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. 

An example of success

By now maybe you already know about the young Augusta Uwmanzu-Na. She becomes popular and her name appears in all media after she was accepted in the eight Ivy League Universities that are the elite schools in the United States. It's something that can achieve very few people. Now she has time since the 1st of May to choose their future university. 

Although she born in North-America the origins of Uwmanzu-Na are Nigerian and she says she could not have reached the punctuation without the help of their environment. "My recent achievements reflect the values of the Elmont people hard work, the support of my parents and dedicated teachers. I'm happy but above all, I am grateful" says Augusta. 

It's easy to use the story of Uwamanzu-Na as an example to other teenagers. Anyone does no wrong to imitate what she said has been the key to her success: the tenacity and her persistence, and it's what has help Augusta to overcome all the difficulties she found. A story reflected in all the medias of the country. Two years ago, when Augusta was 15 years old, she started to carry out a project for school which she tried to understand by himself how works the fluid mechanics based on an example which allowed him to observe and measure. But she has a problem: she need to use cement and concrete and use the gym banks to measure the forces. She couldn't work well so she decides to present in a lab where she can work. First, she was rejected by Columbia University but finally she could bee accepted in an engineering school at the University of New York. But she kept an ace up his sleeve and she keeps the contact with the main investigators from Columbia University wich allows she to achieve a summer job. 

This one of the many stories that proves that the important thing to achieve what we propose is the hard work and determination. Augusta Uwmanzu-Na has been successful in studies but everyone can stand out in what it proposes. The world is full of stories that this, stories of people that in spite of the problems they found they manage to overcome them and achieve what they wanted. 

The number of executions in the world returns to Cold War levels

According to with what International Amnesty has announced in their annual report, 2015 was the year with the largest number of death penalties carried out in more than 25 years. A total of 1634 people were executed what is the highest figure recorded since 1989. This number also suppose an increase of 573 cases with respect to 2014. The global increase of this data is because of three countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan wich were responsable of the 89% of the death penalty cases during 2015. Another cause of concern is the increase in the number of countries around the world that apply this penalty last year. If in 2014 were 22 countries, the last 2015 the number rise until 25. One of the new countries that are now in the statistics is Chad, where the last august 10 presumed terrorist were shooted.

 

The director who carries out the study concludes that 2015 was a year of extremes because it let us both good and bad news. On one hand we have and increase the number of death penalties but on the other hand, 2015 was the year when the majority of the world, 102, countries abolish completely this kind of sentences. Some of this new countries are Madagascar, Republic of Congo or Mongolia. 

But there is another bad data. Inside of the 1634 sentences does not include China ones because this kind of data is a state secret. Although International Amnesty esteem that about thousands of people were executed last year in this country. China leads the listing of the countries with more executions per year and it's followed by Iran, that executed at leats 977 people in 2015, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Besides Iran apply the death penalty to minors so it means that the country violates the international right. By the other way, Pakistan killed 320 people and in Arabia the number of people executed by sentences like the beheading increase in a 79% in relation with 2014. 

Chiara Sangiorgio, who is an expert in the death penalty, argue that the government say that they use this kind of sentence referring to the keep of national security. The true governments use them to create an emotional response in the citizens and not to make the nation more secure. 

There are also a lot of countries where the international rules about fair trials are infringed because these country use tortures or threats to obtain confessions. In addition, a lot of countries use this kind of sentence to condemn crimes related with drugs or money that have any relation with death crimes what are the only ones for which there is an international law that allows the use of this practice.

This news surprised me, not only because of the increase in the number of cases where the death sentence was applied during last year but also because it made me see how different things are and how little we know about what really happens. The news shocks me because I used to think that the death sentences were something of the past but the fact is that 2015 has been the year with the largest number of executions in last 25 years and it shows us that it's something very real and it's happening every day. 

Another thing that can surprise us is that the United States are the number seven in the list of the countries that use this sentences. All we know about the death sentence in the United States but I didn't know that it was used as much. 

Well, maybe we can have the feeling that things are changing very fast but the reality is very different to this feeling.

Human Rights

I'm sure we all have listened to a lot of times about Human Right, but we really know what they are? Why do they need to exist? Or what are they importance?

