Blog Feed

      Hi are you sitting at home wondering what you want to do for the rest of your life? Just graduated college and don’t know what you want to do next? Well I definitely know how you feel. Hi my name is Jordyn Randall and Im in the 9^th grade. I’ve been thinking a lot about what job I would want to have now, my future and what I want to do after high school and even college. But I found out that its not easy to find a job and that there are 13.9 million people unemployed.

       In The major worker groups, the unemployment for adult men ( 7.5%), adult women ( 7.4%), teenagers ( 24.9%), whites ( 7.4%), and Hispanics ( 10.3%) showed hardly any change in April, although the rate for blacks ( 13.0%) declined over a month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 5.2% in April. This information hasn’t been shocking but considering that my race is the highest unemployed is disappointing but makes me want to strive to not be in this category.

I believe that some of this unemployment has something to do with taxation. Businesses pay more taxes in the U.S. than any where in the world. Many businesses are being truly crushed by this, which is also chasing businesses out of the country. Barack Obama has just proposed  a boost in unemployment taxes. I feel that this is going to make businesses not want to hire more employees.

There is a such thing as unemployment benefits though. Unemployment benefits are payments made by the state to unemployed people. Depending on the authority and the status of the person. The amount of money may be small, covering only central needs, also known as welfare. In some countries a proportion of unemployment benefits are divided by labor unions.

 After doing all this research I feel copying more money will get rid of all our problems because if people have more money they will buy more things and businesses will have more money. I also feel that we should just keep the prices of everything the same instead of raising the prices of things every year. I don’t think we should do both because that wouldn’t be to good for businesses.

   Did you know every 10 seconds of the day an animal is abused or tormented? Most of the domestic animals (cats and dogs) that are abused usually die because they don’t have the strength to live. Others that are abused are most of the times put out on the streets. To me this is just wrong. I’m not saying its right to abuse animals but if you do you should at least have the common courtesy to bring them too the Aspca (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.) Henry Bergh founded the ASPCA. His purpose of this organization was to and I state “to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States.” I believe in his cause of preventing animal cruelty along the Unites States but he should have had bigger plans to expand the organization across the world.

    Studies by the AMERICAN HUMANE ASSOCIATION recognized that most of animal abuse cases aren’t intentional but were just incidence that were caught in between a human fight. They also found out that 71% of Women entering shelters with injured animals were the cause of their injuries. They beat the animal out of anger and frustration and they pass this behavior off to their children. Also, 70% of the animal abusers had past records of crime. Animal cruelty doesn’t just have to be beating animals but abuse can be animals living in bad conditions.  The SPCA investigates most of animal cruelty cases. Adoption services for animals need to do a better job and a background check before they give these beautiful animals away.

    These animals need your help! Go save an animal life today and spread the word. Go volunteer at your local Spca and give an animal a second chance at life.

 ​http://scienceleadership.org/blog/Animal_Abuse:3 <---Link to Blog 1

Bibliography

This is the you in the world project, and it is to help put a dent in homelessness. It is blog two, and is about opinions and more research. The research I did really helped me understand homelessness, and how it can affect anyone. Homelessness is defined as not having a set place to sleep in the nighttime. When I think of homelessness, I think of sleeping on the streets, and under overpasses. That is exactly what homelessness is. 

     Homelessness is in all parts of the city, and all neighborhoods. There were volunteers that went out yesterday, May 17 and counted 583 people in the nighttime were homeless. There were 50 volunteers, and they counted the homeless. That was just yesterday, but on any given day people can become homeless. I feel as though the citizens of Philadelphia could help the shelters, so that we can prevent some people from being homeless or becoming homeless. 

     My opinion on homelessness is that it can be prevented, or that the city can help some of these people. The only people or organizations that are helping the homeless are groups like Project HOME, SREHUP, the Office of Supportive Housing, and all homeless shelters. There are people who give the homeless food, and I applaud that, but the homeless need safe places to rest at night. I feel that all these abandoned building that are big enough can be turned into shelters, and places that are affordable for homeless people. 

