Blog 9

People eat different kinds of food on a frequently basis to produce energy . A common type of food I eat on a frequently basis would be bread. I like all types of bread from pizza bread to sandwich bread and sweets. The most common bread I usually eat would be sandwich bread.bread is prepared from a dough of flour and water, usually baked in an oven to turn into bread. Some health effects on bread that would be a positive impact would be  that whole grains were found to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.In addition bread made with whole wheat helps you maintain a healthy weight. Growing the wheat is the largest environmental impact of making bread. All wheat production requires water.

About a week and a half ago i went to a garden located in the RCC campus.While observing all the fascinating plants  and vegetable being cultivated , we had guest speaker from UCR who where teaching us facts about how a garden works. One of her topics was about Biological control, biological control is a natural species that protects the plants in its area from harmful pesticides. Another topic she was talking about were the types of insects for example scale insects,scale insects are bugs that suck on the trees nutrition along with that scale insects leave a sugary substance which ants love which makes them there predator.A topic that we talked about my environmental science class was about how wasp lay eggs in the white caterpillar and the caterpillar protect the wasp eggs till they mature,that topic was also introduced during the garden trip. I also had an encounter with the weirdest looking bug ever, the bug that i met was a stick bug and i was able to carry it. It was such a neat bug because it looked exactly like a stick so it would be able to camouflage with its characteristics were ever its habitat is.

Blog 7

Dont you ever wonder where our water comes from ? Well i live in the city of riverside and our tab water and drinking water comes from groundwater from the wells in the Bunker Hill Basin and Riverside Basin.The county of riverside concern on safe water is high. In 2012 they collected about 17,000 samples of water to test for potential contamination.The Riverside Public Utilities treats some of its wells and all water sources are blended at a central location before entering into distribution. One personal interest in our water was that how much fluoride is in our water ? according to the riverside public utilities is that fluoride level for water is at1 ppm but Riverside has fluoride levels at 0.6 ppm and is not planning to add fluoride to its water by artificial means.  My question is why they add fluoride to our water? I thought fluoride was a chemical hazard to humans.Many of take water for granted because only one percent of the worlds water is drinkable and the 97 percent is either salt water, or undrinkable water. The average american use about 90 gallons of water per day.  Thats a whole lot of water being wasted everyday , its important to treasure our water because its an important factor of the living. Most of our bottled water is made from plastic. and plastic is made by oil, so we are using another valuable resource to keep our water stored. Water bottles have chemicals known as  polycarbonate known as bisphenol A (BPA). BPA couses cancer and hazardous effects on humans. Another reason why plastic bottles are bad for our envioment is becouse most of the plastic is waste.In addition that why we recycle plastic to reuse the same resources and use less of the environment.

blog 6

• water, water bottles
• soda, soda cans
• clothes/cotton 
• natural gasses/ gasoline
• disposable utensils/ plastic
• paper 
• wood/ buildings
• brick stone, buildings
• plants
• shampoo, soaps
• electricity

Gasoline

Many of know what gasoline is because we use about everyday so we must all be familiar with it. Gasoline is made from crude oil pumped from the ground which is called petroleum. This liquid contains hydro carbon and it turns out that hydro carbon molecules have many different properties of gasses.  An example would be if a carbon atom CH4 is the lightest in  the chain known to methane. Gasoline is have many types of boiling points due to the levels of hydro carbon . an example would be heating up the crude oil to different temperatures to obtain the gasses needed which is called oil refining. The first four gases on its chain are CH4 methane C2H6 ethane C3H8 propane C4H10 butane. Chains up to C18H32 are liquids at room temperature and chains above C19 are solids at room temperature. Gasoline is used every where from our cars to machines that created our civilization. Gasoline is common upon everyone house old uses like the stove, dryer, boiler which is all powered by natural gasses and electricity. Gasoline has been used in the industrial revaluation , factory's creating more jobs which expanded the use of gas. A negative outcome on gasoline is that it releases carbon in our atmosphere which effects our atmosphere. another negative out come is the pollution it releases it can cause harm to our body's and even have sicknesses.

I choose to do my research on gasoline because its a natural resource that we all depend on. This natural resource is limited time only which have a big price and control over our every day life's. Gasoline is an interesting product because of its benefit on human civilization which can create more comfort in our lives. We accept the risk of burning fossil fuels to make our life a little easier while harming our environment in the long run. In addition to harming our environment gasoline is a big part of our world and its limited, we should find better and safer power alternatives to sustain our energy use .

