Eye Color Explained

People think that know they know about the inheritance of their eye color. Brown eyes are dominant and blue eyes are recessive, but Rick Sturm suggests that something else is going on. Rick Sturm says, "There is no single gene for eye color, but the biggest effect is the OCA2 gene." The OCA2 gene controls the amount of melanin pigment produced in the body. The gene is about 74 percent of the total variation in people's eye color. This gene has also been linked to three nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs) which Sturm found after gene-typing 3000 people. This theory suggests a new look beyond the brown/dominant and blue/recessive. David Duffy,one of Sturm's colleagues gives an example of why there is more to eye color, "For example, among individuals carrying the SNP sequence “TGT” at all three locations on both copies of the gene, 62 percent were blue-eyed.” Also found was that when people were tested who only carried one "TGT" copy, only 21 percent of them had blue eyes. When people with didn't carry any copy of a "TGT", only 7.5 percent of them had blue eyes.

Its strange to know that scientists are still elaborating on theories everyone thought were very concrete. Every day scientists are coming up with more and more discoveries and I predict that soon we will find out that we were totally wrong on a theory. Just like we once thought the world was flat, but later found out we were wrong.

Healing Power of Honey

"The Healing Power of Honey" is about how a certain type of honey that can heal ulcers that refuse to heal. For diabetics a cut on the foot can lead to an ulcer that will fester for months. One diabetic, who instead of receiving a skin graft on her foot where the ulcer was, treated her ulcer with a honey-infused bandage and after a month the foot ulcer was gone. More and more scientists are willing to give honey a try because a lot of bacteria becomes increasingly immune to conventional antibiotics.
Honey can affect the way doctor’s deal with patient’s wounds. Honey could become an easy way out of a nasty looking ulcer so you don’t have to have an operation. This is definitely a change for the better because it provides us with an easier way to heal certain wounds without going through such an extensive process. Honey could very likely become a new medical practice.

Rape

This week in health we watched a movie called "Freshman Fall." Its about a girl who starts her freshman year at college and gets raped on the first party of the year. She had no idea it was coming and was afraid of everything after it happened. The girl in the movie didn't tell anyone for awhile because she thought it would make people think less of her. But what she didn't realize until later was that it wasn't her fault. In this article about rape, it talks about how most rapes victims know the person that raped them. Most people aren't expecting it at all and thats the scary part. You never know when people have a hidden agenda to hurt you. Its really important that if you do get raped to tell someone about it and not face the situation alone. After you are raped don't take a shower because the physical specimen can provide evidence if you do press charges. The most important thing is don't blame yourself. It will give the rapist more power over you and won't help your healing.

"Each Grain of Sand a Tiny Work of Art"

I never thought much of sand but then i came across an article called, "Each Grain of Sand A tiny Work of Art." The title of the article is true, if you look under the microscope at sand they have amazing patterns, shapes, and colors. And depending on the environment the sand is in, it has different shapes, patterns, and colors. All the pictures in the article show different places with different sand. No one would ever except sand to look like anything but a dull little grain, but the pictures prove them wrong. Besides just looking cool, sand can be composed of things to display the history of the local area. For example, eroded mountains, volcanic explosions, dead organisms, and degraded man-made structures. There is so much more to sand that people don't know about. I know most people don't ever give it a second thought when they are walking on the beach or watching the sand glide through their hands. Next time your at the beach, just think of all the little pieces of art you are stepping on.

Setting Limits for Teens

I just read an article about setting limits for teens. This article talks about how deep down teenagers actually want limits, instead of being free to do whatever they want, whenever they want. It makes teens feel like they have some kind of parental protection and that they are cared about by their parents. I have never really thought about this before, but I guess it's true for me. If my parents didn't care if hung out with the wrong group of friends or had flunking grades, then I would feel like they don't care about me. By setting limits my parents are showing me that care enough about to me stop me from making bad decisions. Also, they are doing me a favor to avoid future trouble and failure.

But at the same time parents can't have too many limits, they have to give their teens some choices. That way teens will be more likely to obey the limits their parents set. If my parents had an insane amount of rules, I definitely would have more of a tendency to break them, then if they didn't have as many. For example, if I had a friend my parents really didn't like and they were consistently telling me they hate her and don't want me to have any contact with her, then I would probably hang out with her more. If my parents would've said I don't think you should be hanging out with this person, she could have a negative effect on you, then I would have probably realized it myself and after awhile the friendship would die out on its own. But my parents strictly forbidding the friendship would make me want to keep being friends with her because my parents are so strongly against it.

Parents should find an equal balance between having too many limits and not enough. That way teens can make the best out of their teen years without getting into a lot of unnecessary situations.

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