Charlotte Cagliostro

Ippolito

C Even AP Biology / Current Event #14

1/29/19

Alexander, Kurtis. “Insurance Claims from California's November Wildfires Total $11.4 Billion.” San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, 29 Jan. 2019, www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/11-4-billion-in-insurance-claims-filed-after-13567670.php.

In Kurtis Alexander’s San Francisco Chronicle article, “Insurance Claims from California's November Wildfires Total $11.4 Billion”, he discusses the recent wildfires that have been burning vast areas of land in California. Alexander notes that one of the most deadly fires, known as the Camp Fire, “killed 86 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in and around the foothill town of Paradise.” Early on in the article, Alexander is able to establish how devastating these fires have been both financially and emotionally for California residents. He goes on to talk about the how insurance agencies have been affected by the fires. He claims that, form the companies’ perspectives, these fires are actually quite typical since wildfires are an annual occurrence in California.

Alexander’s topic (wildfires) is somewhat relevant to today’s audience. It definitely resonates with individuals living in California or on the west coast. However, the topic fails to connect with a larger audience. People in other countries or even on the east coast do not encounter wildfires and the devastation that comes with them, so they are not as invested in the issue. It is important to note how wildfires are one sign of climate change that will only continue to worsen as the planet continues to warm; therefore, it is important for individuals to be aware.

I really enjoyed Alexander’s article. I thought he was able to construct a very interesting, yet informative piece that truly spoke to the impact of the California wildfires. He was able to write in a very clear and concise manner that almost anyone could read, allowing him to reach a larger audience. However, I wish Alexander could have incorporated some more scientific data and statistics into his article. I believe that there is a lack of substance in his work that made it a more surface-level discussion of the fires.

“A New 3-D Printed 'Sponge' Sops up Excess Chemo Drugs"

Layla Brinster

1/28/19

Current Event #14 Review

Citation:

Landhuis, Esther. “A New 3-D Printed 'Sponge' Sops up Excess Chemo Drugs.” Science News, 15 Jan. 2019, www.sciencenews.org/article/new-3d-printed-sponge-sops-excess-chemo-cancer-drugs.

Esther Landhuis, in her  “A New 3-D Printed 'Sponge' Sops up Excess Chemo Drugs” describes how scientists have created a 3-D printed sponge to absorb the excess drugs associated with chemotherapy in cancer patients. Scientists got the idea for the sponge from similar procedures used to remove plaque from arteries and were inspired to mimic this technique to treat glioblastomas. Normally, when chemotherapy is used on cancer patients, the drug attacks all areas of the body, causing harmful side effects. The sponge is inserted into a vein a few centimeters away from the infusion site of the chemotherapy drug. The aim of this sponge is to lessen these side effects through the absorbent sponge. That way, the chemotherapy treatment is contained more and does not spread as much. Tested on pigs, since their vein size is close to humans, the sponge has proven to absorb up to 40% of the excess drug. Although the sponge has not been tested on humans yet, there are plans to run trials in the near future.

This topic is extremely relevant to society and what we are learning in class. We have just finished learning about mitosis and cell division, how cancer occurs, and treatments for it, such as chemotherapy. We also learned that chemotherapy tends to attack the entire body, causing harmful side effects as it stops cell division. Thus, a study about lessening the effects of chemotherapy fits with what we have studied. Furthermore, these techniques can help treat multiple cancers and potentially save many lives if it proves to be successful in humans. Every day we are developing new ways and ideas to treat and prevent cancer.

Overall, this article was very well written and easy to understand. The points were concise and clear. The 3-D sponge was described very nicely and simply for an average reader to comprehend. Furthermore, the experiments being done on pigs with the sponge were also very comprehensive. However, the chronologically of the article posed some problems. To improve the article, I would suggest introducing the sponge and the inspiration behind it (glioblastoma, heart procedures) in the beginning, to paint a clearer picture. Then, I would talk about the trails on pigs and what exactly the sponge accomplishes. All in all, this article was extremely eye-opening and encouraging to learn how new innovations and research is being done to lessen the effects of cancer.

"Lack of Sleep is Tied to Increase in Two Alzheimer's Proteins"

Ally Bruno

Mr. Ippolito

AP Biology

29 January 2019

Cunningham, Aimee. “Lack of Sleep Is Tied to Increases in Two Alzheimer's Proteins.” Science News, 24 Jan. 2019, www.sciencenews.org/article/lack-sleep-tied-increases-two-alzheimers-proteins-brain?tgt=nr.

Aimee Cunningham, author of “Lack of Sleep Is Tied to Increases in Two Alzheimer's Proteins”, discuss two proteins that are found in the human brain and have links to Alzheimer's disease. She first delves into the cerebrospinal fluid that are affected during sleep and the way sleeping flushes and cleanses the brain of these harmful proteins. She then goes on into advocate for early intervention for insomnia and other sleep disorders, which could decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s disease as a person ages. She then compares the dangerous of both the Tau and A-Beta and ultimately deems the tau protein more dangerous as far neurodegenerative diseases.

