Just sit down, and imagine the fact that you could be in jail right now, for something you didn't do. People every year are put in jail based on false Eye-Witness testimonies and false evidence for crimes that they did not commit.
But the U.S. Justice system has realised that this is becoming a huge problem, and thats where we get DNA evidence. Un-debatable evidence that can only be linked to one person on this earth. As DNA evidence is being used in more and more court cases, less people are being falsely imprisoned and more people are being exonerated (released from jail after new evidence was presented). A group called Project Innocence aims to help exonerate falsely imprisoned people, ans as of now, they have exonerated 316 people from prison.
My personal reaction to this would be that I think Project Innocence is definitely a step in the right direction, but the thing that we need to fix would be the loophole in the justice system that keeps on allowing people to be falsely imprisoned and convicted of things that they did not do.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
TED talk on Genetics and Dinosaurs by Jack Horner
One of the great mysteries that surrounds the early times of the world are dinosaurs. The dinosaurs where these massive, powerful creatures that roamed the world hunting and leaving a lot of untold secrets in the ground.
So what if you could create a dinosaur from a current animal like a chicken or a dog? Well a paleontologist by the name of Jack Horner had a dream like this for his whole life, and he spent his life trying to find the DNA needed to recreate a real living dinosaur. Jack Horner, who had an amazing sense of humor, talked in this TED talk about how we can actually change a chicken into dinosaur. He was part of a handful of dinosaur digs that recovered a lot of soft tissue, and even red blood cells. Including things like atavism activation and tons of primitive and prehistoric examples, he makes a really good argument for how we could change a chicken into a dinosaur using DNA and changing its genetics.
This is something that I find really interesting, and when he explains it, it definitely makes it look like we could easily make a dinosaur from a chicken. The only issue is we need to find a dinosaur with living DNA in its blood and tissue so that we could create this Jurassic Park like creature.
So what if you could create a dinosaur from a current animal like a chicken or a dog? Well a paleontologist by the name of Jack Horner had a dream like this for his whole life, and he spent his life trying to find the DNA needed to recreate a real living dinosaur. Jack Horner, who had an amazing sense of humor, talked in this TED talk about how we can actually change a chicken into dinosaur. He was part of a handful of dinosaur digs that recovered a lot of soft tissue, and even red blood cells. Including things like atavism activation and tons of primitive and prehistoric examples, he makes a really good argument for how we could change a chicken into a dinosaur using DNA and changing its genetics.
This is something that I find really interesting, and when he explains it, it definitely makes it look like we could easily make a dinosaur from a chicken. The only issue is we need to find a dinosaur with living DNA in its blood and tissue so that we could create this Jurassic Park like creature.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Laughter and the Immune System
Waking up everyday to something that makes you laugh definitely starts the day off well, but when scientists discover that laughter can actually improve your health?
Well you have me sold. Humor and laughter is quite un-humorous when it is put into scientific terms, but its actually quite intriguing, laughter can help Natural Killer cells, which are cells that can help defeat tumors and cancer in the body, laughter can even help prevent tumors and cancer all together! A test done on 10 students helped relay this information, 5 watched a humorous video and the other 5 watched a teaching video. Blood tests were taken from each test subject, and it showed that the people that watched the humorous video had higher levels of Natural Killer cells in their blood, which in turn helps kill and prevent cancer.
Humor is basically a stimuli that occurs in the body, this can help prevent sicknesses and help mental stability too. In conclusion, laughter and humor is something that everyone should wake up to everyday, mostly because its good for your health and it brightens up your morning!
Well you have me sold. Humor and laughter is quite un-humorous when it is put into scientific terms, but its actually quite intriguing, laughter can help Natural Killer cells, which are cells that can help defeat tumors and cancer in the body, laughter can even help prevent tumors and cancer all together! A test done on 10 students helped relay this information, 5 watched a humorous video and the other 5 watched a teaching video. Blood tests were taken from each test subject, and it showed that the people that watched the humorous video had higher levels of Natural Killer cells in their blood, which in turn helps kill and prevent cancer.
Humor is basically a stimuli that occurs in the body, this can help prevent sicknesses and help mental stability too. In conclusion, laughter and humor is something that everyone should wake up to everyday, mostly because its good for your health and it brightens up your morning!
Friday, November 8, 2013
Apes and the first quadrupedal humans.
Did you ever notice that apes, are just quadrupedal humans? Well a scientist by the name of Maurice K. Temerlin adopted an ape in the early stages of its life, and raised it like a human.
This was a science experiment of sorts, to see how close exactly apes are to humans, but after being attached to it (they named it Lucy) for so long, the ape began to act up. After a long, and heartbreaking story, it was most likely Lucy's humanization that brought her to her end.
