Self+directed+and+independent+research+learning-critical+reviews+of+contemporary+science+issues

__ Term 1, 2 & 3 __ __ Self directed and Independent Research __ ~ NATURE'S NEAR PERFECT LITTLE ENGINE

I am going to share with you about the __**SALP**__. What is **SALP** ? => It is a smallish, barrel-shaped organism that resembles a kind of streamlined jellyfish, gets everything it needs from the ocean waters to feed and propel itself. What is so **special** about it then ? => The waste material of it can be used to remove carbon dioxide from the upper ocean and the atmosphere. Amazed? That is not all... => Researchers have found out that the half-inch to 5-inch-long creatures (ocean-dwelling salps) can capture and eat extremely small organisms as well as larger ones,rendering them even hardier -- and perhaps more plentiful -- than had been thought. Salps were thought to be the most efficient filter feeders in the ocean but they can consume particles spanning four orders of magnitude in size. It is like eating everything from a mouse to a horse. Salps capture food particles, mostly phytoplankton, with an internal mucous filter net. Until now, it was thought that only particles as large as or larger than the 1.5-micron-wide holes in the mesh. But a mathematical model suggested salps somehow might be capturing food particles smaller than that. Salps eat food particles of three sizes: smaller, around the same size as, and larger than the mesh openings. When exposed to ocean-like particle concentrations, 80 percent of the particles that were captured were the smallest particles. This finding is important for a number of reasons. First, it helps explain how salps -- which can exist either singly or in "chains" that may contain a hundred or more--are able to survive in the open ocean, their usual habitat, where the supply of larger food particles is low. **Second, and perhaps most significantly, it enhances the importance of the salps' role in carbon cycling. As they eat small, as well as large, particles, they consume the entire 'microbial loop' and pack it into large, dense fecal pellets.** **The larger and denser the carbon-containing pellets, the sooner they sink to the ocean bottom. This removes carbon from the surface waters and brings it to a depth where you won't see it again for years to centuries.** **And the more carbon that sinks to the bottom, the more space there is for the upper ocean to accommodate carbon, hence limiting the amount that rises into the atmosphere as CO2.** The most important aspect of this work is the very effective shortcut that salps introduce in the process of particle aggregation. Typically, aggregation of particles proceeds slowly, by steps, from tiny particles coagulating into slightly larger ones, and so forth. Now, the efficient foraging of salps on particles as small as a fraction of a micrometer introduces a substantial shortcut in this process, since digestion and excretion package these tiny particles into much larger particles, which thus sink a lot faster. This process starts with the mesh made of fine mucus fibers inside the salp's hollow body. Salps, which can live for weeks or months, swim and eat in rhythmic pulses, each of which draws seawater in through an opening at the front end of the animal. The mesh captures the food particles, then rolls into a strand and goes into the gut, where it is digested. It had been reasoned that the lower limit of particles captured by a salp was dictated by the size of the openings in the mesh (1.5 microns) In other words, particles smaller than the openings were expected to pass through the mesh. But the new results show that it can capture particles as small as 0.5 microns and smaller, because the particles stick to the mesh material itself in a process called direct interception. Up to now it was assumed that very small cells or particles were eaten mainly by other microscopic consumers, like protozoans, or by a few specialized metazoan grazers like appendicularians. This paper indicates that salps can eat much smaller organisms, like bacteria and the smallest phytoplankton, organisms that are numerous and widely distributed in the ocean. As much as they are impressed with the practical implications involving carbon exchange, the scientists are captivated by the unique, almost magical performance of this natural undersea engine. **__REFLECTION__** __I feel that this finding is very interesting. Just imagine an organism eating something that is much bigger than itself... It is unbelievable. It can still eat food that is very small. In the process, it helps the environment a lot. Why is this so? When it consumes the carbon particals, they will pack them into large pellets causing the pellets to have higher density. Hence, they will sink into the ocean reducing the amount of carbon dioxide. How amazing. I believe that they will surely play an important role in the environment.__ ~ DONE BY NG JIA NENG SOURCE OF INFORMATION : SCIENCEDAILY ~ POLAR BEARS, GLAUCOUS GULLS MOST AT RISK CONTAMINANTS I am going to share with you about global warming effects on wildlife. Researchers could not document strong evidence that contaminants such as PCBs and DDT were adversely affecting animals throughout the Arctic, other factors, such as the impact of climate change, disease and the invasion of new species will affect the overall exposure that each animal has to pollutants. Climate change, in particular, will affect sea ice distribution and temperatures. This will in turn cause food web changes and changes in nutrition, which led the researchers to list animals at the highest risk from contaminant exposure. The Arctic wildlife and fish considered to be most at risk are: Polar bears in East Greenland, Svalbard and Hudson Bay, killer whales in Alaska and northern Norway, several species of gulls and other seabirds from the Svalbard area, northern Norway, East Greenland, the Kara Sea, and the Canadian central high Arctic, ringed seals from East Greenland, and a few populations of Arctic char and Greenland shark. ~ __REFLECTION__ I would like to share with everyone about this topic is because global warming has an impact on the environment. Something must be done. Maybe we can introduce SALP??? Nevertheless, we should play a part ourselves. We can practice the 3RS and cut down on activities that causes pollution. Everyone should play a part in order to conserve wildlife... { :( } If we don't stop polluting the environment, i am sure that there will be a dire consequence for us, (not just wildlife)... :( done by ng jia neng... Source: ScienceDaily ~ WASTE FAT FROM FRYING FUELS HYDROGEN ECONOMY ~ I am going to share with you about hydrogen. Hydrogen has been tipped as a cleaner, greener alternative to fossil fuels. But scientists have struggled to find a way to make it that doesn't consume vast amounts of energy, use up scarce natural resources, or spew out high levels of greenhouse gas. Researchers at the University of Leeds have now found an energy-efficient way to make hydrogen out of used vegetable oils discarded by restaurants, takeaways and pubs. **Not only does the process generate some of the energy needed to make the hydrogen gas itself, it is also essentially carbon-neutral.** Researchers are working towards a vision of the hydrogen economy. **Hydrogen - based fuel could potentially be used to run our cars or even drive larger scale power plants, generating the electricity we need to light our buildings, run our kettles and fridges, and power our computers. But hydrogen does not occur naturally, it has to be made. With this process, we can do that in a sustainable way by recycling waste materials, such as used cooking oil. Hydrogen can already be made quite easily from simple fossil fuels, such as natural gas.** The fuel is mixed with steam in the presence of a metal catalyst then heated to above 800 degrees centigrade to form hydrogen and carbon dioxide. However when much more complex fuels are used, such as waste vegetable oil, it is difficult to make very much hydrogen using this method without raising the temperature even further. The reactions could be run at lower temperatures but the catalysts would quickly become poisoned by residues left over from the dirty oil. In short, the process is not only expensive but also environmentally unsound. Researchers have perfected a two-stage process that is essentially self-heating. To begin, the nickel catalyst is blasted with air to form nickel oxide -- an 'exothermic' process that can raise the starting temperature of 650 degrees by another 200 degrees. The fuel and steam mixture then reacts with the hot nickel oxide to make hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The researchers also added a special 'sorbent' material to trap all the carbon dioxide produced, leaving them with pure hydrogen gas. This trick eliminated the greenhouse gas emissions and also forced the reaction to keep running, increasing the amount of hydrogen made.The researchers have shown that the two-stage process works well in a small, test reactor. They now want to scale-up the trials and make larger volumes of hydrogen gas over longer periods of time. The beauty of this technology is that it can be operated at any scale. It is just as suitable for use at a filling station as at a small power plant. If we could create more of our electricity locally using hydrogen-powered fuel cells, then we could cut the amount of energy lost during transmission down power lines. ~

