GMOs and Mutations - (1/9 - 1/13)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/YanBPI

Summary:

     Mutations and GMOs are the two main ways that DNA can change. Mutations are accidental changes in DNA. Mutations can come from internal factors such as errors when copying DNA or external factors such as radiation. Mutations can be helpful meaning that it benefits you, neutral meaning that it doesn't really do anything, and harmful, meaning that the mutation can possibly harm or kill you. Mutations are one way that you can change DNA. Another way people change DNA is through GMOs. GMO stands for genetically modified organism. It is when an organism, typically a plant or animal has modified DNA so it is immune to a certain type of disease, durable against weather, etc. There are many methods as to changing an organism's DNA. The Gene Gun is a type of gun that shoots the DNA into the organism's tissue using gold particles. Another method is using vectors. Vectors are viruses with modified DNA in them. When the virus is injected into the body, it will put the modified DNA into yours to give the body new instructions.

SP6 - Constructing Explanations: 

     This week I constructed an explanation of how my superhero got his powers through explaining how GMOs work. My superhero was genetically modified to have similar traits to a chameleon (blending, tail, etc.) when scientists were experimenting with genetically modified humans. My superhero had restriction enzymes put in him which cut out a part of his DNA. He was then injected with the DNA of a chameleon that gives the chameleon its blending, tail, 360 eyes, etc. to replace the cropped out DNA. Once the new DNA replaced the old, cropped out one, it was stitched with an enzyme called DNA ligase. Once the procedure was done, he was going to have similar traits to a chameleon. This is what I explained to show how my superhero was genetically modified to have the similar traits of a chameleon. 

XCC - Stability and Change:   

     One system that I identified that relates to Stability and Change is with DNA and cells. The DNA is the basic blueprints for life. It works with the cell to make an organism function. Some parts of the DNA can turn on and off to make different kinds of cells which do different jobs. Despite mutations happening all the time, it is usually unnoticed and stable, but can go unstable. In both an internal and external mutation, the DNA is changed to function differently. This can be harmful, helpful, or neutral. Mutations occur when there is a wrong base pairing (substitution), an extra letter appears in a DNA base pair (insertion) or when one letter in a DNA base pair goes away (deletion). The chromosomes which store the DNA can also duplicate in amount (duplication). Part of the DNA code can also be deleted (deletion), reversed (inversion), or be in a different area in the code (translocation). GMOs can also change the way DNA works. This is how DNA which is most of the time stable can go unstable. 

Determining Offspring - (1/3 - 1/6)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/02wKEF

Summary: 

     The Punnett Square is used to determine what phenotypes and genotypes an offspring will receive from their parents. This square is made up of a 2 x 2 grid with the genotypes at the top and left of the grid. To use the Punnett Square select a trait to begin with. Then put one parents genotype for that trait above the Punnett Square and the other parents genotype to the left of the square. Make sure each letter in their genotype aligns with a square. Then, to fill the square, simply take one letter that is aligned with that square and put it inside it. Then take another letter that is aligned with it and put that in the square. Do this for each square in the Punnett Square and now you have a table full of genotypes that will determine the probability of the offspring getting that trait.

SP6 - Constructing Explanations: 

     I constructed an explanation of what the offspring of my superhero, Invisib-blend and Black Widow would look like. To do this, I used a sheet prior to this activity that determined Invisi-blend and Black Widow's genotypes for each trait. Using that sheet, I filled in 10 Punnett Squares to determine what traits the offspring will receive from each parent. I found out that the offspring of Black Widow and Invisi-blend will have a tail, 360 vision, claws, no scales, red hair, stronger immunity, but will not be fast or blend in. The child is also a tactician. The last two things that I determined were the superhero status and the gender. I found out with the Punnett square that the offspring will be a male villain.

