Nail Climbing

In our STEAM course “Game Changers” we just finished our only AP for the term. We learned about the different types of games, and we learned what kind of mechanics are in games. During this term, we playtested a lot of fun (and some boring) games. Some of the games that we played that I enjoyed were Egyptian Ratscrew and Mancala. For our AP we had to go in a group and build our own game. My group members were RP, and DRS. We build a game called Nail Climbing. In this game, you are a rock climber who has to climb up nails and go around obstacles. Whoever gets to the top of the mountain first wins. This game is a game of skill, luck, and betrayal. I really enjoyed making this game with my group. I would have preferred to make the game board smaller because it would be easier to make more and to carry around or put in a box.

The game was created by many versions. Our first version was a foam board with ripped pieces of paper for cards. In all, our game went through 2 versions for the board and 3 for the cards in order for it to get what it is right now for our final version. We had a lot of people playtest our game. One of the reasons why our game is the way it is, because of the corrections people had for us. Some things did not change at the beginning we had nails in our board and we still have this now for our final version. In our second version for the board, we wanted to make sure the nails would stay nailed into the board because with our first version they kept on falling off. We then decided to get wood and make that our board. For the character pieces for the first version, we just put a sticker on the back and poked a hole in it so that it can stay on the nail. Now for our final version, we drilled a hole in it and put an eyelet in it. The whole board has 500 nails put in it. We wanted to use more because we thought that our first board had too many blank spaces in it. Our first version had around 300. Overall I think that every version we made and new things we added or took away for our game made it better.

I really enjoyed putting together this game with my group. My biggest contribution was helping with thinking part of the idea of what the game will be. I also nailed in the 500 nails for the wooden board; in total that took around 3 hours to put all 500 nails in that wooden board. I also created and partly designed the cards that were used for our game. For our cards, we made a back it is a drawing of a white mountain. What I am most proud of is creating the back for our cards. I am proud that I created that because it took forever and I think it looks cool and it fist just right with our game. It took a while to create but it was worth it. What I could have improved on more are the character pieces. They are a little bland but they are still an important piece in our game. In all, I think that our game wrapped up pretty well. Our group worked really well together because we enjoyed each other’s company and worked equally on the work for the game. I really helped the group focus on the task at hand, and that really helped in the long run. That everyone had a part in our group for doing different tasks. I mostly did tasks that were at my skill level. In all, we all worked on the game equally and I had fun building and designing the game with my group.

How Bad Is An Outbreak Of HIV/AIDS

This course was called Disease which is a STEAM the unit was called World. In this unit, we learned about R-Naught and how a disease can spread. We also learned about the categorizing of an outbreaking disease. For this AP, we had to find a disease and do research about it and make a Newspaper about it. What I had fun when doing this project was making the newspaper. what I had trouble with was finding what the R-Naught and other research items. I overcome that by asking for help and doing more research. Overall I thought this project was fun to make.

                        

   Fodey, Newspaper,(2017).                                             Blogger, Map,(October, 10, 2015) .

My disease that I am researching is HIV/AIDS. I found an outbreak in Africa in 1990s-2000s. “1990 Jonathan Mann resigned as the head of the WHO AIDS programmed, to protest against the failure of the UN and governments worldwide to respond adequately to the exploding pandemic, and to protest against the actions of the then WHO director-general Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima. During Jonathan Mann's leadership, the AIDS programmed became the largest single programmed in the organization’s history.”

HIV symptoms include fever, sore throat, and fatigue can occur. AIDS symptoms include weight loss, fever or night sweats, fatigue, and recurrent infections. The R-Naught is 2-5. It means 2-5 of new cases from one person. Two risk factors are having unprotected sex and having another STD.

91% of HIV cases in Africa are caused by sexual transmission and virtually all is heterosexual. “So says the World Health Organization, with other agencies toeing the line. Some massive condom airdrops accompanied by a persuasive propaganda campaign would practically make the epidemic vanish overnight. Or would it?” In Africa, the HIV outbreak is epidemic because epidemic means, “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.” In Africa, there are a lot of communities that have HIV/AIDS. “69% live in sub-Saharan Africa. There are roughly 23.8 million infected persons in all of Africa. 91% of the world's HIV-positive children live in Africa.”

