Lego Experiment

I do not remember much of the experiment. As a group, we built the car, made all the proper modifications, connected the cables to the motors and from the car to the computer.  After we did this we used the application on the computer to put in orders for the car to do. We would make it do circles and also go straight. That is all we did for when I was there.

The problem in this video bellow are the problems the corporations are having with falling oil prices. With the falling of oil prices it is helping people buy cheaper petroleum at the pumps and this is hurting the “fracking” companies. It hurts them because the drop in oil prices makes hydraulic fracturing less economically viable for companies in the U.S. invested in the whole process.

Hydraulic Fracturing is the action of pumping a fluid into a well in order to break up the rock that bears oil or gas to release the hydrocarbons trapped inside. The public has recently become aware of all of the negative affects that fracturing is doing to the Earth. There is a great movie about this and it is called, “Promised Land.”

This movie is all about a company called Global and their ventures into a town that is full of natural gas but the only challenge is that not everyone agrees with it. The challenge for the representative from Global is to try and get everyone to vote for the fracturing, telling each and everyone of them that they can be millionaires if they sign the contract and vote for them. This movie is actually a great one because you get to see the struggles from both sides of the pie. One side being the major corporation that is trying to create wells on the land and the side of a single environmentalist working on his own, trying to protect the people and the land from something he has already suffered through. I do recommend this movie to anyone who has an interest in this.

I am pretty sure this happens all the time, a piece of land that is rich in a natural resource that helps keep our oil prices down could be stripped away in order for people to make money. It is happening right now in the Midwest. These big corporations are just taking people out of their homes and making them move in order to tear apart the land for natural gas. Thanks to these low oil prices the corporations have slowed down significantly for now.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/080814/how-fracking-affects-natural-gas-prices.asp

http://www.voanews.com/media/video/falling-gas-prices-hurt-nascent-illinois-hydraulic-fracturing-industry/2660302.html

Everyday there are companies who are always trying to come up with ways that a car can have more mileage per gallon. There are many people working out there who have brilliant ideas on how we can increase the gas mileage of a car but it is either too expensive of an idea or they give up on the idea. Right now, on average, cars run at about 24-26 MPGs. It keeps increasing as the years go on. There is a better fuel economy for new cars and trucks and with this situation people do not have to focus on getting smaller cars in order to save gas. Smaller cars are making somewhat of a comeback because people do not want to spend a lot of money on gas. There are also the hybrids that people are buying in order to save lots more money by using an electric car. Also cars are getting lighter. The bodies of the cars have become much lighter and therefore can travel farther per gallon. There are also sneaky ways that people can adjust their cars in order to save money, like making sure your tires at their best and cleaning the air filter. Cleaning the air filters are said to increase a vehicle’s gas mileage by 10%, and that is just because you’re keeping it clean.

It is thought that by 2025, gas mileage in cars will be at around 54.5. Doing this means that the cars will still be using gas because gas gives the best results in a car (depending on the car). The Obama Administration has been planning on ways in order to come up with this idea. One idea is the Start-Stop system. The way it works is when a car is on but stationary, lets say like in a traffic jam, the cars are always starting and stopping, so when the car is stationary the engine will cut out and when the driver needs to move again, the cars revs up the engine and lets the driver move with no problem.

There are many ideas out there for increasing the gas mileage of a car. People just need to be as patient as possible will all this new technology is being discovered in order to help our future.

http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/the-road-ahead-how-well-get-to-54-5-mpg-by-2025/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/13/cars-in-the-u-s-are-more-fuel-efficient-than-ever-heres-how-it-happened/

http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/22/cars-mpg-gas-forbeslife-cx_jm_0422cars.html

Measles is an infectious viral disease causing fever and a red rash on the skin, typically occurring in childhood. Vaccinations for measles has to a priority for every person. We never know where people travel to or who comes into the country who has been in contact or infected with measles. We have to worry about the children become sick with measles because they can become very sick and their futures could be in jeopardy.

This video explains to us that Measles is very contagious and that kids who have not been vaccinated can catch this virus easily. Measles is airbourne and can stay in an empty room for more than 2 hours. Last year alone, a Measles outbreak had infected more than 600 people in around 17 different states around the country, an outbreak that had started in California in the famous amusement park, Disneyland. Parents should be worried and have their children vaccinated because they never know who has made contact with the virus. This virus is very serious even though it kills 1 or 2 out of every 1000 people.

The parents who do not want to vaccinate their kids because of religious, medical or personal reasons should be careful because their is a bigger risk for them of catching the virus. Since the first site of people infected was in California, people who have not gotten their children vaccinated should be keeping a close eye on where their children go and who they are hanging around. Children who have gotten the vaccination still have a small chance of 3-5% of catching the virus. Two dozes of the vaccination can give you a 97% chance of not catching the virus. That percentage is high enough to help make sure that no one gets sick.

Families and everyone else should worry about getting vaccinated because this virus can spread quickly. There is a chance that people who watched the media deal with the Ebola outbreak could believe that the media went over the top with this outbreak, but it is a concerning matter and parents should make sure that their children are vaccinated.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/measles-outbreak-swells-121-cases-year-cdc/story?id=28830089

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/09/measles-outbreak-vaccine-questions_n_6648086.html

http://www.wsj.com/articles/measles-vaccine-debate-hits-home-at-california-school-1423695333

Ebola has been around for many years but recently there was an outbreak in Africa that resulted in one man being infected, who then flew to Dallas, Texas and became the first person in the United States to die due to this insane disease.  This outbreak was a matter of life or death for some people. The biggest issue was, “how many people in the United States would it infect?” That is what the United States and President Obama wanted to avoid.

“Here’s the bottom line. Patients can beat this disease. And we can beat this disease. But we have to stay vigilant. We have to work together at every level — federal, state and local. And we have to keep leading the global response, because the best way to stop this disease, the best way to keep Americans safe, is to stop it at its source — in West Africa.”

This statement comes from President Obama’s October 25th Weekly Address on the issue of the Ebola outbreak. The main issue was to secure the outbreak in Africa and to make sure that we were prepared enough in order to make sure no one became infected.

During the Ebola outbreak, the midterm elections were happening, so Congress was out of session so everyone in the administration acted together as one to make sure that everyone was prepared for the outbreak. They all came into agreement that the only way to protect from the outbreak was to make sure that the crisis with Ebola in Africa was contained. The administration at the start wanted a mandatory quarantine in the major cities where 94% of all flights from countries that were affected by Ebola  fly into but that could not be agreed upon. The best idea they came up with was  to have those people who were previously in those affected countries monitored in the privacy of their own homes and make sure that they were not spreading it to other people if they were infected.

From Greg Laden’s blog, he says that the government wanted to do a full intervention in order to come up with a vaccine in the majorly affected areas. The problem with this idea is that it could have taken up to 6 months for that process. He knew that they could not be a major scale outbreak in the U.S.A. He talks about the ways we as a country could stop the outbreak if it were ever to happen like stop all flights and the fact that people can have symptoms of the disease days after being exposed to someone who is infected. This process could be avoided with “self-monitoring” and making sure that people take care of themselves and realize where they are coming from.

All in all, I do like the way the U.S.A. responded to the Ebola Crisis. It was sad to see that citizens had to suffer and some actually pass away but it was good that not many people had been infected.