XCC - Structure and Function:

     One structure and function system I found was with a simple DNA strand. The structure of DNA supports its function by staying compact. If a single DNA strand were to be stretched to its maximum size, it would stretch to 9 meters, or about 10 feet. However, that is not the case, as DNA is shortened down into an extremely compact size smaller than a cell. Since the DNA structure is extremely small, it could work to its maximum efficiency since it isn't bigger than the cell it is. That same cell can easily retrieve it for instructions on what to do, when and how to replicate, etc. This is how DNA's structure supports its function. 

     

     

The Charity Fair Project - (11/5 - 11/9)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/4k9dz0

Summary:

     The Charity Fair project is a project done to help those in need. In order to donate to the charities, students must create their own product to sell and propose a charity worth donating to. The students must have knowledge of the charity including the statistics, the cost and profit of selling your charity, how to make the product, and the product price and info. The charity my partner and I wanted to donate to was the National Alliance to End Homelessness. This charity focuses on tending to 500,000 homeless people in America by creating elaborate policies with congress, rehousing the homeless, and educating others about homelessness in general. So far, they have made much progress in ending homelessness. This year it was reported that this charity decreased the unemployment rate by 16% and because of this charity, 60% of the U.S reported a decrease in the homeless population.

Backward Looking - How much did you know about the subject before we started?:

     Before I started this years charity fair, I knew much about it. However, from 2014-2016 Charity Fair, the rules often change each year. For example, in the 2014 Charity Fair, you were supposed to donate to a charity and give a bit of info about the charity, nothing else. In the 2015 Charity Fair, you were supposed to add the Cost and Profit of your charity, Info & and Statistics of your Charity, Instructions on building your product, and a tri-fold with all this information. Based on the 2015 Charity Fair, I knew that you were supposed to add Cost & Profit, Charity Info, Instructions, etc. However, in the 2016 Charity Fair, the requirement of making an Ignite Presentation for your charity pitch popped up. Since I hadn't done that in previous years, I didn't know about it. 

Inward Looking - How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?

     I personally feel that this is the best Charity Fair that I have done in comparison to Charity Fair 2015. The part that I like the most was the product making. The product that my partner and I made were snow globes, and it took some time to make them, and in the end they looked really nice. The part that I dislike about the charity fair was the Charity Part- more specifically the Ignite Presentation. I don't really like the Ignite Presentation due to the fact that it was limited to 15 seconds only- it could have been longer in order for the slides and the dialogue to match. I also feel as if I didn't gather a lot of information and statistics on my charity and how they ended homelessness. Overall, I feel that the product info and making was my favorite part since people seemed to enjoy the product and how it looked in the end.

Outward Looking: Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar?:

     When I observed other people's projects, I saw that they had all donated to a charity helping those in need such as animals, the homeless, veterans, etc. When I saw what people were selling, I saw that many people were selling food, drinks, snacks, or anything edible in general. This is different from the products that my partner and I sold, which were not edible. However, some people didn't sell foods. I saw that one group sold slime, while another group sold decorated mason jars. I also observed that many people had sold items based on holidays, especially Christmas. For example, I saw some groups selling Christmas ornaments for their charity. 

Forward Looking - What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

     If I were to do Charity Fair 2016 again, I would focus a bit more on the charity part of my project rather than the product part of the project. If I were to do this, I feel like I would have further convinced the audience to donate to our charity if I had more knowledge about it. Also, I would have made the tri-fold cleaner and more organized. I could have worked more neatly on the category titles so they looked more welcoming and rather than using a school tri-fold, I could have brought my own because if you wrap the tri-fold in paper, it often doesn't come out as neat. One last thing I could have done to make my project better was to sell more snow globes since during the Charity Fair, they sold out really quickly, and some people may have not had the chance to buy one of them

Animal Superhero + Genetics (11/28 - 12/2)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/RvemwO

Summary:

      DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is the basic blueprint for life. It has 4 bases- adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. Adenine connects with Thymine and Cytosine connects with Guanine. These 4 bases make up most of a strand of DNA. In a strand of DNA, there are also genes. Genes determine the traits and appearance of a living organism such as the hair/eye color, skin, etc. DNA is created from both of your parents. As much as DNA is important, there are abnormalities that can happen when a baby is born. One example of this is called Tay Sachs disease. Tay Sachs happens when a single letter in a DNA strand is missing from both parents when given to a baby. This causes fat to build up in the brain and eventually destroy the host's brain. DNA is essential to life due to the fact that it stores all the instructions for your body and tells each cell what to do.

