High School Genius

          On May12th 2014, A 15 year old student found a new cheaper way to test whether a person HIV. Nicole Ticea is the 15 year old grade 10 student who goes to York house School in Vancouver. She has devolved a way for users to place a drop of blood on a chip and receiver near instantaneous results of whether you are infected with HIV or not.  It is said to be as simple as having a pregnancy test. The way to track HIV is to amplify the virus which will show a negative result on an antibody test.  Doing this made her win first place in the BC 2014 Regional Sanofi BioGENEius Challange. In places where HIV thrives, it is difficult to test for HIV in labs, but this could lead to a major breakthrough.

          This shows that students my age are able to make big breakthroughs in sciences. A girl who is three years younger than me is able to discover a way to detect HIV. If these tests are true, there should be more money invested into it. This has the potential to save many lives. It is amazing that someone who is a few years younger than me is able to do this. It just shows no matter what age you are, you can accomplish anything. Hopefully this will casue less people to have HIV which can lead to happier lives.

Picture and story

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/teenager-creates-new-hiv-test

The Future of the Internet

     Google has plans to build 180 satellites around the world to spread internet access. They will launch “small, high capacity” satellites which will go into low orbit. It will provide internet connection to areas without any connection. Google may double the amount of satellites if this proves to be a success. It is estimated to cost around 1 billion to 3 billion. These satellites will most likely to pay for themselves. This seems to be an extension of project loon where they launch balloons into rural areas which give off internet access. The satellites will provide access for a wide region will project loon will handle places with greater demand.

     This is a huge step to making the world connected to one another. In theory we should be able to get internet anywhere. All of the satellites will be spread out which means more internet access everywhere; this will cause a global society. An internet system which is truly global will be one of the biggest booms to humanity any business could grant. Google can give internet to anybody, which means that countries such as Turkey, and China, where they censored the internet, would have no control.  People have the freedom to surf the World Wide Web without worrying about what websites they go on. 

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/01/google-making-internet-satellites/ 
Picture http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/YugoWarSats.html

Censorship In China

      Annually, the Chinese government tries to block foreign media a couple weeks before the anniversary of the June 4^th, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. This year is the 25^th anniversary of the Tianamen Sqaure massacre.  The professional networking site with 300million users, LinkedIn in China, has been censoring anything related to the Tiananmen massacre. Reports of references to it being blocked can be found inside mainland and outside of China.  The LinkedIn’s management does this because of “the specific requirements within China to block certain content.”  The concept that is unclear is that they censored the content in Hong Kong as well. Hong Kong is territorially a part of China, but it is under the “one country, two system,” regulation where it allows freedom of speech, press and publication under Hong Kong Law.

     The internet should be a free place where you should be able to post anything you want. Places, like China, use censorship to hide the truth from the public.  This story is another example of what censorship does to people. Google back in 2010 has removed its search engine from China because they did not want to deal with the China’s censorship and privacy demands. Governments like these try to hide what happened because they are scared of the power of the internet. If you look back at the Arab spring, their main weapon was the internet; they posted what they can to show us what was happening around the world. 

http://qz.com/216691/linkedin-is-censoring-posts-about-tiananmen-square-even-outside-mainland-china/
Picture http://sites.psu.edu/comm410girlspower/2013/11/03/internet-censorship-in-china/

Net Neutrality

       Net neutrality is when the internet service providers (ISP) enable access to all contents of the internet to the consumers. What the ISP is trying to do right now is to get this removed.  ISP in the states such as AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable are lobbying to get rid of net neutrality as of May 15th 2014. They want you to pay more money to have “faster access” to high bandwidth websites such as Netflix and Youtube.  The ruling will be by the end of the year and it would “mark the end of net neutrality.” The telecom companies argue that if they don’t charge these fees, they will not be able to invest in faster connections for customers.

