Monthly Archives: January 2014

A Cancer Test That Only Costs Three Cents!

 

Have you ever experienced a loved one being diagnosed with cancer. If you have, it’s apparent that cancer is no easy battle. In this day and age, technology has enabled researchers to do more and more research on typical cancers (like breast cancer). But what about the more rare cancers, such as pancreatic cancer? Today, I’m here to inform you about Jack Andraka’s process of creating this breakthrough and the challenges he dealt with through this process.

After losing a family friend to pancreatic cancer, Jack started doing some research. From the start, he found out that 85% of pancreatic cancers are detected late (when there is a 2% chance of survival). He knew that he wanted this to change, but how? All great minds start somewhere, and Jack started out by pinpointing a protein (in the bloodstream) that is present in all pancreatic cancer cases and in the earliest stages. This protein is mesothelin. After having an epiphany in the middle of a high school biology class, he was on to something. Basically, he would “lace antibodies to [carbon] nanotubes so that they would react to mesothelin,” (blog.ted.com). Now, this theory may seem confusing to the average middle schooler, but Jack states that, “it’s as easy as making chocolate chip cookies.”

In Jack’s seminar, he talked about a preexisting pancreatic cancer test, pointing out how costly such tests were (as high as $800) and that they often didn’t produce accurate results. Now the hard part is over… or is it? Finding a lab to conduct his research was a challenge for Jack. In fact, he wrote to 200 scientists to use their lab and got 199 rejections. John Hopkins University was willing to take him up on his idea, but not without asking him tons of questions. Nonetheless, he kept going and, in the end, produced a sensor for pancreatic cancer through hard work and minor improvements to his plan. This just goes to show how, no matter your age, anyone can achieve great things.

To me, Jack’s story is really inspirational. I guess, whenever you have an idea, you should never be afraid to pursue it. In Jack’s case, he received many rejections, but, in the end, produced a cancer detector that will change millions of people’s lives. The best part about his invention, to me, is how inexpensive it is. At a mere 3 cents, it’s incredibly affordable and has close to a 100% accuracy rate. Jack had spoken in a TED seminar a few months ago. Be sure to watch this video, as you can hear the full story behind Jack’s discovery. This just goes to show that innovation takes hard work but really pays off in the end. It just takes one idea.

~ Mehreen

 

Bakery Story: The Online Baking Revolution

Bakery story is an online game available on the app store. It’s free, and creates a world where easy, electronic baking is possible. In this game you have a job to run a bakery. You must constantly leave food on the counters, or you’re at risk of customers leaving with broken hearts. The food on this app takes a variety of time to cook, ranging from five minutes, to two bakery story days (forty-four hours) There are dozens of ovens to choose from, each creating specific foods, related to the oven name. For example, the shaved ice machine creates red, blue, and rainbow shaved ice, and the deep fryer adds donuts, and other fried food onto your counters. In this game you can continually expand your bakery, leaving room for more chairs, tables, and other decorations. You are also able to decorate the bakery in a variety of themes, or create your very own style, mixing and matching chairs and tables. All of these luxuries may be purchased with the coins and gems that your bakery earns for feeding happy customers. These coins and gems can also be purchased using real world money within an in-store purchase, but your bakery can survive without spending real money. Finally, bakery story allows people to make friends with other bakery’s. The benefits of having friends is that your friends may give your bakery six tips a day, providing the Bakery Story owner with extra coins to buy items. Also, your friends give you a daily gift. This gift may help when trying to build an oven that you don’t have all the parts for. Overall, Bakery Story is a game that leaves millions happy as they are provided with the entertainment of online fun.

I am a fellow bakery story lover. I have reached level 70/99 and have over three million coins. I love how I am able to redesign my bakery, and put my creative mind into play, using the app. I’ve made beach, autumn, movie, Paris, and winter themed. My friends are always leaving compliments on my wall about my fabulous bakery. I have over 100 neighbors, who give me fully tipped tables each day. Normally, I check my bakery twice a day. I bake eight-hour foods in the morning, that will be finished in the afternoon. Then, I bake twelve-hour foods to cook through the night. My favorite part of Bakery Story is the goals. Every week this app comes out with new goals for the bakers to complete. After you have finished a goal you earn a prize of either coins, or a decoration. I know many people who have bakeries, and love it just as much as I do. Amelia Pellegrino, a level 63 baker says, “Bakery story is one of my favorite apps, it’s so simple and easy to use.” Everyone loves this game! Bakery story is mostly of interest to the teenage group, mostly girls, but many boys as well. It entertains the daily life of many of todays people in this electronically filled World. In conclusion Bakery Story is an amazing app and I suggest that everyone gets it, because I know that they will enjoy it just as much as I do.

