Biography of Ian Wilmut Essays

Biography of Ian Wilmut Essays Biography of Ian Wilmut Paper Biography of Ian Wilmut Paper | The Life and Accomplishments of Ian Wilmut| Dr. Ian Wilmut with the year-old Dolly in 1997. Dolly was the first animal to be cloned from DNA taken from an adult animal.  © Najlah Feanny/CORBIS SABA| James Ray| Shepherd University| 9/16/2011| | Ian Wilmut is an embryologist from England that is arguably the most controversial researcher in recent history. He is considered to be the pioneer of cloning. He and his colleagues successfully cloned a lamb they named Dolly. He received many awards for his controversial work while enduring great backlash for the ethical implications of his accomplishments. Ian Wilmut was born July 7, 1944 in Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire, England (American Academy of Achievement, 2005). His father was Leonard Wilmut, a mathematics teacher at the Boys’ High School in Scarborough were Ian would later attend. His father was also a long time diabetes sufferer that eventually lost his sight to the disease (Lovetoknow Corp, 2008). It is thought that this experience may have been the early foundation for Ian Wilmut’s interest in scientific research. As a child, Ian Wilmut was raised in the town of Coventry (American Academy of Achievement, 2005). Early in his life Wilmut was interested in agriculture and farming spending much of his time in the outdoors and working as a farm hand (Wilmut, Creating the Genetic Replica, 1998). Wilmut once dreamed of a naval career, but those dreams were short lived due to his color blindness (Wilmut, Creating the Genetic Replica, 1998). As a young adult Ian Wilmut attended the University of Nottingham to pursue a degree in Agriculture. He felt he did not have the business sense to be successful in commercial farming so Wilmut focused his attention on agricultural research. While completing his undergraduate work at the University of Nottingham, Wilmut was exposed to the field of embryology by his mentor G. Eric Lamming. Lamming was a renowned expert in reproduction and after introducing Wilmut to his field, Wilmut knew that genetic engineering of animals was his quest in life. After graduation from the University of Nottingham, Wilmut attended the Darwin College at the University of Cambridge. In 1966 Wilmut spent 8 weeks working with Christopher Polge in his laboratory (Wilmut, Creating the Genetic Replica, 1998). Polge is credited with developing the technique of cryopreservation in 1949 (Rall, 2007). Wilmut was fascinated by Polge’s work and joined his laboratory in pursuit of a research PhD. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the freezing of boar semen and embryos. Based on this research, Wilmut was able to successfully produce the first calf born from a frozen embryo, a Hereford-Friesian named Frostie (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). This scientific advance allowed cattle breeders to increase the quality of their herd by implanting the embryos of the cows that produced the best meat and milk into cows of inferior quality. Wilmut graduated with his PhD in 1973 and took a research job with the Animal Breeding Research Station in Scotland. The research station was both privately and government funded and soon became known as the Roslin Institute in Roslin, Scotland (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). It is widely believed that Wilmut began his research in embryology after over hearing a conversation about Dr. Steen Willadsen, an embryologist that had used a cell from an embryo already in development to clone a sheep. Wilmut began applying Dr. Willesden’s research findings to his own research at the Roslin Institute. In 1991, animal activists heard about Wilmut’s research and burned down his laboratory. However, Wilmut was undeterred and secured funding from Pharmaceutical Proteins, LTD Therapeutics to continue his research. The greatest and most controversial part of Wilmut’s career began in 1996. Wilmut and a team of researchers took the DNA of a 6 year old Finn Dorset ewe’s mammary gland, switched off the active genes, and fused it with an egg cell from a Scottish Blackface ewe from which he removed the genetic material (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). Wilmut used electricity to fuse that mammary cell with its own DNA to the empty egg while it was in the dormant state. He repeated the same process with 277 udder cells and eggs from sheep (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). 