This blog goes back to the facial recogntion topic, which at the moment I think is my favourite. I now have a name for it: the cross-race effect. (I didn't make it up, I found the term whilst researching.) But please Ms Zhang, if it's really not going to work, please tell me straight out. I know you said that the global warming experiment would be better, and I really do value your advice, but for some reason I really want to do this experiment and if there's a fair chance that it will work I think I'm prepared to take it, I just don't want to dig myself into a hole.
The facial recognition one would also, I think, be easier to perform. There's no equipment that will be impossible to access or expensive to purchase. At the moment my idea is to only use two different cultures because I wouldn't be able to get large enough groups of 3 or more cultures. The two cultural backgounds I'll use are Asian and Anglo-Saxon. I'm aiming for around 16 people in each group, half boys half girls. All the volunteers will be around my age - say between 14 and 17- because 1) this will remove one of the variables and 2) this is the age group in which I know the most people. I'll use not well-known models (they can't recognise the models) of both cultures as the people they have to distinguish between. This will work well because most models are of the same height and build so one will have to concentrate more on the facial features and because photos of models won't be hard to come by. As yet, I'm not totally sure how to question the volunteers. I might sure them the pictures in a sequence and ask "have I shown you this person before?". One of the experiments that was conducted in Germany (which I posted the other day) showed the volunteers the faces then left a gap of up to 3 weeks before they tested the recognition.
Unfortuanately I haven't been able to find too many examples of how the cross- race effect has been tested. Most sites just mention it in regards to witness-identifiaction. I managed to track down the Meissner and Brigham, 2001 study into the cross-race effect that was mentioned on nearly all of the sites, only to find that I had to buy it before I could read it. Maybe I'll find it a library.
For my experiment, the aim would sound something like "Is a person able to recognise faces from their own culure better than those from another culture?" I think the independant variable is the person and their culture and the dependant variable the effect of culture on recognising faces.

Okay, I've temporarily moved away from the facial recognition idea and am back to global warming. (I apologise to the people reading this blog- it must be really hard to follow.) As shown in the mind map in my second post, one of the aspects of global warming that I thought about studying was the effect global warming and rising sea temperatures will have on coral reefs.

To conduct the experiment I would obtain a sample of a species of coral and place it in a fish tank. Over the fish tank I'd put one of those heat-lamps, maybe similar to those used for pet reptiles. The temperature of the water and lamp would begin at the temperature the coral is used to, then after a certain amount of time (say, 2 days) I'd increase the temperature. The increase would depend on the rate scientists believe that global warming will warm our seas. Every 2 days I'd increase the temperature by the same amount and observe how the coral reacts. Obviously I'd have to do a lot more research into how coral survives so that I could place the right type of water and other things in the fish tank with it to ensure that the coral doesn't die because I've left out a vital nutrient as opposed to because of the temperature increase. If time and availability permit, I would hopefully be able to study at least 2 or 3 corals instead of just 1, removing some of the variables of the experiment.

I think the aim would be something like "Do increases in sea temperature have an effect on coral reefs?" The independant variable would be the increase in temperature while the effect on the coral would be the dependant variable.

There has been quite a lot of research into the changes in coral reefs due to rising temperatures. According to my research, the coral dies due to a process called 'bleaching'. The rise in sea temperature causes coral to release the food producing algae that is its symbiont (I think that's a word, it is according to dictionary.com anyway). Without the algae the reefs turn white as they die. Coral can recover from bleaching, but most do not. Fish species also suffer from the bleaching of coral but I don't think test that in a fish tank for my SRP. For anyone wanting a bit more knowledge of this but not an overwhelming tidal wave of words try http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html .

This picture is also from that siteand shows what was once a living reef but now resembles rubble.

Hooray!!!!!!! I found something. This is just a brief extract from from a site titled Investigative Interviewing Research Laboratory, url is http://iilab.utep.edu/eid.htm .

Cross-Racial Identification

Faces of one's own race are better remembered when compared with faces of another, less familiar race. This phenomenon, referred to as the "cross-race effect" or "own-race bias," has been demonstrated across a variety of memory tasks (e.g., recognition, identification, forced choice, etc.), in both adults and children, and across a variety of ethnic groups (e.g., White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, etc.). Our research has focused on explicating the cognitive or social psychological mechanisms that might underlie the phenomenon. More specifically, we have been examining the role of perceptual learning and encoding-based processes that might substantiate superior memory for own-race faces.

