Annotated Resources

energycenter.org/uploads/energy_plan.pdf
San Diego Regional Energy Plan, this pdf suplies informatiopn about San diego Regional Energy growth. It also offers a 4 step process in helping manage the energy growth and states specific goals we need to make. All of this info can work well with my poster.

usenix.org/events/fast03/tech/full_papers/zedlewski/zedlewski_html
Modeling Hard-Disk Power Consumption, talks about how new technologies such as mp3 players consume a lot of energy.

environmentalleader.com/2009/02/06/video-games-consume-as-much-energy-as-san-diego
Video Games Consume as Much Energy as San Diego, Video games in the U.S. consume 16 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. That translates to over $1billion worth of energy a year.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692634/pdf/10466143.pdf
Cellular mechanisms of brain energy metabolism and their relevance to functional brain imaging, describes the health hazards to some energy consumptions.

usenix.org/events/osdi04/tech
Energy-Efficiency and Storage Flexibility in the Blue File System, describes some problems with the evolution of mobile storage and its energy consumption issues.

Essential Question Research

1.NationMasters.com

• The U.S. is consuming 20,680,000 bbl/day, which is more than the following 4 ranked countries following the U.S. in most consuming countries. As of 2007 (most recent data I could find). This site's information could also be integrated into our visual element of mine and David's project.

2.Life Cycle Analysis and Assessment

• Explaines what a life cycle analysis is and what the importance of them is. For my particular use though, the importance of them is to explaine how much energy is being used throughout somethings life cycle. From this site I got more questions that I'm going to ask myself to help answer my essential question, for example, how much energy was used in the extraction and processing of raw materials, manufacturing, packaging, marketing, use, reuse and maintenance of the product, recycling and disposal as waste at the end of its useful life for each of our sounds in our RnB track.

Three Annotated Sources for Propogation

Source One: "Plant Propogation" (visited 10-9-09)
This site gives information on sexual propagation and asexual propagation. It also has an interesting link to hydroponics that covers all principles of indoor hydroponic horticulture and gardening. This source also provides many links related to propagation that can be very helpful.


Source Two: "Stem Cuttings!" (visited 10-9-09)
This source is mainly for home gardeners, but I thought would be usefull to our classmates as well. The site is very user friendly because of its images, steps, charts and more. If anyone should be choosing to start something from a cutting they should consider going here.

Source Three: "Propagate How To" (visited 10-9-09)
If anyone should be wanting to know how to do a simple to complicated propagation technique then they should use this source. Someone from the class could visit this site and search a particular plant and get a complete walkthrough on how to care for it. With the sites search feature it makes it incredibly easy to navigate.

Farmer in Chief

I thought this article was very insightfull and really took a good look at the base of many of the problems in not only the United States but the world. It seems a lot of current issues have to do with the food crisis we are in. I don't think there is any easy or quick solution, but some of the solutions that the author talked about seemed like a start.

I thought some were a little over the top and would be very hard to get people to go along with, but they all addressed part of the problem. I thought the idea about giving one more dollar a day to each child in a school seemed reasonable, but then the author went on saying that each school should have its own garden and that there should be way more food education. That may not be in every childs or even parents interest.

A metaphor that he used that really struck me was "when we eat food from the industrialized food business we are eating oil and spewing out green house gases." This really grabbed my attention, but curious enough it made me think about organic foods. If for some of the reasons the industrial food business is causing all these things wouldn't it make sence to say eating some organic foods is doing the same? There seems to be no way to not contribute to the food crisis, oil prices and global warming.

All in all this article has left me wondering how the world is going to approach these matters and even if these problems will affect me in my lifetime. I hope you, John!, will be able to shed some light on us and take us more in depth on the subject.

Best Practices for Propogation

If you plan on starting a seed:
If you are using one of the small cell trays fill the amount of cells up with soil depending on how much seeds you plan on starting. Once you fill up the amount of cells with soil you shake the entire tray so the soil settles and there is no big air bubbles. If the soil is dry it is not always best to water from the top, you can fill the bottom tray with water till its about half full then lay the cell's tray inside the tray containing water. Also before planting your seeds, read the back of the seed package for instructions on seed spacing and depth in the soil. Then wait and watch your plant come to life within no time!

John's BFF

Some interesting things he talked about in class today was how he actually goes to fast food resturaunts and asks for their grease, and how his van traveled 60,000 miles on biofuels! Some things i wish that could happen are that the biofuels company in SD could go public and more people in California could switch to alternate fuels. Its a lot more efficient because the grease is going to be thrown out anyway! He really gave me a good incite in class today and I cant wait till we can start applying this stuff to our projects or our class, such as using the biofuel generator at exhibition. Thanks John for bringin him into class!

What I'll Be Growing

Me and Stephanie are going to grow a pumpkin for our stop motion project.

Senior project Interests

I am interested in 7) climate and autmosphere. I don't want to just be taught that humans are the reason for the climate change or that they are the maiun cause because I have found threw recent studies otherwise and have doubts about how much the human contribution is to the climate change. Is this just a natural course that Earth goes threw every 100,000 years or is humans progressing the climate change?
I am also interested in 2) energy and think I can base my senior project on it. Everything needs energy, including bugs to do everyday tasks, wind and cars, etc.. What I would like to do is record energy in use, in other words record the sounds of San Diego and make a music track out of those sounds.

Initial Plant Research

1. Aloe Vera:

I would like to grow an aloe plant because of they have been widely used as natural medicines. Since I have personal interests in becoming a doctor I wanted to be able to create some kind of jell or cream from my plant that can be used for things such as cuts, scrapes, or maybe even rashes. I think some of the family aloe’s have a very unique shape to them and would be nice to use in the mini nature photography project also.

The aloe vera is a succulent plant.

They are extremely frost tender and are grown In warm climates.

It is best to plant aloes in a pot and place where direct sunlight hits. It was difficult fin ding an exact duration of how long it takes to grow but it can fill a good sized pot over the summer season. It seems reasonable from what I’ve read.

Having its own pot seems to be the correct way to grow them, gravel is recommended to put at the bottom of the pot to ensure drainage of all fluids in the soil because the plant flourishes in drier conditions because the plant is 95% water itself. A few pots may be needed to ensure I have enough to make a good portion of the cream/medicine for exhibition.

The plant does not require to be watered every day, it should be watered when its soil surrounding the plant is completely dry. The soil should be moderately fertile and fast draining. 10-40-10 may be the NPK ratio for the fertilizer that is used in the soil.

The aloe vera is also known as the medicinal aloe and it is a species of succulent plants that originated in Northern Africa.

2.Venus Fly Trap:

The venus fly trap very much interests me because of how it looks, certain characteristics about the plant such as being able to eat insects, and it will present me with a small challenge in growing it throughout this project because of the care that is needed when growing it.

Is a carnivorous plant.

Should be grown from May through October and/or kept in 70-95 degrees F.

May be a good idea not to grow from seed, but I have heard from a few different sources that they grow fairly quickly.

A large pot is required to plant a good sized venus fly trap.

Just peat moss for drainage, but the soil must be kept moist at all times. The plant should also not be kept in direct sun light and is good to keep in an area with insects.

Feeding a Venus fly trap hamburger is fatal because of the fat content.

The Natural World

I have always been curious about the human anatomy and would enjoy learning about it in E.S. this year. Also going into the evolution of humans relating the human anatomy would be very interesting. I plan on using my curiosity for the human anatomy and my plant research to make an aloe vera plant and create a cream of some sort that could be used on dry skin, rashes, and possibly cuts.
My curiosity for the human anatomy was fueled ever since I learned about the very basics in grammar school, such as a humans vital organs.