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Unit4WritingExercise.docxUnit 4 Writing Exercise
Instructions: Select a prompt that you have not answered in a previous Unit or WPE attempt. Respond to the prompt by writing a well-developed and organized essay of at least 750 words or three pages in length. Be sure you answer the question being asked. You may not use any sources other than the prompt you selected and your existing knowledge to write your essay. Try and time your writing to correspond with the timed WPE exam.
Please double space your essay, and remember to give your essay a title.
Option 1: The federal food fortification program was created in the early 1900’s. The program originally addressed urgent nutrient deficiencies, such as folic acid or iodine, by adding them to common foods. The Food and Drug Administration attempted to limit the number of foods that could be fortified so that the program would not create nutritional imbalances. But that proposal was denied and over the years Congress has restricted the F.D.A.’s authority over fortification and dietary supplements. This helped open the door to vitamin enhanced beverages and sports drinks, which today account for sales of more than $18 billion a year in the United States alone.
Read the following excerpt from an article published in The New York Times and answer the following question: Who should determine the contents of vitamin drinks? Consumers? Producers? Lawmakers? Or someone else?
Are Vitamin Drinks a Bad Idea?
The New York Times
By Anahad O'Connor
January 30, 2015
Companies are increasingly adding vitamins and minerals to juices, sports drinks and bottled water, responding to a growing consumer demand for these products. Even though the amounts of added nutrients in these drinks are typically small, some nutrition scientists are concerned that through their overall diets, many people may be ingesting levels of vitamins and other nutrients that are not only unnecessary, but potentially harmful.
“You have vitamins and minerals that occur naturally in foods, and then you have people taking supplements, and then you have all these fortified foods,” said Mridul Datta, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition science at Purdue University. “It adds up to quite an excess. There’s the potential for people to get a lot more of these vitamins than they need.”
Today more than ever, studies show, the average person is exposed to unusually high levels of vitamins and minerals. Already, more than half of all adults in the United States take a multivitamin or dietary supplement. Bread, milk and other foods are often fortified with folic acid, niacin and vitamins A and D.
A study published in July found that many people are exceeding the safe limits of nutrient intakes established by the Institute of Medicine. And research shows that people who take dietary supplements are often the ones who need them the least.
Particularly concerning, experts say, is the explosion of beverages marketed specifically for their high levels of antioxidants, like Vitaminwater, POM Wonderful, Naked Juice and many others. The body requires antioxidants to neutralize free radicals that can damage cells and their DNA. But it also uses free radicals to fight off infections and cancer cells, experts say, and when antioxidants are present in excess, it can throw things out of balance.
A study published this month analyzed 46 beverages — both with and without sugar — sold in supermarkets alongside bottled water. It found that many of these drinks contained vitamins B6, B12, niacin and vitamin C in quantities “well in excess” of the average daily requirements for young adults.
Eighteen of these drinks contained more than triple the daily requirement for B6. Eleven had more than three times the requirement for B12. And a half dozen had more than three times the requirement for niacin or riboflavin. Some of these products promised improvements in energy and immune function, while others promoted “performance and emotional benefits related to nutrient formulations that go beyond conventional nutritional science,” the researchers said.
The most common nutrients added were vitamins that are already plentiful in the average person’s diet, so their widespread inclusion in these drinks is almost completely unnecessary, said Valerie Tarasuk, the lead author of the study and a nutrition science professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto.
“It’s very hard to figure out the logic the manufacturers are using to do this fortification,” she said. “There’s no way that the things that are being added are things that anybody needs or stands to benefit from.”
Option 2: Thomas Pyle is president of the American Energy Alliance. The AEA was founded in May 2008. The AEA states on its website that it is “a not-for-profit organization that engages in grassroots public policy advocacy and debate concerning energy and environmental policies. AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party. AEA is an issue organization that supports affordable, abundant and reliable energy for America’s consumers and businesses.”
Read Pyle’s recent article and answer the following question: Do the advantages of utilizing fossil fuels outweigh the advantages of “going fossil-free”?
Activists want Detroiters to abandon modern life
The Detroit News
By Thomas Pyle
February 12, 2015
Imagine a group of activists that spends its time opposing companies that produce soap, surgical steel, and sterile plastics used in hospitals — because it is the “moral” thing to do. It sounds crazy, but it’s already happening.
The same groups pushing to eliminate these life-saving technologies and many other everyday products will soon descend on Detroit. The leaders of this movement are holding a two-day event to convince Detroiters to “divest” any stocks or bonds from the companies that help make these essential items.