SP6 - Constructing Explanations:

     I constructed an explanation of how my superhero would blend in with the environment. Since I based my superhero (name is Invisiblend) off of a chameleon, I explained how chameleons blend in with their environment and change color. I found out that chameleons have cells called iridophores that reflect light in a particular way when excited or relaxed to influence the color of it. With this information, I implemented this into my human superhero by also adding iridophores beneath their skin and making their skin color a lot more transparent. Now that I had found a way for my superhero to blend in with the environment that they are in, I added that to my concept sheet in the structure and function section to show how my superhero would blend and change color.

XCC - Patterns:

     A pattern that I identified this week was DNA. DNA is shaped like a continuous spiraling ladder. The rungs of the DNA also stay consistent. Each rung is either A and T connected to each other and C and G connected to each other. With this pattern in mind and with the current technology that can read DNA strands, we could possibly solve the genetic disorders such as Tay Sachs Disease by identifying it when a baby is immediately born by taking a strand of DNA from the baby and then seeing if a letter in that strand of DNA is missing or has an abnormality. If the disorder is found in the DNA, then action can immediately be taken to help stop it.

Human Body 2.0 - Project Blog (11/14 - 11/18)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/QF6ycw

Summary:

     The spinal cord is one of the most important, if not the most important organ. It sends information and instructions to and from the brain and the body. Without it, the entire body and the brain is virtually useless since the brain and body can no longer communicate with each other. If you split or damage a part of the spinal cord, anything below the damaged area will no longer function temporarily or permanently depending on how severe the damage is. Once damaged badly enough, the spinal cord cannot heal itself the right way. The nerves that were damaged do not know where to heal to, so instead of the damaged nerve re-connecting to a nerve that it split off of, it connects to the wrong nerve. Since the spinal cord is the most important organ in the body, it must need more protection and should have the ability to heal itself. 

Backward Looking - Have you done a similar kind of work in the past (earlier in the year or in a previous grade; in school or out of school)?:

     Yes, I have done a similar assignment to this project which I did in 5th grade. In this assignment I was supposed to write in my blog the organs about a particular body system, the function, how to simulate the function of that body system based on activities we did, how to keep it healthy, and 5 interesting facts (or fun facts) about that body system. The body systems that I wrote about were the Nervous, Skeletal, Muscular, Digestive, Urinary, Cardiovascular, and Respiratory System. Doing this assignment gave me prior knowledge to help me with this project by telling me what each body system is composed of and how they work.

Inward Looking - How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?:

     I believe that the Human Body 2.0 Project for me went fairly good. The reason why I think that way is because the I thought that the Written Argument and Design Brief went well since we gave as much information as we could give in detail and the rationale of why we wanted to redesign the spine that way. However I personally can't feel the same way for the presentation. I feel like that the presentation was rushed and unpracticed. It did contain almost all the information for our re-design except for the counter argument and rebuttal, but I still think the presentation could have been better.

Outward Looking - Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar?:

     When I observed other people's presentations, some were similar and some were different but mostly similar. Similar to my group, many people proposed their re-design of their body system through slide presentations. When I saw other presentations, I noticed that some groups did their presentations in a different way. Some people used animations or videos to show their re-design. One group that was re-designing the digestive system even added skits and a video to their slide to show what the problem with their original design was, their re-design, and the simulation.