Alzheimer's is a degenerative disease that affects 5.5 million people, causing memory loss and other symptoms, that in its later stages rendering it victims incapable of expression or comprehension. Any information that could be used in early intervention in this terminal illness is extremely important and useful for doctors and scientists around the world. The control of sleep-related illnesses is much more easily acceptable than ever before and if doctors are able to suppress the harmful proteins in any way, this would be an enormous step for Alzheimer’s treatment.

In reviewing this article, I believe that Cunningham did not place enough emphasis on the relevance of her research. She did not include any information, statistical or otherwise about the effects of Alzheimer's disease in the United States or the millions of people around the world who are also suffering. If she would have included this information, the research the article included would have seemed more dramatic and significant in terms of scientific discoveries today. In spite of this though, Cunningham produced a thoughtful and informative response on the lesser known side of a ruthless degenerative diseases, with a perfect balance between data analysis and explanations suitable for all audiences.

Andrew Goldbaum 1/27/18 Current Event 14 C Even

“Artificial Intelligence Can Detect Alzheimer's in Brain Scans Six Years Before Diagnosis.” Neuroscience News, Neuroscience News, UCSF, 4 Jan. 2019, neurosciencenews.com/ai-alzheimers-detection-10427/.

Can artificial intelligence - a field specializing in teaching computers to learn from its experiences and use human-like cognition to solve problems - detect the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease years before the final diagnosis is made? New research has indicated that this is a very real possibility. For some context,  drugs have emerged in recent years to curb the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, but they are usually useless. This is because final diagnoses are made for Alzheimer’s after enough neurons have died to make the disease irreversible, and the drugs only work when Alzheimer’s is still early in its progression. To combat this problem, neurologists have attempted to interpret PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans. These scans can isolate a specific molecule - say glucose - and display changes in their levels throughout the brain. Glucose levels are important to note for Alzheimer’s disease because the disease is characterized by dying neurons; and when neurons die, they stop using high levels of glucose to carry out life processes. Therefore, the fix is simple: catch glucose changes throughout the brain early enough in the Alzheimer’s progression for the drugs to still be effective, and death rates from the disease will plummet. However, this is the difference between “difficult” and “simple”: experts in the field already know how to interpret data to detect tiny changes in the point of interest of a disease - say the early development of a tiny tumor - but glucose changes are often so subtle and slow-progressing in Alzheimer’s that these experts may not see that mild glucose losses here and there are part of the overall early onset of a disease. However, by feeding vast quantities of PET scan data of patients who eventually developed either the disease, mild neurological impairment, or no symptoms to an artificial intelligence algorithm; it has learned to distinguish the subtle glucose changes that lead to Alzheimer’s from those that don’t with astounding accuracy: 92% accuracy in one set and 98% in the other, six years before the final Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

PET scans are already an extremely powerful technology: I intern for a psychiatric institute - The Amen Clinic - in New York City, and it uses this scan to detect blood flow levels to specific parts of the brain in order to determine if someone has ADHD, Cranial Cervical Syndrome (CCS) and epilepsy, autism, among other conditions. The psychiatrist I intern for already knows how to properly examine this data, diagnose the condition, and offer a highly specific treatment to alleviate much of said condition with high levels of accuracy. However, something I noticed is that the types of patients who come into this clinic tend to have the same few conditions: predominantly ADHD, CCS, and sometimes autism. If the diverse types of biological molecules PET scans can examine (from glucose levels to blood levels, etc.) can be augmented with the cognitive powers of deep learning AI algorithms, early onset diagnoses of a much wider range of diseases is within reach. Therefore, the entire arsenal of available treatments can be tailored for someone’s specific problem before it ever becomes that problematic.

This article was well-written because it clarified not just the new development in the field, but why exactly it was necessary: not only did the article discuss how AI can identify the slower, widespread changes that humans can’t identify; but it described everything from why glucose is used in the PET scans to the main gist of what the scans do to where the current treatments for Alzheimer’s are applied and their setbacks… The only explanation I found to be lacking, however, was that for the AI: the article should have stated whether it used supervised or unsupervised learning and if there are future applications of this kind of algorithm besides Alzheimer’s detection.

Clara DeMagalhaes Current Event #13

Sengupta, Somini. “Global Warming is Helping to Wipe Out Coffee in the Wild.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/climate/climate-change-coffee.html

In his article, Somini Sengupta discusses how global warming hinders the growth of coffee in areas where the plant is grown. While searching for rare varieties of coffee in the wild, British botanist Aaron Davis discovered that 60% of the world’s 124 coffee species are at risk of extinction in the wild due to deforestation and climate change. The main issue with this is that wild types of coffee could have genes needed for our manually cultivated varieties to survive in a climate that keeps getting warmer and drier, and those genes won’t be available if those species die out. This is especially important to farmers who depend on coffee to make their living, both to ensure that they thrive financially and so that they can start their day. Though the wild plants can be preserved in seed banks and nationally protected forests, half of them aren’t held in seed banks and a third don’t grow in the protected forests. To find out more about the risks wild coffee plants face, Davis used a barometer in a test. He found that wild arabica, the most vital coffee bean, was highly vulnerable to climate change effects, and if global warming continues, it may become extinct. Losing species like these is not only detrimental to people who need them, but it also means that there is less food, shelter, and diversity in an ecosystem. However, another kind of coffee plant known as stenophylla was found by Davis and is currently being tested on.

