Drafts

D.W Brock assesses the ethical issues amongst human clothing, he looks at the pros and cons that come with cloning.  Brock sees human cloning as something that will change the view on human life. He believes that human life will be seen as something that can be manipulated and adjusted for what a person desires. Cloning may change the way that human life is seen and the value of humans or clones may seem lesser than the other. If genetic cloning occurs, then the value for human life starts to degrade. Genetic cloning occurs. Therefore the value for human life is degraded.

    Brock argues that when human cloning occurs the clone is given specific abilities and has desirable attributes given to them, so human life will be seen as something that can be easily manipulated and controlled. This can create the clones as being seen as objects and is what causes the degradation of human life.

We assume that we were asked to measure dark-to-dark instead of from the center line to the first dark spot as the value from the center line to the first dark spot is an extremely small difference. This might have also been the case over concerns that the ruler might be more likely to affect the lines created by the laser.

Actual human life outweighs potential life. A fetus has potential life. Therefore, a woman's life outweighs a fetus’ life.  This argument can be seen throughout section 4 and is explicitly stated on page 18, “The rights of any actual person invariably outweighs those of any potential person.” The reason for this argument is because Warren believes that a woman has the right to have an abortion in order to “protect her health, happiness, freedom, and even her life.” It’s important for a woman who already has a life to be able to live it the way she wants to and be able to make decisions that will effect her own happiness and freedom. She reasons that just because a fetus has some “resemblance to a person” or just because a fetus will become a person that it does not mean that this fetus has the right to life. This is because the fetus may not be of any importance in the future, his or her life may not be of any significance compared to the life that the woman already has.  

    Students losing one month of skills learned in school is a big deal. Poorer students lose much more than the more wealthy students. The New York Times said:  "According to a report released last month by the RAND Corporation, the average summer learning loss in math and reading for American students amounts to one month per year. More troubling is that it disproportionately affects low-income students: they lose two months of reading skills, while their higher-income peers.... make slight gains." (Smink) Losing so much during the summer by impoverished students is evident because they do not have the means to learn during the summer. The wealthier families can afford to surround their families with books and other materials during the break. Also many students go to educational camps which the less privileged families cannot afford. There have been different ideas of how to combat this problem. New York City has made mandatory summer school for their students: "In New York, around 34,000 third through eighth graders are required to take summer school classes this year in order to be promoted to the next grade. The classes typically last only half the day, leaving many on their own for the afternoon." (Smink) This is a decent solution for kids who have to go home to a harsh situation or are struggling grade wise. Unfortunately this solution takes some freedom away from the students in a time where they should be learning how to live with freedom. Learning and development are hurt in the impoverished community during summer vacation.

The first step is to add benzoin (0.5 g) and ethanol (4 ml) to an Erlenmeyer flask and swirl gently until it’s fully dissolved. Then, add sodium borohydride (0.1g) in small amounts over a 5-minute time period. After all of it is added gently swirl for twenty minutes. Once the compound is mixed thoroughly cool it in an ice-bath and add water (5 mL) and 6M HCL (.3 mL). Fifteen minutes later add 2.5 mL more water. Set up vacuum filtration and use that to collect the product using ice water to wash the solid. Let the product dry for fifteen minutes and determine the crude yield and melting point. Save a small portion of crude material for TLC analysis. Recrystallize the crude solid using acetone and an Erlenmeyer flask. Use around 1 to 1.5 mL of the solvent. After the compound is crystalized, let it dry and come back during evening hours to take the melting point and final percent yield. The next process is to do the TLC analysis. Dissolve benzoin, recrystallized product, and crude product in ethyl acetate in three separate vials. Set up two separate TLC plates. On the first put dots of starting material, recrystallized product, and a dot of each. On the second plate put a dot of the starting material, the crude product, and one of both together. Place the 9:1 CH₂Cl₂: ethanol in the TLC developing chambers and add the plates. Let the solution run until its 1cm below the top. Once the plates are finished developing use the UV light and circle the new markings that developed.

