Exoneration

For the exoneration project we listened to story on This American Life about four teenagers who were wrongly convicted for the rape and murder of the of a young woman, and were sent to prison for 15 years before they were exonerated because of DNA evidence.

The radio story explain how four teenagers all around the age of fifteen, who were wrongly convicted of rape and murder when police pinned the crime on the completely innocent boys. In Chicago, 1986 a woman was found dead by train tracks, with signs of rape and her head bashed in. The reason this murder was so prominent, was because the woman was white medical student, and found near a mostly black neighborhood. When someone was not arrested quickly, the public began to get angry causing the police force to feel pressure to convict someone for the crime. The police brought in three boys to trying to get them to confess with physical abuse. When the one of the boys did not confess the police told him that if he singed a confession, he could go home and see his mom, but when he did they locked him up instead. The police used the best guess profile as the confession,the boys confession also included the one boy who didn't confess from physical abuse so they were able to arrest all three boys. The police then brought in a fourth boy who they asked to confess to seeing them commit the crime, when the boy turned it down, they added him to the trail as another one of the rapist. During the trial, police were able to get one of the boys to confess to the crime, one the stand, in order to get a shortened sentence. The teenagers were found guilty and sent to prison with a life sentence. Fifteen years later one of the boys heard about prisoners being exonerated from DNA testing. He sent a letter explaining his situation to a lawyer who took their case. Because the semen found at the crime scene did not match any of the boys DNA, they were released from prison, and shortly after two men confessed to the crime.

My reaction to this story is that it is terrible how bad people can be sometimes. Four young boys were convicted of a crime that they didn't commit, just because there was pressure from the public on the police force. wrongly arresting the boys not only messed with there lives permanently, but also allowed two murders to get away with their crime. Its sad to think that the people in our justice system can be corrupt, when so many peoples lives are riding on their decisions. This is also a hard story for me to hear because the boys were about my age when they went to prison. If i went to prison right now I would be able to handle it. The men never got to learn how to drive or got to go to college an they had to be extremely mature when they were just kids. I could never do what they did.

Antiangiogenesis

In Colleen's, the sophomore class of Animas High School watched a Ted Talk on antiangiogenic food. The Ted Talk was called "Eating to Starve Cancer" and it talked about the different food that could possible help lessen the chances of us getting cancer.

The Ted Talk first discussed about what causes a tumor to become malignant. All tumors start out as a small cells that have a genetic malfunction. To grow bigger, the cell needs to have small blood vessels supply it with oxygen and nutrients. If the small blood vessels are cut off then they will not be able to supply the tumor with nutrients, thats where the anti-angiogenic foods come in. Antiangiogenic foods are food the are used to regulate blood vessel growth. By eating antiangiogenic foods, you cut off the blood vessels that feed tumors, there for starving the tumors. Anitiagiogenic foods are things like dark chocolate, red whine, blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes and much more.

My reaction to this article was amazement. I love the idea that people can do something as simple as eating foods, and it can be used to help prevent cancer. Its such a weird concept that eating can be a simple enough thing to stop someone from getting cancer. People should be more aware of what they can do to help them not get cancer. 

Aldo Leopold was ahead of his time with his realization about ecosystems. Leopold realized that to survive, all things must live in a perfect balance. People often did not realize what taking out one organism could do, or how it could ruin a symbiotic relationship.

In the article, "Think Like a Mountain"a man is describing his thoughts and experiences about killing wolves. Leopold writes about how wolves were being executed to keep them from eating live stock. With the execution of all the wolves the population of the deer skyrocketed. Slowly the deer began eat all of the vegetation. With all of the plants missing the deer began to starve and die. In the end all the wolves, deer, and plants were dead, just from killing the wolves.

My response to this article is that I am surprised how much or world is in balance. Even if just one part of our ecosystem goes missing, it will have a huge impact on the rest of our world. with this idea in mind, it showed me just how much we need to respect each life form because we all have a place in this world.

For the start of the evolution project, we listened to the story was of Lucy, the modern day chimpanzee, on Radiolab.

Lucy was a chimpanzee that was taken away from her mother two days after birth. She went to live with Maurice Temerlin and his wife Jane where she was raised like a human girl. Lucy would  dress herself, make tea, lye, use silverware, look through magazines, and drink gin. The goal of this experiment was to see how much chimpanzees could be like humans. With the complete socialization that Lucy was a human girl, the experiment was extremely successful. She learned over 140 words in American sign language. Lucy was able to fully comprehend and communicate to people, as well as having the ability combine words, to convey what she was feeling. The other social boundary that was crossed was Lucy's sexual attraction to human men. When Lucy was put with a male of her species, she refused to hold his hand and would not communicate to him. Instead Lucy preferred to look at the magazine "Playgirl"showing her sexual attraction to humans. Although Lucy had been raised as a human girl, her body was still one of an apes, which meant that at age 12, she was extremely strong. She began destroying the house, and eventually the Temerlins had to send her to a rehabilitation center, located in Gambia. Lucy became very depressed. She would not eat or sleep and she began to loose her hair. After a few weeks, the Temerlins left Lucy in the care of a woman named Janis Carter. Because Lucy was depressed in the center, Carter took her and a few other socialized chimps to in island in the middle of a river, where she let them run free. She taught them what to eat and how to survive while living in a metal cage. At first all the chimp would stay with her but eventually they all left to do their own thing. Lucy was the last to leave the cage, staying signing that she was hurt, but eventually she left and so did Carter. A year later Carter returned to check on the chimps, she hugged Lucy and gave her a few of her old belongings. Lucy looked at the items for a small amount of time then returned to the wild with the other chimps. A year after that, Carter returned to find Lucy's skeleton. The hands were missing, the head was separated from the body, and there were no signs of skin and fur. Unfortunately all signs added up to the fact that Lucy had been poached, though the matter of how she died is still questioned by the people who loved her.

Because of Lucy we learned that the boundary between species, if genetically close enough, can be broken. Lucky also taught us that being human does not only have to do with what we look like, but how we act and are socialized. Though I knew that chimpanzees and humans were closely related, I never realized how much they could be like humans. I think that  even though Lucy's life was full of tragedy, the experiment to see how much a chimp could be like a human was extremely successful. Though Lucy taught us a great deal about the species boundary, I think it is horrible the way her life ended. Though the Temerlins meant well, because of the way they had socialized Lucy, it was like putting a teenage girl alone in the wild, to fend for herself. Though she had the body of a chimp, Lucy still thought and acted like a human girl, and I think it was horrible to get rid of her.  

For the class project, we had to watch a Ted Talk of choice, with a topic of biology. I chose the Ted Talk, "Life in the Deep Oceans."

The Ted Talk was a showing of under water video footage. The video held different scenes of deep ocean fish, shrimp, and Hydrothermal Chimneys. While showing the different aspects of life under water, David Gallo would narrate thought the shots and give the I'm formation if it. The pictures were also used to show graphic reenactment of a submarine mapping the oceans bottom using sound waves.

My response to the Ted Talk, "Life in the Deep Oceans," done by David Gallo, was that is was a wonderful and informative video. Deep oceanic life is one of my favorite subjects, so personally I found the video riveting. I highly recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by oceanic life.