~Lucy

Dance: Sport or Art

 

Dance is way people express themselves without having to say a word. Its only you and the music. All you do is listen to the beat and move however you want to. To others though it is more aggressive and competitive. An example of this would be the popular show Dance Moms where girls take part in competitions to win so that to themselves they are the best dancers. Then there are other studios who don’t compete but rather take part in exams to test their technique and knowledge about this activity.  Isn’t that was normal sports do. They are competing, and testing their knowledge and technique in it. For example lets go with football. In football you have to compete against the other team to win, use your knowledge about the sport to get ahead of the game, and your technique to to grab the ball and have the crowd yell “TOUCH DOWN!” Now if dance has everything football has why isn’t is a sport. To the world dance is an art but to any dancer dance is one of the hardest sports known to man.

My opinion on this matter is that dance is both. To me dance is a sport because of the mind set and stamina you need to perform it while keeping a smiling face to make it look easy. Dancing on your toes is probably the hardest thing I have ever done. You are literally putting all your weight onto your big toe. To do that you need strength. Just like in any other sport. But in other sports you do not need to keep smiling and pretending that those 30 fouette turns you’re doing are easy. In other sports you can show the aggression, you can scream, and your can shout. You don’t have to hide anything. For some reason people think “Oh! Dance is just girls in tutus, dancing on there toes.” Well one, there are other forms of dance for example, hip-hop, tap, modern, lyrical, jazz, and others. And yes we do wear tutus but most of the time what were are wearing is blood, sweat, and tears. But we can’t  complain too much because no pain, no gain! The reason I think dance is an art is because of the way we express it. Just like I said before, we don’t talk, we don’t yell, we just dance. We are like paintings that move.  We are graceful, and artistic with the way we present ourselves to the audience. We may not hit  each other, or score a goal, but we do work hard just  as any other athlete. So maybe one day those football players can step into “our pointe shoes” and try a grand jete en tournant, I think they would change their view on dance.

~Isabella

What is Social Media Doing to Our Society?

 

Social media seems to have evolved and taken over the 21st century. Everywhere we go, people are “tweeting” or “instagramming,” sharing pieces of their life with their friends and followers. Social media shares information with people all around the world, keeping everyone updated about your personal life. There are many different social media websites now, ranging from public videos on Youtube to photo sharing on places like Snapchat. Social media has increased communication around the world. It’s easy enough to just a shoot a quick text or message someone on Facebook, and they could contact you from anywhere. With the pros of this new technology comes cons, and there are quite a few. It limits to face-to-face socialization and cyber bullying has become a huge issue. Keeping this in mind, we have to ask ourselves- is social media running our lives?

I think that social media can be greatly beneficial to society, but it needs limits. It can help to improve business, and is a part of many peoples’ daily life. I love going on Twitter and seeing what people have to say! That being said, it should have boundaries. Updating your status every 5 seconds is not going to help you land a job or get an A+ on your next test. I believe that everyone needs to take a step back from this revolution and see what really matters. True socialization is dying in society and by simply having a conversation with someone in person, or going out with friends, you can help to save it.

~Emma

Our Nation Should Be “Under God”

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Ever since 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance has been written with the words “under God”. For the past several years, people have been trying to take these words out of our nation’s pledge. In the year 2002, “A federal appeals court here declared today that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because the phrase ‘one nation under God’ violates the separation of church and state” (Nieves). A country used to be a Christian nation, but now that more people have immigrated here, it has changed. Multiple schools have banned their students from saying our patriotic pledge. For example, one principal,  Pat Jones, banned the students of Alliance High School in Nebraska from reciting the pledge without the school board knowing about it. Many parents were amazed and outraged that the principal would do this, especially without the school board knowing. This debate has been going on for the past ten years and, still, has not been resolved.

I believe that the full pledge should still be recited in schools and at other public events. ”’We will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public settings,’ wrote Judge Fernandez, 63, who was appointed in 1980 by President Bush’s father” (Nieves). Once the pledge is taken away, so will everything patriotic and having to do with God the country has to offer. America used to be a country built on it’s faith in Christ Jesus. Now that more immigrants are coming into America that are not Christian,  they expect the country to change it’s ways because of their religion. They are welcomed into the country and have much more freedom than in other countries. I don’t believe they should respond to this by asking the country to change it’s national pledge. I know that other people who are not immigrants want to change the pledge, but that is usually because they know others don’t believe in God. Our nation was built on the foundation of the bible and I don’t think that our nation’s history and artifacts should be altered. In conclusion, I believe the Pledge of Allegiance should not be banned from schools and should remain exactly the same.

~Calli

 

By Hand or By Keyboard?

