Liyijia Zheng Unite 3--Arthur Dove's Tree Forms

Arthur Dove's Tree Forms

Works Cited

http://arthistory.about.com/od/glossary_a/a/a_abstract_art.htm

http://www.harley.com/art/abstract-art/

http://www.americanmodernists.org/who_are.html

http://www.askart.com/AskART/interest/Modernism_1.aspx?id=22

Satan Laving the Court of Chaos

Works Cited
http://www.ackland.org/Witness/ThePaintings/ThePaintingSatanLeavingtheCourtofChaos/index.htm Satan leaving the Court of Chaos

http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darknessvisible/characters/chaos_and_night.html
This image is depicting Satan crossing the bridge over chaos. This is him leaving chaos to get to Eden. But to do so, he had to cross this bridge which was made out of sin and death. This would be after the scene which depicts Satan leaving the Court of Chaos. This is significant because it marks the start of Satan journey through a dark evil place to corrupt Adam and Eve in Eden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michelangelo_-_Creation_of_Adam.jpg
This image depicts Adam outstretching his hand to touch God’s outstretched hand. This painting is significant because it attempts to show the Creation of Adam by God in God’s image. God is reaching out to Adam to give him life and the mirrored outreaching arm from Adam is there to mimic God because God wanted Adam to be like him in his image. This image relates to the main image because of how Satans arm is outstretched while leaving the Court of Chaos as well.

http://en.paris-lifestyle.fr/sites/paris-lifestyle.es/files/uploads/2013/03/orsay635_0.jpg
This image is of the dark romantic style. It shows numerous individuals fighting. It also shows the strength of the human body. You see a flying demon in the background and a contrasts between the red and white. Those with red hair seem to be on the offensive while those with black hair seem to be trying to escape. This relates to the original image because of the human like qualities given to Satans body pertaining to his muscles. Also, Satans helmet has a red frill in the image and in this image, those with power have red hair, have red on them. The background looks like it’s on fire and it’s almost as if those with red have this fire in them that gives them strength.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sans-culotte.jpg
This painting is of the early tricolor flag during the french revolution. The person holding it is a sans-culotte. They were a radical group, typically made out of farmers. This image is significant because it stands as a symbol of the passion and patriotism of the common man during the French Revolution. This is also related to the image because of the contrast between light and dark and because of the emotion shown in the painting. In the painting with satan, there is confusion, sadness, tiredness, anger, and satan is hiding his face which could mean that there is too much emotion to be expressed.

Unit 3 Undulating Expanse

Effect of Short Naps vs. Long Naps

Works Cited

"Napping." National Sleep Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013.

Soong, Jennifer. "Power Naps: Napping Benefits, Length, and Tips." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2013.

Ackerman, Jennifer, and Javier Zarracina. "How to Nap." Boston.com. Boston Globe, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013.

Naitoh, Paul, and Robert G. Angus. Napping and Human Functioning during Prolonged Work. TR Document Retrieval. Corporate Author : NAVAL HEALTH RESEARCH CENTER SAN DIEGO CA, 30 Apr. 1987. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.

Liyijia Zheng's Unite 2 Podcast--How Do I Change My Facebookaholic Behavior

Works cited:

1.Gresle, Caroline, and Michel Lejoyeux. "Phenomenology of Internet Addiction." Internet Addiction. Ed. Hannah O. Price. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 2011. 85-94. Print.

2. Van Rooij, Antonius J., and Mieke F. Zinn. "Treating Internet Addiction with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: A Thematic Analysis of the Experiences of Therapists."International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 1st ser. 10 (2012): 69-82. Print.

Experiment about yoga's effect on weight loss and stress alleviation

Work cited:

The Health Benefit of Yoga, Health & Balance, March 25, 2013

<http://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/the-health-benefits-of-yoga?page=2>

Colette Bouchez, Reviewed by Louise Chang, Yoga for Weight Loss?, Fitness & Exercise, March 25, 2013 <http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/yoga-for-weight-loss>

Effects of TV on Productivity and Sleep

Problems of Fukushima Health Management Survey

                      Image by SimplyInfo
       http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplyinfo/7095078965/

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station meltdown changed Kenjii Ookubo’s healthy lifestyle plan.[1] A March 2011 tsunami caused three nuclear reactor’s failure. The government provided temporary housing after thousands abandoned their original homes, this included Kenji Ookuboo. Along with the physical suffering, Kenji also suffered from mental illness and soon became an alcoholic. The mental health problem became a prominent issue for victims after the meltdown.[2] The Fukushima Health Management Survey was meant to provide support to victims, but the study had serious flaws, including financial mismanagement and a poor study design that failed to take into account participants' distrust of authority in the wake of the disaster as well as general cultural bias against sharing personal information. Scientists should revise the study and provide the psychological treatment that victims still need.

