Writing in Biology

Magnetism accounts for the properties of magnets and their effect on forces and charges, as well as currents, resulting in a magnetic field. Each magnet is made of two magnetic poles that are called the north magnetic pole and the south magnetic pole. Like poles repel and unlike poles attract. This is true for all magnets, regardless of their size. The poles are therefore inseparable. Unmagnetized pieces of iron can be induced to become magnetic. This is done when the iron is heated and cooled or tapped between two poles. What occurs on the molecular level is that tiny fragments of the iron align themselves to have one of their poles meeting the unlike pole of the magnetic material. Eventually, the entire material can overall become magnetic.

Scientists conducted an experiment to determine if people would be more likely to accept help with higher levels of oxytocin in their bodies. Some participants were given a nasal oxytocin spray and others were given a placebo. Scientists had found that the participants who received oxytocin were more inclined to accept help from other individuals. Whereas the participants who received the placebo were more aggressive towards the person offering help. There is a difference in intensity of oxytocin in everyone. As shown, people with higher oxytocin levels would be more receptive when people offer them assistance. It also proves that different concentrations of a hormone can have different effects on people.

Lipids are crucial biomolecules in our body. Their main functions are involved in energy storage, membrane structure, and signaling. Because the fatty acid chains are dominant in the structure and are made up of primarily hydrogens and carbons, lipids are significantly nonpolar. Bond between carbons and hydrogens are nonpolar because of their relatively similar electronegativities. The most important interactions that contribute to the properties of a lipid are van der Waals forces. The simplest lipid formed by fatty acids is triacylglycerol, also known as triglyceride. It is a glycerol bonded to three fatty acid chains, and the bonds between the two are formed by dehydration between glycerol hydroxyl groups and fatty acid carboxyl groups. The fatty acid chains are virtually always different. Triacylglycerol transport and storage revolve around the liver and adipocytes, which are the tissue involved in fat metabolism. Material from the digestive system or body cells enter the liver, where biosynthesis of lipoproteins, fatty acids, and cholesterol occur. These synthesized products are then distributed to adipose cells for storage or are distributed to the body cells for energy use.

It's possible that we will be able to create "enhanced" humans through Cas9 genome editing sometime in the near future; however, if I was given the option years from now to genetically modify my child to be taller, I wouldn’t opt for the height-enhancement of my child. A child is their own being, and I think there’s a beauty to the fact that parents cannot decide who or what their child is. It’s not the parents’ place to decide or control how their children will be before they can for themselves. A part of parenthood is about unconditional love for your kid, regardless of if they’re short or tall, and there seems to be something off about engineering your child to be what is considered favorable to you or to the world. A purposeful height-enhancement may damage a child’s view of their parents’ love. If a child knew that some part of them was pre-decided by their parents, it may convince them that their parents only love them because they decided what kind of child they wanted beforehand. Additionally, there is a chance that the genes altered to enhance their height were pleiotropic, which would mean we may have altered other phenotypes that would have been beneficial to the child.

    Cortisol is a steroid hormone that regulates metabolism, immune response and stress.  Children who grew up in a calm environment have a moderate level of cortisol. While children who are experiencing a stressful childhood would have higher levels of cortisol. A more depressive childhood can result in lower levels of cortisol. Higher and lower levels of cortisol can have an impact on cognitive function. High levels follow a patterned release of cortisol which is influenced by the environment. When an individual finds themselves in a stressful situation a system called “fight or flight” would be initiated. Which would cause cortisol to be released and with constant release of cortisol it would affect cognitive function and health problems in the future.

