Week 14

I have mixed feelings on Artificial Intelligence.  I feel that as a society, we can really benefit from the technology that machines and robots can do without the mistake of human error, such as surgeries as someone had mentioned in class.  But what is the need/want for these machines to have the capability to imitate human emotions and thoughts? Maybe I'm just wary since I've seen too many sci-fi shows, but sometimes depending too much on these machines can lead to our downfall

Debunking Captivity: 3 Reasons Not to Keep Dolphins in a Tank

Aw, this article makes me sad. I know that having any kind of animal locked up for viewing or "research" isn't necessarily the best thing for them, but the researchers always say it's for the animals best interest, such as they were hurt. However, I'm guilty of going to amusement parts when I was younger and the dolphins were my favorite thing to see! I was fascinated with them! When I swam with them on a family vacation I thought it was awesome. But looking back, I feel so bad. As the article states, they're not there for our enjoyment and entertainment.  We view them as such intelligent creatures, but don't bother assessing our treatment of them. I agree that dolphins deserve rights and should be treated as who rather than what.

Week 13

"...The human species if living as if it had more than one planet to occupy..."

I completely agree with this quote! We're using resources left and right to just build more and more. It's gotten to the point where we're over consuming tremendously, and being the humans that we are, we just keep going and going, rarely thinking of the consequences that could happen.  Rather than being concerned with our surroundings and the effects that could happen, humans tend to live in the present and are just thinking out we could further benefit from the things around us.

Nanobionics aims to give plants superpowers
I found this article to be interesting, but a little disturbing as well. While I'm sure the intentions of creating bionic plants are good, it's just yet another way of messing with mother nature. Do we really know the consequences of these actions down the road? Maybe we won't see the effects immediately, but they could happen in the next hundred years and make a negative impact on the ecosystem. While I encourage technology and new findings, I'm still apprehensive on creating new genes for alive plants and animals.

Week 12

I found it interesting to learn about the different units of radioactivity.  The becquerel, sievert, and curie are units that are all brand new to me.  It's a bit difficult to fully process in such a short amount of time, but how it was broken down made it understandable.  And I was shocked to find out bananas are radioactive! One of my favorite fruits!

I looked at http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/virus.html and I find it interesting the whole structure of a virus.  It's often something that we just hear about and we only experience virus' as a whole versus thinking of it as an individual thing.  We see the effects that it can have on living organisms.  It also discussed the 2 most common viruses that people often think of: influenza and HIV

Briefly glancing at the other sites, I like how the pictures are illustrated. It breaks it down into visuals that are easy to understand and labels each part!