Forward Looking - What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

     If I were to do this piece over again, there are two things that I would change about this project.  The two things that I would change about this project is the idea of how to heal the spine and the overall presentation (since as said before, i'm not necessarily proud of it). To heal the spine, rather than having axons stretch to protect the nerves as said in our presentation, I would have DNA to contain instructions for each nerve cell. When a spine is damaged, DNA should tell the damaged nerve cells what specific nerve to connect to when healing. Regarding our presentation, I would change the presentation to a video since a video is easily changeable compared to a live presentation and I would add the problem with the re-design of our spine and how we are going to fix that. 

Spinal Cord Redesign (11/7 - 11/10)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/m24s3G

Summary:

     The spinal cord is the organ in your nervous system that is made up of bundles of nerves. It connects with your brain and the rest of your body. The function of the spinal cord is to send information and instructions from the brain to the rest of your body and give information back to the brain. For example, if you wanted to move your hand, your brain will send a signal that goes through the spinal cord and to the hand telling it to move. If you get injured at a certain body part, say the hand, the hand will send a signal to the brain through the spine to tell the brain that it is injured. The spine is extremely important because it sends instructions and information to and from your brain and your body. Without the spinal cord you wouldn't be able to move or feel anything at all. 

SP6 - Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions:

     This week I constructed explanations about the spinal cord through my team's design brief. With my team, I explained the original function of the spinal cord, which was to send info and instructions to and from the brain and body. We then explained the issues with the spinal cord such as the durability of it and how it  couldn't heal the right way once broken. We designed a solution to the fact that the spinal cord isn't durable by saying that we could encase the spinal cord into something really durable and flexible such as carbyne. If the spinal cord wrapped in carbyne does manage to break itself  (which is very unlikely), there could be instructions in the DNA to tell the damaged nerves in the spinal cord what to and what not to do.

XCC - Structure and Function:

     In our redesign of the spine, the carbyne that supports the spinal cord in a few ways. As said before, carbyne is a very durable and flexible material to use. If it were to be encasing the spinal cord, the chances of the spinal cord breaking and the host being paralyzed is very unlikely. Also, since carbyne is very flexible, it acts as the original design of the spine and spinal cord. For example, in the original design, if you jump, the spine kind of coils to fit the structure if your body when you jump. Since carbyne is also flexible but stronger, it could do the same thing. So if you wrap carbine around the spine, the spine will have no problem adapting to it since it is now well protected and is now flexible so it could adapt to almost any position that the human gets in.

     

Is it healthier to be a Vegetarian or Omnivore? - WAC

By Joshua Santos, 2026-7B

     It is much healthier to be an Omnivore, or someone that eats both vegetables and meat. Omnivores eat meat which provide healthy vitamins that improve system. Humans were also designed to eat meat and do not have the same stomachs as herbivores and cannot get the most out of vegetables and plants. Also, myths regarding meat eaters to live shorter lives or have cardiovascular diseases were in the past proven false thoroughly and many times. Omnivores are not excluded to eating vegetables and plants, so Omnivores eat both meat and plants which both in total provide vitamins and fats that improve the health and performance of the body and healthy and many minerals such as iron.

     Omnivores eat meat which provide healthy vitamins to improve body systems. According to the article ¨Is It Healthier To Be A Vegetarian Or Omnivore?" by ProCon.org, it states that meat provides vitamin B12, which makes the digestive and nervous system more healthier. This agrees with Kris Gunnars in the article ¨7 reasons not to avoid meat (unless you want to)¨, which says that meat provides protein and according to this article, it says: ¨Another thing protein is important for is bone health.¨ These two articles show that meat is necessary for skeletal, digestive, and nervous system health. Also, an article called ¨Is It Healthier To Be A Vegetarian Or Omnivore?¨ by the Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities or SENCER says that ¨And yet, meat products contain creatine and carnosine, which are beneficial to the brain and muscles¨"and shows that meat is also healthy for the brain and muscles.

