Final Reflection

Well, now for sure we can say that we did it! We have survived the Batxillerat. After two years of hard work, we have arrived at the end of what is say to be the hardest courses in our lives and now it's time to start what is say to be the best years of our life. Yes, a big change is coming for all of us. But now, before do the last step, it's time to look back and see everything we've been through. This LAST post is dedicated to one final reflection and the blog will serve me as a perfect tool for this last task. 

So when it comes to my English (which is mainly what is this blog), I have to go back to 2013 to find my first post. It was about my dream, and now when I read it again I realise that this year I have fulfilled a dream: go to England! I didn't remember it. 

Looking now all my post from 4th of ESO is like having little flashbacks. I write about things I had no idea, it's funny. 

But I can see (fortunately) a big improvement in both, the writings and the themes. The first ones are like "my favourite..." and now they seem a bit ridiculous, really. Comparing with my laters post, for example, the way they are writing, the structure or the extensive have improved a lot. Also, the appearance and the design of the blog have been improving with posts. 

I also have seen a big change in the themes I choose to talk. My latest post are about themes I'm keen on. The news for example, now I like to choose the ones that are related to current science, astronomy or curious topics. 

One of the things I like to talk about in the blog is about movies (as you have seen in the second term). My first film-review was in 2014 about the film All is lost. I am proud to say that I have also improved in this. 

Oral presentations, one of those things that like the blog, you have to do term by term. The first oral presentation I have on the blog it's from the last year. Comparing with the last ones I can't notice big changes but fo example, one thing that I do no longer is to say "aaaamm" between phrases. 

Lookin all my post since the beginning in 4th of ESO I have found some really interesting. I have read again about my Berlin experience and it has made me remember the great trip I lived. Then, from 4th ESO too, I have found what I use to think that was my bets post of the course: Choices. If I thought that the decision we made that year was difficult it's because I really have no idea how difficult it is to choose a career. 

My posts from 1st of Batxillerat are already better than before. I have a lot of favourites in this year: Into the Wild, The Nightmare Before Christmas, La Isla Mínima, Black Mirror: white Christmas (what remembers me that I have to look the las episode yet) or the final reflection from last year Looking Back. 

Now it's time to say goodbye to the place we have to live our teenager age and because of that to the place that has seen us make a big change. Let behind the high school also involves let behind a lot of people and at this moment, I'm not only referring only to classmates and friends of this stage but also to all the teachers wich have help to launch us to the big world. It's time to say goodbye a lot of things that I'm going to miss but it's also time to say hello to new ones that are coming. 

Formal letter

Penis

45-Empuriabrava

berta@gmail.com

The president

4th May 2016

Dear Mr Rajoy,

I am writing in order to complain about the few mesures that have been carried out to stop the climate change. 

Climate change and the enviromental changes in general represent one of the big difficulties that we have to face nowaday. The fcat that our politics does not propose any mesure to try to solve the problem seems to mean that it is something that does not affect us. But the reallity is very different: animals are disapearing, the Poles are melting and the sea levels are raising each year. According to experts, if we continue in this form life on Erth will became really difficult not only for animals but also for humans. 

In view of the big problem tha climate change involves and the few stpes that have been taken i think it would be necessary that if our goverment do not want to do anything they coulds help organitations that rally figth agains the problem by grants for example.
Looking forwars o hering from you.
Yours sincerely,
Berta Mateos

Canary, candidate for the giant telescope

Canary increse their possibilities to take the 30-meter telescope. A delegation of American scientists has spent three days on the island of La Palma to study the conditions of the observatory and they recognize that Canary is economically the most profitable option.The director os the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, Rafael Rebolo, after the work of technical committee of the telescope TMT agree that Canary have a very serious option to ensure the success of this project. These specialists collectes information to consider the Canary candidacy as an alternative to build this telescope.

This enourous project of 1,400 million of investment in cutting-edge science is blocked since 2014. The idea was to raise the telescope TMT in Hawaii, but legal issues have been an impediment to the construction: the courts have recognized that not met requirements to build it in Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain  according to the native religion of Hawaiians and it  has special environmental and cultural protection.The chief operating officer of TMT, Christophe Dumas, recognize that they can't wait any longer. Hawaii is the favorite place to build and thei are going to gove them a few months but if finally they can't carry out the project in Hawaii they have to choose an alternative place. "Time is money" say Dumas.

