Wow! The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has made a huge step in the fight against cancer. A new treatment called immunotherapy has just been passed to be used on any type of cancer. This procedure will change the way we cure cancer. We will no longer have to organize, categorize, and make a plan in order to treat cancer. Instead we can use the common mutation in cancer in order to target and fight it. Immunotherapy uses the bodies own immune system in order to beat cancer. This section of the immune system merely has to be activated to recognize the cancer cells as harmful and in turn, destroy them. I think this is an amazing breakthrough. Cancer is a very serious problem and we need to come up with new ways to fight it. In December of last year I lost a family member due to cancer. He was given a few months to live but died a few days after being in the hospital. My grandmother was also affected by breast cancer and has been cancer free for two years, so I know both extremes of what can happen. I would love to see immunotherapy go far so that sometime, hopefully in the near future, cancer will only be as scary as the common cold.
For more information about Immunotherapy, Visit the The Cancer Treatment Centers of America
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The ocean. Beautiful, mysterious, and the home to many animals is now under attack. It has been for a long time. Trash in the ocean is a huge problem and it's not just the plastic bottles you see floating on the surface. Plastic is the main problem. When plastic is thrown in the ocean, or anywhere for that matter, it doesn't biodegrade meaning it doesn't break down without hurting the planet. Instead it photodegrades, which means it is broken down under sunlight. When this happens the plastic particles separate and create tiny balls of plastic that can then be eaten by animals in the ocean. This specifically has been wreaking havoc on small animals such as baby chicks that live in or near the ocean. When researchers cut open their bellies after they had died they found large amounts of these tiny particles of plastic. Some may ask "So why can't we just go and scoop up all the plastic out of the ocean?" and the answer is its not that simple. Like I said its not just the plastic on the surface, it's all the tiny particles in the water from the broken down plastic too. Not to mention the disruption of ocean life. We need to start on land and it's really simple to help out. Throw away your trash, don't leave it to be swept away by the waves or to be picked up by someone else. Take your own action and the planet will be much healthier because of it.
No Surprise! People aren't getting enough sleep. Everyone talks about how tired we are and how we need to get more sleep, but how do we get it. For starters we can take a look at our daily schedules to see if there is anything keeping us from the amazing thing we call sleep. Below is an simple sketch of my schedule stating the majority of what I am doing from 1:00 in the morning to 12:00 at night. Not much surprised me. Everyone is always shocked when I say I go to bed at 8:30, (More like 8:45), but even with what looks to be 10 hours of sleep I often feel like I don't get enough. When you break it down it takes about five minutes to get to bed, about an hour of just lying there waiting for my brain to slow down enough to sleep, and on bad nights who knows how many times I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night for any number of reasons. I understand why its hard for people to get to sleep. It doesn't take much to keep me up at night. So how can we help people like that, how do people get the much needed sleep they need. According to the article some foods can help you with this. Before bed if you're going to eat anything eat something like egg whites, chicken, granola, or whole-grain crackers with milk. These foods are high in tryptophan and melatonin which are things found in these foods that help induce sleep.
This article talks a lot about how summer learning loss is a real problem and uses many unproven or reused reasons to support year round schooling. For me this article sounded like a broken record saying that we no longer need a long summer break and that it really hurts the amount of things students remember. I love the long summer break and I would never want to change to year round school for a few reasons. First of all the three months of summer that we get is the best time to travel in Michigan. My family and I go up north to Traverse City a few times a year and while it is fun in the winter, you don't get to experience all of the things you get to if you go in the summer. Secondly this article uses the argument that students learn to have a healthier diet during the school year. I think kids eat healthier in the summer even with all of the ice cream and smore's waved in their face. When you're home you notice more of the food you need in the house. It also gives you a chance to eat more of the delicious fruits that are good in the summertime like watermelon and berries.
