A child's skull.

Transgenic Crops

To those of you unfamiliar with the MCAT, we have a one hour writing section, in which the test taker has to write two dialectical style essays (thesis/antithesis/reconciliation). I wrote this practice essay a few months ago and the thoughts found within are pretty important to me, so I thought I'd share:


Environmental concerns should outweigh economic concerns in society's decision making. 
Write a unified essay in which you perform the following tasks. Explain what you think the above statement means. Describe a specific situation in which economic concerns might require higher priority than environmental concerns. Discuss how society might balance environmental and economic concerns.

          Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, statistics show an unprecedented growth in the human population, which can be attributed to a variety of factors such as improved standard of living and technological advancements, but amongst the most notable of these factors would be the industrialization of agriculture. Since the 1980s, the agricultural industry has largely profited from genetically modifying certain crops to elicit favorable phenotypes, but as industrial farming has evolved, it has become increasingly apparent that some of these genetic interventions, such as Monsanto’s contested "Terminator Gene," are primarily used to benefit the business at the expense of the environment's natural course of action. The Terminator Gene, as suggested by its name, prevents a flower or fruit from bearing viable seeds, thereby thwarting the possibility of harvesting seeds for future use. No sum of economic profit could ever legitimize this action. This type of genetic modification is inherently unethical because it poses an extremely serious threat to plant biodiversity (a common fear with genetically modified crops).

          However, with a population of nearly seven billion and sustainability currently too difficult to implement in certain parts of the world, genetically modified crops have become increasingly cost effective. This altruistic scientific discovery was initially proposed as a means to eliminate the possibility of food shortages across the world -- transgenic crops were engineered to include pesticide and herbicide resistance genes, while some crops were altered to incorporate even more specific advantageous traits, such as the capacity to withstand extreme weather conditions or the ability to express greater amounts of certain essential nutrients that were otherwise not readily available in countries where famine is common. Although these modifications were carried out at the expense of another organism, the constructed phenotypes ran in parallel with advantageous phenotypes that evolution might have naturally selected in the long run.

          To ensure a proper balance between the environmental and economic concerns, a more transparent discourse between environmental scientists, economists, and transnational government officials should be organized as a means to implement strict legislation that prevents the overcommodification of crops. We must create laws that dissuade corporations like Monsanto from even considering the idea of capitalizing on unethical modifications as offensive as the Terminator Gene. We, as inhabitants of this fruitful Earth, should be thankful for the ingenuous intentions behind the founding of transgenic crops. They have provided nutrition to the masses for the past three decades, but we should also be receptive of the evolutionary risks we run. Genetically modified crops should only be considered a temporary remedy that gives us some time to develop a more sustainable system that depends less, or perhaps completely eliminates our dependency, on manipulating the integrity of other organisms.

D2 RECEPTOR & ADDICTION

From Who Falls to Addiction, and Who Is Unscathed? by Richard A. Friedman, M.D.

Alcohol and drugs affect mood and behavior by activating the same brain circuits that are disrupted in major psychiatric illnesses.

...

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has shown in several brain-imaging studies that people addicted to such drugs as cocaine, heroin and alcohol have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain's reward pathways than nonaddicts ... When Dr. Volkow compared the responses of addicts and normal controls with and infusion of a stimulant, she discovered that controls with high numbers of D2 receptors, a subtype of dopamine receptors, found it aversive, while addicts with low receptor levels found it pleasurable. This finding and others like it suggest that drug addicts may have blunted reward systems in the brain, and that for them everyday pleasures don't come close to the powerful reward of drugs.

Propranolol

Image borrowed from Something Intellectual

Researchers at Harvard and McGill University in Montreal have come up with a drug that can be used to delete bad memories. The drug is called propranolol and will cause a state of selective amnesia in a patient that is given the drug. (Associated Content, 2010)

As I was trying to catch up with my neglected Google Reader, I came across this pretty picture which just so happens to coincide with what I'm learning in my Cell Biology of the Nervous System seminar. A week ago, we started talking about neural plasticity and the enzyme responsible for stabilizing memories. As my professor was talking about the mechanism, I kept smiling and thinking about Eternal Sunshine, when out of nowhere he goes "You know, some movie came out about this a few years ago, a Spot, a Sunshine, something," to which I immediately yelped "Eternal Sunshine!" to which he responded "Yes! That's it. It's impressively accurate."

My friends have told me I should sell the index cards I make to prep for exams. I tend to spend way too much of my time perfecting my diagrams so that they're comparable to the originals.

Maybe someday I'll develop my art skills sufficiently enough to illustrate biochemical pathways and/or anatomy!

Genetics. Holla.

Flocculation!

13. inside

 26 things: november 2010

 (click to zoom in)

FOUND MY CRANIUM CLAY AFTER ONE WHOLE YEAR OF LOOKING FOR IT!

It was inside the H&M bag where my Settlers of Catan pieces were.  After opening it, I noticed these really weird crystals growing out of the clay. SCIENCE. What kind of organism grows as a crystal?? Fungi? Bacteria? Does this mean someone with fungus was touching my Cranium clay? What kind of nutritional value does clay have?

UPDATE:
according to lagunaclay.com:

"It means the clay has 'aged' – enough time has passed between the mixing of the clay and its use for bacteria and mold to develop. This is a good thing, because mold and bacteria contribute to the workability of the clay. The way these by-products of the aging process contribute to workability is by increasing the flocculation of the clay body. This means that the clay particles will stay together better."

  [flocculation: form or cause to form into small clumps or masses]

The Acromion.

Lazy Sunday mornings...

"You know what acropolis means, right?"
"Uhm, I know the Acropolis [of Athens]," I responded.
"Well, akros- means highest point and -polis means city."
"Oh, right, right."
"Yeah, well, there's a bone (points towards his shoulder) that's known as the acromion because it's the highest point of the shoulder."

!!!!

Suren Manvelyan 

via Fresh Photons

Retina.

This excites me for the Retinal Neurophysiology seminar that I'll be taking next term:

Andy Fischer (2008).

This photomicrograph of a chick's retina was also produced using an antibody staining. It reveals the three basic stages of visual processing by the circuit in the eye that detects light and transforms it into signals the brain can understand. At the top of the image are the retina's photoreceptor cells (in gray)--the familiar rods and cones--that capture photons of light and translates them into electrical currents.

via human brain: 9 of the most stunning images ever