Thursday, March 8, 2018

Abbey Thomas
Mr. Ippolito
AP Biology / Current Event
9 March 2018
Murphy, Heather. “They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease.”

For this week’s current event, I reviewed Heather Murphy’s article entitled “They’re Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease”. The article focuses on the research done by a Norwegian infectious disease physician at Leiden University Medical Center, named Meta Roestenberg. She is studying schistosomiasis, and infectious disease that affects more than 200 million people, and killing thousands, and is primarily found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Schistosomiasis is caused by larvae that live in the shells on freshwater snails, that when inside the human body, will reproduce and cause chronic pain, fever, organ failure, internal bleeding, or genital infections that increase the chance of being infected by HIV. Roestenberg give students male parasites that cause the disease, and they are small so no reproduction happens, and the students are being treated with different drugs in hopes of finding one that could kill the parasites. So far her work has been successful, but there still are doctors that question how effective the drugs will be. One researcher, named Daniel Colley from the University of Georgia, said “that the drug is “not terribly effective” and given that the worms’ life span is five to 10 years, “That is a long time to have something as ugly as a schistosome living in your blood vessels, putting out excrement and things,’”. But many other researchers agree that the testing is unorthodox, but are willing to try it so that a vaccine can be found.
If Roestenberg research is success it will save the lives of thousands of people in Sub-Saharan Africa. Roestenberg’s need for “challenge trial” also highlights a problem within the medical community. Since this disease is not usually found outside of Africa, many large research groups stationed in the US and Europe are not looking for a vaccine since it does not affect them directly. Along with these issues, the lack of vaccine for Schistosomiasis is also due to lack of funding because companies do not want to invest in vaccines if they do not know if it will be effective on people. The problem with these claims is that it requires money to do trials to see if it is effective on humans, and so the production of vaccines like Schistosomiasis is put on stand still.

Overall, Murphy’s article on the research being done for Schistosomiasis disease was very well done and researched. One thing that Murphey did well during her article was explain why Dr. Roestenberg needed to do a challenge trial to find a vaccine, and this information helped the reader understand why the drastic tests were being done. One of her article’s weakness was that she quoted sources, but since she did not include their position in the infectious disease field, it was hard to know if they actually knew about this disease of were outsiders. She could strengthen this weakness by including how these researchers related to the topic.

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Sunday, March 4, 2018

“1.5M 'Rare Penguins' Discovered in Antarctica.”

Susie Goodell
Mr. Ippolito
AP Biology
3/5/18
“1.5M 'Rare Penguins' Discovered in Antarctica.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 2 Mar. 2018, www.foxnews.com/science/2018/03/02/1-5m-rare-penguins-discovered-in-antarctica.html.
Current Event 17
For this current event, I read the article “1.5M ‘Rare Penguins’ Discovered in Antarctica” from Fox News. This article describes the recent discovery of remote islands islands near the Antarctic Peninsula on which 1.5 million Adelie penguins live. These penguins are one of five species of penguins that live on and around Antarctica and are identified by a white ring that surrounds their eye. Their average height is 70 centimeters and weight is about three to six kilogrammes. The population of this species has been decreasing very quickly, so scientists were very surprised to discover such a large group of them on these remote islands. This was the first bird census of the Danger Islands, which is a group of nine rocky islands off the northern tip of South America in the northwest Weddell Sea. The census found 750,000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins on these islands as well as 100 nests of gentoo penguins and 27 nests of chinstrap penguins. Scientists were so shocked by the images of hundreds of penguins on the islands that they ordered a field expedition and drone footage.
However, the discovery of these penguins is not all good. The Danger Islands have not been affected as much by climate change and have faced little human impact. Although, now that scientists are aware of the animals inhabiting these islands, they are worried about the design of the Marine Protected Areas of the area, especially concerning overfishing. Adelie penguins are carnivores that feed primarily on krill, which are commercially fished in the region. As the authors wrote, “It is not known how long this tiny island group will remain protected, especially from fishing, as the polar regions are warming more rapidly than the rest of Earth as heat-trapping greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel-burning build up in the atmosphere.” Scientists will have to watch the islands and the penguin populations inhabiting them to track the effects of climate change on and fishing in the area.

This article was very well-written and informational. The authors did not use words and phrases that would be confusing for readers. It was not too long or too short. However, there are some aspects that could be improved. The authors could organize the article better; it skips around a lot and does not flow well. The authors also did not develop their ideas enough. For example, they stated that the discovery of the breeding pairs would have consequences for how scientists manage the region, but then began talking about Adelie penguins in another region. Overall, though, the article was very factual and enjoyable to read.
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Saturday, March 3, 2018

AP Biology Students' Genetic Disorder Presentations

One of the suggested AP Biology labs involved producing a mathematical model of the Hardy Weinberg principle, also known as the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, model, theorem, or law, states that allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of other evolutionary influences. 