There is no Vaccine for HIV yet but here is an Evaluation of: Liu J, O’Brien KL, Lynch DM et al.: Immune control of an SIV challenge by a T-cell-based vaccine in rhesus monkeys. Nature 457(7225), 87–91 (2009), of it. It says that we don’t have a vaccine but what you can do is have safer sex. For the decline of HIV, it was nearly declined over 20% overall during the past decade. Is happened because people had safer sex.

Here is a list of things to avoid a future outbreak of HIV/AIDS:

1. Use a new condom every time you have sex:

2. Consider the drug Truvada:

3. Tell your sexual partners if you have HIV:

4. Use a clean needle:

5. If you're pregnant, get medical care right away:

6. Consider male circumcision:

Work Cited 

"A Timeline of HIV/AIDS." AIDS.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

"Can the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in New York City be Stopped?" Can the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in New York City be Stopped? N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

Devarajan, Shanta “What caused the HIV epidemic in Africa?” 27 Jan. 2011, Web.

Fumento, M. Michael Fumento: Why is HIV so prevalent in Africa? Retrieved February 24, 2017.

ΚΟΣΜΟ, ΝΕΚΡΟΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΟΝ, and Προβολή πλήρους προφίλ. The history of AIDS in Africa. Oct. 1980. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

sahoboss. HIV/aids in South Africa. 20 May 2011. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

"Symptoms of HIV." AIDS.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

"Timeline: AIDS moments to remember." CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

Pizza Meals

This is my Last Action Project for my last term, Food For Thought. In this course we are studying about how to review foods. For this Action Project we had to choose a food to get at a restaurant and a home meal. We had to research a lot about our food. We had to find the food, review it and say what we smelled, tasted and felt about the food.  We also had to take a picture of our foods. The thing that I am most proud of is making the whole project. Something that was hard for me was reviewing it.  Please learn more about the project down below.

AA, Food Meals,(2016)

People either hate or enjoy pizza. Since I love pizza it will be my homemade meal. I will prepare a medium sized pizza. In these couple of paragraphs I will share my notes. The pizza looks like a square of meat with bread around it. It looks green and big. When you look at the pizza you can see steam coming from it. The pizza also looks outstanding. The pizza smells like green peppers and onions. When I took the pizza out of the oven it smelled earthy which reminds me of the outdoors. As for the feeling of the pizza it is hard and harsh.  When you feel it, it also feels warm and humid like a warm fire. The pizza bubbles so it sounds like birds pecking in the summertime and maybe like the breeze in the morning. When I eat the pizza is crunch and chewy at the same time.  It also tastes lemony. The dish I made appears fresh and organic to me. I know this because when it came out of the oven I had that feeling of perfection that I had just made a wonderful pizza. Six adjectives I would describe this meal are good, juicy, great, homemade, hot, tasty, Italian. The ingredients are: Mild Italian sausage, pizza sauce, mushrooms, onions, green peppers, green olives, black olives, Romano cheese, Mozzarella cheese, and hot roll mix. You can get all of these ingredients at Mariano’s. Overall this meal was very delicious and when I finished it I were full.

To compare my homemade dish with that of a professional, I wandered out to the Chicago Domino's pizza restaurant. The pizza looks like meat with sauce on it. It also looks like an angel coming down from heaven. It smells like the beach in the summer. It smells like flowers on a summer's day. The pizza feels like a smooth ground. It feels like a hot pot. It sounds like a stove pan sizzling. It sounds like the trees in the summer. When I eat the pizza it sounds like a wood being thrown in a fire. The pizza taste sweet, like very sweet. It also taste lemony sometimes. Six words to describe this meal are creamy, crispy, wholesome, lumpy, fine and saucy.

