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Unit 2 - "Whatsa Matter"  (Italian accent)

1/28/2014

41 Comments

 
It was a great first week!  Students performed superbly in demonstrating their laboratory safety knowledge, and I am confident that we will have fun and safe semester of experimentation.

For our second week, and second unit, we will shift our focus to matter and its various phases.  Our week ahead will follow the rough schedule listed below:

Monday - class discussion: open work time if available
Tuesday - Lab 1; open work time if available
Wednesday - Lab 2; open work time if available
Thursday - open work time; open experimentation
Friday - open work time; open experimentation

Below are materials related to our work, including notes, details about the work we will do, and worksheets.  Please feel free to contact me about any concerns or questions.
Unit 2 cover sheet
Unit 2 Worksheet 1
Unit 2 Worksheet 2
41 Comments
Nikki Anderson link
1/28/2014 09:42:59 am

To find this article I went to reddit.com/r/science and went to the psychology filter.

This article is about a study that was performed by researchers to see how if you perceived to have slept affected how you performed in situations. They told participants that the average amount of REM sleep was between 20-25 percent then told the participants to sleep while they calculated the amount of REM they got. Scientist then told each participant that they either gotten 16.2 percent REM or 28.7 percent REM while they slept, even though they hadn’t calculated it at all. The participants that thought they had gotten a better sleep did better on a test that they were given than those who thought they had gotten less.

I think this is really interesting because I always feel tired and I just thought it was because I normally stayed up late. And while, that may be one of the reasons, I’ve also been so used to not sleeping well and feeling tired, I feel like I almost assume that I’ve gotten my brain to think that I never get a good sleep. What’s really cool about this article is it further explains why positivity affects our day to day life. If you’re constantly thinking about how sad you are and, in this case, complaining about how tired you are, it’s like your brain doesn’t really know what else to expect so it automatically jumps to that conclusion.

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Melody Day
1/28/2014 10:19:11 am

I agree; this is quite interesting. It makes me imagine about how everyone in the world could potentially do so much better if they set themselves in the right mindset, even if it's only something such as taking all their vitamins and having a balanced breakfast in the morning. (I know that makes me feel prepared for the day.) In the end, I suppose it's just a matter of training your brain to think positive thoughts.

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Melody Day link
1/28/2014 10:16:10 am

Article category: Cancer

This article was about how a lack of sleep can increase the growth rate of cancer in a human being. The author has written down that the number of times a living creature is disturbed during its usual resting hours can effect how aggressive the disease becomes. This hypothesis was proved through the use of lab mice. Cancerous tumor cells were injected into them, and half of the rodents were woken up several times throughout the night, while the other ones were able to get a full night's sleep. In the end, the tumors in the sleep-deprived mice were double the size as the regular mice.

I found this to be interesting because at least half of the people I know get less than six hours of sleep a night. I, myself, rest at least seven hours a night, and I still feel the effects of being tired the next morning. I wonder if cancer would be easier to handle and not as deadly if everyone got at least ten hours of sleep every other day. This could potentially slow down the growth rate and give the doctors more notice.

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Tiffany La
1/28/2014 12:04:29 pm

Okay...just wow. I don't really know a lot of people with cancer, but I already know personally what it is like to be sleep deprived. That's really interesting on how sleep deprivation is proven through cancer that it's bad for you!

Although, now I'm worried. My dad is almost always sleep-deprived (and has been for 20 years and luckily has time to take naps to make up the sleep, but he still wakes up at 3-4 in the morning even when he DOESN'T have to go to work!), and with his age starting to come along... (sigh) I guess it just matters on how you take care of yourself in the end.

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Tiffany La link
1/28/2014 12:29:55 pm

When looking for an article, I just used the lovely http://www.reddit.com/r/science/ that we used for the first post, and ended up stumbling across an interesting Neuroscience article.

The article, titled "An Aging Brain is Still Pretty Smart", talks about the mental psychology of the older generation, and somewhat going against the stereotype of 'As you get older, you forget a lot more.'

The author pretty much did his own research, and proved that older people are slower when thinking ONLY because they have a bigger mental library. THAT'S IT.
The main reason why we start to get slower when remembering things while aging is just because of the natural aging process. As we grow from our teenage years, some parts of the mind naturally decline. BUT, at the same time, unlike those younger than us, we have more experiences and knowledge to draw from, which is why it takes longer for us to voice what we remember about something.

