20 Time Project...Does the placebo effect really work?

This is an introduction to a new project I am working on for 20 time in my biology class. 20 time is a certain amount of time given in class to students, so they can explore topics and  experiment with things they are interested in.

For my 20 time project the essential question I have asked is whether the placebo effect really works. The reason I chose this as my project is because I have read about this effect in multiple books and I have always wondered whether it really works.

My goals at the end of this is to become more knowledgeable and to figure out if the placebo effect does actually work. I will measure this experiment by assembling a group of people who are willing to participate in this project and giving them a pill with nothing in it, and telling them it will help them be less groggy in the morning. If by the end of the experiment they tell me that this pill has helped them and they are much less groggy in the morning, we know that the experiment worked. My plan moving forward is to do more research into the the effect, and then hopefully start testing!

Unit 6 Reflection

In this Unit we learned about, Biology and its applications in the real word. We learned about the many fields biotech is used such as agriculture, engineering, and medicine, and their applications in the fields such as genetically engineering food or GMOs. Then we learned about processes and things done in biotech such as gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing. Gel Electrophoresis is when electricity is used to separate  DNA fragments based on size. We did a lab on this, where we did the electrophoresis and saw how the tiny gene particles moved farther or closer together and clumped together based on their size. We also learned the applications of phoresis which is studying proteins and genetic fingerprinting. The next thing we learned about was recombinant DNA which was kind of an overlap with what we had learned in the previous semester, the central dogma of biology. Recombinant DNA is the inserting of DNA of one organism into the DNA of another organism or in other words genetic engineering. The final thing we touched on was bioethics and what it means. Bioethics is the study of decision making as it applies to moral decisions that have to be made because of advances in biology. Some examples of bioethical questions that are faced is should drug companies be allowed to patent genes? or Should we genetically modify embryos?

Some of my weaknesses in this Unit were understanding certain concepts like pGLO, and getting a good grasp on the different types of bioengineering and biotech because I didn't realize biology could be applied to so many fields. Some of my strengths were bioethics because I do a good job of keeping up with the news, so I knew about the problems biotechnology was coming across and  the many bioethical questions that were being posed. However for the concepts I didn't fully grasp, the labs did a good job of enforcing the concepts. In this Unit we did the pGLO lab and the candy gel electrophoresis lab.

I want to go more in depth with biotech because I find some of the things we can do with such advanced tech in biology extremely fascinating. Especially things like altering genes to make a totally customized human or animal, or even cloning living things. Some of the articles that we read in class were extremely fascinating as well. I think I did a good job of fulfilling my new years goal that I set for myself.* My goal was to never skip vodcasts and listen to the full thing without skimming to better understand the concepts, and I definitely did that. My second goal was to not procrastinate and get my assignments done on time, and this Unit I have been doing a good job of that, I think overall I have learned a lot about Biology and its applications in the real world and have improved as a student.

*http://iisiyonaii.blogspot.com/2017/01/smart-goals.html