Sickle Cell VS Cancer

                                 Independent Research-Term 1
Hi everyone! Welcome to my first blogpost for the year!  In this article, I will be writing about an article I came across on the internet.

Title of chosen article:Sickle cells show potential to attack aggressive cancer tumors


           VS                 

   Overall, the main purpose of this article is to tell the world about this new scientific discovery.  The key scientific question I feel that he is proposing is: Is chemotherapy the only cure for cancer?

   In this article,the writer starts by introducing the research team which researched on this project.Basically,the team discovered that sickle cell,commonly thought as an enemy to humans as it causes the infamous Sickle Cell Disease,can be harnessed to starve cancer cells of their food.In Sickle Cell Disease,the sickle cells,being deformed,clot the blood vessels in the person, endangering his or her life.Similarly,when these cells are used to cure cancer,they happen to be attracted to cancerous cells,thus clotting around it and closing up all means of getting food!

  I feels that this article can be trusted as firstly,this was put up in 'Science Daily',which should be reliable.Other sights that prove that this experiment is not fake include:Duke Health.org and First World Pharma. Moreover,the prove given by the author is persuasive.As stated in the article:

"In a National Institutes of Health-funded study of mice with breast cancer, the researchers gave the animals an infusion of fluorescently dyed sickle cells and viewed them under special window chambers that provide real-time observation of processes inside the body. Within five minutes, the deformed cells began to adhere to the blood vessels surrounding the hypoxic tumors. Over 30 minutes, the cells had formed clots and began blocking the small blood vessels that fed the tumor."

This means that they had did a test run on mice and had apparently worked!However,I feel that we still have to be careful of what we do.Firstly,cancer is a very dangerous topic. Secondly,this experiment has not been tried out on humans.As stated in the article:

"Dewhirst and Terman said the research team would continue to conduct studies in animals before moving to human trials."

Hello everyone.Throughout the whole term,these are some of the work I did.

These are, a vernier caliper(top) and a micrometer screw gauge(bottom), the one's I used during one of our lab lesson.My friends and I used them to measure tiny-winnie objects like marbles, the width of a thin metal wire,and many other objects.After all the measuring, we plotted a table to gather our readings.It was really fun,especially with Mr Tan teaching us the four uses of Vernier Calipers.
Uses:
1)Measure the inner width of the object.
2)Measure the outer width of the object.
3)Measure volumes of objects with the tail.
4)*Lastly,use it as a weapon to HIT people!!!

                                                     Term 1-Secondary 1      

     Time flies really fast.In the blink of an eye, term 1 is almost coming to an end. Well, in this blogpost,I will talk about my thoughts about this term.Overall,I feel this term has been an eye-opening experience,with concepts and thoughts that go deeper than the normal boring textbook, and new ideas and inventions that adds colour to the learning of Science.
     This term,we had a mini Science test on our understanding of worksheets 1-7.Personally,I feel that it was a total failure! Out of 25 marks,I only got 17.5! That is an A2,which is not acceptable as it was such an easy test. Well,what's done is done. After reflecting on my horrible results, the biggest problem I have is carelessness.I feel that the best way to solve this is to focus more and work faster to check through the paper more times during the test.Some other minor problems are due trick questions with very close answers.Even though these type of questions can't be avoided, I can still minimise errors if I scrutinise it meticulously.

     With all these in mind,I hope to work towards an A1 in Science and even be exempted from it. This can be done,in my opinion, if I use every small amount of time that can be squeezed out from rides on the MRT, or any free time in between lessons or CCA to study the past days' notes and work. Also, more importantly, I need to be more careful when doing work!