nalexandroum's blog

At the start of the class, the idea of having to write multiple drafts a week seemed daunting and not particularly doable. As the semester got underway though and I started writing and posting drafts I realized that having drafts “due” pretty much every day of the week was actually very helpful in making me stay aware of my writing. I did miss a few weeks, but overall writing multiple drafts, even if they were about different topics or for different subjects, made me take more notice of how I was writing and how long it would take me to write something. Looking back at the start of the class I felt like I was spending a lot of time on each draft trying to get it to be as good as possible, and then struggling to turn one draft a week into a Perfect Paragraph seeing as I had already spent so much time on editing and perfecting while writing the initial draft. I soon realized that this was an inefficient way to be going about this, especially considering we had to write multiple drafts a week. Eventually I started to become more aware of how much time writing tends to take me, as I unconsciously attempt to simultaneously write something from scratch and edit it. Although I still find myself doing that, I have noticed that the necessity of writing multiple drafts a week has made me better at just putting all my thoughts on a page and then going back later to fine-tune things—and this is where the Perfect Paragraphs were helpful.

As a theoretical concept I think Pleistocene Park is very interesting, but although premise behind grasslands slowing the Arctic thaw may hold merit, I don’t think it’s feasible as a solution for climate change at present. Climate change is such a time-sensitive and pressing concern, and the proposed project could take decades upon decades, with no certain guarantee of success—time which we no longer have. Although we can approximate most of the megafauna that actively drove the expansion of the Pleistocene grasslands, we cannot reintroduce the exact same species and this could mean failure of the project. There is no guarantee that introducing all the components of a Pleistocene ecosystem (or as close enough as we can get) will result in an identical recreation, and we may instead z be left with an ecosystem that resembles neither the Pleistocene, nor any modern-day ecosystem.

The idea behind Pleistocene Park is that recreating the grasslands that dominated Pleistocene will slow the thawing of the permafrost and “solve” climate change. The theory is that grasslands will reflect more sunlight and make the Arctic absorb less heat, while also reducing how insulated the ground is during the winter to allow the seasonal freeze to reach further into the ground and keep the permafrost frozen. Just knocking down the trees and shrubs that currently inhabit Beringia is not enough though, as they will continue to grow back. The Pleistocene grasslands were maintained by large grazing herbivores that encouraged the co-evolution of grasses; particularly mammoths, which routinely knocked down any trees that tried to grow, thereby keeping the grasslands intact. This is why the Russian scientists are attempting to bring large proboscideans back to the Arctic: so they can beat back the forests and encourage grasslands that might stop the thawing and the carbon-happy gases inhabiting the permafrost from being released into the atmosphere and making orders of magnitude increases to the effects of climate change.

Beavers build dams, which slow down or block running water to create ponds and wetland areas. Because water flow is slowed, any nutrient-rich sediment or soil that is carried in it will trapped in the pond (Puttock et al, 2017). These nutrients will be added to the wetland ecosystem because they will be taken up from the soil by plants in and around the pond, which will then be eaten by fish and terrestrial herbivores. In addition to recycling nutrients through the ecosystem via excretion, these organisms may also be eaten by carnivores, which will also add to the cycling of nutrients.

Genome editing (or gene editing) is a type of genetic engineering that involves modifying a living organism’s genome. Specific regions of the genome are deliberately targeted and DNA sequences are inserted, deleted, or otherwise modified to change the sequence at that location and alter gene function, either by preventing or enabling expression, or by changing how the gene is expressed (“Genome editing in brief: what, why and how?”, n.d.). Genetic disorders can affect both somatic (body) cells and germline cells (cells involved in reproduction, such as sperm and eggs). While genetic mutations in the DNA of somatic cells only affect the individual and cannot be inherited, changes in the germline DNA are heritable and can affect future offspring (Ormond et al. 2017). Genetic disorders can only be “cured” by targeting them at the genomic level, which these new advances in molecular and genetic technology have made possible. There are, however, concerns about its viability, ethics, and long- and short-term consequences, especially surrounding the topic of germline editing. Both somatic and germline cells can be edited, and while any changes made to the DNA of an individual's somatic cells will only affect that individual, changes made to their germline DNA could be inherited by their future children. The technology at present cannot guarantee that “unintended modifications created through an editing procedure would not result in a devastating long-term outcome such as cancer or adverse developmental effects if one were to modify a zygote” (Kohn, Porteus & Scharenberg, 2016), which has lead to mixed scientific and public opinions about its use.

