Using the article, “TV Linked With Brain Changes in Kids” by Laura Sanders, answer the following essay prompt: Think about what you have read. Are you surprised, concerned, confused?  Are the sources cited by the author credible, or might they be biased?  Why do you think so? Do your own observations or experiences lead you to agree or disagree with the ideas expressed in the article? Be sure to consider the importance of speaker, audience, context, and purpose in your essay.  Write a multi-paragraph formal essay that expresses your opinion about the effects of media exposure on human development. Include information from the article to support your thesis, using integrated citation.   You will be graded based on the following: 25/25 Author includes a thesis statement with two main ideas that fully answer the question being asked in the prompt 25/25 Author includes one parenthetical citation per body paragraph that aligns with MLA guidelines (no works cited is necessary); author makes a connection of the quote to the prompt 25/25 Author uses 3rd person academic point of view; content shows a clear understanding of the prompt and article being presented 25/25 Author uses proper grammar, punctuation, capitalization etc. Reading: ——————————————————————————————————- Science News Society for Science & the Public  GROWTH CURVE: NEUROSCIENCE    TV Linked With Brain Changes in Kids  BY LAURA SANDERS   DECEMBER 2, 2013  Last Sunday, the Giants battled the Redskins in our living room, and there was no bigger fan than 9-month-old Baby V. Unlike her father, she was not interested in RG3’s shortcomings. The tiny, colorful guys running around on a bright green field, the psychedelic special effects and the bursts of noise drew her in like a moth to a 42-inch high-definition flame.  My friends with kids have noticed the same screen fascination in their little ones. Like adults, kids love colorful, shiny, moving screens. The problem, of course, is that watching TV probably isn’t the best way for little kids to spend their time. Long bouts in front of the tube have been linked to obesity, weaker attention spans and aggression in kids.  Now, a new study of Japanese children has linked TV time with changes in the growing brains, effects that have been harder to spot. And the more television a kid watches, the more profound the brain differences, scientists report November 20 in Cerebral Cortex.   Researchers studied kids between age 5 and 18 who watched between zero and four hours of television a day. On average, the kids watched TV for about two hours a day. Brain scans revealed that the more television a kid watched, the larger certain parts of the brain were. Gray matter volume was higher in regions toward the front and side of the head in kids who watched a lot of TV.  Say that again? Watching television boosts brain volume? Before you rejoice and fire up Season 1 of Breaking Bad, keep in mind: Bigger isn’t always better. In this case, higher brain volume in these kids was associated with a lower verbal IQ. Study coauthor Hikaru Takeuchi of Tohoku University in Japan says that these brain areas need to be pruned during childhood to operate efficiently. “Gray matter volume is like body weight,” Takeuchi says — the scales can be tipped by both muscle and fat. Stretching the analogy to its (admittedly ridiculous) endpoint, TV might make the developing brain too fat.  These results, like most of the other studies on children and TV time, highlight an association. The data can’t say that TV viewing caused these changes. Even if the results could do that, it still wouldn’t be clear whether the culprit was TV itself or the lack of other activities like playing sports, practicing an instrument or playing with pals. Some of the kids in the study watched TV for 4 hours a day. Assuming they also ate, slept and went to school, that leaves very little time for anything else.  The study is “one of the first to attempt to bridge the developmental science of television viewing with neuroscience,” says health policy expert Frederick Zimmerman of the University of California, Los Angeles.  More studies are needed to figure out exactly how television affects the growing brain. But for now, it’s clear that parking in front of a TV for hours on end isn’t good for us, and that’s especially true if you’re a kid.   

You are interested in understanding the gene regulation of Lkp1, a protein produced in liver and kidney cells in mice. Interestingly, you find that the LKP1 gene is not expressed in heart cells. You isolate the DNA upstream of the LKP1 gene, place it upstream of the gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP), and insert this entire piece of recombinant DNA into mice. You find GFP expressed in liver and kidney cells but not in heart cells, an expression pattern similar to the normal expression of the LKP1 gene. Further experiments demonstrate that there are three regions in the promoter, labeled A, B, and C in the figure below, that contribute to this expression pattern. Assume that a single and unique transcription factor binds each site such that protein X binds site A, protein Y binds site B, and protein Z binds site C. You want to first determine which region is responsible for tissue-specific expression and then create mutations in the promoter to determine the function of each of these regions. In the figure, if the site is missing, it is mutated such that it cannot bind its corresponding transcription factor.   Which protein is likely to act as a gene repressor?

_________ quickly rejoins double-strand breaks, but “cleaning” of the ends results in deletion of a few base pairs. _________ uses a newly-made sister chromatid as a template for perfect double-strand break repair.

You have discovered an “Exo–” mutant form of DNA polymerase in which the 3′-to-5′ exonuclease function has been lost, but the ability to join nucleotides together is unchanged. Which of these properties do you expect the mutant polymerase to have?

Transcription in bacteria differs from transcription in a eukaryotic cell because in bacteria

If the sequence of one strand of a DNA segment is 5′-G C C A C G T A T C A G-3′, what is the sequence of its complementary strand?

Adenine and thymine form _____ hydrogen bonds between them, while cytosine and guanine form _____ hydrogen bonds.

The chromosomes we typically see in images are isolated from mitotic cells. These mitotic chromosomes are in the most highly condensed form. Interphase cells contain chromosomes that are less densely packed and

DNA polymerase has some functional constraints which greatly complicate the process of DNA replication. Which of these is NOT one of those limitations?

The most likely outcome of post-translational histone modifications or methylation of cytosines is