I'm not sure why this struck me, since it was only the 2nd link on the reddit page, but the words just seemed to pop out at me when looking around.
Also, I think it may have been unconsciously influenced by my aging family, since my remaining grandparents are now in their early 80s (which is very healthy for a Vietnamese person) and my own parents are in their 40s-50s. There have been times where I end up asking: "Do you remember this, Dad?" and my father would shake his head, also because of his habit to just remember the things that he needs to know.

I guess I just got attracted to this article out of love for my family...again?

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Paul link
1/28/2014 01:23:34 pm

Article category:Space school

This article was about sending people into space and how it would work.The article's writer Jacob Ward talks about how the program would work,the would be passengers who payed 95,000-250,000(mostly the rich wealthy people who have nothing to do or the most dedicated. dollars get can skip going to United States Rocket Academy to train for two years.
After the training the passengers would get a shot at maybe going into space.They were sending elite jet pilots and the most dedicated astronauts but now a new generation has come to go into space.

That was cool reading it and all,but will we be able to adapt in space?or maybe something terrible will happen when we're up there?
who knows...?
(was this good enough?)

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Jose Vizcaino link
1/29/2014 10:34:28 am

The article I found was on reddit science astronomy.

The article was about one of Jupiter's moons named Europa, scientists have discovered one of the main reasons why the moon has a chaotic Terrain look. It turns out that the terrain is caused because of hidden water under the frozen crust of the moon. There is some heat spots in the ocean that causes cracks and splits near the equator, now that there is some water located underneath, scientists are also saying that the moon might be possible for alien life to live there as well.

I have found that this Article was really cool because it is really interesting that a moon as a whole entire ocean under the crust/surface of the moon, and the ocean is even warm at that and the surface is frozen. this article also caught my eye when it had said that there is a possibility of alien life. I really hope to read more articles like these in the future.

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Sophie Rickless link
1/29/2014 01:38:33 pm

I found this article using the reddit science section (of course), and then clicking on the nanoscience subsection.

This article, entitled "A Highlight For Low Light", published in the timesunion.com, detailed a huge potential advancement in our current photography method. It described the new discovery of a way to create indium selenide "nanosheets" that could be used to improve the clarity of photographs taken in low lighting. And not only could these sheets of indium selenide greatly improve our photo quality, but they are also much thinner than our current "photosensor materials", cheaper, and could have longer life spans in our cameras.

This article struck me because photography is actually a pretty significant part of my life. I belong to the youth council of a photography organization that takes up a fair amount of my time, and I have a camera (a Canon EOS 60D) that I love, with two great lenses. Since this is such a big deal for me, the moment I saw that this article was about photography, I knew I had to read it, and I was really intrigued by the idea of being able to take clearer pictures with low light--it would enable us to not to have to lug around huge lights all the time if we want to take really high-quality images. I hope that this idea is implemented in the popular camera companies so that it becomes standard technology. :)

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Kristine Nailon link
1/29/2014 02:18:23 pm

This article is about how caffeine can help people with their memories. It doesn't give you a lot of information but it's very interesting. It says that if you drink lower than a tall Starbucks coffee, people will be able to remember previously seen objects. It also states how the studies failed to detect caffeine's memory boost.

I know It's not very much information, but I found this article very interesting because I drink coffee a lot. Reading this article made me wonder on why did they think that coffee helps with people's memories? and how accurate were there test/experiment after it was proven that everything was false. If everything was true I would've thought that "if you drink lower than a tall Starbucks coffee, people will be able to remember previously seen objects" would've been a cool fact. Reading that the study had failed made me a little bit sad but I wish that the article was more longer so I could more things. I hope that they will figure out something amazing about caffeine or coffee that is a true proven fact :)

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Sofia Angulo
2/5/2014 12:56:50 pm

I hope they find a positive fact for coffee too! I drink coffee a lot, and I don't like when I'll be drinking it and they'll tell me that it'll make me short, because that seriously isn't true. It depends on your genes, so yea :O

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Jake Schroeder link
1/30/2014 01:47:01 am

This article is about synthetic magnetic monopoles that were recently created in a lab at Amherst College. I found this by Google searching "Recent Scientific Discoveries 2014" and clicking on this one because it looked interesting. The main idea is that the creation of synthetic magnetic monopoles is so revolutionary it is comparable to the discovery of the electron. A magnetic monopole is an isolated magnetic pole, an entity that, when synthesized, could provide us with insight into natural magnetic poles.I thought this was interesting because it is so recent and extremely revolutionary.

