Interviewees/Ideas

     For my first interview as a science writing, I want it to be with someone who I know will show a freshman the respect and time of day that any working individual deserves, as in the past throughout high school I occasionally was not given equal treatment as other professionals due to my experience and age.

     I met Igor Ivanovski at the gym and have many good conversations about his work at Rutgers as a Ph.D student and research assistant in the genetics department at Rutgers.
As he will soon direct me in the right direction to some of his peers that he works with directly, I already have a short list of who I would be interested in interviewing, as their work sounds interesting to me.

     Dr. Marco Azaro, Assistant Research Assistant in the genetics department.
Receiving his Ph.D from Brown University, and currently, works on primer probe pannels for his lab's genotyping platform.

     His previous work also includes his own developed software to generate multiplex PCR primers and to analyze microarray data. That is quite interesting in the sense of how difficult the process of PCR itself is.

     Once I am able to develop my interview questions as detailed as I'd like, I look forward to my meeting of whomever Igor would recommend to me, but Dr. Azaro sounds like a good fit from what I have found online of him so far.

-Wainam

Wildlife Collisions

Wildlife Collisions

      As the world's population continuously continues to increase at an unprecedented level, it is increasingly common for the world that humans have created to overlap with natural wildlife. According to a five year study about Grizzly Bear populations in Canada, just over half of the Grizzly Bear population deaths are due to vehicle collisions.

     Grizzly bears are not just the only ones affected by collisions.

     The world is increasingly causing damage to creatures of the forest big and small. Sometimes without one's knowledge, a simple action can destroy a particular animal's life.

     Many solutions can be proposed to help interactions between humans and wildlife. However even if the proposed solutions are effective in their intended methods to keep human and wildlife separate, we are one in the same.

    While building a fence, proposing building crosswalks for animals, and even putting up electric pads to deter wildlife from entering a specific vicinity, these are not the easiest things to practically accomplish.

      Funding, development, government restrictions, changing rules all block such ideas from being more than just that, ideas.

     The most effective thing to do is the easiest. Humans can learn to be more aware of what they do, where they are going, and how whatever they do in their lifestyle has a potential consequence.

-Wainam

The World is Unprepared

The World is Unprepared

      The word is not ready for whatever infectious challenge is imminent in the near future. Looking back on history, it is clear that the biggest threats to America and the world is not war, illegal immigration, or a broken economy. It is a lack of preparedness scientifically and medically for whatever virus or disease will ultimately make its way home.

     Most people forget that during the 20th century, there was an epidemic that killed the same amount of individuals as WWII that came less than 2 decades before.

     Spanish Influenza was prominent from 1918-1919 and killed an estimated 65 million people. 

According to Bill Gates in an interview with Vox News, "Today's modern transport compared to 1918 is 50 times as great."

     If the Spanish Flu was able to spread to all points of the world days after its inception in 1918 with more basic methods of transportation compared to today, imagine how quickly a similar disease could ravage the world today.

     Like Ebola in 2014, Bill Gates said we were in no way prepared for an outbreak of that level. 

The scary part is, is that the Ebola outbreak was very controllable in the grand scheme of things compared to other potential outbreaks done on computer simulation.

     The world was not prepared for a relatively small outbreak, and another one is sure to take its place on a much larger scale sometime in the future. 

-Wainam