~ __REFLECTION__ The process of making the hydrogen gas, it will generate some energy to make the gas itself. It is also carbon neutral. This fuel is very energy efficient and evironmentally friendly. We can use this fuel to run our cars and power plant to make electricity for the households. Hence, with this process, we can do that in a sustainable way by recycling waste materials such as cooking oil. So everyone can actually play a part for our environment. The Earth is being heavily polluted. We should at least decrease the pollution on our environment by just playing a simple role. What is so difficult ? I also hope that researchers can discover more alternative fuels to save resources. DONE BY NG JIA NENG. Source: SCIENCE DAILY :) ~ Tea May Contain More Fluoride Than Once Thought, Research Shows ~ The additional fluoride from drinking two to four cups of tea a day won't harm anyone. it's the very heavy tea drinkers who could get in trouble. Most published reports show 1 to 5 milligrams of fluoride per liter of black tea, but a new study shows that number could be as high as 9 milligrams. The fluoride concentration in black tea had long been underestimated when researchers began analyzing data from four patients with advanced skeletal fluorosis, a disease caused by excessive fluoride consumption and characterized by joint and bone pain and damage. While it is extremely rare in the United States, the common link between these four patients was their tea consumption -- each person drank 1 to 2 gallons of tea daily for the past 10 to 30 years. When researchers tested the patients' tea brands using a traditional method, they found the fluoride concentrations to be very low, so they wondered if that method was detecting all of the fluoride. Noting that the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, creates a quandary when measuring fluoride. Unique among other plants, it accumulates huge concentrations of fluoride and aluminum in its leaves -- each mineral ranges from 600 to more than 1,000 milligrams per kilogram of leaves. When the leaves are brewed for tea, some of the minerals leach into the beverage. Most published studies about black tea traditionally have used a method of measuring fluoride that doesn't account for the amount that combines with aluminum to form insoluble aluminum fluoride, which is not detected by the fluoride electrode. Researchers compared that method with a diffusion method, which breaks the aluminum-fluoride bond so that all fluoride in the tea samples can be extracted and measured. They tested seven brands of store-bought black tea, steeping each for five minutes in deionized water, which contains no fluoride. The amount of fluoride in each sample was 1.4 to 3.3 times higher using the diffusion method than the traditional method. The new information shouldn't deter tea drinkers, as the beverage is safe and some teas even have health benefits. "The bottom line is to enjoy your favorite tea, but like everything else, drink it in moderation." ~ ~ __REFLECTION__ From this discovery, i feel that the researchers play a very important role in our lives. Without the discoveries, people will not know what is really good for them. For example, the people thinks that tea is good for health. Hence, they would consume large amount of it. Little did they know that too much tea will affect their health. Because of the large amount of fluoride in the tea leaves, consumers' bone health will be affected. To conclude, this research can raise the awareness so that tea consumers will drink tea in moderation. Besides that, this discovery also shows that you should eat everything in moderation, not just tea. Even if something is beneficial to you, you should always take it in moderation. ~ DONE BY NG JIA NENG (27) 1O2 source: sciencedaily ~
 * Fluoride is known to help prevent dental cavities, but long-term ingestion of excessive amounts could cause bone problems. The average person ingests a very safe amount, 2 to 3 milligrams, daily through fluoridated drinking water, toothpaste and food. It would take ingesting about 20 milligrams a day over 10 or more years before posing a significant risk to bone health.**