The students produce a spreadsheet to follow the phenotype and gene frequencies that result when Hardy and Weinberg's equilibrium is held constant because their conditions are being met. (Large population, no natural selection, no mutations, no emigration/immigration, mating is random.) 

 In past years, student have been asked to violate one of those condition to see how it causes the model to change. This year, I asked them to research an actual genetic disease and alter the standard equation's parameters to see how modern medical practices or natural selection would affect the gene frequencies in theirr models.

 Sarah G. examined Werner Syndrome. Model.



Mairead C. examined Bipolar Disorder.



Amanda S. examined Blue/Yellow Colorblindness. Model.



Olivia S. Examined Red/Green Color Blindness.



Susie G. examined Aniridia. Model.



Nathan R. examined Alexander Disease. Model.



Isabella D. examined Diabetes.



Kirsten I. examined Sickle Cell Anemia by designing a Informational Brochure that might be distrbuted to patients in a doctor's office. Model without medical intervention. Model with medical intervention.



Julia P. examined Anencephaly.



Robert S. examined Schizophrenia.



Jack K. created a website examining Tyrosinemia. Model.

Hannah B. created a brochure describing Hemochromatosis.


Ava A. examined Huntington's Disease.



Rachael P. Examined Acute Porphyria.



Peter B. examined Prognathism.


Clio D. examined Alzheimer's Disease.




Charles G. examined Glaucoma.



Mia G. Examined Muscular Dystrophy.


Andrew H. examined Cystinosis.



Peyton K. examined Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.



Alex N. examined Hemophilia.



Cory R. examined Werner Syndrome.



Luke R. examined Usher's Syndrome.




Isabel S. examined Cystic Fibrosis.




Abigail T. examined Menkes Disease.



Nina V. examined Familial Dysautonomia.




David W. examined Treacher Collins Syndrome.

TCS by Charles Ippolito on Scribd


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Scientists uncover genetic evidence that 'we are what we eat

Alexander Plaza

University of Oxford. "Scientists uncover genetic evidence that 'we are what we eat'." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 November 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161115111720.htm>.

Grace, I read your review of “Scientists uncover genetic evidence that 'we are what we eat"by the University of Oxford and I thought that you did a good job. I thought that you did a good job at summarizing the article. I was not confused about your subject. This is good for the readers since it creates a firm base for the rest of your review. Also, it is good that your summary is brief. It does not bore the reader with useless information and you are able to move to the main point of your review quicker. Finally, I like that your connection is meaningful. You connect the application of studying the food we eat on treating diseases. You also connect it to GMO’s which is a debated current topic. Your connections provide interest for the reader.
Although your article was good, there are some areas that you could improve in. First, I think you should include more quotes from the experts in the study. You critique the article saying that there were many quotes from the researcher so there should be one that stood out. it would be helpful for the reader to get a direct link to the research through a quote.Also, I believe that you could improve some minor grammatical errors. For example you could capitalize the “I” at the end of your critique paragraph. This would stop the reader’s attention from being drawn away from the content of the review.

Overall I enjoyed your review and I was intrigued by the subject matter. I agree that this could be a very important breakthrough in the way we look at our food and our bodies together. It will be interesting to see how scientists continue with this new information and if we take a closer look at GMO’s.
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New Species of Sponges Found on the Pacific Seafloor

Current Event #4: “New Species of Sponges Found on the Pacific Seafloor”
Isabel Sondey

Lim, Xiaozhi. “New Species of Sponges Found on the Pacific Seafloor.” The New 
York Times, The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2017, 
The article I selected centers around the discovery of a new species of sponges living on rock nodules on the Pacific seafloor. Called Plenaster craigi for the number of stars that form the organism’s backbone, it is the most abundant organism living on nodules as far as scientists know. Craig Smith, an oceanographer at University of Hawaii, conducted two explorations with the goal of collecting the newly-discovered sponges. Led in 2013 and 2015, the expeditions covered ground between a part of the Pacific Ocean spanning from Hawaii to Mexico- a region the size of the US. Over a hundred scientific expeditions have been conducted in this region over the course of the last 40 years. Nodules found in this area contain an array of metals including iron copper, nickel manganese and cobalt and “range in size form golf balls to big potatoes”. In order to classify the new discovery based on genetic and appearance factors, Dr. Lim joined forces with Adrian Glover’s research team at the UK’s Natural History Museum. Dr. Glover, on the sponges, stated, “They’re living in a very food-limited environment. It’s quite remarkable that they can survive.” Despite their ability to defy odds and survive on minimal food supply, these creatures may face danger if nodule mining in the area begins. Deep-sea mining is becoming increasingly attractive to people, which puts the sponges’ habitat at risk of being mined. In the case that deep-sea mining isn’t economically feasible and minerals can’t be extracted from marine ore as some have hypothesized, then the sponges are safe. But if the opposite proves true, and the huge stores of sediments do prove valuable to people, mining would have damaging effects on the organism.
This new finding is of great importance, as it has opened scientists’ eyes to a whole new species that they weren’t even aware existed. A deep-sea biologist, Diva Amon, who embarked on Dr. Smith’s expeditions commented “This is one of the most abundant animals found living on nodules and we didn’t even know it existed.”  Deep-sea biological oceanographer Stace Beaulieu of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution states that “This is very exciting because it is not only a new species but a new genus.” Genus is a subgroup ranking above species and below family. In other words the discovery of the new species is equivalent not to the discovery of dogs, but to the discovery of a larger group including wolves, coyotes, and jackals alike. Very little is currently known about the new species; what it eats, how they reproduce, and the extent of the area they inhabit all stand as mysteries to scientists in the present. However, further investigation of the creature in the near future will help us understand more about the creature and its environment.

