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Sciences

Welcome to the Triple A Learning blog for MYP Sciences. The most recent blog posts are listed below and you can access the blog archive by following the appropriate link in the panel on the left.

December 6, 2011

How Green is Your Artificial Tree?

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: carbon footprint, christmas tree, inquiry based learning, MYP Science, The Story of Stuff — triplea_ble @ 11:38 am

A study published by a consulting firm in Montreal was published last year around the holidays – attempting to answer the question of whether it’s “better” to get a real tree or an artificial tree. I repost my response here in light of the approaching holiday…

So what’s better, real or artificial? The answer would seem to be obvious. A foregone conclusion? You buy an artificial tree and you have it for a number of years and in the meantime you’re not condoning the senseless slaughter of millions of precious little carbon sucking conifers every year.

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December 3, 2011

Is Pizza a Vegetable? Ask your Congressman…

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: Consumerism, food pyramid, MYP Science, nutrition, one world — triplea_ble @ 1:50 am

When celebrity chef Jamie Oliver famously took on the school lunch programs of the UK in 2005 he quickly found himself up against a number of formidable obstacles. Despite having the moral high ground and that always important ingredient of good intentions, he was attempting to make healthy meals for children that refused to eat them, kitchen workers that refused to prepare them, and a school board that refused to pay for them.

Unhealthy food, as it turns out, is easy to make, extremely cheap – with a large profit margin, and kids can’t seems to get enough of it. When Mr. Oliver deconstructed one of the more popular menu items as normally unusable pieces of meat that are blended, bleached, dipped in corn starch and syrup and friend in trans fat, few students seemed to care as they continued dipping their chicken nuggets into a plum-free plum sauce and a tomato-free ketchup.

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November 24, 2011

Triple A donates new computers to One Laptop Per Child cause

Here at Triple A Learning, we’ve always supported the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) cause. With a mission to “empower the world’s poorest children through education“, who could fail to be moved by its ideals.

What OLPC believes

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November 13, 2011

What’s Cooking? – The Evolution of Modern Man

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: effects of cooking, Evolution, food labels, food pyramids, MYP Science, raw food — triplea_ble @ 12:57 pm

The following blurb can be found on a website called rawfoodlife.com – one of the many dedicated to espousing the virtues of the Raw Food Diet.

A raw food diet is not just good for you – it’s also good science! You don’t have to take our word for it, have ‘faith’ or trust the latest nutrition guru. Science now proves that cooking not only destroys nutrition and enzymes but chemically changes foods from the substances needed for health into acid-forming toxins, free-radicals and poisons that destroy our health.

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November 4, 2011

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes – A Cure for Dengue?

Filed under: Sciences — triplea_ble @ 3:00 am

The journal Nature Biotechnology recently published a scientific paper discussing an apparently successful trial involving genetically manipulated mosquitoes – the first of its kind directed at controlling the spread of Dengue fever.

In the experiment, several thousand breeding males equipped with a lethal gene that kills any viable offspring before they reach adulthood were released in a large trial in the Grand Cayman Islands, and again in Malaysia and Brazil.

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October 23, 2011

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: bangkok, environments, flooding, MYP Science — triplea_ble @ 5:17 am

My family has been on a slow and steady flood watch here in Bangkok for the past two weeks. You can only hear the airline pilot declare “brace brace” so many times before you poke your head up and look out the window. You start letting your guard down a bit and just living like a regular family until the next big piece of information – usually misinformation – comes down the pike and the pilot starts screaming “brace brace” again.

We’ve kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that eventually our soi is going to have a half-metre of water or so. How long it stays and what it will do to the downtown is anybody’s guess however.

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June 6, 2011

The German E. Coli Outbreak – “Where have these bugs been?”

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: drug resistance, E. coli outbreak, intradisciplinary units, kidney failure, MYP Science, pathogens, virulence — triplea_ble @ 1:11 pm

The latest report out of Germany in the growing E. coli outbreak that has killed more than 20 and sickened hundreds, identifies the source of infection not, as previously reported, from Spanish cucumbers but instead from locally grown bean sprouts.

Whether or not this turns out to be the case – certainly the bean sprout farmers are scratching their heads at how they could be the source since they grow them without soil! – remains to be seen.

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May 25, 2011

Saving the World – One Worm at a Time

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: developing countries, Deworming, MYP Science, parasitic worms, randomistas, scientific method — triplea_ble @ 3:20 pm

If you were of a like mind to one of the myriad organizations trying to address the problem of education in the developing world, you’d probably start by making a list of all the things preventing kids from succeeding. Maybe you’d build new schools, train better teachers, start school lunch programs, or dig latrines so female students had a safe place to go to the bathroom. All of these have been attempted over the years with some modicum of success but considering the amount of money spent compared to gains in GDP, graduation rates, test scores or any of a number of quality of life indices, you’d have to agree there hasn’t been much bang for the buck.

Many developing countries are certain to fall well short of the UN Millenium Development Goals for universal education which are set for 2015.

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May 12, 2011

Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd?

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: maternal spindle transfer, MYP Science, one world, pronuclear transfer, reproductive ethics, three parent embryos — triplea_ble @ 6:19 pm

The three-parent embryo passed a major milestone last month when the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority found no evidence to suggest the technique was unsafe medically.

Like any interesting issue in IB science classes though, we of course need to look at things through more than one lens, and the ethical considerations alone are sure to keep the debate raging for quite some time.

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May 10, 2011

Food Miles and the Locavores Dilemma

Filed under: Sciences — Tags: carbon footprint, Food Miles, life-cycle calculations, Locavore, megafarms, MYP Science — triplea_ble @ 4:09 am

The picture at right is a familiar one for those of a certain generation but likely a mystery to anyone born in the mid-1970s and beyond. These empties would be collected a few times a week from one’s front step and replaced with full bottles by someone called a milkman.

This kind of home delivery of a food staple like milk has all but disappeared worldwide in part due to changing household economics along with matters of convenience and choice. The main culprit however is the disappearance of the local dairy farmer and the centralization of milk processing and packaging at mega-dairies.

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Triple A Learning IB Blogs

Sciences

December 6, 2011

How Green is Your Artificial Tree?

December 3, 2011

Is Pizza a Vegetable? Ask your Congressman…

November 24, 2011

Triple A donates new computers to One Laptop Per Child cause

What OLPC believes

November 13, 2011

What’s Cooking? – The Evolution of Modern Man

November 4, 2011

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes – A Cure for Dengue?

October 23, 2011

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

June 6, 2011

The German E. Coli Outbreak – “Where have these bugs been?”

May 25, 2011

Saving the World – One Worm at a Time

May 12, 2011

Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd?

May 10, 2011

Food Miles and the Locavores Dilemma