The dish that I preferred was the homemade meal. It had a more unique taste because I added more ingredients to it. Although the restaurant meal was delightful, it was much too crunchy. I thought that the homemade meal had a more preferable smell to it like real organic onions, pepper and sausage. The texture for the homemade meal was more tangible. When you touch it you can feel the warmth of it like a warm fire burning and the dough was crisp outside and soft inside. Over all the homemade meal looked more perfect. In the end, the homemade meal also sounded better. When you bit down on it you could just hear it sizzle. I would recommend the homemade meal, because overall it tasted, sounded, felt and looked superior. I would also recommend it because you could taste every ingredient in it. It tasted crunchy and smooth at the same time. The homemade meal was also quite a bit heavier, so after 10 or 15 bites I was full. Overall the homemade meal can have more foods within it so that means it might taste more perfect than each ingredient was originally. It can also be stored more easily than the restaurant meal.

One of Pollan’s five food transformations is called ‘from quality to quantity.’ This relates to my homemade meal for three reasons. The 1st is the quality of the meat is important. The 2nd, the quantity is huge-there are two pounds of hot Italian sausage in the meal. Lastly, pizza is a big meal because a whole group of people can eat it and enjoy sharing this together. Pollan’s 5 food transformations ‘quality to quantity’ is related to the restaurant meal for three reasons. The 1st one is that it does have a little quality from how it is packaged and sent to the person who ordered it. The 2nd one is the quantity of it is big. For the 3rd and final one this meal is big enough to feed ten people at a party since there are two boxes. Overall, both of the meals can be understood through Pollan’s 5 food transformations because they both can speak to quality to quantity.

In conclusion both of these meals are good in quantity but overall the homemade meal is the greater one out of both of the two meals because it was far superior in quality.

Growth Population

This is my second Action Project for my last term, Food For Thought. In this course we are studying in this unit is to see what a global food system looks like, and to understand the human and environmental impacts of this system. For this Action Project we had to choose a global issue that is happening in the world. We had to research a lot about our our issue and how to learn more about it. We had to find way to fix that issue and named three ways we could do that. We also had to find a way to address that issue that we are learning about. The thing that I am most proud of is making the whole project. Something that was hard for me was recording the project. Since I had to record something I made many mistakes but it all ended well. Please learn more about the project down below.

 

How many people can the earth hold? There are about 7.125 billion people living on Earth right now. Many Scientists think that the Earth can hold up 10 billion people. According to Live Scientist: “So 10 billion people is the uppermost population limit where food is concerned. Because it's extremely unlikely that everyone will agree to stop eating meat, Wilson thinks the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth based on food resources will most likely fall short of 10 billion.” My position is that I think too many people are being born in the world and soon the earth won’t have any more room for more people. One of the reasons why we have so many people here today is because many years ago people died much younger due to disease and lack of proper nutrition. Life expectancy was very short. Now people are much safer and healthier than they were before with food security. My solution is that we need to colonize other planets. In 2027 nine people will go to Mars and start a community. That community and others like it will have to grow dramatically. The development of food systems can be traced back to the origins of the production of food surpluses. These surpluses enabled the development of settled areas and we can use this on Mars.

We may have to have more than one earth by the rate humans are growing. “One possibility they consider is that future world fertility rates will remain what they were in 1990. The consequences of this, with accompanying small declines in death rates, are startling. By 2025, the world would have 11 billion people, double its number today. Another doubling would take only a bit more than 25 years, as the fastest- growing segments of the population become a larger proportion of the total. By 2150 there would be 694,213,000,000 of us, a little over 125 times our present population.” This is a global issue because in the next 9 years the world population would be more than 11 million more than the earth can hold. This means soon there would have to be more than one earth.

