An Animal Gamble in the Arctic

Ice in Arctic waters shrank this summer to the sixth-lowest level in 36 years of monitoring, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Monday. The ice reached its seasonal minimum on Wednesday, at 1.9 million square miles. That is down only slightly from 2013 but is still 19 percent below average.

The Arctic is changing — fast. Two experts who have spent decades working there believe that the marine mammals who call the high latitudes home are now locked into a human-forced ecological game of chance. Jeffery DelViscio

Scientists are concerned about the ice melting from human-caused global warming because the melting may change the weather farther south. Studies have linked the ice melting to changes in the jet stream, which can produce extreme weather. Ice in Antarctic waters, meanwhile, is hitting record-high levels, which scientists attribute to local climatic conditions.  I think that one day the water will get so high that it will start spreading.

questions:  Do you think that this could cause lots of problems?

                   Do you think that this problem could continue?

 

Doctors enlisted to turn the tide on antibiotic resistance (for Alexandra Smith)

Antibiotic resistance

What is it?

Now that we are using antibiotics for everything, the viruses are adapting to the medicine that we are using to get rid of them. This means that some of the antibiotics are no longer effective or are not working as well as they use to because the bacteria is getting used to it. Some microbes are changing faster than antimicrobials can kill them. As a result, it’s once again possible to get an infection for which there is no sure cure. This is called antibiotic resistance, another way of explaining this phenomenon is that antibiotic resistance occurs when an antibiotic has lost its ability to effectively control or kill bacterial growth; in other words, the bacteria are "resistant" and continue to multiply in the presence of therapeutic levels of an antibiotic.

One cause of antibiotic resistance is the fact that farmers are giving their animals a bunch of this and that we are after consuming all of it.

Are you ready for a world without antibiotics?

Antibiotics are a bedrock of modern medicine. But in the very near future, we're going to have to learn to live without them once again. And it's going to get nasty. If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance — and trust me, we’re not that far away — here’s what we would lose. Not just the ability to treat infectious disease; that’s obvious but also the ability to treat cancer, and to transplant organs. Any treatment that relies on a permanent port into the bloodstream for example kidney dialysis would no longer be safe at all. We would not be able to do any major open-cavity surgery, on the heart, the lungs and the abdomen.

We’d lose the ability to treat people after traumatic accidents, as major as crashing your car and as minor as your kid falling out of a tree. We’d lose the safety of modern childbirth: Before the antibiotic era, 5 women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of every nine skin infections killed. Three out of every 10 people who got pneumonia died from it and that’s where we are headed again.

And we’d lose, as well, a good portion of our cheap modern food supply. Most of the meat we eat in the industrialized world is raised with the routine use of antibiotics, to fatten livestock and protect them from the conditions in which the animals are raised. Without the drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we’d lose the ability to raise them that way. Either animals would sicken, or farmers would have to change their raising practices, spending more money when their margins are thin. Either way, meat, poultry, pork — and fish and seafood, also raised with abundant use of antibiotics— would become much more expensive.

Read the article here: 

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/doctors-enlisted-turn-tide-antibiotic-resistance 

Questions:

1) Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? Why do you think so or not so?

2) What else would antibiotic resistance affect?

Elephants appear to be super sniffers

Everyone knows that elephants trunks are very strong and useful. A great example of this is that they can lift objects with their trunk and also spit water out of it. Researchers looked at bush elephants (Laxodonta Africana). These are the largest of Africa’s two species. They usually live in grassy areas hence to why we call them bush elephants.

 Did you know that elephants are amazing sniffers? Elephants have around 2,000 scent-sensing genes. Isn’t that crazy? Other good sniffers like rats have around 1,200 genes for scent-sensing, blood hounds and other dogs have around 800 of these different genes and humans have around 40 of them. Elephants use their great trunks to smell predators from far away. They can ‘’find’’ people from the two ethnic groups living near them in east Africa that are trying to hunt them. That helps the elephants defend themselves and helps them know when the people are close. Scents play a HUGE role in the elephant’s behavior. Example: the elephant can communicate aggression via scent.

