RJA#12

RJA#12A

List of completed tasks

-Research

- Outline

List of tasks needed to be done

- Presentation

- Draft

- Editor's letter

- Final paper

RJA#12B

My plan for the presentation is a couple slides explaining a virus a video of what a virus can do. After that i would like to present my argument and show the table comparing an active virus to a living organism. And of course have time for discussion and questions.



RJA#12C

http://cdegelau.blogspot.com/2009/11/rja-11.html

http://elvisenglish1020.blogspot.com/2009/11/rja-11a-introduction.html

RJA#11

RJA#11A


You begin to cough then body aches and chills finally a fever and your body is almost to the point of immobility. It feels like your being destroyed from the inside out and in fact you are. A microscopic entity is destroying your cells and replicating hundreds of species to continue the cycle. This entity is a virus and most of us have had contact with one in our life and would like that to not happen again. Now how is it we feel like something is living in us and taking over our body to do whatever it pleases but it is exactly not considered a living organism. What does it mean to be a living organism? Must you walk, talk, and eat or is it more complexed. Turns out it is more complexed and viruses sometimes fall short of the required characteristics. At the same time viruses also have points in their life when they meet the majority of these requirements. So I ask why do we not consider them living organisms? I believe that viruses have stages in their life that they are more alive than some people. They eat, evolve, replicate, and move and do so with the assistance of a host. A brief explanation of a virus is in order to understand what a host cell is and how a virus does certain things to live. In this paper I will explain how a virus lives and how it meets the qualifications of a living organism at certain points in its life. Some people believe that special circumstances are the case for some viruses and are said to be living. Also included is an interview with a teacher of sciences who researches viruses in her own time.
RJA#11B
For my visual aids I will provide a picture of a virus to show certain characteristics, a video for my presentation to show how a virus works, a table comparing a virus to the qualifications of a living organism, and possibly the results of an online survey(once i figure out how to do that).
RJA#11C
http://jalves1.blogspot.com/2009/10/research-journal-assignment-10a.html

http://stinoeng.blogspot.com/2009/10/rja-10a.html

RJA#10

RJA#10A
What does it mean to be a living organism? Must you walk, talk, and eat or is it more complexed. Turns out it is more complexed and viruses sometimes fall short of the required characteristics. At the same time viruses also have points in their life when they meet the majority of these requirements. So I ask why do we not consider them living organisms. I believe that viruses have stages in their life that they are more alive than some people. They eat, evolve, replicate, and move and do so with the assistance of a host. In this paper I will explain how a virus lives and how it meets the qualifications of a living organism at certain points in its life.
RJA#10B
Are viruses living or not?



I. Introduction
A. Hook
B. List of what will be discussed in the paper
i. Summary of a virus
1. Characteristics, host cell, life span, summary
ii. Comparisons to other organism
1. i.e. bacteria
iii. Qualifications
1. What makes a living organism living?
2. Where does a virus stand? (Table comparing both)
iv. Survey conducted ( Interview or poll on internet)
v. Special circumstances
1. Certain viruses living
2. Stages of life when a virus could be considered living
II. Paragraph 1
A. Breakdown of what a virus is.
i. Shape, function, variations, lifespan, and characteristics
ii. How it infects a host cell?
III. Qualifications
A. What makes a living organism?
i. Movement, evolution, metabolism, and etc
ii. Where does a virus stand? (Table comparing both)
IV. Comparisons to other organism
A. Compare to bacteria
i. Differences and similarities to bacteria
V. Special Circumstances
A. Certain viruses considered before others
i. Giant virus
B. Particular stages of life considered
i. Dormant stage vs. active
VI. Results from survey
A. Discuss results from interview or survey
VII. Conclusion
A. Wrap up
i. Restate key points
ii. Strong finish

I am not sure what happened to my outline but it looks like crap.

RJA#8

RJA#8a
1. Metacrawler
2. Virus as living organism
3. I kept it like it is above.
4. 10/15/09
5. 52
6. I would say the relevance of the hits was a 4. Most pertained to my search and a few were off the wall.

