Science Software Applications

For students and young children interested in Science topics, but uninterested in science classes, a variety of science software games or applications can be useful in gaining or improving interest. Many of these games or applications can be purchased by the general public, by parents, or by teachers. They address anything from interactive encyclopedias to virtual trips to the zoo.

One software application that can help students or children become interested in science topics is encyclopedia software. These applications contain as much information as a printed encyclopedia; however, it also includes interactive material and videos that allow students to review information in full color and detail as well as watch live examples of the topic to engage interest and improve attention.

Another example of science software applications are software that allows students to participate in virtual science experiments, complete virtual dissections of animals, and explore the human anatomy. These applications encourage students to interact with the material as well as provide opportunities to complete the experiments multiple times. This encourages students to participate and explore outcomes as well as give them opportunities to understand how changes in the experiment or dissection change results or affect the overall experiment.

Yet another type of science software application includes games for younger children that encourage them to explore science topics such as whether, animals, different environments, and natural phenomena such as volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidal waves.

Science educational software programs can provide a variety of avenues for increasing student or children’s interest in science topics and science classes. Additionally, these programs can encourage students to explore topics on their own, outside of the classroom. Since many are available for purchase on the internet, then students, parents, or teachers can acquire them. This access can improve student’s interaction in science subjects outside of classrooms. Overall, these programs are a wonderful way to encourage students interest and understanding in science.

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Science related careers

How many times have you said or hear your child say, When am I ever going to need this. Many students face this same question day in and day out. For those students who are not interested in science, providing them with some real life examples of industries that use science skills may be helpful. Students always benefit from making connections to their personal lives, interests, goals, and experiences.

So what kinds of careers require science knowledge, which students many not think of?
Several career fields use scientific information. Among these may be a few that students do not think about or that they only know some aspect of. Examples include zoologist, nutritionist, environmental scientist, physical therapist, pharmacist, and marine biologist.

Zoologists and marine biologists study different types of animals and require extensive knowledge about biology. Nutritionist help patients develop nutritional diet plans and have to have extensive knowledge about human biology as well as chemistry to help determine what types of foods a person can eat and how foods interact with each.

Environmental scientists are another set professionals that have to know about several fields of science. These scientists have to have knowledge about biology, chemistry, and botany to understand how different factors impact the environment.

Finally two other options include physical therapists and pharmacists. Physical therapists require knowledge in anatomy to understand body parts as well as physiology to understand body movements. These sciences help the physical therapist determine the best treatment options for patients who are injured.

Pharmacists have to have knowledge of chemistry and anatomy to understand dosage requirements for patient prescriptions as well as possible side effects or medication interactions.

A variety of fields and jobs require some basic knowledge or use of science concepts. Helping students make these connections can improve their interest or participation in the classroom.

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What you need to know about Science Fair Projects

Science fair projects can be interesting and fun for students. They can increase interest in science topics and teach students about systematically approaching problems and challenges. However, a student’s first science fair project can be a bit overwhelming for both the student and the parents. A few tips should be considered when approaching a science fair project in an effort to make the experience more enjoyable and interesting throughout.

The first consideration should be choosing an appropriate topic. Help your child select a topic or experiment that will hold their interest for several months, that fits with the type of learning style your child prefers, and that is appropriate for their developmental level. These tips will help the student stay focused, reduce frustration, maintain interest, and ensure success.

Another tip is to ensure that the student has all the rules and guidelines for what needs to be included in the project. Often science fair projects require record journals, presentations of the project, and require that all six steps of the scientific method be included in the project. So make sure your student knows all the requirements and guidelines.

A third tip would be to find out or research what judges look for when judging science fair projects. Student should know and understand the judging criteria. Furthermore, parents can review the criteria and ask students to explain or demonstrate how they met each requirement. This aids the student in understanding the process, improving critical thinking skills, and self-reflection skills.

Finally, encourage students to create a timeline for their project and help them adhere to the timeline. This will ensure students complete the project, stay focused and reduce frustration.

Science fair projects can be a great way to encourage interest in science and provide an opportunity for parents to be involved with the student’s education. Using these few tips can help make the experience fun, enjoyable, and rewarding for all.

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Lousy Lice

Imagine you see the hottest new blockbuster on opening night. You are amazed at the action scene, cry when the main characters fall in love and applaud when the day is eventually saved. You walk out of the theater talking about how the great the movie was with your companion and at first you don’t notice how itchy your head is. You have no idea that while you were enjoying the cinematography, little white bugs were finding a new home, your head.