These large mammals may be the world’s best smellers!

https://student.societyforscience.org/article/elephants-appear-be-super-sniffers 

Questions:

1. How do you think that elephants can communicate via scent?

2. Do you think that it would be a good thing to have a trunk that can smell as well as an elephant’s? Explain your answer.

Is the Orca a whale?

The Orca is actually categorized as a dolphin, this is because dolphins are a sub-category of a sub-category of whales, that means that all dolphins are whales, but it is necessary to note that not all whales are dolphins. The Orca (or Killer whale), scientifically is a dolphin, the largest of the dolphins.

It is a member of a family called delphinidae (a dolphin family), in this family you will find the bottle-nose, common, and Hector's dolphins, in fact, Hector's dolphin and the Orca are alike.

 

Killer whales are found in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas. They have a diverse diet, although individual populations often specialize in particular types of prey. Some feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals (like pinnipeds) and even large whales.

 

Killer whales are highly social; some populations are composed of matrilineal family groups which are the most stable of any animal species. Their sophisticated hunting techniques and vocal behaviors, which are often specific to a particular group and passed across generations, have been described as manifestations of culture.

 

The difference between an orca and a whale is that whales have baleen which they use to sieve food into their mouths and an orca and dolphins have teeth.

 

 Article:

 

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/04/killer-whales-are-actually-dolphins/

 

 

Questions:

 

1. How will you classify the Orca; as a whale or as a dolphin? Why?

 

2. You know about another animal that can be classify in two families?

Young blood: The elixir of youth?

A few years ago there was a phenomenon of books and movies called "Twilight" which centered around a vampire and his human girlfriend. In the story importance was placed on human blood being a factor behind why vampires stay young, seemingly forever.  Of course vampires and the "Twilight" books are all fictional, yet it seems that there is some truth even in fiction. In the case of laboratory mice scientists have found that the blood of young mice, when given to older mice helps improve the memory of older mice and helps the older mice muscles.

  Originally the scientists connected blood vessels between older and younger mice, which showed that the younger mice did not benefit from the blood of older mice. So then, they decided to just try giving older mice the blood from younger mice and found that the older mice had healthier hearts and livers. The brains of the older mice also improved thanks to the effect on their brain cells or neurons which worked more efficiently.  This resulted in the older mice becoming  "smarter" and growing new brain cells, something that usually only occurs in young mice.

Now before you stop visiting your grandparents, because you might be worried that they might ask you to donate blood, this article only talks about research done in mice.  If this was ever to be applied to humans, researchers would isolate the substance in blood which is responsible for this beneficial change. For now the researcher done on mice indicates that a protein found in the blood of mice known as GDF11, which stands for growth differentiation factor 11, might be very important to understand more about how this process works.

The article written by Lida Katsimpardi shows the importance of asking questions and learning from our fellow species how our own bodies work and applying that knowledge to benefit the human species. It makes us wonder is there more to our blood cells than just blood, such as a "magic" protein which can help us stay young ?  Either way I will keep eating my veggies and spinach, until we have more understanding of GDF11 and how it works.  For now daily exercise and plenty of sleep will be my solution to aging too fast.

 You can find the article here:     

https://student.societyforscience.org/article/young-blood-elixir-youth

Discussion Questions :

 

1.  Can you think of another example of a substance or food where the promise of a longer life is based on eating or drinking something which will have immediate health benefits?  Do these examples have a negative side effect that accompanies the intended positive effect ?

 

2. What are the moral implications of asking teenagers for their blood so that products can be made for older people to make them younger ?   How will this affect the nice and neighborly habit of donating blood simply for the sake of helping a stranger with their health ?

