New Hopes for an AIDS Vaccine

First of December. World AIDS Day : a time to stop in medical advances to combat the disease. 35 million people are suffering AIDS in the world, among them more than 25 million are in Africa. Therapies slow down the progression of this disease, but are expensive and long time toxicity .

Px Therapeutics scientists searching a vaccine against AIDS. The 41 Euroneut program involving 17 European partners investigates how to block entry of the virus into the body.

The vaccine is based on the gp41 protein which is within the virus . 

Nicolas Mouz is the director of Px Therapeutics, in Grenoble , France: " The GP41 protein was chosen because it is a protein that is located on the surface of the virus. Is a protein that the immune system can sense and also plays a important role in the mechanism of virus entry into the cell. "  The AIDS virus is constantly changing to fool our immune system. But the GP41 protein does not change, what could be the Achilles heel of the virus. If the body produces neutralizing antibodies, the vaccine could be effective .

In the UK, the Guilford Center conducts tests on volunteer patients . Dr. David Lewis , medical immunologist , is responsible for the investigation of this vaccine. The Doctor Lewis says: "If we put the vaccine in the nose a good response in the genital tract is stimulated. So the concept is innovative start administering the vaccine in the nose with 3 doses . This prepares the body for a good response in the genital tract in order to block infection with antibodies to keep it out . "

The human immunodeficiency virus is so complex that you have to combine all the preventive measures from access to antiretrovirals to achieve a safe and effective vaccine.

Informative Video: New Hopes for an AIDS Vaccine

Science vs religion.

Science vs religion 
This is a topic that has been discussed a lot, they keep discussed about it and continue to discussed it because never ending the controversy between them.
There is much interest for years to determine their relation. So, why science has always clashed with religion? Because each is considered the most appropriate to gain knowledge and criticize the work of another field, (science doesn't accept the faith without evidence and religion says science denies the most fundamental). Although the two disciplines must collaborate because they share some goals and can bring up ideas.

 But, we can explain everything from two views? For example, we talked about how life arose because the age of the world according to the Bible not conform to 3,000 million years tell us that science.

• The theory of the scientific community is that life evolved from inanimate matter almost 4.000 million years. 
• According to religion, however, the world was created by God in seven days. 

 Science and religion; a strange couple. What about this relation? Stephen Jay Gould says science studies how is the sky and religion how to get there.

 Definitely, it shouldn't be so difficult relation between science and faith if each know their objectives and methodology, but in practice it has been difficult

The Dark Energy

Of all the mysteries of the universe unsolved one that has my calls my attention is the issue of dark energy hi so I want to upload this entry on this topic. Under current physical dark energy is a type of energy that is present throughout the universe and enb causing the galaxies apart ever go faster, in other words dark energy causes the acceleration of the universe accelerates and increasingly more and more.Yet there are still many things we do not know about this energy and the universe,Hope that someday you can solve this mysteries

Your brain eleminate the trash when you sleep

The investigators of the Rochester University has made one study about the importance of sleep.

This study say that when we sleep our brain eliminate the trash that we not need, when we sleep our brine is very active in the trash elimination as the beta-amiloide, that produce Alzheimer ore other diseases.

The glinfático system is the responsible system of the elimination of the trash in the rest of the body.

Know how pass this elimination is one thing that was not possible until now, because the technologies have evolved, with the two-photon microscopy.

Other thing that to the brain when we sleep in reduced its size one 60%, this produce more space in the cells and do that the elimination of the beta-amoloide is more easy.

The conclusion are that when we sleep more, we have less provability to have Alzheimer or other diseases, but if we sleep little we have more provability, for this is very important sleep.  

Wearing socks over your shoes reduces your chances of slipping on ice

Wearing socks over your shoes reduces your chances of slipping on ice

This Study was conducted by New Zelans scientists who wanted to know if wearing socks over shoes improved the tracion in icy sidewalks.

They do an experiment. After conducting the experiment with 29 people, two-third had previously fallen on ice, scientists found that wearing socks over their shoes was associated with a statisically significant improvement in tracion.

Wormholes

Wormholes

The Wormholes  is an astronomic rare and very incredible object. According to the article that I have read in a book of astronomy, the Wormholes are enormous routes that allow to connect different parts of the universe, in the time and in the space. 

Sounds like science fiction. Nevertheless, the holes of worm exist, at least as mathematical solutions to a series of formulae known as Einstein's field equations. Even this way, his royal existence is another question still not seizure.


Wormhole picture.