Lice is a common problem with people and is usually transferred via a hair brush or other hair utensils that are shared. They can be transferred using someone’s towel or hat. You can get lice many different ways, but there are many myths about the dreaded head vermin. For example, lice are not attractive to a dirty head over a clean head. The truth is they would rather find a clean head to crawl onto because they can attach to the skin better. And they do crawl; they don’t hop or fly like other insects their size. So, whether or not you get lice has nothing to do with your hygiene and it has nothing to do with your ethnicity, age or social status. It does not matter which combination of these things you are, your head is just as attractive to lice as the next.

If you find the white critters in your hair, think about where and who you have been with the last twenty-four hours. They bugs only live a specific amount of time not on someone’s head, so more than likely you contracted the companions the day before. If you did, you do not need to quarantine yourself inside your house, but head down to the pharmacy and get one of the many products created to get rid of the annoyances and know that you did nothing specific to be one of the many people who get lice.

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Breastfeeding is Good for Everyone Involved

Whether you do it in public or behind closed doors, you cover yourself or go full frontal or decide not to do it at all, breastfeeding has health benefits for everyone involved. Everyone knows that breastfeeding your child passes on immunities, helps the baby bond with its mother, and provides your baby with all the nutrients it needs. There are many benefits for the mother too like losing weight and there is evidence to prove that breastfeeding is linked to lower probability of breast cancer in the mother and the female baby.

According to a study posted online by the New York Times, the lower number of women with breast cancer who breastfed specifically targets those who have breast cancer in their families. The study included over 60,000 participants but will continue to further prove their findings. A study quoted by Dr. Jay Gordon shows if you are breastfed as a child, you are 20-35% less likely to develop breast cancer in adult life, specifically post menopausal. This study is just proof that feeding your baby is a substantial way to take care of yourself as well as your baby.

Breastfeeding also burns up to 600 calories a day. This can be a diet all by itself, but would of course be further helped with diet and exercise. Sitting in a chair, bonding with your baby, giving it the nutrition you know it needs and be able to burn calories to lose that baby weight really seems like the ideal situation for mother and baby. The breastfeeding also sends a hormone through your body to hasten the shrinking of you uterus and the hip bones.

It is up to the mother and the family whether or not breastfeeding suits your lifestyle or not, but losing weight quicker and a chance to not have specific types of cancer sound like positive things to consider when making your choice.

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Chronesthesia

Audrey Niffenegger was on to something when she wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife. A man who is plagued by a specific incident and keeps going back to it when he is troubled. The concept is called Chronesthesia and it involves mental time travel. More accurately in reality this ability involves being able to the future and do this to a point where it actually has an effect. Most people can remember the past and understand the future, but those with Chronesthesia can be acutely aware of the future.

According to the findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there are two sets of independent processes that facilitate the travel. The first process is figuring out and remembering the specific event you keep thinking about. This can be any number of things and can involve many people. The second process is figuring out what part of time that event falls in; past, present or future. The main question the researchers are asking is “how do you know [any event] happened at a time other than now?”

While conducting studies, the researchers found that specific and consistently similar parts of the brain were used while remembering real and imagined events from the past and imagine events from the future. From their findings they were able to come up with a solid definition for Chronesthesia and in the study they define it as ” a form of consciousness that allows people to think about this subjective time and to mentally travel in it.”

The ability to think about a specific time in the future and being able to experience it is ground-breaking research. Being able to be at your children’s birth or their graduation before it happens. There are many different uses for this research and finding and to think such radical findings are reality and just a work of fiction.

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High Flouride = Low IQ

Parents start worrying from conception about how to best take care of their children and how to supplement their regular diet to make them as healthy as possible. There has always been a debate over water to use for your child and levels of fluoride. Some toothpastes even market their product as ‘fluoride free’ and safe to swallow using the coattails of that disagreement to sell their products.

Fluoride is, on average, added to 70% of all public drinking water and a study published in Environment Health Perspectives says that there seems to be a link between levels of fluoride in water and the link to lower IQs among children ages 8-13. According to Paul Connett, Ph.D. “This is the 24th study that has found this association.” This last study was monitored very closely and certain variable such as lead and iodine levels were watched very closely so they could not be considered to have an impact on the fluoride effects. The education options were also very similar.

Two cities in China were the subjects of the study. One city had high levels of fluoride, almost twice the allowable amount, and the other city had less than a third of the proper amount. The high fluoride city had only 8% of children considered to be bright and 15% considered to be mentally retarded. In contrast, the low fluoride city had 28% of students who tested to be bright and only 6% who were considered mentally retarded.