The new common core standards have eliminated handwriting from the curriculum in American classrooms. Now that electronic devices are being brought to classrooms, penmanship has dropped from the list of necessities for children to learn. Some argue that handwriting brings out creativity and intelligence in students. The main two reasons why many teachers fight to keep penmanship. The first is that many tests require writing and reading from paper. The second reason is for comprehension – students can slow down their thinking process by writing out every word. Others say that typing on devices is neater and faster for kids. Seventy-eight percent of teachers surveyed think that using devices to work in school develops expression and creativity for students.

Students should be allowed to use devices for their work, but penmanship should not be completely forgotten. Many teens already have electronic devices available for use in school so teachers should take advantage of them. Also, it is much easier for teachers to read and edit student’s work on computers. On the other hand, there are still many things in life that are written down on paper so students should know how to handwrite to accomplish these tasks. Overall, common core standards need to accept the new technology, but not eliminate the older way of writing.

~Georgia

Another Wonder of the World???

People refer and know about the seven wonders of the world. However people in Belize believe that there is one more. There is a large atoll which is a ring shaped coral reef that surrounds an underwater volcano that has risen above the surface. This atoll is also referred to as the Great Blue Hole of Belize. It is 96 km away from Belize mainland and is very difficult to reach. Many dive boats drive over the atoll everyday. Also many people pay to skydive over the atoll.  Not much is known about the atoll but in 1997 a geologist names Robert F. Dill and a team of divers drove out to the atoll to collect data on how deep it is. Two of the divers descended down into the hole 407 feet. They found there is no oxygen near the bottom. Also they found tropical fish, sharks, and amazing coral structures. Now the atoll is a world-class destination for scuba divers all over the world. It is said to be the largest world formation of it’s kind. It is 984 feet across and 480 feet deep. A NASA scientist, Glyn Collinson who recently dived the Great Blue Hole said “It was the deepest, deep blue hole imaginable; A chasm that fell away deep into the dark blue.  It had been forged out of solid rock as caverns, hundreds of thousands of years ago during the last ice age.” Different animals are found at different depths of the atoll. In the deeper waters you may see a blacktip shark or hammerhead shark. On most dives people do they only see their partner diver and maybe some small reef fish. Around the rim of the atoll you will find a beautiful reef area filled with life. This includes much shrimp, anemones, angelfish, butterflyfish, small groupers, Elkhorn coral, and purple seafans.  People can’t dive to the bottom not because of the depth, but because of the little sunlight that reaches the bottom. As a result of this, the deeper areas inside don’t have as much life as associated with drop-offs.

Many people find atolls scary because of the look from above, how ancient it is, and how it is the top of an underwater volcano. People who dive the atoll say the top is beautiful and colorful, with the friendly reef fish. I believe it is definitely for the daring to dive or skydive over an underwater water volcano that appears as a black hole. There are dangers to diving the atoll. There is a certain amount of experience one should have before diving. I think that if you have another person who goes under with you and you have some experience, it is perfectly safe and a good experience. For people who want to dive further down than the clear reef area for research, only professionals with much oxygen, experience, and technology should try because of the little light, and more dangerous animals you can encounter there. The great blue hole of Belize I believe is an eighth wonder of the world. It dates back thousands of years ago and has formed such beautiful reefs, and a home for animals. In fact it was originally an underwater limestone cave. Some signs of a cave is visible underneath the reef area.  It is a major tourist attraction for many all over the world. It continues to amaze many with it’s history, beauty, and animals.

~Erin

I Bet You’ve Never Heard of This Dance Style

What do you think of when you hear the word dance? Ballet? A tap dancer? Well, believe it or not, there are actually many other forms of dancing, and I’m going to share with you the dance type I myself study. I practice Indian dancing, which connects me to my Indian culture/heritage, because of the traditional moves we are taught. It consists of Bollywood and Bharatanatyam (I don’t expect you to be able to pronounce that.) Bollywood dance is the combination of Bombay (now known as Mumbai) and Hollywood. Basically, it is the type of dance you would see in a Hollywood movie, but the Indian variation. Bharatanatyam is an ancient, traditional portrayal of the Indian culture.

    I like to do Indian dance because it is different than other typical styles of dance. Although in a way, they are a little similar. Think of it this way: Bollywood is almost the same as jazz, or energetic, modern dance. Bharatanatyam is a little more classical, like ballet or contemporary. I think it is better to do Indian dance than regular because pretty much everyone thinks of American modern when they hear the word dance. Also, doing Indian dance is a way for me to learn more about my culture than I would if I didn’t do these dance styles. Bollywood and Bharatanatyam are two fun ways to boost your physical energy, and to learn about the Indian heritage at the same time as letting it live on to this day.

~Shreya