     One thing that I didn’t like was the ban against feeding the homeless. Mayor Nutter was wrong for doing that, because everyone has the right to eat wherever they want. I am not homeless, but I can eat in public. So why is it that if you are homeless you only can get food from a shelter. That makes no sense to me. I feel that people should be able to share with anyone, even if they don’t have a home of their own. The reason there are so many homeless people alive, is because how generous other people are. So why would the Mayor make people, not help out others in need.

     Homelessness can affect anyone, men, women, children, and families. It doesn’t just happen to the lower class, it can happen to anyone. Now people can complain about homelessness, or the citizens can take action. Me personally, I am going to take action. I am going to help people in need not because it is the right thing to do, but because I would want someone to do the same for me. Homelessness is defined as not having a set place to sleep in the nighttime.

Welcome back! In the previous blog, I talked about all different kinds of bullying and how it can affect other people. If you didn’t read my first blog, click here. You wonder why you are reading the next set of the blog. Well in this blog, it will launch into a new journey. In this journey of blog 2, there will be more information, my perspective on bullying, and the understanding of the issue. Don’t hesitate and prepare yourself for the next adventure of massive bullying.

After all the researching of bullying, it had struck me because many students were criticized from all types of bullying. Many people don’t take things seriously, but it can cause other people into a serious problems. Dealing with bullying, there is no ending to what will happen next when hate is building up because the bully is hard when children and adults are being foolishness.

Gathering all new information about bullying, children who had been bullied change their personalities. The victims usually;

: Shy and quiet
: Will lose relationship with friends
: Bring weapons to school for vengeance
: Commit suicide

They rather end the anguish of being tortured everyday at school where they think it is easier for them to rest in peace.

Bullying is extremely wrong when the victims are being torture. The ones who bullied the victims are also hurting themselves because it shows how much they care about people. The fact when they don’t think how it can affect other people. I saw my friends, and other students in my school were bullied by verbal. Students talk trash to each other especially girls who gossips a lot about the clothes they wear. Also boys who thinks they are better than each other. It’s crucial for young children to die because family members will be really struck to the story of their child committing suicide. They only want their child to have a wonderful life for fulfilling their dreams in the future. The ones who are friends with the bullied are afraid to stand up for their friend who had been bullied because the next they will get bullied next, but it is important that standing up for themselves or their friends will might stop them from preventing bullying.

I always talked to people why they aren’t friendly. When they don’t listen and continue to threaten you, ignore them. Life is very precious where people can’t just end their life. I always think words can’t hurt me because there is a lot of things I want to experience instead of being depressed what people had said. I don’t care what kind of bully occurs in the show because there is no right where children hurt each other’s feelings for being better than others. Children come to school are being created equally with all respects. No matter what ethnicity, where you come from, the language you speak, personalities, etc, we are all human beings who are like each other’s.

 created a Google doc about bullying. On May17th, 2012 I had amass all the responses with multiple choices with short answers. The results shows how many people had been bullied, and if bully matters in the society.

“ I'll stand up for the weaker person. I don't care how that makes me look to other people, because at the end of the day I could've saved a life. What happens most of the time is people see it, think it's wrong, but never speak up.” This shows how deeply when people wanted to stand up for someone when he/she feels accomplish of helping the ones who get tease.” - Anonymous, age 15.

Please click on this survey and take couple minutes to respond. Remember, once you submit it will be anonymous. Thank you for your patients.

For more information, there will a website about signs of how people can identify of bullying.

Click here for a commercial  of bullying.  

For my sources, click here!

Stephen White Blog 2: 

My opinion on child sex trafficking is that it’s unacceptable. Honestly trafficking anyone is wrong. What joy do you get from taking advantage of a child? As they’re raping a child do they think that someone could be doing the same to theirs? Taking a child or an adult and using them for your own benefit is unjust. I learned that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is a federal law that criminalizes the act of human trafficking and was first signed into action in early 2000. In the U.S. the top 10 states that have the most children taken into the industry are: California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New York, District of Columbia, Ohio, New Jersey, Washington, and Virginia. 

