Angelinna Faisca, "The Smart, Agile, and Completely Underrated Dodo Bird."

 Angelinna Faisca 12/16/20

AP Biology

Mr. Ippolito

Anthes, Emily. “The Smart, Agile, and Completely Underrated Dodo Bird.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 8 June 2016, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/the-dodos-redemption/486086/

The article that I reviewed was “The Smart, Agile, and Completely Dodo Bird.” This article first starts off with the stereotypical ideas and thoughts of the dodo bird: Clumsy, naive, fat, walking straight into the arms of hungry Dutch settlers. However, this story has been told like that over and over, even hearing it in my younger years in school. However, most recently scientists have learned that this wasn’t the case at all. Emily Anthes, the author of this article, then goes into the origin of the dodo bird. About 8 million years ago, the ancestors of the dodo bird, which is part of the Pigeon family, arrived on a small volcanic island and lost its flight and took a big, flightless bird image, one we are familiar with seeing as we speak of the dodo bird. The first record of the dodo bird was in 1599. After this, in less than a hundred years, the dodo bird died out. To make things especially harder, taxidermies were not something that was done efficiently, so many dodo specimens were not saved, bringing the myths even closer to utter false facts. Going far into the future from 1599, in 1865, a fossil deposit was found, and in the 20th century, only one full skeleton was made. In 2011, a paleontologist named Leon Claessens travelled to the island to thoroughly look through the skeleton, along with two of his students. After printing a 3-D model of each bone, they were able to find that the bones of the dodo bird were made to run through  dense forests and rocky hills. After all of this research, they saw that the dodo bird was not a total useless oddity, as they had found that they had also used their small wings for balance. What was also found was that dodo birds had enlarged olfactory bulbs, which might have enhanced their sense of smell, helping them with finding food sources. Overall, this article goes through  the different factors of the myths that were surrounding the dodo bird, when all in all, it was probably one of the most useful and evolved birds in its time. 

In connection to our current life, there were  so many  things that none of us knew about this bird, especially amongst the myths that we have been told. Which leads to the question, what else can  we learn  about extinct animals? The answer is quite a lot, as the dodo bird has been extinct for over 300 years, yet we are still able to even comprehend what its brain size was and even knowing what its sense of smell was. This leads scientists to wonder and explore what other things they can figure out about other extinct animals and how they could have been beneficial to our current Earth.  

Finally, although I don’t think the article really needed anything, since it was a really  good article in my opinion, I think it could have included images, as it didn’t include any throughout the article, which  just made it seem wordy, and less engaging to some degree. However I thought it was a very good article, as it spoke of all the functions that were questioned about. Overall, Emily Anthes article was very  informative and gave me a lot of information about the myths of the dodo and what the dodo bird was really all about.

 

Maya Brinster 

December 16, 2020 

AP Bio EF Even 

Current Event 9 

“New Tests Identify Early Changes in Alzheimer's Disease before Symptoms Appear.” 

ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 1 Dec. 2020,

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201201203937.htm.

The article “New tests identify early changes in Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms appear” describes a revolutionary discovery conducted by researchers at the University of Gothenburg that could lead to more effective treatments for Alzheimer's. Previously, scientists knew that the Tau protein, a type of protein that is predominantly found in brain cells, can form clumps of aggregates in the brain during Alzheimer’s and contribute to memory loss over time. However, this abnormality was able to be detected only once the patient experienced clear symptoms of memory loss. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg discovered specific forms of this protein that undergo certain changes, such as the increase in blood or cerebrospinal fluid, during the early stages of Alzheimer’s. They were able to develop highly sensitive techniques to test regular blood samples and measure these changes, and detect Alzheimer’s much earlier than what was previously possible. 

The detection of this abnormality could enable the disease to be detected and therefore treated, much sooner. Dr. Thomas Karikari explains the significance of this study, stating that “The remarkable findings reported in these publications show that the new highly sensitive tools capture the earliest Alzheimer disease changes in the brain in clinically normal people. These tools, therefore, have the potential to advance population screening and clinical trials." Since cognitive issues don’t develop in the early stages of Alzheimer's, a sooner detection could enable a more helpful cure that could halt the disease before any serious change is done to the brain. 

