Restaurants plan DNA-certified

premium seafood

By ROD McGUIRK , Associated Press – Sunday, November 27, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/restaurants-plan-dna-certified-premium-seafood-121222097.html

This week I read an article about a new science technology that tests seafood to see if it is labeled correctly and not as a different type of fish.  This tool is called DNA barcoding.  Basically this tool checks if food is really what you think it is.  Currently this tool can test up to 167,000 species.   This new DNA barcoding technology was built for consumers so they will know that what they are buying and eating is what they see being advertised.  Studies have found that seafood items are often labeled incorrectly.   Not only is this bad because you are paying more than the fish is actually worth but it can also be dangerous.  According to the article, “In 2007, several people became seriously ill from eating illegally imported toxic pufferfish from China that had been mislabeled as monkfish to circumvent U.S. import restrictions.”  Some studies have even shown endangered species being sold when labeled as different kind of fish.  Scientists are working to add all 1.8 million species on Earth into a Barcode of Life DNA library.  I think this tool could be very helpful to people with allergies, if in the future it could be used to test things other than fish and animal products.  For example, if a kid had a peanut allergy maybe DNA barcoding could be used to tell if the food they want to eat is nut free.   In conclusion, I think this tool could possibly be very important to our future.  

The Rabbit Bean Population Lab

Last science class we did a lab about population. We used beans to represent  the rabbit that we were trying to find the population for. What we did was we were trying to find the population growth of rabbit over 5 years.  We started with 2 bean and each time we would dabble  the rabbits witch means the rabbit had kids. we  it start at 0 years with 2  rabbit at year 1 you will have 4 rabbits at 2 years you would have 8 rabbit and so on. After  we had collected  our date of how many rabbits there would be in 5 years if you started with only 2  rabbits we made a graph.  It  show what our data. Then our teacher challenges us and had us fined the amount of rabbits there would be in 10 years but it was not that hard. In conclusion I think this was a grate way to learn  about population.

Polar Bears’ Plight: How to Help

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/polar-bears-plight-how-to-help/#.Tsvayf5IGKQ.email

http://gma.yahoo.com/video/pets-26594274/polar-bear-invasion-in-manitoba-canada-27318468.html

 by Ron Claiborn, ABC news reporter
 November 20, 2011

Today I read an article and watched a video about polar bears.  Both were about how the polar bear environment is changing due to global warming.  This is a big problem for polar bears.  To be specific, the polar bears in the new this week live close to Manitoba, Canada. The polar bears that live there have been wondering into town in recent years looking for food.  This is unsafe for both the polar bears and humans.  Polar bears are very large wild animals that can harm humans and can be a very dangerous animal.  Animals rescue workers capture these polar bears.  They take them to something like a jail but for bears to see if they are healthy for one or two weeks.  Then the rescuers release them back into their natural habitats in the wilderness about forty miles from Manitoba.  The polar bears are marked with a green paint dot so scientists will be able to tell if the same polar bear returns to Manitoba.  Polar bears hunt for their food on ice.  They are hungry because they haven’t eaten since the ice melted in July.  New ice has not yet formed for them to hunt.  Each year their hunting season has been getting shorter and they must adapt to their changing environment.  But not its getting harder and they aren’t getting enough to eat.  This is because of global warming.  Scientists predict that there will be no ice in this area by 2080 and they are making plans to move the polar bear community further north so they can survive.  

Ready to blow? Homes evacuated on Canary Island as underwater volcano spews molten rock 60ft into the air

By Chris Parsons  7th November 2011

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2058436/El-Hierro-volcano-ready-eruption-Homes-evacuated-Spains-southern-Canary-Islands.html

This week I read an article about an erupting volcano in the Canary Islands which is located in the Atlantic Ocean by Spain.  Now this is not an ordinary above ground volcano.   This volcano is under the water on the ocean floor.  The lava or magma from the erupting undersea volcano is polluting the water around the Canary Islands with yellow and brown lava.   The Canary Islands are made up of several islands made up of volcanoes over thousands of years.  This volcano is located just off the island of El Hierro.  The last eruption on El Hierro was in 1793 over two- hundred years ago.  Authorities have been evacuating certain areas of the El Hierro island after the number of minor earthquakes in one day was over one-hundred fifty.