Many civilizations had a growth problem but each one had a different way of fixing it. According to BBC News: China had a one-child rule. If they had a girl, sometimes the girl was killed or abandoned in order to get a boy. Other countries use ultrasound to abort girls and have boys. This is causing a population imbalance with too many men in some countries and not enough women. That may lower the birthrate. The earth had less people before because there were a lot more diseases like the Black Plague. After the Black Plague a lot of the people were dead and the food was bad. The Black Death it was caused by Yersinia pestis bacterium. The Black Plague first exploded in Europe between 1347 and 1351. According to Empires Of Food: “It’s likely that 10 percent of Europeans starved to death around the year 1316.63 Worse carnage lay ahead. In October 1347, a mere generation after the famine, the bubonic plague hatched in Sicily.” The estimated number of deaths was 75 million people. After that it got better since they made food better and finds ways for people not to get diseases. Now people are still dying from some diseases but less than it was before. What we can learn from history is that advances in food and health change the birth rate. Now we have cures that can help us with some a disease. According to the Empires Of Food book: “By growing and storing food surpluses, the monasteries became business, cultural, and financial centers, as well as dietary hubs. Monks were such noted businessmen that one medieval writer observed that, around one monastery, the River Seine was a channel for vessels that trade in many goods. Abbots signed trade agreements with other abbots. The monks at St. Denis, for example, had a long-term arrangement to buy salt, wine, and oil from their colleagues in Marseille.” What this quote means is that the monks fixed the food that caused so many deaths. They used that to preserve food and made it better to make the food healthier.

A couple of ways I have so we can reduce the population growth is Even some people will inhabit Mars that is only 9 people out of 7 billion people that won’t do anything to help the population be smaller. We need population control. Supplied can be sent to Mars for the people and more people can stay on Mars and other planets. People could try and make a rocket or something that can travel to Mars and back to earth more easily and faster. A last way to reduce the population growth is to have everyone educated or to focus on having every young person educated. Three ways to address the population growth is “provide universal access to safe and effective contraceptive options for both sexes.” “Guarantee education through secondary school for all, especially girls.” “Integrate lessons on population, environment, and development into school curricula at multiple levels.” People will say it will be expensive to educate and it will take too long to give the supplies to Mars. Yes it will be expensive but we could create robots to help us. We could also find away to make it shorter for the time to get to Mars. In the meantime people need to have less children.

Soon there would have to be two earths in order to withstand the population growth. “One possibility they consider is that future world fertility rates will remain what they were in 1990. The consequences of this, with accompanying small declines in death rates, are startling. By 2025, the world would have 11 billion people, double its number today. Another doubling would take only a bit more than 25 years, as the fastest- growing segments of the population become a larger proportion of the total. By 2150 there would be 694,213,000,000 of us, a little over 125 times our present population.” My recommendation to achieve slowing population growth and finding new planets we must make it's a priority. My last thoughts are that we need hope for our earth because of how the population is growing. If we keep on making more and more people be born on earth the world might die of hunger and diseases.

WORKS CITED

Abhiprerna, Abhiprerna Smit. "10 Effective Ways to Control Population - List Crux." ListCrux. 31 Jan. 2016. Web. 02 May 2016.

Bryan Bryan. "Civilization and Economic Growth." Civilization and Economic Growth. Web. 02 May 2016.

"China to End One-child Policy and Allow Two." BBC News. NA, 29 Oct. 2015. Web. 10 May 2016.

Cohen, Joel E. "June 2016." Discover Magazine. Web. 02 May 2016.

"Food Systems." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 10 May 2016.

Fraser, Evan D.G., Andrew, Rimas “Empires Of Food." Arrow, 2011. Print.

"Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion." Worldwatch Institute. 11 July 20012. Web. 02 May 2016.

TechMediaNetwork, 2011. Web. 02 May 2016. 

Wolchover, Natalie. "How Many People Can Earth Support?” LiveScience.

A Rooftop Garden Delight

In the STEAM course "Food" we are learning about planting food/crops and plants. We also learned about the mathematics of planting plants and the science behind it. We learned about a farmer named Mr. Fukuoka who uses new ways to plant plants in a way that is better for the environment. I chose to plant my garden on the roof of my building. I will begin planting some vegetables and flowering plants in the garden. I like how the end results of my garden turned out. I also like the plants that I chose for the garden. What I am proud of is my garden overall and the illustration for my garden. The two things that I could have done better would be to choose some better ways to plant the plants in the garden and I could have made my drawing more specific.

