Category: Uncategorized
Journalism in Verse
19
She was 19
1 when she learned to walk
2 when she could talk
3 when she made her first friend
4 when she would play pretend
5 when she began school
Expanding her brain with an endless array of knowledge
Beginning a life in which she had much to learn from
10 when she found a passion for art
11 when she crushed on a boy, sensing a feeling so strong in her heart
12 when her body began to change
13 when boys stop looking at her the same
She wished all would have remained.
17 when she had her first kiss
18 when she graduated
19 when she visited the post office
19 when she was taken and raped
19 when she fought back
Her name was Uyinene
And she was 19 when she was killed.
The article: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/15/africa/south-africa-student-murder-sentence/index.html
Neuron Function – Psych 12
Sensory Neuron –
The sensory neuron is nerve cells within the nervous system responsible for converting external stimuli from the organism’s environment into internal electrical impulses.
Interneuron
The interneuron transmits impulses between other neurons.
Motor-neuron
This neuron carries signals from other parts of the body into the nervous system.
Neuron Structure – The structures of the Neuron cause the brain to properly function the way in which it does, each part with its own purpose.
How does an action potential move along the neuron fibre?
As an action potential travels down an axon there is a change in polarity across the membrane of the axon. The impulse travels down the axon in one direction only, to the axon terminal where it signals other neurons.
Neurons communicate in sending signals in what to do next.
Synapse
Above is the structure of the Synapse
The junction between the axis and the dendrites where that cause neurons to an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron. A neurotransmitter is released there. A chemical that allows one neuron to talk to the next neuron and continue sending the impulse.
- Information from one neuron flows to another neuron across a synapse. The synapse contains a small gap separating neurons
Protected: Spoken Word – Dear Present Me
Keep ya head up – Lyric analysis
Meaning: The meaning of this song was to shed light onto the problems of minorities, whether it’s women or black people. This song was meant to empower people in face of oppression. Despite the many problems, 2pac preaches the fact to stay strong and “Keep ya head up”.
Si Lo Ecoutait
Collaboration Fluency Reflection
During the Collaboration Fluency presentation, my team and I were sure to make our Dragon’s Den presentation prepared and full of information, however there are still a couple of things that we could have done better. The first step to the begin our project was to dream. Our team sat together and brainstormed different ways that we could’ve made an innovation that would help our world a little more. Personally, I loved this step. I have always been a bit of a dreamer and I absolutely love to express creativity! My favorite part of this was how we weren’t afraid to pitch out any ideas no matter how unrealistic they were. I learnt that every single idea has the potential to become more, which I think is very important. Our invention, the Personal Healthcare Companion (PHCC) had started out as something that wasn’t exactly attainable. Like we had included in our presentation, the PHCC was inspired by the Disney character Baymax from the movie, “Big Hero 6”. We began by thinking of a robot that could do just as much as Baymax could. That includes being able to scan a patient and knowing what kind of treatment they needed. Obviously, this technology was not attainable for us, being four teenagers.
When presenting the project, I think that everything went exactly as we planned that it would. It had gone very smooth and we included all the information that we wanted to talk about. Our invention also seemed to be very clear and everyone seemed to understand what it was. In the end, we took from what the judges said. There were ways that we could make our invention even better.
Doing this project, we did come across some “bumps in the road”. Personally, one of the things that I would have stopped myself from doing was procrastinating as much as I did. This has been something that I do often and it doesn’t usually result in anything good. One of the things that I disliked about this project was that the class time was spread out and sometimes we’d go an entire week without working on the collaboration fluency project. This resulted in me not being as motivated to work on it as I was. I also found myself confused about which days we would be working on the project. As for us as a group, I think for the most part I wouldn’t change anything. We each supported each other and overall were a great team.
The slip of paper that I chose after our presentation had been one under the category of Personal Responsibility skill, “I practice self-determination”. I chose this slip because I used to often silence myself when doing group projects. This year I told myself to never do this. The first criteria on the slip was “advocate for myself and my ideas”. I do think that I am refining for this one. Every idea that I had during our project was never left unsaid. I found myself comfortable to say even the craziest ideas. The next criteria were “Imagine and work towards change in myself & the world”. Now if we were talking about my personal life outside of science class, I would 100% say refining. As for this project, I do want to change the world, but I don’t think that this project would be what would I want to change it with. But it is a step to something that could possibly become bigger in the future. As for change in myself, I think that this is a step towards that, as I think everything should be. I would say that this finds itself in between developing and refining. The final criteria on this sheet is “Take the initiative to inform myself about relevant issues”. I would say that for me, this is refining. I have always been very aware of the issues that are happening right now in this world. This was the first step to starting this project. But it’s not only this project that has made me think outside of what is happening to me personally. I think that this alone is something that everyone should try to take part in. How can we help an issue if we don’t know that much about it.
One thing that I wouldn’t change would be the people who I chose to do this project with, Shannon, Olivia and Elise. I feel as though we all clicked like pieces in a puzzle. Each one of us weren’t afraid to express our ideas and to help each other out. We each made it a priority to stay on track. We told ourselves that certain work would have to be done by a certain date and if one of us didn’t have their part finished, they would have to do more work to make up for it. I do think that this helped our work process since we were motivated to finish and were aware of the consequences that would come without work.
But in the end, I did learn a lot from this project. I learnt a lot about electricity, issues going on in our world and finally, teamwork. I do think that I will carry a lot of this information on for my future projects.