What is Fukushima Health Management Survey? Fukushima Health Management Survey comprises the Basic Survey (radiation dose estimates) and detailed surveys (Thyroid Ultrasound Examination, Comprehensive Health Check, Mental Health and Lifestyle Survey and Pregnancy and Birth Survey). The huge percentage of this survey is designed for mental health issues. However, the survey did not function as a support for victims.

Image by Irish Typepad

   http://www.flickr.com/photos/irisheyes/5629126714/

First of all, victims could not trust authority, thus experts had difficulty to gather convincing health survey results. The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) assumes that people are active organisms which have tendencies toward psychological growth, but the development requires social resources as supports and the social context can either support or thwart growth. In an article called Understanding Respondent Motivation, Pete Cape points out that under SDT, when respondent lacks of intention or trust to act, the activity has no value and no desirable results exist. This is the same situation that most Fukushima evacuees are now facing. They cannot trust authority, thus their responses are invalid. Although Japanese government responded to nuclear crisis in time, evacuees wondered what it did for the protection of nuclear power station and reconstruction. After the water wall stroke nuclear stations, there were at least fourteen hours between the loss of electricity to power the pumps keeping cooling water on the nuclear fuel and a meltdown. Japanese government did not take actions to examine the aftermath and the radioactivity scale was shown to the public twelve days after the crisis began.[3] Even after the nuclear crisis, Japanese government misspent reconstruction fund on unrelated projects.[4] Yuka Togawa, one of the evacuees, desperately said that though the government officials said that they were trying to construct public housing for evacuees, but nothing was there. There are more and more queries rise among evacuees, which creates difficulty for authority to conduct mental health survey. After filling out health survey, Yuka was invited to talk about her issues to mental health experts on phone, but Yuka refused. For her, it was useless.[1] 

Secondly, Fukushima Health Management Survey is inefficient because of unique Japanese cultural background.[5] The mental health survey is a significant aspect of clinical psychology which helps mental health experts to engage in researches, consultation and assessments. While the development of clinical psychology in Japan is difficult since Japanese are more concerned about personal issues and are not willing to talk about those things. Hirooki Yabe, a neuropsychiatrist at Fukushima Medical University, said that only about 40% of adult evacuees responded to survey.[1] Because of no cultural habits to visit clinical psychologists, normal people will not go to clinics, unless he or she undergoes severe mental illness. Thus, Noriaki Muraro, representative director of Schwarz Pharma Japan, said that Japan was still a developing country concerned about clinical trials.[6] In this way, the results are not reliable and the mental health survey does not serve as a support for Japanese evacuees.

Thirdly, despite the cold responses from evacuees, the huge executable cost also hinders the implementation of Fukushima Health Management Survey. The practice of the survey not only relies on the paper works, but also consists of follow-up phone calls and walk-in clinics which specializing in mental health. All these steps require money. Seiji Yasumura, one of the leaders of Fukushima Health Management Survey Team, once said that the government just gave three billion Japanese Yen (US $34 million) a year, but the cost was twice that amount, thus the survey was under financial pressure.[1] The most important step in the survey is walk-in clinics, which offers face-to-face interviews with victims and gives scientists opportunities for close examination. However, Fukushima Medical University presented that only 100 out of 210,000 evacuees have been face-to-face interviewed by psychologists so far.[1] Money shortage prohibits the conduction. Although Fukushima Medical University appeals to public for donation, it does not receive enough supports.

Although the Fukushima Health Management Survey does not function properly, it does help government officials to estimate the radioactive exposure and help them control orders. However, the Fukushima Health Management Survey should do more than that. In order for the survey to be more efficient, scientists should take money budget, social effects and trust between government and evacuees into account. By solving those difficulties, Fukushima Health Management Survey will be valuable.