The results of the titration experiment we performed went closely to what we expected. We had to prove that K₃[Fe(C₂O₄)₃] ·3H₂O was produced in the previous experiment, a 3:1 ratio of moles of C₂O₄^2- to moles of Fe³⁺ needed to be calculated from this second experiment, and we ended up with a 2.5:1 ratio. This could all be worked out by determining the number of moles of C₂O₄^2- and Fe³⁺ by solving for moles in the concentration (Molarity) formula, and then using molar ratios from the given chemical equations to find the number of moles of each ion.  Having an average ratio of 2.5:1 is a good sign that we did the experiment correctly, but it could have been better. Our first sample had a 2.22:1 ratio which was much worse than sample 2’s 2.8665:1 ratio. This could be since we added slightly more KMnO₄ to the 2^nd sample. This may have been a more optimal amount for the experiment to proceed correctly. Overall, we did decent job getting the ratio that we desired.                    

The people who deny global warming do not propose solutions. They deny the fact that humans have an impact on global warming, so they do not propose ways for people to correct it. Often, they take away from the bills and laws people pass to try and lessen global warming. This is happening with the current president. President Trump is a global warming denier, he thinks that the solutions Obama had passed is waste of money. This will have a profound impact upon the earth. “President Donald Trump's planned climate change policies could lead to an extra half a billion tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2025, according to a new analysis.” So, this solution for climate change would just take away from all the solutions of the other side. The solutions for the climate change people are to have a cleaner planet. Being a more sustainable society and having renewable energy is the best solution. For the people who oppose the idea that humans have a large impact on climate change, all the solutions seem like a waste of money. So, the solution of the government depend on who has power.

The American Dream is something that a lot of people hold sacred. Many American’s and people who come to America cling onto the dream so as to have some hope for success. The definition of the American Dream according to the book “Chasing the American Dream” by Mark Rank has three parts. First, you have the opportunity to follow your passions. Second, if you work hard you will be successful economically. Lastly, being able to successfully tackle your problems, and have hope and optimism. These definitions were formed according to people’s answers on what the American dream is. Do these definitions really hold true to this day? People who have money would likely tell you yes. You would find a different answer from poverty level Americans.

The methods project requires students to construct a multi-panel scientific figure of an interspecific interaction on the UMass Amherst campus and write a detailed methods section describing how it will be made. Another student will then follow those methods and try to recreate the original figure. Because a primary goal of science is replication, the goal of this project is to write a method section with enough detail to allow another student to reproduce the same results as the orignial. This project also promotes critical thinking skills as it requires students to distinguish differences in observations and inferences by comparing and contrasting the original figure to the replicate and by helping students to think about what potential factors need to be controlled in the expirement. 

The interspecific interaction in this project is a tree and moss. Because another student has to recreate it, the two organisms should be immobile in order to allow relocation of the same organisms. The location of the organisms are limited to the UMass Amherst campus, however it is also important to make the location of the interaction of the organisms accessible. Therefore, the interaction between the tree and the moss will be near the ground making it accessible to all heights. Specific distances, camera angles, and body positions will also be factors that need to remain constant to recreate the image. Controlling these variables will help allow for similar amounts and areas of background. It will also keep the proportions of the images similar. 

Lassa virus is a very severe virus that kills nearly 20% of those infected with it. The most interesting thing about this virus is that it is rarely spread from human to human. It is mostly spread through a vector, which in the case of Lassa virus are rodents. This virus is also primarily spread in places where people are in close contact with rodents. In a area in which rats or mice travel from home to home. The virus doesn’t affect the rodents it just lives in them, so they are essentially a reservoir of the virus, they just keep giving and giving. This is very scary in countries where sanitation is poor and rodent control is minimal. Another problem is the virus can live in the rodents experiments and saliva. So when a rodent sneaks into a house and maybe takes a bite out a loaf of bread and people don’t notice or choose to eat it anyways because that is their only food source they can become infected with the Lassa virus. The problem why Lassa is so bad is because it just seems like a common cold or flu for a while so it goes undiagnosed relatively often. But after a certain period of time those infect start to develop a hemorrhagic fever. This means that blood vessels begin to break and host starts internally bleeding. This can cause a lot of internal problems and also causes the body to become rapidly dehydrated. Blood also comes out of the body's orifices. Something that can further transmit the disease.