Science Is A Creature That Continues To Evolve At A Much Higher Rate T

Science is a creature that continues to evolve at a much higher rate than the beings thatgave it birth. The transformation time from tree-shrew, to ape, to human far exceeds the timefrom analytical engine, to calculator, to computer. But science, in the past, has always remaineddistant. It has allowed for advances in production, transportation, and even entertainment, butnever in history will science be able to so deeply affect our lives as genetic engineering willundoubtedly do. With the birth of this new technology, scientific extremists and anti-technologists have risen in arms to block its budding future. Spreading fear by misinterpretationof facts, they promote their hidden agendas in the halls of the United States congress. Geneticengineering is a safe and powerful tool that will yield unprecedented results, specifically in thefield of medicine. It will usher in a world where gene defects, bacterial disease, and even agingare a thing of the past. By understanding genetic engine ering and its history, discovering itspossibilities, and answering the moral and safety questions it brings forth, the blanket of fearcovering this remarkable technical miracle can be lifted. The first step to understanding genetic engineering, and embracing its possibilities forsociety, is to obtain a rough knowledge base of its history and method. The basis for altering theevolutionary process is dependant on the understanding of how individuals pass oncharacteristics to their offspring. Genetics achieved its first foothold on the secrets of nature'sevolutionary process when an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel developed the first "laws ofheredity." Using these laws, scientists studied the characteristics of organisms for most of the next one hundred years following Mendel's discovery. These early studies concluded that eachorganism has two sets of character determinants, or genes (Stableford 16). For instance, inregards to eye color, a child could receive one set of genes from hi s father that were encoded oneblue, and the other brown. The same child could also receive two brown genes from his mother. The conclusion for this inheritance would be the child has a three in four chance of havingbrown eyes, and a one in three chance of having blue eyes (Stableford 16). Genes are transmitted through chromosomes which reside in the nucleus of every livingorganism's cells. Each chromosome is made up of fine strands of deoxyribonucleic acids, orDNA. The information carried on the DNA determines the cells function within the organism. Sex cells are the only cells that contain a complete DNA map of the organism, therefore, "thestructure of a DNA molecule or combination of DNA molecules determines the shape, form, and function of the [organism's] offspring " (Lewin 1). DNA discovery is attributed to the researchof three scientists, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and James Dewey Watson in 1951. Theywere all later accredited with the Nobel Price in physiology and medicin e in 1962 (Lewin 1). "The new science of genetic engineering aims to take a dramatic short cut in the slow process of evolution" (Stableford 25). In essence, scientists aim to remove one gene from anorganism's DNA, and place it into the DNA of another organism. This would create a new DNAstrand, full of new encoded instructions; a strand that would have taken Mother Nature millionsof years of natural selection to develop. Isolating and removing a desired gene from a DNAstrand involves many different tools. DNA can be broken up by exposing it to ultra-high-frequency sound waves, but this is an extremely inaccurate way of isolating a desirable DNA section (Stableford 26). A more accurate way of DNA splicing is the use of "restrictionenzymes, which are produced by various species of bacteria" (Clarke 1). The restrictionenzymes cut the DNA strand at a particular location called a nucleotide base, which makes up aDNA molecule. Now that the desired portion of the DNA is cut out, it can be joined to another strand of DNA by using enzymes called ligases. The final important step in the creation of anew DNA strand is giving it the ability to self-replicate. This can be accomplished by usingspecial pieces of DNA, called vectors, that permit the generation of multiple copies of a totalDNA strand and fusing it to the newly created DNA structure. Another newly developed method, called polymerase chain reaction, allows for faster replication of DNA strands and doesnot require

Make Sure Your Website Gets an F

Make Sure Your Website Gets an F Make Sure Your Website Gets an F Make Sure Your Website Gets an F By Mark Nichol Do you have your own blog or Web site, or are you responsible for the site of another individual or an organization or company? If so, remember that the medium is (also) the message how the information is presented affects how it is received. So, to help site visitors engage with your content, consider the F not the letter f, but the online-design principle of the F-shaped pattern. One way people who study engagement with online content measure that engagement is by eye tracking: observing the eye movements of test subjects as they navigate within and between pages on a Web site. Research results have shown that most site visitors scan Web sites with eye movements roughly corresponding to the F shape. Because Western culture is, well, acculturated to engaging in text-based visual stimuli from the top left of a piece of content, Web designers have learned to put the most important visual information in that position on a Web page. (Quick what do you see at the top left of this page? That’s right, the logo form of the site name its brand.) And because readers of English (and all other Indo-European languages) read from left to right, it is natural for our eyes to move to the right from our first point of reference. That means that usually, our first eye-tracking movement is a line like the top horizontal line in the uppercase version of the letter f. Then, accustomed as we are to return to the left margin of a page, we backtrack horizontally or return diagonally to that location (as opposed to reading boustrophedon, or in a zigzag pattern). At this point, we skim from left to right again, as if forming with the movement of our eyes the letter f’s second horizontal element. A snapshot of an eye-tracking study (which often employs heat-mapping technology and connect-the-dots lines to record the ocular oscillations) may show multiple horizontal sweeps, but these lines generally extend less and less as the eyes travel downward, and a vertical line along or near the left margin of the page is also an almost invariable artifact of such studies, demonstrating that many site visitors scan down the page at about the same short distance from the margin. Variations occur, of course, especially when the page designer incorporates an arresting textual or illustrative element elsewhere on the page, but the F shape is the default setting for displaying written content online. (This pattern doesn’t necessarily apply when the home page features a block of text, but it’s typical on home pages dominated by a table of contents or a directory.) The take-away: As you’ll see from studying this site and many others, the F-shaped presentation of content is a pervasive and persuasive scheme of organization. There’s more to it than that, of course and I’ll share more tips in subsequent posts but this outline starts not with a, but with f. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Freelance Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Wether, Weather, WhetherLatin Words and Expressions: All You Need to KnowHow to Treat Names of Groups and Organizations