Summer Assignment 8.24

This will be the final week of the summer assignment this year. Great job with all the comments, I hope you found some of the articles I linked to interesting. There are a few things I have for you to do this week.

• To get credit for this week's entry, comment about what your favorite post was over the summer, and what you are most looking forward to learning more about this year.
• If you are registered for Dr. H's class (Block 2 A/B), please visit this website and request access. If you have used PB Works before, you will not have to confirm your email. If you are new to PB Works, you DO NOT need to use your school email account to request access. After I accept you, you will receive a confirmation email.
• Once you have access to the wiki, feel free to have a look around. It is still a work in progress, so there is not too much there yet. There are some things on the front page for you to do.
• There are a few commenter names that I do not have "real" names for. If you made these comments, please let me know your name so that I can get your grade entered correctly.
• harmOnyx3
• ThatStupidKid
• a (Only commented on 7.27 post)
• Two long AOL-gibberish names, one posted on 7.13 and 7.20, the other posted on 7.13 only.

Once again, great job this summer, hope you have something fun planned for the last week of vacation. I am looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks.

Summer Assignment 8.17

• Using science to dispel an internet myth.Not that McDonald's burgers are any good, but they don't defy any laws of biology. What is the next internet/urban myth you would like to see overturned by science?
• A blogger posts her experiences before, during and immediately after open heart surgery. WARNING: if you don't want to see pictures of an actual human heart during surgery  DO NOT click the link.
• No more Olympics, so you get three science links this week. Will viruses some day power our cell phones (or other electronic devices)?

Summer Assignment 8.10

• Glow in the dark soldiers, circa Civil War era. Discovered by a high school student. I love this story. It really shows the importance of asking questions.
• So 3-D printers might be making houses soon. I can see this being very useful for martian or lunar colonies since it could potentially be automated.
• And of course, one more Olympics link.

Summer Assignment 8.3

• Continuing last weeks item about artificial life, scientists have created a synthetic jellyfish-like organism using rat cardiac cells. Video below.

• Even Usain Bolt wouldn't stand a chance if the Olympics weren't so species-centric.
• I am not really surprised that more effort and money is spent developing new weight-loss drugs rather than on efforts to simply get people to eat better and exercise more. Not sure I agree that a "junk-food tax" is the way to fix it, though if that is working in other countries, it may work here as well.
• So apparently this is real. Weird. Just remember, unexplained is not the same as inexplicable.