This is another extract from what I'm pretty sure is A German University -but as the name is in German I can't be positive. Thankfully they had an English translation underneath.

In research on the perception and recognition of human faces, the
Own-Race Bias has been the subject of numerous studies and is known as
a robust phenomenon (Meissner & Brigham, 2001). It depicts the worse
recognition performance with faces from persons of other ethnic groups
(out-group faces) compared with faces of the own ethnic group (in-group
faces). Despite some smaller gradual differences in the extent of the
Own-Race Bias (Sporer, 1992), this effect occurs with most ethnic
groups (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001), whereas Blacks and Whites are
the ethnic groups whose recognition performance has been tested in most
studies. It was the aim of this dissertation, to test Sporer's (2001)
In-Group/Out-Group Model. This model is based on earlier theoretical
explanations of the Own-Race Bias, and integrates these theories to
build a basic structure for a more complete explanation of this effect.
A central assumption of the model is the emergence of different kinds
of encoding strategies depending on the perception of a person as being
a member of the own ethnic group or another ethnic group, respectively.
The model predicts that once a face is perceived as an in-group face
it will be processed holistically, whereas out-group faces will be
processed feature-based, leading to worse recognition performance with
these faces.
...
Experiment 2 investigated the recognition performance with faces whose
outer features (eg. hair, ears) were deleted, compared with 'normal'
faces. Participants were n = 64 Turks and n = 64 Germans. By the
deletion of outer features, feature-based encoding was supposed to be
more difficult, thus leading to worse recognition performance with
out-group faces compared to in-group faces. Additionally, the interval
between encoding and test varied between immediate and three weeks.
Test stimuli were faces from African-Americans, Caucasian-Americans,
Turks and Germans. A worse recognition performance for faces without
outer features was found, independently of ethnic membership after the
delay of three weeks. When the recognition performance was tested
immediately, a Own Race effect was found for faces without outer
features, indicating feature-based encoding of out-group faces, that
disappears after longer intervals between encoding and recognition.
Experiment 3 investigated the Own-Race Bias by testing two German
groups who were supposed to have different amounts of contact with
other ethnic groups. The groups were n = 32 police officers working at
the international airport in Frankfurt/Main (high contact) and n = 32
students at the University of Giessen (low contact). Test stimuli were
faces from African-Americans, Hispanics, Turks and Germans. Both
groups showed equal recognition performance when analysing overall
performance, however, police officers performed better with black faces
than did students, whereas students showed better performance with
German faces than police officers. In a second experiment
(Delayed-Matching task) with the same participants, the view of the
test face (frontal vs. half-profile) was varied. While performance in
the frontal-view condition was almost perfect for all of the four
ethnic groups, the performance decreased with increasing social
distance from the participants (i.e. performance was worse for the
black faces, followed by the Hispanic, Turkish and German faces) in the
half-profile condition. These results are interpreted as evidence for
an influence of contact on the Own-Race Bias and as evidence for
feature-based encoding of out-group faces.

Hmmmm...facial recognition not looking too promising at the moment. All the sites and studies I've found so far are about the differences between people of different cultures recognising facial expressions, not the actual faces, which is what I'm looking for.

Okay, I've come up with an idea that has nothing at all to do with global warming. I don't know if it will work as an SRP topic but I think it has potential. I want to test facial recognition between people of different cultures. In other words, does someone asian find it harder to distinguish anglo-saxon faces than other asian faces and vice-versa.
I got the idea in history when my teacher, straying from the topic of the Vietnam War, somehow got onto the topic of facial recognition between cultures. According to him studies have actually been conducted to show that, in his words, people from one culture who haven't been exposed to other cultures think that everyone from that foreign culture look the same.
I spoke to Ms Zhang about it, who confirmed that a lot of studies have been carried out into this area of research. However she also said that it might not be feasible on the small scale I would be conducting it on and there are too many variables. So at the moment I really don't know what to do. Ms Zhang thinks that the global warming experiment would be better but the only problem with that is that I don't have an actual experiment in mind. My next step is....research. Lots of it I think, if I'm going to be able to determine whether the facial recognition will work. Wish me luck.

