Drugs

During this past week we spent a great deal of time with sex ed and looking at drug abuse.  Surprisingly one thing stood out to me about drug abuse.  This is how people can't stop the addiction.  Once they start, it is always there and it takes rehab to get them off.

So I did some research and found that scientists are testing a new drug the blocks memory.  People will sometimes visualize a certain person or thing with the drug, and taking the memory of that away can help fix the addiction.  This is interesting because it can be a much more harmless way to go through rehab.

I think although this is not a stellar option it is good to help for these people available.  Unfortunately though, the real problem doesn't even lie in the abuse but it lies in schools.  It cost 47,000 a year in california to keep an inmate in jail.  We should put that money towards our students to help them.  By making schools better, there would be less inmates, and the cycle would continue with a little more peace in the world.

Jews are Smarter?

Today I was looking for more challenge from my biology class.  So, I went to Colleen to find more.
She gave me an article about how jews are smarter than the average human being.

This article gave many reasons why jews may be smarter, but personally, I think it is much simpler than I realize.  I think that many of the people who are jewish just respect education much more than others.  I think that the author is thinking that a gene helps the jews but honestly, going to school will do juts as much.  I do not think that I am smarter than anyone because I am jewish.  Rather, i think my hard work ethic by going to Colleen to get more of a challenge is why I might have higher test scores personally.  Further, I think that many of those who value education get higher test scores in general.  Therefore, I do not agree with the author in the way he says that a gene helps jews to be smart, and that all jews have this gene.

--Elliott

How Big is Your Chicken?

Those chickens you buy at the supermarket are cheap and yummy but do you know where they came from? If the chicken you are eating is 3kg rather than 1kg would it change your opinion?  Many of the birds we eat live in close quarters and can barely hold their weight.

Selective breeding is taking the best birds and breeding them with each other whereas Genetic modification scientist can change traits directly.  Selective breeding is very useful because farmers can easily change the appearance of their chickens without scientific methods.  Also it is all natural.  GMO's on the other hand scientist can isolate a single gene and add or take it from the chicken.  Like removing the feathers if they get to hot. Even so both ways of breeding, the chickens have become so large that they ar ein pain for their whole life because they are so large.   I think that selective breeding is more consequential because we have chickens that have all the bad traits now.  These chickens would never be able to live in the wild.

IHope we can find ways to get food cheaply but without hurting the integrity of species.  I don't think that Gregor Mendel would aprove of what we are doing now because we are hurting the species as a whole at this point.  Hopefully in the future we can help this species go back to their original state.

Kill the Mosquitos?

You know those pesky things called mosquitos?  They annoy even the best of us yet we don't kill them, no one wants them and all they are is a nuisance.  
We read an article about how irradiating the world of mosquitos would affect the world and how we need them, but more interestingly, we learned how we as humans require something to help nature.  It is a monetary value on it.  For example, how much is clean air worth?  Is it better say its priceless or put a price on it.

I think we need to put a price on it for one reason.  If an organization can see a price then they can easily try to budget it but with it being priceless its seems bigger than anyone can handle on their own.

HIV

Where does HIV come from.  Today we watched a Ted Talk about how HIV comes into the human population.

In Africa where people live in extreme poverty, they go bush hunting.   They kill monkeys and then the blood from the primates can enter into the human.  The blood has HIV and then the person is infected.

I think this is a very big problem, but at the same time there will never be a utopia, and I think we need to pick our battles.  I think that we should fix poverty within our country before we start on someone elses.  We have budjet problems and health problems of our own.  I think we should help them but at the same time we have much more pressing issues at hand

Chimps

Do chimps deserve to live a free life like humans?  Recently a debate has been coming to light about how testing on animals is unacceptable.  Many people who want to stop animal testing would never take the drugs as testing as themselves.  So the question is if you dont want testing on animals would you take the testing yourself.  I know that I would rather the chimps not have to do the testing but at the same time i would not take the drugs instead of them.  And many other people would agree with me.  Therefore, I do not think that testing on animals will change anytime soon.

Can Water kill you?

Can water kill you? Its said to be a good thing but can it also be bad?  Today I read an article about how if you drink to much water  you can actually die.  It can make your cells swell and then since there is no room to swell in your head you can actually die.

This was very interesting to me because when I go to bike races, I drink a large amount of water to compensate for my race.  I think this might actually hinder me in my race because of the amount of water I drink.  It may actually dilute my blood enough so that I am not getting the correct amount of salt that I need.  I am ging to use this information next time I go to a race to see if it helps me to drink less water and therefore my blood will not be as diluted.