The debate around vaccinations is something that has began to be brought into the light recently. The fear is that vaccinating less-than-a-year old babies will pose serious health related side affects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have stated that healthy young babies should get vaccinated against 14 deadly diseases by the time they are age two. One of the other main things babies, and even adults, should get is the flu shot. The US Government is so in favor of vaccinations, that they will let uninsured children receive them free of charge.

Many state laws require kids to be vaccinated in order to go to school, but some parents have been going against those laws for what they say are religious or “philosophical” reasons. Due to some parents reluctance to get their children vaccinated, diseases that have not been around for a long period of time have made their way back into our school systems; some of those diseases include measles, mumps, and whooping cough. 80-90% of a population must be vaccinated against a disease in order for that disease to not spread, and right now roughly 75% of our population is vaccinated.

Infectious diseases like the measles and mumps are still very prominent in vaccine-less countries, or poor countries, and if they get brought here, they can be easily spread again if we stop vaccinating young children. One of the biggest reasons parents fear giving their children vaccines is because they think it will give their child autism. Others also believe that there are unsafe levels of mercury within the vaccines that can put the health of their children at risk. The chemical that makes up the mercury based substance has been removed from the vaccines, and since it has been removed, autism rates still rose.

Children first get vaccinated between 12-15 months, which is roughly the same time that autism signs start to appear. Doctors have stated that the link between autism and vaccinations is purely coincidental due to the age at which kids get vaccinated and the age when they may develop autism. People have began to argue that we need to stray away from using our money to investigate whether vaccines cause autism, and start using that money to try and find a cure/prevention for autism; people think the science speaks for itself. Doctors have also stated that the odds of having a health risk due to getting vaccinated are not as high as it would be to catch a vaccine-preventable disease if your child is not vaccinated. Vaccines are rigorously tested before they get used, and they would not be permitted to be used if they produced serious health issues.

A suggestion many doctors have been making is to space out the span in which you give your vaccines to your child. Rather than giving them 2-3 shots at a time, they have suggested doing one shot, and then another a week or so later. Getting vaccinated not only helps your children, but it also helps the community you live in as a whole; one vaccinated person could be the difference between a deadly disease breakout and a safe community. Doctors also state that many parents have not fully seen the affects these infectious diseases have on young children; no one would want to see their child with the measles, mumps, or even the chicken pox.

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The human race is taking on a new endeavor for the upcoming years: sending humans to Mars. By the 2030’s, people are stating that it may be very likely to send humans to Mars for the first time. In order to do so, it would cost a decent sum of money, and we would have to be sure that NASA can be funded enough to support this endeavor. Aside from monetary issues, we would also need to be sure that we are cooperating with one another on an international level. Under the current budget that NASA has, it would not be possible to lead this manned mission to Mars as it is simply not enough money. Officials are saying that sending humans to Mars is what should be focused on in the world of space travel these next few years.

Astronauts and scientists have been working closely in the International Space Station (ISS) to help better understand technology that could assist in the manned missions to Mars. In the ISS, individuals have been able to make huge advances in how humans can stay healthy/survive in space, which is ideal to learn when planning on sending humans to Mars and very far away from the Earth. Living and working in space an pose some serious risks for astronauts, but many of them believe the journey to Mars would be worth those risks. NASA must create a new, more powerful, space craft that could withstand the long journey to Mars; in this space craft, reliance to Earth would be less.

NASA is doing something bis these days that will help their initiatives in hoping to send humans to Mars: their Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). ARM is a program where NASA is attempting to capture, redirect, and study an asteroid. This asteroid will get placed into a stable orbit around the Earths moon, where astronauts can take pieces of it to study back on Earth. ARM will help NASA map out the human path to Mars by testing the capabilities needed to do so. NASA wants to have the journey to Mars be a non-Earth reliant mission, which it has to be since Mars is so far away (48,678,219 miles away from Earth…). The ARM mission will help NASA develop more ways to have non-Earth reliant missions in the near future.

Another method of space exploration that NASA hopes to use in order to help with the possible mission to Mars is Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP). In my third reference about the ARM mission, NASA states that “SEP uses electricity from solar arrays to create electromagnetic fields to accelerate and expel charged atoms (ions) to create a very low thrust with a very efficient use of propellant. When compared to conventional chemical propellant sources, the ARM mission uses five to 10 times less propellant as a result of the SEP technology.” In capturing an asteroid, NASA will test the limits of SEP like it never has been tested before, which could be a huge breakthrough in the science of space. SEP technology could help send cargo and humans to Mars a lot more efficiently, and a lot faster. In testing pieces of the asteroid captured by the AM, astronauts and scientists will be able to study ways that could help them bring matter back from Mars too.

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In the Solar Energy experiment, my partners and I worked to see the effect distance has on voltage, and how different colored filters would affect voltage. In class, we learned that the stronger/closer the light source is to the solar cell, then the higher the voltage would be. This is what we sought to experiment on and find out if it was true. To do this, we had the following set of materials:

• One solar cell
• One voltage probe
• One NXT adapter
• NXT with an attached light sensor
• One light source (blue flashlight)
• Labview VI
• A Ruler
• 3 Colored film filters
• Excel spreadsheet

The image above shows the NXt adapter, the flashlight, the three different colored filters we used, the voltage probe and solar cell, and the light sensor.

Solar Lab – Here is an Excel Spreadsheet of our data

The first chart on the spreadsheet demonstrates the results we got when we used different distances between the flashlight and the solar cell. We held the flashlight at different distances from the solar cell a number of different times. The distances we chose were 1cm, 5cm, 20cm, 35cm, and one without any light. Each time the flashlight was farther from the solar cell, the voltage decreased. The closer the flashlight was to the solar cell the higher the voltage was, which is what we learned in class.

The second chart on the spreadsheet represents our results when we used the blue, green, and orange colored filters. The orange filter allowed the most voltage, then green, and then blue. To me this makes sense since orange is a light color, green is somewhat a middle color, and blue is typically a dark color.