http://ezinearticles.com/?National-DNA-Databases&id=3137254
National DNA Databases
This article discusses where DNA databases are and how they are used. It also says that each country differs and that every region has their own rules and regulations. In some places just being suspected of a crime, they will take your DNA for the database. It explains how each country has their own way of keeping the information. This article also talks about the problems involved in DNA databases, like the privacy and the civil liberties act. This article has a lot of the same information as the others but it doesn't give a whole lot of information. This person seems to know what they are talking about, but they just don't explain it enough.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Hmmm
You know, I have no idea what to write a blog about. I have written about school and how I feel overwhelmed, and it seems to be getting worse with exams coming up. I feel like I'm going to fail every class. It's crazy. Classes I should be passing with ease, I feel like I'm doing terrible. Other than classes I have work, which is pretty easy. I go to work til five, and just answer phones. Every now and then the day could be stressful, but it's not bad. When I'm not at work, I like to hang out with people who make me smile. Friends and family have held me together through good and bad. This semester I have made great friends. The connections group has been so much fun and the people in it are amazing. Everyone has their own personality and we all get along well. I'm really glad I took the class. College will get easier hopefully as I adjust more. The good friends will stay, and the family will always be there. This blog is random and all over the place. =P
Holidays
Christmas is quickly approaching! Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday. I love everything about it. I love the weather, the music, the smells, the colors, the lights... everything. People around Christmas time are always so nice and cheerful. Even when everything is terrible, Christmas bands everyone together. You see the best in people, even with the crazy people shopping. =P. The music is always catchy and pretty. Many songs have beautiful meanings. The smells are always nice. At the mall they have like honey roasted nuts which are good, and then you have the smells of the candy canes and stuff. I love candy canes. All the different colors at Christmas are nice too. You see many different trees and decorations. It's always sooo pretty to see everyone's creativity. The lights at night time light up the streets, and you can just see the love put into putting them up. It's the best time of the year. You get to spend time with your family in great fellowship. It's awesome!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Overwhelmed
It's very easy to get overwhelmed with things. This semester has flown by. I kept telling myself everything would be okay and now it's almost the end of the semester and I'm worried about everything. Two weeks ago my uncle took his life and it has been incredibly hard to get over. I can't understand it. I want to understand it. I know I never will, but I just have to understand things. I can't go without understanding. My family has held together and tried to move on. We were doing good until this Sunday we get a call stating that my great aunt passed away. She had recently had a surgery and wasn't allowed to travel for two weeks, so she wasn't able to go to the funeral for Uncle Chris. She wasn't having any trouble after, and she didn't complain of any pain. She just said she was tired. Unfortunately, she a blood clot passed through her lungs and she didn't make it. She was a great lady and will always be remembered. I know she'll be in Heaven with Uncle Chris and they can joke and play like always. It's still tough, especially so close to the end of the semester. It seems like as soon as I was getting back on my feet, something threw me to the ground again. Hopefully everything will get better soon enough. As a family, we will make it through. That's all I can ask for and that is what I am grateful for. Family and friends who help me when I need it. Okay, enough of my sadness. The light will continue to shine. =]
Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca Skloot came and talked to us on Thursday, November 19th. She talked about her book, and her inspiration to the book. She talked about where she is now, and how she got there. She explained earlier works and articles and she just explained certain interests she had. She started into science when she worked in a vet's morgue. She wrote a paper on it and how it affected her research. In class one day, she heard the Henrietta Lacks story and was just drawn to it. She wanted to hear more and learn more, so she researched it. She talks to the family of Henrietta. She talks to the doctors and she is able to understand what is going on, so she then tries to explain it to the Lacks family. It was really neat to see her talk on the subject of what she is passionate about. She wanted to know about something, so she went out and got it. She was very comfortable to just talk about things she had written about. It was really cool to just listen to someone talk about something that worked really hard at accomplishing, and it kind of gives you hope to hang in there and stick with it, even if it takes you ten years.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
WIPS #2
"Thinking in Color"
Samantha Patton did two presentations. She did one on Parkinson's Disease and then this one. She sped through both presentations, and she seemed knowledgeable, but it was like she expected us to know the "scientific" words she was using. In the "Thinking in Color" presentation, they were looking to see if there was a pattern in connecting certain words with certain colors. They took a study on 52 students to see. They used 50 concrete words and 150 abstract. Concrete being words like bear, arm, chair, and the abstract words being like nowhere and such. After they got the results, they grouped the results by 11 colors based off the responses. They then narrowed it to the top 75 abstract words and are going to use that for the next experiment. They'll use around 30 students and are going to use a stroop based format for sampling. They will have a color choice but they won't be able to choose brown anymore. They are hoping for a desired result, but they may not get it due to low statistics. They are comparing response times and accuracy. Things like connecting green with envy or economy. She didn't give much time to take notes, and she seemed to expect us to know the experiment. She seemed more confident, but it lacked the explaining process. This one is a little harder to talk about since she went so fast.
Samantha Patton did two presentations. She did one on Parkinson's Disease and then this one. She sped through both presentations, and she seemed knowledgeable, but it was like she expected us to know the "scientific" words she was using. In the "Thinking in Color" presentation, they were looking to see if there was a pattern in connecting certain words with certain colors. They took a study on 52 students to see. They used 50 concrete words and 150 abstract. Concrete being words like bear, arm, chair, and the abstract words being like nowhere and such. After they got the results, they grouped the results by 11 colors based off the responses. They then narrowed it to the top 75 abstract words and are going to use that for the next experiment. They'll use around 30 students and are going to use a stroop based format for sampling. They will have a color choice but they won't be able to choose brown anymore. They are hoping for a desired result, but they may not get it due to low statistics. They are comparing response times and accuracy. Things like connecting green with envy or economy. She didn't give much time to take notes, and she seemed to expect us to know the experiment. She seemed more confident, but it lacked the explaining process. This one is a little harder to talk about since she went so fast.