9 of those eggs began to grow and divide into embryos (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). Wilmut then transferred the 29 embryos into surrogate sheep resulting in 13 of the sheep becoming pregnant (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). Of those 13 sheep, only one delivered a healthy lamb (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). On July 5, 1996, Dolly was born at the Roslin Institute. Wilmut has said that he named the lamb after country music singer Dolly Parton (Wilmut, Creating the Genetic Replica, 1998). After insuring Dolly was developing in a healthy manner and securing a patent for his work, Wilmut introduced Dolly to the world in February 1997 as a product of somatic cell nuclear transfer. DNA testing revealed that Dolly was in fact the genetic replica of her mother (Dewar, 2004). Dolly delivered four healthy offspring during her lifetime. In 2003, Dolly succumbed to pulmonary adenomatosis (Wilmut Highfield, After Dolly, 2006). After cloning Dolly, Wilmut went on to produce Molly and Polly, who had commercial value. They were each cloned with a human gene that allowed their milk to contain a blood clotting protein factor IX, which could be extracted to treat human hemophilia (Wilmut Highfield, After Dolly, 2006). Eventually, herds of sheep with genetic proteins in their milk could be produced, turning them into living drug factories for other diseases as well. Wilmut hoped that technology could be used with pigs to create human-adaptable organs for transplants. He also envisioned that certain genes could be more easily isolated and modified. Wilmut did could not have predicted the controversy his accomplishments would create. Media played up society’s fears of cloning human beings. Religious organizations lobbied against the use of embryos in research and called it murder. In March 1997, Wilmut appeared before the U. S. Senate public health and safety subcommittee hearing to discuss the ethical implications of his work. He said†I know what is bothering people about all this. I understand why the world is suddenly at my door. But this is my work. It has always been my work, and it doesn’t have anything to do with creating copies of human beings. I am no haunted by what I do, if that’s what you want to know. I sleep very well at night. † In 1999, Wilmut lobbied for a change to Great Britain’s 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act to allow for the use of surplus eggs from assisted fertilization treatments to be developed for their stem cells. He sits on a Church of Scotland committee that examines the ethical issues surrounding advancements in science and technology. Although he is not a religious person, his focus is to neutralize critics so that scientific and technological advances can continue. Ian Wilmut wrote two books with his colleagues including Keith Campbell. These works include The Second Creation: The Age of Biological Control by the Scientists Who Cloned Dolly and After Dolly. In 2005, Wilmut received a license in the U. K. to clone human embryos for the purpose of culturing human stem cells. His goal was to investigate treatments for Motor Neuron Disorder. At the same time, the United States passed legislation to prohibit the use of government funding for research involving human embryos. Wilmut abandoned his use of human embryos when Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan was able to program skin cells from adult mice to revert back to their original stem cell state. Ian Wilmut’s discoveries and advancements to the scientific community have garnered him several awards. His work with Dolly earned him Time Magazine’s 1997 Man of the Year Runner Up (Time Magazine, 1997). In 1998 he was inducted into the Museum of Living History in Washington, D. C. and was given the Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Award. He was entered into the Order of the British Empire (OBE), the Fraternal Order of the Royal Society (FRE), the United Kingdom’s Academy of Sciences (FMedSci), and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). In 2008, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of England (BBC, 2007). Ian Wilmut is a balding, unassuming man. He is married with three children, Helen, Naomi, and Dean. While currently out of the controversial limelight, Wilmut is the current Director of the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He lives in the Scottish countryside with his family. He enjoys gardening, the sport of curling and taking long walks (Wilmut, Creating the Genetic Replica, 1998). The impact of Ian Wilmut’s work is far reaching. It lays the basis for possibly treating or curing diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s through the use of stem cells (Wilmut Highfield, After Dolly, 2006). It could lead to better agricultural stock without the fear of deadly diseases such as mad cow disease (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). Furthermore, his works could possibly be used to prevent animals from becoming extinct. Although controversial, I believe Ian Wilmut’s advances in science are for the greater good. The only concern I have is now that the process is known, what is to prevent some self funded millionaire from cloning humans (Dewar, 2004). It is easier to control research that is dependent on public or governmental funds, but one cannot control those that already have the funds. I chose Ian Wilmut because I was interested in cloning and what useful purposes it has for society. I understood the implications for the treatment of diseases but I did not realize the other uses as well. For example, I did not think that a lamb could be genetically engineered, without harm, to produce milk that could treat hemophilia in humans (Wilmut, Campbell, Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control, 2000). I did not consider that cloning could be used to prevent the extinction of endangered species. Time Magazine. (1997, March 10). Time. American Academy of Achievement. (2005, October 25). Retrieved