Blog 5

Hello fellow bloggers so, I’ve been attending RCC campus for about a year now. The campus lay out is distributed for civilian use and the nature surrounding its area. The school has many trees and bushes distributed along the planetarium and the cafeteria; many birds who live in the area take advantage of this area due to the food and trees surrounding its map. Another factor having all these trees and bushes is that many other species share it for example squirrels, skunks, possums. In addition to our campus I feel like it’s a green environment but also has its cons. An example of a harmful chemical that affects our environment on our campus would be all the students who drive cars and pollution polluting our air we breathe on our campus. Our class room seems to use a lot of energy due to powering all the electronics which affects our environment on our campus, I wouldn’t know the usage of energy but we have a large facility being used six days a week. NYU has a program that they have purchased which is wind energy. By using wind energy we can reduce the use of man-made energy to renewable wind energy that can power the school and save the environment some harm. In addition to NYUs plan of wind energy would be a great environmental improvement to the community surrounding our school campus. By doing so we would have to start a program that can helps students with renewable energy and get funds to start a program at RCC to produce wind energy to power the school. This will also benefit our city and students who gets hands on experimentation on how to save energy and improve our energy use.

Blog #4

This weekend me and a friend went hiking on a trail. This trail was located around the Arlington Hights area of Riverside. I've been going to this spot for years which the spot is called ages peak, because of its nature in the area and how it separates from the city. This isn't a community trail its more a mountain area with water creek on the side, its actually fascinating to see this in such a big city in riverside. I usually come here and take long walks or just play with my R/C Car. While at the trail i was picturing a big biosphere covering the area i was located at. Within my area there were many trees and bushes clummbed along the water way and inside those trees there were many biotic species such as birds , insects even water life. What interest me the most was when i was looking in the water there were many craw fish , and i thought craw fish came from salt water. It made me think how this species so far from the pacific ocean get to an area like this. Besides the craw fish there are many ducks scattered along the lake .Those were my main focus while i was at the spot, moving along my area there were cactus's in all one spot and living in the cactus's were many bugs spiders, then when i was looking around later i saw many lizards running around the area of the cactus and the bushes. Looking at all these biotic species all in this one spot made it into a community of living creatures and within that they have a food web established to keep the community balanced in its nature. In addition to my trail and to what was in my sphere i feel that the key stone of this area are the insects because if there were no insects there probably wont be lizards and if theirs no lizard theirs no birds which could change the nature of this area drastically.

Blog #3

Blog #3

This world has been sustained for billions of years within its own natural capability to create water, plants etc. to make the earth for what it is. The United States Department of Agriculture is considering planting genetically engineered eucalyptus trees. These GE Trees were developed by ArborGen Biotechnology Corporation to provide materials to create paper and wood pallets that fuel power plants around the world. Director of Center for Food Safety “ Bebbie Barker” Announced that  “ Factory forest will accelerate and expand large scale, chemical intensive, monoculture plantations. We need to understand the risk in order to determine if GE trees are sustainable way forward or a dangerous diversion” In addition to this report there has been a report that GE trees would pose a threat to natural trees in the surrounding area due to the capability to spread pollen and seeds in great distances which would harm natural trees by contaminating them by pest, pathogens risking the life span on US forest. Another negative out come with these genetically engineered trees would be that they consume twice as much more water than natural trees due, Another environment risk is that burning GE wood pellets could slow the climate change. Regardless to all the environmental risk with the outcome of GE trees the USDA will consider to use GE trees despite the risk. My opinion is that scientist shouldn’t mess with mother earth and start to create fake trees because all its doing is hurting our environment than sooner it’s going hurt us.

·         The information source I used was the internet and the site is called RT News.

·         This is a reliable site because most of the news is not filtered like how most news sources are.

·         The Russians are the ones who own the website and post news from all over the world and important news on technology and science.

·         The website is reliable because it’s a nonprofit organization that’s posts up honest news from around the world.

·         My reaction to this article was very interesting because as is we eat and consume GMO products for example food and fruits that have been made in a lab for human consumption. My feelings on that are scary because we don’t really know what we are eating and can cause illness. In addition to GMO now the government is taking bigger risk on hurting our environment by producing factory forest to create materials and bio fuels to power etc.  Another negative outcome would be that it would affect our natural trees that produce our oxygen. I feel that humans are destroying this world with bio engineering.

Web page/ Source

http://rt.com/usa/genetically-engineered-usda-harm-environment-404/

John Castanon

 

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My name is John Anthony Castanon and I was born and raised in the city of Riverside. I was born on August 19 1994 in Kaiser Hospital on Magnolia ave. Currently I live in orange crest, in the Riverside area. I have two little sister whose names are Erica she is 17 and attend King High and daisy which is 13 which attends Miller Middle School. My mother works for the Fontana Postal Services “USPS” she’s been working there for about 14 years. My dad is a truck driver for Waste Management and has been working there for over 20 years. What I love to do for fun is work on my car and take it out to the track to beat my fastest lap time. I have a dog and two leopard geckos which are so neat when they shed their skin. My academic interest would be history and science. I love history because it’s what affects us in today’s world.  I find science very fascinating because I love the way things work including life. In addition I’m at a point where I look at life and can’t really find its meaning to me because were living organisms just as an animal, plants or any living thing from us. Science has the power to change the world and how to make it a better place my goal would be to major in science. Environmental science is interesting because its how our world works. Besides looking at how it works we are looking at how we humans are destroying our earth. A topic the interest me that I would love to learn would be if humans are over populated, with no more natural resources.