        I do not think doing this is a good idea. They claim to give you a faster service for paying more for streaming on website you have had always been on. All ISP just want to keep money in their pockets. This would be the start of not having free internet. Some ISP throttles your internet when you use it to much. In places such as Korea where they can have up to 1 gps internet, it is much cheaper than here. In Kansa City with the release of Google fibre, where they can download 1gps, ISP such as TWC are making deals where you can have internet go that fast. Those ISP have the power to make your internet fast, but they are not forced to do it until a competitor comes. The head of the FFC, Tom Wheeler, who used to be lobbyist for large cable companies, is now in charge of the US communications. It will not be obvious on which side he would be on. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/15/fcc-approves-plan-to-allow-for-paid-priority-on-internet/
Picture http://www.wired.com/2014/01/one-talking-comes-net-neutrality/ 

For a funny take on Net Neutrality visit 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU

The World Cup

     On May 14th 2014, the head of FIFA admits to let Qatar to host the 2022 World cup a mistake. The choice of selecting Qatar was proven controversial because during the summer time, when the world cup is usually held, Qatar can reach temperatures up to fifty degrees Celsius. If they plan to move the world cup to the winter months it’s going to conflict with many leagues in Europe such as La Liga, British Primeir League and Bundesliga. Many of the players in those leagues will have to choose if they want to play in the World Cup or in their respective leagues. This move would prove to be costly to the world cup and the European leagues. One proposal was to make the stadiums with air condition. There have been many human right violations with the building of the stadiums in Qatar. It is estimated that 220 billion dollars is going to be spent on the world cup compared to South Africa spending 3.5 billion.

     Having the world cup in Qatar is a big mistake; with their track record of having slave labours from India, and Malaysia not being good. It should not be acceptable because 1200 migrant workers have died in Qatar since the announcement of the world cup and an estimate of 4000 will die when it is finished.   I do not know how a country like Qatar got the world cup over countries such as The United States, South Korea, Japan and Australia. Honestly I think that there has been some unfair business happening between the FIFA heads and Qatar. I hope that the world cup would be moved to another country but this is most likely not going to happen.  That world cup is in eight years and that should be enough time to move it to another country.

http://www.dailyzone.com/articles/608/20140516/fifa-head-calls-qatar-2020-world-cup-mistake.htm

http://www.businessinsider.com/qatar-world-cup-workers-dead-2014-3
Picture : http://failaka.com/amnesty-accused-qatar-of-slave-labor/

For a good short documentary on the story go to

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:11019010

The Rio Sumer Games

      Organizers for the Rio 2016 Olympics games are worried about being too far behind in schedule as of May 9th, 2014 . The preparations for the games is “the worst [they’ve] seen” and that they might not finish construction on time. Compared to previous summer games, during the same time period, Athens had 40% of their infrastructures finished, London had 60% of it done, but in Rio they only have 10% of it done. A “worst case scenario” for them is that there might be a “London 2016” Olympics, but this is very unlikely. Most of the sites for the London games have been converted for public use and the cost to upgrade them again would cost millions.

         Poor per capita nations should not be allowed to host these kinds of events. These nations would benefit more if they use the funds from these programs to alleviating poverty and improving the economy. Developed countries who are able to afford these costs should host events such as the World Cup and the Olympics. Poor countries want to “show off” their countries, but it just makes it easier for politicians and companies to steal money from the people. This year in Sochi, many of the buildings were left unfinished. Hotel lobbies were half built and doors have been missing from rooms. There should be more planning into making these events.  The world cup is just around the corner and it should be a test on whether they are able to handle events of this magnitude. If it is a disaster, they should move the Olympics. The 2016 Olympics should have been in Chicago and if they probably asked today to get ready for it they will have already been prepared. They already have most of the infrastructure for these events. Like FIFA, I think that IOC is highly corrupt where many under the table business happen.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/10819420/IOC-chiefs-make-secret-plea-to-use-London-2012-venues-as-Rio-2016-Olympic-Games-fall-behind-schedule.html

Picture http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-19243023