September 15, 2011, from Museum of Living History: achievement. org/autodoc/page/wil0bio-1 BBC. (2007, December 29). Retrieved September 22, 2011, from BBC: http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/uk/7163587. stm Lovetoknow Corp. (2008). Retrieved September 20, 2011, from biography. yourdictionary. com: http://biography. ourdictionary. com/ian-wilmut Dewar, E. (2004). The Second Tree. New York: Carrol Graf Publishers. Rall, W. (2007). Ernest John Christopher Polge. In W. Rall, Cryobiology (pp. 241-242). Wilmut, I. (1998, May 23). Creating the Genetic Replica. (T. A. Achievement, Interviewer) Wilmut, I. , Highfield, R. (2006). After Dolly. New York: W. W. Norton Company. Wilmut, I. , Campbell, K. , Tudge, C. (2000). The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control. New York: Farrar, Str aus and Giroux.

How to Write a Heart-Melting Graduation Speech

How to Write a Heart-Melting Graduation Speech College is almost left behind. Youve finished top in your class. You put in all the time to get those straight As and impress the pants off your teachers. Now you expect to leave school on a speech that has to be impressive for both faculty stuff and your fellow graduates. You need to write a speech that makes them laugh, cry, and think. It’s up to you to distill 4-6 years of heartbreaking sacrifice, agonizing defeat, and tons of embarrassing party stories into 10 minutes. In order to make your mark on your graduating class, you need to employ some of these vital speech-writing skills. Introduction (One Minute) You need to start your speech with something that gets their attention. While you might be tempted to go serious from the first instant, people respond to humor much better. Take advantage of your captive audience by hitting them with about a minute of solid college jokes. You can make good fun of your Dean, you can laugh about how much â€Å"research† you had to do to get your degree in Criminal Studies, or you can just tell about the time you woke up in the toilet. Do: Make sure you test out your potential jokes ahead of time to ensure that they land well. Don’t: Do not start your introduction with how much you don’t want to give a speech. Not only is it boring, but it instantly shows everyone that they shouldn’t listen to you. Your Story (3-4 Minutes) Here’s where you start to bring it down to a level. Now that you’ve got them laughing, you want to tell them a story. This needs to be a true story that has a lot of heart. Were you raised in the Foster Care system? Did you finish school despite being a paraplegic? This is what they really want to hear. They want to be inspired by the fact that you, like they, have overcome nearly insurmountable odds to come to this point in your life. Do: Explain both the trials and accomplishments over the last years of your life. If you don’t have anything (which is unlikely), choose a great historical figure, important professor, or your mom. Everyone loves their mom on graduation day. Don’t: Lie or make fun of anyone who has helped you. Remember, your audience wants to be uplifted and inspired. Make sure that even the darkest story always hints that there will be light at the end of the tunnel. Connect With Your Audience (3-4 Minutes) Once you have shared your story, it’s time to make this story about your audience. Just like you, they have been through hard things. Some of them are single parents, some of them have lost loved ones, some of them took decades to complete their degree. And, through it all, they’ve been dedicated to following their dreams. Congratulate them on their success and show them that your success is really just the success that you all share together. Do: Remember all the different people who you are representing. You are representing the poor, the lonely, the popular, the minorities, the gay, the straight. Honestly call out the fact that you are no better than they are, and that each one of you have accomplished something great. Don’t: Make fun of any individual or group that you represent. It’s your duty to represent the best in every one of the 50-50,000 people who are wearing caps and gowns. Respect their sacrifices and make your speech about them. Conclusion (1-2 Minutes) This is the end part, where you wrap everything together into one heart wrenching ball. Complete your speech by showing your audience who they could be and how each of the hard and wonderful moments of their life have led to this day. Express how their actions today will affect generations of children. Show them that they are the true heroes. Do: Look inside yourself and find the most true thing you know about who you are and who you can be. Then tell them that they have the same power, and that today is where their future begins. Don’t: Be afraid to cry. If you’re doing it right, you will realize how amazing it is that you have accomplished this goal – and so will they. They will look back on this speech and thank you for giving them a singular moment of inspiration on this momentous day. Is your graduation speech ready but you are scared to death to deliver it? Find out how to memorize your speech and   how to overcome the stage fright to stay calm on this important day! Cant write it by yourself, keep in mind that our experts are ready to write your speech for you.