RJA#8b
1. Technorati
2. liv* virus*
3. I used the operator shown above.
4. 10/15/09
5. 6
6. 1

RJA#8c
1.Videosurf
2. Virus biology
3. I was unable to use operators here because the search came up empty.
4. 10/15/09
5. 387
6. 2, the hits i recieved were about certain viruses ie flu, hiv, and hepatitis.

Internet Research

Internet Research website



Website Presentation

Wolfram/Alpha

1.Wolfram/Alpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/


2.Wolfram/Alpha (W/A) is a computational knowledge engine. Started by Stephen Wolfram in the 90s W/A is a state of the art computing engine. It uses built in alogrithms and inputed data it calculates any mathematical equation. It also offers a blog area and a community link to review with other users. It offers other areas of focus the math such as life science, geography, chemistry, and physics but the main idea of the website is for computing equations.


3.I tried the website for my topic and realized that it is not that kind of search engine actually not a search engine at all. It did link me to a definition of a virus when all I put in was virus but once I added more words it failed to find information. Then I used it for an equation and it worked fantastic. I found the voltage using ohms law that has been uploaded unto the website and it was extremely simple to operate.


4.Like I said above the real weakness would be to try and do an actual search here. The website is very limited and not used for basic search attempts.


5.Wolfram/Alpha uses its own database to search within.


6.Wolfram/Alpha


7.The way it is used is to click a link say mathematics then it breaks down to subcategories such basic arithmetic or more challenging like properties of a knot.


8.You do have to use keywords like amps or ohms but there is no case sensitive problems.


9.There are no stop words on this particular engine.


10.Also the search function is done by links to subcategories.


11.The main limit is the website is built on actual data it does not contain topics with opinion.


12.Sorting is done by the categories.


13.The display is easy to follow and well organized.


14.There is a FAQs, Blog, community and a new to wolfram/alpha link to help get started.


15.The special features of this website would be the blog and community mostly. The website as an entiriety is a special feature to me. I think it is awesome that they have all that computing knowledge there for anyone to use. All in all a great website if you are there to solve a problem.

RJA#7

RJA#7a

I use the google search engine for most of my browsing needs. I employ google due to its ease and the fact I have always known about it. I do not like that google has so many hits on my searches I do and I find it hard to minimize or filter the search engines crawler. I also don't like how some websites are sponsored and have precedence over the academical websites I need. The main reason I use google I guess is habit.

RJA#7b

The website I was issued did not have to much information on viruses. Actually nothing but a definition. The website is a computing program and contains algorithms and formulas for various mathematical uses. But it is a new domain and will take time to broaden the scope of information obtained. Wolfram/Alpha is the site name and does allow some operators. I used * on the ends of various words such as virus, organism, and liv. I did not try any other operators for my topic but did research others. I believe the relevance of this website like many depends on what you are searching for. Mathematically it is a 5 but when it comes to life science or biology it drops to a 2.

RJA#7c

I plan on either visting a museum or doing a one on one interview with a scientific leader at school. I hope to get an understanding on how the scientific community faces the decision of making viruses living organisms. So I might try to find a person from each side of the argument to review the points I hope to find researching. I do not know the exact questions I will be asking but after completing more research they will come.

RJA#6

RJA#6a

Edward Villablanca
Viruses: Are they living organisms or not?
Associated Content

January 05 2009

1

Are "viruses living organisms" articles

viruses living organisms

I treid the link on the homepage of eng 1020 website but that did not produce any results so I went to google.

Sept. 24 2009
106,561
2

RJA#6b


Virus* AND journal* AND living

Are "viruses living organisms" articles


I didn't have any comments but thought adding journal to my search strings would help me minimize the data collected.


RJA#6c


www.protopage.com/medic06

RJA#5

RJA#5a

http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/yellowstone/viruslive.html

1. George Rice


2. Are Viruses Alive?


3. Microbial Life


4. Montana State University


5. Microbial Life Educational Resources


6. July 26 2009


7. Webpage


8. Sept. 17 2009

I used a basic search of Viruses living or non living and gathered a fairly large focus of material. I used google then filtered out the waste.

