Awareness Article #4 is due May 1st, 2009.
Please see Awareness Article format found in the labels on the right hand side of the front page.
Reminders:
1. Write your Awareness Article as a word document so that you can cut and paste it in to the blog. This will prevent you from losing any work as a result of technical difficulty.
2. You require a login and password to post on the blog.
3. See me if you are having difficulty.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
Title: Violent Video Games Affect Boys’ Biological Systems
Date: April 30, 2009
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081113101424.htm
In a recent study researchers pooled together a group of boys from ages 12-15 to play two types of video games. There heart rates were being monitored while playing both different genres of games. It turned out that the heart rate visibility was affected to a much higher degree when the boys were playing the game that included violence than it was when they were playing games that didn’t include violent features. Differences in heart rate variability were registered both while the boys were playing the games and when they were sleeping that night. The boys didn’t feel that they had slept poorly after having played violent games. These results show that the autonomous nerve system, and central physiological systems in the body, can be affected when you play violent games without your being aware of it. It is much too early to draw conclusions about what the long term significance of this sort of influence might be. What is important about this study is that the researchers have found a way to study what happens physically when you play video or computer games and, on the other hand, to discern the effects of various types of games.
Kayla M
Why Should We Worry about Swine Flu?
The Swine Flu is a respiratory virus, influenza A H1N1; this is commonly found in pigs, birds and human flu viruses. The characteristics of this virus have been known to infect humans before. Humans where the first to pass this disease after the 1918 influenza pandemic, but it has rarely been passed from person to person in the past. Since this virus has a constant ability to pass to people, this case has led the World Health Organization (WHO) to establish the general alert level to be 4 out of 6 (six being the worst). Swine flu has been in Mexico for about a month, where “45 cases confirmed in New York City, 10 in California, six in Texas, two in Kansas and one in Ohio”, reported by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The deaths in Mexico, from this virus have reached above 150 deaths. In total there were 774 deaths worldwide, since the year 2003. Companies are already making vaccines with three influenza viruses that were chosen before this flu broke out.
Katelyn R.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=worry-about-swine-flu
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-SwineFlu/idUSTRE5421MY20090503
Title : You won’t raise your glasses to this, ladies
Date: May 11 2009
source:http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/you_wont_raise_your_glasses_to_this_ladies-40274002.html
Study in the United Kingdom said women should not drink alcohol because they have a higher chance of getting cancer compare to men. Nowadays women drink alcohol like men which increase the risk of getting cancer.. It doesn’t matter whether the amount of drinking is light or heavy women who drink a glass of wine or half pint of beer a day would increase their chance of getting a breast cancer by 12%, risk of liver cancer to 24% and risk of rectum cancer to 10%. Naomi Allen said even low levels of drinking and the levels that they consider safe for will increase the chance of getting the cancer. The Canadian Cancer Society recommends women to drink less than one drink a day; one drink is 350ml beer, 145ml glass of wine and one 45ml shot of spirits.
For the average person, materials cutting is a very simple concept to grasp. The reason is simple and that is that their experience with cutting tends to revolve around common every day items, such as wood, fabrics and metal such as piping.
Laser Cutting Machines In High Tech Environments
In todays high-tech, often dust free manufacturing environment, the cutting of materials brings with it new challenges. For instance, consider the problems of making ultra precision cuts in hardened alloys on a multi-million-dollar satellite, where even one speck of dust in the wrong place can lead to total disaster.
Todays Solution – A Laser Cutting Machine
Todays solution would be to use a laser cutting machine. Of course even then, an inert gas such as nitrogen might also be used in the cutting zone to displace ambient oxygen, thus preventing any unwanted chemical reactions that might produce micro-ash.
Low Tech Applications
Laser cutting machines are also being used today in surprisingly low tech applications as well. For instance, consider the problems in textile manufacturing. Laser cutting machines are now able to replace older more dangerous cutting devices and they can also cut through much deeper stacks of fabric.
May 4, 2009
What is swine flu? U.S. declares public health emergency
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=what-is-swine-flu-us-declares-publi-2009-04-26
Swine flu is a respiratory disease in pigs, caused by influenza viruses that regularly outbreak. Usually, humans are not affected, but such cases are occurring. It is spreading from one person to another. The symptoms of swine flu are of the same as the other kinds of flu, such as, coughing, sore throat, fever, headache, body ache, chills, and fatigue. To avoid getting swine flu, regular hand washing, sleep, and plenty of fluids help.