 

Wily bacteria create ‘zombie’ plants

We are seeing a lot about Zombies these days, from our televisions to the bookstore it is certainly a part of popular culture. Recently I read an article that used the ‘zombie card’ to describe how a specific parasite took control over a certain species and preventing it from reproducing (thus, turning it into a zombie, serving only the bacteria that used it as home).

It sounds hard to believe that a parasite can actually change the behavior of a plant, but it seemed to modify the flowers to look more like leaves, which would attract insects, which would then transfer the bacteria to other plants and ensure that it could be spread over and over again. This leaf like structure stopped the plant from flowering, which is crucial to its reproductive cycle – meaning the plant itself could not continue to ‘spread’ so to speak.

Sounds hard to believe that you could stop a plant from reproducing so easily, but we do it all the time. At home in the summer, we pick the fading flowers from the plants in order to prevent them from going to seed so that it will continue to flower all summer long. Once a plant goes to seed, it stops producing flowers.

This article, written by Esther Landhuis is a good example of evolution at work. Surely the bacteria doesn’t think to itself “hey, maybe I can complicate life for that vulnerable looking plant……” it is all a part of natural selection which goes much further than how we came from Homo Habilis. It makes me stop and wonder just how the species we know now might evolve in four or five generations – or less.  It is certainly scary how fast bacteria can change and adapt to a friendly environment, especially with cold season right around the corner.

You can find the article here:

https://student.societyforscience.org/article/wily-bacteria-create-zombie-plants?mode=topic&context=79

Discussion Questions:

1)   Can you think of other examples of when a parasite host that continues to live on? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this situation? 

2)   How do you think life on earth will evolve over the next five generations? What are some of the highlights, and some of the drawbacks for us to this new evolution.

wanna learn how the bike works?

what an awesome video! yeah!

The Future of Cars

In Las Vagas in January 2010 general motors of GM test drove a new electric cars that looked like colorful eggs. This car holds two passengers. Parking with this car may be easy because of its small build but how easy. Well this car can self park. Also when you need it, it will come right to you with one easy click of a button on your cellphone. How cool! This car is called the EN-V pronounced envy.
Now scientists are researching to if newer cars will do more complex things. For example,reminding you when to take your medication, sending you a text when your car needs to be charged or, connecting to other devises. also it even 'talks" to other cars to insure pedestrians and other cars are safe on the road. lastly these cars save energy.

Google you may know of as the Internet search bar on your computer but, it also has scientists researching into these types of cars. They even invented six cars that can drive around surfactantly enough to have them drive all over the world to see if they worked. All that the driver did was give it direction to where it wanted the car to take them and check out the cars to make sure they worked well enough.“People who see our technology understand its potential to make driving safer and cut down on traffic,” says Sebastian Thrun, the engineer and computer scientist in charge of Google’s self-driving car program. That being said google is very much into safety of the people.Neither of these cars have been released because of safety concerns but cars by ford and other companies have been released that can parallel park by themselves.

At Massachusetts institute of technology or MIT scientists have invented an AIDA also known as affective intelligent driving assistant. This white robot sits in your car gives you directions and can cheer you up because it can tell when you are in a bad mood. Also it can detect when a car accident has occurred or there is a lot of traffic it will give you faster directions for you to get to the place you want to go.

Platzer a scientist got in a car named Boss built by his colleagues and Carnegie Mellon. “Right after the start signal, Boss hit the gas and rocketed forward, and I felt a bit like [I was] in a roller coaster. Only those are safe, because they simply follow the tracks,” he says. “Boss didn’t have any tracks to follow…. The curve came closer and closer, yet Boss still didn’t hit the brakes. It actually didn’t hit the brakes until long after I would have. That was a rather odd feeling.”

1) Do you think that for kids who are 11 now will get their drivers licenses before the robot cars?

2) If one of these cars came out would you buy one? Why or why not?

Drones in the sky.

