This is a discussion board where you have to respond to the other students post. Below I have
posted the students post and a place for you to respond. The response must be 100 words. Please
is you have any questions ask for clarification. Please keep things in this format.
Student post: There are millions of bacteria in our bodies. In fact we have more bacteria in our
bodies than that of DNA. Bacteria, prior to knowledge, is commonly given a 'bad rap' as
something to be dangerous and of negative consequence if contact is made.
Bacteria belongs to the prokaryotes (single-celled) kingdom. As described by Live Science,
bacteria are microscopic single-celled organisms that thrive in diverse environments. They can
live within soil, in the ocean and inside the human gut. Humans' relationship with bacteria is
complex. Sometimes they lend a helping hand, by curdling milk into yogurt, or helping with our
digestion. At other times they are destructive, causing diseases like pneumonia and MRSA
(Vidyasagar, 2015).
A healthy bacteria in our bodies found in our digestive tract are called probiotics. Experts at the
National Institutes of Health note that probiotics show some promise in the treatment of diarrhea,
irritable bowel syndrome, vaginal infections, tooth decay and skin disease (Russo, 2017). Good
bacteria help breakdown the foods in our stomachs if these bacteria's are not even within our
systems then they can cause our bodies to react in an undesirable manner. According to Kirsten
Tillisch, M.D., chief of integrative medicine at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center
(2016), "Obesity, cancer, anxiety, and depression all may be influenced by the type of bacteria
living in the gut." Bacteria is efficient in its ability to keep our bodies up to date or current on the
new bacteria's that are in our environment through the foods and other mechanisms of contact we
encounter.
Your Response:
Students post: My life is influenced by helpful bacteria in many ways. Probiotics are consumed
on the daily in my house. My children eat Greek yogurt and love it. The probiotics in yogurt
helps with gut health and making people go regularly. It’s healthier and nutritious. Also bacteria
has influenced my life by making antibiotics (penicillin). It helps my family when they have
infections and are sick. It’s helpful that something that is made from fungi helps prevent new
bacterial growths and therefore treats the existing infection. One last thing that also influences
my life with bacteria is how it makes yeast. I bake constantly and use yeast in my breads. While
it doesn’t smell the greatest when using it sure does taste good!
Your Response:
Students post: The news of child bullying is on the radar of probably every parent. Funded by the
Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, a video game was created to teach children empathy. The term
“empathy” as described by The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California,
Berkeley is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally
define empathy as the ability to sense other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to
imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. This was specifically geared to the
middle school age group which is commonly the age where bullying begins. The game -developed in partnership with Gear Learning at UW-Madison and researchers Constance
Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire, who are now professors of informatics at the University of
California, Irvine (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018).
The video game built by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers features a robot in space
that happens to find its on another planet after crashing. Through its facial expressions and
language barrier it must rebuild its space craft through build an emotional bond with the aliens of
the foreign planet.
The researchers found that within as few as two weeks the children showed greater signs of
retrained empathetic brain networks. According to University of Wisconsin-Madison (2018),
some also showed altered neural networks commonly linked to emotion regulation, a crucial skill
that this age group is beginning to develop, the study authors say. The ability to catch on to these
needed skills are not bound to the video games. Anyone can learn them at anytime, children can
begin to learn empathy as earlier that the age of 2. The goal is to eventually introduce emotional
stabilizing video games to the gaming market to convince the removal of games that promote
violence.
This is very critical in this day and age.
Your Response:
Students Post: For this week’s science in the news I came across an article that I found to be
worrisome. The article title is “A new pesticide may be harmful to bees as the old one”. The
article states that bees around the globe are in trouble due to a common pesticide. Scientist have
showed how a chemical that is a possible replacement has similar harmful effects to bees. This
will reduce the number of new queen bees and males in bumble bee colonies. This is forcing
farmers to seek alternatives to pesticides on their crops.
Neonicotinoid pesticides protect crops against pests. It blocks receptors in the insect’s
brains which ends up paralyzing and killing them. This pesticide wreaks havoc on a bee’s ability
to navigate and find food, reproduce and form new colonies. In Europe the union banned the use
of neonicotinoid pesticides. We here in the US still use it. While some bees have developed a
resistance to it others haven’t. Researchers started to investigate a new alternative to the old
pesticide called sulfoximine. Its effects on the bees were staggering. After 9 weeks of exposure
to this new pesticide colonies produce fewer bees. They produced 54% fewer new queen bees
and their male counterparts. Sulfoximine had a significant impact on the reproduction of bees.
With this impacting bee population it could effect a lot of everyday life. It could affect plants and
flowers. All I can think of is the kid’s movie “The Bee Movie”. In this movie the bees take back
their honey and stop working. Without them pollinating and working the tree and flowers all died
(My kids watch this movie often). It shows how much we need bees and their work.
Your Response:
Student post: It is very feasible that the nonliving parasites may be linked to the early days of the
begging of life. It was prokaryotes such as bacteria when life first evolved on Earth, Parasites
such a virus share properties with cells own genes, suggesting that they may have originally been
part of cellular DNA. It also suggests that their DNA may have stayed in cells early in evolution.
Parasites may have evolved from the DNA and reproduced through certain
processes. Bacteriophage is virus that infects bacteria by attaching itself to bacteria and places
its nucleic acids into the cell. This can cause one of two cycles called lytic and lysogenic. Lytic
cycle reproduces the virus DNA until it takes over the bacteria and it released to infect other
bacteria. In the lysogenic cycle, the virus DNA is absorbed into the bacteria’s chromosome. It
will remain dormant while the bacterium reproduces making more copies of the virus. Once the
proper conditions are met, the DNA will split form the chromosome and start the lytic
cycle. The means that the virus can remain dormant for extremely long periods of time.
Your Response:
Student Post: Parasites may be linked to the beginning of life on the planet I believe. According
to the textbook chemical and physical processes started biogenesis. With biogenesis it created
new living organisms. These were the first living cells. The stages of how these cells are formed
are debatable. First they synthesize of organic monomers then they synthesize of organic
polymers it then self-replicates molecules and then it forms the first cells. I believe this process is
true and possible. I think that’s how a lot of illnesses and certain diseases were created and
overtime evolved. I also think that this is true because the conditions on earth early on were very
different. The atmosphere was thick and contained water vapors which would help parasite and
fungi survive and thrive.
Your Response:
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