Cancer Story
Part 1: Cancer Story
It all began when my 4-year-old host, Timmy, started getting the symptoms of Neuroblastoma. The wheezing, the chest pain, he went through it all. That’s when his mother decided to take him to the doctors. She found it out of the ordinary that her usually energetic child, was becoming much more quiet because of the pain he was going through. I am one of Timmy’s genes that went through some mutations because of the cancer found inside of his neuroblasts which are immature nerve cells that a fetus must create as part of its development process. These nerve cells are supposed to grow and become functioning nerve cells, but, unfortunately, they become cancer cells instead. Because of the immature cells it is the reason why Neuroblastoma seems to only target children 5 and under.
At the beginning, Timmy’s cells grew and didn’t respond to the signals telling it to stop (like regular cells do). Instead they began to multiply out of control. This is what created his tumor. To get to the stage I am today, I underwent a somatic mutation. Somatic mutation is what is passed from the mutated cell during cell division. The effects on poor Timmy’s body have not been the best. Tumors have been growing on his spinal cord causing spinal cord compression which will eventually cause pain and paralysis. The cancer is also spreading quick to his bones, skin and liver. Timmy is not the child that he used to be. The cancer has made it impossible for him to have a normal child hood. The treatment that Timmy’s parents must choose from include, surgery followed by watchful waiting, surgery followed by chemotherapy, radiation therapy or low-dose chemotherapy. The surgery is meant to break the tumor and chemotherapy is meant to slow down the process. Like every other type of cancer, there is no cure yet, but I, as a gene, believe that one day there will be and my dear host, Timmy, will get better!
Part 2 : The Making of the Cancer story
1. What questions did you need to research in order to create your cancer story?
I did not have to type question after question in the google search bar in order to find my information as it was mostly found on the same two websites. However, the questions I did search for were “What do the genes and cells undergo with neuroblastoma?”, “What are the treatments to neuroblastoma?” and “What is the cause?”.
2. What new or familiar digital tools did you try to use as you worked through this project?
I used the Riverside digital library at the beginning just to find the basics of neuroblastoma. That was new for me.
3. What was the process you used to further investigate this project?
I started this project by looking at neuroblastoma at a beginners level (since I had never heard anything about it). But with every task that we were told to accomplish, I gained more knowledge.
4. How did you verify and cite the information that you found?
The websites that I used were all official health websites so that let me know they were giving out true information.
5. How did the process of completing this challenge go? What could you have done better?
Overall I find that the process went good. It was a bit challenging at times since this cancer does have a lot of undiscovered aspects. Something I wish I had done was work on this time earlier instead of procrastinating.
Links : http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/neuroblastoma/symptoms-causes/dxc-20164445
http://www.medicinenet.com/neuroblastoma/page6.htm
Observing Cells Lab
On Friday, our science class used a microscope to observe cells. Some animal cells and some plant. Unfortunately, I was absent so I wasn’t able to experience this lab “hands-on”. My solution is to simply search up the cells that I would have been observing. Which were onion cells and cheek cells.
Observations :
What can I observe about the onion cell? Well, I can make out some of the parts of it. Parts like the cell wall and what looks like the vacuole.
In this image of some cells from the inside of the cheek I can see the nucleus on the cells and apparently, the cytoplasm. The nucleus are shown as blue dots in the middle of the cell.
The question is, if I already didn’t know that these cells were plant and animal cells, how would I tell them a part? A good way to do this is to look out for parts that plant cells have, that animal cells do not. For example, cell walls and a chloroplast. There are also parts that animal cells have but plant cells do not. Like the vacuole!
During the lab, a substance called methylene blue was used with the cheek cell. This was used to “stain” the cell. Doing so enhances the cell underneath the microscope. Methylene blue is a stain specifically used to enhance the nucleus in animal cells.
By doing some of this research, I got to find some real-life pictures of cells and not just a drawing in a text book. I also found some ways on how to differentiate animal cells in plant cells. All in all, I think that this lab will be useful later on in our biology unit.
Solution Fluency – First Aid Helper
Define : The problem that we are looking to fix, is helping someone who can’t depend on another person to help them when they are in need. This machine would help people who are sick, elderly or possibly just live alone. It would take away the need to be taken care of by someone else. The First Aid Helper would be there for assistance, and even to call 911 in case of an emergency.
Discover : Our problem has been designed to decrease the need for a stay at home nurse since it would be impossible for them to be working all the time. We hope that in times of trouble, the First Aid Helper will be something to depend on when needed.
Dream : Our product has been inspired by many other devices. The first, however, was a fictional character. We were first inspired to make a robot similar to Baymax in the Disney movie “Big Hero 6”. Since this would be a very difficult task to achieve, we decided to think somewhat realistic. We now like to describe our product as a Roomba with features similar to Siri. We want our product to be capable of a lot. For example, whenever there is a sign of danger, the device is able to contact 911. We want to make this possible by setting various trigger words like “help”. We are also thinking of adding a Bluetooth feature for it. This would help for if the First Aid Helper is not close enough to read your words. There would also be a deactivate button in case of accidental button pressing. Overall, our dream is to be a source of security of whoever may need it.
Deliver : As previously mentioned, our main inspiration for the design of our device would be the Roomba. We are planning to take the basic design but we’d take out the cleaning equitment and replace it with the necessities of our device. Such as the first aid kit and the ability to speak and listen.
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-roomba-works.html
In conclusion, we hope to take our innovation seriously as we do think that it can result in something helpful.