External Business Enviroment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

External Business Enviroment - Essay Example De Rome (2006) describes environment as the surroundings where a person or an entity gets influenced. This means the circumstances that surround us are the environment. Same as we perceive the surroundings, the businesses gets affected the same way. Environment is very important when we discuss the nature of the business and its location. Perhaps, the environment controls businesses and can either make them profitable or else shut these off. The word external is described as any force, issue, person, or anything connected to outside, (Bradley C. Karkkainen, 1994 ; William H. Rodgers, 1994). This refers to everything that is connected with the exterior of a certain thing, is called external. External in this report, will be discussed with reference to the forces that influence a change in the business environment and its strategies. U.K. is a well stabled, prosper and a developed nation, and that’s a major reason behind many businessmen who want to invest in United Kingdom. United Kingdom’s environment is a business friendly and is also very welcoming to new trends, which makes the market profitable and every business find a way to the profits because of the cosmopolitan nature of the country. London is considered to be a magnet for global businesses and investors. Moreover, the European Union serves as an addition to the market of London. Businessmen just intend to enter in to the single largest market of the world, with the world leading financial services of the world. By now, it is fairly understood that how is the U.K. environment in terms of businesses, operate and why are the investors so keen to invest in the pool.

Women and Gender in Islam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Women and Gender in Islam - Essay Example For this text analysis assessment, the purpose is to analyze and compare/contrast the issues pertaining to the Islamic culture and specifically the women of Islam. Women are viewed as subservient to their husbands, with very little choice but to remain as a secondary force to the dominant male race. To better understand the role of women in a culture such as this, as well as to assess how the cultural aspect plays into such a societal standing, the two pieces of work to look at are "Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate" by Leila Ahmed and "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Quran by Asma Barlas. What was often common place for a woman in this culture would be to marry someone, but to marry a person that was chosen by her father. A marriage such as this would commonly be referred to as an "arranged marriage". As she begins her work, Ahmed brings up the first of many points regarding women and marriage. That is, "Neither the diversity of marriage practices in pre-Islamic Arabia nor the presence of matrilineal customs, including the association of children with the mother's tribe, necessarily connotes women's having greater power in society or greater access to economic resources," Adding that, "Nor to these practices correlate with an absence of misogyny; indeed, there is clear evidence to the contrary. The practice of infanticide, apparently to girls, suggests a belief that females were flawed, expendable," (Ahmed p.41). Ahmed begins her work with one of the central themes for study of women in Islamic cultures. While there was a vast cultural diversity throughout the region , in the end the women were seen as the weaker sex and as such could be done with as was decided by the male elders of the home. Ahmed emphasizes this by the choice of the word misogyny in her text. That is defined as, "hatred or strong prejudice towards women; an antonym of philogny," Elaborating further that, "Misogyny is considered by most feminist theories as an implicit motivation of political ideologies that justify and maintain the subordination of women to men," ("Misogyny" p.1.). Just as monarchs were throughout the ages, males in this culture tended to express more outward joy at the birth of a male offspring rather than a female birth. This can be explained by the understanding that males sought to continue on their blood lines, as well as having someone to train that would be able to take a place of leadership as they saw it. Ahmed does counter with the fact that variation did occur in regards to the roles with which women were able to play throughout the vast Islamic culture. She sets out to compare lives, as well as the marriages, which the Islamic leader Muhammad would have had with his wives Khadija and Aisha. Unlike some of the other women around her, Khadija was a woman of wealth who actually was an employer of Muhammad as it was his job to keep an eye on her interests. Unlike the cultural norm, Khadija herself proposed marriage to Muhammad. Ahmed writes that, "She proposed to and married him when she was forty and he twenty-five, and she remained his only wife until her death at

