How smoking is bad for a human body.

There are tons of disadvantages of smoking and no advantages. Did you know that smoking harms nearly every organ in the body! Smoking can cause many different types of cancer as well. There are hundreds of harmful chemicals in cigarettes. There is tar in them. Tar is the black, sticky stuff that people put on the edges of roads when building them. Can you imagine that going into someone's body! Smoking also causes heart disease, arthritis, and stroke. Smoking makes stroke and heart disease 3 times more likely and doubles the chance of arthritis.. It can also effect vision. Smoking leads to cataracts and optic nerve damage, which are both factors in blindness. Smoking is one of the leading causes of death. It has more deaths per year than drugs, alcohol, and car crashes. Combined! Smoking can also weaken bone density. It makes your bones more likely to fracture. Smoking is horrible for your body and you should never do it
http://betobaccofree.hhs.gov/health-effects/smoking-health/
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/ 
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/QuitSmoking/QuittingSmoking/Smoking-Do-you-really-know-the-risks_UCM_322718_Article.jsp 

Nikola Tesla

Nikola was strange. When he was 7, he started seeing visions. It was part of a mental illness he had for the rest of his life. He was born in Croatia on July 10, 1856. It’s ironic that he was born during a lightning storm, because he would invent things related to electricity. In the 1870's, he went to a college in Graz, Austria. Tesla came to the US in 1884. He worked with Edison for a short time. After that he invented the Tesla coil and AC electric current. Then he went to work with George Westinghouse. Tesla invented lots of things. Tesla invented the Famous Tesla coil, electric oscillators, and the first hydroelectric dam. He also experimented with radios and x-rays and he improved the light bulb. One thing that most people that have heard of Tesla don't know is that he came up with the idea for the smartphone.

In his last years, Tesla worked on inventions. He died in New York on January 7, 1943. 

http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/nikola-tesla
http://www.biography.com/people/nikola-tesla-9504443#death-and-legacy 
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla/ 

Brazilian Wandering Spider

This is my 4th Vlog i forgot to post it but the redback spider is the 5th Vlog. i just posted these two out of order. watch it by me EZR HERE!

PechaKucha

This is the link to my PechaKucha about 7 scientists. Click HERE.

Hubble

Here is my presentation on Edwin Hubble.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Here is my presentation about Leonardo Da Vinci along with my 3 sources.

Why you need a spacesuit!

So I was thinking of a topic for a blog and I did something about space yesterday, so let's get into this:

Why do you need a spacesuit, and more important, how do you die in space?

To answer this, we must first know why we don't need a special suit for living on Earth. This is because of the atmosphere. The atmosphere controls temperature, causes tons of air pressure (which we need to survive), and protects us from the sun's radiation. So if we go away from the atmosphere, none of this will be there. But you won't die instantly. In fact, you can survive if you've only been outside for around a minute. You would be unprotected from the sun's radiation and because of the vacuum, you would swell up. You wouldn't explode, though. Also because of the vacuum, the boiling point of bodily fluids becomes less than 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit, so your blood would boil. All of this would take a while, but you know what wouldn't? Asphyxiation, or lack of oxygen. In fifteen seconds, you would be unconscious. After 90 seconds, you'd be dead. Holding your breath will actually make it worse, as it can rupture your lungs.
In a vacuum accident in 1965, a person survived similar things as this. He remained conscious for 14 seconds and his last memory before passing out was the spit on his tongue starting to boil.

Hope you learned something and always wear a spacesuit,

James

Sources:

• Don't try this at school (it's a youtube vid)
• More info
• Even more info

To Mars

Mars One is a company that is currently get money to fund a permanent settlement on Mars. But can you even live there?