A team of five people in the TMT has been studying the feasibility of La Palma: geophysical conditions of the island, the quality of the sky to know the percentage of nights that can make science and the infrastructure of the observatory, which are very good and has been hosting telescopes from several countries during decades.

Dumas also admit that in Canarias the cost of operation is less than elsewhere because the fact that the physical and digital communication infrastructures are already built would save many investments. The team was serching for potential sites for the giant telescope, which aims to observe points unseen of the universe, and now by an informatic analyze they want see what would be the optimal point depending on the winds and orography.

Digital data storage in DNA

The demand for data storage increases sharply. The rate at which these needs increase will make that very soon we will find the problem that the means at our disposal are not enough to accommodate the huge volume of information. According to Microsoft in 2017 this demand will be about 16 zettabytes, a volume that supports we use today are not prepared to accept. Although the improvemant of the optical discs we still needed million units to store 1 zettabyte (approximately 1,000 million terabytes), which also mean a significant physical space, too. 

With the aim of revolutionize the digital data storage, Redmond are collaborating with Twist Bioscience, a company specializing in biotechnology based in San Francisco, and with the University of Washington to use DNA as a means to store information in a small space.

The genetic material is an attractive alternative for this purpose because it is extremely dense (up to 1 exabyte per cubic millimeter) and very durable (it has a half life of over 500 years). However, the great difficulty to store digital data in DNA is that the processes of reading and writing are not simple.

To carry out this project, Microsoft has bought 10 million Twist DNA strands. According to the cooperation agreement, the corporation will provide the data as a digital sequence, and Twist will convert it to a physical form through synthetic biology techniques.

To encode digital data into a DNA strand the researchers convert digital zeros and ones of the file in combinations of the four elements that form the molecules of genetic material (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine). According to Microsoft, in a single gram of DNA it could store 1,000 million terabytes.

This news set out one of the problems that maybe nobody had think about. In last years we are collecting and storing enourmous amounts of data and information, but the space we have to keep it is not unlimited. It means that we have a limit and acording to the news this is not far away. It's also true that the means to keep information has improve a lot but it is still not enough so we need alternatives and it's when we turn to see science and technology working together. Thanks to bioteclogy, that it's a field that is in constantly improving over the years, now Microsoft seems that have the solution to do problem. What Microsoft propose is really very difficult and have a lot of complications, but we can't say no just satrting, so we only can wait to see what happend and trust in science. 

Genetic modification at service of cancer

CRISPR is a kind of genetic manipulation that has also been at the service of oncology. From the Novartis Boston Research Institut (NBIR), an old candy factory, not far from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rob McDonald, one of the researchers, explain how they use the famous genetic scissors discovered by the scientific Doudna and Charpentire to try to develop new drugs against different types of cancer.

McDonald explains that cancer is a complex genetic disease, and although the tumor initially responds to treatment, we know that is able to develop resistance because has secondary mutations, usually in tumor suppressor genes (that are the responses to the control of tumor cells). "If those guards are mutated or missing, how can we attack them, if they are not already?"

Thanks, CRISPR technology scientific from NIBR are putting one by one million of genes to checking how it affects to the tumor cell and  tries to accelerate the discovery of new anticancer molecules. In this old candy factory, they are working with 400 cell lines, 19000 genes and about 76000 million cells that could cover an entire baseball field. This new kind of technology suppose a titanic effort, says McDonald, and it would be impossible without the new genetic technology that is not only apparently simple (its use has spread quickly to all fields of science), but also very cheap (about $ 20-30 per gene, compared to a previous edition genetic technology, TALEN, which could cost up to around $ 4,000 per gene).Technology allows doing precise changes in the DNA cells to try to answer a question: Is it important that gene for the survival of tumor cells? And consequently, is not is a good candidate to try to attack with a drug potential?

Although this application now seems to have their main potential in the field of drug development it is not the only one. Laboratories around the world are also exploring the therapeutic potential of this genetic technology in the treatment of cancer patients. In 2015, researchers at the Eliza Hall Institute (Australia) demonstrated  that this technique was able to remove Burkitt lymphoma cells by deleting the gene (MCL1) responsible for keeping alive the tumor cells. And from the same NIBR, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, the use of CRISPR has been investigated to improve the effectiveness of treatment with modified cells. This hematologist showed few years ago that modify genetically the patient own cells in the laboratory and then transfering this cells to the patient allowed to control certain hematological tumors, mainly leukemia. This cells from the laboratory have already proved effective in a group of 36 children with lymphoblastic leukemia who had not responded to other treatments.