Lives On The Boundary Summary And Analysis English Language Essay

Lives On The Boundary Summary And Analysis English Language Essay The education system in America is broken according to Lives on the Boundary, by Mike Rose. Rose gives examples of how and why education should be equal for everyone. The first part of the book I found it very difficult to find a theory out of the things that Rose wrote because the majority of the first 67 pages were about how he grew up and the low socioeconomic world that he had the trudge through to get where he is now. But then when I look at the statistics from the beginning, I see that yes, our nation is not proficient in many subjects, but we are also growing in mass amounts with college and high school graduates when compared to other countries and even ourselves in the 1800s. In 1890, 6.7 percent of Americans fourteen to seventeen year olds were attending high school; by 1978 that number had risen to 94.1 percent. (Rose, pg 6) For a country that has a failing education system, that number seems to have grown, making me believe the opposite. Yes, I agree that our education sy stem is not perfect, but it is not as terrible as many believe it to be. For those students who have now will to learn, we as teachers can not force them and when people say lets look to the past for the answer, there was never an answer for why our schools are not working. There has never been a solution, only a problem that has been reworded and restated in so many different ways that when reading a book this about the failing of the education system seems to be redundant. When Mike Rose was growing up he had only a few books available to him so he began to buy comic books because he loved the heroes and the action. After comic books he moved to other items like the instructions to his chemistry set and science fiction novels. He wrote very little in his schooling until his last year of high school where a teacher helped him find an interest in doing so. My first enthusiasm about writing came because I wanted a teacher to like me. (Rose pg 102) Although he did become a good reader, with help from his comic books and chemistry set instructions, he did not score well on English tests. It can be assumed that Rose only liked to learn or read about the concrete things in life; basically he was only educated by what entertained him and tuned out the things he did not understand. He even states in his book that this was a method he commonly used, but it proved to be harmful for him and his education in the long run. Rose goes on to explain the struggles of immigrants in this country and their need to learn English to improve their own lifestyles. Not only are we all categorized as black, red, yellow and white, but we have to understand what those categorizations mean, especially when we are trying to understand the world of education. We all hope that racism does not exist amongst teachers and professors, but we can not say anything for the parents or siblings. The education system can not control the time a student is out of the classroom. As Rose points out, whether we like it or not, race can and sometimes does play a factor into education. Rose says a failed education is social more than intellectual in origin. We as educators must realize that a traumatizing experience may have a very negative effect on a students education. Losing a parent or a sibling can cause a student to regress or stand still in their education, unable to move forward. After such an experience, we should try to work w ith the students to help them regain the ability to learn and comprehend things, instead of just tuning out. The only solution I could really see Rose proposing is trying to keep the children engaged with each other as well as the teacher. This may have a positive effect so the child does not grow up to be the shy wall flower that is underprepared. Rose goes on to argue that great classic novels should be taught and the students should be able to learn from them by choice, not just because they have to regurgitate something later on for an exam or a