POLLUTION

In this post I will talk about a global issue that we are fighting against nowadays. This global issue is about air pollution.

As we live in some villages around Castelló d'Empuries we are not used to see smog hanging over our heads everyday, but if sometimes we have visited some big city we could probably have seen it.

Delhi, the capital territory of India is the most polluted city in the world. This territory is half the size of Rhode Island and is twice more polluted than the entire New York City. To make us aware of what it is like to live in a place with too much pollution, a photographer named Matthieu Paley travelled there and took photos of it.




The main pollutant substance is Carbon dioxide. It is warming the Earth and we are constantly throwing it to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas. Also, in the past 150 years, we have thrown enough Carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to raise levels higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years.

SOLUTIONS FOR THIS PROBLEM:

Industrialized countries have been working against this problem and they are taking measures to limit emissions of Carbon dioxide by making people just drive and fly more and also by recycling more. Also the Paris Agreement, which is a voluntary agreement among 118 nations to try to combat against climate change. As a part of the agreement, each country has to keep the post-industrial global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius. And also they put higher taxes on gasoline so that people will conserve more this energy and pollute less.

My personal opinion about the solution of this problem is that governments should focus more on industrial pollution because they throw many substances to the air that are contaminating the industrialized cities. But also everyone should be more aware of this problem and try to help as much as they can because it is a global issue so it affects everyone. Personaly, we should all use public transport and recycle more because people think that this doesn't help but actually it does. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours and also recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75.000 trees.

Ear cropping and tail docking

Recently the Spanish congress has approved the prohibition of ear cropping and tail docking just for aesthetic reasons. 

The surgery to cut off a dog's tail is usually done with surgical scissors and without anesthesia when they are just a few days old because that's when their tail is still soft. It causes pain to the dog, but it is just a puppy so he is not alert and he won't remember it. 

The surgery to cut off part of a dog's ears is done with anesthesia and with dogs between 6 and 12 years old. 

Tail docking and ear cropping is banned in some parts of the world as Australia or the U.K.

I think that this decision of the Spanish congress is going to be positive, because many people use these technics to just give a look to their dogs. But obviously it is not positive for them. First of all because it causes pain to them and it is not natural. Another reason is because dogs use their tails to communicate emotions like anger or excitement, so if they cut off its tail, he will be less able to interact with other dogs. Also cutting their tail or ears is dangerous for its health because it could cause some problems as a developer of a nerve tumor or a neuroma. 

Although this surgery has been less common in the past years because it has fallen out of fashion and people stopped doing it. But the fact that the Spanish congress has banned it, is finally going to make people stop doing it.

SCIENCE LIMITS AND GLOBAL ISSUES

Science has allowed us to evolve, to learn many new things about the world we live and also to live happily and with an easier life. 

But science has also its limits and its inconvenient. One of these inconvenient is the science has created an inequality all around the world, discriminating the ones who cannot have opportunities to learn about it and to use it from the one who can. 

This inequality is a violation of human rights. Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms inherent to all human beings, from birth to death, no matter what if our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin...

But, as I have said, there are many differences in the world so we don't have the same possibilities in life. Rich people have the opportunity of studying and learning and having a better life with a proper work and house, but there are some humans that don't have the possibility of learning and going to school and some are not allowed. This is a big problem in our society and a violation of human rights, the ones that say that everyone has the right to have access to education. 

Also science violates human rights in some other aspects as the access to technology to have a proper life, the restriction of some scientific private advances, the access to health care...

DESCRIPTION OF A PERSON

In this post I will describe my father.

My father is named Valentí and he turned 50 in September 2016. He works on the construction sector selling materials, but recently he is also working as a farmer which is what he really likes, because he is a very calm person and he enjoys working in the fields.
Physically, he is no very tall, he has black short hair and blue eyes.

Also, he is a very smart person but he wasn't very good with studies when he was young, so that's why he decided to give up and start working on what he liked, with construction machines and trucks.
He is very good at repairing things so every time a familiar has a problem with their car they come home and he solves it. He has learned how cars work all alone by repairing them and seeing how they are built. Recently he has also built a machine from zero, with my cousin's help, for his tractor to facilitate the work. He is a very hard-working person.

He is a very king and humble person. He always helps everyone he can for nothing in return. Every time I have a problem and I am blocked I ask him for advice and he tries to help me trying to find a solution.

He has a sense of humor and he is always laughing and trying to make people laugh. In his free time he likes to spend it with family or just working on something at home, but he doesn't like doing nothing.

SPACE TOURISTS

Two unnamed people have already paid for places in a trip that will take them around the moon, but without landing. So late next year they will fly with SpaceX.

Many people are fascinated about the possibility of being able to travel to space in less than three years, it will be available for everyone who can afford it. But it is expected the cost of the space travel will eventually come down and become something which is affordable to more than only the very wealthy. 

Traveling to the space is not easy, they have warned that that it is a week of hard travel and it could feel like a long time in a small capsule which is for seven people and it will feel small even if just two or three are traveling there.

Also the ones that want to travel to the space have to support a long training programme of two years before they are allowed. Tourist will need to know how to operate key parts of the spacecraft in the case that there is an emergency or issue in communication with the mission control and they will be able to keep themselves and the spacecraft safe. 

YOU CAN READ MORE HERE

MY OPINION: 

I think it is a great idea that they allow citizens to take these amazing trips to the space, but I hope one day the prices are low enough for everyone to travel to the moon and not just the very wealthy.

I will really like to travel to the moon one day because I think that it will be amazing to see the Earth from another perspective, but I don't know if I would be able to support the extreme conditions of the training programme and then the takeoff. Also, I don't think it is enjoyable to be in a very small capsule for a week. 