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Jessica link
1/30/2014 09:30:48 am

I found this in the Psychology section on Readit.
Nightmares have a larger emotional impact than bad dreams do. In a recent study, scientists have found out that fear is the lesser emotion felt in these dreams, other things like sadness, confusion, guilt and many other things manage to appear constantly. Men are more likely to have nightmares about natural disasters like floods and war.

I think this is insanely interesting. I didn't even know Nightmares and Bad Dreams were different things I thought they were the same. I personally have nightmares/bad dreams often, I had no clue they could cause emotional damage. I wonder why men are more likely to dream about earthquakes and stuff more than woman. I would like to look more into this topic and find more about what causes nightmares/bad dreams.

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Becca Jones
1/30/2014 12:30:04 pm

Hey! I was interested in reading this specific article as well. I found this topic extremely interesting, as did you. Previous to skimming the article and your response, I didn't seem to find a difference between nightmares and bad dreams. I find it intriguing that men are more likely to have nightmares about natural disasters and destruction. I wonder why that is and would also like to know more about what causes these dreams that provoke sadness, confusion and guilt.

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Jorge Cortez link
1/30/2014 12:27:29 pm

I found this article because earlier in class I heard you and Brian talk about the mission to Mars and once I got home I decided to look it up and read the article in its entirety.

The article is mainly about how by the year 2016 the first ship will be sent to Mars by a privately funded company and two years later a rover will be sent and by the year 2023 the astronauts are supposed to arrive. Over 200,000 people have applied to be a part of 20 or so to actually make it there, and of those 20 none are able to come back, this is because while they leave and as they spend time there they will lose muscle and bone mass so much to an extent that they wouldn't be able to make it back to Earth safely.

This article was one of my favorite that I've read so far, it was the most interesting because planetary travel has always amazed me and I never thought it would be so soon that this would happen because 2016 is only around two years away (also the year I graduate, yay). I'm glad that this is happening because its such a huge step for us as humans plus we are ruining Earth pretty badly so we need to get out of here before it caves in on us honestly.

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Becca Jones link
1/30/2014 12:45:06 pm

I came across this article while navigating through the Reddit science section, (obviously). I skimmed through subsections and found this in Psychology; an article titled, "Believing you’ve slept well, even if you haven't, improves performance."

This article proposes that the more you desire sleep, the more it will slip from your grasp. People nowadays come home from school or work, wanting some personal time, as would anyone, (after all we are at school for eight hours a day, not including transportation time). Being apart of the somehow functional, sleep deprived world, we are trapped in our own lacks of energy and enthusiasm. But we could change this, says the article. Perhaps if we ignored the fact of our lack of sleep, then maybe we would start to believe it?

Anyway, I liked this article because it is very relatable to young adults our age. We all are experiencing this lack of sleep throughout our four years of high school especially. The science and testing behind this was also interesting to me, you may read that in the link I have attached to my name.

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Jonathan Worley link
1/30/2014 03:50:31 pm

I found this article by looking on the Reddit Science section, under the Social Sciences subsection. In the article there is a link to the simulation they discuss throughout.

This article is about which factors in human interaction cause people to form groups with one another. It uses a virtual model in which "agents" that represent people are forced to repeatedly interact with each other. When two agents cooperate, they become closer. When they don't, they distance themselves. Whether they cooperate or disagree is random, however how close the individual agents are does create a bias. In the end, the interactions show that groups are formed based on two simple rules - the laws of reciprocity and transitivity. In other words, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours; and the friend of a friend is my friend.

This article fascinated me because I guess I didn't necessarily realize that such complex human interactions could be broke down into two relatively simple rules. To me, it seemed like there were far too many factors that went into the equation. Granted, in the article it does mention that maintaining such groups would be more dependent on factors such as culture and identity. However, I can relate to the idea of mutual friends determining the make-up of a group. I would much rather hang out with the friends of people that I know and trust than hang out with total strangers. It's also become part of social media, where Facebook suggests mutual friends for you to add, as an example.