paper. It would even be a good idea to revise these messages and redress past wrongs would involve more than adding some new books to the existing cannon. (Rose p. 107) In this quote, Rose is saying that education needs to be changed so that education is available to all, this can help the underprepared students to have a fair chance at advancing in their education. Also, by bring in great, classic novels, this can help students to become more cultured and well versed in literature. If teachers are trying to keep students engaged by bringing in books by Snookie and Lady Gaga, that is when I will agree that our education system is failing miserably because students need literature, not pop-culture trash. The more we try to cater to their needs with literature, the more of a decline w ill be apparent and the underprepared will then grossly outnumber the prepared. The narrative of this book offers the theory deeply buried within the authors own personal story. I think that I struggled reading a novel be such a narrative voice when I was trying to find a theory. When you as the reader get to move with him through his school experiences, being the underprepared and then into his own classrooms, you can see the growth that is possible. Many people believe it is not probable for the underprepared to succeed. That is where I believe the theory comes into plan. I began to see a theory emerge within Roses own experiences. Throughout the book, he is talking about how the underprepared are being stuck on a continued path of underachieving or even failure because no one seems to give them a real chance or the tools required to achieve success. For a good portion of the book, I felt like I was reading another article for class; the problem is brought up and addressed, in several different ways, but we never find a solid solutions. The only solution that educators have been using is to put all of the remedial or underprepared together so they dont hold anyone else back, but they also never get the opportunity to learn. Rose makes the good argument that tests or exams should not just be a regurgitation of information that the teacher gave, but failed to give more than one or two examples. To engage students, we as educators must be able to do more than just lecture for an hour and expect them to be paying attention. Teaching, I was coming to understand, was a kind of romanceà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦You wooed kids with these things, invented a relationship of sorts, the terms of connection being a narrative, the historical event.(Rose pg 102) I think this quote embodies everything that a teacher needs to do to engage students to help them want to learn. By creating a romance with learning, the students can feel excited and happy about learning. The students can feel giddy about buying a book or even solving the math equation, it all depends on how the teachers choose to engage them. All in all, Rose makes some very convincing arguments about the decline of the education system, but like many of the authors we have read, he only offers a few ideas to fix the problem. His idea of creating a kind of romance with education to engage the students is a good idea, but a lot of teachers may argue that it will meet with to much resistance. As many of us have witnessed or even experienced, standing at the front of the classroom and just lecturing does not engage many students and with todays generation, they will probably be on Facebook or Twitter while you are giving your lecture. So how do we engage the students of this generation? Do we turn to technology to help us run a classroom or do we stick with the old lecture and hope that students are paying attention? I believe there has to be a compromise between lecture, some form of group work and technology. By allowing group work, like Rose does in some of his classes, the students can learn from each other and help to e xpand their own ways of thinking. By still using some lecture, as Rose does as well, you as the teacher still get your say in, hopefully in a creative way that the students enjoy listening to and learning from. And with technology, the students in this generation get to use what they are familiar with to help them, and some students even find enjoyment when the teacher needs help with the new projector or smartboards. Rose brings up many problems and offers just a few good solutions but I believe the problem of education and the underprepared has been around for a very long time and it will take more than a book or a few ideas to fix it.

