Lit. Poems

"Two-sided Humanity"

Beauty

Kind, powerful

Forgiving, smiling, embracing

Brilliant, immortal, ugly, hungry

Burning, lying, cheating

Dark, hurtful

Brutality

"A Character Description"

Max

Scared, alone, and hungry

Who loves his family and a good fistfight

Who feels sadness and hatred about leaving his family and putting another one in danger

Who needs friendship and acknowledgement in a world that hates him

Who shares dreams and words with a little girl

Who fears living in hiding forever

Who'd like to see the outside world and steal the sky

Who dreams of the end of the war and Death

Who ends up being a survivor

Aquarium Trip Response

A few days ago, our unit went on a trip to the Adventure Aquarium for our science classes. The trip was meaningful and a wonderful experience.

I’ve never been to the Adventure Aquarium before so this field trip really interested me, and I’ve always liked studying and reading about marine mammals. Some of my favorites are the West Indian Manatee, sea otters, Californian sea lions, and penguins. Even before the trip, I was looking forward to seeing these animals and much more.

The first animals my group and I saw were these species of fish that I didn’t know. They were colorful and swimming so fast that I couldn’t even get a picture of them!

There was a type of interesting fish I saw that really intrigued me. It was long and silver with a pointed mouth. It swam really fast too. In its tank were also these flat fishes that stuck to the bottom. They stayed still which was why their pictures came out the best.

Our group then went to one of the exhibits that allowed us to touch sharks.

I was reluctant to stick my hand (and then my whole arm) into a tank of man eating monsters. Scenes from the movie Jaws replayed over and over until my friends showed me how small these sharks were. They were like baby sharks and thus deemed harmless (I did not believe it).

It was then when I saw an albino shark lying on the bottom of the tank did I try to stroke its back (I had though albino sharks were blind and thus, to me, were harmless). The skin felt amazingly weird. Like a crossover of leader and plastic which I don’t know how that is possible. It was the strangest feeling and the memory I would never forget.

After visiting the shark tank (and a huge tortoise), we went to the exhibits that were held outside of the aquarium. And that’s where I met the love of my life.

I have always been infatuated by penguins so when I saw a group of African penguins were taking a shower and chilling out, I couldn’t help but uncharacteristically oogle at them. I had no idea Africa had penguins!

And of course I took many pictures of them (twenty-two in total).

They were the best part of the field trip, and unfortunately I never got to see the exhibits the hippos or starfishes that my other classmates saw. And I never got to see the animals I was looking forward to the most. But in general, it was a decent trip.

New Dinosaur Discovered in China

Recently in Mongolia, China, a new 6 foot long agile dinosaur was found as a claw sticking out of a cliff face— which was actually the tip of the predator. During a 2008 field expedition, doctoral student Jonah Choiniere of George Washington University and graduate student Michael Pittman of University College London discovered the remains. “It was a total surprise that the whole skeleton was buried deeper in the rock,” they said.

The dinosaur is now called Linheraptor exquisitus, a creature that lived about 75 million years ago, and a relative of Velociraptor, a feathered, bipedal meat-eater. Linheraptor exquisitus is about 6 feet long or 1.8 meters, and 50 pounds or 23 kilograms. It is described as an agile predator by researcher, and belongs to the family of Dromaeosauridae whose members are known for sporting a large, curved claw on the foot that might have helped in capturing prey like horned dinosaur.

The skeletal remains and fossils were found in the rocks of the Wulansuhai Formation, part of a group of red sandstone rocks in Inner Mongolia, China. It is the fifth dromaeosaurid discovered in the rocks, which are famous for their preservation of uncrushed, complete skeletons.

Pittman stated, “Jonah saw a claw protruding from the cliff face. He carefully removed it and handed it to me,” and added, “I’ve always wanted to discover a dinosaur since I was a kid, and I’ve never given up on the idea. It was amazing that my first discovery was from a Velociraptor relative.”

The find marks the first near complete skeleton of its kind to be found in the Gobi desert since 1972, and will help piece together the appearance of other closely related dinosaur species.

Links:

Students Discover Clawed Dinosaur in China

Afghanistan's Cost of War

Since 2003 money has been spent on the war in Iraq, but now more funds are being spent in Afghanistan than Iraq as military intervention slowly dies away. However conflict in Afghanistan has started to quicken its pace.