Laila MIrza
The Eyes Of Honesty
by: Clive Thompson
My article talks about how honest or honorable people are whether or not they are being watched. Many tests have been done to show that places that work on the honor system people are much less dishonest thinking they can get away with it. In a study, posters with eyes and flowers were placed by a coffee station based on the honor system, it showed that even with the eye posters people were much more honest just based on the feeling of being watched.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?locID=winn39111&bi=SU&bt=honesty&c=1&t=2&ste=22&docNum=A155705004&st=b&tc=30&tf=0
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?locID=winn39111&bi=SU&bt=honesty&c=6&t=2&ste=22&docNum=A117754987&st=b&tc=30&tf=0
Michelle
Malaria
By. Peter Rollason
Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases and an enormous public-health problem and it is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions. Malaria parasites are transmitted by female Anopheles mosquitoes. The parasites multiply within red blood cells, causing symptoms such as fever, anemia, chills, flu-like illness and in severe cases, coma and death. Annually, there are 1 and 3 million deaths among young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites with mosquito nets and insect repellents or by mosquito control by insecticides inside houses and draining standing water where mosquitoes lay their eggs.
References:
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/malaria.htm
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/artic/malaria_research_niaid_fact_sheet_niaid.htm
Weather
Newton, David E. Gale Encyclopedia of Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Online. Detroit: Gale Group, 2008.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?locID=winn39111&bi=SU&bt=%2522Weather%2522&c=1&t=1&ste=21&docNum=CV2644032393&st=b&tc=63&tf=16
Weather is the condition of the atmosphere at any given time and place. There are six major factors that determine weather conditions. They are: air temperature, air pressure, humidity of the air, type and amount of cloud cover, amount and kind of precipitation, and speed and direction of the wind. The study of weather is called meteorology. Scientists don’t know the exact date for the beginnings of this science. The six factors determining weather conditions result from the relations of four basic physical elements: solar radiation, Earth’s atmosphere, the Earth itself, and natural landforms on Earth’s surface.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/weather.html
http://www.extremescience.com/weatherport.htm
Jarrell
Title: Myth busters –breaking glass with human voice
Author: Myth busters Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman
Date of article: February 4, 2006
Source: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7765557442856739526
There is a story that if you sing a note at the exact right pitch, a glass can be broken. The Myth busters looked into this, and proved it true. When you hit a glass it has a natural resonance. At this frequency it can affectively change sound waves to movement. When the same resonance is played at a higher decibel, the crystal will shatter. After using a computer to generate the sound, then a professional and ammeter singer with the assistance of a speaker, they were able to successfully break a glass with a human’s voice without assistance.
Additional sources:
http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae479.cfm
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1503
Submitted by: Ashley
Do you really need to drink 64 ounces of water per day?
According to Heinz Valtin, a retired professor of physiology from Dartmouth Medical School who specialized in kidney research and spent 45 years studying the biological system that keeps the water in our bodies in balance.
Valtin says that for people who have specific health concerns, such as kidney stones or a tendency to develop urinary tract infections, drinking lots of water can be beneficial. But after an extended search in 2002 for the origins of what is commonly referred to as the "8 x 8" guideline and a review of associated health claims, he reports finding no scientific evidence supporting the notion that healthy individuals need to consume large quantities of water. In 2008 Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb reviewed the evidence for the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. They came to a similar conclusion: "There is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water."
In fact, Valtin found that the 8 x 8 guideline may have originated from a misunderstanding. In 1945 the Food and Nutrition Board, now part of the National Academy of Sciences's Institute of Medicine, suggested that a person should consume one milliliter of water (about one fifth of a teaspoon) for each calorie of food. A daily diet of around 1,900 calories would need the consumption of 1,900 milliliters of water, an amount remarkably close to 64 ounces. But many dieticians and other people failed to notice a critical point. Most of the daily need for water could be met by the water content found in food.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eight-glasses-water-per-day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIhjzLfHcBA
Teddy
Stretching Your Mouth Affects What You Hear
From the June 2009 Scientific American Magazine
By Erica Westly
Back in the day people used to believe that all our five senses acted separately but in the twenty first century we know that they can work together. An example of this is how when we see lips moving it can help us understand or hear better what the person is saying. A neuroscientist named David Ostry, along with helpers, conducted an experiment where they moved around peoples mouths with a specially designed robot. When they moved the mouth to say had when it really said head, the volunteers thought the person said had and the same thing happened when they got the person to move their mouth as if they were saying head when they actually spoke the word had. There have been studies done to prove that the brains sensory processing overlap some times, causing different senses to in fact effect each other.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-real-stretch
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/4/1245.abstract
Titles
- Background Information for Electricity
- How Electricity Works
Authors
- S Corbeil
- Marshall Brain and Robert Lamb
Date of Articles
- 2009
Sources
- http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/schoolzone/Info_Electricity.cfm#whatis
- http://science.howstuffworks.com/electricity1.htm
Summary
Electricity is everywhere in our world; from lightning to nightlights, from huge billboards to even your own brain. An electric current can be created when the balance between protons and electrons is not stable. Humans have become very accustomed to being able to use electricity, we use for lots of thing such as heating, cooling, even storing data in computers.
http://www.medicinenet.com/swine_flu/article.htm
http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed/h1n1/
Post a Comment