http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/world/asia/tested-section-of-new-high-speed-rail-track-disintegrates-in-china.html?_r=1&ref=railroads


Railroads:

Clean Hands, Clean World

This article is about how easy it is to get germs or bacterias and asks readers to make a change and start washing their hands with soap. The article says that it doesn’t matter how many times you wash your hands, it’s never going to be 100% clean from germs. This article is very useful because with it we can see the many things we can go to avoid germs and with that, we also avoid getting sick and pass diseases to others.

That can cause us infections and there are two main classes of infections those that you get from the things around you; and those that are associated with you getting some health care, such as in a hospital. First, community-based infections, if we compare school kids who wash their hands four times each day, with kids that don't wash their hands at all. We can see that the ones who wash their hands have 24 % fewer sick days due to infections, and 51% few days off due to stomach problems. So this article suggests us to wash our hands at least 3 times a day.

This article also talks about how infections can affect our health conditions and how we hospitals affect you from picking up an infection in a hospital if you don’t take care of washing your hands when touching in things that are not clean etc. “One out of every 136 hospital patients gets seriously ill from picking up an infection in a hospital, which works out to 2 million cases each year. Out of those, about 80,000 people die.” So we can see that lots of people die because of infections in hospitals and also outside of hospitals.

Lots of bad things have happened. In a nursery with 45 healthcare workers, one person who was a carrier for antibiotic-resistant golden staph did not wash their hands — and they set off an epidemic. In another hospital, a single respiratory therapist had chronic sinusitis with antibiotic-resistant golden staph. And because they did not wash their hands, and set off a hospital-wide epidemic that infected 32 people. So we have to be careful and always wash your hands.

This article is also telling people to help this foundation that makes people more aware of that. I really liked this article and it interests me because its something that I and my family are aware of. We wash our hands every time we go eat. And I lot of people are not aware of that and don’t wash their hands that often and they may get infections because of these bacteria that we can’t see and that are hard to take away from our hands. We have to use soap and the right temperature so they go away.

I think that my brother had a type of infection because of not washing his hands and also by walking around the house without shoes. Like we saw in this article, many people die because of simple infections. There are more than 2 million cases every year and out of those, 80,000 people die. So we have to be aware and do our best not to have these problems and infections on our lives.

http://www.ecorazzi.com/2012/03/05/clean-hands-clean-world-takes-aim-at-hand-washing-giveaway/ 

Rafaela de Figueiredo

This article talks about climate coolers. It was written by Stephen Omes on January 25, 2012. This article talks about methane; a not very known thing about methane is that it traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere (greenhouse effect) more than 20 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide. But unlike carbon dioxide, methane stays in the air for only 12 years.

So, scientists say that if we bring down methane emissions, we would have a slow temperature increase caused by global warming. So, that would help a lot. The black particles spewed from fires into the air can help. If people would reduce the amount of methane and soot that end up in the atmosphere, we would have more than half degree Celsius every year and the amount of global warming predicted to happen in 2050 would degrease a lot.

And not only slowing down warming, but reducing methane would clean up the air “The scientists estimate that better air quality could prevent between 0.7 million and 4.7 million deaths per year that would otherwise have been caused by air pollution.”

“If you were to cut out these emissions, you might actually get a warming effect instead of a cooling effect,” Forster told Science News.

Scientists know that people get curious about this cleaner to slow climate temperatures. But maybe the world can get a head start on cutting on methane and soot.

Most articles about global warming talk about carbon dioxide, but there is more to it. That is not the only gas that accumulates in the atmosphere and insulates the planet. Methane also traps heat in Earth{s atmosphere. More than twine times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide. But unlike carbon, which can stay on Earth for hundreds of years, methane is in the air for only 12 years. So reducing methane might be the head start to solving a big problem.

This article interested me because, well it’s about effects that will lead us to global warming and it’s about my future. About what will happen if we don’t do something right now. My family has been concerned about global warming and carbon dioxide emissions. We know that this is real and it’s happening right now. We started recycling this year because of so many reasons and we are now more aware of what is happening to our world.

The areas of interaction that is being used on this article is Environments, Health and Social Education and Community and Service as well because it is happening on our environment and it is a effect of what we are doing for this to be happening. It has to do with health and social education because we are learning about this problem and the whole purpose of wanting to clean and cool up the air is for us to have a better life. And this also relates to community and service because there are people out there, wanting to make a change and making things and planning projects for us to change and for everyone to  just live on a better world.

Words:

Methane: A colorless, odorless, flammable gas that is the main constituent of natural gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas, sometimes produced in the air when natural gas does not burn completely.

Carbon dioxide: A colorless, odorless gas produced by burning carbon and organic compounds and by respiration. It is naturally present in air and is absorbed by plants in photosynthesis.

Greenhouse gas: A gas that contributes to Earth’s greenhouse, or warming, effect by absorbing heat.

Soot: A black, powdery or flaky substance consisting largely of carbon, produced by the incomplete burning of organic matter, such as coal and wood.

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/01/climate-coolers/