With the rise of scientific issues such as genetic engineering in public debates, “science is becoming more politicized and controversial with widespread societal implications” (Rose, Korzekwa, Brossard, Scheufele & Heisler, 2017). As such, the importance of public attitudes towards these issues is increasing, as is engaging the public with these topics in order to increase knowledge and awareness (Rose, Korzekwa, Brossard, Scheufele & Heisler, 2017). People’s attitudes are influenced by their knowledge, and so people with different backgrounds will often have varying attitudes towards complex topics depending on how familiar they are with them. The University of Massachusetts Amherst has over 100 different undergraduate majors, and presumably people in different majors will have had different levels of exposure to the topic of genome editing. In this study we investigated whether or not there is any observable connection between college major and people’s attitudes towards the use of genome editing to treat genetic disorders.

Genome-editing has been met with both celebration and skepticism from the scientific community and the general public, with concerns about the viability, ethics, and long- and short-term consequences of modifying the human genome. As genetic disorders are caused by DNA abnormalities, they can only be “cured” by targeting the disorder at the genomic level, recently made possible by new advances in molecular technology. Both somatic cells and germline cells can be edited, and while any changes made to the DNA of an individual's somatic cells will only affect that individual, changes made to their germline DNA could be inherited by their future children. The technology at present cannot guarantee that “unintended modifications created through an editing procedure would not result in a devastating long-term outcome such as cancer or adverse developmental effects if one were to modify a zygote” (Kohn, Porteus & Scharenberg, 2016), which has lead to mixed scientific and public opinions about its use.

Genome editing (or gene editing) is a type of genetic engineering that involves modifying a living organism’s genome. Specific regions of the genome are deliberately targeted and DNA sequences are inserted, deleted, or otherwise modified to modify the sequence at that location and alter gene function, either by preventing or enabling expression, or by changing how the gene is expressed (“Genome editing in brief: what, why and how?”, n.d.). Genetic disorders can affect both somatic (body) cells and germline cells (cells involved in reproduction, such as sperm and eggs). While genetic mutations in the DNA of somatic cells only affect the individual and cannot be inherited, changes in the germline DNA are heritable and can affect future offspring (Ormond et al. 2017)

A possible explanation for these results is identified in a review of the different responses of skin temperature to physical exercise: during the first few minutes of high intensity exercises such as jumping jacks there is an initial reduction in the temperature of the skin as blood flow is redirected to the active muscles (Neves et al. 2015). Because we were measuring body temperature by taking the temperature at the temple we may have been just measuring skin temperature, and the slight decrease could therefore be explained by the skin’s initial cooling period at the onset of exercise. The fact that we were recording body temperature at the forehead is one of the variables that may have affected our results, as we were not directly measuring core temperature. Additionally we could not control for the natural differences in body temperature between females and males, nor for the weight and fitness levels of each person. In terms of the exercise, 1 minute may not have been enough time to truly test its effects on body temperature, and we could not control for the amount of effort put in by each member of the group during the exercise. To create a clearer picture of thermoregulation, this experiment could be repeated with longer periods of exercise, and using more accurate methods of recording core body temperature than forehead thermometers. Additionally the measurements should all be taken at the same time of day to control for natural temperature fluctuations with circadian rhythms, and the gender, weight, and height of the subjects should be kept as constant as possible.

Our hypothesis was that exercise will have no effect on body temperature. We recorded a mean resting temperature of 98.24 ºF, and mean temperatures of 97.99 ºF and 98 ºF for the first and second 1-minute sets of jumping jacks respectively. There was a 0.24 ºF drop in temperature after the first set and a 0.25 ºF drop after the second set, which shows that our hypothesis was not supported by the data. There was relatively low variation within the data, with a standard deviation of 0.93 for body temperature at rest, and standard deviations of 0.76 and 0.75 for each respective set of jumping jacks. This finding was supported by the data acquired by the rest of the class: across the data acquired by all four groups, the mean body temperature was 98.59 ºF at rest and 98.26 ºF after both sets of jumping jacks, with standard deviations of 0.86, 0.77, and 0.82 respectively. There was less variance in the forehead temperatures after each set of exercises than the forehead temperatures at rest.