Well, we start at the beginning. Human Rights are the rights that have all the humans without distinction for the simple fact of been a human. Human Rights are universal and it means that have the same value and validity in all the world.

It is in the 17th century when we start to see some statements with a clear idea of a "natural right" and in the 17th century, there are some countries that start to include "Bills of Rights" in their Constitutions. Along the 19th and 20th century we can start to see some laws that act as a guarantor for the dignity or moral integrity of humans. But it's also the time when took place the First World War and then, despite all the efforts, we can't avoid the Second World War with all the consequences that it involves. And it's just in this time when born the necessity of designated guarantees individuals against public authorities. On 1948, the United Nations General Assembly approved the document entitled "Universal Declaration of Human Rights", totally thirty items, which represent civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights. 

I would like to talk about the 19th article: 

Article 19."Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom o hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and idea through any media and regardless of frontiers"

Of course, there are a lot of articles that should be the base of our societies they should be in all ideologies and behavior of all citizens. They would have to be taken for granted without the necessity of have to be included in a document. But, unfortunately, the history of humanity lead us the need of having to include them. I'm talking about the number one, for example, that says: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights", or the number three that says: "Everyone has the right to live, liberty and security of person".

I have chosen the number 19 because I think it's one of the least respected rights. We are in an age where it supposes we can express and say whatever we want immediately, thought The Internet, we have the possibility of share what we have to say with all the world and also we have the possibility to listen to everybody. Even so, there are some places where people are jail because of their thoughts and there are some places where the words of ones have more weight that the others.

But this article says something more that it's also very important in any society. People have the right to listening others and choose what opinion he defend without interference. Nobody should be coerced by the ideas of others and nobody should be treated as the instrument of another cause than itself. Freedom of opinion and freedom of speech also includes not be intilled something you don't want.

Hey Planet Nine fans...

By twitter the astronomer Mike Brown, from the Universiti of Caltech (USA) awake new expectations about what can be the ninth planet in our Solar System. Mike Brown? Yes, the same scientific who reduce in rank the planet Pluto to the disgraceful category of "short planet". Brown announcement the discovery after present it in SETI, the organisation dedicated to exploring the universe and search intelligent live out of the Erth.

According to the first estimations the hypothetic ninth planet should be describing a super-orbit around the Sun that will make him take about 10.000 and 20.000 years to complete it. However, thanks to the new discovery of a new Kuiper belt (KBO) there is more evidence to believe in the real existence of a new plant. Mike Brown explains that when they saw a strange signal in the records they notice that something strange was happening. The strange signal was described as a heavy gravitational force which was able to drag little objects in specific areas of the Solar System. And the only explication is that only a mass with a big volume can produce an effect like this. The estimations about this ninth planet say that it is 10 times bigger that the Erth and is located about 149 billion kilometers from the Sun.

All these new discoveries have been possible thanks to the Canada, Franç Hawai Telescope wich is working in the development of the study of the beginning of the Outside Solar System (OSSOS). Because of scientifics are talking about something that is happening in an extremely large distance they can't support or confirm the existence of the ninth planet. They should wait for more evidence.

Besides the Brown study, it has been developed in parallel another study lead by the astronomer professor Daniel Whitmire who affirm that the existence of this ninth planet could be linked with the massive extinction in the Erth. Acording with Whitmire study this ninth planet trigger comet shower every time it completes a whole orbit around the sun. It happens every 27 million years and when in take place the planet makes that comets impact against the planets of the Solar System. Appareny the ninth planet keeps key answers about the running of the whole Solar System.

Recently astronomers are making great discoveries and they are also carrying out amazing investigations. In last years, we have seen new projects to find live in other planets and now we are witnessing discoveries like the gravitational waves or this one about the existence of a ninth planet in our system. All these new discoveries have a grat impact in the last hypothesis we believe about the beginning of the universe or the causes of the extinction of dinosaurs. I think it's amazing and we are only at the beginning so it means that there are a lot of new things to know that could allow us to understand a little bit better the place we live. I think we are very lucky to live in an era when each day we advance and we progress a little more. We live in an era when a lot of discoveries have taken place and all make progress very quickly. It means that maybe in few years we can have a completely different idea of the universe. I think it's great, nothing it's predictable, now we can't know with wich technology we'll be living or how will be our daily routines. It can be a little frightened, too, but I think we are in the progress line.