Sources:

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-fallout-of-fear-1.12194

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/08/stress-fukushima-health-issue-mental-distress_n_2837280.html

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20150364

[5] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00207598408247514

[6] http://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Clinical-Development/Developing-Japan-intent-on-clinical-trial-catch-up

[1

Tomatoes and Conventional Plant breeding

Photo by epSos.de

    Tomatoes taste much better than before due to the proper plant selection and conventional plant breeding - a technology where scientists crossbreed plants to introduce genes from one variety into a new genetic background. You may not be surprised to find that the tomatoes you get from the market near your house are sweeter and juicier than the ones you have in your granny's garden twenty years ago. According to a European Union study cited in “You Say Tomato” from Nature magazine, nowadays tomatoes contain more sugar and acids that make up the flavor than those before. Tomatoes’ genes are developing to get closer and closer to human desire. However, due to the uncertainty of the different gene foundations, proper plant selection becomes more and more difficult, which causes conventional plant breeding to make minimal progress. By further researching tomato genetics, including mapping its genome, scientists will spur huge developments in conventional plant breeding not only in tomatoes, but also many other crops, causing that ancient task to finally replace the currently popular mutation breeding.

Photo by Iynn. gardner

    A report in Nature website presents both domesticated tomato Heinz 1706’s and its wild ancestor Solanum pimpinellifolium’s high-quality genomic sequences; thus emphasizes that through the comparison between the two plants’ genome sequences, scientists can better understand the limitation in conventional plant breeding. Heinz 1706 was generated by Heinz Company and named after the company’s founder Henry Heinz. It was firstly cultivated by the conventional plant breeding of different tomatoes from all over the world and finally became an ideal type of tomato for making tomato ketchup. Therefore, different from its ancestor Solanum pimpinellifolium, “Heinz 1706” has many more developed traits which humans prefer. In this way, by comparing Heinz 1706’s genome with that of its ancestor, scientists can have a basic idea about what tomato genomes have been changed. As a result, they will be able to figure out which genomes have been well developed according to human desire and which have not. In other words, focusing on those undeveloped genomes, scientists may introduce new ways to carry out conventional plant breeding.

   
    After understanding the scientific value of genomic sequence, scientists then applied the discovery to tomato genetics studies into conventional plant breeding and formed a new technology - molecular plant breeding. This technology will then bring breeders a clearer guide about how to choose the types of tomatoes they are going to breed in order to get the desirable result. This is because under the help of genomic information, breeders now are more familiar with the function of different genomes. In this way, instead of trying all kinds of tomatoes in order to see which combination is the best, now the breeders can easily choose two types of tomatoes by checking if they have the genomes that are in need. Therefore, the plant breeding will be faster and more efficient. 

 
    Furthermore, that progress made in tomato cultivation will also enhance the plant breeding of other crops. There are two reasons, the first one is because tomatoes belong to one of the planet's most diverse plant genera - Solanum. There are more than 1,000 members in this family, including potatoes, tobacco plants, peppers, eggplant and nightshade. They spread all over the world and can be easily found. By studying tomato’s genome sequence, it will be easy for scientists to apply their knowledge about tomatoes to the cultivation of other crops in its family.  In “The time is ripe for tomato genetics”, because tomato is closely related to a large family, studying the tomato genome can increase the knowledge base around many different plants. (Howell, Whitney L.J.)

    Another reason for the application into other crops is the combination of the genomic knowledge, cloning technology and conventional plant breeding. Presented in “Genome analysis and genetic enhancement of tomato” (Gupta et al.), different genes are responsible for many different traits in plants and the map of genes is helpful for scientists to clone them. Therefore, after successfully cloning those ideal traits, scientists can help breeders to make further progress in the conventional plant breeding - breeders then will not have to wait for a long time for the bred plants to grow together and share the genomes. Instead, the specific genomes which control certain desirable trait will be able to be directly introduced into crops. This may not sound like conventional plant breeding, but it actually removes the biggest drawback - time consumed using from the conventional plant breeding and all the other good characteristics are maintained. In this way, the research on tomato genomes will bring the revolution to the conventional plant breeding of both crops in Solanum genera and all kinds of other plants. 

    Compared to huge potential improvements in conventional plant breeding, another population breeding type - mutation breeding has many more disadvantages. For conventional plant breeding, breeders mainly utilize the natural combination of two or more plants’ genes - even the combination of cloning technology only introduces new genomes to plants but never changes the existing genomes.  However, mutation breeding differs from conventional plant breeding by exposing plants to X-rays and using chemicals to cause mutations on existing genes. In this way, breeders completely lose control on the variations because there are thousands of possibilities that genomes can change under the influence of chemicals and ultra-rays and no one is sure what will happen. Also, exposing plants directly under those physical and chemical substances may cause the variation of the desirable genomes like those leading to high sweetness and strong disease-resistance. Therefore, although up to now, due to its convenience and fast speed, mutation breeding is still more popular than the conventional plant breeding, the application of genomic knowledge into the plant breeding will improve this ancient task in many ways and finally help it replace that uncontrollable mutation breeding.

