Anna

This week at Robin's Park the mosquitoes were really bothering me, and I wondered what was the science behind mosquitoes being attracted to people. ﻿First of all, only female mosquitoes bite, and the reason that they bite is not for food, but instead to get a protein in our blood that is necessary to develop their eggs.  ﻿ ﻿I found this article  [] which explains mosquitoes being attracted to people and here is my summary.  The two main reasons that mosquitoes are attracted to people are because of sight and smell. Mosquitoes are attracted to dark colors such as navy blue, black, and red. Apparently, the main attractor is the rate of a person’s carbon dioxide production when they exhale. People with higher metabolic rates produce more carbon dioxide, along with larger people and pregnant women. Other scents that mosquitoes pick up on include lactic acid (made while exercising), acetone (in our breath), and estradiol (a product of broken down estrogen). However, more than 350 compounds can be isolated from odors produced by our skin so researchers have not yet discovered definitive chemicals that mosquitoes are attracted to. Only female mosquitoes bite, and they suck a person’s blood to get a protein to develop their eggs. The reaction on a person’s skin comes from their bodies immune response to the saliva of the mosquito. For now, the best defense known is bug spray containing DEET, but in the future scientists may narrow down what chemicals must be masked to be unattractive to mosquitoes.
 * Week 3: Mosquitoes [[image:mosquito_bite.png width="375" height="269" align="right"]] **

 **Week 2: Recycling **

After recycling our paper in class to make new paper, I started to wonder about how much people actually recycle, and how much what we do recycle gets used.

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**Recycling Facts:** []
 * We recycle over half of our aluminum, about 38% of our paper, 20% of our glass, and only 5% of our plastic, 45% of which is the type used to make soda bottles
 * The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
 * Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
 * Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour
 * Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.
 * The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
 * Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted
 * Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.

Other ways we can help our environment besides just recycling can be composting. If every american throws out 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted that means that about 368,407,860,000 pounds of trash gets put in a landfill in America every year that could have been decomposed into soil. Items that are compostable include coffee grounds, tea leaves, leftover fruit and vegetable parts, grass clippings, leftover animal parts such as bones or fat, and much more.

Ways to reduce your waste ~ bring a refillable water bottle to school instead of using a plastic disposable bottle ~ buy items in bulk to cut down on packaging, for example instead of buying individually packaged chip bags, buy a large bag and eat one serving at a time ~ Garden your own vegetables ~ replace disposable batteries with rechargable ones ~ read news online, or subscribe to an online newspaper instead of getting a real newspaper every week ~ ride a bike to nearby locations instead of driving ~ use reusable containers in your lunch ~ cut down your shower time

<span style="color: #ff7200; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">For more ways to reduce your waste visit [] <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"> Surprising Facts: []
 * <span style="color: #6a1dd3; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">Week 1: **
 * <span style="color: #6a1dd3; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; font-size: 170%; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Effects of the Animal industry on the Environment **
 * It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein
 * On average, each human creates more than 6 tons of soil erosion due to growing livestock feed
 * 70% of all agricultural land is used for livestock production

According to UN scientists "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."

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The meat industry is causing a destruction of rainforests and habitats which is in turn causing many animals to become extinct. It is also a much less efficient method of obtaining energy which we can relate to the rule of 10% loss of energy for the food chain. If we obtained our energy directly from plants instead of from animals which obtained energy from plants, we would be able to feed millions more people and be able to sustain the world's high population.