Based on the current literature and to maximize engineering efficiency of treatment, the researchers plan on engineering two liposomes to successfully eliminate all PaCSCs throughout the body. One liposome will encompass the metabolic treatments and include phenformin (OXPHOS inhibitor), devimistat (Krebs cycle inhibitor), RRx-001 (c-Myc inhibitor), auranofin (glycolysis inhibitor), and ONC201 (Akt/ERK inhibitor, TRAIL regulator). The second liposome will encompass the self-renewal treatments and include navicixizumab (bispecific antibody for VEGFR and DLL4 in Notch), a bispecific antibody for VEGFR and JAG2 in Notch, vantictumab (frizzled receptor inhibitor), PRI-724 (β-catenin inhibitor), LGK974 (small molecule porcupine inhibitor), ETC-159 (small molecule porcupine inhibitor), BMS-833923 (smoothened inhibitor), and PF-0444913 (smoothened inhibitor). Both liposomes will be decorated with PaCSC specific antibodies that bind to PaCSC specific antigens cluster of differentiation 44 (CD44), cluster of differentiation 24 (CD24), and epidermal surface antigen (ESA) to ensure targeted delivery to cancerous stem cells. Cells positive to all these antigens had a 100-fold increased tumorigenic potential compared to non-tumorigenic pancreatic cancer cells (Lee et al. 2016). The researchers will therefore incorporate three monoclonal antibodies, one for each of these antigens, into the membranes of the two liposomes.

Myristic acid was produced in a 34.5% yield (0.02g)  from the once recrystallized trimyristin. To obtain the theoretical yield for myristic acid, one had to calculate the number of moles present in the hydrolysis of trimyristin and multiply that number by three. This is because one mole of trimyristin is balanced when three moles of myristic acid are present. As a result, the theoretical yield of myristic acid was 0.058 g while the actual yield for the experiment was 0.02 g, which therefore led to a percent yield of 34.5%. To improve the percent yield, the filter paper form the filtration should be allowed to dry overnight to obtain any remaining crystals that may have been stuck on the paper.

    For myristic acid, the melting point recorded was 51-52℃, whereas the theoretical melting point is 54.4℃. This demonstrates that the experimental end product was relatively pure. To improve the purity, the trimyristin from the second recrystallization should have been used to measure the melting point because it was more pure than the product from the first recrystallization and thus making the myristic acid more pure.

For the concept that these culturale ideas may onday free themselves from our us and begin to move away there may be a chance that something along the lines of this happens. While these ideas will most likely never be able to leave the realm of inside of intelligence due to the nature of them there is a possible that we, as humans may lose control over them. As our technological understanding increases and we get closer and closer to creating true artificial intelligence these ideas will eventually transfer to this other intelligence. This would result in us losing our monopoly over the environment that is these memes and result in us not being the sole dictators of how we wish to shape them. In communities that are completely separated from us human beings, we might see ideas arise that we are unable to comprehend as humans. In this sense I believe that these cultural ideas might be able to free themselves from us however due to the nature of their existence they will always be bound to the ecosystem that is inside some form of intelligence.

These Cultural ideas however are very vulnerable to being exploited by us for our own desires. While these ideas can have unintended consequences that cause them to have a major increase in replication such as the tide pods example, humans can also purposefully artificially craft memes to help spread an idea. In the “can we weaponize memes?” video its takes a very literal and humorous interpretation on how memes could be used as a weapon against a group of people, however these ideas today are already used in this way today due to shaping from human influence. The culturals ideas are commonly used in politics to express and spread one sides political agenda in absence of true data or facts or can seek to belittle or insult people who believe in the opposing view. This purposeful shaping of memes can lead to further decisiveness in ideological views and result in people ignoring alternate points of views due to repeat exposure to the same message and repeat degradation of the other messages.

It is very possible that our cultural ideas are using us to try and survive as best as possible in the ecosystem that is our minds. These cultural idea possess many different qualities that we can parallel to the real world with how life has evolved over time. As stated in the “Ecology of memes” article, these cultural ideas vary in a large number of different traits that can lead to different forms of how they replicate themselves and change overtime. Some examples of things these ideas can differ in for different replication effects would be in Adaptability, ability to assimilate other ideas, the ability be a parasite off of other idea or work together with other ideas in symbiosis. We see these strategies and many more used in cultural ideas trying to survive also long as possible. This use of these strategies to attempt to remain relevant in the minds of humans for as long as possible could be compared to the fact the these cultural ideas might be exploiting us for their own reproductive success. one examples showing directly negative effects from this exploitation would be from the tide pod video. This IDea went around at the expense of the health for many individuals but as a  result I became a huge and widely known idea. Even now, while the trend has died off a lot this idea still sits in the back of our mind due to the effects it has on some individuals in our community.