Extended Essay Reflection

Writing an Extended Essay was not at all easy for me. When I first got my topic "Stem Cells" I thought I would be able to write my essay effortlessly, because this was the topic in which one could find a lot of information and evidences. But, as I went along with my research, I faced a lot of difficulties in finding information  I actually wanted. However, after doing some more research I had a good plan that I could implement on my essay. On the other hand, I think I wasted a lot of my time by just doing the research and not concentrating on writing my essay and that took away a lot of my time.

Managing and organizing everything on time is the major thing which I learned and understood. Even though I think I had a good plan about how to write my essay, but still there were problems which I came across while writing the actual essay, especially building arguments that needed to be supported with evidences. Secondly, there was another thing which I really need to work on i.e how to give citations in MLA format. 

When I have to write my essay next time, I would definitely keep in mind to organise and manage my work according to deadlines and  I would also not take a lot of time to just research the given topic, rather I will try to focus on managing my essay and spending time on research equitably and judiciously.

Stem Cells

Plan

Advice

                                                                           IT Skills

Making Yearbook is not at all easy. You can only complete a yearbook within time and without or very less mistakes if you work carefully throughout the year. In my opinion, InDesign is a very delicate software to work on. If you make any mistake, you should definetly fix at that moment, because, later on you might find trouble in fixing those things.

                                                                     Time Management

Time management is another main issue. You must need to manage the time yourself in order to get everything done on time. There will due dates for each spread which cannot be moved to another date. So I would say that try to get every thing done, such as pictures you would need in your spreads and most important thing, the text. If you have these things with you then I would say that you are good to go. Never leave such things for the last moment. This year we really worked hard after school, and on weekends to get it to the deadline.

                                                                    Covering Events

You cannot expect that you would not need to come on weekends in this class. Many events like- Volleyball, track and field and Soccer, which are held on Saturday's must have the pictures of such tournaments. Sometimes you need to interview some people from other school, which could a different experience for you. There will be shifts for those people who will come and click pictures. It is not easy but yet it is fun. 

Paris Attack

The attack on Paris  suspected to be carried out by ISIS militants on 13th November, 2015 was a result of growing hatred towards Christians, Jews and other religions by the muslim fundamentalists elements. 

While  intolerance for other religions is not a new phenomena, the attack on Paris appears to be related to publication of caricature of Prophet Mohammad by renowned magazine “Charlie Hebdo”. The publication of caricature created widespread anger and resentment within the muslim community world-wide and could be one of the reasons for attack on Paris.

Also, the recent influx of migrants from Syria and Iraq to safer places in Europe possibly helped the ISIS militants to sneak in and merge with other asylum seekers. The militants might have found this to be the easiest way to settle down in different places in Europe and strike at will. The attack on Brussels recently proves this point.

Labeled for Reuse

Digital tools

Today we looked at three tools which could be used in our day to day life. Starting off with Evernote which is a unique tool with many features which help us to take notes, capture handwritten notes and photos which could be saved digitally. In other words, Evernote can be used for any work which involves archiving and journaling. Another useful tool is Diigo which helps us to bookmark and tag webpages. This is also a useful tool in a sense that it allows us to highlight any part of the webpage, much the same as Yawas does. Yet another tool is Yawas. It is a web add -on that works for chrome only. It can also highlight text on any web page. The best part about Yawas, according to me, is that it saves all the highlighted texts in our bookmarks so that whenever we need to review to any webpage, we can easily go back and open that site from where we took notes. 

I think  the tool which could really help me would be Evernote because the tool helps us to organise our work in a more better way. Also, the tool can be easily accessible through our smatphones. It could also be useful because Evernote helps us to scan picture using our phone camera. Besides, a large number of other web services can also be used to synergies with Evernote. So, I would like to make use of Evernote in most of the work elated to web. 

Stem Cells (Research Proposal)

Topic - Stem Cells

How treatment of  serious ailments could be done through stem cell therapy ?

The quest for  advancement in biological science and treatment of serious ailments has led to the discovery of one technique, popularly called Stem cell therapy. Initial research led to the discovery of ways to derive embryonic stem cells form mouse embryos way back in 1981. In 2006, scientists developed the technique to re-programme  genetically the adult cells to assume stem cell-like state. 

Other potential research questions

Is stem cell therapy applicable for all types of ailment ? 

How can we say for sure that treatment through stem cell therapy cures all serious ailments? 

How to approach the research ?

    My research on stem cell therapy would vary from disease-to-disease. The  treatment for each affected  organ would require customised research procedure followed by clinical trials. I would introduce the various methods available for stem cell therapy at present and analyze the effectiveness and related issues concerning each method of stem cell therapy. 

      Normally, the required stem cells to be placed in an organ for curing an ailment is produced in a laboratory. This is done with the help of the various types of available stem cells - viz. embryonic, fetal, adult, and re-programmed stem cells, also called ' induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells'. 