About 1.05 trillion US dollars was approved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, last month the cost exceeded the permitted one trillion dollars due to US lawmakers approving the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill, including 128 billion dollars used on the two wars through September. Some expenses also included war-related costs incurred by the State Department, like embassy security.

The Iraq war expense added up to a grand spending— approximately 747.3 billion US dollars— since the US led invasion there in 2003. The other 299 billion dollars was for Afghanistan, where the US invaded to fight Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. On Sept. 30, a war funding for fiscal 2010 included 72.3 billion dollars for Afghanistan and 64.5 billion dollars for Iraq. This was the first year that Afghanistan was more expensive.

In December, President Obama announced that he was going to add an additional 30,000 more US troops to the Afghan war effort to join 68,000 already there fighting a resurgent Taliban. Obama says he wants to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011, but this will depend in part on conditions on the ground. No deadline for leaving has been set. Estimates of the cost per troop per year in Afghanistan vary from $500,000 to $1 million depending on whether expenditures on troop housing and equipment are included along with pay, food and fuel. Medical costs for the injured and veterans' compensation balloon as time goes on. In Iraq, the U.S. force is supposed to fall to 50,000 by the end of August, from some 115,000 last month. The 50,000 can remain until the end of 2011, under an agreement with Baghdad.

10 Great Technologies

Technology is advancing so fast that almost everything is being replaced with a newer, better innovation that changes our lives so drastically. Out of all the latest gadgets and inventions, here are the top ten:

1. Hydrogen Fuel and Economy:

What if we can replace the so expensive and limited, imported oil and use water as an alternative (and no, it isn’t hydropower energy). Scientists have figured out that turning water into hydrogen and then burning that which could be used to charge fuel cells…no longer do we need to be at the mercy of oil suppliers!

2. Therapeutic Cloning:

Remember when we started generating clones of sheep and people? Now, the idea is cloning replacement organs or tissues in a vat and the body would see no reason to reject it. Cancerous or damaged organs could be replaced by new, disease free clones of themselves.

3. Moore’s Law Upheld:

The Moore’s Law Upheld is a law, stated by Gordon Moore, Intel’s cofounder, which implies that available computer power can be expected to double every other year. For at least two decades pundits have been pointing out barriers to the law's fulfillment, and the chip industry has been smashing those barriers. Currently they can't agree if the law has a couple of more decades of life left, or 600 years. Either way, in terms of available computing power, it's clear that we haven’t seen the end yet.

4. Desktop 3D Printing:

Now we can download a design of your choosing and generate it in your desktop 3D printer and design your own gadgets, post the designs, and sell them! Toys, kitchenware, and decorative household items should be fair game, at least…

5. Location Based Computing:

We all know that Google maps and GPS have helped our bad sense of direction one time or another. But think of actually walking outside and pointing to any three dimensional ‘thing’ (Ex: A building) and get information on what it is. You’ll never get lost ever again.

6. Better, Cheaper Solar Cells:

Years ago, photovoltaic cells (cells that turn sunlight into electricity) were a costly new technology, but in less than ten years, the cost would be on par with the price of electricity. Solar cells will no longer be a new technology, but a standard feature to our way of life.

7. Mobile Robots:

In many science fiction thrillers, we see and read about robots that become servants-like beings and cater to our every need. Well, that kind of ‘fantasy’ may not be so far away. Today’s technology has allowed robot trucks to navigate through suburban traffic and maybe one day on the highways. They’ll definitely be popular for handling pick-and-pull chores…

8. Pervasive Wireless Internet:

Internet continues to dominate in all points of our lives, and to some of us, we can’t live without it. Being online all the time will become a routine, and that’s why a pervasive wireless Internet may be one of the great innovations today. It’ll be as easy as a click.

9. Stem Cells:

A mother’s greatest concern is that her child is in good health, but that’s something you can’t worry and wish it away. Sometimes, it’s in your genes, and involves many complicacies. However, due to the advancement of today’s technology, children with birth defects will live normally.