Much of the human population depends on coffee in order to function on a day to day basis. If the plant’s existence were to be in danger, then many people’s lives would be severely impacted negatively. On top of that, like the article said, the extinction of any wild coffee species would affect the ecosystem. It would disturb the balance of the region, eliminate diversity, and impact every other species that depends on coffee for food or shelter, which in turn affects every other species. The loss of gene diversity also cuts off potential research opportunities.

One thing that the article did well was that it was simple, concise, and easy to understand. The formatting, order of topics, and non complicated language made it so that the reader did not have to have any previous knowledge on this subject in order to know what was going on. However, one thing that I think the author could have done was include knowledge from other botanists instead of just Davis. This way, the reader could hear what multiple experts think about the subject at hand and understand better how crucial it is. It also makes the information found in the article much more credible.

Szilvia Szabó

Mr. Ippolito

AP Biology

January 18th, 2019

Purdue University. "Researchers race against extinction to uncover tree's cancer-fighting properties: Are we killing the cure?." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 January 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190117115906.htm>.

Chemists in China were experimenting on an almost extinct species of trees, called abies beshanzuensis, to look for possible treatments of diabetes and obesity. However, in the process of playing around with the trees’ molecules, they discovered that this kind of tree has cancer fighting properties. Organic chemist at Perdue University, Mingji Dai, alongside Zhong-Yin Zhang, a professor of medical chemistry also at Perdue University, found that one of the synthetic versions of the tree’s molecules constructed by Dai and his team is a selective inhibitor of the protein SHP2. SHP2 is one of the proteins most commonly targeted in treating cancer. It is one of a hand full of specific proteins that help cancer spread, so by stopping SHP2, we can slow cancer from spreading.

Several hundreds of thousands of people die from cancer in the US alone, so any sort of advancement in regards to cancer can save so many lives. This new compound has the potential to drastically improve the quality of life for countless people and save their loved ones from seeing them suffer. Additionally, I feel like this should serve as motivation for people to want to better preserve our planet and the other organisms that inhabit it. The cure to a disease could be right under our noses and we don’t know it. We could be unknowingly letting much needed cures and treatments slip out of our hands.

Overall, I felt that the author of this article did a really good job at presenting the information in a clear and coherent way so that the average person could understand it. They did not use any overly technical medical terms and simplified the findings of the experiments conducted. I also thought that the author did a really nice job of guiding the reader through the information. The organization structure was thought out very nicely and was very fluid. However, I wish the author included more information about what these scientists did exactly to get this information. For example, I was somewhat confused when the author wrote, “With help from chemical biologists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, the team went fishing -- in a pond full of proteins.” I think that if the author was more clear about the procedures, it would have been a bit easier to understand. But, I do believe that this author did a really nice job of simplifying the information without it being too dry and educating the public on this advancement.

Charlotte Cagliostro

Ippolito

C Even AP Biology / Current Event #13

1/18/19

Pierre-Louis, Kendra. “Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/climate/ocean-warming-climate-change.html.

In Kendra Pierre-Louis’ New York Times article, “Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds,” she focuses on the ocean’s role in climate change. Pierre-Louis explains how the ocean absorbs much of the heat energy entering earth’s atmosphere, and without its presence, the rising temperatures would be much more obvious on land. For centuries, the ocean has served to maintain earth’s climate and keep it suitable for human life, but if no action is taken to combat global warming, the adverse effects of climate change will be catastrophic in future years. Pierre-Louis writes that “the surging water temperatures are already killing off marine ecosystems, raising sea levels and making hurricanes more destructive. As the oceans continue to warm, those effects will become more catastrophic, scientists say.” One problem that has already emerged is the rising sea level; coastal communities will soon suffer the consequences. The ocean’s increased temperature has and will continue to hurt marine organisms As it gets hotter and hotter, aquatic species will have a difficult time adapting to the environment; many organisms will be have to relocate and thousands will perish.

The subject matter of Pierre-Louis’ article is incredibly relevant. Climate change will shape society on a global scale for years and years to come. It is incredibly important for individuals to be aware of the consequences of global warming and how they will manifest. Citizens should be educated on how the effects of climate change will impact their lives and future generations. The effects of global warming will only worsen. For example, Pierre-Louis writes that “more powerful storms like Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and Hurricane Florence in 2018 will become more common, and coastlines around the world will flood more frequently. Coral reefs, whose fish populations are sources of food for hundreds of millions of people, will come under increasing stress.”

I enjoyed reading Pierre-Louis’ article. She wrote a compelling and informative piece on a relevant topic that will most definitely shape the century. One thing that I wish she included in her article was a call to action for her readers. I wish she had finished off her piece trying to motivate and incite her audience, possibly just to be more aware on climate or even to take political action.