A Reflection Post For ALES204

    Today i have finished my last class of ALES204 for this term. How time flies and I feel I just walk into this classroom yesterday. In this course, Dr. Laccetti and TAs let me know more about the social media and give us great lectures about how to write a resume and CV, which is very important and useful when we want to apply for jobs. From this course, I get to know more social media like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, LinledIn, and many others. By participating in these websites, I know more about the events happen in the other side of the world and I can communicate so conveniently with friends faraway from me. Social media makes the world smaller.

       Image retrived from http://cdn.briansolis.com/wpcontent/uploads/2008/08/1814873464_02b8d3f59e.jpg

    By using social media, many people get helped by other people. For instance, in China, last year in summer, due to the rainstorm lasting for many days, and the road were destroyed,  the farmers in Henan province could not sell their crops. Therefore, they use social media to ask for the public's help. Many people saw this piece of information, they came to the farmers by themselves to buy the crops. The social media pays a very important roll in this case and solve the farmers problems. Besides, a teacher from a school in the rural area asked for help through the social media. Because that place is very poor, students even cannot afford a new textbook, the teacher ask people for help to send some textbooks and other books for the students. Just after a few days, hundreds of books are sent to the school. These two true stories show the importance of  the social network.

    However, there are still many concerns about the social media. Nowadays, people rely more and more on social media, therefore, there might be less contact in the real life.   Is that possible if one day, we all stay at home and using social media, and no matter where we go, we use Twitter to contact with friends instead of talk to them face to face? That is the biggest problem associating with the increasing trend of social media. Here is an an article about the bad aspects of social media.

    The future of social media is very bright, it brings us a lot more fresh information, easier to publish personal ideas, and search for lates information. In general, the advantages that social media brings us weighs far more than the bad aspects. As long as we can handle it well and can differentiate it with the real life, social media can become a very useful tool in our lives.
 
Here is my five comments under my classmates' blogposts:
1. Science of Chinese Food (free blog post) by Lutong Huang
2. Free post -- The sciences in Titanic by Qiyun Liang 
3. Wikipedia Article: Give you warm in winter by Feiyan Zhou
4. Smoothie Craze by Pharyne Hrywkiw
5. Do We Have to Drink Milk by Yuhan Jiang

Chocolate: Delicious Food for Human, Poison for Dogs

    Many people like to take a bar of chocolate at he teatime in the afternoon. At this time, maybe you want to share the sweet with your friends. If you cannot find anyone else, your dog is a good object to share with. Many people know that dogs also like desserts. But stop it, otherwise chocolate may kill you dog. In America, chocolate is one of five common items that can cause dog poisoning, the other four are antifreeze, marijuana, raticide and insecticide.   

     Chocolate contains theobromine, it can excite the central nervous system, relax muscles and increase heart rate.     However, for most animals, theobromine is poisonous. for human beings, we have a pretty high metabolic rate for theobromine, in other words, those toxins in our body will be excreted quickly through liver detoxification and kidney excretion, therefore the toxins cannot affect us. 

   Unfortunately, the situation becomes difficult for dogs. They cannot excrete the theobromine efficiently. Dogs can only excrete half of the theobromine they take after 20 hours. the minimum amount of theobromine which can poison a dog is 16mg per kilogram body weight. 300mg theobromine per kilogram body weight can cause the death of dogs. In addition, the usual chocolate milk contains about 1.4mg/g theobromine, and the black chocolate contains around 14mg/g. For example, for a dog whose weight is 3 kilogram, it he takes 3.42g of black chocolate, which is only a little bite, he might get poisonous. Taking 10g of black chocolate may cause severe vomiting and cramps. Taking 60g of black chocolate may cause its death due to fast heart rate and muscle rigidity. It is only the weight of a bar of chocolate. But for white chocolate, dogs can eat because it contains little amount of theobromine.

    In summary, if you want to share delicious food with your dogs, never feed them chocolate (except for white chocolate), otherwise your movement may let you lose your most loyal friends for the whole life.    

    Here is Yuhan Jiang's blogpost about milk, should we really need to drink milk? His point of view is very interesting and give us some information about why milk is bad. Nice blogpost, I like it.    

References:                                                                                            http://www.longbeachstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Chocolate-Festival-longbeach.jpg

http://www.talktothevet.com/ARTICLES/DOGS/chocolatetoxic.HTM