WIPS #1
"Nutritional and visual enhancement of pureed food products"
Matthew Fascio and Cathy Draper are trying to find a way to make pureed food more nutritional, and they are also trying to make it look more edible. Cathy would like people who have to eat pureed food to want to eat it. Looks and smells are a big part in determining whether certain foods seem tasty. Cathy speeds through the introduction about the product, maybe because she is a little nervous. Matthew then goes through his experiment. He seems to be nervous. He is stuttering and her mumbles. He is also slouching over. His was over a pureed sandwich. They had to use something from the campus garden and something "left over." He uses bell peppers from the garden, and day old bread. His teacher inspired him to do this project. He did a few different trials, and he didn't like his first outcome. He changed the methods of freezing and came out with a better result. He put the data on a hydonic scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being dislike very much and so on. He also looked at the protein content and the calories before and after the experiment, and he observed that the protein went up about 50% and the calories went up about 50 more. Cathy did a stir fry meal using bell peppers and basil from the garden and cooked rice for the "left over." She was looking for something visually appealing. She did a chicken stir fry, and had some trouble with her portion sizes. Her first product was okay, but she really enjoyed the final product. She changed it by the way she chopped her ingredients and by freezing each seperately so they all contained their own flavor. She did the same data as Matthew, but her outcome was not what she wanted, since her portions were off. They each had challenges, like the bread would get sticky and fall apart after pureed, and portions not being quite right. Overall, they had the desired outcome of making the food better looking and making it more nutritional. This sort of showed me that it takes a while to get the desired results of something. It takes a lot of background knowledge to sound like you know what you are talking about and to be able to relay it to someone else. It was cool to see someone passionate about the project, because they weren't forced to present it, and they were just wanting to show someone what they came up with.
Matthew Fascio and Cathy Draper are trying to find a way to make pureed food more nutritional, and they are also trying to make it look more edible. Cathy would like people who have to eat pureed food to want to eat it. Looks and smells are a big part in determining whether certain foods seem tasty. Cathy speeds through the introduction about the product, maybe because she is a little nervous. Matthew then goes through his experiment. He seems to be nervous. He is stuttering and her mumbles. He is also slouching over. His was over a pureed sandwich. They had to use something from the campus garden and something "left over." He uses bell peppers from the garden, and day old bread. His teacher inspired him to do this project. He did a few different trials, and he didn't like his first outcome. He changed the methods of freezing and came out with a better result. He put the data on a hydonic scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being dislike very much and so on. He also looked at the protein content and the calories before and after the experiment, and he observed that the protein went up about 50% and the calories went up about 50 more. Cathy did a stir fry meal using bell peppers and basil from the garden and cooked rice for the "left over." She was looking for something visually appealing. She did a chicken stir fry, and had some trouble with her portion sizes. Her first product was okay, but she really enjoyed the final product. She changed it by the way she chopped her ingredients and by freezing each seperately so they all contained their own flavor. She did the same data as Matthew, but her outcome was not what she wanted, since her portions were off. They each had challenges, like the bread would get sticky and fall apart after pureed, and portions not being quite right. Overall, they had the desired outcome of making the food better looking and making it more nutritional. This sort of showed me that it takes a while to get the desired results of something. It takes a lot of background knowledge to sound like you know what you are talking about and to be able to relay it to someone else. It was cool to see someone passionate about the project, because they weren't forced to present it, and they were just wanting to show someone what they came up with.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Annotated Bibliography #4
DNA databases
FBI adds uses for its DNA datbase
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-30-dna-database_x.htm
This article talks about the pros of DNA databases. Not only does it talk about helping solve crimes, and helps to put criminals behind bars, it also talks about being able to find missing persons and unidentified victims. Even though it hasn't found many unidentified victims, a few is better than none. This article is pretty useful since it gives me one more thing to think about as I evaluate DNA databases. It says that the FBI is doing all they can to make DNA databases more useful. This source is pretty objective, and it tells you the pros of DNA databases, but it should also tell you the cons. It's a little one sided. You are able to see how people are trying to conform the use of DNA databases to a good thing by adding more things that it can do.
FBI adds uses for its DNA datbase
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-30-dna-database_x.htm
This article talks about the pros of DNA databases. Not only does it talk about helping solve crimes, and helps to put criminals behind bars, it also talks about being able to find missing persons and unidentified victims. Even though it hasn't found many unidentified victims, a few is better than none. This article is pretty useful since it gives me one more thing to think about as I evaluate DNA databases. It says that the FBI is doing all they can to make DNA databases more useful. This source is pretty objective, and it tells you the pros of DNA databases, but it should also tell you the cons. It's a little one sided. You are able to see how people are trying to conform the use of DNA databases to a good thing by adding more things that it can do.
The Human Family Tree Video
In The Human Family Tree, scientists set out to figure out where human ancestry began. These scientist believe that the human ancestry descended from a common place in Africa. These scientists take DNA swabs from random people in the streets of New York and figure out their genetic lineage. In this, they see that people who don't look as if they are from the same lineage, they are. An Indian woman may be connected with an African male and so forth. In the video, you see people from all over come up and try to understand where they came from. It's really cool to see how interested people are in descent. All you do is swab your cheek and they can trace it back as far as they can and guess where you are from. It's a rather neat project, and it could go along with DNA databases because they could look far back in your DNA to see where you came from, like this project is doing.
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