Jay+Zhou

//**Week 3: Advances in Personalized Medicine **// ===This week, our AP Biology course took a tour at Janssen Pharmaceuticals in Springhouse. During the tour, Janssen employees mentioned several interesting aspects of their research, including the development of a new lupus drug and Remicade, the company's drug for rheumatoid arthritis. One thing that particularly caught my attention was the mention of the use of a biomarker to predict the effectiveness of the company's Remicade drug. This biomarker is a tool of the burgeoning field of personalized medicine, in which scientists strive to find cures and provide therapies on an individual level. In this case, the biomarker was used to predict whether or not Remicade would actually be effective on the patient, thus possibly saving the patient (and the company) time and money.===

===According to tissue engineer Nina Tandon, her field of study could also be useful in personalized medicine, especially within pharmaceutical companies like Janssen. By definition, tissue engineering is a topic that focuses on using principles of life sciences and engineering to replace, repair, and maintain tissue function. Through various advances in biomaterials and the discovery of stem cells, scientists have also been able to create functional tissue with extracellular matrices known as scaffolds.===

media type="custom" key="26170742" === Currently, within pharmaceutical companies, it can take over 15 years and $1 billion to develop a drug from the beginning (drug formulation) to the end (the last phase of clinical trials). This is a very lengthy and expensive process, and Tandon proposes the application of tissue engineering to expedite drug screening. When a drug is in its initial stages, scientists must first research the disease that they wish to cure and comprehend it thoroughly. In her Ted talk, Tandon cites the work of Kevin Eggan, who used stem cells from patient's with ALS and differentiated them into neurons. These engineering neuron tissues then showed properties of patient's with ALS. Techniques like this could easily be applied to the pharmaceutical industry. ===



=== Additionally, the reason that many of these drugs often fail during various stages of clinical trials, or are not extremely successful even after marketing, is that humans and the animals that are used in testing (monkeys, mice) are still very different, regardless of shared, shallow traits. Also, there are large amounts of variance, even among humans. By engineering individual tissues, scientists could achieve as close of a match to certain patients as possible, and therefore test and develop treatments that have higher rates of efficacy. Also, the potential use of these engineered tissues could actually allow pharmaceutical companies to utilize fewer animals in tests. The use of animals in medical tests has always been questioned for its ethicality, so this application of tissue engineering could be a solution. ===



===As science makes more and more discoveries, we as a society contribute my raising more qualified individuals, and we also reap its benefits. The idea of personalized medicine can allow companies to become much more efficient. If tissue engineering could be applied to the drug screening process in the ways mentioned above, we might be able to see far more effective therapies and treatments to currently incurable afflictions.===

**//Week 2: The Search for Fresh Air //** ===This week, our theme was sustainability. On Friday, we explored a related topic by taking measurements of trees to estimate the amount of paper that they could be used to produce. Naturally, over-consumption of paper has contributed to deforestation, an issue that has gained increased attention in recent years. Deforestation has rightfully become a prominent topic of discussion because of its far-reaching impacts. In addition to reducing biodiversity by causing the loss of animal habitats and protection, deforestation also affects the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the air. Most are probably (and hopefully) aware that trees are autotrophs, and therefore undergo the process of photosynthesis to convert sunlight into chemical energy. During photosynthesis, trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen as a byproduct.===



===By killing trees, society is reducing the world's carbon sink. Trees typically absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and without them, more carbon dioxide becomes free in the atmosphere and can contribute to an increase in the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is potentially harmful because it increases global climate, thus melting glaciers, increasing sea levels, and disturbing ecosystems. Additionally, the killing of trees also leads to a decrease in atmospheric oxygen. Ultimately, a combination of carbon dioxide level increase (reportedly a 30 percent rise since the beginning of industrialization) and oxygen level decrease (reportedly a 21 to 35 percent drop since prehistoric times) has lead to almost unlivable areas.===

===In some cities, the level of atmospheric oxygen has decreased to almost 15 percent -- a number frighteningly lower than the 19.5 percent required by safety standards. Along with deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels has also contributed to this poor air quality. This tainted air can cause loss of consciousness, and even death, so some city-dwellers have decided to avoid the problem of the outside air and retreated indoors.===



===For researcher Kamal Meattle, it was necessary to avoid the Delhi air, so he developed an indoor system of plants that provided adequate air levels and absorbed harmful chemicals, such as formaldehyde. His building was dubbed the "healthiest building in New Delhi," and raised the blood oxygen level of residents by one percent. Residents of the building also experienced less incidences of eye infection and respiratory irritation.=== =media type="custom" key="26106844"= = = ===While heading indoors to avoid the problem of poor air quality is not the most sustainable solution, it does provide hints of what could be done to improve the global situation. Society as whole could make more attempts to reduce paper consumption and logging, thus reducing the frequency of deforestation. Also, many scientists are researching cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels so that less carbon dioxide might be released into the atmosphere. Similar to the idea proposed in the video, cities could also attempt to grow more trees and smaller plants to increase carbon dioxide absorption and oxygen production.===

**//Week 1: The Origins and Evolution of Human Language //** ===Among the videos that we watched in class this week, Did You Know 3.0 stuck out to me. The creators of the video used a variety of factual comparisons to portray the rapidly changing world. One particularly interesting comparison stated, "There are about 540,000 words in the English language -- About 5X as many as during Shakespeare's time." I was amazed by how much English has supposedly changed (according to the video), especially since the English language used in the Shakespearean Era is already considered Modern English. Evolutionary linguistics is a rising field that can help us better understand why this 108000 to 540000 word change mentioned in //Did You Know// has occurred, but more importantly, it explores the reasons that humans first developed the capacity for language.===

===While scientists have not yet determined the sole factor behind language development, several prominent theories exist. According to the gestural theory, human language first developed from gestures used for simple communication. Since the regions of the cortex that are responsible for mouth and hand movements border each other, this suggests the possibility of gestures transitioning into language due to the proximity of the two neural systems. Also, many primates rely on basic gestures to communicate with each other, often utilizing similar gestures to humans. ===

===The "Putting the Baby Down" theory suggests that language first evolved from the vocal exchanges between early human mothers and their offspring. Since early human mothers could not bring their babies with them while they foraged, unlike apes and other primates whose infants could hang on their backs, these mothers were forced to develop a method of communicating with their infants to protect them from feelings of abandonment. Certain words, actions, laughter, emotion-expressing calls, and facial expressions supposedly evolved into early forms of language. ===

===More recently, scientists have discovered a gene responsible for language development. The FOXP2 gene, a gene also found in other animals in addition to humans, was discovered through a study on the KE family, an English family with severe Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia (DVD). DVD is a hereditary deficiency in the ability to use motor planning to create movements necessary to a child's early speech. Researchers eventually determined that this hereditary disorder was caused by a mutation in the FOXP2 gene. In further studies, mutations of this gene were found to reduce size and vocalization rates of mice. A larger than normal amount of FOXP2 in songbirds also correlated to song changes. ===

===In the future, additional research of genetic and evolutionary causes of language development might be combined to create a narrower, more accurate understanding of the topic. Perhaps scientists might utilize differences in the FOXP2 gene among humans and other genetically-similar species to find the genetic key behind the evolution of a complex language. Through knowledge of the genetic and social factors behind language, animals might one day be conditioned to develop language capacities. Of course, this type of research would have ethical implications, but society is still a long way from this point. ===

Here is a video with more in-depth explanations and theories behind early language development in humans:
media type="custom" key="26024238"