Confidence and Innocence Through Point of View

John Updike’s well-known short story, â€Å"A & P†, employs a unique form of narrative, utilizing the first person point of view.The themes of innocence and confidence of the youth intertwine in Updike’s story, through a play in narrative tone, as made possible by the first person point of view. As an effect of this narrative form, the story begins abruptly: â€Å"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.† The tension that will slowly build up as the story progresses is given right away at the narration’s first blow.Followed by the first sentence is a statement from the persona, which serves as a device to establish the story’s setting. At this point, a â€Å"camera† is set up for us in the place where the story happens. The voice in the narrative serves as the set of eyes by which we witness all events taking place. Set in the A & P grocery store, the story unfolds in a setting of complex structure—shelves with i tems lined up and several identical aisles.Perhaps, with this focused and limited set of eyes, the first person point of view allows the reader to get a simplified description of the A & P’s surroundings: â€Å"I’m in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door . . .† Throughout the story, we meet characters and witness events through this perspective.Updike’s narration, however, is not just unique in terms of point of view. The choice of perspective also enables the reader to hear a distinct â€Å"voice.†Accompanied by a pair of eyes is a voice and tone that contributes to strengthening the realistic feel of the story.  Ã‚   It is noticeable that the language used by the author is very conversational, making it feel like the voice connects directly to the reader. Not only does it tell the story; it slowly forms a personality, which, in this case of using the first person point of view, is not excluded from the story’s turn of event s.In â€Å"A & P†, we witness an incident caused by three teenage girls in bathing suits from the perspective of Sammy, a nineteen-year-old boy working at the check-out counter. It is interesting that his name is not revealed until the late middle portion of the story. Nevertheless, his character has already been established at the very beginning, where we hear his voice and vicariously experience the story. To further explore this point, let me cite a few lines, which contribute to establishing Sammy’s character.Seeing the three girls in bathing suits, he immediately focuses his attention to one girl, which he refers to as a â€Å"chunky kid.† Here, by noting his word choice, Sammy already appears to us as a free-spirited teenager. This is reiterated as he comments on the customer who complains as Sammy rings the purchase a second time:   â€Å"She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.†These lines are dabbed with a sense of annoyance towards elders, and in this case, an old lady. Later on in the story, we get the same feel in his somewhat mocking remark: â€Å". . . women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less.†This tone, which brings with it a sense of confidence freedom of spirit, also shows us the innocence behind the personality—his opinions are quite shallow, leaning towards trivial matters. This overall tone contributes and prepares us for the shifts that occur in the story. The finality in Sammy’s tone falters when he begins to speak of Lengel, the single figure of authority in the story. More and more, the image presen ted to us of Lengel reveals Sammy’s innocence. And indeed, the story’s conclusion confirms it.The presence of the three girls in A & P also reflects the innocent confidence of the youth. Baring all, they brazenly enter into a place, not caring that their outfits don’t blend in. At first, it appears to us as a dare, as something that â€Å"Queenie† perhaps suggested—a rebellious act, which could probably be an act against authority, intended to project superiority over rules and adults.However, this queen-like image of strength also falters at the entrance of Lengel into the story. Lengel obviously represents authority—as manager and as Sunday School teacher. Firm in his tone—not defensive or angry, nor is he loud and uncontrolled, he calls out the unfitting clothing worn by these three young ladies.As he speaks, we feel the stark contrast of tone between him and the teenagers in the story. Right after this, one of the girl mentions he r mother as an excuse: â€Å"My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks.† Immediately, the brazen air to â€Å"Queenie† vanishes—she appears to us as a little girl hiding under her mother’s skirt. By inserting a figure as Lengel into the narrative, Sammy’s tone is helplessly muffled—as if he suddenly gives in to how things are—and not as how he perceives things to be.The events that follow feel like a gradual crash. Impulsive as he is, Sammy decides to play the role of an â€Å"unsuspected hero.† And the way he narrates his story implies that his next act is only seemingly brave, defiant, and strong.He makes his motives clear: â€Å"The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say â€Å"I quit† to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.† Not knowing how to handle the situation, he puts up a front, faltering more and more:  "I started to say something that came out â€Å"Fiddle-de-doo.† It's a saying of my grand- mother's, and I know she would have been pleased.†Again, figures of authority are projected in the story—the mention of his grandmother, for instance. Soon after that, Lengel’s input to Sammy’s impulsiveness makes him look even more innocent and young—an image which veers away from the initial confidence suggested by the tone made possible by the narration’s first person point of view: â€Å"Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He's been a friend of my parents for years.â€Å"Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad,† he tells me.† Parents once again come into the picture. And the mockery thrown by the