If this volcano were to have a major eruption, it would not be good.  Scientists have found out that quakes causing volcanic activity in this general area could cause a bad tsunami.  That could happen if there was major shift in the titanic plates.  Scientists believe a mega tsunami could reach the east coast  of the United States which is quite far away.   It could also reach and other places in Europe, the North of Africa and parts of South America.  

The underwater volcanic eruption off El Hierro  cannot be good for marine life, the environment, or the nearby coast of El Hierro and its people.   In conclusion I really like this article because it included a lot of pictures and graphs and even a video that helped the readers visualize the eruption of this unusual under sea volcano.

Huge Crack Discovered in Antarctic Glacier

         By OurAmazingPlanet Staff Space.com | SPACE.com – Wed, Nov 2, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-crack-discovered-antarctic-glacier-212405650.html;_ylc=X3oDMTNsYWUybDIyBF9TAzEzNjk3MDUxBGFjdANtYWlsX2NiBGN0A2EEaW50bAN1cwRsYW5nA2VuLVVTBHBrZwNkNTI4OTU2Ny01YTUzLTM2NDQtODUyNC03M2E3ZTUyZDA3MzAEc2VjA21pdF9zaGFyZQRzbGsDbWFpbAR0ZXN0Aw--;_ylv=3

This week I read an article about a very large new crack discovered in the Antarctic Glacier. The crack was spotted from an airplane flying over the Antarctic. The plane had come from Chile to take pictures of the area for scientists to study the polar ice as.   Scientists have a way for figuring out how long deep and wide the glacier is by just taking a 3-D picture of it using an Airborne Topographic Mapper instrument.   I would say that this is a pretty big crack in the glacier.  It is 18 miles long and the deepest point of the crack is 195 feet.   

The process of the glacier splitting is called calving.  This means that a piece of the glacier will break off.  When that happens to this new crack, the new glacier will have a surface area of about 340 square miles.  Most of this new glacier will be underwater.

When I saw the picture and read the article, I wondered if the crack was caused by global warming.  I’m sure scientists are now studying this.  I realize more than ever that we need to take better care of our environment because if all the ice caps and glaciers melt the sea levels will rise and flood coastal areas.  I wonder if landlocked areas would be affected as well by climate changes and migration from coastal areas.   I think this could be a big problem in the future and am glad that scientists have discovered this new crack and are studying it.

Air pollution tied to lung cancer in non-smokers

By Kerry Grens | Reuters – Fri, Oct 28, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/air-pollution-tied-lung-cancer-non-smokers-223155953.html

This week I read an article about lung cancer.  It talked about a 26 year study conducted on 180,000 non-smokers from every state in the United States of America.  From the study scientists discovered that people who have never smoked in their life have a higher chance of getting lung cancer if they lived in an area with a lot of air pollution.  According to the study, “people who have never smoked, but who live in areas with higher air pollution levels, are roughly 20 percent more likely to die from lung cancer than people who live with cleaner air.”    Smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer in the world today.  However, this study shows that even if you are a non-smoker you need to be concerned about your environment and the air you are breathing.

When I saw is the middle of this article I thought of when I lived in Indonesia and there was so much pollution there.   It was so hard to breathe there sometimes and I never knew it was that bad for you to breath in the air.  I also was thinking why do people smoke if they know it is bad for you? Smoking turns your teeth and finger nails yellow and gives you bad breath.    It turns your lungs black.  None of these things are good in anyway. In conclusion, smoking is not worth risking your life and getting Lung cancer.