Video Reflection

When my group, Emma, Ilija, Connor and myself, started doing this project and making it as creative as possible, we also took in consideration the general information; we had to learn all the phases of Mitosis and make our drawings match the information we knew already. I, personally, didn't benefit from this project and learned nothing new, considering we worked on this project for about 3 hours only in school. The reasons why I didn't benefit from this is because I only worked on the drawings on the smartboard, while Emma researched and wrote the whole scenario and outline.
The ways of improving this project are giving us more time to work on it and having more options to do the project.
The way I learn the best is working with 2 or 3 more people, making a creative project, but since the guys love building visual stuff and material, I always prefer to end a project with a big essay in which I can prove my knowledge and opinion.

Can Your Grandfather's Diet Shorten Your Life?

Epigenetics is the study of the hereditary changes in the phenotype; phenotype affects what you look like. Every cell in your body has methyl tags that change the structure of a particular gene. They can turn on and they can turn off active and inactive genes.Epigenetics is associated with many things, as well as diet and environmental stimulus. Those two affected the pregnant mothers that have lived in New York during 9/11 and had post traumatic stress in them. The children they ended up giving birth to have suffered from a lack of tolerance in stressful situations. The two syndromes, Angel man and Protobilli, are different diseases, but both have one thing in common; they are caused by a missing gene. An interesting fact is that if you inherit one less gene from your father, you suffer from the Protobilli disease, while if you inherit one missing gene from your mother, you are diagnosed with the Angel man syndrome. 
Daily 'sins' affect the lives of all generations; smoking, drinking, diet, stress, and similar can be causes to many diseases, including cancers. While curing that awful disease, doctors tend to use and remove the methyl tags on cells, which they also do on Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis, and mental disorders children and adults. 

Cancer Warrior

   The film we watched in class, "Cancer Warrior", is a research documentary about various types of cancer and the experimental cures and drugs that could prevent the growth of cancer and ensure the removal of cancer indeed. Consequently, I've realized the difference between the tested and not approved drugs. The tested ones showed positive results after researching and being tested on laboratory animals and people who suffered of cancer, and yet had hope in succeeding in this quest for the cure.
    Putting aside the experimental cures, I think that the people who are being infected by serious and/or fatal diseases should be allowed to receive experimental treatments and therapies because it's usually a cocktail of drugs given which could or could not affect the patient's recovery. Taking a look on the bright side, releasing a drug before it has been tested throughly well enough, might result with recoveries due to the drugs used to mix that cocktail. Yet again, those are only the possible benefits, that cannot be assured in any way.
   The risks patients expose themselves when receiving a treatment of a drug not fully tested can be fatal in many ways. The patient may/may not be allergic to the drug, their organs can fail if they've had some previous inner organ diseases, and similar.

Dominant and recessive genetic traits

A dominant trait is a genetic trait that is shown when the genes of one parent are present, while a recessive trait is when the genes of both mother and father are present.

                        

Characters (The Island of Dr. Moreau)

The Island of Dr. Moreau - Summary

       The main character, Prendick, is an upper class gentleman who finds himself stuck in a shipwreck in the middle of an ocean. As one other ship was passing by, the crew pulled him in to save him from dehydration, and that's when he met a doctor named Montgomery. Montgomery explained Prendick that they are heading towards an unnamed island where he works, and explains that the animals that are on the boat traveling there to and will be worked on there. Later after that, Prendick meets the captain, who is a drunk, grotesque man. Once the boat arrived at the island, the crew and the captain refused to take Prendick with them, so they put him back on the boat and sent him away, but not for long. The crew felt sorry for him and they took him back of the lifeboat, and settled him in an outer room in which he spent most of his time in. As Montgomery introduces him to a doctor named Moreau, Prendick gets flashbacks. He suddenly remembered that he had heard of Moreau and that he was an eminent psychologist who worked in London, before he became a journalist. Later after that event of getting a flashback, dr. Moreau captured Prendick's attention, which made him seek for more details and more relieving secrets about the man. Everything around Prendick was a secret, he was sure. The animals, the crew, the doctors...even the captain. As he starts to wonder around the island to seek for Moreau, Prendick hears cries of a puma. Once he started going to find the puma, he meets a group of islanders who were not completely human; they were half humans with inner and outside characteristics of animals. After he returns to the enclosure, he questions Montgomery about who the pack was, but Montgomery refuses to answer. The next morning, as he awoke with the fresh memories of what happened the day before, he notices the doors of his enclosure stayed unlocked and leaves to begin an adventure. He meets the Ape Man, the leader of the pack, who takes him to it. As they wanted him to make a promise that he will praise Moreau and read a book in which it is stated that he isn't allowed to act bestial. All of a sudden, Moreau pops out and Prendick runs away, with a plan to drown himself, but Moreau stopped him. He explained Prendick that he has been doing experiments on animals for 11 years already, to make a complete transformation from animals to humans. Prendick accepted the explanation and as of that day, his life on the island began.

Phases of Matter

The phases of matter are liquids, gases, and solids. Liquids are in a total disorder, meaning that all of the molecules it consists of move around the empty space. Gases are found in a smaller disorder where they cannot move as freely, but comparing to the solid stage that is arranged in an order, it can actually move while the solid stay in its original form. The fourth stage of matter is similar to gas, and it is called Plasma. In that chemical compound, certain portions of molecules ionized. Plasma does not have a definite shape or a definite volume just like gas,  unless enclosed in a container. Unlike gases, plasmas under the influence of magnetic fields can form structures such as filaments, beams and double layers. 

Stages of matter ->