Carmel blaze out of control

Roy Elal

7B

6/12/10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11916009

Written in: 4/12/10

Author: BBC

On December 2, the second day of Hanukkah, which is considered the holiday of miracles, happened an extremely tragic event. Forty-one people (37 of them were prison guards) were killed on Thursday as a huge brush fire continues to rage across the Carmel Mountains in northern Israel, killing and injuring dozens, among them prison guards and firemen. This inferno's beginning is unknown, and it managed to burn 7,000 acres (28,327,465 meters) of forest land in the first 3 minutes it started. The people who have started this (if it was intentional) are unknown, and the reasons for this unfortunate happening is so far, also unknown. Over 17,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, for safety reasons.

Once the Haifa firefighting department realized they couldn't handle the fire, they had to call all the firefighters in Israel to come help. Once they still couldn't handle it, the Israeli government asked any young person with good physical abilities to come and help. Once they still couldn't handle the fire, the Israeli government started calling other countries to come and help. Special equipment, aircrafts and crews were sent from Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Jordan, Egypt, and the UK. The US sent an expert team, firefighting supplies, and a 747 airplane (biggest aircraft in the world). Surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority also sent firefighting units to help. So far, 35 airplanes are helping! Israel's prime minister is still asking for help from Germany, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Everyone that arrived so far to help, decided together they should push the fire "from green areas to burnt areas". Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister has described this situation as an 'unprecedented disaster', meaning it is an exceptional accident as an Israeli spokesman described the saying. This definitely teaches us that not even 35 airplanes and all the firemen/women and volunteers there are in a country, plus other firemen/women plus experts, take as much as 5 days to put it out (put it out today 6/12/2010). Therefore, what we should interpret from this information is that our technology isn't as advanced and efficient as we thought! Since I am an Israeli, and I have an Israeli channel (whom shows the news, etc.) and I got a lot of information, from the news on TV, and not the website mentioned above.

I chose this situation, because, it's a terrible thing that happened in my country, and involved many other countries (which reminds of how our school is, many different cultures, and nationalities, and people from different countries help those people who are in need of help, who are from a different country!) After all of the disastrous things whom happened in this event, there was probably one benefit: this benefit was that we, as the human race, or everyone who contributed to help, realized that we need to improve our technology, or at least the ways to put out a huge forest fire. What I learned, is first, that my home country; Israel, we will have a hard time in the next couple of years, especially if a war brakes out. Another thing I learned is that our (our meaning everyone in the world) technology needs to improve, and become more advanced than it is now. The first time I heard about this, was when it went on the news. I didn't manage to complete my homework that day because I stayed up until 1 or 2 AM watching the news to see what's happening. I was pretty sad, because 41 people in my country, the were burned alive.

Food Inc. Reflection

After watching Food Inc, what are your impressions of how science of food industry, technology of food industry, and society are interrelated?

Well, the science of food industry is basically the plants that grow whom then are fed to the animals. Next comes the technology of food industry which is all the machine, and factory stuff. Last is the society, or the people, us, who eat this food who goes all the way from science of food industry, to technology of food industry, then to us. These 3 are interrelated because its a process, who goes in order, first science, then technology, and then us!

How did the film describe science & technology as a positive or negative impact on society or the environment?

The film described science and technology as a negative impact on the environment concluding in the fact it also has a negative impact on society.

How do our consumer choices affect what is out on the market and therefore, our own species survival?

Since we nowadays get to choose what we want, since we are they predators, eating more of some food we don’t have much of, ends up with that animal’s extinction, and therefore our specie survives.

How are we as humans connected to how the Earth is used?

Since we are controlling the Earth right now, we get whatever we want, resulting in us affecting the Earth like no other animal.

A few ideas that popped up in conversation throughout the movie were:

When do we say "no" to more high tech devices and go back to what caused the problem in the first place? Why are we only into the "HOW" things work and not the "WHY" things don't? What did this farmer mean?

I agree with the farmer, because it’s true, we don’t go back to see what is wrong and why it doesn’t work, we move on and try to create something better, which usually means gaining more money (for the creators) and less time to waste.

What is the difference between natural farming and industrial farming? Which is better? Are they both necessary for human survival? Why or why not?

The difference between the two types of farming is that industrial farming is made using machines and factories, while natural farming, like its name implies, is natural! No special materials used, etc. The better one is, in my opinion, is natural farming, because it doesn’t cost as much for the farmers and there are no special materials used so it’s almost 100% you can’t get any weird illness.

If technology and industry have improved so much that we are getting faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper, how are science and technology held responsible for improving or ruining human health and survival?

Science and technology are responsible for partially ruining human health and survival because they put all these materials and ‘poisons’ as some people would say into the chickens or the food we eat.