364 Expedition

Many years ago, when humans still didn't exist, took place on catastrophic fact wich was responsible for deleting the dinosaurs from the visage of the earth. Many years ago an immense meteorite more than 10 Km in diameter crashed into the Erth. Now, the project waited by researchers is about to carry on: drilling under the ocean bed of the Chicxulub crater, the enormous hole opened 66 million years ago where now we know as Yucatan peninsula (Mexic). 

On 13th of April, an international scientific team will set off from the Mexico gulf to the drill platform which is 30Km open sea. This will be the first time that the crater has a submarine drilling. The main question the project try to work out is: what that impact was so catastrophic? The scientific team tries to get more knowledge about the formations of the crater and the environmental and ecologic effects of the impact. Another of the objectives is to study what were the conditions that make possible the return of the sea life in the area after the impact. 

The drillings will take place in a characteristic structure that also have other craters on the Moon or in Mart. This position is know as rings-peaks and is circular mountain ranges. The crater is about 180 and 200 Km in diameter. On earth, there are only two bigger and both are also older, one is in Vredefort (South Africa) and the other one in Canada, both formed 2000 million years ago. The problem is that the zone has been modifying by the erosion and can't be investigate properly by scientific. 

The plan for the study is to drill 500m the first week and then over tow month drill one kilometer more checking the surface and collecting signs of minerals and fossils. But the scientific team in charge of the project are sure that it could figure out more mysteries that they have been bottomless until now, for example, the global warming wich took place 55 million years ago and was responsible for the end of the giant birds.


It seems unreal that now, after millions of years, we can know that one-day enormous dinosaurs walk the earth for thousand of years. I think it's incredible how analyzing the earth we can know how was the Erth millions of years ago, who lived in there or what happened. These kind o studies are like "the pictures were never made" because they give us a real image of the world. Maybe we can think that the study of the dinosaurs has no relation with us because they lived million of years before the humans, but the fact is that their extinction makes possible the life of the mammals and, therefore, the evolution till our times. 

Why I Hate School But Love Education

Why I Hate School But Love Education. Well, it's true that at first sight it can sound a little bit contradictory, but actually it isn't at all. This is the name of the video wich Suli Breaks could get almost eight thousand views on YouTube in 2012. Suli Breaks is a world's leading spoken word artist who creates poetic presentations with the aim of telling powerful stories. With this one he wants to make us think about the educational system and he wants to make us ask ourselves some questions like why we are studying?

The fact is that most of us are living our last times at one stage and we are getting ready to change to another stage. Now we are finishing our high school chapter and in few moths, we'll start our first steps in the "adult" world. Also, we are in an age, which is said to be the best age of our lives, where we have the obligation of dream about our futures, think what we want to share with the world and don't take anything for granted. So with all this I want to say that it's a good time to ask ourselves the kind of questions that Suli Breakers make us. 

"If you don't build your dreams, someone else will hire you to help build theirs"

This quote is telling as something as simple as we have to chase our dreams. One of the thigs that characterise humans is the capacity of creating future prospectives. It means that each person can think in their future, know what he wants and act in the present in order to get it. The worst decision we can make is to choose not make what we think that can make us happy. And the point of the quote: if you don't work for yourself someone else will hire you to make their dreams come true. 

Actually, the video is a good critique of the educational system. Applying the meaning of the quote before to school system it's saying that schools are not making their true work. Schools should strengthen the love for knowledge and motivate people to broaden horizons. School should prepare students for what they really need that it's not only to be good at their job but finding what they really are and what they want. School should be places where one could create himself.

Nowadays "school" is not fully related to "education". There are a lot of ways of education and a lot o differents ways in which a person can be educated and currently school only focus in one of them: be beneficial for the society and not for the own interest. In this point, we should analyse other factors that make education not be the tool it could be like for example the interest that "leaders" have in the control of the society and keep their power. 

