Christian+Huckfeldt

Week 3: Lupus

Before this year, I had never really heard of Lupus. After learning a little about it during the Immunology Unit, I became interested in it. Now, after spending a few more days talking about it, I really find it interesting. Lupus is an autoimmune disease that can cause damage to any part of the body. Lupus is a chronic disease, meaning that it occurs over a long period of time. Lupus is an extremely hard disease to diagnose and is thought to be affected by the genes each person receives from their parents. If researchers find a way to cure Lupus, the human population will get a much better understanding of the way our immune system works. This could also lead to a better understanding of genetic engineering and how to manipulate genes in our bodies. Due to some of our class discussions this week, my interest in Lupus has reemerged.

media type="custom" key="26170872" This video is published by Nucleus Medical Media and explains the signs and symptoms of Lupus. Even though the woman is not the most exciting to listen to, this video is very informative.

media type="custom" key="26170878" This video is a Documentary based on a woman who suffers from Lupus. In this video, she explains her initial signs and symptoms, as well as how she lives with Lupus now. This video was helped to be created by the Lupus Foundation of America.

__** Facts about Lupus: **__ **7.Lupus frequently impacts a person’s ability to keep working, with one study finding that 40 percent had to stop working on average about 3.4 years after they were diagnosed**.
 * 1. Symptoms can range from mild to life threatening **
 * 2. An estimated 1.5 million Americans are currently living with Lupus **
 * 3. More than 16,000 new cases are reported annually across the country **
 * 4. Researchers believe that around 5 million people across the world suffer from some type of Lupus **
 * 5. Women of color are two to three times more likely to develop lupus than Caucasians. **
 * 6. 90% of people who develop Lupus are women **

Facts based on data from... [] and []

Many companies such as Johnson and Johnson have put together teams to research and develop a cure for Lupus. This is a serious disease, that if cured, could potentially lead researchers to curing other autoimmune diseases such as MS and Crohn's Disease.

//**__Will you be the next head of research for Lupus at Johnson and Johnson???__**//

Week 2: Recycling is Key



The process of recycling has interested me for years. When I was younger, I always used to ask my Dad how recycling worked. I just could not comprehend the fact that a plastic bottle could be crushed down and turned into something else made of plastic. Along with the concept of recycling, I could also never seem to get a grasp on what numbers on the bottom of a container could be recycled. For example, I used to recycle everything that was plastic until I found out that only our area accepts certain numbers. This week, we created recycled paper using a blender and corn starch. I never knew this was how paper was recycled, so I thought that for this week, I would look into recycling as a whole.

media type="custom" key="26108824" This Ted Talk is delivered by Mike Biddle, who has created a plant that can recycle any type of plastic.This video explains how it is done.

media type="custom" key="26109110" This Ted Talk is by Captain Charles Moore, who first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He talks about the problems that come with tons of plastic debris floating in our oceans.

Most people probably think that throwing plastic in the trash is not a HUGE deal, because it's just one piece of plastic. However, when over 7 billion on the planet think this way, we have a problem.

10 Facts you probably never knew about plastic: 1.The average American throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year. 2.Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times 3.It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade. 4.One million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans. 5.Plastic constitutes approximately 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean’s surface, with 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile. 6.Plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body—93% of Americans age six or older test positive for BPA (a plastic chemical). 7.In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day. 8.We currently recover only 5% of the plastics we produce. 9.The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is located in the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California and is the largest ocean garbage site in the world. This floating mass of plastic is twice the size of Texas, with plastic pieces outnumbering sea life six to one. 10.44 percent of all seabird species, 22 percent of cetaceans, all sea turtle species and a growing list of fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies.

Data found from http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/07/22-facts-plastic-pollution-10-things-can-do-about-it/

If you are not convinced we have a problem after reading those facts, something is wrong. If you ask me, plastics are being used way too much. But if we continue to use them at the rate we do, we must use them more efficiently. The planet that we live on is overlooked every day, and with the way that we treat it, it might not be here for too much longer.

Week 1: Can we live somewhere else??



SS

Ever since I was seven or eight years old, I was fascinated with outer space. I was unable to comprehend how there was so much more to the universe than just the little state of Pennsylvania. For years, scientists have been looking long and hard for another planet that could sustain life, similar to Earth. This is a heated topic because if humans do not find somewhere else that can sustain life,overpopulation as well as the depleting fossil fuels could cause human extinction (If we haven't died of many mass extinctions before that). I decided to research this topic because the humans in the movie Wall-E left planet Earth to go to another life-sustaining planet, which made me wonder, could humans do that too?

media type="custom" key="26021830" This Ted talk is performed by Dimitar Sasselov, who is a Bulgarian astronomer who has researched other life-sustaining planets in other galaxies. The results of the experiment show that there are 706 planets that are "candidates" for possible colonization. This talk highlights just one of the hundreds of worldwide experiments that are trying to find another life-sustaining planet.

media type="custom" key="26021840" This is another Ted talk from a woman named Carolyn Porco, who claims that new findings suggest that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has shown hints of a possible ocean under its surface.

This is a completely relevant and important topic because new research is being done every day to see if any other planets could sustain animal life. Every few weeks, another group of scientists are finding what they think could be another life-sustaining planet. Even though many scientists are finding different planets, there are a few similarities that all scientists are looking for when trying to find another habitable planet....

1. Must be in a habitable zone (a band of space that is a certain distance from a star so that water will not boil or freeze) 2.Must orbit that star 3. Relatively the same size as Earth 4. Similar composition to Earth (Iron, Rock, Ice) 5. Must be an atmosphere that allows life (not too thin or dense) 6. Must have water (or at least the ability to sustain water)

Another question that scientists are asking is, "Could animals even survive the journey to another planet?" The fact is that many of these planets that are being found are hundreds if not thousands of light years away. Even if many of them could sustain life, humans might not be able to reach them. So, along with trying to find other life-sustaining planets, researchers are also trying to find ways we could get to them.

What do you think? Will we find another life-sustaining planet that is close enough to get to? The human population may depend on it.