This link shows correlation and not causation, but with the findings in this twenty fourth study, the scientist have a more solid foundation to move forward on to show an actual causation relationship between fluoride levels and IQ levels. Many fluoridation tests have been run in most countries, but, Connett says that “no work has been done in the U.S.”

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Denisovans

Neanderthal, Cave Man, Human and now Denisovans. Which of these things is not like the other? That is a trick question because based on recent findings, they are all closely related species. Scientists found a finger bone and a tooth in a cave in Southern Siberia. The bone was said to belong to a female. When the tests started on the bones, the female was called woman-X. The bone was found by Russian archeologists in 2008 and since then has had many tests run on it. They have extracted enough of the DNA to produce a genome. This genome supports the theory that the Denisovans were a sister species to the Neanderthals. It also supports and independence and split of the DNA between Humans and Denisovans.

After comparing the Denisovan’s genome to that of a Neanderthal, the scientists realized that the Denisovans could have been as spread out as all over Asia. They were not only inhabitants of Siberia. After further analysis, scientist found that the Denisovans have a very close genetic make-up with the people of Melanesia. Although current day Melanesians are a mix of many different ethnicities, mainly because of many people who migrated there via the waterway.

The actual origin of the Denisovans is being debated and researched currently by scientists. There is speculation that the Denisovans were related to the Neanderthals, but split from them when they entered a new continent. Some other speculations is that they met with the Neanderthals and mated with them. Even though their origin in relations to the site where the fossils were found is hot topic, it is of course secondary to the fact that another Human species exists. With this new discovery, scientists will move forward and continue to investigate whether or not there exists more species of human-related beings.

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Science Mystery

Science has solved many of the riddles and mysteries in life and the world we know. However, scientists have yet to answer what could be the greatest question of all – where did the Antikythera Mechanism come from?

The Antikythera Mechanism is an artifact discovered by sponge fisherman in 1901 off the coast of Greece, near a small island called Antikythera, located near Crete. It was found inside the remains of a Roman cargo ship and is made of bronze. Science has been able to estimate the age of the device to approximately the time of 100AD.

The mechanism is a series of gears and armatures apparently used to track star movements and other astronomical phenomenon. In all, 82 fragments were discovered including the main gear box. The question science must answer is how did this device come to exist nearly 1500 years before modern western artisans were able to create anything similar? Some scientists feel the discovery is similar to finding an F-16 jet in an Egyptian pyramid, setting off numerous debates and arguments over the technological capability of ancient artisans and inventors.

Despite x-ray images and advanced imaging techniques used to look inside the corroded remains, science is still baffled by the amazing accuracy and intricacy of the wheels, inscriptions and mechanisms which functioned with such apparent precision that it could allow for the actual speed of the moon as it orbits the earth. Due to its elliptical orbit, the Moon accelerates and decelerates as it circles the earth and the Antikythera Mechanism allows for this variance. The ability to measure the speed of the moon as it transits its orbit was not available until the Renaissance period in Western Europe.

Science has yet to produce an adequate explanation of this discovery and its presence in the world during times of less-capable engineering. Man had been tracking the movements of the visible stars for centuries prior to the construction of the mechanism, however, this device brings into focus the larger question of what other devices and technology ancient man was able to conceive and construct during this same period.

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Stem Cell Origins

Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatm...
Image via Wikipedia

Even though this hot button topic seems to have fallen into the shadows, it is still a viable scientific method. A stem cell can be put into any foreign group of cells and attach itself to the area. A stem cell can be put in a cancer patient to rebuild an organ which has been killed off by chemotherapy treatments. Stem cells can also be used to regenerate any organ in the body which has been damaged.

The three main places to find stem cells are in adults, umbilical cords and embryos. To obtain cells from an adult donor, a doctor will extract them from the bone marrow. This is a painful procedure, but if the actual patient has healthy ones left after whatever necessitates the transfer of the cells, this is the best option. This will ensure the body will take the transfer since it is from the same immune system.

Another option to receive stems cells from is the umbilical cord. There have been movies that deal with this issue, such as My Sister’s Keeper, where the umbilical cord of children is stored to be harvested for cells at a time that may be necessary down the road. The umbilical cord can be donated to science for a fee or kept for your family for just in case situations.

The most controversial source of stem cells is the embryo. In this instance, the cells are extracted when the embryo is still technically considered a blastocyst, which is before the cells start to split and differentiate. The controversy lies in the fact that a blastocyst who has stem cells extracted from it, is then destroyed by the procedure. This is usually done when a woman makes the choice to abort a fetus and allows the stem cells to be taken and used.

This is all to say that knowledge is power and there is truth and honesty even in the largest controversy.

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