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Monday, 30 October 2017

Formal Writing

Testing On Animals Should Be Banned

Are you aware that those cosmetics or beauty products you use on an everyday basis could be causing an animal unnecessary pain, or in some cases death? You could be supporting animal cruelty without even knowing it. Each year more than a hundred million innocent animals are killed as a result of animal testing in the United States alone. When are we as human beings going to stand up and speak for those animals who don't have a voice to be heard?

Animal testing is when scientists conduct experiments on animals to test certain products. Today a lot of products are tested on animals without the consumer even realizing, like mascara, lipstick, deodorant, perfume, shampoo and many more. These experiments are disgusting and inhumane. They do things like spray dangerous harmful chemicals into their eyes, cutting them open while they are still alive, burning their skin off, exposing them to existential heat, tying and trapping them in metal boxes so they can't move, ripping out the animal's vocal cords so they can't make noise, and sadly many more inhumane acts. This is not an experimental ‘test’ it's torture.

It is the modern 21st century we have so much technology at our fingertips, so why are we still testing products on animals? It is completely unnecessary. Some people argue that we need to test on animals because otherwise, we are halting the future of medication, but this is not true. In fact, it has been proven that testing on animals is incredibly inaccurate and there are many more effective and efficient ways to go about the matter. Dr. Richard Klausner who is the former director of the National Cancer Institute proved the theory of how unreliable animal testing is when he said “We have cured cancer in mice for decades—and it simply didn’t work in humans. Even chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, do not accurately predict results in humans—of the more than 80 HIV vaccines that have proven safe and efficacious in chimpanzees (as well as other non-human primates), all have failed to protect or prove safe in humans in nearly 200 human clinical trials, with one actually increasing a human’s chance of HIV infection”. Science needs to move on from their ineffective outdated ways.

If you had the chance to spare at least one innocent animal's life would you? One of the things that you can do to take a stand against this cruelty is check the description on the back of the product you are buying, make sure it says “Not tested on animals” or “Cruelty-free”. Although this doesn't seem like a big step it's a start, if enough people stop purchasing these products the companies and mass producers will not make any money and be forced to stop the testing. If this is not your thing but you still want to help there are charities you can donate to, but make sure to be careful and do your research first because some of them are hurting rather than helping.

So as you can see, Animal testing is a disgusting barbaric act that is completely unnecessary and unreliable. We need more people to take a stand against it. Animal testing is wrong on so many levels. It is time to enforce a ban on animal testing and make it against the law all around the world. We need to save the animals.

Friday, 15 September 2017

Bacteria and Disinfectants

Purpose: How concentration can affect the performance rate of disinfectants in killing micro-organisms


Savlon
What is a disinfectant?
- bacteriacidal

What does it do?
- inhibits the growth of bacteria

Why does it do that?
cetrimide
chlorhexidine gluconate

Structure of a cell
Binary Fission - reproduction

Aim: I want to investigate how to kill bacteria using different concentration of Savlon.

Hypothesis: I think that the higher the concentration of Savlon the more bacteria killed.

Variables:

What is your independent variable? The concentration of savlon

What is your dependant variable? The clear zone

Describe a suitable range of values to be used for the independent
variable and how these values will be changed? The range of the concentrations i used were 0, 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000

Describe how the dependent variable will be measured and give its units? we measured the diameter of the clear zone with a ruler in millimetres

Identify any other variables that might influence your investigation and
describe how they will be controlled or kept the same to make your results
more accurate? A variable that could influence the investigation is the size of the filter paper disks, we ensured that they were keep the same size by using a hole punch. Another variable is the fact that we used savlon for the investigation instead of detol, we used salvlon because it tested better and another variable is the temperature that the agar plates were kept at, we controlled this by putting them in an incubator. 

Describe how you will ensure that your results are reliable and that you
have enough data? I ensured that my data was reliable because we did the experiment three times and took an average, we also removed an outlier.

Equipment:
  • Agar Plate
  • Vivid
  • Yoghurt
  • Cotton Bud
  • Discs of filter paper - hole punched
  • Tweezers
  • Ethanol - alcohol
  • Bunsen Burner
  • Pipette - Dropper
  • Dimple Tray

Method:
1. Label the agar plate into quarters.
2.Pour some of the diluted yoghurt into the agar plate
3.Drain the excess
4.Use a paper towel to soak up the unwanted yoghurt left on the rim of the agar plate
5.Use a pipette to do the dilutions on a spotting tile
6.Clean the pipette after each dilution
-10 drops of savlon, (0)
-9 drops of water, 1 drop of savlon, (1/10)
-9 drops of water, 1 drop from the solution above, (1/100)
-9 drops of water, 1 drop from the solution above, (1/1000)
7. Hole punch the filter paper into 4 small discs x3
8. Dip tweezers in ethanol
9. make sure to put the lid back on the ethanol each time
10. pass the tweezers through the flame to make sterile
11. use the tweezers to pick up the filter paper circles
12.soak the filter paper circles in each of the different concentrations
13. place the filter paper that was soaked in the different concentrations of savlon into the quarters of the agar plate
14. tape the agar plate closed
15. label with your initials
16.leave overnight



Concentration of savlon resulting in clear zone
Clear zone diameter (mm)
Average
Concentration123
00000
1/100012101010.67
1/10014261514.5
1/1021202421.67




Trend Line
This data showed
- That the line is increasing

My conclusion
- My hypothesis was correct, I conclude that the higher the concentration of savlon used the more bacteria is killed, therefore the clear zone is bigger.

Discussion
The purpose of the Savlon was to stop the growth and reproduction of the bacteria. Bacteria are very small microorganism's, which have cell walls. For example the Capsule is the outer layer, cell wall is the middle layer and the cell membrane is the inner layer. Savlon kills bacteria because it contains Cetrimide and Chlorhexidine Gluconate. These layers protect, keep the structure and the cell membrane controls what enters and exits the cell. The chemical in Savlon is Chlorhexidine and it is bactericidal and bacteriostatic and kills bacteria by breaking down the cell membrane. 

Structure























Reproduction of bacteria
Image result for reproduction of bacteria
1. Cell replicates it's DNA


2. The cytoplasmic membrane gets bigger, separating DNA molecules. 

3. Membrane closes in, a cross wall is formed


4. Daughter cells.

The Chlorhexidine in savlon affected the structure of the bacteria so they  were no longer able to reproduce, which is why they created the clear zones in the agar plates.
Growth
Image result for bacterial growth curve







Phase 1: Lag Phase
Bacteria begin to take in nutrients, synthesize, their RNA and there proteins, but they are not ready to replicate/reproduce yet.
Phase 2: Exponential Phase
Bacteria replicate quickly.
Phase 3: Stationary Phase
Bacteria death rate and growth rate are the same.
Phase 4. Death Phase
Nutrients are no longer available so the bacteria dies


Evaluation
 If something went wrong, what was it and how did you fix it? On one of the agar plates we spread the yoghurt to thin so it left a patch, we didnt use this measurement because it would effect the overall result.

Were there any anomalies? We had one outlier from when we spread the yogurt to thin.


What were some of the problems and how could you fix them in the future? We struggled getting all the agar plates finished before the period ended, so some of the yogurt didn't set properly, we could have started the investigation earlier in the period.


Has your investigation raised any challenging questions? Is there any way possible that we could speed the process up