Artificial Selection in Plants

In the 1800s, Charles Darwin, with some help from Alfred Russel Wallace, first came up with and published his On the Origin of Species in which he proposed an actual mechanism explaining how species evolved over time. He called this mechanism natural selection, which basically means individuals possessing the most favorable adaptations for the environments in which they lived would survive long enough to reproduce and pass down those desirable traits to their offspring. Darwin hypothesized that in nature, this process would only occur over very long periods of time and through several generations of offspring but eventually, unfavorable characteristics would cease to exist and only the new, favorable adaptations would survive in the gene pool. Darwins Experiments With Artificial Selection When Darwin returned from his voyage on the HMS Beagle, during which he first began formulating his ideas on evolution, he wanted to test his new hypothesis. Since its aim is to accumulate favorable adaptations to create a more desirable species, artificial selection is very similar to natural selection. Instead of letting nature take its often lengthy course, however, evolution is helped along by humans who choose desirable traits and breed specimens possessing those characteristics in order to create offspring with those traits. Darwin turned to artificial selection to gather the data he needed to test out his theories. Darwin experimented with breeding birds, artificially selecting various characteristics such as beak size and shape and color. Through his efforts, he was able to show that he could change birds visible features and also breed for modified behavioral traits, much as natural selection might accomplish over many generations in the wild. Selective Breeding for Agriculture Artificial selection does not only work with animals, however. There was—and continues to be—a great demand for artificial selection in plants as well. For centuries, humans have been using artificial selection to manipulate the phenotypes of plants. Perhaps the most famous example of artificial selection in plant biology came from Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, whose experiments with breeding pea plants in his monastery garden and subsequently collecting and recording all of the pertinent data would go on to form the basis for the entire modern field of Genetics. By either cross-pollinating his subject plants or allowing them to self-pollinate, depending on which traits he wished to reproduce in the offspring generation, Mendel was able to figure out many of the laws that govern the genetics of sexually reproducing organisms. Over the last century, artificial selection has been successfully used to create new hybrids of crops and fruit. For instance, corn can be bred to be larger and thicker in the cobs to increase grain yield from a single plant. Other notable crosses include broccoflower (a cross between broccoli and cauliflower) and a tangelo (the hybrid of a tangerine and a grapefruit). The new crosses create a distinctive flavor of the vegetable or fruit that combines the properties of their parent plants. Genetically Modified Foods   More recently, a new kind of artificial selection has been used in efforts to enhance food and other crop plants for everything from disease resistance to shelf life to color and nutritional value. Genetically modified (GM foods), also known as  genetically engineered foods  (GE foods), or  bioengineered foods,  got their start in the late 1980s. Its a method that alters plants a cellular level by introducing genetically modified agents into the propagation process. Genetic modification was first tried out on tobacco plants but quickly spread to food crops—starting with the tomato—and has enjoyed remarkable success. The practice has undergone considerable backlash, however, from consumers concerned with the potential for unintentional negative side effects that may result from eating genetically altered fruits and vegetables. Artificial Selection for Plant Esthetics Apart from agricultural applications, one of the most common reasons for selective plant breeding is to produce esthetic adaptations. Take, for example, the breeding of flowers to create a particular color or shape (such as the mind-boggling variety of rose species currently available). Brides and/or their wedding planners often have a specific color scheme in mind for the special day, and flowers that match that theme are often an important factor in realizing their vision. To that end, florists and flower producers often use artificial selection to create blends of colors, different color patterns, and even leaf coloring patterns to achieve the desired results. Around Christmas time, poinsettia plants make popular decorations. Poinsettias can range in color from a deep red or burgundy to a more traditional bright Christmas red, to white—or a mixture of any of those. The colored portion of the poinsettia is actually a leaf, not a flower, however, artificial selection is still used to get the desired color for any given plant variety.