Rachel Carson & Silent Spring

                                             

      RACHEL CARSON:May 27, 1907- April 14, 1964

Born on May 27, 1907, Carson Grew up in a town in Pennsylvania. She always loved nature and the world around her thanks to her mother who encouraged her to do so. After graduating from Pennsylvania College in 1929 she recieved her Masters in Zoology. After being hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write scripts during the Depression, She began a career as a scientist and editor. She also became the Editor-in-Chief for everything at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She published a prize winning book in 1952 called Under the Sea-Wind, then Sea Around Us, and then The Edge of the Sea. After finding out about pesticides that were used in World War II, She began he next book called Silent Spring.

She died of Breast Cancer on APRIL 14, 1964.

Silent Spring was inspired by Rachel Carson after she found out about the pesticides that were being used in World War II. It facilitated the ban of pesticides in the United States in 1972. This book is accredited for launching the Environmental movement. After hitting the New York Times List and the Book of the Month List, this novel became a hit everywhere. The argument of the book is pesticides that were uncontrolled and unexamined were harming the natural areas around us including the animals, and even us. The title is catching because it implys that when spring comes around there will be no noise because everything will not exist. After her book came out, there were so many threats and lawsuit against her. Everyone was pestering her because of how she was voicing her own opinion. Her biggest fear was the pesticide DDT. Critics have attacked her teachings and said that when restrictions were placed on DDT it caused deaths that were needless. Silent Spring got an honorable mention in Human Events magazine for being one of the ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Smoking/Statistical Information

..............Smoking is the practice when tobacco is burned 

and the vapors are tasted or inhaled...............

WARNING: SMOKING CAN CAUSE SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH

Using data from a recent study, I found out the it only takes a few minutes of smoking to cause genetic damage to your body related to cancer. 

THE FACTS/STATISTICAL FINDINGS: 

- Over one thousand million people worldwide smoke tobacco, but the percentage of smokers has decreased in some countries while increasing in others and especially among women.

- Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of a preventable death in the United States.

- It is estimated that 443,000 premature deaths have occured and resulted in a 193 million dollar loss due to health care expenditures. 

- A 2004 Study by the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion found that cigarette smoke contains over 4,800 chemicals, and 69 of which cause cancer

-Women account for 39 percent of all smoking deaths.  

People start smoking for different reasons. Maybe they have been around it all their life and it is basically the thing to do, or maybe they just think its cool? 

STATISTICS SHOW THAT ABOUT 9 OUT OF TEN TOBACCO USERS START BEFORE THEY ARE 18. MOST OF THEM WHO STARTED SMOKING NEVER THOUGHT THEY WOULD GET ADDICTED, SO MANY PEOPLE SAY THAT IT IS BETTER TO JUST NOT GET INVOLVED WITH THEM AT ALL. 

Society needs to realize that it is important not to get in the habit of smoking because it causes a chain to our children and their bad habits. Second hand smoke is one of the most dangerous things so be courteous to others and PUT OUT THAT CIGARETTE. 

What is Life?

Thinking on the terms of "what is life" there are things that can be examined that might not be exactly alive. 

But first lets see what life really is.......

According to the Webster dictionary, Life  is "the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganicobjects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power ofadaptation to environment through changes originatinginternally."

So if this is all that life is, then is a virus considered to be alive? 

According to the definition, viruses are qualified to be alive because they replicate and do not require a host to do so, but they do use the living thing. But the next question is "Is there only certain types that qualify as being alive?" If we use the fact that viruses replicate then is a computer virus alive? It can be said that viruses are alive at some point but eventually die when they are inactive. Are proteins alive? Through my research, I found to believe that proteins are not alive because they do not contain the parts and are too small. 

Cells are actually considered to be alive because they can replicate proteins and maintain themselves & a virus is DNA AND RNA sitting in a protein capsule. 

Three DIETS for three BLOOD types

Looking through information on the internet I found the three basic diets for three blood types: 

Blood Type A should avoid red meat, eat plenty of fish and vegetables, with a low dairy intake. Light exercise only.

Blood Type B should avoid chicken and bacon, eat plenty of meat and dairy, some fish, and plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Blood Type AB combines the A and B diets.

Peter D'Adamo, a physician, wrote a book called Eat Right 4 Your Type. He uses peoples research to come to the conclusion that he can determine diets based on peoples blood types. 

HIS LOGIC TO THIS DIET: 

He believes that the human blood type determines a person's health according to how healthy they are. This is hard to show because two people with the same blood types can be in different health conditions based on their metabolism rates. 

EXAMPLE DIET FOR BLOOD TYPE B: 

Breakfast
Fluidizer cocktail
Rice bran cereal with banana and skim milk
Grape juice

Lunch
Sandwich – thin slice of cheese, thin slice of turkey breast, two slices of bread, mustard or mayonnaise
Green salad
Herbal tea

Snack
Fruit juice sweetened yogurt
Herbal tea

Dinner
Broiled Fish with steamed vegetables
Fresh fruit
Herbal tea or coffee

SO HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO OUR DISCUSSIONS ON MITOCHONDRIAL EVE? 

D'Adamo discusses the evolutionary theory of blood types, using the work of William C. Boyd. Boyd had a experiment, using surveys that were conducted in many places determining peoples blood types. He divided the world population into 13 geographically different races with different blood types. If it started at Mitochondrial Eve, then how are there this many differences? 

Mitochondrial Eve

MITOCHONDRIAL EVE

Mitochondrial Eve is the woman that all humans descended from today. Something that everyone forgets or does not know about Mitochondrial Eve is that even though everyone was descended from her line, she was not the only woman living at that time. Nuclear DNA shows that the human population never dropped below ten thousand.


There have been challenges to the Mitochondrial Eve theory. A recent observation has shown that the mitochondria of sperm are frequently passed to the offspring. It could have been that Eve never existed because of paternal existence and when it occurred. 
See Below Video for extra information on mitochondrial eve:
Who Was Mitochondrial Eve?

Humans are categorized with a race or ethnicity. 

They can be categorized using color names: 

Black (Sub-Saharan Africa), Red (Native Americans), Yellow (East Asians) and White (Europeans).

There are so many races today and these races are depicted through hair color, skin color, eyes, and other things. But what depicts a race and what does each race look like? Looking at this picture we see a white male with light skin, light hair and light eyes. Does this depict the normal white male? We look at the guy on the end right. He has darker skin, eyes and hair. Does this depict the normal black male? What constitutes a race these days? Overtime through reproduction with other races, we have created several mixed races. The idea of mitochondrial eve confuses me when I see this picture of different races and how they are split. 

Update on Sunflower

After watering the seed with too much water, I believe that I murdered my plant. It sadly died I believe two days after being born due to over excessive drowning. But I am going to make another plant and rely on the sun and not too much water in order for it to grow.
Hopefully my plant will look like the picture above, but that would never happen :) 
Some facts about the sunflower:

Common Name: Common Sunflower Scientific Name: Helianthus annuus Awards: State Flower of Kansas - 1903 Kansas Wildflower of the Year - 2000

Day 1: Sunflower

So right when I got my plant, I took it back to my room where I placed it in my window facing the sunlight. I put a few drops of water in it. The next day I gave it some more water. I think i drowned my plant, and I'm not sure if its going to grow. oops.