Time travel

Popular television shows such as "Doctor Who" have brought the idea of time travel into the vernacular of popular culture. But problem of time travel is even more complicated than one might think. LSU's Mark Wilde has shown that it would theoretically be possible for time travelers to copy quantum data from the past.

It all started when David Deutsch, a pioneer of quantum computing and a physicist at Oxford, came up with a simplified model of time travel to deal with the paradoxes that would occur if one could travel back in time. For example, would it be possible to travel back in time to kill one's grandfather? In the Grandfather paradox, a time traveler faces the problem that if he kills his grandfather back in time, then he himself is never born, and consequently is unable to travel through time to kill his grandfather, and so on. Some theorists have used this paradox to argue that it is actually impossible to change the past.

"The question is, how would you have existed in the first place to go back in time and kill your grandfather?" said Mark Wilde. Deutsch solved the Grandfather paradox originally using a slight change to quantum theory, proposing that you could change the past as long as you did so in a self-consistent manner.

"Meaning that, if you kill your grandfather, you do it with only probability one-half," Wilde said. "Then, he's dead with probability one-half, and you are not born with probability one-half, but the opposite is a fair chance. You could have existed with probability one-half to go back and kill your grandfather."

But the Grandfather paradox is not the only complication with time travel. Another problem is the no-cloning theorem, or the no "subatomic Xerox-machine" theorem, known since 1982. This theorem, which is related to the fact that one cannot copy quantum data at will, is a consequence of Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle, by which one can measure either the position of a particle or its momentum, but not both with unlimited accuracy. 

The acidity in the oceans increases nervousness of fishes. - Eric Bravo

Looking for interesting news about science I found a very interesting and worrying new about the sea and the impact that our activites make on the animals that live in it.
Some researchers found that the acidity of the sea, incresed by our chemical productes, our factories, ships and the fishing industry, affect fishes in the way that it increases they nervousness.
For their study, the researchers created a laboratory with an area with light acidic water and one with acid water. A fish that was not exposed to large amounts of acidity in the water, was just swimming normaly. However, with a higher acidification of the water, the fish went crazy and starts going back and forth very quickly, something common that fish do when they feel nervous.

Then they, put the two fishtanks together and they saw that the fishes rarely pass to the acid side.

This, they said, can have serious consequences because it would mean that if some parts of the ocean get acid, fishes will not be able to go there to find food anymore. According to the study , a week passed after they changed type less water acidification. The good news is that this harmful effect seems to be reversible : after 12 days the fishes get better, and none of them was nervous anymore.

This study adds to previous research that had shown that ocean acidification included behavioral and sensory changes , including loss of smell.

Chinese scientists are trying to develop the first invisibility cloak

One of the most recent and relevant news is that some chinese scientists in Pekín are trying to develop "the first invisibility cloak" in the world, trough the technology to prevent the visibility of objects.
The newspaper said that the Chinese government has contributed money to work of about 40 teams of research during the past three years, to develop this idea, for the moment limited only in science-fiction.
Among the ways that scientists explore to achieve invisibility it's developing materials that divert the light from the object you want to hide, by creating electromagnetic fields, and the development of materials of caouflage of high technology.

FROM SPACE TO YOUTUBE

"It started with the questions that made us our families" post-Apolo astronaut Chris Hadfield.

The most famous post-apolo astronaut, Chris Hadfield, that became famous thanks to upload  some videos on famous web "Youtube".
In some videos, Chris, ask to their viewers to send him questions and all sorts of things they would like to do in the ISS to upload to next video. The videos were made famous around the world, they collected thousands and even millions of views in a few days.
Now a days on earth, Chris, after leave the Canadian Space Agency has published his new book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, that includes all he learnt in the agency and some experiments that he did in the ISS.

To read the new and a little interview.

Fractals

Hello everybody! Now, I'll explain a bit of the fractals.

Fractals are typically self-similar patterns, which means that it's seen the same from near as from far. Fractals may be exactly the same at every scale, or they may be nearly the same at different scales.

Using this, there's an interesting aplication of fractals that may surprise you. Upon measuring Great Britain's coast, one may assume it measures 18000 km long, but if one measures it more precisely, it measures nearly as twice as long.


Also, the image of the snowflake shows that with every division the lenght of the perimeter increases by 4/3 each time, so the last frame of the GIF is (4/3)^6 times longer, or a bit more than five times and a half (5,61865569...).