Get ready for London

We are going to London, a big city with a lot of things to do and lots of things to visit! Because of that, it's important to know a little bit where can we do during our stay in the capital.

We are staying in the Safestay Holland park. The first think we like to now is that there is free Wifi! Well, the other important things to know about the place is that it is in the Holland Park wich is very close to the center and is very close to some places to visit like Kensington Palace, the Opera Holland Park...

One of the important things, when we stay in London, is to know where are the nearest stations.Near the hotel, we have the Holland Park station and we also have High street Kensington wich is the one wich can bring us to the center and to Picadilly Circus. Is there where we could found a lot of things to do. Nearest we can find the Soho, China town and Trafalgar Square. And the National Gallery wich is one of the places you must visit. It's in Trafalgar Square and it's an art museum founded in 1824. It means it's an enormous building and  it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.  But personally, there are two museums I can't wait to visit in London. One of the is the Natural History Museum of London wich is in South Kensington. The Natural History Museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology. Is there where we can find the famous dinosaur bones. The other one is the Science Museum that is also in South Kensington. 

But beyond museums in London, there is a lot more to do! Other places to visit are for example the London Eye, the Big Ben, the Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, the Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Shakespeare's Globe Teatre, Harrods, the Tated Modern, St.Paul's cathedral, Camden Town, Borough Market, the Tawer of London, Notthing Hill, Oxford Street, the Speaker's Corner, etc etc and more etc. 

How you can see there are too many things to do in London and we don't have time to lose. I can't wait to be there!

Women Inventors

If you look around you will see them. They are revolutionary inventions that in some cases have saved lives and others have made it better. This is the inventions created by women from different times that you maybe didn't know who was the inventor. 

Helen Free created the urine test strips that are used around the world to diagnose diseases, detect pregnancy and to monitor diabetes. It consists of narrow strips impregnated with chemistry substances. When we have a pathological change in our organism, it makes the composition of our urine also change. For example the concentration of glucose. The strips are sensitive to this kind of stimulus and in depend on of this concentration the strip will mark one colour or another. This kind of strips has allowed us to improve our urine and blood analysis in a fast an effective way. 

All the new discoveries that allow us to improve in the medicine field are often those we consider most important. So we can say that the medicine against leukaemia is one of the important and it was invented by Gertrude B Elion. This medicine is known as 6-mercaptopurina and it blocks the body's rejection of foreign tissues making easier the kidney transplants. But this is not the only contribution to medicine that the pharmacologist Gertrude Elion made, she also lead the group that carry out the medicament to treat gout and the antiviral to fight against the herpes virus. 

Imagine you are in your car and suddenly a seagull shits on your windshield. Yes, disgusting. Well, imagine now that you have to get off the car and clean the shit by yourself. No exactly for this reason but for something similar, Mary Anderson invented the windscreen wiper. She was travelling in a tram to New York and she noticed that the drivers had to open  their windows very often to be able to see and sometimes they had to stop the tram and clean the window because the snow or the rain didn't allow them to see properly. It was when Mary Anderson think in a kind of controlled from inside the tram to clean the window without having to go out and stop the train. And in 1903 born the first windscreen wiper of the history.

   

This may be one of the important machines in the USA. I'm talking about the machine for make paper bag. Bags had been consolidated as another "typical" of the United States. We can recognise them in all the films and TV series, they are part of the USA! So this machine was created by Margaret Knight. In an automatic way, her machine cut the paper, folder it and then stick it to create a the famous bags. Before the Knight machine, the paper bags only could be made by hand and they carried a high cost.

 

The investigations made by Katherine Blodgett were the beginning of a new scientific discipline with monolayers. Monolayers are an organic layer with a single molecule thick. This kind of monolayer had had applications in a huge number of different fields as the conversion of solar energy or in the manufacture of integrated circuits. Blodgett goes into detail about their job and she could create nonreflective multilayer of multiple glass layers. In other words, she was the first who was able to create the first 100% transparent glass of the world. This new kind of glass eliminated the distortion created by the reflected light in optical equipment like sunglasses, telescopes, microscopes, cameras and projectors. It means that the investigations of Blodgett have help to improve the science and other fields indirectly through the improvement of the glasses and optical materials. For all of this, Blodgett is also know because she was the first women to get a doctorate in physics from the Cambridge University. 