    In general, through the tomato genomics study, scientists will have further understanding of plant genetic diversity and a huge development on the conventional plant breeding will be spurred. In spite of the immaturity of the molecular plant breeding, it is still a potent and powerful tool to improve the conventional plant breeding. In the future, crops may grow faster and become more resistant to diseases while also tasting better. Therefore, we will be able to enjoy delicious food whenever we want.













Bibliography:
- Gupta, Vikrant. Mathur, Saloni. Solanke, Amolkumar U. Sharma, Manoj K. Kumar, Rahul. Vyas, Shailendra. Khurana, Paramjit. Khurana, Jitendra P. Tyagi, Akhilesh K. Sharma, Arun K. “Genome analysis and genetic enhancement of tomato”. Critical Reviews in Biotechnology.Vol. 29.2 (2009): 152-181. Web. Feb.6.2013. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=9&sid=77ff9587-e567-4e33-8758-0db495091d08%40sessionmgr115&hid=101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=43448167>

- Howell, Whitney L.J. “The time is ripe for tomato genetics” Whitney Howell. July 16, 2012. Web Feb.6, 2012 <http://wljhowell.wordpress.com/tag/heinz-1706-tomato-variety/>

- “The tomato genome sequence provides insights into fleshy fruit evolution” Nature, 30 May 2012, Mon. 18 Feb 2013. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7400/full/nature11119.html>

- “You say tomato”, Nature, 30 May 2012. Mon. 18 Feb. 2013 <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7400/full/485547a.html>

"Heading in the Wrong Direction"

Image by 4BlueEyes
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4blueeyes/4981183847/

The Keystone XL Pipeline project, a controversial oil pipeline, enables the development of tar sands, “one of the dirtiest, costliest, and most destructive fuels in the world.”[1] With the intention to create jobs and increase our oil supply, TransCanada Corporation seeks the president’s approval for the 1,179 mile tar-sands pipeline. However, because the costs far outweigh the benefits, we cannot promote a pipeline project when the environment continues to suffer from the negative externalities accompanying our current energy sources. The Keystone pipeline proposal is not a step towards improving our economic situation, but rather a detriment to the environment, an enabler to our country’s addiction to oil, and a wrong turn on the road to a clean energy future.

The Keystone XL Pipeline project, is the proposed construction of a 1,179 mile-long tar sands oil pipeline by the Canadian oil and gas company, TransCanada Corporation. The pipeline will potentially transport 830,000 tar sands oil barrels per day from Alberta, Canada through Steele City, Nebraska, trekking across six states in between: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.[1] TransCanada Corporation argues that the pipeline will lead to positive tax revenues increases, a stable energy supplier for the U.S., and a significant increase in employment opportunities.[2] In contrast, the pipeline can potentially destroy ecosystems, pollute water sources, and raise public health concerns. Renouncing the negative externalities shadowing the project, President Obama initially rejected the TransCanada’s first pipeline proposal January 18th, 2012; however, after slightly altering the proposal, TransCanada submitted a revised re-application that only proposed to build the original project’s northern segment. TransCanada is currently anticipating the project’s approval and a presidential permit to begin construction, which they should receive during 2013’s first quarter.[3] Should the President Obama approve the project proposal regardless of the destructive externalities accompanying it?

Tar sands and their extraction processes are proven to be detrimental to the surrounding environment. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta through Steele City, Nebraska: a 1,179 mile stretch of potential environmental destruction. Tar sands are either extracted through surface mining or an In-Situ drilling process, which both induce mass land destruction and water contamination.[4] The extraction processes of this crude oil source have high potentials to destroy surrounding ecosystems, produce toxic waste reservoirs, release toxic chemicals that pollute the air, and emit a higher amount of global warming pollutants than fuels produced with conventional oils.[1] Evidence regarding tar sand oil’s effects is illustrated through the mess created by the Kalamazoo River spill a few years ago, which resulted in mandatory evacuations, massacres of biodiversity, and environmental corrosion.[5] This spill created 800 million dollars of environmental damage that the US economy continues suffering to clean up. Aside from the monetary factors tar sand oil induces, health issue reports associated with air pollution and acid rain have been recorded in communities surrounding its usage.[6] Regarding the global warming influence, the greenhouse gas emission level from tar sands oil production is three times that of conventional oil production. Our country can not afford a further increase in our level of greenhouse gas emissions, environmentally or economically, which the Keystone pipeline’s construction will prove to do.[4]