Wednesday 4th of December

On Wednesday December 4, in science of contemporary world, we saw a video of powers of ten, from 24 to -15 power of ten, and a sheet of paper, you should write see the different powers of ten.The video was in English, so that was hard to understand what it said, in the video you could see the DNA, neutrons, electrons and protons, atoms, the more galaxies properly than our, the orbits of planets in the solar system and more. But now we have a task and we have to fill a table we see the video to homeworks.

Are found Two black hole Intertwined in a cosmic dance

-A group of astronomers has discovered what appear to be two supermassive black holes at the center of a remote galaxy , at 3,800 million light- Earth rotating together like dance partners years.

At first moment, scientists thought that the strange structure was forming new stars at a frantic pace , but after inspecting it further, they realized that the phenomenon " is more like a fusion of giant black holes '.

The " dance " of these two black holes begins slowly spinning objects with each other at a distance of a few thousand light years. Few black holes have been identified at this early stage of fusion. As they continue circling around each other , are close , separated only by a few light years .

In the final step in the merger of black holes , gravitational waves they send through space and time. Researchers are actively seeking these waves using dead stars called pulsars hoping to better understand how the dancers black holes.

URL: http://www.abc.es/ciencia/20131206/abci-hallan-agujeros-negros-entrelazados-201312051827.html

Wednesday 13th of November

In our Science for contemporary World’s class Rebeca explained us new vocabulary to use it in our works for enhance it: she showed us synonyms of “say” (visualize, portray, analyze…) and the meaning of “allegedly” (what means according to someone’s opinion) with some examples.

Then we watched a video about C.E.R.N, which explains what it is and how it works. This is the video:

http://cds.cern.ch/record/986165

(This is the structure, the circuit of C.E.R.N)

31st October

We went to the library. To start the class Silvia explained the work. After that we did groups of three or four persons. With these groups we must do two different works. The first is one map with the classification of the camps of science. We can search information in internet and we can do one conceptual map with a computer program. The second work is do targets for the game “Who is who?”  We must search information of 52 scientists. Concretely we must find a photo, his age, an anecdote etc. 

7th November: 13th class

Contents: We talk about:

· In this day, all of our class had to do minimum two questions about the universe: one that is already answered by the scientifics, and another that isn't answered. A few questions for example:

-What is dark matter

-What is a black hole

-When will the planets of the solar system be aligned in a straight line

-Which is the biggest galaxy in the Universe and where is it

-Are there more galaxies in the Universe

-Are there alive beings in Universe or other planets

-Is there intelligent life somewhere in the Universe

-Where do things go when they enter a blackhole

-Where do you go when you enter a blackhole


(http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/7275536/Our_Universe_questions)

Also, we correct  the moddle exercice: "Bad science... studies that are not right."

16th October: 7th class

Contents: We talk about:  

Today, Sílvia has explained us the different sources of scientific information. For last, at the end of the class have done an exercise on the different contents of the science. Now I leave you a summary of the  different sources of  scientific information, the exercise that me done and a image of a scientific magazine.

1. Sources of scientific information

• Divulgative books 
• Divulgative magazines
• “Normal” newspaper
• Scientific magazines

2. Feels of science 

• Biology
• Astronomy
• Physics
• Geology
• Chemist
• Sociology
• Computer science

... etc. The explanation of each one do not put it because it is the exercise that have to complete the students.

Image of scientific magazine; his title is SCIENCE.

And his website is : http://www.sciencemag.org

9th October: 6th class

Contents: we talk about

• Continue with the explanations and the evaluation of the projects

The explanations and the evaluation:

Last day, we continue with the explanations of the projects that the previous day we finished it and we started to explain. While a member of each groups made his presentation, the rest were evaluating the experiment that he or she was introducing us. The different things that we evaluated were:

• If the experiment solved the hypothesis raised.
• If the experiment would work.
• If we improve anything.
• The presentation.

At the end of the class each of us handed the evaluations we had done.

3rd October: 5th Class

The summary of this class:

In this class we start getting together in groups and we continued with the solution of the method, we discussed, collaborated asked and that way we could think of to fix it.

When time is up, all have returned to normal site and we have to listen to the different projects of different class groups.

Eric began with an explanation of the project and at the end we have to score according to our approach.

2nd October: 4th class

Contents: We talk about:

• The Scientific Method

Today we start the class with the main features about Scientific Method. In the case, the teacher, Sílvia explanined the differents parts about this method. For everybody know this process, she puts a homework about two differents presentations where explain the 6 steps for the next day. This work consist to see this presentations and do a summary about both. After, we put in practice the Scientific Method about a group work. There are differents topics and we say the objective, information that we need, hypothesis,explain the experiment, put the differents variables and the conclusion and the result about this work.