Mars One's mission is to send a group of colonists to Mars, and they will live there permanently. There first part of this quest is selecting the people to go, then putting them through training. Then they launch a rover to the planet to find the perfect area to build. They also send a satellite to the red planet which can communicate with ones orbiting Earth and basically give them interstellar internet. Then, they send the materials that they need to the planet for the rover construct into the civilization. Finally, the base is operational and they send the first group of humans. If all goes well, the next group of humans will come join the pioneers of interplanetary living. But getting those first 8 people to the planet will cost a low, low price of only 10... billion dollars. I'm being sarcastic, just so you know, people who can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

This is actually a plausible idea, since many lakes and other bodies of water have been found on mars. By filtering the water out of the soil and using it for water or splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen, The astronauts will be able to breathe. 

Hope you learned something,

James

Sources:

• Mars One
• Article about military members signing up (kinda interesting and where I got the estimated price)
• How they get oxygen (and other stuff)

3D Printers

3D printers are exactly what they sound like ; printers that can produce 3 dimensional objects. I heard about these and thought the idea sounded cool. So I did some research and found out about how they work. It starts with a design for what you want to build. It is designed in a computer program that is hooked up to the printer. Then the  computer sends a picture of the object design to the printer. The printer works a lot like an Inkjet* printer, going left and right very fast while drawing every thing that is on that line on the paper. However, the 3D printers go left and right while adding layers to the object. These projects take hours to do, which is a huge upgrade from the old machines that companies used to use to build prototypes. The old ones took days, even weeks! The layers on the item are about 0.1 millimeters thick, so that's why it doesn't get done faster. The most common material that the printers use are probably pretty familiar to most people. They use ABS plastic. What's that? It's the same material that LEGO* bricks are made of. But they can also use other materials such as metal and glass.The machines can vary in size from printers meant for small toys to printers meant for printing whole rooms! These things are pretty expensive, as you could probably imagine. The smaller ones could get to be  $1,000 on the low end, but the bigger ones can get up to $600,000!

3D printers are a great invention an d I know that they will make a big impact on the inventing and art world.

http://mashable.com/2013/03/28/3d-printing-explained/ 

http://www.howitworksdaily.com/how-do-3d-printers-work/

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-3d-printers-work.html

What is ALS?

In 2014, a huge fad went around where you dump a bucket of ice water on yourself. It's called "The ALS ice bucket challenge", but what is ALS??
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is often called Lou Gehrig's disease, because Lou Gehrig was a baseball player who contracted the disease.

Lou Gehrig

Part 1: Basically, Amyotrophic means no muscle nourishment. This will make the muscle waste away. Lateral refers to the spinal cord, which is the area where the nerves degenerate. This leads to sclerosis, which is scarring or hardening. Your spinal cord degenerating leads to not being able to move your legs and arms, having trouble with speech, and you die when the muscles that control your breathing don't work. The worst, most horrible part is, your brain doesn't degenerate, so you can send impulses to your legs but they won't work. So your basically trapped inside your body.

But there is a cure and Stephen Hawking will tell you. While sounding like a robot.

Stephen Hawking. He doesn't look too great but he's smarter than you.

Scientists saved him, hooked up a machine to him so he can talk again, but he sounds like a robot. And he's a scientist and he made the black hole theory. I got my information on part 1 here.

Part 2: Though we are still not exactly sure what causes ALS, it is believed to be found from mutations in a gene that produces enzyme SOD1. 

ALS is mostly found in white males in their sixties, though my great uncle got it early and he was an African-American. These statistics are for most of the population.
The verbal complications of ALS can be treated with a computer, as shown by Mr. Hawking. The early symptoms are very small and often overlooked, like cramps, muscle weakness in arms or legs, and involuntary twitches. Then it leads to not being able to walk and death, later on. Part 2 info was found right here.

Part 3: More early stages of ALS include clumsiness and weakness in hands, tripping, and keeping a good posture. More possible causes for ALS are smoking, lead exposure, and 5 to 10% of ALS patients inherited it. Also I should note that your pencil is not actually lead and writing will not cause ALS. 

People with ALS sometimes also start struggling with memory, and some are also diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which I guess is dementia that affects the front of your temporal lobe?

Part 3 was found here, and I hope you learned something.

