Drafts

GMOs stand for genetically modified organisms. Their DNA has been artificially modified to enhance effectiveness. Some of these effects include longer shelf life, taste, nutrients, the ability to withstand pesticides, and faster-growing plants and animals. They are mainly found in agriculture products and cattle. An explicit example of GMOs used is to fasten the growth and size of chickens. They are everywhere in grocery stores, and can even start from the birth of livestock. Monsanto is a major producer of pesticides and genetically modified crops, selling a package of farm products that have improved yields and cut down on some pest problems. But while that business has made the company popular with many farmers, a series of scandals have damaged its reputation with consumers. Monsanto is well-known to genetically modify their seeds and crops, create growth hormones forced on cattle; in addition, suing the farmers over patent infringement. These are the reasons Monsanto is an unethical company.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/04/why-monsanto-is-n...

https://entjournal.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/devil-in-disguise-the-unethi...

  Once all three of the images have been gathered open google drive. Click on the new media icon and hover over the tab labeled more. A second menu should pop out to the side. Select google drawings. A file should open revealing an empty workspace with a checkerboard pattern. From here import the three images from before into the workspace. They will be oriented left to right as follows: Close up shot, distant shot, map. The workspace itself is 10 inches across and the images should fit that space exactly. The close-up image is 2.7 inches wide and 3.61 inches tall. The distant shot is also 2.7 inches wide and 3.61 inches tall. The map is 4.6 inches wide and 3.61 inches tall. On top of the map, circle the area where the leaf was found by clicking the 'shape' icon and adding a circle. Select the border color icon next to the fill icon and change the color to red.  Approximate where the plant may be found in this area. Select the arrow icon and add an arrow pointing towards the circle starting from the bottom right. The figure should look as follows. Three images left to right including a close-up shot, distant shot, and map. The map should have a red circle identifying where the plant was found with an arrow pointing towards this circle. The figure image is now complete. Export to a .png file by clicking ‘file’, then ‘download’, and select ‘PNG image (.png)’.

        The following question was recently posted as a writing prompt in my anthropology disscussion section, If you could go back in time and prevent early humans from developing agriculture would you? I would not. To preface my argument, there is much evidence that points to early farming communities having very poor health and lower lifespans, compared to their hunter-gatherer counterparts. These seem like terrible things, so why not get rid of it? Even though agriculture may have harmed human health in the short term, we now have the available technology to learn from our mistakes and improve. On such example is golden rice. Many recent reports of global malnutrition have concluded that the diets of many poor countries consist of primary rice, in some cases up to 100% of a diet. Unfortunately, even though these people receive calories, they don't get other important nutrients. One of which being pro-vitamin A.  Without it people can lose their eyesight, worsen their health and eventually die. A swiss professor and a team were able to insert the gene for Beta-carotene production into grains of rice which codes for pro-vitamin A. This rice could save millions of people and the same could be done for other nutrients. Also one of the important factors that should be highlighted is that even the best hunter-gatherers had an average lifespan of 26 years while humans today live on average to 79 years with agriculture and everything it has allowed us to do. This includes cities, medicine, and engineering. I stick to my answer, however, I feel the question is very subjective because for some people the hunter-gatherer lifestyle may seem more appealing and would choose to prevent agriculture. This is to say that neither answer is right or wrong. Instead it's an opinion on a hypothetical situation.

It is often difficult to distinguish the difference between a learned behavior or something that is innate. If it is instinctual, it is present from birth and likely has evolved in an organism to better help it survive in harsh or changing conditions. For example, the Clark Jay has the ability to bury over 30,000 nutcrackers regardless of the weather and be able to retrieve 90% of them within the span of months. Their spatial learning is not a behavior that was learned over time through experience but rather is behavior that has a genetic basis. 

Another example of this is depth perception. Though they are not born being able to perceive depth. humans eventually develop the pathways needed to obtain the ability of depth perception after the age of 5 months. Otherwise, they fail to distinguish how deep something such as a ledge could be. The only difference is that it takes a little bit of time. Nonetheless, it is not a learned behavior, but rather an innate feature of mind that develops post-birth.

One classic example of a learned behavior is conditioning. A famous example of this is Pavlov's experiment with dogs. Dogs do not know to salivate when they hear a bell, but if you present food as a stimulus paired with the ringing of a bell, the dog will eventually associate the ringing of the bell with food and will salivate even if the food is not present.

Public health is a relatively new concern in the history of mankind. This is not due to people simply not caring, but rather their inability to understand how illnesses are spread. Germ theory was essential in order to help contain and prevent transferrable disease. Before this advancement in microbiology, medical professionals had to theorize the cause of illnesses. These doctors proposed humoral and subsequently miasma theory. Humoral theory proposed that imbalances of phlegm, red bile, black bile, and blood. Miasma theory suggested that illness was caused by miasma, or bad air, usually emanating from rotten organic matter. As wrong as miasma theory was, it certainly was a better explanation than humoral theory. The idea that filth, rotten material, and stenches harbored illnesses is still something expressed by people today, and therefore must have some truth.