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Nicholas Maciel link
1/30/2014 05:08:14 pm

This article talks about "mosters" in Lake Xochimilico, which is near Mexico city. These monsters are called Axoloti and can walk at the bottom of the murky waters of the lake or can swim with their thick tail. They can grow up to a foot longa and feed on water insects and small fish throughout the channels of the lake. It is said from research that their population has decreased dramatically. They know this because in 1998 they did a survey and came to the conclusion that there are 6,000 axoloti's for every per square kilometer in the lake. Now they have found that there are 100 of the monsters in the lake said from a survey in 2008. They are now wondering if these animals will become extinct any time soon because of their extreme decrease in populatiry in the last 15 years.

This article interested me first of all, because it talked about fishes and I am a fisher, so I would like to know and am interested into things about fishing. I was also interested because in the title it had mentioned Mexico and monster so I was wondering what type of monster is this and how it will affect Mexico in general. It amazes me how their population has changes so quickly.

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Jazzay Buncom link
1/31/2014 01:26:54 am

I found this article on Google News under the Science category.

This article is about how penguins who are already vulnerable have yet another danger, Climate Change. The lifestyle of a just-hatched Magellanic penguin has never been easy, but climate change is only making it worse for them (according to a decades-long study of the largest breeding colony of the birds). The chicks are already vulnerable to predation and starvation and a study at Punta Tombo, Argentina has found that intense storms and warmer temperatures.

This article saddens me because I think it is such a extreme loss whenever a species goes extinct. These penguins were already extremely vulnerable and scientists have found that the climate change has been a new variable that has recently increased their vulnerability so the chances that they may go extinct has been heightened. Next to the article is a picture of three Magellanic penguins that died of hypothermia from a rainstorm. Maybe if the penguins were moved to somewhere with a more balanced climate they would be better off although moving them from their natural habit could kill them all off as well. They should begin to try by moving a small amount of them.

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Tiger link
1/31/2014 03:19:56 am

I looked on a science website that I occasionally check for some really cool, if not random and weird articles now and then. So the article th

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Tiger
1/31/2014 03:24:03 am

I'm sorry, I clicked the submit button by accident. lol.

I looked on a science website that I occasionally check for some really cool, if not random and weird articles now and then. So the article that I caught my eye was about "etched glass stops cracks in their tracks". What was intriguing to me was that if you carve etchings into glass, it actually makes it harder for it to crack. Engraving certain patterns into the glass can toughen it up and also buff bulletproof glass further.

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Sophie Williams link
1/31/2014 03:29:02 am

I found this article looking through a science website that named the year's top discoveries:

This article is about NASA's Kepler mission to find habitable planets. Their search turned up two new planetary systems, that remain in a "habitable zone" away from a star (that could potentially act like our sun), where the planet's surface temperature may be suitable for water.

I found this article interesting because I feel like almost everyone at one point has wondered if there was anything else out there, and now there might be a possibility. The star that some of the planets orbit would act like our sun, but at a lesser degree and that proves to me that there could be life more than anything else. A planet which they call Kepler-62f is only forty percent larger than earth, and is known to have a "rocky composition". So, even though it's 1,200 Light years away, it proves something almost inconceivable.

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Victoria Delgadillo link
1/31/2014 03:29:10 am

I found this article searching “New science discovery” in google.

Many people make jokes about their addiction to caffeine or sugars to get through the day. But recent studies suggest that these people actually exhibit signs of a real disorder. People become so reliant on the caffeine that one days they don’t have it they experience a frightening lack of energy. Caffeine is categorized as a drug, and it is the most commonly used drug in the world.

I found this interesting because I actually rely on caffeine a lot as well. I’ve always joked about it because to me it wasn’t a big deal, so it shocked me to see that there was actually a caffeine use disorder. It was shocking to see that it could classify as an addiction, because it isn’t something people can easily give up, and they go through withdrawal periods just like you would with any other drug.

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Diego Ruiz link
1/31/2014 03:49:52 am

I found this article by looking up new scientific discoveries. Then i saw what steven hawking thought about black holes which i found curious because im very curious about black holes. Hawking talks about how he thinks they dont exist. “There are no black holes,” however, by saying it’s only true “in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity.” hawking says. It struck me because i thought they were real.