A RUSSIAN ARCHITECT'S DREAM TO CLEAN AIR

A Russian architect named Alexei Umarov had this idea of a skyscraper that could clean the air pollution, because this situation affects all around the world with the excessive heat, polluted air, metals in the air, excessive levels of carbon dioxide... So he wanted to solve this problem. 

This project is named the HyperFilter skyscraper and it looks like a giant tree that can purify the city's polluted air. The difference between the Umarov's idea and others architects' one is that Umarov's doesn't have any flats or offices on the inside, it's just a giant air filter. 

Many architects liked this idea of using materials and techniques that could remove impurities and clean the air we breathe. Daan Roosegaarde has already created towers in cities like Beijing, which are supposed to filter impurities in the air. But there's no serious evidence that these constructions can reduce pollution levels. Though all architects try to find the way these towers really work. 

His project, the HyperFilter consists of a skeleton, a porous shell and long pipes with filters inside. The air will get sucked through the pipes, cleaned and cooled. The other substances will be separated and accumulated on the lower levels of the building where they will be recycled. 

MY OPINION:

In my opinion  Alexei Umarov's project is a very good idea because polluted air is a real problem nowadays that affects many parts of the world and that dirty the air we breathe every day. 

So if they finally get the perfect techniques that can actually remove all these substances from the air with the perfect material, I think that this would be revolutionary because many cities are trying to fight against this air pollution and many will use these towers. 

HERE YOU CAN READ MORE

SCIENTISTS MAKE MEAT

Scientists from the Netherlands finally discovered how to grow meat in the laboratory. This way we won't have to kill more animals to eat, but there are some problems.



The first problem is the cost of the production. Just a piece of meat costs around $12.500 to make, but because the laboratory has an investor from the meat industry, maybe the first hamburger will be on the market within five years.
Though all it will be expensive and in small production, because it lasts 3 months to grow a hamburger, so it will be just for restaurants and for 12-14 dollars.

The other problem is that people don't like the idea of laboratory products and they prefer the natural products, especially if the laboratory one is also expensive.

The positive part is that with this process, we will never need to kill more animals, because with just some cells from a tissue, that are able to divide into many other cells, can turn into muscle fibres and then create a burger.

But I think that we all just should have a diet with less red meat so we won't have to kill that amount of animals to eat, and also because it is healthier to have a varied diet that includes everything we need.

Here you can watch the process of creating a burger from a cell in the laboratory:

The Physician, NOAH GORDON

The Physician is a novel written by Noah Gordon. It is about a Christian British boy of the 11th-century, who lives in the poorest suburb of London. At the age of nine, Rob Cole, the protagonist, is orphaned, his father dies and then his mother from appendicitis, so he and his many brothers and sisters go to live with different families. 

Rob fears being adopted by a family and becoming a slave, but finally he is taken by a traveling barber-surgeon, whose work is so various, from entertaining people to cure them with natural medicines he creates. So Rob became his assistant. 

From this day Rob discoveres his love for medicine and also his gift, which is the power of knowing if people is going to die just by touching them. So when Rob is old enough to finally leave the barber-surgeon, he becomes also a barber-surgeon. But he wants to take advantage of his gift and learn more about medicine so that he is able to cure everyone, and also the ones who die with the same disease as his mother. 

So after this, he started asking for a physician who could teach him and someone told him about the Persian medical school, the best one, so he decides to travel there at all cost. During this journey he will have to renounce to many things, like his religion, but also he will learn so many things.

MY OPINION: 

The reason why I love this book is because it represents courage, overcoming and that everything is possible if you really want it, because Rob Cole has many problems during his journey and he had to live in poor conditions to get to where he wants. But it never came through his mind to give up and come back home where he had a proper work that gave him enough money to live in very good conditions. Also, I really liked the way Rob wishes to learn and even when he was given the option of having a rich work, he renunced because he wanted to stay next to his teacher and learn even more and also he never forgot the disease that killed his mother and he tries to discover what happened to her. 

NASA discovers new solar system TRAPPIST-1

Astronomers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have announced the discovery of a new solar system that is 39 light years away from Earth.

They have detected seven planets of the size of the Earth, or slightly smaller, orbiting the star of the TRAPPIST-1, and it is believed that they have the qualities needed to support life. 

Three of the planets could also have oceans so it gives a hope to astronomers that someday they will find a second Earth 

The planets of this system are all very close to the star, which is small and cold, and very close to each other so they are similar to see the Moon from the Earth. That's why those planets could have some water and maybe life, because they are template. Their orbits are smaller than the Mercury one.

The star of the TERAPPIST-1 has a temperature of 2550K, and our Sun 5778K.

The observations were made by the Terappist robotic telescope at La Silla, Chile, and now, the NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is searching for atmospheres around the planets. Future telescopes may be powerful enough to detect markers of life, like oxygen. 

This is the Liverpool Telescope they used. It is located on La Palma in Canary Islands where the skies are clear most of the time.

The first planet discovered outside of our Solar System was in 1992 and since then 3577 planets have been found. But just twelve of them are able to maybe support life and just three are as ideal as those they have recently found. Though all, they estimate that there coulf be 40 billion habitable worlds in our galaxy.

Here you can see the TRAPPIST-1 planets compared to 4 of our planets.

If you want to read more information about this new you can click here

MY OPINION: 

For me those new discoveries are very interesting because we all know that out of our solar system, somewhere else, life exists, so every day we get closer to find it with new technologies and new studies. And who knows, maybe one day humans can conquer another planet. 

To me, knowing that they estimate that there are 40 billion planets able to support life reminds me of the enormous things we don't already know about the place we live and the things we will never know. So we are just an insignificant planet in one of the many enormous galaxies. 

"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes." - Stephen Hawking.