What economic costs, environmental costs, ethical costs, health costs, and cultural costs did you observe while watching the film?

I saw that some people, to be specific some farmers, had economical problems, because they were farmers, and farmers don’t earn a lot so they had problems with that. Environmental costs would be that the industrial farmers, the ones using the machines and factories, have to ruin the animals, using machines and ‘poisons’ to make them big and fat, resulting in the fact that they earn more money. Health costs is that what the industrial products put in the meat, which means they can destroy the health of the people who eat their products, which is health costs, because in the end, the company would have to pay.

Finally, state your final thoughts about this film and any changes you see happening in the food industry in the future or even your own eating habits.

Unfortunately, I don’t see any change in my eating habits for the future, after watching this film, I still believe that there is no issue here in Serbia, and that even if something does happen and I become sick, it’s not going to be such a big deal like the kid in the movie who sadly died.

Composing Music Increases the Brain's Language Skills

Roy Elal

7B

http://www.suite101.com/content/music-and-its-effect-on-the-brain-a209609

March 16, 2010

This article, was about how making music, or just playing/singing it help the brain's language skills. This discovery of how music helps the brain's language skills, happened in March this year (2010).

According to new research, Musicians; from professional violin players to professional drum players, have a trained ear,

in a way, so they can hear special background noises they focus on, which is one way of proving the new (March this year)

discovery that making music helps the brain's language skills. During this discovery, brain imagine studies show that music,

activates many contrary parts of the brain, involving an overlap where the brain processes music and language. During this

experiment, the scientists had shown that when a person listens to a sound, the brain wave recorded in response is

physically the same as the sound wave itself, in fact, "playing" the brain wave produces an almost identical sound. But for

people without a trained ear for music, the ability to hear some of these targeted background noises. Musicians,

by contrast, have subconsciously trained their brains to better recognize selective sound patterns,

even as background noise goes up. "Something similar to this would be, like learning to drive a

manual transmission car, when you first learn to drive a car, you think about the stick shift, the

clutch, and all the other different parts-- but once you understand, your body know how to drive a

car almost automatically." Adir Elal (my dad). At the same time as this, people with certain

development disorders, such as dyslexia, have a harder time hearing sounds among loud noises ---an

example of this would be; for students having a hard time to hear their teacher in class. This type of

musical experience could aid children with dyslexia and similar language-related disorders. Stroke

patients who have lost the ability to speak can be trained to say hundreds of phrases by singing

them first. Some scientists (names were unavailable) demonstrated the results of intensive musical

therapy on patients with lesions on the left sides of their brains, those areas most associated with

language. Before the therapy, these stroke patients responded to questions with largely incoherent

sounds and phrases. But after just a few minutes with therapists, who asked them to sing phrases

and tap their hands to the rhythm, the patients could sing "Happy Birthday," song, recite their

addresses, and communicate if they were thirsty. The underdeveloped systems on the right side

of the brain that respond to music became enhanced and changed structures.

All-in-all, this article, was quite interesting, learning about how music could help people with language dyslexia, i think thats pretty awesome, and would definitely be very helpful towards those people who suffer from these disabilities, and definitely helpful towards the people who nurture them. I think the experiments show that music might be an alternative medium for engaging parts of the brain that are pretty much not engaged.

Roy Elal

7B

due date: 3/11/10

Electric Jolt to Brain Boosts Math Skills

Ker Than

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101104-electric-current-brains-math-science-health/

Published November 4, 2010

Some scientists ran some tests, and found out that a non painful electrical shock to the brain increases people’s math skills. The study leader, Roi Cohen-Kadosh (Israeli), who is a neuroscientist at Oxford, in the UK. These scientists and other scientists still don't fully understand how electrical stimulations improve these specific mental abilities, but one possibility is that the electrical shock influences brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. This experiment took about 7 months, and ended recently, meaning it took about 7 months to finish. They did this experiment to help people with dyscalculia.

This new discovery could lead to long-lasting treatments for people with moderate/severe math capabilities, or for people with dyscalculia (math dyslexia). This learning restrictions anticipates a person from understanding even the simplest math approaches, according to the leading scientist in this experiment; Roi Cohen-Kadosh. “Treating such conditions is ‘exactly our aim’” Said Cohen-Kadosh. Cohen-Kadosh and his team used a method called ‘transcranial direct current’ not to hurt or invade healthy cells, blood vessels, and/or tissues. This method’s purpose is to assign only a weak shock to the brains of 15 healthy adults who volunteered to take part in this six day learning task. The shock was assigned by using pads on the head (specifically the scalp). These adults, which had normal mathematical abilities, firstly, were trained to mentally to associate nine random symbols with numbers (random symbols with numbers meaning: ex. 78^9). “This was done to mimic the learning process that children go through as they first learn how to associleate numerical values with digits” Cohen-Kadosh claimed.

