Genetic Soulution

In the history of many countries there has been a movement to use "genetics" to make the population better. In the US it was called Eugenics, in Germany it was called the Holocaust. Both were attempts to purify the gene pool and make the population better suited to life. While the Nazis took the cleansing a lot further, to the destruction of over 6 million non-arian persons. Here, while we did not kill many people, we locked them away in mental hospitals, some of which used the same gassing techniques as the Nazi, and we forced thousands of sterilizations on people the Eugenics movement found unfit. They made pedigrees of things feeble mindedness or bad temper, things that had no genetic basis. Now James Watson is promoting a new kind of genetic sorting. Using IVF, it is possible to take a cell from an eighth cell mass without any harm to the embryo and test its DNA for a multitude of genetic diseases or mutations. He urges that embryos with things like autism or down syndrome be passed up for "better" ones. Or if it is a test after pregnancy has started, he suggest abortions if any test comes up positive.

This new way of manipulating our population is very controversial. People think that we are going against god, that it is unnatural and that we do not know what we are doing. We are taking evolution into our own hands. But once we start manipulating genes, where do we stop? At genetic diseases, or at eye color? There is a slippery slope.
There is also the lives and contributions of those people who would have been terminated. There are many artists who were bipolar or manic depressive. Just because people have a problem, does not mean they are worthless.

Mental Health

An Actual Use for Social Networking!

Lately people with debilities or who are ill or handy capped have been using social networking sites to expand their world and gain support. This is a good option for people who are unable to leave their homes often or have problems that prevent them from interacting normally with others in a face to face situation. These networks, provide support through live chats and lets disabled people make friends and talk about their situation and the world that they might not be able to see. These people can seek out others that understand their situation and can provide an understanding friend, instead of the disabled persons feeling alone and misunderstood.

“Soon I had a little neighborhood. It was like stopping in for coffee every day just to see how things were going.”

There is only so much that you can understand about the world bu watching the news, these networking sites allow people to feel connected once again to the world outside of where they are confined.

I think this is a great use of technology, much better than students procrastinating on their homework by chatting oh Facebook.

Closer to the recreation of the Big Bang!

In Pasadena on Tuesday scientists rejoiced as a proton accelerator, called the Large Hadron Collider, successfully worked and sped protons using 3.5 trillion volts of electricity at over 99 percent the speed of light. The protons collided and the effects were recorded. This machine has been and 11 billion dollar project that has lasted many years. Three years ago it failed to work because of a bad connection between the magnets that are used to move the protons. There are a few other examples of this type of proton accelerator machines, all trying to recreate the Big Bang. While those machines have been collecting data for years, this is the highest output that has been created, unfortunately it is not possible to run the Large Hadron Collider at full power for another few years, due to slight problems with the magnets involved.

These scientists are trying to recreate the Big Bang so we can better understand out environment. They have opened a whole new area of science that will be explored. Their current goal is to find the definition of dark matter and to hopefully create Higgs Bosom, I don't understand what that is, but it has something to do with imbuing energy into particles. As Harvey Newman, a Caltech professor who works on the C.M.S. experiment:

“It’s very exciting because we are entering a new energy range,” ...“We’re looking at all kinds of exotic things,” he said, including signs of extra dimensions."

This is an exciting new field, I wish I understood better. The exploration of the origins or our universe.


Scientist celebrating with Champagne. With a back drop of the computerized model of the impact.

Wrong Way!

Obama is now proposing to start drilling for oil off the east coast. While the rigs would be out of sight and the states would get some of the profit, I feel this is a big mistake. While I know that he never deceived us, even saying in his State of the Union Address that

“tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

will be made, and I am sure, as the president and a global player, he has a view of the state of the world that far exceeds my own. But even with that being the case, i can not agree with this plan,

I feel that it is working towards the wrong end. Our goal should not be merely to reduce the US's dependence, but move away from using oil in general. It would be like the Prius, better for the ones buying the gas, but in the end, it has one of the most toxic batteries in existence which goes right into our earth. So while it claims, low emissions, and environmental friends, its really just pocket friendly to those who drive it and is hurting the environment in other, less disclosed ways. This drilling will not help up break our addiction of oil, merely foreign oil. I think that he should instead invest all the money that would go into buying the property, doing environmental research, drilling, then refining into creating alternate energy sources and making our country compatible with them.

Lets Learn From the Fish!

I don't think that this is a new break through, but scientist have found that when dealing with damaged hearts, injecting stem cells do not create favorable results, they are useless. Ulrike humans, who replace maybe half of their heart cells in their whole life and when damaged produce scar tissue that does not contract, Zebra fish can regenerate a fifth of their heart if it is cut off. The scientists do no know how this is naturally don't yet, but they have noticed that the mature cells revert back to slightly differentiated cells before multiplying to regenerate the lost tissue. This is currently impossible within in humans, they have found that the DNA in human heart cells after damage replicates in the beginning stages of P1, but does not pass through the checkpoints.

While we do not know how Zebra fish are able to regenerate, or why we cant. I believe that studying other animals and essentially copying their genes into our own genome could, quite possibly, be the future. It will be extremely controversial, raising questions like "what is human?" and "how human do you have to be to gain human rights?". But this future, where we can take the desirable traits of all the animals, this is when we can take evolution into our own hands.

Mental Health