"Rachel Carson is responsibe for the death of over a million Africans each year!"

Malaria is one of the most deadly diseases and the leading cause of death in the world. Malaria causes 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths a year. Malaria is an insect-borne disease, found mostly in mosquitoes. When the female mosquito feeds on the blood of a human, it injects their own saliva so that the female mosquito’s proboscis wouldn’t become clogged with blood clots. In their saliva, the parasite causing malaria may exist and travel into the host. The parasites then travel to the liver, where they mature and then move to the red blood cells to multiply. The following results in destruction of blood cells, liver failure, kidney failure, meningitis, respiratory failure from fluid in the lungs, and rupture of the spleen leading to massive internal bleeding. Malaria is not contagious but a fetus can contract malaria from its mother, because of the blood transfusions that exist between them.


Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” addresses the results of insecticides. Insecticides and pesticides were used to control the population of insects and pest surrounding their crops and trees. Carson warns that the effects of pesticides are far greater than the initial plan. In fact, the pesticides affect everyone in the area. It starts when the planes spray. The chemicals are absorbed into soil, travel into the stream affecting the fish and eventually birds of prey. As the chemicals climb up the food chain, the concentrations get more deadly. A few cases of human deaths were recorded due to the strenuous amount of the chemicals that were used.
“Silent Spring” raised awareness to all about the effects of insecticides and pesticides and the book basically screamed “STOP USING THIS STUFF”. And so the book’s wish was granted. As a result, insect population, such as mosquitoes, rose. As the mosquito population rose in certain areas of the globe, the diseases that were connected with them were also are on the rise, affecting millions of people. Mosquitoes have a way of carrying the disease from one person to another without themselves being infected and some are known to carry a strain that is not affected by the less harmful chemicals. We cannot count on the disease they carry as a weapon to kill off mosquitoes and help fight the war on malaria.




For what it is worth, I truly don't believe that rise of malaria was Carson's goal. But with every change there is a problem and to every decision there is a consequence, good or bad.

"What Are the Odds": investigating probabilites

1)What are the odds of being killed by a coconut?
General odds are 1 to 250,000,000. But it all depends if you have coconuts in your area. They can reach a speed of 50mph- fatal if you are underneath. Coconuts kill 150 people a year.

2)What are the odds that you are a decendant of someone famous (infamous)?
Four percent of people find, when searching their geneology, that they have royal blood connections. Around 23 percent have confirmed connections to the aristocracy, famous historical figures or rich landowners.

3)What are the odds of a girl/guy will be raped in their teens?
This can be a little bit of a challange to investigate, because most sexual assults are not reported, in fact, 60 percent of them. 29% of children 12-17 are victims, it jumps to 44% for those under the age of 18 and 80% under 30 years. Although 12-34 are the highest risk years, girls age 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to become a victim of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

In 2007 numbers reported that there were 248,300 victims not including 12 years or younger. The number has certainly decreased since 2003-2004 when there was an estimated 20.48 million victims both men and women. They say it had decreased 60% since 1993

4) What are the odds that you will misspell one of the common misspelled words?

when these words are misspelled a certain percent of those

5.What are the odds of getting struck by lightning?
Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year (estimated total deaths + injuries) 1/500,000
Odds of being struck in your lifetime (Est. 80 years) 1/6250

6 What are the odds of the world end by asteroid?

one in one thousand

Where's My Mommy? : mitochondrial eve

Mitochondrial Eve is said to be the mother of all daughters. How is this possible? Mitochondrial DNA is passed from generation to generation women, unchanged. Meaning, all women alive today descended in a direct unbroken female line from mitochondrial Eve. As population grew, people started to migrate away from “home”, there physical appearance became proportional to their environment. For example, darker skin is the indirect result from the sun. We know that too much sun is bad for you, so in order for these people to survive in the condition, a mutation had to be made. Those who survive were able to make that adjustment. We now know that the “adjustment” is melanin. Mutations such as these, occurred everywhere there was people. And then when populations grew there, the people of the new cites migrated, resulting in more mutations to adapt to new environments.



97-99% of every human genes are the same. Here is the 3-1% that makes us all unique.


Chinese girl



Japanese school children



Caroline Wozniacki- Danish



Sioux native American



India



Africa

All pictures courtesy of Google images

poly water

Poly water or anomalous water or orthowater is liquid water formed by the condensation of water vapor. This water has lower vapor pressure, lower freezing temperature, higher density and viscosity, higher thermal stability, and different infrared and Raman spectra, compared to the water that we originally know that flows out of our faucets.1 Anomalous water was first discover in 1967 at the Russian Technical Institute. It was the properties of water and the effects of confined spaces on liquids that contributed to the widespread interest in anomalous water.2 However, Many researchers discovered that anomalous water is not a polymeric form of water and that it is in fact dissolved glass.3




1"anomalous water." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 29 Sep. 2010 .
2Paustian, P. Robert. "Polywater (Book)." Library Journal 106.11 (1981): 1233. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Oct. 2010.
3Bascom, Willard D. “Polywater. Comments” The Journal of Physical Chemistry 1972 76 (3), 456-457. pubs.acs.org.

Weird Website

Ok so these people are talking about freezing people so that they can preserve the living. But they don't call it freezing, they call it vitrification, which is not freezing but preserving similar to what they do to the animals you dissect, I suppose. Their goal is to preserving human life with the intent of restoring good health by cryonics. By preserving human "life in a state that will be viable and treatable by future medicine. It is expected that future medicine will include mature nanotechnology and the ability to heal at th cellular and molecular levels." Fact or Fiction?
See for your self at http://www.alcor.org/index.html

Why know amphioxus?

You may know them as lancelet and in some part of China they are considered a fishing industry. These small marine animals resemble small fishes with out eyes and spend most of their time buried in the ocean's bottom (Britanica). The lancelet are representatives of the subphylum Cephalochordata, sister group of craniates.
So why know about these small creature that live at the bottom of the sea? Well, they provide indications about the origins of the vertebrates. These traces are found in their genomes that holds clues to evolution. Clues such as how vertebrates have employed old genes for new functions(Wikipedia).
see a pic...