RJA#5b

Scientific American, Volumes 156-157 By Making of America Project

• Google Books


• Munn & Co 1937


• Univ. of Michigan

Nature, international weekly journal of science, Volume 146 By Sir Norman Lockyer

Macmillian Journals Ltd. 1940

http://books.google.com/books?id=tJUPAAAAIAAJ&q=Viruses+living+or+non+living&dq=Viruses+living+or+non+living

I again used Viruses living or non living and found plenty of books on that. I used the Google books link provided and found what i needed.

RJA#5c

http://tad.blogspot.com/



http://melissacahilleng1020.blogspot.com/

RJA #4

Microscopic life
Author:
Richard Walker





http://www.beyondbooks.com/lif72/2c.asp





http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/virology/1995-December/004924.html





RJA #4a





Should viruses be considered living organisms?

FO- Virus, considers, considering, consider, lived, live, lives, organism.

RE- suggested, assumed, analyzed as, documented, percieved, believed. Alive.

ST- Bacteriophage.

LOG- Viruses-Viruses as organisms-Viruses as living organisms.

RJA #4b




Virus* AND live* AND organism*



Bacteriophage* OR virus* AND alive AND organism*



Virus* AND suggest* And liv* AND organism*



RJA #4c

http://tad.blogspot.com/

http://melissacahilleng1020.blogspot.com/

http://eceng1020.blogspot.com/

http://sofiaf1020.blogspot.com/

RJA #3

3A. Exploring my research topic


I started with wikipedia to get an idea on the current issues dealing with philosophical debates on conciousness. There I routed myself to other websites with more information and continue my reasearch. After reading through a few of the linked pages I have decided that the topic chosen might not be adequately argued. There are so many different theories that the time taken to just read them would be enormous. So I am going to go back to my first blog and choose another topic and see what I can do. So I moved on to biology and looked around and decided to do my paper on vivisection. Vivisection is the study of organisms, live organisms, either under anesthesia or not to study their internal organs for reasons other that their health.



3B. Narrowing my research topic



My topic is already fairly concise so I don't believe i will be narrowing it.



3C. Developing a research question



Is it necessary to use vivisection for human benefits?

Where would we be without vivisection?

Why is it considered inhumane?

RJA #2

2A Topics for Research Paper

1. String Theory

2. Quantum Theory

3. Conciousness

4. Dark matter/energy

2B My Chosen Topic

What is conciousness? Do we as humans display it? I hope to explore the physical and philosophical understanding or lack of regarding conciousness. As of now I am keeping an open mind on what I believe. I do stand steady on people are concious but I believe some people are not. Hopefully the questions I have can be answered or allow me to create my own opinion.

After taking Intro to Philosophy at Metro I know that conciousness is the reality of being. Do we as humans be? I know that does not sound correct and it probaly is not. Let me clarify, do we exist in this world or are we just here. As I write this I find it hard to explain. Existence is what we learned about and focused our discussions. Does existing on this world walking and talking make us concious or do we need to have a higher understanding to be truly concious.

There is so much I don't know about the discussions among scholars on conciousness and want to read a couple books I bookmarked to get a better understanding. I want to learn both sides of the argument and decide what I believe then try to write a convincing paper. Like I said existence is the key to me. I want to know what entails someone to exist and how conciousness plays its role.



2C http://delicious.com/jward50

Research Journal #1 Areas of Academic Interest

A list of all the topics I am interested in for a reasearch paper in Eng 1020. This paper will be a 3,600 words and an argumentative piece. Any help in controversial discussions in the listed fields would be helpful and appreciated.

Scholarly:
1. Philosophy
a. Aristotle
b. Plato
Academic:
1. Physics
a. Metaphysics
b. Modern Physics
2. Biology
a. Evolution
b. Microbiology
3. Chemistry
a. Organic Chemistry