You've been lied to: diet soda

Hello everyone. Haven't done a blog in a while, but here we go:

Since the beginning of time (or the 6th grade year, at least) someone- I won't name names- and I have been in a super intelligent debate (for a goldfish) about what kinda stuff makes diet coke sweet and how it affects you, blah blah blah. But I shall prove to you that this so called "healthy alternative" is not at all healthy. 

Part 1: Scientists have found a link with diet soda and obesity. The thing is, diet soda disrupts the body's to know then you're full, leading to stuffing yourself. Also, the artificial sugar can lead to wanting real sugar, which makes you take in just as much sugar as you would without diet soda.

Not only will this product make you fat, but it can also cause cancer. Also aspartame, an artificial sweetener, can cause headaches. This my dad can prove from experience because he said it himself. Part 1 found here.

Part 2: More research shows us even more side affects of this totally healthy substance. It can affect your kidneys! At Harvard Medical School, a study was conducted on 3,000 women. Kidney function started to decline when the subjects drank more than two sodas a day. It was also found that the sugars in the real soda were not to blame, so the scientists think the artificial sweeteners are to blame. Next up, your metabolism can get messed up and this can lead to belly fat and high cholesterol. This study was conducted by the university of Minnesota. 

Also, let's look upwards at the obesity to diet soda link I mentioned earlier. Just two diet sodas a day can increase waist size by 500%. This brought to you by Texas Health Science Center. This next one doesn't affect you if you're under the age of 21. Non-sugary drinks allow alcohol into the bloodstream faster than the sugary ones, so your Jack-and-diet-coke is gonna go to your head a lot faster than normal. This tidbit from the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia.

The University of Sheffield in the U.K. found that the preservatives in your diet soda can also damage the DNA in the mitochondria of your cells, to the point where it gets completely destroyed. Oh and also, diet soda has a pH of about 4, which is very acidic. Water has a pH of 7. Battery acid has a pH of 1. The lower it is, the more acidic it is. 4 isn't too low, but a lot of it will damage your teeth a ton. The University of Michigan found that diet soda drinkers at the dentist have more decay and fillings. I should also mention that the pH range is 0-14 and regular soda is a 2.5. Here is where I found the info for part 2.

Part 3: These artificial sweeteners, found by Dr. Brooke Alpert, have a very intense taste that can make sweet things like fruit taste sour. It also makes your body go into fat storage mode, making it impossible to shed pounds for a while.

Also, while you may be not putting anything bad in your body, your not putting anything good in either. If you like the fizz, sparkling water is fizzy, and you put the good of water into your body.

Back to tooth erosion, dentists looked at a crack rock (a form of cocaine) addict, a meth addict, and a diet soda drinker. They found the level of tooth erosion to be the same. Yes, drink this stuff and you'll smile like a drug addict.

You might just get addicted to something if you're too depressed, and drinking a lot of diet soda led 30% of the subjects to be depressed.

Just one diet a day may also cause vascular problems like strokes and heart attacks. Conducted by Columbia University, a study found that everyone who drank diet soda was 43% for likely to have a heart attack. Part 3 was found here.

 Hope you learned something and drink more water,

James

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was born in New York during 1934. He even went to Harvard at the age of 54 as a researcher and lecturer (because we all need more of those). He had first graduated from Rahway High School when he was 17 years of age. After that he went on to acquire three different science degrees which was influenced by the time he was four and went to the New York  World's Fair. However once he was through with Harvard he Cornell University in Ithaca. Then he was a director at the Laboratory for Planetary Studies.  Carl died of pneumonia at the age of 62.

 

Carl Sagan was a astronomer (if you couldn't tell) who wrote over 20 books about space and the universe. What he was most famous for was (Mrs.Bronn, I don't know if you know this show or not) the t.v. show "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" which he invented in the 1980's.

My sources:Famous Scientists,  Britannica, and Carl Sagan.

Balloon Trick

This is my presentation of what you need and what to do for a really cool balloon trick. Go HERE.