In the News- When Social Networking is Too Much And Glowing Animals.

In an article I read a while back and meant to post about, the topic is about living in what the article's author calls the "Conversation Age."

He goes on to say how it is getting increasingly harder to keep up with online conversations. Those conversations which happen to be with family, friends, co-workers, and other people that could be important. Not only that but with the increasing amount of social networks, it is hard to keep with who is on what and what is being said. There is Facebook, Google Plus, blogs, and many other sites where people are trying to talk to us on a daily basis. So with all of the conversations going on, and not just online, how does one keep up with it all?

You can't.

Or you can very much try. It could help by limiting how many sites you're on and who you talk to. For example, how many of those friends on Facebook do you really ever talk to? And how many of those people do you see every day? Is it really that important to talk to someone online when you can talk to them by phone or offline?

Anyways, I don't really use social networking sites all that much. I mainly use facebook these days to keep up with my friends far away or to manage the pages I've created. Most of them have turned into well faring pages the began as book reports and were never meant to become liked by anyone other than me. But now I have a following on those pages and I like to update them and talk to people about the books on it. I also have the facebook page for this blog which I try to keep updated.

But other than that, the only places I talk to people online is here on my blog, other blogs, on Goodreads, or on Inkpop. I sometimes use emails, but not as often. The really only person I email is a cousin's cousin. Personally, I'd be fine without talking to people online, but then, I'm fine with talking to people online too.

Anyways, I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this topic anymore, so I'm going to turn to another subject.

Tegon, the glowing beagle.

 Discovery.com, reported a couple weeks ago that scientists have genetically modified a female beagle to glow. Yes, you read that right. The beagle, named Tegon, glows fluorescent green when under UV lights. And the whole animal glows when under these lights. But Tegon is not the only animal to be modifed by humans to glow. Another puppy named Ruppy, glows fluorescent red and a cat named Mr. Green Genes, glows...well green.

According to the article:

He and his colleagues achieved the feat using a five-step process. The scientists first inserted a DNA fragment that controls the expression of a green fluorescent gene into dog cells. They next extracted DNA from a dog oocyte (an immature female reproductive cell prior to fertilization) and injected the fluorescent-modified dog cells into it.

The third step was to use a process known as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer to generate an embryo. The resulting embryo was then transferred into a surrogate dog mother. After 60 days of pregnancy, she gave birth to Tegon. When given a doxycycline antibiotic, the female beagle literally glows under UV light.

The animals are created because researchers hope to use them to improve benefits of humans. Dogs, especially, are good for this type of thing apparently. They have 268 types of genetic diseases that are close to what we get.

 "Also, the dog has physiological and anatomical similarities with humans. These reasons make them a good model for human disease."

Lee said the genes injected to make the dog glow could be substituted with genes that trigger fatal diseases. He and his team would then be able to chart the course of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and more, better understanding how such diseases develop.

Dogs also make good candidates for this kind of research because they have "good communication skills with humans, which enable them to have good response skills to direct orders. They are also easy to handle." He added, "Compared to mice and other smaller animals, dogs provide a much larger sample collection." 

Injections? Glowing? Fatal diseases? I don't know about you but this sounds somewhere along the line of animal abuse. I understand that it is to help humans with diseases, but what about these poor animals? Even if injecting them with glowing genes doesn't harm them, I think adding fatal diseases to the mix does.

How would you like it if people injected you with diseases in order to save other people without your consent? You probably wouldn't like it.

Also, don't be surprised if glowing dogs and cats become a new pet trend in future.

As Ko said, the "technology could be used for producing a variety of unique cats and dogs, possibly creating a new area of commercial interest."

Hm, a glowing pet? While that would be interesting, I think it would get annoying at night when you're trying to sleep. Plus everyone would have to get UV lights and glasses just to see their pets glow. Unless, of course, they came up with another way to make the animals glow.

Resources
Conversation Age
Glowing Animals

So, do you have troubles keeping up with social networking? How has social networking impacted your life? Would you like a glowing pet? Do you think it's abuse to use animals for research and medical purposes?

Sincerely,
Peony

In The News- Making Facebook Illegal for Teachers to Speak to Students.

I've heard about this recently while on vacation the last two weeks. It is becoming increasingly more and more common for teachers to not being allowed to  talk to past or current students on internet sites like Facebook. Where I live it is still allowed for students to friend and speak to thier students online. In fact, for some classes we need to be able to speak or friend our teachers. For example, the freshmen are suppose to do a book talk and one of the options is to make a facebook page for the book. So in order to see this page our teachers have us friend them or send them the link.

Anyways, in a recent Yahoo! artcile, a teacher sues Missouri because a new law makes it illegal for her to contact her kid online. According to Yahoo!:

The law, which has been nicknamed the Facebook law, prohibits teachers from having exclusive communications with students over non-work Internet sites. Students are defined as anyone under 18 who attend or used to attend the school where the teacher works.

But while this teacher and parent faces this delimia, not everyone seems to think that this new law is such a bad thing. This new law is suppose to fight teacher sexual harassment and abuse. And in a way, I agree with this law. I just read an article in Seventeen magazine about teachers who sexually harass their students.

One girl in the article said that at first the teacher was nice, and he listened to her when she was having a hard time at home. Eventually the messages and conversations went into the personal area. And while her mind screamed that this was bad, she ignored that voice and went over to the teacher's house.

Eventually the teacher turned out to be over protective and he would get angry a lot at her. One point the girl said, she had gotten a boyfriend and when the teacher found out, he wanted the girl's boyfriend to share her. The girl said no because she didn't want to cheat on her boyfriend. Later on, the girl became depressed and she told her parents about it. Her parents were mad at first, being parents, but then they sued the teacher for sexual harrassment. The teacher was fired, went to jail, and was labeled as a sex offender.

The news article also quotes one professor who says that being able to talk to studdents online isn't nessary to a student's education. And I can see the truth in that, it isn't all that important for teachers to be able to talk to students online. And although that makes sense, there's the issue that some students feel and trust their teachers to talk to them about important stuff.

For example, a student going through depression or abuse may feel more comfortable telling a teacher about it then a parents or some other adult figure. And this student may feel more comfortable telling the teacher online rather than offline because the student may not want to rish other people hearing about it. So if this student who is too shy to apporch a teacher about something important offline, now can't talk to the teacher online.

The other issue I see is that if you're going to make it illegal for a student to talk to a teacher online, then it should be illegal for a student to talk to a teacher over text messages or the phone. But if you do that, then how is a student to contact a teacher if they need homework help? Of course the student could talk to their friends about the assignment, but what if they're unsure too?

Read this article: Teacher sues state over "Facebook Law".

So what do you think about this issue? Should it be illegal for teachers to contact students privately online?

Sincerely,
Peony