I found this article very interesting and enjoyed reading it. I like how the author explained everything they were writing about with great detail, as it made everything very easy to comprehend. It would have been nice if the author focused a bit more on the impact that this discovery has on future treatments, as this is very important. Overall, however, I really enjoyed this article and am now more optimistic about the future of Alzheimer's disease. 

Willy Swenson

 Willy Swenson

Mr. Ippolito

AP Biology

December 13th, 2020

“Neanderthals Buried Their Dead: New Evidence.” ScienceDaily, 2020, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201209140358.htm. Accessed 14 Dec. 2020.

‌In the article “Neanderthals Buried Their Dead: New Evidence”, the authors explain new evidence discovered on the subject of burial in the Neanderthal communities in France from 41,000 BC. The new evidence comes from an old archaeological dig. Using bones found from 1970, a French and Spanish research team was able to conclude that the bones were indeed buried all those years ago. They concluded this based on three crucial pieces of evidence. The first is that the preservation of the skeleton was better than any bison or animal bones from the same time period, suggesting that there was rapid burial. Also, the dirt layers around the skeleton at the dig site were much older than the surrounding layers of sediment. The last piece of evidence is that the bones were relatively not scattered at all, and much less scattered than animal bones that were buried under natural conditions. While all of these pieces of evidence are important to understand if Neanderthals practiced burial with their dead, more extensive research must be conducted in order to conclude chronology and geographical extension of Neanderthal burial practices. 

It is very interesting to understand if the Neanderthals practiced burial with their dead because we garner a new understanding of how complex the thoughts of Neanderthals were. Burial of the dead is often practiced in well-developed species, such as homosapians. As we inch closer to the mystery of burial techniques of Neanderthals, we also inch closer to understanding this ancient group that coexisted and interbred with our homosapien ancestors. I was initially attracted to this topic because I wanted a break from all of the biological misfortunes and disasters that our World is facing today and learn about something that is noncontroversial. This topic is also interesting to me because I took a DNA test and I found out that I was <2% Neanderthal, so maybe one of my Neanderthal ancestor’s skeleton is still preserved somewhere, buried under hundreds of feet of sediment. 

 Henry Min

Mr. Ippolito 

Ap Biology

12/13/20

Saey, Tina Hesman. “The FDA Has Authorized Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine. Now What?” Science News, 12 Dec. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/fda-authorize-pfizer-vaccine-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic. 

In Tina Hesman Saye’s “The FDA has authorized PFizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Now what?”, the author does a good job over giving an overview of the weeks and months to come. More specifically, Saye goes over all of the steps and precautions the government is going to take when distributing the COVID-19 vaccine. During December, “the vaccine [will start] to be shipped, but won’t have a widespread impact for several months” due to the limited amount of vaccines. Only around three million vaccines will be distributed, and then the next three will be shipped to the same people for their second shots. The next step is for scientists to look for side effects and other health issues once giving a vaccine. Throughout Pfizer’s vaccine trials, the most common side effects were minor fevers, headaches, and fatigue. This is a big factor as “two people have had serious allergic reactions after getting Pfizer’s vaccine” and it has to be fail proof. Another step is figuring out if people who already had COVID-19 need to be vaccinated or not. “A small number of people in the PFizer trial had antibodies in their blood indicating that they had been infected prior to [being vaccinated]”, and this shows that even people who have developed antibodies may need to be vaccinated. After this scientist will decide whether to vaccinate people in the placebo group. The controversy surrounding this is how vaccinating placebo patients will delegitimize their results, and therefore there are some scientists who don’t support vaccinating placebo patients. If everything goes right, then Pfizer will decide if the vaccine is ready for children. They believe that because children develop milder symptoms compared to adults, there is no rush to vaccinate all children yet. Hopefully if everything falls into place, then the FDA should give their full approval for the vaccine. 

I enjoyed reading this article as I am interested in the current state of the vaccine and COVID-19 in general. The author's structure of her article made it really easy for me to understand exactly what Pfizer’s plan is in order for the vaccine to reach as many people as possible.