Overall, I found the article to be well-researched and well-written. The author cited statements made by several reputable scientists in the subject area, including Mark Hannington, marine biologist at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, Stace Beaulieu, Deep-sea oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic, Ann Vanreusel, marine biologist at Ghent University in Belgium, and Swee-Cheng Lim, sponge taxonomist at the National University of Singapore, who also published a paper on the organism in the journal of Systematics and Biodiversity. The scientists whose research was quoted and discussed came from across the globe. The author included researchers’ comments on all different aspects of the new creature, which allowed the reader to develop a very full understanding of all the research that has been conducted to date. However, not much about the creature is currently known, and the article fails to address research that can be done in the future to answer the lingering questions of the scientists on the creature. The article mentioned how the the regions the organism inhabits, its diet, and its method of reproduction are currently unknown, yet no research plan to develop an understanding of these items is discussed. The author also fails to mention exactly how scientists stumbled upon the sponge. In order to provide the reader with a fuller understanding of the new sponge and the research that is being done on it, the author could have provided some insight into how the creature was discovered, as well as experiments and expeditions that will be conducted in the future to obtain information on the creature that is unknown right now.

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Friday, March 2, 2018

Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?

Jack Kochansky
AP Biology EF Even
Mr. Ippolito
2 March 2018
Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?
By Henry Fountain
Fountain, Henry. “Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?” New York Times, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/climate/remove-co2-from-air.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront.
In recent years, bleak reports about carbon emissions and the climate have led some people to believe that the only hope for climate stability is to remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the air.  But, as Henry Fountain points out in his article “Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?”, this is easier said than done.  He outlines a few different proposed methods of removing carbon dioxide from the air, a general field known as “negative emissions”.  He begins by explaining the potential and also the limitations of negative emissions technologies, quoting the European Academies Science Advisory Council, which said that there was only “limited realistic potential” for real success.  Fountain then gives brief summaries of the five primary proposed methods for lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.  The first and probably most feasible method is to plant more forests.  Already, forests around the globe take in about 1 to 2 billion tons of CO2 annually, which offsets some of the 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide human activities put up into the air.  If we planted more trees, it could help to assuage this problem all around the world.  Considering space limitations and massive industrial emissions, it might not be able to completely equalize air pollution, but it could make a big difference.  Another proposed method is known as enhanced weathering, and it entails crushing certain types of rock and spreading them out on land to react with carbon dioxide and take it from the air.  However, a huge amount of energy would be required to process and transport these rocks, and the solution would still be slow and minimal.  Another proposed method, one which has showed some promise, is known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.  In this technique, certain types of vegetation are grown, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then are burned in a facility that can capture the CO2 released in burning.  This technique has potential because in addition to removing carbon dioxide from the air, it results in a net gain of energy that we can use.  Fountain then describes one of the less-likely solutions, adding iron into parts of the ocean to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, living organisms that take in carbon dioxide then bring it to the bottom of the ocean when they die and sink.  He does point out that “putting large amounts of metal or chemicals into seawater is considered ocean dumping,” and it could have severe negative ecological effects if misused.  Finally, Fountain describes a technique that is already in effect at power plants but could be used for the atmosphere: direct air capture.  In this method of negative emissions, chemicals are used to bind to carbon dioxide and then treated to release the gas in an area where they can be captured and stored.  Even though some industries have begun doing this at smokestacks, where carbon dioxide is up to 5 or 10 percent of the emissions, it is a lot more difficult to apply such technologies to the atmosphere, which is only about 0.04% carbon dioxide.  Even with all of the expectation for technology to resolve our climate crisis, it is clear that it will not be easy easy as people think.
Climate change is one of the world’s most pressing problems today, and it will not go away anytime soon.  Even as scientists and governments alike have asserted that climate change is very real and very bad, some industries and leaders refuse to change their ways.  Right now, when we need to be making the shift to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible, our president is trying to revive the dying and dirty coal industry.  Part of that nonchalance might be a result of an unreasonably inflated hope in the development of negative emissions technologies.  We need to keep in mind that as quickly as technology is progressing, trying to lower the amounts of a certain gas in the atmosphere is a mind-boggling task.  It’s also worth noting that the two most likely solutions, planting forests and bioenergy, involve plants, the very things that we’ve been destroying.  The best course of action seems to be to directly solve the problems we’re causing, so maybe we should just avoid cutting them down in the first place.  Climate change is going to impact everything, from our lives in the cities to the existence of ecological diversity in the Amazon rainforest.  If we continue blundering along poisoning the atmosphere now, we’re going to face a nasty surprise when we realize that our technology cannot perform the impossible.