26th September: 3rd Class

Contents: we talk about

·         Review questions

·         Explain the main features

 

Review the questions:

At the beginning of the class we read some of the questions we had written the day before. After read them we corrected the wrong ones.

 

Main features:

The main features of Science are:

·         Results have to be reproducible and objective: it means that it won’t depend of the person who counts; the results always have to be the same.

·         Use mathematics as a tool.

·         Doesn’t exist an authority principle: s, if you check it and it’s wrong, doesn’t care who says this; it will always be wrong.

·         Reality is the trial/ proof/ test.

·         Simplicity (Ockam Razor)

·         Ethic: share all the knowledge nut you have to recognized the owner.

 

 

Here I show you a cartoon of  Newton and Leibniz having an argument because they think that both are the owners of one idea.

 

 

QUESTIONS

· Questions that scientists can answer:

• Does exist human cloning?

· Not scientific questions:

• Why we have to study science if we are of humanistic group?
• What is the life?
• Why the people always try to find an answer for all their questions?
• What are the feelings?What would the world be without them?
• Is true that all the people have a soul twin in this life?
• How to make interesting questions when you are forced?
• How the people can ensure the past only with investigations?
• Have everything sense?
• Why when we have something in our reach we don't value it and when we lose it we miss it?

25th September: 2n Class

Contents: we talk about

•          Structure of the Blog
•          Curiosity Questions
•          Verify Aristotle’s affirmation

Structure of the Blog:

We spent about 10 minutes listening how to do a good reminder about what we did the last class. What it has to contain: contents, images and an explanation.

Curiosity Questions:

We had to make ten questions about what themes that science for contemporary world could answer. These questions could be about things what are discovered and known or things that aren’t known yet.

We had had 5 minutes to make all the questions and then we shared them with all our partners. Silvia gave us some easy homework: write the 10 questions in the moodle.

Verify Aristotle’s affirmation:

In this part of the class, we were trying to check Aristotle’s affirmation. It says that women have less teeth than men.

Everybody of us counted how many teeth we’ve got. Then we did an average, girls in a column and boys on another. We have the same number of teeth: 28. 

A funny image: 

2013-14 COURSE

15-September-13: First class of the course

Contents. We talk about:

• Description of the course
• Main features of science

Description of the course. 

Without being extensive about details, we talk about:

English in the classroom: 
We'll try to use it as much as possible. It's compulsory to write at least the first lines of every work in English. If all the work is in right English, the marks will rise up by 1 point.

Evaluation:
The mark will be obtained from the weight average of the corrected works.
Attitude (mainly, being in time and sending works in the right dates) may change 1 point up or down.
Traditional exams, when existing, will be only vocabulary.

Blog and moodle
Students have to contribute to the blog with one entry every term, at least.
We will work in moodle:

http://agora.educat1x1.cat/ies-dperramon/moodle/course/view.php?id=362

It includes a forum to upload interesting science news, and the contents structure.

Contents
The course will have six themes.

There is one moodle topic for every theme with the outline and the activities

Main features of science

Science is a method and a way to look at things, more than a set of knowledge.
It's one of the characteristics of occidental culture.
Curiosity, the aim to know (that's not considered a positive feature in many cultures), is the engine of science.
The obligation of checking ideas with reality and the strict respect for the experimental results are other main features of science.

DRAGON GENOME

One of the last days in class, we've made an activity working in pairs. Each of the pair had two green, two red, two orange, two yellow and two sex cromosoms that gave the information from the mother or the father. Then we had to wrote on the sheet what features will or not have your baby. The activity consisted in that each of the couples had to choose one of the two chromosomes and then join with the chosen of the partner to made a dragon baby. Finally the only thing we had to make is wrote the chromosomes that the mother and the father had in the sheet and mix them considering the recesive and the dominant ones and watch the features that the baby will have with that mix.

ECOLOGY 10/4/13

In this class we have told about ecology.

Ecology is a scientist discipline which studies the behavior of comunities of alive being and its relationships.

We also have told about some definitions related to this. For example:

·Biomass: mass of alive beings.

·Ecosystem: set of all the things that are importants in a level.

·Producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, descomposers: different levels of a trophic level.

·Habitat: phisical part of ecosystem.

·Ecologic niche: "place" in the ecosystem, position in the ecosystem.

·Trophic web: same to the trophic level without draws.

·Trophic level: relation of who eats who.

·Biome: kind of ecosystem.

·Population: group of animals that belongs to a one specie.

·Biotic potential: possibility that a specie has to develop in the ecosystem.