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Erica Wehrung link
1/31/2014 06:15:50 am

I found this article by googling, "recent cool science articles" and then it linked a really interesting website called LiveScience where I found this article titled, "Did Alien Life Evolve Just After the Big Bang?" which I found intriguing, so I decided to read it.
Basically the article is about how 15 million years after the Big Bang, something called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is just sizzling plasma in space as a result of the Big Bang, cooled down enough, to become between 31 and 211 degrees fahrenheit which is just perfect for living things to form and live! So, there could have been life way far out in the universe millions of years before even earth was formed, let alone life began to inhabit it.
I found this very interesting just because anything to do with aliens in general instantly intrigues me. Just the fact that there could be other things and maybe people, blows my mind. It was fun to read an article that had valid proof that there could have been life before earth.

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Erica Wehrung link
1/31/2014 06:16:04 am

I found this article by googling, "recent cool science articles" and then it linked a really interesting website called LiveScience where I found this article titled, "Did Alien Life Evolve Just After the Big Bang?" which I found intriguing, so I decided to read it.
Basically the article is about how 15 million years after the Big Bang, something called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is just sizzling plasma in space as a result of the Big Bang, cooled down enough, to become between 31 and 211 degrees fahrenheit which is just perfect for living things to form and live! So, there could have been life way far out in the universe millions of years before even earth was formed, let alone life began to inhabit it.
I found this very interesting just because anything to do with aliens in general instantly intrigues me. Just the fact that there could be other things and maybe people, blows my mind. It was fun to read an article that had valid proof that there could have been life before earth.

Reply
Erica Wehrung link
1/31/2014 06:17:00 am

I found this article by googling, "recent cool science articles" and then it linked a really interesting website called LiveScience where I found this article titled, "Did Alien Life Evolve Just After the Big Bang?" which I found intriguing, so I decided to read it.
Basically the article is about how 15 million years after the Big Bang, something called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is just sizzling plasma in space as a result of the Big Bang, cooled down enough, to become between 31 and 211 degrees fahrenheit which is just perfect for living things to form and live! So, there could have been life way far out in the universe millions of years before even earth was formed, let alone life began to inhabit it.
I found this very interesting just because anything to do with aliens in general instantly intrigues me. Just the fact that there could be other things and maybe people, blows my mind. It was fun to read an article that had valid proof that there could have been life before earth.

Reply
Sam Merino-Herzog
1/31/2014 06:48:47 am

I found this article on Livescience.com under the History category.

The article is about early hominids and sequencing their DNA. A Neanderthal specimen that was found in a cave in Siberia had its 40,000 year old DNA sequenced and examined. Scientists at the National Academy of Sciences developed a way of examining partially decayed samples of DNA by predicting the subsequent chains in the pattern of nucleotides.

This can open the way for even more scientific discoveries regarding early hominids. Early Homo Erectus and Homo Florentinus fossils haven't been sequenced. If they are using this new method, we could find out how exactly life evolved on Earth, and in what pattern it could potentially keep evolving in!

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Sam Merino-Herzog
1/31/2014 06:48:57 am

I found this article on Livescience.com under the History category.

The article is about early hominids and sequencing their DNA. A Neanderthal specimen that was found in a cave in Siberia had its 40,000 year old DNA sequenced and examined. Scientists at the National Academy of Sciences developed a way of examining partially decayed samples of DNA by predicting the subsequent chains in the pattern of nucleotides.

This can open the way for even more scientific discoveries regarding early hominids. Early Homo Erectus and Homo Florentinus fossils haven't been sequenced. If they are using this new method, we could find out how exactly life evolved on Earth, and in what pattern it could potentially keep evolving in!

Reply
Deryk Goerke link
1/31/2014 07:01:33 am

I found this article by going to Brian and asking him about the latest things in science. The article is about scientists watching chemicals that are turning into memories. The text mostly talks about a video recording capturing proteins in the brain communicating between neurons and shaping memories. This is a very hard study because 1 lost molecule could determine if a memory exists or not.

I think that neuroscience is very interesting because we use our brain to figure out everything we know about the universe, but we still know very little about our own brain.

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Deryk Goerke link
1/31/2014 07:02:59 am

I found this article by going to Brian and asking him about the latest things in science. The article is about scientists watching chemicals that are turning into memories. The text mostly talks about a video recording capturing proteins in the brain communicating between neurons and shaping memories. This is a very hard study because 1 lost molecule could determine if a memory exists or not.

I think that neuroscience is very interesting because we use our brain to figure out everything we know about the universe, but we still know very little about our own brain.