Although this article was short, it was fairly well-written.  It touched one five of the main ways in which we could use negative emissions technology to curb air pollution by carbon dioxide, while giving a brief but accurate description of each.  It chose a relevant topic for today’s ecological and environmental concerns.  However, there were also a few ways in which the article could have been improved.  It only mentions five types of negative emissions technology, but there are more than ten plausible solutions.  It would have been better for Fountain to offer descriptions of some of the other possibilities, some of which are more likely to work than a few that he mentioned.  It also focuses a little too much on the unlikeliness of these technologies to work and not enough on what they actually are.  Overall, though, the topic is very important, and the article did a good job at summarizing its main points.
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Thursday, March 1, 2018

Human Fossil Discovery Rewrites History

Kirsten Ircha           3/1/18  
AP Biology E/F Even      Current Event #17
Citation:
Strickland, Ashley. “Human Fossil Discovery Rewrites History.” CNN, Cable News Network, 25
-intl/index.html.
The article, “Modern fossil discovery rewrites human history,” by Ashley Strickland interestingly explores the true past of the human race. The discovery has shown that the oldest modern human fossil has been found in Africa, dating back to 177,000 to 194,000 years ago. This fossil has been dated using three different techniques and the specimen is undeniable that of a Homo sapiens, rather than Neanderthal or some other early human ancestor. This is especially interesting as this explains migration pattern of early Homo sapiens. Furthermore, scientist have been able to clear up controversy over other modern human fossils, some 90,000 to 120,000 years old due to the findings. What has been found is that human migration may have started 50,000 years earlier than previously thought. This changes how scientist view the timeline of human migration. As Rolf Quam, study coauthor and anthropology professor at Binghamton University, explains this breakthrough,  "There have been previous suggestions of a possible earlier migration, relying on both archaeological sites and ancient DNA studies, but now we have an actual human fossil that proves it." Further confirmation of this discovery comes from stone tools and other technologies from the archaeological site. The article describes these tools stating, “They were shaped in a unique way called the Levallois technique, where stones were flaked around the edges to achieve a sophisticated point used in hunting. The discovery of the tools along with the fossil in this location is the earliest known association between the two in the region.”
This article has a great impact on society. Due to the new discovery, scientist are now able to move forward and uncover history. In this way, scientist will be able to understand the “in between time,” or the historical time periods that are currently unclear. As Israel Hershkovitz, study author and professor in the department of anatomy and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, explains this advancement, "We have started excavating at two sites that were excavated in the past, the Skhul and Tabun caves, with the hope to find some hominins that will allow us to answer further questions relating to the late phase of human evolution.” This topic is of vital importance as the scientific community is constantly seeking answers about our evolutionary past. With the new excavations, the possibility of having a complete understanding of this issue continues to increase.
Many strengths and weaknesses exist throughout the text. To begin, the author uses a good amount of quotes from key scientist and individuals related to the discovery. This makes the article feel well supported by fact. Also, the grammar is perfect and the word choice is simple enough to be understood at many different educational levels. However, quite a few flaws can also be found in the article. Above all, the context of the article is somewhat unclear and confusing. This makes the audience have a weak base when beginning to read the article. Due to this, the remainder of the article is harder to fully comprehend. Also, the author uses many quotes that are taken directly from an e-mail. Although e-mails can be reliable, the article would have seemed more legitimate and supported if the quotes were taken directly from an actual conversation or interview. One of the more minor errors occurs towards the end of the piece. This is because the conclusion paragraph seems somewhat unrelated and abrupt. The piece would have seemed far more unified with a more complete ending. Due to these reasons, the main areas of improvement for the author are centered around better obtained sources, clearer background information, and a cleaner conclusion.  

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