·

Evolution teory

EVOLUTION TEORY

-Man comes from apes.

-Darwin and Beagle

-Lamark (wrong)

-Natural selection.

-Mutations

-Variability of species.

1.       All life being are some related and from a commune ancestor.
2.       Every a life being inherit information from his parents, you only inherit chromosomic information.
3.        Are two things that are responsable of change in specie:  genetic variability in the some species and natural selection.

Changesàvariabilityà         à

 Different combination between chromosomes

Mutations à changes DNA

 

 

Natural selection: only survive and have descendents that are best adapted to the environment. 

EVOLUTION TEORY SAYS…

•          …that monkeys are our cousins.
•          … that we came for same kind of ancient monkey.
•          Never told about the relationships.
•          …that we have 4% of Neanderthal DNA.
•          The theory of evolution has nothing to do with social relations.

Class: 13th of March 2013

The Cells

The metabolism is all the reacts of a cell. The metabolism is pretty the same in all the cells.
There are two types of metabolism: vegetal cell's metabolism and animal cell's metabolism.
The vegetal ones makes the photosynthesis.

Process in a cell:

• Obtain energy: glucosa + O2: Energy - ATP/ CO2 + H2O
• Bet energy from the Sun (only plants): H2O + Co2 - Glucosa + O2
• Fots or lipids
• Proteins construction: enzims - in ribosomes formed by aminoacids from DNA orders
• DNA replications 

-Work in class:

Make a conceptual map of the porfile of chemistry of life.

Class: 23 of January, 2013

TIPS FOR TAKE NOTES

In the last class we did a different activity. We read several pages explaining various tips on taking good notes in class.

When we finished, we note the most important tips.

The most important tips

-Entendre el contingut.

-Intentar escriure amb les teves paraules.

-Remarcar les paraules clau.

-Remarcar les paraules que no s'entenen.

-Resumir/simplificar el que diu el professor.

-Keep your notes together.

-Numerar i posar data als fulls que treballes.

-Utilitzar esquemes/parts gràfiques (cas particular).

-Deixar espais en blanc, per poder completar.

-Han de ser entenedors.

-Incloure instruccions de cara a una futura llegida.

-Escriu gran/separat.

-Deixar marges per anotar comentaris.

-Utilitzar marcadors (en cas de que hi hagi moltes pàgines)

-Escollir si prendre apunts a la llibreta o en fulls.

-Stay active in class.

-Abrevate when it's necessary.

-Frases curtes i clares.

-Repassar els apunts.

-Check with other people notes.

THE GEOLOGICAL SCALE OF TIME

30/1/13

Work to do:
- We have to explain earth's life and relation it with a period of time, for example: one day, one year...
- We have to do groups of three people. And every person of the group have a task: one have to do the mathematic part, the other have to llok for all the datas, and the last one have to do the stetic part.

MATHEMATIC PART
We have to do diferent covertions to know what period of time corresponds for example to a one minut.

DATA PART
Search all the important parts of the history of the Universe like the firts cells, the apparition of the dinosaurs....

STETIC PART
Choose the period of time or the place you want to represent.
- 27 years 
- One week
- All the " Riera"
- Around the world
- Amazonic river
- Beer
- 90 years.

13/02/13

What are we going to do?

•  Talk about and organize the previous installments
• Clarify what’s left to hand over.

Earthquakes:

Earthquakes can’t be prevented. They can’t be measured in a detailed way either; all the scales we have to describe them are subjective, or relative, never exact. Earthquakes aren’t dangerous as such, but they provoke tsunamis, fires (because of gas explosions) and volcanoes explosions, which actually kill and hurt people and damage buildings and landscapes.

   We don’t have a lot of earthquakes in Catalonia, but they are more usual in places like Murcia or Italy (mostly the south) because they are near plate tectonics borders.

   The most devastating damage ever provoked by an earthquake occurred in Crete: a volcano erupted because of the earth-shaking movement that broke the internal layers of the volcano and made it explode.

Group work: 2009 Aquila Earthquake

• Decide how would we deal with the geologists problem and account for why would we lock them up or why we wouldn’t.
• Discuss about and organize the previous ideas.
• We receive more information about the case (newspaper articles of the moment).
• How would we end with the case and why.

9/1/13

C.M.C.

Last day in class, we started the new theme, "Our Home", about the Earth.

We made an activity about things of our planet, we had to writte some questions about Earth  and classify them in "Ecology,  Earth's History or Layers", depending of the area, the papers were of a different colour.

We talk about the past homeworks at the beggining of the class too.