions the Northern Hemisphere and how it is destined to freeze over again, which seems like a very big topic someone could study for years and is just passed by in a few sentences. I feel like the author should have elaborated more on this as well as when the article mentioned at the end how life would be affected. I feel the biggest reason why most people would stop and read this article is because they know it will affect life and change our environment and this article really only mentions that as an afterthought which somewhat leaves the reader hanging.

Gillis, Justin. "Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years." The New York Times. N.p., 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/science/earth/global-temperatures-highest-in-4000-years-study-says.html?ref=science>.

The Allergy Buster: Can a Radical New Treatment Save Children With Severe Food Allergies?

Thernstrom, Melanie. "Can a Radical New Treatment Save Children With Severe Food

Allergies?" The New York Times.7 Mar. 2013. Web. 10 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/magazine/can-a-radical-new-treatment-save-children-with-severe-allergies.html?ref=science>.

           

Kim Yates Grosso is the mother of a girl named Tessa who has very severe allergies to milk, wheat, eggs, nuts, shellfish, and other foods. Her allergies are so serious that if she gets a drop of milk on her skin she will go into anaphylactic shock, an allergic-immune response that causes tissues in the body to swell until the windpipe closes, the lungs collapse, and the heart fails. Kim had a strict diet for Tessa that the whole family followed, but she decided it wasn’t fair, so only Kim and Tessa kept to the diet. Lunches were made from complete scratch and Tessa never spent the night at friends houses and didn’t like going to birthday parties because she felt unsafe. Kim got a job at the Menlo Park, California, school district so she could shadow Tessa throughout the day. Tessa came very close to dying due to her allergies in 2011 when she was seven years old because of rye toast and spring rolls that turned out to have traces of wheat. Instead of having hives, her body internally shuts down. A week later, Tessa began having panic attacks and stopped eating because she was so afraid of dying. Psychiatrists did not work and treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorders such as germ phobia was useless because the invisible traces can kill a severely allergic child. Kim realized that her daughter was not the only person with serious allergies.  However, Kari Nadeau, an M.D./Ph.D. and an associate professor of allergies and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, was giving a lecture at Stanford in 2009 that Kim heard about. She told Kim to continue strictly avoiding the foods Tessa is allergic to. However, Tessa’s case does not show much hope because her blood work showed high quantities of an immune protein called IgE, which is used to show how severe allergic responses are.

          The rate of food allergies has more than doubles over the last decade, with an estimated 5.9 million children and 2.3 million adults in the US. That is 1 in 13 children in every classroom, and this number may rise. Allergies are most common in three to five year olds, or nearly 1 in 10 preschoolers. Children don’t seem to be growing out of their allergies as fast as they have in the past. If Dr. Nadeau and other doctors can find a way to treat and overcome allergies, it will save many lives because many people die from allergic reactions when they do not know that they are coming in contact with small traces of whatever sets off a reaction. I do not personally have any allergies, but I know that when someone has allergies as severely as Tessa does, it is hard to relax, and you don’t get to have the same experiences as other children your age. If the method that Dr. Kari Nadeau is working on is constantly successful, other children with allergies can have more normal lives and kids with extremely severe allergies might be able to make their allergies less severe.

            I did not like how the title of this article made it sound like the article would say some examples of kids with allergies being cured and how only avoiding the foods that caused allergic reactions would help, especially because there are a few photos on the side that implies that a few kids have overcome their allergies. Another thing I did not like was that most of the article was about Tessa, with only the last two paragraphs out of seven about allergies in general and treating them. Otherwise Melanie Thernstrom did a very good job writing this article, describing the severity of Tessa’s allergies, and giving details of how the family coped with it.