How does your environment affect you?

My environment affects me because I care way too much about what people think. How you look like, what you do, everything is influenced by how other people will react to that, lets say, if you do something nobody likes, the biggest chance is that you´ll stop doing it (unless you love it) because you want to be accepted. Other way that it affects me is because the media teaches us a lot of things that we may not know or want if it wasn’t for it perhaps I wouldn’t want an IPhone or a PS4. 

Environment affects us a lot because we live in societies that judge, we interact with other people and care about their thoughts and feelings, so we try to improve ourselves for them. For example, when I was a kid, my father loved to watch soccer, and now I love to watch soccer. 

Anyways, I believe that there are some things that you will do no matter what others think, I listen to “old people music” (Aerosmith, Juan Luis Guerra, Santana, etc…) and I have met no one with similar interests but I would never change it.

Environment does affect you in a very personal way because we act according to other people, but one should never let other persons define you.

The Faust Legend

1) Germany 1587

2) There was this teacher called Faust who didn´t achieve anything in life. He sells his soul to the devil for knowledge, things happen.

3)  Christopher Marlowe’s “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”, and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s “Faust”

4) Nein 

The best day of my life

The best day ever to this moment in my life was when I visited Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, Spain. I was on a family trip on Europe and we were extremely excited to visit the stadium. I used to be a really big fan of Real Madrid, but I didn’t thought that my excitement would me that great when I first saw the stadium. We went in on September 10, 2012. We were on a tour bus around town and from the distance you couldn’t see the stadium, so until we were in front of it, I knew where we were. It was a great experience, about 4 hours it took and to this day I cant remember where did all the time go. 

My passion

I dont really have a lot of passions at my age, I like reading, and playing videogames, but i wouldnt call any of them my “passion”.´If I had to choose one thing that I really enjoy doing and that I have no other motive for doing it other than because I like it it would be playing guitar. I began playing when I was 12 with a partner from my mother´s office, but sson my brother started sneaking into my classes and kid of ruined it for me because I wanted to be “special” about it. Then at a performance I had at school some technical problems caused me to not be able to play that song that I was practicing for a LONG time, so i was less and less fond of it every time. Then my teacher told me that he has reached his limit so he stopped giving me classes. I stopped playing for a couple of years but missed it a lot, so last year I begun playing again with a new teacher and I love it. Thigns are a little different now, my brother is way more occupied than before so he can´t mess with me in the classes and I´m not really doing it for a show but rather for fun, so I just play at home. Playing guitar is a great way to relax and spend a few hours practicing while listening to what you like.

I hope that one day I will be able to increase my ability and play without a teacher, but for now, that´s how I do.

Ethics in Science

Ethics are one of the world´s most important values, they are what tell us what is right or wrong, whether you should do something or not, and how to feel about it, yet, there is not an exact set of rules that define ethics, most of the people consider stealing wrong, yet, there are people who grew up in families and cultures that consider stealing good so for them it´s good. That takes me to my first point, how can we define what is good or wrong? Does the general opinion make something good? or do your beliefs define it? your family? the amount of times you have done it? how you feel about it? Ethics are not exact, yet, the general opinion seems to define what is good or wrong.

Now in science, especially on the topic of the discovery of DNA, the person that seems that discovered it was Rosaline Franklin, but it seemed like the guy named Wilkins helped (not her, the discovery), yet, it says that the guys Watson and Crick, gave a definition and a more exact model of what was happening, but they were using the information of Franklin.

In the end, Wilkins, Watson, and Crick, got the Nobel Prize, while the only thing that Franklin got was a little recognition, so did they stole from her? I think they did, because it says that they used her information without her consent, but I also think that the reasons she did not get the Nobel prize was because se was dead, and she was a woman, I´m guessing that if she would´ve been alive on the time they gave the prize, she still would not have got it, because sha was a woman, so the three guys would not have given her any credit.

When it comes to ethics in this particular case, I do believe they should have asked her for her permission if they wanted to use her information, and that they should have been ashamed of stealing from her and getting recognition for it (Watson and Crick), on the other side I do believe Wilkins did a huge part and that the ones that really deserved the Nobel prize were Wilkins and Franklin.

Supersmall lab-on-a-chip is superfast

Trying to find a specific protein in a drop of blood that could cause a heart attack is a complicated task, but there is a new device that can detect an impending heart attack or increasing insulin levels. This device could also work so that people could con on the hospital faster. Experiments showed the setup detected various levels of troponin T, a cardiac-regulating protein that can signal an impending heart attack, in less than 10 minutes.

The lab is on a chip and it´s the size of a sugar cube lab, in the first compartment is a densely packed forest of silicon nanowires coated with antibodies, molecules that latch onto specific proteins. The thick nanowire forest allows the small proteins in the blood that researchers are looking for to move through and be captured by the antibodies.

You can learn more about how the lab works at: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343100/title/Supersmall_lab-on-a-chip_is_superfast

Select cells appear to spawn tumors

There has been 3 new independant studies that showed that the sloid tumors in the brain can be caused by a few bad cells called the “cancer stem cells”.

Cancer researchers have debated whether every cell in a tumor is capable of re-creating the tumor, or if only a few special cells have that capacity, this what the thing that the three independant studies tried to prove, they used some fluorescent proteins so tehy could trace where the cells went as tumors, in all the 3 cases, the tumors seemed to arise from only a small groups of cells that work like the normal stem cells: cancer stem cells are thought to be able to re-create tumors the way that normal stem cells can re-create tissues.

The finding suggests that the only way to cure this type of cancer is to kill the stem cells, the doctors say. And doctors may need to re-evaluate how they measure a cancer treatment’s success. “A shrinking tumor doesn’t necessarily mean an efficacious therapy,” he says. He says this last part because the stem cancer cell could re-create the tumor

Body Worlds

There is new exhibition going on in Museo Miraflores in Guatemala, it is called “Body Worlds” the exhibition shows real human bodies in different positions and some of them only the muscle, others only the skeleton and so on… People can donate their bodies to the plastination institute, they have gathered more than 13,300 bodies donated at the time  (right now you can´t make any donations)    These bodies are preserved through a process called “plastination” which was created by Dr. von Hagens, the process is created by pouring the entire bodes (or the part that you want to preserve) in three successive silicone baths and a material called Plexiglas.

 

This exhibition has caused a lot of controversy in various parts of the world because not many people feel confortable knowing that real human bodies are shown to any person that can pay it, I personally think it is wrong to show these human bodies to people because it goes against my morals and ethics. If you want to watch it, ok go ahead, but in my opinion it IS wrong

Artificial jellyfish created from heart cells

A team of scientists in the U.S. created a “fake” jellyfish using silicone as a base on which to grow heart muscle cells that were harvested from rats. The jellyfish uses electric contractions to mimic the movements from a real jellyfish. This experiment proves that the technology of reverse engineering is indeed useful.

Jellyfishes use a type of pump to move their way through water, so they say it´s similar to the ones of the human heart. The team wantsto improve the work on the artificial jellyfish. They want to make adjustments that will allow it to turn and move in a particular direction.

They want to insert a little brain on it so it can search for light and food.

New medicine to prevent AIDS.

The FDA just approved this new medicine that is supposed to prevent people from contracting AIDS, this is the first medicine approved in this kind of area. The objective of this pill is to reduce the amount of persons with Aids on 25% fo 2015. Creating this medicine has a cost of 12,000$ to 15,000$ a year. There were tests made in various persons from 2007 to 2009 and 45% were safe. I think this is a great advance in the field of medicine because poeple die from this disease alot avery year, and using a pill that can stop it is a great idea.