Some new information I found was that an estimated $9.5 billion is generated in annual revenue from trafficking activities. Between 50 and 60 percent of children who are trafficked are under the age of 16. In Thailand it was found that 60 to 70% of child prostitutes are found to be HIV positive. The child sex trade is happening all around the world. The child sex trafficking is mostly in Cambodia, Moldova, Asia, Russia, Middle East, and rural parts of Brazil.

To add to my research I researched child sex trafficking more abroad. In my first blog I mainly focused on the child sex trade in America but in this blog I talked about where it’s mostly happening and my opinion on the subject. I’ve also found more charities that are here to help end the child sex trade that can be found here. Some things I’m still left wondering about is how the government plans on protecting children and adolescents from being traded internationally. I haven’t found the answer yet but I’ve been looking around.

My research has added to the understanding of my issue in many ways. I’ve noticed that people really are trying to stop this growing industry. It caught the attention of the White House and the world. MSNBC Dateline took a trip to Cambodia to find out more about the child sex trade. They found out that some children are born into poverty and their parents sold them into the child sex trade in exchange for money. Children as young as 5 years old are being traded. In Cambodia children as young as 12 years old are considered old in this industry. In Cambodia children are sold because of family struggles. Some are lured and kidnapped. 
If a child’s a virgin they can be worth as much as $600 because they’re pure. You’re allowed to keep the child for up to 3 days.

Here is the video of MSNBC Dateline’s trip to Cambodia to uncover the child sex industry.

Here is my the link to my bibliography

     About 20 to 30 percent of cats and dogs are adopted from shelters and rescues. 26 percent of dogs are bought from breeders. At least one-third of cats are acquired as strays, and more than 20 percent of people who leave dogs in shelters adopted them from a shelter.  There are about 5,000 animal shelter nation wide. Why can’t people understand that instead of going out and buying a dog from a pet store for hundreds to thousands of dollars you can just go to a shelter and adopted a pet that needs a home for only about hundred dollars.

   The top 10 reasons people in America get pets are to Teach kids about selflessness, Pets can increase your sense of security — personal, private, and psychological, Personal growth,  Need an excuse to get physical, Preparing for parenthood, Looking for a constant companion, It's a great way to meet people, Getting and giving unconditional love, Take a stand on a humanitarian cause, and the number one reason Pets are a prescription for good health. People don’t understand that you don’t have to go to a pet store and spend a lot of money to get this. You can go right to a shelter and get a dog or cat that can do the same things as if you bought one from a pet store.

   When you adopt from a shelter your giving a cat of dog a second chance. There are an estimated 3.7 million unwanted pets wanted pets must be euthanized at animal shelters every year, many because they could not find families to adopt them. Some people choose not to adopt animals because they think the animal they adopt will have bad behavior. This is not the case there are a number of reasons why pets arrive in a shelter, from losing their owner to being abused and rescued.

Read more: 

Recent discovery: 

Do you know that now scientists could eliminate some of the mutations in an embryo’s DNA? Don’t be anxious or boisterous about this news. We’re no in the stage to increase the intelligence, height, or the body structure of the baby prior from birth. But, will it happen in the distant future?   

Personalized medicine?

Thesis: The price of personalized medicine is expensive and is most likely to be used within the upper society. It is not realistic for the lower class to be able to afford it daily and it is only available for people who have a mutation in an actionable gene. 

     The value to develop personalized medicine is a new breakthrough in inventing new ways to cure. But, the current price for these medicine is too expensive and could most likely be used in the upper society rather than the lower class who could not afford about $294,000 per year (about $800 per day). Then, it will evolve into a social injustice that was primarily made to help the whole society. Even if the price goes down in the future because of the invention of new advance technologies, personalized medicine are only available to patients who have an actionable gene. Unlike all prescriptions from clinics that could treat people of all classes and almost all people, personalized medicine’s medical power could only be delivered to a selected group.  

Trustworthy results?