ExoMars 2016

Europ is ready to carry out their last change is the spy: land in Mart. The next Monday, a Russian rocket will take off to start the important spy mission more beyond Earth orbit that has never realised the European Space Agency (ESA). This mission is the first part of ExoMars project wich aims to search for life on Mars. 

The fact of sending a rocket to Mart suppose a huge deployment of technology. Until then both USA and Russia are the only ones able to land on Mars. The problem is the thin atmosphere of the planet. But the next ESA mission will try a new lander wich has been designed particularly to the enter in Mart. In addition, this new vehicle will try more kinds of landing as well as parachute, a heat shield and also retros.

The new ESA mission will be realized in collaboration with Rusia and with the rocket will also travel a satellite to study the gases. One of the biggest secrets of the red planet is the presence of methane gas in the atmosphere. In Erth, this gas is a signal of life and because of that one of the main objectives of the satellite will be analyse the atmosphere. According to the experts of the mission, the capacity of this satellite is such that will mark whether it is worthwhile or not to continue the search for life on Mars. Another instrument that will travel in the rocket next Monday is a machine to search for underground ice water.

The mission will take three months to reach the planet. This is the first time that different objectives are combined in a single mission. And this is what makes the mission more complicated. ExoMars 2016 will help to determinate where could land the future mission that Europe will throw in 2018 if is possible a place with water where we can find life on Mars. The final decision about the right place to land will be take on 2017. 

Personally, this is a kind of theme I really like and I really enjoy to read in news, too. I tink that one of the fields with more future forecasts is the field of astronomy. In the last years, we have made important advances and the fast progress and improvement of technology are allowing us to enlarge our expectations and also our possibilities. A few years ago we were asking ourselves if it would be possible to reach the moon and now we are seriously considering the possibility to find live on other planets, what will be the next?

The Hatton Garden theft

The Hatton Garden is the largest theft in England, but it is not knowing, for this reason, The Hatton Garden is known because of the robbers.They are pensioners. The authors are seven and all of them have already been sentenced to prison. They have an age between 59 and 79 years old and all of them have an old and extensive career in the world of crime. The defendants burst into a security room from the diamonds district in London and they took a loot wich is value in 14 million pounds. 

Who is considered to be the leader, Brian Reader (also knowing as The Master), could not be tried because of his health. The Master is 77 years old is now in the intensive care unit watch over nine armed officers. His lawyer has asked to revoke the sentence because of his poor state of health. 

The high punishment in Egland for theft that is not in houses are 10 years. The other three leaders of the robbery, John Collins (75 years old), Daniel Jones (61 years old) and Terry Perkins (67 years old), had been convicted to seven years in prison, and the other two more accomplices, Carl Wood (59 years old) and William Lincoln (60 years old), has also been convicted to six and seven years of prison. 

The band members were suffering from typical diseases of people their age like diabetes, arthritis, and urinary incontinence. They planned the robbery during three years and they could take the jewelry from 73 security boxes after bursting into the room through a hole drilled in a concrete wall half a meter thick. The loot has not been repaired completely, some objects are still missing and it is suspected that some of them to have already been out of the country. 

I have found this news very funny although it may not be. I'm imagining the situation: seven retired that between the game of dominoes and card game at the bar engaged in planning the large-scale theft. And what is the best: they carry it out and it works! 

We are in an age where there are no thieves but hackers. All companies, banks and also ordinary people care more about the security of their computers and information systems than about their material things. And these seven thieves have star in a robbery at the old-fashioned. They had an schematic plan to follow organized and planned in a perfect way. They have have the leading role in a type of theft increasingly rare. They also know what they were doing because they didn't let any physical trace during the two nights that lasted the theft. But they make a unique mistake that we can say is only one they can make because they are not used to new technologies: license plate readers and modern microphones. 

It's not to praise the robbers but we must recognize that the facts have their grace and they can be the perfect plot for a Hollywood film. 