My garden will be located on the roof of my building. I put it there because it is sunny, it is big, and small animals like rabbits and squirrels won't eat my plants. I will have to make sure that the wind doesn't destroy the garden or blow away the plants. I will be constructing a top over it so the wind won’t ruin it, but so it still gets sunlight.

I learned that plants need three main things from the soil to stay alive: Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), and Nitrogen (N). My volume is H16 in x W60 in x L84 in = 80,640 cubic in or 47 cubic feet. My garden will have soil in 10 squares surrounded by water. Instead of going on the roof every day I will go once a week because my water system will keep the plants moist over a longer time. I would find a way to keep the water in the garden without it coming out, probably some kind of plastic sheet lining. The plants for my garden are called mutualism because they all work together without one plant taking chemicals away from another plant.

AA Garden (2016)

The materials I will use for my garden will be seeds for vegetables and seeds for flowering plants. I also will need some soil, wood for the base and bed. I will need nails and a hammer to put the wood together. I will need water to feed the plants, and some clear plastic panels to block the wind. I also will have to find a waterproof material to keep the water in its holding area. I will line the area where the water will be with thick plastic sheeting so the water won't seep through the wood and ruin the garden.

My sample soil pH was a 7.9. I needed it to be lower, around 6.7 to 6.4. Therefore I will need to add organic matter to the soil to lower the pH level. The Potassium was only 200 parts per million. I will need to put Sulfate of Potash which is 1/2 per 100 square feet for the quantity. After that my soil should be good because I don’t need to add anything for Nitrogen and Phosphorus. Both at their current levels.

My Potassium calculations are:

35 square feet

0.5/100 = x/35

0.5 x 35 = 100x         

x=0.175 pounds of sulfate of potash

Test	Result	Parts per Million Equivalency Chart
pH	7.9	----
Phosphorus (P)	P3	50
Potassium (K)	K1	200
Nitrogen (N)	N4	80

Nutrient	Product	Quantity
Nitrogen	0	0
Phosphorus	0	0
Potassium	Sulfate of Potash	½ per 100 square feet

The plants I chose were basil, borage, dill, marigolds, mint, nasturtium, onion, oregano, radish and sunflower. The onion is the nitrogen fixer out of all the 10 plants listed here. Onion’s companions are basil, borage, dill, marigolds, nasturtium, oregano, radish, mint and sunflower.

What I learned from this project was that everything needs to be thought out in advance. You need to know a lot about the properties and the nutritional needs of plants in order to make the correct plant selection. You need know how to change your soil if you don’t have good soil. You need to know about pH level and how it works. You will also need to know about volume and how to calculate it.

The volumes for the three containers I chose to put my plants in are: Plastic milk jug V=H8in x W4in x L4in = 128 cubic inches; Water bottle V= 3.14 x 3^2 x 6 = 169.56 cubic inches; Plastic box V= H8in x W10in x L14in = 1120 cubic inches.

In conclusion my garden will have ten plants in it. I will only need to water them once a week. I won’t have to buy many vegetables at the store because I am growing them in my garden. The soil I have now is pretty good, but I will have to improve it slightly. This will be fun to make at home.

WORK CITED:

"Companion Planting Guide - Growing Tips Article at Burpee.com." Companion Planting Guide - Growing Tips Article at Burpee.com. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

"Cubic Feet To Cubic Inches Conversion." How Many Cubic Inches in a Cubic Foot? Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

"Top Ten Companion Plants." Porchside Gardening For Food and Fun. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

Pollution Action Plan

     This is my third Action Project for my third term course, Fuel. In this course we learned how to balance chemical equations, and discussed pollution. For this Action Project we had to do three action plans to help not pollute the air and we had to see what pollution is and how it gets into our atmosphere. We also had to make a diagram, and make it look like a paper. The thing that I am most proud of is making the diagram and making the paper. Something that was hard for me was finding the equation. Please learn more about the project down below.