Although argued that the pipeline project’s approval will create jobs and economic benefits for the US, this new project will solely increase our oil dependence and cause large-scaled future economic problems. Following the president’s first rejection of the project, the presidential administration concluded the estimated accumulation of U.S. jobs accompanying the pipeline’s approval, stemmed from false accusations. Obama’s rejection report explained that although the project would create an immense amount of temporary jobs regarding the pipeline’s construction, long-term employment rates would not increase. They calculated that the pipeline would result in solely “5,000 to 6,000 direct construction jobs in the United States that would last for the two years that it would take to build the pipeline.”[7] Aside from the false hope of decreasing unemployment, by acquiring an addition pipeline, the U.S. would increase our oil dependence. With our oil production at its highest rate in years, and constant research being conducted to decrease oil usage, the country is not in dire need of a new oil source. As we attempt to steer our consumers away from over-consumption of oil, creating an abundant supply that would be readily available at our fingertips, would simply enable addiction and foreshadow a future oil dependence with negative economic impacts. 

Image by tarsandsaction
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarsandsaction/6320923978/

President Obama addresses our country’s road to a clean energy future by acknowledging, “We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”[8] How would approving the Keystone pipeline assist this goal when it will only increase our oil dependence and stir up existing climate problems? Approving the proposal will send us away from improvement and down the wrong road towards a clean energy world. The U.S., already criticized for our excessive consumption of oil, consumes approximately a quarter of the world’s supply, in comparison with the global community. By approving the pipeline project and increasing our domestic oil supply, our dependence will worsen, and steering the country towards a cleaner energy future appears as a less appealing aspiration. When President Obama took oath in 2012, he promised the country that we would strive to lead the global community in creating a clean energy environment and improving the current climate situation. The tar sands oil extracted for use in the pipeline does not only contradict this goal, but will worsen our climate situation and cause a backtrack in the promising improvements we have already made regarding cleaner energy.

Alternative solutions concerning our country’s energy crisis emerge through research daily, so why should we put more money towards a solution that will only cause more detriment than we are already facing? Rather than aspiring to obtain an abundant oil supply, we should be looking for ways to reduce our dependence and lead us towards a cleaner energy future. Through discovery of efficient energy policies and the introduction of alternate solutions for the crisis at hand, our country will start heading towards the right direction. To put the U.S. back on the right track, President Obama must reject the Keystone XL pipeline proposal and begin searching for “ a long game that will help to get the United States, and hopefully the world, to where it wants to be several decades from now.”[9]


1. http://www.nwf.org/What-We-Do/Energy-and-Climate/Drilling-and-Mining/Tar-Sands.aspx
2. http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html
3. http://www.foe.org/projects/climate-and-energy/tar-sands/keystone-xl-pipeline
4. http://dirtyoilsands.org/tarsands
5. http://www.onearth.org/article/tar-sands-oil-plagues-a-michigan-community
6. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578001901362643448.html
7.http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/01/18/why-obama-decided-against-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
8. http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy
9. http://www.nature.com/news/change-for-good-1.12312

Unit 1 Project: Global Warming

The Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that lessens human’s impact on global warming, just ended this year. Global warming activists are pushing towards a new treaty immediately so the average global temperature does not start increasing at a rate that will cause weather patterns that have never been seen before and cause catastrophes. Human caused carbon dioxide is one of the main factors that many people associate with global warming but may not be completely justified. (1) Recently, there have been global warming studies done with different results than in the past. For many years, global warming has been a widely talked about topic but humans and their carbon dioxide emissions are not the only cause of this change, but global warming is rather a pattern the earth constantly.(6)

Image by Juampe López
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/110/292526441_a23903ef98.jpg

Global warming activists draw toward their audience’s emotion appeal, and don’t purely use scientific evidence to back up their claims. One of the most prominent examples of this is a documentary by Al Gore, “An Inconvenient Truth” which is the fourth most viewed documentary of all time. The documentary goes into detail human’s impact and role on global warming and essentially blames humans as global warming’s main cause.(7) The films draws to an emotional appeal blaming human caused global warming on tragedies like Hurricane Katrina, the melting of the ice caps, and polar bear traveling as far a 60 miles just to drown because they couldn’t find ice. The film was made by a politician and used many pictures and video animation but is not accurate in some of its main claims.(4)