Thesis: The results of personal health risks should not varies from different companies, the results should be definite in order to prevent confusion and panic from testers. 

Different biotech companies have different methods in collecting DNA samples. Some companies, like 23andMe use saliva samples while deCode Me use cheek cell samples to sequence an individual’s DNA. But, all of these variety of different samples leads to results that varies from company to company. If the results depended on only a part of the whole DNA then the odds calculator will prevent the tester from contacting a certain disease but it could also create unnecessary panic and bewilderment of the testers if the company did not explain how to read the statistics in the right way. 

The odds calculator is a great tool to help prevent and decrease illness. But, the biotech company also need to give the testers both the possibility and the definite facts about their health. Also, these biotech companies need to create a manuel to guide their testers to read their results properly so they will not mistakenly believed that all of the results shown on the odds calculator is true. Personalized medicine need to be created so it could target both the patients with actionable and non-actionable mutation genes or the cost needs to be lower so it would be affordable to all groups of people.

Personal Research: (Personalized medicine/genetic testing)

Based on the survey that I had conducted, 25% of the people said that personalized medicines are necessary in our society based on their expensive cost the rate of cure for all groups of people. 75% of the people said that the society need personalized medicine but it is not ready to be accepted as a major type of medicine in our society, yet. 

Also, 25% of the people are not interested in taking genetic tests, 25% of the people are interested in taking the tests and 50% of the people hesitated to crack their DNA.   

Click here to fill out a survey! 

For bibliography click here.

There is a rapid growth in the percentage of teenage obesity. 12% of parents feel that their children are obese. 78% of parents feel that Physical Education in school should not be removed. 27% of parents feel that their teenagers do not eat nutritionally. Also, 24% of parents feel that teenagers get less exercise more and more.

Teenage obesity is becoming a bigger issue than any of us can handle. Clearly it's taking over, because it's affecting more teenagers each and every day. I get very heartfelt about this topic because I don’t like seeing people unhealthy or in bad shape. Not only is this an issue for physical reasons, but I also consider how a teenage obese person might be feeling on the inside. People are judged because of their appearances every day. So imagine how you would feel if you knew that everyone was staring at you because of your weight?  

Click to this link if you want to read my bibliography and more updated information on how important teenage obesity really is!               

   Hello, welcome back. I’m just going to give a brief review over what I talked about in my last blog. (Click here to review Blog #1)

   I didn’t get as much information as I wanted but here’s what I learned:

·      Public school’s had lost 50,00 student because they all went to charter schools

·      The Philadelphia School District held community hearings around Philadelphia discussing weather to shut down the nine schools (Drew, FitzSimons, Harrison, Levering, Pepper, High School for Business, Sheppard, Sheridan West, and E.M. Stanton).

·      Their reason for closing Stanton & Sheppard is they are small, they educate on low in – come, and they’re both old buildings (the schools will need a lot of repairing to do)

   The only thing I have to say about this is, how is the future going to be for the next generation that come up and schools getting shut down?

   As you read this I bet you wondered, so how can we prevent this from happening? I only have one word to tell you. Protest. We could discuss with the school district how this would be a negative effect towards children (this is in the first blog). 

SPEAK UP! DON’T HOLD BACK!!!

Click here for my bibliography.

I will be asking general questions about the different genres of music in their country. I want to know some good songs to listen to and any popular bands/singers.

•  What are 5 questions related to your conversation goal that you can think of ahead of time to ask your partner?

1. What type of music do you listen to?

2. What is your favorite song?

3. When do you most frequently listen to music?

4. What is your favorite artist?

5. Is music an essential component in your life?

•  What are you looking forward to about this conversation?

I am looking forward to getting to know the person I am speaking with. I want to learn about their every day life and some of the challenges they face. I would like to possible create a friendship.

•  What are you nervous about?

This is my second blog post regarding the topic of the Pro-Choice Movement’s involvement in politics. First off, I would like to state that the point of this blog entry is “opinion.” If I happen to offend anyone, I am deeply sorry. I have done more research on this topic and I have found many interesting tidbits of information. 

