Is salt even safe to cook with? Scientists have recently discovered micro-plastics in salt that has been sold in supermarkets all across China. They have found even larger amounts of plastic bits in sea salt and shellfish.

In 2011, clothes made of nylon showed scientists that pieces of plastic were shedding off of the clothes. When these clothes went in the washer machine the little pieces of plastic were rinsed off in the water and flushed back down in to the  ocean. This causes the pieces of plastic to not only contaminate the water but the marine life as well. There have been cases of even finding plastic in the air.

Lance Yonkos is an aquatic toxologist the University of Maryland. He studies chemicals and the affect they can have with the life of aquatic animals. Yonkos expresses his frustration with the consequences following human activity. He implies that the we now have a challenge to face after trusting the ocean to take care of our waste for years.

Adults are supposed to have around 5 grams of salt each day. However, most people eat more than that. Studies show that with the amount of salt consumed, people on average would be ingesting over 1,000 plastic particles a year. This number would only dramatically increase if you were to include all the salt you would get from Chinese shellfish. Try consuming over 100,000 particles of plastic!

The plastic contamination was most likely from when the salt was mine, milled, or packaged. Unfortunately scientist don’t know exactly were the contamination came from. Not only is consuming plastic not good for you, it can actually be pretty bad. Plastic can absorb other chemicals like hydrocarbons, pesticides and other solvents in to your daily diet. Even though this hasn’t been classified as a big problem, it can’t be ruled out yet. I hope teams continue to research this problem and to find a solution to it. I am not trying to gain weight in Chinese plastic and become a giant action figure!

For years, scientists have been exploring the idea of one day inhabiting (Earth’s neighboring planet) Mars. Throughout the history of our world, humanity has faced many challenges. From natural disasters, over population, and economic issues to destruction caused by humans. To some Mars could be the answers to our problems.

Aside from Earth, Mars is the most studied planet. Since 2004 two robot rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) have been patrolling the surface of Mars. To this day, these rovers are sending communications back to Earth. There have been many different conspiracies of life already existing on Mars. Ideas of using the reddish-brown planet as a back up place to go (in case the apocalypse happens). There are currently 8 active missions on Mars that have potential to answer some of the questions that have been lingering in the thoughts of many people. Eventually humans will have to find somewhere else to live, so why not look to the planet right next door?

There are many reasons leading people to think that human life on mars is possible. The human body is capable of adapting to the temperature and the gravity of Mars. Enough sunlight reaches the surface for humans to use solar energy as resources and there is still a thin atmosphere that offers protection from radiation from the sun. There is also water in the ground that is frozen and could be extracted for human use.

Recent space imagery was received by NASA on Sept. 28, 2015 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The imagery showed that there are downward slopes (on the surface of mars) that was formed by contemporary moving water. There have been other signs of water on Mars before, but this time the conditions could possibly be thought of as more habitable. Even though the water on Mars would have to be pretty salty (to keep it from completely freezing on the cold and desert planet), this is still some helpful evidence towards hypothesis’ that were built on colonizing the planet.

This however, is just another stepping stone in the mission to Mars (for there are so many variables that need to be factored in) and correlation does not equal causation. As of now, there isn’t a way of actually being able to tell if Mars can support human life. With so many elements making it difficult for scientists to study Mars it could be years before we find another piece of evidence but there are many ongoing projects continuously trying to fulfill the questions we have.

With the low costs for a television and cable now, watching TV is now a staple in most people’s home. Due to this young adults are watching too much TV, which is causing them to not exercise enough for a young adult. Recent studies have shown that young adults that watch too much TV are more likely to have worse cognitive function later on in life.

Concerns for the growing sedentary and screen-based lifestyles have lead to a study testing the association between physical activity and cognitive function. The study was based off examining connections between 25-year patterns of television and physical activity to midlife cognition. The study used a questionnaire on 3,247 adults, ranging in ages of 18-30, asking about television viewing and their level of physical activity. They were assessed with repeated visits over the course of 25 years. Now one might wonder what the classification on high TV use is? They defined high TV viewing as watching TV for more than three hours per day for more than two-thirds of their visits. They also measured exercise by the length of the exercise as well as the intensity. In order to test cognitive function, they designed three tests that examined their processing speed, executive function and their verbal memory.

The study showed that people who were classified as high television viewing during those 25 years, 353 of the 3,247, were more likely to score poorly on the cognitive function tests. In regards to the physical activity level of participants, those with low activity levels during the 25 years, 528 of 3,247, were more likely to associate with poor cognitive function. If participants were both high television viewing and low physical activity levels they were almost twice as likely to perform poorly on the cognitive test.