Suffragette

I'm coming with a real story. Suffragette is a film that related the sad reality that takes place no as long ago as we like to think. If we think about the fact that the two supposed "big democracies" of the occidental world (England and France) didn't let their women vote until 1928 and 1948 make us think no only about the past but about the present. The fact that women couldn't vote means that almost the half of the humanity can't participate in the decisions. But it wasn't only the vote, women have always been considered in a different way than men. Women have always had fewer rights and has always been treated like a s***. Why? Because not even imagining the worst of the reason I can find any to justify this abuse, because yes, we can call it so. 

Suffragette is set at the beginnings of the XX century few years before the first world war. Women demand their politic rights and their vote right. This is the story of the first feminist movement. But nobody wants to listen what women has to say, nobody take care about the half of the population and nobody believes in what women are demanding. And after several years of peaceful fights that have any result, the suffragettes decided to radicalize themselves and start using the violence, like break the shop windows or detonate the postbox, to force the change and get their rights like any other man. This is the only way suffragette can be heard. 

The film relates how Maud Watts, a young girls that has been exploited in a laundry since she was little (like his mother and many other women), undergo a process of ideological and politic change from a women who accepted the role that she had to live in the society to an activist in the feminine movement who risk everything: her husband, her house, her job and her son to be heard.

She is one of the women who fought for her dignity, that of her companions and that of all of the women in the world. 

Actually, this film is an excuse to talk about the inequality that there are between men and women. When I saw the film I end with a terrible fury. Suffragette show the shame we have to feel when we think that all was real, that it has happened and is still happening. But the vote wasn't the only problem. Still now there is a big difference between man and women and that only means that we still have a big problem in our society. We only could say we have improved the situation when we can't find any difference between man and women, until then, we can't take nothing for granted.

In many countries, women are still officially considered less than man. But in our own country, there is still inequality. At the beginning of the century began a war to say "no, it has already been enough. We have tolerated too many years and we don't continue in this way", but this war hasn't finished yet and this is the true sadness. We can't be content with improvements, we have to get the full equality.

Neurostimulation

We all agree that technology, in the last years, has improved a lot and has created new ways to change our daily routine and make it more comfortable. But technology doesn't is the only one that has had an improvement because science has changed a lot, too. And what can happen if we mix both technology and science? One of the last and more important fields where technology and science have joined forces is the field of neuroscience. And from this union are emerging possibilities like these:

From Londres, foc.us company offers us neurostimulation techiques to improve the score in the games. For example, foc.us gamer headset is developed to improve the work memory and the surveillance. The product consists in a diadem with two electrodes that send small electric shocks to the front of the brain. Foc.us propose an overclock of our brain to improve the speed and the plasticity of the brain and bring the player to anther level. 

But it isn't the only product the foc.us has. They also offer a neurostimulation treatment to electrify our dreams. Lucid dreaming send small waves to the brain's prefrontal cortex (wich is in charge of the higher functions of the brain) to make that the person can have a lucid dream, it means a dream where the person is conscious that he is dreaming and can change the logic of the dream. Lucid dreaming can give us the experience of the improbable, can allow us to solve problems with our subconscious and remember the solutions when we get up and allows us to create and explore without limits. 

But foc.us isn't the only page that is selling this kind of products. From thync.com, we can buy think Vibes. Think Vibes is a small device that is placed on the brow and is connected to adhesive strips that attach to different parts of the head. It depends on where we set it, through an electric shock, think Vibes can make us to feel energy or calm. And only in less than five minutes. 

  

Finally, I would like to talk about another company, PriorMind. This one from Hong Kong gives us the opportunity to improve our cognitive capacities, search our best potential and take the control of our future. The product they sell consists in a little device that creates electric shocks and two sponges which go to different parts of the cranium to stimulate the zone. With PriorMind, we can improve our cognitive sensitive and our ability in mathematics, language and our creativity. 

This is only a little research of some of the applications of neurostimulation. The field of neuroscience is very new and there are still a lot of tings to discover. Thanks to technology neurosciences can advance and can provide us with products like these. All it seems that have to take us very far but at the same time we have to be very careful because we really don't know what we are changing in our brains when we apply any electric shock. It means that the fact that some products of this type are already available fro a general public may seem dangerous. Although they have shown their effectiveness nobody knows about the second side effects or their long term effects.