Obama signed an aviation bill that would open the skies (300 feet high in altitude) to unmanned aircraft systems, also known as drones. The most important questions that have been asked are concerns about the low altitude in which the drones would be flying regularly. A few of the many questions include, what would stop a terrorist flying one of the drones at tree high altitude and plow through a few civilians. And would peoples privacy be declined because of the drones taking pictures at low altitudes in backyards and windows. An answer to the privacy question formed by officials is that the drones are merely flying through public air space.

There is also another part of the airspace in which the drones would be flying. The stratosphere. It is mostly empty in human activity. This layer will be increasingly populated by solar powered drones that would travel at bicycle speeds. High resolution cameras on their underside would take pictures of the population in city's.

One of the drones that would be used in the stratosphere is called the zephyr, a high altitude, solar powered drone, designed by the British company QinetiQ. It weighs about 120 pounds and has a wingspan of about 74 feet! This is quite incredible because it weighs just 120 pounds.

Although drones seem new. They are actually quite common. For example, a satellite up in orbit is a drone. And most military forces contain drones that are called UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. A helicopter toy that you got for Christmas or your birthday would be considered as a drone.

What will these drones be able to see? They will record the route and speed of auto mobiles and other land vehicles. They will observe the movements of individual pedestrians. They will also observe when people turn off the lights in their houses at night. The information gathered by the drones would be sent to smart meters and mobile devices.

1. Would you be worried of drones taking pictures of you in your daily life?

2. Do you think that it is a requirement to have these drones?

Mr Beaupre's class: round 1 part 2

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY – GRADE 8

SCIENCE BLOG ASSIGNMENT v1.02

The purpose of this assignment is two-fold: to have students research current scientific topics occurring in the media and, to create an environment wherein students can engage in a healthy discussion related to science.

Please Note – Participation in this assignment occurs on two levels.

Level One: Each week, ONE designated student will be responsible for choosing a scientific issue currently covered in the media (a list will be provided indicating each students designated date). After reading the article, the student will create a summary of the information presented and create TWO thought-provoking questions for the rest of the class.

On the blog, you will find links to numerous media sources for scientific information. You can use these sources, or identify your own, for your respective article.

Due Date: Your summary and questions are due on the Sunday, at 8:00pm of your specified week (please consult the schedule for details).

Level Two: Once the designated student has read the article, summarized the information, and posted the two questions, each remaining student in the class will be responsible for commenting upon the questions.

You MUST comment at minimum ONCE each week. However, bonus marks may be given if you discuss and respond more frequently.

Level ONE Evaluation:

1. Appropriate article chosen	5
2. In-depth summary provided	5
3. TWO thought-provoking questions	5
4. Summary & questions posted by deadline	5
TOTAL	20

Level TWO Evaluation:

1. Responds to the questions asked	5
2. Provides and interesting reflection	5
3. Spelling and Grammar	3
TOTAL	13

Article Schedule:

WEEK	STUDENT	DUE DATE
1	BUCK-THOMPSON, Liam	February 27th post, March 2nd
2	BISSONNETTE, Alissa May	March 5th post, March 9th reply
3	ANCONA ARIAS, Luis Javier	April 2nd post, April 6th reply

Our Blog Website:

http://grade8sciencejournal.blogspot.com/

Sample Places to find Science in the news:

(links to these sites are found on the Blog itself..)

Scientific American - http://www.scientificamerican.com/section.cfm?id=news

Science News for Kids - http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/

CBC Science - http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/science/

Popular Science - http://www.popsci.com/

Science News Magazine - http://www.sciencenews.org/

NY Times Science - http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html

Blogger – Student Evaluation

Level ONE Evaluation:

1. Appropriate article chosen	5
2. In-depth summary provided	5
3. TWO thought-provoking questions	5
4. Summary & questions posted by deadline	5
TOTAL	20

Comments:

Level TWO Evaluation:

Week:		1	2	3
1. Responds to the questions asked	5
2. Provides and interesting reflection	5
3. Spelling and Grammar	3
TOTAL	13

Bonus Tracks:

Week	1	2	3