Week 13

Do we rely too heavily on supplements to provide antioxidants?

I believe that yes, we may rely too heavily on supplements for our antioxidant intake. There is an entire industry built around the well-known concept that antioxidants are the good guys in our diets that we want more of in order to protect ourselves from damage to our bodies over time. This simple idea is great for those who sell supplements and great for those looking to supplement their diets easily. I believe there is some merit to this but you should do your research and pick what supplements you feel may be beneficial to your diet and try not to overdue it or more importantly, try not to replace the nutrients you get from foods with supplements. I think it is better to focus on adding many colored foods to your diet (vegetables!) and take a supplement when you feel you may need it.

How might we deal differently with the effects of environmental pollutants?

Well, I think dealing with how we treat the environment from the get-go is truly the answer. We need to reduce harmful effects by preventing those effects in the first place as best as we can. I recall from an article we read in week 8, that humans use the planet’s resources to such a dramatic degree that we will need a 2nd planet by 2050. This is a devastating thing to realize. Perhaps if we can start becoming more forward-thinking with how we exploit resources and how we engineer pollutants and contaminants we could avert this possible tragedy.

I think the answer to environmental pollutants specifically comes with starting green and staying green throughout the process of manufacturing these substances. We want to minimize even the smallest amounts of harmful chemicals. One thing I realized from Larry’s class is how often I heard the idea growing up that certain products “contained only small amounts” of whatever harmful chemicals, to find out later that continued exposure to these small amounts over time can be very damaging. We need to be careful when accepting such claims and go green from the root to the shoot!

Memory and magic- how might you view things differently now?

In my brain’s effort to provide a world that makes sense to my senses, it has decided to function in a way that fills in the gaps. This is a dance between my unconscious, my expectations, my intentions and my imagination. It makes me wonder, is my mind playing tricks on me? Or, is my mind just trying to create a more seamless perception for me? A world that makes sense is a world that feels safe and predictable. A world that falls in step with my expectations will reinforce my own beliefs thus reassuring me that who I think I am is really who I am.

When you talk about magic and memory I believe that we are talking about how we let ourselves be deceived by visual illusions because those illusions are what make cognitive sense to our minds. Its funny how we then label this illusory experience as magic, something esoteric and belonging to a non-ordinary reality when in fact it is the preservation of the ordinary that is the goal of the brain in those moments.

Week 11: Cognition

• Would you agree that “to live is to know”?

I would agree with this statement. Every living being is conscious, interacting with the world around them. How we measure levels of consciousness includes the term cognition which is the process of knowing or taking in information and concepts present in the world around us. This is what makes consciousness and the act of cognition different.

As living beings, part of how we define living systems is the presence of cognition. I personally believe that everything in existence including rock, stars, dirt and other ‘non-living’ substances posses a level of consciousness. I am not sure if they posses what we define as cognition but they certianly posses a level of consciousness that is undeniable.

Week 10: Living Diversity

I live in an urban neighborhood but there is still quite a diversity of species around me. For example, there is a cat standing on my kitchen table as I write this waiting for a pat on the head. There are birds chirping outside my window and humans walking by outside. There is a collection of insects roaming around in the soil outside as well as a few ants making their way inside next to my sliding glass door. There are quite a few species of plants hanging out in my refrigerator- kale, broccoli, sweet peppers, etc…. I am also told that every person has their own custom bacteria roaming around in their skin and in their gut.

Review of Animation

I like the animations on the website. I just wish they were a little bit longer and maybe some narration added? Maybe thats asking too much, but it would be nice if they were a few seconds longer.

Definition

"Biochemistry is the chemistry of life, a bridge between biology and chemistry that studies how complex chemical reactions give rise to life."

Yes! Its seems completely logical that biochemistry should emerge from chemistry. I think the Bio gives life and dynamism to the study of chemistry, opening new possibities and ways of seeing how life interacts with itself.

Gene therapy

I like the idea of using gene therapy in the treatment of devastating diseases. I especially find interesting the use of a vector to deliver therapeutic genetic information into a cell. It seems like a very sophisticated and clever way to trick the trickster.

However, this interesting method also makes me concerned. I get distracted by the replication process that is inherent to viral activity. We are essentially manipulating a pathogenic process and using that process to reverse disease. But what if you get too much of a good thing? Perhaps I am too swept away by the science fictional aspects of this idea- but what if that specific virus you manipulate somehow goes rogue and gets into the general population and replicates itself? Does it still maintain its therapeutic effect? Or would it then just be messing with perfectly healthy genes? What if the vehicle for good goes bad? How is this process contained/controlled? Lotsa questions.

Perhaps what is underlying my concern is the thought of scientists’ manipulating genes in a way that would never happen in nature. It sort of reminds me of GMO food. The argument on the pro-GMO side was that it would enable farmers to grow robust crops and we could feed a large population. The picture that was painted for us was in the vein of Monsanto’s “Golden Rice.” We are going to feed the world! They proclaimed. There were images of starving children shown to us, a way to proclaim that humanitarianism was the premise for Monsanto's endeavours. On the other side, people argued that these manipulations would never occur naturally and we have no idea what the health effects would be nor could we know the consequences of introducing GMO strains into the worldwide food population. So, here we are today with reports of health problems related to GMO food and not a single bit of corn on the planet that has been untainted by this process.

That said, I hope this process goes forward carefully and consciously. I understand that the manipulation of genetic material is a next step in fighting disease and I would love to see some effective therapies come out of this process. I just think we need to keep a critical eye on how the process unfolds.