I feel that this was a very beneficial experiment, but I also feel that it wasn't properly carried out. An ape is an ape, and we should keep it that way, and the way that Lucy died saddens me. And it was all because she was so used to being around humans so much. Lucy did teach us a LOT about how chimpanzes can be so much like humans, and it definitely proves that we came from a common ancestor, but it also taught us that animals like that, who are wild and free, can be socialized and civilized, the story that Maurice Temerlin told were incredible, and really gave me insight on how close we actually are to some animals.
This was a science experiment of sorts, to see how close exactly apes are to humans, but after being attached to it (they named it Lucy) for so long, the ape began to act up. After a long, and heartbreaking story, it was most likely Lucy's humanization that brought her to her end.
I feel that this was a very beneficial experiment, but I also feel that it wasn't properly carried out. An ape is an ape, and we should keep it that way, and the way that Lucy died saddens me. And it was all because she was so used to being around humans so much. Lucy did teach us a LOT about how chimpanzes can be so much like humans, and it definitely proves that we came from a common ancestor, but it also taught us that animals like that, who are wild and free, can be socialized and civilized, the story that Maurice Temerlin told were incredible, and really gave me insight on how close we actually are to some animals.
Friday, September 20, 2013
"Thinking Like A Mountain"
Thinking like a mountain. First of all mountains don't have brains, but their ecosystem does!
The story "Thinking like a mountain" was a story about how a hunter would hunt wolves near a mountain, but after the first one he shot, he felt like he had taken something away from the mountain and the area around. He wanted to give back and sort of avenge the wolf even though he killed it. Taking something away from an ecosystem is pretty serious, and we applied this to our field work at DNS.
This story also explained how I sort of felt about hunting animals for glory and pride, and not for useful things like its hide and its meat. I really enjoyed this story and I thought that it was really well thought out in how the hunter was acting.
The story "Thinking like a mountain" was a story about how a hunter would hunt wolves near a mountain, but after the first one he shot, he felt like he had taken something away from the mountain and the area around. He wanted to give back and sort of avenge the wolf even though he killed it. Taking something away from an ecosystem is pretty serious, and we applied this to our field work at DNS.
This story also explained how I sort of felt about hunting animals for glory and pride, and not for useful things like its hide and its meat. I really enjoyed this story and I thought that it was really well thought out in how the hunter was acting.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
TED Talk about transplant cells
Cells. Its what all our bodies are made up of. We have cells for our skin, organs and muscles but what happens when something goes wrong?
When the first organ transplant was completed, it started to become a go-to thing when something went wrong with one of your organs. Susan Lim, the first doctor to successfully complete a human liver transplant had the revolutionary idea of instead of replacing the whole organ, which takes a donor, lots of time, money and resources, to just replace the bad cells with good cells. Cells are things that can be stored for a lot longer than a fresh organ ready for a transplant, and they can also be duplicated and modified in ways that organs cant. This idea has been proven to work on many patients who had good cells implanted into the infected/dying organ, the good ones took over the dying ones and cured the organ. The cells that are implanted are modified stem cells that help work against organ failure, the stem cells can differentiate and are good at multiplying fast. Sort of like a tiny little organism. Lots of people today require bone meal transplants which is virtually the same thing as what Susan Lim devised. They can be injected via blood or transplant.
I think this idea is something that really could change the way that we are able to heal ourselves, but honestly. I think that the way that most people eat and treat their body is whats causing them to go wrong, but that is just my personal opinion. We wouldn't have as many doctors if we didn't have McDonalds.
When the first organ transplant was completed, it started to become a go-to thing when something went wrong with one of your organs. Susan Lim, the first doctor to successfully complete a human liver transplant had the revolutionary idea of instead of replacing the whole organ, which takes a donor, lots of time, money and resources, to just replace the bad cells with good cells. Cells are things that can be stored for a lot longer than a fresh organ ready for a transplant, and they can also be duplicated and modified in ways that organs cant. This idea has been proven to work on many patients who had good cells implanted into the infected/dying organ, the good ones took over the dying ones and cured the organ. The cells that are implanted are modified stem cells that help work against organ failure, the stem cells can differentiate and are good at multiplying fast. Sort of like a tiny little organism. Lots of people today require bone meal transplants which is virtually the same thing as what Susan Lim devised. They can be injected via blood or transplant.
I think this idea is something that really could change the way that we are able to heal ourselves, but honestly. I think that the way that most people eat and treat their body is whats causing them to go wrong, but that is just my personal opinion. We wouldn't have as many doctors if we didn't have McDonalds.
Credits:
TED.com Susan Lim (Transplanting cells)
Wikipedia (Susan Lim)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)