With midterm peaking the horizon, its time to consider the topic for a midterm paper for New England Flora. The prompt is to write a research paper about how climate change is affecting plants. You can choose any plant or type of plants from anywhere in the world. Because of this, I plan to choose something unique that peers might not think of immediately. Here, I will brainstorm some ideas over the course of the time leading up to when the paper is due. Initially I thought of the affect of global warming on plants of the far north, mainly trees and how their respiration is affected. During the winter, trees need to conserve as much water as possible as humidity is low. With global warming air temperatures rising steadily causing snow and ice to melti at an alarming rate. This would affect the amount of humidity in the air, therefor influencing how these tundra tree-line trees store water and even respirate. 

Another idea I had was to evaluate aquatic plants. Specifically oceanic plants. Here, I could look at this relationship in a more positive light. There have been many articles and papers published about seaweed and climate change, specifically how growing vast plots of seaweed can help fight climate change. Increasing and expanding the seaweed farming industry can be beneficial to reducing a country's greenhouse gas emmission. While I think the negatives associated with climate change are extremely important, and as a realist I was tempted to write about a negative, I want to give myself and other who read  my paper a bit of inspiration and hope about the future. 

It seems that every year at the start of a new semester there is a cold that gets circulated throughout the entire school community. The common cold usually consists of congestion, cough, sore throat, rhinorrhea, and low-grade fever. Most common colds are caused by rhinoviruses and often caused by contaminants on the hands rather than airborne aerosols. The cold is usually caught 1-2 days after being exposed to the pathogen. Common colds typically are resolved within a week but not before reaching a peak at about 3-4 days after becoming symptomatic.

            Not smoking, being exposed to preschool at a young age, drinking red wine, and reducing physiological stressors can all help prevent an individual from contracting the common cold. Surprisingly, after conducting a fair amount of research it has been discovered that vitamin C intake does not seem to help reduce the length of colds. In some studies, daily vitamin C intake, especially natural intake through diet rather than supplementation, seemed to decrease the amount of colds a person caught during cold season.

            The common cold has been a bit of a mystery when it comes to treatment. Still to this day, the only real treatments are treating the symptoms rather than the virus itself. Antihistamines are used to reduce sneezing. Anti-inflammatory (NSAID) medications, like ibuprofen, are used to help decrease inflammation and pain in areas like the throat or sinuses. Nasal decongestants can be used to help with congestion. So remember, as the first semester of school goes on, wash your hands.  

The power of the mind and mental state has always been of interest to me. Many people have heard of Buddhist monks and what they have been able to accomplish with the power of meditation, whether it be the ability to withstand freezing cold temperatures or go days without food or water. I don’t know the truth to a lot of these kinds of stories, but it’s interesting to think about how you might be able to control more than you think with your mind. It’s interesting because you don’t have much control over what happens inside your body; the only thing you can control is your breathing rate which may in turn affect heart rate and other bodily processes. I guess the only way to know for sure if meditation really has the power I’ve heard of is to give it a try myself.

Download inkscape to create figure. Go to the design building and walk towards to ground floor lobby entrance by the cafe near the design building UMass Amherst sign. Select a leaf from the small tree that shows phytophagy and place hand behind leaf. Take a photo using an IPhone 8 back camera. Step away from the tree about five steps to allow the sign and background to be clearly visible and distinguishable in the image, capturing the entire height of the tree. Email the photos from the phone to an email account to access them on a computer with Inkscape installed on it. Open the images in the computer and crop them to squares of a size 3022 x 3022 pixels. Open Inkscape and click and drag the cropped photo files into the inkscape page. Organize the pictures with the up close phytophagy in the top left corner at about the size of half the page width in a square shape, leaving some white space on the left and top. Label this image "A" with an A on the upper left side of the photo in black with font Calibria in size 18. To the right of this photo, place the larger phytophagy photo of the exact same size to the exact right. Label this image B on the upper left of the image in the same method as image "A". 

A bee was found inside of my car while I was on the way to class. It reoriented its body to the driver’s side and landed on the steering wheel. This caused me to react in fear. An instantaneous physiological response occurred from the sympathetic branch of my autonomic nervous system. As a result my heart rate increased, adrenaline was released, the sweat glands on my hands were stimulated and my muscles began to contract at a rate in which my body began to shake. Action potentials were occurring at a higher frequency in order to prepare my body to escape from the stressful situation. In this state, my levels of blood calcium increased and the amygdala in my brain triggered activity in the hypothalamus. The stimulation in my hypothalamus sent signals to the pituitary gland to release the ACTH hormone into my blood.