Each daily training session took place, the 15 adults each got a 20 minute long electrical shock to their parietal lobes, the part of the brain used for processing numbers. "People with dyscalculia have problems (in that brain region), such as lower brain activation or abnormal structures" Cohen-Kadosh said. After every training, the scientists making the experiment made the adults who participated take test that are shown to children to compare with their mathematical accomplishments in their future lives. One test included two of the symbols the participants learned on a screen. For example; one of the symbols was number 2, while the other was 4. Thus, the number ‘2’ symbol would be purposely bigger than the number ‘4’ symbol. After the participators had a look at the screen, the team would ask which number was physically bigger. According to Cohen-Kadosh people with normal mathematical problems would have trouble doing this, while young children and people with dyscalculia wouldn’t, that is because in a normal brain, mentally processes everything differently than young children and people with dyscalculia, so in this case, people with normal brains, have size and evaluating number interfere with each other. After the participators’ brains were shocked, their achievements in this task got worse and worse, meaning the experiment was working, and they were improving their math skills. "It's counterintuitive," Cohen-Kadosh declared “but declining performance is a sign that the number symbols have become deeply ingrained in the participants' minds—thus showing the treatment actually improved mathematical abilities.” --- 6 months after the experiment, they called all the 15 participants back and gave them the same task, surprisingly for the Cohen-Kadosh and the team the participants still did badly on the task, signifying the improvements from 6 months before were still working! "The effect had worn off only slightly, but it was not significantly lower than after the end of the last training session" said Cohen-Kadosh.

This Current events, was definitely was the most interesting I have done in the past year. I say this because I'm not trying to say the others were boring, but this was amazing, reading about an electrical shock to a person’s scalp, I only saw, or heard about things like that in cartoon movies. I also thought it was pretty cool that the leading scientist was an Israeli. What was nice about the scientists experiment was that they did it to help people with disabilities, which does happen oftenly, people trying to help others that are disabled, but never did I know people had disabilities with learning math. Daniel Ansari, another neuroscientist at the University of Western Ontario Canada, said that types of treatments like this are most likely “very, very far off” then added “This is an exciting beginning, but the experiment is limited to very basic mathematical tasks --- It doesn’t necessarily show that it improves school relevant skills such as; arithmetic” although Ansari wasn’t part of this experiment. One concern the whole group of scientists had been that if a person with a normal brain, and no disability, who stimulate, or shock their brain to boost their math skills is an ‘unfair’ advantage. "Should we prevent this?" Cohen-Kadosh questioned. "It's a dilemma, and an ethical question." In my opinion this is an unfair advantage, unless everyone; all students in the schools, get this stimulation, then it would only be fair, but I highly doubt that would happen. I think for my next article I will read about the same thing, just with writing songs/playing music improves English (language) skills.

Bibliography

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRWTKSxQQPORUslgsqE-AuN9z51BuhAk4qJS3vkvvMdY0_e90E&t=1&usg=__AK6eG4HzrDkuipkremEzX8fuX7w

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101104-electric-current-brains-math-science-health/

The new planet Gliese 581g contains Earthlike blues and greens

Roy Elal

7B

Due: 6/10/10

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/100930-new-planet-discovered-first-habitable-earthike-water-gliese-581g-science-goldilocks/

Today, for the summary of an article we had to make, I will be talking about a recently discovered planet, Gliese 581g (new Earthlike planet). As astronomers say, its the first Planet with all the conditions and features that a habitable planet needs. As far as scientists' research went so far, Gliese 581 is probably a rocky place that includes; an atmosphere, temperate regions (a variation of temperatures, but no extremes of hot or freezing cold,) and essentially, liquid water, which gives an even bigger chance for there to be life on the planet.

"this is really the first goldilocks planet" astronomet paul Butler. meaning not too hot, not too cold. "Just the right size and just the right distance (from it's star) to have liquid water on surface" claimed Butler (Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.)

This lately discovered planet is placed about 20 light-years away from Earth (20 light years are 1.89210568 × 10 to the power of 17 meters.) Gliese 581 is one of the hundred closest stars to us, even though when you think, 'it's 20 light years away!! how is that so close to us?' well, if its one of the hundred closest stars to us, its very close, comparing to one of the planets farthest from us, and therefore, there are between 10 sextillion (10 with 21 zeros) to infinity stars in the universe.

Scientists found six planets orbiting the red dwarf, making Gliese 581g the center of the biggest known planetary classification outside our solar system. Planet Gliese 581c was claimed in 2007 as conceivably habitable, although after wards, it was recognized to orbit too close to the star (star as in their sun,) making the planet too hot for life. An additional star, or planet, Gliese 581d, is believed to orbit on the cold side of the habitable zone. While Gliese 581d could have life, but then, the planet would need a bulky atmosphere with a powerful greenhouse result to warm up to the period of habitability.

"They are very close to habitable, but not quite," Steve Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, stated during the conference. "This one (Gliese 581g) is right between the two, in the same system." Gliese 581g is approximately the size of three Earths, the recently discovered planet is tidally locked to its star, which means that one side is constantly in the daylight, while other side perpetually dark.

Intelligent life, or Aliens, if they are to exist, they are most likely to live in between the shadow and light, a temperate region known as the terminator, as i said before, a temperate region is a variation of temperatures, but no extremes of hot or freezing cold, as the scientists said. "Imagine the view from the terminator," Vogt said, "You basically see this star sitting on the horizon. You see an eternal sunrise or sunset, depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist." The Gliese 581g finding took scientists 11 years of examinations. The data let scientists to find the wobble in a star's orbit which brought about by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet, a technique called radial velocity. "Given the relative ease of finding this planet, 10 to 20 percent of all stars may have potentially habitable planets." Vogt said in a press release.

"There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy."

All-in-all, I think this article was very interesting! I mean, knowing that there's a chance for other intelligent beings to be other than us, on this planet Earth, everyone would be excited to know that! I learned a lot from this article, and it had so much information about this topic, I even used a little of it for my debate speech. :P

Bibliography:

Roach, John. "First Truly Habitable Planet Discovered, Experts Say." Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News. 29 Sept. 2010. National Geographic News. 05 Oct. 2010 .

Living things and the environment reflection

What needs are met by an organism's environment?

An organism obtains food, water, shelter, and other things it needs to live, grow, and reproduce from its surroundings.

What are the two parts of an organism's habitat with which it interacts?

The food it eats, if the organism needs to hunt it down or just get it from a tree, and the other organisms surrounding it.

Why do you find different kinds of organisms in different habitats?

You would find different types of organisms in different types of habitats, because, the polar bear wouldn't be able to live in Egypt because it's too hot for it's body, while a camel wouldn't be able to live in the arctic because it's too cold for it's body. Each organism lives in a habitat they can adapt to, and they won't freeze to death, or burn to death.

Think about what will soon start happening within Belgrade. How do animals prepare for such a change?

Well, I’m guessing that most of the animals know that this type of weather is coming, and they start making their shelter better/more productive, hibernating, and eating a lot, etc.

The monkey would not be able to survive without the banana it was eating, because that’s what the monkey mainly eats.

Which factors could they survive without?
The monkey would most probably be able to survive without the rocks it was sitting/standing on.

Video:

Mr. Watts' presentation

I found this presentation quite interesting! So many amazing things I learned about different animals, for example, I never knew about the krill.

· Seals

- The seal mother’s milk is 40% fat.

- Super Weiner, a pup that doesn’t stop eating, most likely to be a dominate male.

- Crab Eater Seals eat mostly krill.

- Leopard Seals eat Penguins and Krill.

- Leopard Seals can be extremely aggressive.

- Elephant Seals can be 500 kilos and eat squid and penguins.

- Female Leopard seals, are very dangerous, for your own safety, don’t go in the water with one around.

- Male Leopard Seals, sing to attract the Female seals.

· Whales

- Eat all the time.

- Huge animals.

- Migrate from Brazil, going down to the arctic.

· Penguins

- Macaroni Penguin

- Adelie Penguin

- Gentoo Penguin

- Chinstrap Penguin

o Hatch at Christmas

o Arrive to arctic at about the same time at spring.

- Emperor penguins

o Arrive at the end of summer, because they take longer to grow a chick.

o Hatch in Christmas / New Years.

o They have to survive during the winter to grow a chick.

· Krill

- Eat algae like super fast machines.

- Swim fast.

- Gets eaten by almost every animal in the arctic.

- Eat ¼ of their body weight in a day.

- Live until 10 years, eat algae the whole time.

- They only make eggs in around the spring.

· Polar Bears

- Almost eat only the fat in the animals they kill, very rarely eat the meat.

- They have very thick fur, so they won’t freeze to death.

- Very Strong and powerful.

- Not very fast runners.

- Polar Bears live only in the Arctic, not in the Antarctic.

I consider Mr. Watts’ presentation very good! I learned so many things from it, he had great stories, and tons of information. I really enjoyed the presentation, I can’t imagine living in such a cold climate, and in some of the pictures of him and his team they were sometimes not wearing any hats, which I found quite weird, not wearing a hat in that type of climate and in that type of weather. Mr. Watts helped me to connect more to the things we are learning in class, with stuff he actually got to experience. He taught me something which I found pretty important: Every animal is equipped with different types of tools, to make our world as it should be.

- -Roy