    While undertaking research, I need to look into the moral and political issues as well concerning stem cell therapy. The concern relate to 'Human Embryonic Stem Cell (HESC)'. Those who are against the use of HESC advocate that it is morally wrong to  deliberately destroy human embryos in order to develop stem cell lines on which research could be done. I would also look about the dangers and benefits of the available options for stem cell treatment through literature, academic journals, government websites and scientific journals. 

Sources :

1. ww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

2. http://www.eurostemcell.org/

3.  http://stemcells.nih.gov/Pages/Default.aspx

Extended Essay - Stem Cell

Lines of Inquiry

How can we say for sure that treatment through stem cell therapy cures all serious ailments?

What are the various diseases besides bone marrow transplant where use of stem cell therapy has proved beneficial? 

What is the success rate of this therapy

What measures can be taken to publicise the use of stem cell therapy in a proper way without allowing certain unscrupulous persons to take advantage

of this therapy for their person gains. 

Academic Honesty

Reflection - A lot of times when I have to cite my work, I do not cite it correctly and usually put incorrect citations in order to do my work quickly. However, when I have to redo my assignments I realize that I should have properly cited my work before instead of doing it in my own way. 

Golden Standard Q2!

Should certain kinds of ads be banned in the interest of health/morality/annoyance – alcohol, cigarettes, prescription meds, etc…?

Lines of enquiry :

1. Why advertisement is necessary ?

2. For whom the advertisement should be meant ?

3. Do we need to regulate ads in the interest of the society ?

4.What is the popular opinion world over on advertisement of products, especially those products which have health,morality, and annoyance issues ?

WHO- The author should preferably  be a social scientist and someone who studies behavioural issues of impact of advertisement of products on society.

Why- The author should write with a view to present a balanced view of the effects of advertisement, especially on issues relating to health, morality etc.

Where- The article/debate should be on a site which  is known to serve the cause of public such as any .org or .edu site

When - The site where such material is published should be an updated one, is watched frequently by masses and is open for comments by the interested persons.

What- The site should have citation, should provide evidence in favour of or against the views published, should not have grammatical errors, should be well written.

Golden Standard Question - 1

There’s a minimum wage, but should there also be a maximum wage/salary a person can earn? Lines of Inquiry -  People can get more amount of salary. They should not suffer if are ready to work hard. Who - A person should be a worker so that he can tell his opinions about getting a maximum salary.  What - The website should be supported by evidence and should be errors free. It should be well written and should not contain any logical fallacies.  Why - The website should be written to inform the public about getting a maximum wage/salary. Where - The site should be an org.. or gov… When - The website can be frequently updated. On the other hand if the website is updated 5-6 hers ago then also we can trust because here it’s people’s different opinions not a science based research.

Golden Standard Redo

Gold Standard from Aayushi Bajpai on Vimeo.

Golden Standard Criteria

Who - 3 years of experience with cancer research

• Who? The author of the website must be an Oncologist, or someone who has done research on the subject of cancer. You can also have a PHD, in something related to cancer.

Why

• Why? The author's purpose should be only to tell people about cancer, i.e. what is cancer, how can one get cancer, how to prevent yourself from getting cancer etc. The author should not talk about anything other than cancer,  and also he/she should not advertise/promote their clinics or hospitals, because the topic is solemnly based on cancer.
• The URL should have .org or .com at the end; .gov, .mil. .edu are education,government, military etc. We don't want something that government, education, and military related.

When -

• The website should be recently updated because the information about science usually change day by day. If it's pretty old then the person might get wrong information.
• So the website should be regularly updated.

What - The quality of writing should be good enough

No grammatical errors.

Cited proprly

Golden Standard Video

Golden Standard video!! from Aayushi Bajpai on Vimeo.

Golden Standard

Who- who is the author of the website? Is the site reliable? Is there any information about the author?
What - Is it supported by evidence? Are there any grammatical errors? How well the website is written? Does it have any logical fallacies?
Why - Why is it written? What's the purpose? Is it biased?
Where- Where has the data come from? What kind of site is it? Is it org, com, edu? Is the website connected to any links? Are the linked websites well written? When was it last updated? If it's updated recently and the website is well written then it's a reliable source.
When- When was the website published? When was it updated? If the website is pretty old, then it's not a reliable source.

Pakistan Day

I  think we should invite Saiba Gul who is an engineer turned entrepreneur and is passionate about women empowerment, especially in South Asia. She was born and brought up in Lahore and is an alumna of MIT.  She had worked on low-cost solar lighting for post-Tsunami refugees.

   

At present, she is associated with ‘Popinjay’ Brand  handmade, quality  fashion accessories by actively engaging skilled artisans, and  embroiderers, especially women.
             The women are given practical training and  very good wages so that they could be self-reliant and work with dignity which eventually leads to uplifting the social status of  such artisan women.