In reality, these activists want Detroiters to “divest” from modern life.
Of course, divestment activists don’t say they want to divest from modern life. Instead, they urge people to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies. The problem is that fossil fuel companies make many of the life-saving products that will be divested along with fuel.
Everyone knows that when they flip on a light switch or fuel up their cars, they are using energy. But you may not realize that many of the products we use every day also come from energy — particularly natural gas, oil and coal.
Take natural gas. Besides generating 27 percent of America’s electricity, natural gas is used to make fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, plastics and fabrics, just to name a few. If you’re wearing a shirt made from nylon or polyester, you’re wearing a product that came from natural gas.
The same applies to oil and coal. Besides supplying 95 percent of our nation’s transportation fuel, oil is used to make asphalt, aluminum, shampoo, cosmetics and much more. Every step of your morning — from putting on deodorant to driving to work — involves products derived from oil.
Coal, meanwhile, supplies the largest share of U.S. electricity, at almost 40 percent. But it doesn’t end there. Coal is also used to make steel, concrete, aspirins, soaps, carbon fiber and more. Imagine life without roads, bridges and sidewalks. That is life without coal.
Divesting from natural gas, oil and coal is akin to divesting from modern civilization. But that’s exactly what the so-called fossil fuel divestment movement wants Detroiters to do.
On their website, divestment activists call on the world to “go fossil free.” But as we’ve seen, life without natural gas, oil and coal isn’t much of a life at all.
You don’t have to look far to see what life is like for those who lack access to the energy and products produced using fossil fuels. For the 1.3 billion people around the world who don’t have electricity, natural gas- and coal-fired power plants could mean the difference between life and death.
Where people use more fossil fuels, poverty recedes. This occurred in the United States during the Industrial Revolution — and it is occurring in developing countries today.
In China, rising natural gas, oil and coal consumption has led to higher life expectancy, lower mortality rates for young children and improved sanitation facilities. The same is true in India and Brazil, where quality of life is improving dramatically as both countries use more abundant, reliable and affordable energy.
Those last words are key. Energy isn’t useful on a large scale unless there is a lot of it, it can be depended on when it’s needed, and it isn’t too expensive for people to use. And right now, fossil fuels are the only energy sources that fit the bill.
In other words, the world can’t divest from fossil fuels without resigning millions of people around the world to darkness and poverty.
The divestment activists who are coming to Detroit don’t just want to take away Detroiters’ energy, but also the soap, steel and plastics which make modern life possible. Detroiters should tell these activists to take a hike.
Option 3: A recent Live Science article explored the connection between sexual attraction and microbes. Read the article and answer this question: What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of incorporating microbial composition and immune system type into dating profiles?
Valentine's Science: How Mouth Germs Shape Attraction
By Tanya Lewis
February 14, 2015
Choosing the best mate this Valentine's Day just got sort of creepy: Accumulating research suggests that in addition to good looks, charm and intelligence, a person's body bugs may also play a role in love.
The human body is home to 100 trillion microbes, known collectively as the microbiome. In fact, bacterial cells in the human body outnumber human cells by a ratio of 10 to 1. In recent years, scientists have found that these communities of organisms are crucial for human metabolism and immune system function.
"So it shouldn't be surprising that [the microbiome] has effects not only on metabolic processes, but on the way we look at things ... and even in sexual attraction," said Dr. William Miller, a retired physician, evolutionary biologist and author of the book "The Microcosm Within: Evolution and Extinction in the Hologenome" (Universal Publishers, 2013).
Kiss of life
Scientists are starting to discover just how big a role these tiny tenants play in human lives. For example, microbes may be invisible musicians in the complex orchestra of human attraction. "We are being supplied by a number of hidden cues we just didn't realize were there," Miller said.
In November 2014, Dutch scientists published a study in the journal Microbiome that found that couples have similar microbial communities in their mouths, and a 10-second kiss can transfer up to millions of bacteria.
In that study, researchers gave 21 couples at the Artis Royal Zoo in Amsterdam questionnaires about their kissing habits, including how often they kissed in the past year and how much time had passed since their last intimate kiss. Then the researchers swabbed the couples' mouths to determine the bacterial makeup on their tongues before and after a kiss.
The more often the couples kissed, the more alike their oral microbial communities were, the researchers found. In addition, the couples' tongue bacteria were more alike than those in their saliva.