In my opinion abortion and contraception should not be made illegal. There are things that are illegal that people still manage to do (i.e. Drugs, dog fights, jaywalking, etc) but because they are illegal, they do these things in an unsafe manner. If abortion were criminalized, people would still get them because they are necessary in most cases. I learned that 13% of pregnancy-related deaths worldwide are related to complications in unsafe abortions. According to Planned Parenthood, 1 in 3 women in the U.S. Have had an abortion by the age of 45.

Some people believe abortion and contraception is a mortal sin because of their religion. In 1930 the Roman Catholic Church banned all “artificial” means of contraception like condoms, diaphragms, and cervical caps. According to the Church, tampering with the "male seed" was equivalent to murder. Not all people that are Pro-Life have had those opinions their whole life. In my research the most notable change of opinion was that of former senator Rick Santorum. In a statement made in a 1995 interview Santorum says, "I was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress... But it had never been something I thought about." Santorum is now one of the strongest opposers of abortion and contraception. “Santorum is a product of the polarization of our politics," said Pat Ewing, the former campaign manager for Senator Harris Wofford, whom Santorum defeated in the 1994 election. "He has taken advantage of it. He understands it. And he will take a position to benefit himself to get a small group of people to love him adamantly. His personality hasn't evolved, his politics has."

People can change their opinions if they think it’ll make them more popular. Not just about their views on abortion and contraception. Anything. 

In my opinion, saying “Pro-Choice” is kind of pretentious. It may sound harsh but at the end of the day the reality of it is that you are “pro-abortion.” This doesn’t mean that you want to abort every child that is conceived. It just means that you support women's right to choose what they want to do with their body. In many cases, abortions happen because of rape or incest. If it is your opinion that abortion and contraception shouldn’t even be used in these situations then I guess our beliefs conflict. 

Through out my research I’ve been asking myself, “why would people be against this?” I totally understand the religious aspect but if you oppose abortion and contraception for a reason other than that, I’m left confused. In my next blog post I have to talk about change. I plan on looking into people’s opinions on this topic to enrich my knowledge. 

Doctors can try and fix or at least ease the physically suffering it contains but not the emotional and mental anguish it later brings. That you’ll have to deal with yourself. Using condoms are not completely ‘bulletproof’ from having an STD but use it any but before even thinking about having sex make sure that you are ready. As in physically, mentally, and especially emotionally and (if you are a teen) talk to your parents about this for one second can change the entire course of your life that you had planned. Then absolutely consider getting tested as soon as possible! Same for the partner.I don't personally know anyone dear to my heart that has such a disease but I have a big family and I'm not even completely know to half of them but learning about this came to my heart that any growing child/teen would have to deal with this. My personal thoughts on this are that parents should inform their kids about this massive issue. Even if it seems that they don't want to listen try and try again to tell them for they need to know. Wouldn't you rather them keep at least a piece of what you said rather than nothing?

This blog post is a bit short since i was not able to talk to my person after it disconnected. But my goal fo this week was to find out how to ask about college and what someone wanted to do in their future it turned out quite well and i learned a bunch of new stuff. (It won't let me upload a screenshot just yet though..)

SLA Junior Manna-Symone Middlebrooks returned to her second PJAS State Fair to present a project on a Local Pollutant's Effect on Dissolved-Oxygen Producing Algae. This earned her both a First Award and a $2000/semester Scholarship to the Pennsylvania State University!

Finally, Senior Jeff Kessler earned a total of five awards at this year's competition! Jeff's study of the ElectroMagnetic Fields Emitted by Cell Phones not only earned him a First Award, but he achieved a perfect score of 5.0 (an additional distinction earned by less than 2% of all participants)! At the Special Award Ceremony, Jeff was also recognized for three years of participation at both the Regional and State levels, and won one of five Oerlein Awards for Outstanding Senior High School Science Student.

In total, SLA took home 10 State-Level awards and over $16,150 in monetary prizes! Congrats to all SLA PJAS State Participants!