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Showing posts from 2016

Misconceptions!!!

As Albert Einstein once said, “The greatest scientists are artists as well.” The work a scientist does in a laboratory is obviously quite different from the work an artist does in a studio, yet the premise is quite the same. In the scientific environment, a person is questioning. He or she is questioning what they do not understand in the natural world. Many people in the world believe that the work of scientists requires very little creativity or imagination, yet that is the whole basis of experimentation in the scientific community. When a scientist conducts an experiment, they are not looking for a yes or no answer to a question and when an experiment is conducting a scientist is not looking for an answer that they will be able to memorize. Instead, when an experiment is conducting a scientist or group of scientists are on a quest to better understand the natural world. Teachers often have students self-design their own labs in order to foster creativity in the classroom. By h
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Just me playing some Apples to Apples! Just a causal picture of a bear and me where the bear was...

Scavenger hunt fun!

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Picture with a mammal at a Natural History Museum! Spider's Alive Exhibit in Boston! Water-based amusement park! Three types of trees in my neighborhood! Experiencing the big wind at the weather discovery center! Sleeping under the stars with Allison! Holding five earth worms!
          Okay, this is definitely one of my favorite articles that I have read so far! How can it even be possible that creatures are living to be over 200 years old! It is also crazy that the one thing that could be killing off this shark is the changing temperatures of the Arctic Ocean. Not humans hunting them, not humans hunting the Greenland Shark's prey, but instead global warming. This global warming crisis could lead to changes in fishing practices and therefore a downward trend for these incredible creatures.           Easily the craziest part of this article in my opinion is the rate at which this shark grows and matures. First of all, a study has estimated that the Greenland Shark grows at less than one centimeter per year. Compared to an infant human, which grows approximately 1.5-2.5 centimeters a MONTH, it is clear just how slowly the Greenland Shark really grows. However when you compare the lifespan of a human to the Greenland shark, the reason behind the slowed gr

CRISPR

I absolutely loved the topic of this article! I have seen the effects of chemo and radiation on a person and always wondered why they could not just target the cancerous cells. Why these chemicals were essentially poisoning the whole body and ultimately killing the person. It is SO crazy that at this point we can edit exactly what makes us, us! These scientists can edit the genes within a cell and then multiply them to eventually reintroduce them back into the bloodstream. I don’t think it could get much cooler than that!! Of course there are risks to this process which include gene edits in the wrong place, excessive autoimmune response, etc. Excessive autoimmune response would trigger the cells to start attacking the gut, adrenaline glands, or other normal tissues. It is so beyond interesting that they plan to extract the T cells from the site of the tumour because of how those cells are designed to attack cancer. I do wonder though what happens when all of the cancerous cells ar

Gene Loss= Genetic Change??

I found the article: Researchers Highlight Gene Loss as Potential Process of Genetic Change, Evolutionary Adaption to be quite interesting and highlighted some points that I have never thought of before. The main focus of this article was that gene loss is a form of evolution which many people seem to overlook. A gene loss can be categorized two different ways: the genome is physically removed through either recombination or transposition or it is still physically in the genome, but has lacked its ability to function due to mutation. This theory is interesting because when we think of a species evolving, we think the species is gaining some new ability to fend off a certain disease, or reducing the jaw muscular structure. The tricky part is when a gene is considered “dispensable” and how many genes that a living organism can lose and still be healthy. Perhaps the most interesting part of this article to me was the section which discussed the similarities in the genomes between chi