In the same study, the researchers asked one member of each couple to drink a probiotic yogurt containing the "marker" bacteria Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, before engaging in a 10-second kiss with their partner. When the scientists sampled the mouth bacteria of the person who didn't drink the yogurt, the amount of these marker microbes had tripled, amounting to about 80 million new bacteria.
But there's more to the story. The bacteria on the top of the couples' tongues were more similar to each other than to those of strangers, but this similarity did not correlate with the frequency of kissing. Instead, the couples probably share similar microbes because they have similar lifestyles, living environments or genetics, the researchers said.
I odor you
Bacterial inhabitants aren't the only unseen forces at play in human attraction. Other studies have found that people are more attracted to others with immune systems different from (and complementary to) their own.
In a 1995 study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Swiss researchers had male students wear the same T-shirt for two consecutive days, without deodorant, and then asked female students to smell and rate the odors of the shirts without knowing which men had worn them. The women favored the shirts from men whose immune systems were most different from their own, the researchers found. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, because choosing a mate with a different immune system would have made the couple's offspring more likely to survive infections, Miller said.
Given how much scientists are learning about the hidden forces that govern sexual attraction, could humans' microbial composition and immune system type someday make it onto dating profiles?
"When you think about this deeply, the answer is, 'Why not?'" Miller said.
Option 4: Manufacturers have long used robots for difficult and/or dangerous assembly applications. Recently we have seen robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers on sale to the public. A number of robotic toys are available, as well as products like the WowWee Rovio mobile spy robot (below). What do you think of these non-toy consumer robotic products? Are they really useful? Can you think of other tasks that robots could perform in the home that might be practical and useful? Write an essay that answers the following question: What do you predict will be the future of non-toy robotic products?
Monitor your home and stay in contact with loved ones when you're away with the WowWee Rovio mobile spy robot! Keep tabs on your valuable belongings, loved ones, and pets over the Web from anywhere in the world!
Option 5: In arid regions of the U.S., homeowners are starting to use their “graywater,” the water that drains from sinks, bathtubs, showers, and clothes washers, to water their yards and gardens. Read the following selection from an issue of Natural Home magazine, and then write an essay on the advantages and/or disadvantages of graywater recycling for Michigan.
Grow With the Flow: Legal Uses of Graywater
By Carol Steinfeld
As many regions’ water costs rise, more people are asking if the water that flows down their drains after bathing and washing—known as graywater—can be used to water gardens. Increasingly, state permitting authorities are saying yes—with conditions.
In Arizona and New Mexico, homeowners can drain graywater right onto their lawns and landscapes. In states where laws are more stringent, especially California, underground graywater irrigation systems—some involving sophisticated water sensors that direct water to where it’s most needed—are popping up. You can help the earth and reduce bills by installing a system yourself. Though regulations vary by location, setting up a fairly simple water-reuse system in your home is becoming easier and more common.
More than soapy water: A graywater overview
Preparing graywater requires a few basic steps: draining it from the house to your graywater system via pipes kept separate from toilet drains; filtering out fibers and greases; then disinfecting the water and treating its carbon. You can take care of the last two parts—disinfecting and treating carbon—by setting up a system in which graywater drains under a few inches of soil, gravel and plant roots. The plants and soil will naturally treat the carbon and disinfect the water.
Though kept separate from what’s flushed down the toilet—called "blackwater"—graywater still can contain bacteria and pathogens that could cause illness, although the small amounts present in most graywater are a low risk, according to a University of Massachusetts study. Graywater also contains carbon from oils, soaps and skin. As in all organic compounds, that carbon will decompose, potentially causing odors and clogging the air spaces in the ground. Health officials advise draining graywater under three to 18 inches of soil, where soil bacteria decompose carbon and destroy pathogens—and where plant roots can drink it up.
State regulations for graywater vary widely, so check with your municipality to be sure your system is legal. Some states consider kitchen-sink and dishwasher drainage blackwater because it contains grease, nutrients and food bits. In most states, graywater cannot be used above ground without a special permit. In nearly all states, a graywater permit requires submitting results of a soils test and an approved plan.
Laws are changing fast throughout the country; if your state or town doesn’t address graywater, help pave the way by applying for a special permit.
If you’re renovating a bathroom or building a house, consider installing graywater drainage pipes—even if you can’t or don’t plan to use graywater now. In the future, water recycling will likely become the norm as this resource gets too precious to throw away!