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Elena Hoffman link
2/2/2014 10:48:25 am

This was the first/top article on the science page on reddit.com. It is an anthropology article, and I found it quite interesting (as I’m very curious about the topic of evolution).

Brief overview: This article was about the recent discovery of a Y-chromosomal common ancestor of ours that lived around 208,300 years ago. The article discussed how this new discovery “shook up” information stated in previous studies/hypothesis in regards to our origins and the first modern human beings.

What struck me: The article was written in a way that was confusing to me. I did not understand some of it, which therefore left me with a few questions. Is this person they discovered older than even Lucy? The article said something about this human being 8,300 years older than scientists originally believed, as they previously believed humans emerged in Africa just a little over 200,000 years ago. I have a lot of questions regarding this article and I would like to research further and deeper into its main topic.

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Monica B link
2/3/2014 01:52:11 pm

The article I found on Reddit was about how people believe that those who care or have cared for an animal tend to have positive traits and a stronger social relationships and connection with their communities. Young adults who cared for animals paricipate in more activities, such as service to their community, helping friends and family and are known it be stronger leaders. The more they are involved they are in the pet's care, the higher the contribution scores.

I feel a part of this article is true. I do believe that those who have or had a pet tend to be a more happy and develop positive traits. I think one of the reasons is that a pet is like no other friend and though pets don't understand a word you say to them some people share their feelings and problems to their pets which I think relieves someone stress making them a happier person.

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Monica Salas link
2/5/2014 12:46:41 pm

I found this one interesting because it has to do with our project in Kay's class. This article is about happiness, and being happy by giving to others. To support this idea they used research by giving 20 dollars to two men and told one to spend it on him self and the other to spend it on someone else. The one who spent it on someone else was happier than the other. This article was really interesting because it gave me another idea on happiness and their supporting evidence was very interesting and true.

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Sofia Angulo link
2/5/2014 12:52:30 pm

This article is about how our memories actually re-write themselves, rather than keep them the exact way we remember them. It's always updating our memories, changing them to the new experiences we go through, updating them to the present. It does this to help us adapt to the constant changes we're going through in our environment, and to encourage us to live in the moment. Our memories create a story to fit our current world, so if you remember your "love at first sight" you associate it with a feeling of euphoria, which is probably the current feelings you have right now for that person.

I found this to be quite intriguing, the fact that are memories aren't really how we remembered is pretty crazy,. It changes everything, it's like everything is re-written. There is definitely a lesson here too, it's nothing lasts forever, hell, even our memories don't last that much, since they're always being re-written, it will never be the exact same way we remember it. I find it so awesome too that our brains like to live in the present, and I think that's something we all should take into account, because people are often thinking about the future or the past we really need to focus on the present, and not worrying about things. We need to keep on changing and never staying in one place, because truly nothing will ever last forever. We need to evolve to change.

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Rodrigo Perez link
2/5/2014 02:17:31 pm

Article Category: Cancer

I found this article by going to Brian, as I asked him if he knew any cool new discoveries, as this article came up.

Researches have been able to create genetically modified fruit flies. The purpose of this fruit flies are; so that they can detect cancer cells. New applications involves these fruit flies, so that their antennae lights up when they detect cancer cells, however the distance which the fruit flies can detect the cancer cells is 530 nm, which means that there isn’t much variation between individuals. Because the metabolic difference between cancer cells and normal cells, they emit slightly different odors. The odor is much too subtle for our noses, but it has been proven that dogs can detect several types of cancers. With our training skills and knowledge on how dogs can detect cancer cells, we have successfully trained the genetically modified fruit flies to detect cancer cells. Helping us create an electronic nose that would be able to sniff out cancer from breath, urine, skin, and stool samples.

What struck me was “everything.” The reason why I say everything is because I never thought of genetically fruit flies being capable of detecting cancer, most of all, being able to train the fruit flies were it will be nearly perfect on detecting cancer cells. This strikes me very much because it shows how our technology is rapidly growing, and with it is our science, only reaching the impossible.



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Sabrina San Vicente link
2/6/2014 10:21:28 am

I found this article on Reddit Science under the Psychology category.