 
The film itself has been banned in many schools, with many other schools requiring a disclaimer if it is shown because information in it has since been proven not to be as factual as presented.(4) One of the first claims it makes is polar bears are running out of ice and are drowning, it turns out that Al Gore misread the report he got. This was not true. Four polar bears did die but because of a violent storm, not looking for ice due to global warming. In fact, ice glaciers grew by more than 500,000 square kilometer last year, and polar bears are at a recent high.(8)(5) Another major emotional appeal that Al Gore made was Global Warming caused Hurricane Katrina. This is simply not the case, government experts ruled that global warming did not cause Hurricane Katrina and you cannot blame one off event on this issue.(4) The reason that Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophe was rather because the levees were not properly made and much of the damage would preventable if they were properly constructed. Al Gore’s claim that humans are causing the global temperature to rise and cause these events is not correct.

The earth’s temperature is not at record levels and should not be a concern; it is a pattern the earth has been going through for thousands of years.(2) For one, the earth was actually significantly hotter just a thousand years ago. Over the past couple years there have actually been global weather reports of the earth’s temperature being cooler than the previous year.(9) In 2008, the Northern Hemisphere received the most snow it has since 1966. The ice caps simply are not disappearing, according to a report from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado ice caps have actually grown by twenty six percent since 2007.(10) Another report released from NASA shows the last three months have actually been below their 30-year average. These studies were taken using satellite temperature images. The ice caps are always growing and shrinking and global temperature is always going through cycles and this is no reason to support global warming or be a concern.

Image by ultrablunt
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43864496@N03/4055639552/

There has been a weak correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and a slight rise in temperatures in the past, but this does not prove causation.(5) In a documentary called Swindle, many credible scientists, disprove that humans have any impact on global temperature. The documentary states that the sun and water vapor is responsible for the trend of warmer temperatures and are natural causes. Historically if global warming was human caused, temperatures should rise when more carbon dioxide is produced which would be during industrial revolution and periods of high building and carbon dioxide emissions, which is actually the opposite of what has happened. The temperature rose before the industrial revolution and after the economic boom in the last 20th century. There just isn’t the correlation between carbon dioxide emissions by humans and a rise in global temperature that is claimed.

Global warming is not a human caused event and is rather a cycle the earth goes through over many centuries. This period has neither been the hottest or coldest and the cycle is not attributed to human caused carbon dioxide emissions. There have been numerous reports that disprove the claims that humans are responsible for global warming. Global warming activist draw to an emotional appeal to credit their work and not a scientific approach. There has been no statically sound evidence that global warming is human caused at all and that rather the warming and cooling of the earth is from natural causes and is a cycle.

Sources
(1)http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2012/09/16/climate-change-hoax-or-crime-of-the-century/
(2)http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/05/31/sorry-global-warming-alarmists-the-earth-is-cooling/
(3)http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/15/global-warming-insignificant-years-admits-uks-climate-scientist/
(4)http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
(5)http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/correlation_last_decade_and_this_century_between_co2_and_global_temperature/
(6)http://www.differencesmag.org/need-2-know/what-shade-of-green-r-u/430-scientists-say-carbon-dioxide-does-not-cause-global-warming.html
(7) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-global-warming.html
(8)http://www.ibtimes.com/polar-bear-population-higher-20th-century-something-fishy-about-extinction-fears-821075
(9)http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/15/global-warming-insignificant-years-admits-uks-climate-scientist/

(10)http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2010/jan/10/inconvenient-truth-ice-cap-growing/

Keystone XL Pipeline: The Wrong Kind of Change

The Obama administration has always been focused on how to improve climate conditions to mitigate global warming. During Obama’s first term, his plan to confront climate change failed, but he’s back with a renewed vigor. He plans to push down renewable energy’s costs and make natural gas burning cleaner. A recent Nature article, “Change for Good”, states that the clean energy research and development deserves more government investment. It further states that the nations should more strictly regulate the power plants to reduce their emissions.[2] However, the Keystone XL pipeline should not be approved because it would help develop the Canadian tar sands, a source of high emissions, which would be detrimental towards improving our climate.