It This is crazy! Scientists have now created an artificial womb so help premature babies fully develop essential organs such as their lungs. I think this new technology could be very useful but I also have some very high concerns. First of all the united states spends an estimated $43 billion every year caring for preemies and most of them don't make it. This could help us reduce this cost and save the lives of many premature babies. Don't get me wrong there are also a lot of challenges along the way before this can be used on a human child. For one thing the "Biobag" would have to be sized down in order to fit the premature babies. The system also wouldn't work for a child if they had actually been born. It is shown that there are many things to be sorted out but I wouldn't be surprised if we heard of this being tested on a human in the near future.
Anyone that knows me knows that I love sugar and I have often wondered "what happens to my brain when I eat sugar." Well according to a series of experiments where rats were deprived of food for 12 hours, then given access to sugary solution and regular chow for the other 12 hours, it was shown that the pattern of the rats behavior with and without the sugar was similar to that when they were exposed to drugs, such as cocaine. I found this very surprising, but it also made sense to me. For example, I absolutely LOVE Sprite or any sort of fizzy, sugary drink. Often times when I haven't had Sprite in a while (as in maybe a day or a few hours), I start to get headaches and a severe "need" to have some. In the past my parents have also given up pop for a few months just to try to stop drinking it like the "healthier lifestyle" kind of stuff. During the first month of them doing so, my mom often complained about having headaches as well. After this I have come to the conclusion that people do have sugar addictions and that sugar withdrawal is a very real thing. It is also hard to quite bad habits when you have something sweet even if it's not doing you a lot of good.
This article was very interesting. It gave a lot of information about what the EPA has done and the future of what may happen to it. I never realized how much the EPA has impacted the US since it was formed. For example since the 1970's the EPA has reduced air pollution by 70%, and the percentage of America's polluted waterways has been cut almost in half since its formation. The hole in the ozone layer has also been healing, as well as a reduction of blood levels of lead, down 75%. The EPA has done a number of amazing things for our country and I hope they continue to do so with an interesting target on their backs. According to the article, "Trump's original blueprint slashed the EPA by 31%, eliminating 50 programs." I really hope that does not happen, but according to the EPA's website, they have started a new plan called "Back to Basics" where they plan to return to the original intent of the EPA to better help its partners and the economy as well as our planet.
This article raised many questions about many different things, the biggest one being, Is this the start of World War 3? I think that this is a very scary but very real possibility in the world today. So many countries are trying not to make enemies or break relations with other countries that whenever they try to help there is a lot of controversy. For example in this article about the US strike on Syria one group, President Bashar al-Assad said that our decision to strike was, "Foolish and Irresponsible," as well as "Revealed its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality." On the other hand Syrian rebels "welcomed the strike and called for additional action, 'Hitting one air base is not enough- There are 26 airbases that target civilians'....'The whole world should save the Syrian people from the clutches of the killer Bashar and his aids." You can see here how just one action threatens one group, who may then attack us, but helps another that is trying to save their people from terrible ones. So is this the start of World War 3? I think only time will tell what happens when a country decides to act.
I believe there are many benefits to allowing first-year doctors to work 24-hour shifts. First of all it helps to delete some margin of error when doctors switch patients at the end of their 16 hour shifts. When this happens there is a lot of confusion between doctors on what is being done to the patients. Secondly it accumulates first year doctors to having to work these long shifts faster. When they become real time doctors they will be ready for the long and tiring shifts. This also seems to be the only option since the 16 hour shifts have been causing problems. The only problem proposed by this extension is that these doctors can become sleep deprived and it may be harder for them to work. Nevertheless I think this could be a very good improvement for first year doctors.
I think this could be a really good idea. In elementary school kids are always getting mad at each other for no reason. Instead of being punished students could have time to deal with their emotions and learn how to control their feelings so it is less likely to happen later. It seems that this has already happened in the school mentioned in the article. One child said "When I get mad at something, I take some deep breaths, keep doing my work, and tune everyone out." It is teaching kids early that they need to chill out before totally blowing up. I would like to know what happens when a child is there a lot, maybe if they are trying to get out of class that could be a problem. Other than that I think this is a positive way for students to deal with their emotions and it may even lead to less kids in detention/RTR in high school.
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Kelsey AndrewsThis is where I will be Putting my Responses to our Articles of the Week Archives
June 2017
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