This article is about researchers from Aalto University in Finland who created a map that shows where we experience certain body emotions. They conducted an experiment including over 700 people and told them to color the part of the body where they felt certain emotions the strongest. The people in this study were from Finland, Sweden, and Taiwan and researchers saw that everyone in this experiment colored similar parts of the body for certain emotions. For example, people felt pride in their chest, love in their head and arms, shame in their face, and happiness from their head to their toes. The researchers think that this study can help them further understand emotions, and it can also help to shed light on emotional disorders.

What first struck me about this article was the title, I wanted to read this because I wanted to see if I could agree with this "emotion map." I also wanted to know how exactly they collected their information. I was disappointed because I'm not convinced that testing 700 people from only three places in the world could decide what all humans feel. I'm also not too sure about the way they tested this, asking people to color parts of a body doesn't sound legitimate (they also didn't make this "body" clear, did they color a body that was printed on paper or their actual body?) Although they tested a small amount of people I thought it was interesting that most people felt emotions in the same places, and I could surprisingly agree with them as well. As cool as this article was, I'm still not sure about it's purpose or how exactly it will contribute to learning more about emotional disorders.

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Krystal Vickery link
2/10/2014 10:46:40 am

I found this article by typing up on google recent science news. I found this pretty interesting because nothing else really did catch my attention. This caught my attention because I have a feeling that San Diego once found a mammoth fossil. That might've been somewhere else but. This article is titled Disappearance of Wildflowers may have Doomed the Ice Age Giants.

This article is mainly about how the giants living during the ice age really disappeared. Scientists say it might be from the Wildflowers they all ate. They say that these Wildflowers once covered all of the northern hemisphere. But from the severe climate changes during what we call The Ice Age, all the Wildflowers seemed to have disappeared. This then lead to the huge woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceros to go missing.
"We think that the major driver (of the mass extinction) is not the humans," Willerslev said. So in my mind I'm thinking, it wasn't our fault after all. It was the Wildflowers fault who caused these mass creatures to of gone. "The whole Arctic ecosystem looked extremely different from today. You can imagine these enormous steppes with no trees, no shrubs, but dominated by these small flowering plants," Willerslev said. Can y even just imagine the whole article be covered in flowers and not ice??

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Gerardo Flores
2/12/2014 03:51:32 pm

Yes this article is very interesting but it raises many questions for me. for example how did we contribute to the extinction of these giant self sufficient creatures? When did the last mammoth die? How were we able to find the DNA out of an old ancient cat's stomach? This article made me think and ponder on the idea of a mammoth society instead of humans.(irrelevant to article)

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Gerardo Flores link
2/12/2014 03:37:02 pm

This article is about fear. How fear became an instinct and not as much of a feeling dealing with predators and prey. It also deals with the idea that fear can also be something traumatizing and later become and instinct by watching a member of the herd get dismantled by a predator it could have definitely caused a trauma and later on became an instinct to stay away from stronger more dominating carnivore animals in the wild. Later on in the first paragraph it says that too much stress can be harmful to your health aswell as stress and their is a neural circuit in the brain that directly links fear to behavior.

I chose this article because as I was looking for an article dealing with time traveling I saw this in one of the side notes and I was immediately attracted to it so I clicked on the link and within seconds I was intrigued because I was trying to make/find similarities between happiness and fear. I got over excited with thinking about animal behaviors and fear. I was also very interested onto how or why the neural circuit in the brain subconsciously links fear to a certain kind of behavior.

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Amanda Hernandez link
2/23/2014 02:37:53 pm

I found this article randomly by searching up 'interesting science articles'. I found this website called "live science" and went through the top ten articles of the week. One really caught my eye. It was an article about zombies and diagnosing them with different terms that we know. It was saying what had to have gone wrong with the zombie mind for it to act how it does when written on a comic book or on t.v. It also mentioned different animals and herbs that can make a zombie. In the end it stated that zombies are not in fact possible, and they will forever be a fictional story.

Even thought there wasn't any outstanding proof that said zombies could defiantly be real, I still really enjoyed this article. I am now even more scared of bugs but that's ok, I learned more and can now be assured that I don't need to buy that underground basement.

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Diego Ruiz link
5/30/2014 04:53:35 am

I read an article on how playing soccer produces kinetic energy in every kick. ''Children can now give the energy crisis a swift kick, enjoying the world’s most popular sport while generating electricity that can power a light to read or do homework''. says jim sullivan. I find this intersesting because a ball producing energy is awsome. this could be a new begining to the energy crysis especially in countrys that havbe low energy.

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