     Humans were not designed to live off of only vegetables. In the article by Kris Gunnars titled ¨7 reasons you should not avoid meat (unless you want to)¨, it clearly says ¨Our digestive systems are well equipped to make full use of the fats, proteins and nutrients from animal foods¨ and ¨Humans have much shorter digestive systems than herbivores and don´t have specialized organs to digest cellulose, the main fiber in plants.¨ By reading these two quotes, I learned that humans were specifically built to benefit from meat and cannot live off of plants and vegetables because they cannot digest cellulose, so humans cannot get the most out of eating plants. Kris Gunnars also illustrated the idea of meat benefiting humans by saying ¨Humans also have canines, with big brains, opposing thumbs and the ability to make tools to hunt. Meat was one of the reasons humans were able to evolve such large, elaborate brains." This information clearly shows that humans were able to evolve from meat which shows meat's usefulness to humans.

     There are many things that are beneficial to being omnivorous. One of them is the ability to eat both meat and vegetables/fruits. That means that omnivores can benefit from vegetables and meat. ProCon.org states in the article "Should people become vegetarian?" that "A vegetarian diet provides a more healthful source of iron than a meat-based diet." and "Eating meat provides a better source of iron than a vegetarian diet." From these two quotes alone, I learned that  a vegetarian diet provides healthier iron while meat provides more iron. If you eat both vegetables and meat, you get more iron and healthy iron as well, which is good for your body. Meat also provides vitamins that are necessary to make your nervous, muscular, digestive and skeletal system healthier as said in "7 reasons not to avoid meat" by Kris Gunnars and "Is it healthier to be a vegetarian or omnivore?" by SENCER. Also, ProCon.org shows in the article "Should people become vegetarian?" that "A vegetarian diet delivers complete nutrition and can provide health benefits." If you combine the complete nutrition, health benefits and healthy iron with the helpful vitamins, proteins, fats, and nutrients which make many of your systems such as the nervous, muscular, skeletal, and digestive system healthy from meat, you can with no doubt see that being an omnivore is much healthier than being vegetarian.

     There are some things people think are beneficial to being vegetarian. Some of these things are 'if you are vegetarian you live longer' and 'eating meat can cause cardiovascular diseases.' Both of these facts were proven false many times. According to the article "Should people become vegetarian?" by ProCon.org, they show that this fact is indeed false saying "Vegetarians do not live longer. This myth stems from the fact that vegetarians tend to be more health conscious overall..." Kris Gunnars also says in the article "7 reasons not to avoid meat" that meat does not cause cardiovascular disease saying "The main reason for these claims is that meat is high in saturated fat." and "Studies now show that saturated fat in the diet is not linked to heart disease." This shows that meat does not cause cardiovascular disease so you should not worry about this disease when eating meat. This article also claims that there are no health benefits to avoiding meat. "Despite the claims, there is no strong evidence that avoiding meat leads to health benefits. True... there are observational studies showing that vegetarians have a lower risk of several diseases. However, these results are largely explained by the fact that vegetarians are more health conscious overall and are more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke, etc."

     In conclusion, being omnivorous is more beneficial than being vegetarian for various reasons. These reasons include the fact that eating meat provides proteins, nutrients vitamins (especially vitamin B12), fat, etc. that make your body more healthier and stronger. Omnivores also don't only eat meat, they also eat vegetables which means that they can benefit from plants that provide healthy iron, a diet filled with iron, nutrients, and carbohydrates. Being vegetarian isn't healthier than being omnivorous as said by "7 reasons you should not avoid meat" by Kris Gunnars. In fact, being vegetarian is worse than being omnivorous due to the fact that you´re only limited to vegetables, you have to find another source of protein, and you do not have vitamin B12 which makes your bones, digestive system, brain and central nervous system and muscles not as healthy and strong in comparison to an omnivore.