A couple clear limitations are seen from this study though. First its an observational study and correlation is not equal to causation. Also, the study might suffer from a possible selection bias because the TV viewing and physical activity was all self-reported. And who is always 100% honest on those surveys? So the study may have some flaws and you can’t take its results for certain. But the study shows that high TV use and low physical activity increase your chances of having lower cognitive function.

For well over a hundred years police and other law enforcement agencies have been using composite sketch art of criminals for the investigation of crimes. These sketches have been used in many major cases such as: Jack the Ripper, Lindbergh Kidnapping, and D.B. Cooper. The face presents a set of interesting qualities that create a pattern of identifiable features. With a certain attraction to the human face we have researched as long as history has been recorded.

In the last few years several companies and their scientists have created a new world of appearance prediction. They have used DNA to find roots of physical features in the DNA. If we were able to use DNA to predict facial features, law enforcement would have an easier time tracking down criminals. In realtiy the technology is still new and remains a little challenging to work all the time. Facial feature is impacted by hundreds, if not thousands, of genes; each with varying effect on facial feature.

In order to get to this point researchers had to scan thousands of people in order to get an “genetic instruction book”, or genome, to help understand how certain genes affect characteristics. Each person’s genome holds almost 3 billion chemical base pairs, these DNA spell out the persons sex to even the color of their skin. But the scientists were able to slightly change each text, one letter at a time, and predict certain physical features. For example, the research team was able to figure out someone’s eye color by looking at six letters over six different genes. Or if the team wanted to find out the suspects hair color they would focus on 22 different letters. These measures always aren’t certain though, there is the possibility of errors. The team’s predictions are more than 90 percent accurate for eye color and between 80 and 90% accurate for hair color. The team also was able to add skin color to its system and have reported results of around 85% accuracy, about the same as the eye and hair tests.

The data is limited their predictions use the genetic information of about 15,000 people in order to discern sex, ancestry, and facial characteristics. They need more data they say if we want to be able to capture more variation in facial features and characteristics and also to help increase the accuracy of the tests.  A company called Parabon believes its technology for identifying individuals is ready to hit the market. They say investigators can use the images to rule out suspects, such as eliminating suspects with red hair and blue eyes for example. Although this technology is new it could change the way we investigate crimes and even generate images of our ancestors.

When you think of Antarctica, you think of its wide open, white lands. The landscape is barren with little to no vegetation. There are no buildings dotting the landscape, the only thing you see is the wildlife and cold desert of the southern hemisphere. Being on average the coldest and driest continent you would almost imagine it to be one of the few places that isn’t being drastically altered by human activity.

Unfortunately the impact humans have made on the environment have even descended into the windy ice shelf of Antarctica. Antarctica is very important in ground for science on behalf of its clean water, fresh air, and uninhabited lands. This place allows scientists to study the changes in the earth’s environment and the negative impacts that even other scientists could have left there.

As if it wash’t bad enough that trash has that has been put on the ice and is now melting dispersing the waste into the marine environment. The pollution and exhaust that has transpired there has eaten away into the ozone creating a giant hole in the ozone layer above its landmass and has been dwelling there for the past 30 years. This hole was produced through chlorofluorocarbons (also known as CFC’s) chemicals that have been used since the 1930’s through things such a refrigerators and cans of aerosol spray. These CFC’s have polluted the troposphere and has now even leaked as far as the stratosphere where ultraviolet light breaks apart these gasses releasing chlorine (which is the ultimate destroyer of our ozone. The chemicals that have been whisked into the air have become very harmful to the environment and need to continue being monitored.

Global warming is another big impact. In the Maritime Antarctic lakes have shown signs of being the fastest response to regional climate than anywhere else in the world. The climate change is directly effecting the environment in Antarctica making the ice shelves to break off and melt, which starts to deplete the land mass and causes the sea levels to raise (which can really force some issues with low-lying regions all across the globe. Not only is the land being destroyed but all of the life there is as well. Many species originating from Antarctica are now becoming extinct and extra effort has to be spent on preserving the natural habitat.

There needs to be better alternatives for our energy resources.There have been many plans to help change the environment, but not enough action. If something isn’t done to change the contamination (that we humans created in our system) then there could be even greater difficulties for our species to overcome.

Hey my name is Joe Zaccaria, I am from State College, PA and I am attending Penn State to major in Hospitality Management. I love music and football season (even though soccer has always been my favorite sport). I also go through some hard times as a New England Patriots fan but “Free Tom Brady”! My money always gets spent having good times and late nights with friends. I also plan on traveling a lot when I graduate to see a bunch of cool places I’ve never been before.

 picutre I took while “bustin’ hips” for Bassnectar

I am taking this class simply to satisfy my science credits and also because I wanted to take a class with more general topics and not going too in depth in one subject. I also didn’t want to take a class that would require me to buy insanely huge textbooks that I would have to haul around with me all day so I think this class is going to a perfect suit for me and hopefully not too difficult.