10. Digital Libraries:

Today we’re sitting in the library doing research for a project in school, but tomorrow, the ‘brighter’ day, will allow us to access books online. Doubt me? Check out Google Book Search whose staff is trying to upload all books ever written online. By the time I go to college, everyone will have their very own Kindle, and college courses will be online, like one of America’s top universities, MIT. The future for print libraries and bookstores is not very bright…

Links:

10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life

Podcast-Forensic Chemist

Click here

10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye

Global warming is making it bad for our favorite artic animals like the ‘big and fuzzy’ polar bear or the penguins that can walk and be crazily cute, but here are ten species are even worse off than the artic animals:

· California Condor

· Sumatran Orangutan

· Ganges Shark

· Mountain Gorilla

· Philippine Crocodile

· Black-Footed Ferret

· Siberian Tiger

· Red Wolf

· Western Gray Whale

· Sumatran Rhinoceros

These animals all belong on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List is a list of critically endangered animals that face an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future, and they may not live to see the end of the next decade without a similar effort of human intervention that brought them to the brink in the first place.

California Condor

The carrion-eating California Condor is a resident of the Grand Canyon area and the western coastal mountains of California. They should live a long life; their life span is about fifty years which makes then the world’s longest-living birds. However, because of poaching, lead poisoning, and habitat loss that are caused by humans, they have become the world’s rarest bird species— they were almost completely wiped out in the 1980s. Now, there are now 332 condors that are known to exist, including 152 in the wild.

Sumatran Orangutan

Habitat loss and poaching has pushed the Sumatran Orangutan to extinction. The fruit and insect loving Sumatran Orangutan can live roughly for 45 years in the wild, but they breed a lot more slowly than other primates; a single female can only produce a maximum of three offspring in her lifetime. So if the death rate is higher than the birth rate, you got yourself one species that needs help fast.

Ganges Shark

India’s Ganges River’s rare species of shark, the Ganges Shark, is known for being a man-eater, and in other words, dangerous but highly valuable. The sharks are sought after for its oil, however, that’s not the only reason for their placement on the IUCN’s Red List of endangered species. Rampant fishing, habitat degradation from pollution, and increasing river utilization are the primary causes for its rapid disappearance.

Mountain Gorilla

The Mountain Gorilla’s population has decreased rapidly by deforestation, hunting, and the illegal pet trade, and now only a mere 720 remain in the wild although they have managed to elude discovery until as late as 1902.

Philippine Crocodile

Although it is legally protected in its native country, the islands from which it derives its name, the Philippine Crocodile continues to face threats from human disturbance like habitat loss and accidental death by dynamite fishing. A survey from 1995 found that only 100 adult crocs are left in the wild, making the animal a severely threatened species on the planet.

Black-Footed Ferret

Native to North America, the Black-Footed Ferret is one of the most endangered mammals on the continent, and they teeter on the edge of extinction because of human development has reduced their grassland habitat to less than two percent of its original size. Also, since prairie-dogs cover most of a ferret’s diet, about 90 percent, the destruction of the prairie-dogs’ colonies due to habitat destruction, pest-elimination programs, and disease are huge contributors to the ferret’s disappearance.

Siberian Tiger

The Siberian Tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, used to live in northeastern China, the Korean Peninsula, and Mongolia, but now is confined to Russia’s Amur-Ussuri region where it is protected. It is estimated that about 350 to 450 tigers still live although they still face dangers like habitat loss through logging and development as well as poaching for their fur and bones.

Red Wolf

The Red Wolf managed to survive the Late Pleistocene ice age but may not be able to survive extinction in the modern age. The red wolf used to populate throughout the southeastern US, but now are so devastated by predator-control programs and habitat loss that the lack of breeding partners has led many of them to mate with coyotes instead which reduces the number of genetically pure wolves. About 100 still live in northeastern North Carolina today, while another 150 roam at captive breeding facilities across the US.

Western Gray Whale

The population of Western Gray Whales has never recovered from unchecked whaling in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries even though the International Whaling Commission banned the hunt of gray whales in 1947. While there are about 100 western grays that still live, only 23 are reproductive females, and their only known feeding ground off the northeastern coast of Sakhalin Island in Russia has been annexed by oil companies whose exploration and mining activities like high-intensity seismic surveying, drilling operations, increased ship and air traffic, and oil spills are driving the mammals to extinction.

Sumatran Rhinoceros

Used to flourish through the rainforests, cloud forests, and swamps of India and Southeast Asia, the smallest of rhinoceroses, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, are now critically endangered. Illegal poaching, the rampant destruction of their habitat in the name, and the little success that zoos have made for the rhinos to breed are the main culprits for their dwindling numbers.

Links:

10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye