Students from Harker School will be here at Santa Teresa Library on two Fridays in March eager to teach kids about science! 

 Weather and Natural Disasters

Friday, March 16       A  AA  

4:30 PM

   4:30 PM

Age range:  2nd to 5th grade 

Earthquakes & earthquake safety, hurricanes, tornadoes and other forms of wacky weather will be just some of what the Harker teens will tell us about.  There will also be several fun group activities -- such as making a tornado in a bottle!   kdkdkdkthe 

Earthquakes & earthquake safety, hurricanes, tornadoes and other forms of wacky weather will be just some of what they'll cover.  Also, there will be several fun group activities such as making a tornado in a bottle!

Genetics and DNA

Friday, March 23

4:30 PM

Age range:  4th to 6th grade

The second science event will be all about something very close to you:  your genes!  If you are interested in the structure of DNA, blood types, cloning and more -- this is the place to be.  You may even be able to be a genetic scientist for a day and extract DNA yourself -- DNA from a strawberry! 

Deeply rooted in the human psyche is the desire to know more about our progenitors, our family. Who were they? Where did they live many generations ago, before they arrived in the United States? For many people, without a family Bible, it's been nearly impossible to trace family ancestry much further back than the great grandparents. While a membership in Ancestry.com may be of some help in locating new members of your family tree, sooner or later you will see the words: no father, no mother.

With the advent of DNA testing for genealogical purposes, it's now possible to trace your paternal ancestry back to the earliest known ancestor in the United States. Of course, there are some big "ifs" involved in this endeavor. First, if you are a female seeking more information about your distant family members, you'll have to find a willing male relative (brother or cousin) to help out with the process. All that's necessary is to order a DNA testing kit from a reputable lab (such as Family Tree DNA, in Houston, Texas). A few swabs of the cheek will produce the necessary cells for testing; send off the packet to the lab, and wait for the results to arrive. It will take about six weeks or more to get the first results, sent via your e-mail address (everyone is asked to supply an e-mail). You should sign up with your surname group to get a better rate and it's best to request up to y37 markers, in order to get a close match. Here is where the other big "if" comes in. Others from your ancestral tree must have submitted their results, too, to make this whole process worthwhile. Of course, it's also informative to see what other surnames are listed in the results that you receive.

In order to make some sense of terms you may not be familiar with (what is a "haplotype" and why should I care what mine is?) you will find several titles at King Library to help you interpret the results. Here are two you may wish to consult: Trace Your Roots with DNA: Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree, by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and Ann Turner; and DNA and Genealogy, by Collen Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yerser.

After receiving the results, you can choose to e-mail close matches in an effort to find out how you are related. You can also use the results to go back to Ancestry.com or Rootsweb.com, and search for the family trees with the new found names of your ancestors. Happy hunting!!

Splice (2009) is a movie that will forever change the way I view bald men and women. Amazingly, this movie falls into the category of sci-fi, horror, and comedy. Splice is one of those movies where it is so terrible that it actually becomes great.

Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are scientist and a brilliant couple who have figured out how to combine different animal DNA into a single creature. They are told by their employer to halt any further experiments, but decide to continue anyway. Only this time, they decide to replicate human DNA. This human-animal hybrid turns out to be more human than they expect and what they create is Dren, a female creature that grows at an accelerated rate and eventually gets out of control.

The couple makes poor decisions after poor decision on what to do with Dren, even after it is clear that Dren is wild and unstable. The couple becomes frustratingly annoying that it gets to the point where you personally want to punch this couple in their faces for their stupidity, which is ironic since they are considered “brilliant scientists”. The movie takes a turn of events that force the couple to grow apart due to their differences on what to do with Dren. Elsa begins to treat Dren as her daughter while Clive considers the moral implications of their decisions.

I do not want to spoil the rest of the movie for you, but let’s just say between Dren and the couple, one becomes attracted to another and they decide combine their DNA if you know what I mean. The final moments of the movie are so shocking and disturbing that the only thing you can do is laugh and sing Usher’s song, “Oh My God!” because your brain simply can not process what the heck just happened. This scene will be drilled into your brain for the rest of your life.

Overall, I recommend this movie to anyone who is interested in some crazy sci-fi movie.