Genetically modified crops video

Last term, my friends and i made a video on genetically modified crops. Our group leader has posted it on youtube and i would like to share it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXsc-oVdGtw&feature=related

Science practicals and teamwork

Last term (term3), i did science practicals with my classmate Wei Yang rather than Zhi Hao because my teacher changed my lab partners. However, wei yang and i made very slow progress when doing our practicals where he or i would go to watch some other group do their work because we were not sure how to do the practicals as physics is the worst of our three sciences for the both of us.

However, i think our teamwork nearer to the end of the term improved quite a lot as at the start we were always one of the last to leave the science lab as we took so long to complete the worksheets. However, later on we manage to complete the experiments rather quickly and finish up the related worksheets and managed to be finished on time.

I think that teamwork is very important because it lets people work efficiently in a group and get things done quickly.

MacRitchie reservoir outing (Reflection)

Last term, my class went for a outing that had to do with science. We went to the MacRitchie reservoir to learn more about things there. These stuff included things like plant life where our teacher then told us about some of the more interesting plants. Furthermore, we also went to a walking path where our teacher showed us some plants and insects that had some interesting characteristics.

i think that the field trip was very fruitful as even though all the walking around was very tiring, i had learnt many new things that day, mostly about ecology as the aim of the outing was to teach us more about ecology.

Since we learnt many things during this field trip, i would recommend that my school could organize it again for other class that did not go because only the sec2 classes went for this outing.

Reflection: The science to preserving Terracotta warriors

Earlier this term, my group did a presentation on the science behind preserving the condition of terracotta warriors that were excavated in China. we found out that there were two ways to preserve the terracotta warriors.

while i am not going into the process of preserving the terracotta warriors, i think that learning how to preserve terracotta warriors is a very interesting science process. This shows that science is not only about reading test books and studying notes too prepare for your exams but about other things as well such as discovering new things about this world.

I hope to have sabbaticals like this one where we learn about new things and get to put our thinking and group skills to the test.

Reflection for Term 1 science test

For term 1 i had gotten 30.5 which was a very close A1. I think that getting an A1 was quite good even though i was disappointed that it had not been higher because some of my other classmates had gotten very low scores and did badly for that term (like how i got a bad MSG for term 3).

Overall i think that when i study for my end of year exam i should focus a lot more on the physics topics as i think it is my weakest out of the three sciences. I also think that i should revise more on the chemical reactions of compounds and elements as sometimes i am not sure what is the outcome when two things react which could lose me some marks in my exams.

I hope that i will get an A1 in my exam as i am hoping to take triple science next year and while physics and chemistry is already compulsory, Biology needs good science results as well as an MSG of 2.5 and below.

Let's Eat!...genetically modified salmon

The salmon has been the first animal to be approved for genetic modifications. even better the genetic modification allows the salmon to grow to meal size in half the time that a normal salmon takes, meaning more salmon will grow to eatable size more quickly to sustain our population.

Unfortunately, this genetically modified salmon has encountered criticism and threats of lawsuits from consumer organizations even though it has been shown that the salmon does not affect human health in any way and is completely safe to eat.

While people argue that the consumer organization needs to consider the fact that encouraging farm bred fish (the genetically modified salmon) will boost the aquaculture industry. This might make the price of salmon cheaper and encourage people to buy more salmon rather than other types of meat which would then give them a more healthy diet. The only downside is that the population of wild fish that is needed to feed the salmon may diminish in number.

either way, the genetically modified salmon will not be the first FOOD to enter a consumer's mouth. it seems that there is genetically modified substances in our corn chips. *_*

The world's second largest virus has been discovered! (As if we didn't need more trouble =-=)

This huge virus has been dubbed CroV by the scientists that discovered and is currently known to only infect marine life that are also single celled organisms.

The reason why this virus is so huge because of the number of genomes that it contains. 730000 base pairs or genetic building blocks as some people call them. Normal viruses usually have far less than that with the largest known 'normal' virus only containing slightly less than half of the number of genomes CroV has.

Not only that, because the biggest virus, Mimivirus (has 1.2m base pairs) is only distantly related to this CroV virus, it suggests there are more huge viruses. Scientists who have been examining the CroV virus have found surprising things. Mainly that the virus (and other huge viruses) has genomes that allow to have features to have similar to cells.

due to thus, some scientists are arguing that a fourth domain of life should be declared for this huge viruses. This is because viruses share a common set of genes with cells as well as obeying the same laws of physics as any other cell.