The first thing to be addressed should be our nation’s coal firing power plants. Power plants work by burning coal in a boiler to heat up water which becomes steam. This steam turns turbines which rotate generators that produce electricity. A byproduct of this process is CO2 gas (carbon-dioxide), a very abundant pollutant and greenhouse gas. With the help of scrubbers, devices that remove some pollutants from the electrical generation process, carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced, but not by a large enough degree.[6][7]

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) needs to implement a proposed law that requires new power plants to reduce emissions to 1000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electricity produced or less, then go after existing power plants. The average coal-firing power plant produces 2,249 pounds of CO2 per megawatt compared to the average natural gas power plant, which produces 1,135 pounds of CO2 per megawatt.[8] Utility companies say the implementation of this law will raise production costs and reduce jobs which would hinder economic recovery. What if the utility companies are right and jobs are reduced because of the new regulations? That should not be a problem because more money needs to be put into clean energy research and development, which would create jobs.

China produces the most solar and wind energy and is the world’s leading user of wind energy currently. The Chinese government will soon force power companies to generate some of their energy from renewable sources, which is something to think about in our own country to lower emissions and at the same time use renewable energy. Although the Chinese renewable energy market is failing because their supply far exceeds demand, we as a country can learn from this and find better ways to manage the growth of our own renewable energy markets.[12] We have caught up to the Chinese, producing sixty gigawatts of electricity compared to China’s sixty-two gigawatts; however, there is still work to do. While we are advancing our energy technologies and producing more energy from renewable sources, we should not backtrack.

President Obama plans to approve the Keystone pipeline, an extension of the Keystone XL pipeline which will transport crude oil from Hardisty, Canada to the gulf coast snaking through Montana Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and a few other states. Tar sands are oil sands, a mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumen, a very dense and thick oil. Once mined and extracted from the tar sands, the oil is then refined. The development of the tar sands sparks controversy because the processes used to mine, separate, and refine the oil use more energy than those for natural gas and drilled crude oil.[10][11]

 

Transforming tar sands to the finished products we use from oil like naphtha, kerosene, petrol, and diesel takes extra steps than the conventional drilling methods. Excavating the sands and producing the steam needed to separate sand and oil uses so much energy and produces large CO2 emissions. After this, the oil still has to go through the refining process. But how does a pipeline carrying oil produced in Canada affect us and why should we care?

Approving the Keystone XL pipeline not only increases pollution in Canada, but also increases our dependence on oil as a country. As the United States, we should be setting the example towards clean energy and trying to wean ourselves off our dependence on oil. Allowing ourselves access to more oil is detrimental to the efforts made to reduce air pollution caused by the production and consumption of oil based products thus far. Last year, 13,124 megawatts of wind power were installed which is 22% of the total wind capacity in the United States and was 42% of all new generating capacity which is up 10% from 2011’s percentages.[3] To put this all into perspective, the amount of wind capacity we currently hold is enough to power 15 million homes per year.


As a nation, we are heading in the right direction but we cannot regress now. We are using more renewable energy than ever before and we need to continue to push our government to funnel more money into renewable energy research and development, while also making sure to continue the reduction in our oil usage.



References

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1. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline; TransCanada Accessed 02-01-2013
2. "Change for Good"; Nature. Accessed 02-01-2013 
3. "INFOGRAPHIC: Wind Energy in America"; Department of Energy. Accessed 02-11-2013 
4. "INFOGRAPHIC: Offshore Wind Outlook"; Department of Energy. Accessed 02-11-2013 
5. "TransCanada, ConocoPhillips To Expand Keystone To Gulf Coast"; DOWNSTREAMTODAY. Accessed 02-01-2013 
6. "How Oil Refining Works"; HowStuffWorks. Accessed 02-02-2013 
7. "Oil refining and refineries"; BP. Accessed 02-02-2013 
8. "Natural Gas"; Environmental Protection Agency. Accessed 02-02-2013 
9. "Natural Gas and Its Uses"; American Petroleum Institute. Accessed 02-01-2013 
10. "Tar Sands Basics"; Oil Shale and Tar Sands Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. Accessed 01-31-2013 
11. "What are the Tar Sands?"; Rainforest Action Network. Accessed 02-02-2013 
12. "Power cuts China’s slumping renewable-energy industry should be learnt from, not dismissed."; Nature. Accessed 02-07-2013
13. Shogren, Elizabeth. "Deep In Canadian Lakes, Signs Of Tar Sands Pollution."; NPR. Accessed 02-07-2013
14. Austen, Ian. "Oil Sands Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level."; New York Times. Accessed 02-07-2013  
15. Before and After Photo; Watchdog Progressive. Accessed 2-26-2013

Citation Conventions

Citing sources is important so we can show where our ideas have come from and give credit where it is due. This is important because the authors have put a lot of time and effort into their research and it would be unfair to them to not cite their work. We want our blog to be credible and our audience to trust the information we put forth, by citing our sources we are letting them know where we got the information. Finally by citing our sources, it gives readers opportunities to delve further into topics that we write about.