Glen Dranoff is the responsible for Immuno-Oncology at NIBR. He explains that CRISPR could improve the control of the defensive cells and make them more powerful.  Although he is very cautious about the therapeutic potential of genetics in cancer cells edition: "Of course there is much interest, but we are not there yet. At the moment, CRISPR is a very potent drug development tool." And Glen Dranoff is right. In the clinic, there is some risk you don't have in the laboratory like the security. Because at the end you are making changes in the genome and you have to be very sure of what you do. 

NASA asteroid hunter

NASA has spent two years investigating the asteroids and comets of our Solar System. Their objective is to protect the Erth from the objects that could easily crash against the Erth. Because of that, NASA has carried out and investigation of two years with their Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer for Polling Near Earth Object (NEOWISE) and now we are able to know what they have found. According to NASA, NEOWISE has categorized 439 near objects to Erth (or NEOs, the name to describe any asteroid or comet approaching Erth). In the group of 439 objects, a total of 72 were unknowing for all the scientific world. 

The sounding line was thrown in 2009 to space and it was deactivated in 2011 when their mission was completed. But in December of 2013, it was reactivated to help astronomers to track NEOs and be aware if we run some risk of been impacted. During last year, NEOWISE collect about 5.1 millions of images and it also measured more than 19000 asteroids. Then, NASA could reduce the number to 439 NEOs that only 8 has been classification as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). 

NEOWISE is not the unique ship that it's working to keep the NEOs under control. It's only a part of the system. NEOWISE discover NEOs that are big and dark and that kind of discovery help astronomers to complete the net of ground-based telescopes that work with visible wavelengths with light. 

As far as we think, the Solar System is a very crowded place. There are a lot of comets, meteorites, and asteroids that are plough through the universe. Having into a count the big distance presents in space, all of them comes from very far, many come from millions of light years away and there are some that approach only one time each long time. In this sense, the universe is full of life!
But, how many times we have think about a catastrophe produced by the impact of an enormous meteorite? Or how many films can we find about this kind of thematic? Only think about the main hypothesis we have today about the dinosaur extinction: the impact of a big meteorite. Because of that, NASA proposed to keep an eye in any NEOs that could complicate the life of our planet.

Kalimán en Jericó

This third term goes about Human Rights, something that can drive us to talk about the good thing they involve, their importance or necessity but also about their legitimacy, their violation or their default. Well, sorry but now I'm coming with the second part because unfortunately nobody can guarantee the compliance of Human Rights. On one hand there are many countries in the world where Human Rights are respected by their citizens and they are also supported by the law, but on the other hand, still there are a lot of countries where this right have no importance, they seems to no exist and they are constantly violate. As a result, the world is divided into these countries where the citizens are able to have a good life, they have rights, they are protected by the law and they are free to promote themselves and get a full life, and the rest of the countries where people are battered, repressed and have fewer opportunities to get a full life. These problems create inequality in the world. Nobody has chosen where they born, so it's a matter of change which makes it less worthy and more unfair. 

With all this premises I would like to talk about Kalimán en Jericó, wich is a book written by Àngel Burgas. This book related to a mosaic of true stories, which intertwined, show us the portrait of a broken childhood. Àngel Burgas travel to Medellin and he visits the Faro foundation in Jerico where he meet with all the boys that have let behind the life in the streets of the city where they lived the drugs world, mistreatment, and they have meet the gangs world. All this boy have been exiled from the good life but now, in Faro foundation, they have the chance to start looking the future with hope and try to start a new life. 

It's not possible they can forget all experiences they have lived and erase the lived. Àngel Burgas, with this book, move us to another reality well away from our day a day that it's unimaginable. All the stories are told by child of nine to sixteen years old and what they say is not exactly what we would imagine in people of his age: they have been drug addict, they have been battered and have seen how to mistreat others, they have been part of gangs, they have stolen and some of them have killed. All they are childs that have been driven for the bad way. Most of them have lost their families and they are alone and are always in danger. 

It's very difficult to think that things like that are happening and they are very real. We use to weak up every morning and go to the school where we are going to find our friends, and then, when we return home we find our family there. We are always safe and, by now, one of our bigs problemes is to hand over our TDR on time. But there is also the life of people of our same age that have nothing in common with the one we use to. After red this book, if we think about Human Rights, we notice there is something wrong in all that because they don't exist for the people and children who live in Medillín.