In our blog, we plan to use hyperlinks for key terms or words that would need additional explanation and for ideas that we have paraphrased from other sources, we would put the url to the website at the bottom of the page with a number at the end of the paragraph that corresponds with the link (much like a wikipedia article).  For the print sources, we would

cite using the MLA format and place it at the bottom with other sources. We are choosing to cite our sources this way because it is simple and allows the reader to get more information on key topics. Also, by simply using the URL to refer to the sources it eliminates the trouble of having to sift through a formal citing method.

Intro Post

Five individuals, three topics, one university coming together to create a blog. From Jiangsu, China in the eastern hemisphere of the globe to small-town USA, we have created a collaboration of perspectives intended to offer the public unique interpretations on a variety of topics. We will be writing with younger perspectives on current issues involving the humanities and scientific world and attempt to keep you entertained while doing it. Unlike other blogs you will get a unique outlook on topics since we are all from such different areas of the world. Although this blog was created for the sole purpose of fulfilling the requirements of our English 105 class, we intend to bring our geographical backgrounds and knowledge from our majors together and create an intriguing blog. As fellow college students, we hope to not bore you with drawn out articles on un-interesting topics, but rather show you our opinions that evolved from different places around the world  and provide our audience with an enjoyable blogging experience.

My name is Donovan Heath but you can call me Heathbar, just like the candy. I am an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, majoring in Business and Environmental Studies. Although I don’t have much time to do these activities right now, I love listening to music, hiking, and photography. My interest in hiking and photography (the looking at photo’s, not taking them necessarily) began when I took a trip to Vancouver, BC with my family. I find something very peaceful and relaxing about all those activities. It allows me to take a break, reflect on my day and think about things that I otherwise wouldn’t be in the right environment to be able to do so.

 


My name is Yihui Sheng but you can call me Yi.  I am from China and currently a freshman studying in UNC-Chapel Hill.  My major is Mathematical Decision Science, but I am not such a serious and strict person.  Instead, I’d like to talk in an easy way.  Although this blog will be mainly about our English course topics, I'd like to connect those science and humanities subjects with my cultural background and my major.  In fact, I really want to write to all the students of my age, sharing my research and opinions of something which we are all concerned about.   Plus, because I am not that professional, no one has to completely trust me.  I’m more than willing to hear your voice ;)


My name is Zachary Loren but you can call me Zack. I am an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, majoring in Business Administration. I was born in Atlanta, have lived in Washington DC, and now live in North Carolina. I am very interested in sports and played football and golf in high school. I am here to bring you current events with a younger and easy to read approach on the topic. Unlike many scientific blogs that are boring and hard to read I am here to keep you informed and also entertained. 

My name is Liyijia Zheng but you can call me Leah. I am a sophomore student studying Economics and Business at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am interested in business and various kinds of culture. I am also interested in organizational behavior management and things related to human interaction and everyday life. I was born and raised in China. I love traveling and I like to explore different places with my camera on my hands. Experiencing differences is fun. I love nature and beautiful things. 






I can not broadcast an array of outstanding life achievements, enthrall you with unique stories of my worldly encounters, or attempt to impress you through my knowledge of the world’s latest scientific discoveries; however, as a fellow college student, I can fulfill the all too well known desire for entertainment when there’s nothing left to stumble upon and you realize you have scrolled down the same news feed an embarrassing amount of times. My name is Julia Randolph and I am currently a freshman at the University of Chapel Hill. I am from a small town in the mountains of North Carolina that one person has yet to recognize here. When I was sixteen, I studied abroad in Argentina for six months, which turned out to be the best time of my life. As of now, I am living in the great city of Chapel Hill as that girl that has no idea what she wants to do with her life. With my eighteen years of experiences and my small-town, partly cultured girl perspective, I hope I can provide you guys with a little afternoon entertainment!