This doesn't relate to the phytoplankton aspect of my research at all, it's more of a mental note as to how to test different ways of removing/absorbing/destroying greenhouse gases. I'd thought I wouldn't be able to do something like this because I wouldn't be able to contain samples of the gases, but one of my friends suggested that I use car exhaust fumes. I still don't know how or what I'd use them for, but I thought it was worth keeping in mind.

I've done some research into ways of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere but I'm still not sure if the idea will be suitable for my science task.
I found out that in 2007, Virgin launched a competition with a prize of $25 million (!!!!) for the person who can come up with the best way of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (there are catches though, like it has to be tested over a 10 year period before the majority of the prize can be claimed etc.). The competition closed in January this year and the judges received over 900 entries- that's a lot of ideas I can test- but I think they must still be adjudicating them because I can't find out what the winning and other best solutions were. However the website did say that the judges thought that some of the more promising solutions involved machines which use chemical reactions to remove gases. I don't really have a clue what those machines would involve though so I don't think I can base my science project around one. (For anyone that's interested the website is http://www.virgin.com/subsites/virginearth)
On wikipedia I found out some ways of removing methane. Although no processes have been invented with this specific purpose, a number a processes already exist which involve the removal or destruction of the gas. These include combustion- in which methane is destroyed as it passes through eg fire-, chemical decomposition- where some sort of radicals react with methane and it's destroyed, I don't want to research this topic because I think it would both confuse and bore me to tears- and biological decomposition- in which the methane is broken down by bacteria in soil. I think the last option sounds the most promising, both for the environment and for my SRP considering that having more fires (which release greenhouse gases) to get rid of another greenhouse gas seems ridiculous and I don't think I can bring myself to do my SRP on something to do with radicals. But I'll need to do more research into this before I make a decision on doing it for science.
There are two things that have astonished my so far relating to my SRP. They are:
1. the incredibly large amount of research that there is to do for anything and the increasing number of ideas that branch out from that first idea the more research you do which all require huge amounts of research themselves.
2. the number of things I don't know about the world. I'm not saying that I thought I knew everything, far from it, but I thought I had a far better understanding of things than I now realise I do. It's a very humbling experience.
Back to my research. I said in my last blog that getting rid of carbon dioxide wasn't as much of a problem as removing other gases because all we needed to do was stop logging and replant the forests which we ignorantly destroyed. I'm coming to realise it's not quite so simple as I originally anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I knew it wasn't going to be as easy as snapping your fingers; for starters, where do we plant all these trees? So much of the land that was originally forested is now urban settlement or farm land etc.. Also, Earth's population is increasing so more land will have to be cleared to make room for new homes, suburbs, even cities. But that last point is moving more into a humanitarian aspect which I want to avoid for my SRP. Anyway, but I still thought that the carbon dioxide issue was relatively easy to deal with. During my research however I found that many groups are brainstorming ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere-emphasising the point that there's more to it than planting trees. One process that might hold the answer is something called "ocean fertilisation". Never heard of it? Me neither. Apparently phytoplankton, found in oceans, is a major absorber of CO2. At the end of its 60 day life span, phytoplankton sinks in the ocean, taking its absorbed CO2 with it. Some environmentalists believe that increasing the amount of phytoplankton in our oceans is one of the best ways of removing CO2. The way to increase the plankton is to add iron- which is needed for its growth- to the oceans. But it's not as wonderful as it first appears. Research is not conclusive that the CO2 is permanately stored in the deceased phytoplankton/water (at this stage I'm not 100% sure which). Also the process of increasing phytoplankton through iron will be very expensive, and some argue that this money could be better used in other areas of research. Some groups fear that the plankton, once it has increased and spread, will not be able to be controlled, causing other problems in terms of water pollution and ecosystems. Different research shows that to use the phytoplankton to remove only 30% of our CO2, we would need enough to cover an area greater then that of the Southern Ocean.
So, I don't know if ocean fertilisation is a sensible option, but it sounds promising enough and could very well be the basis of my SRP.

I just thought of another possible topic that isn't on my mind map. It relates to the pollution/greenhouse gases heading.
It's all very well to say "we need to stop polluting", and the ways to do so seem logical enough: use less energy and switch to more sustainable and environmentally friendly energy sources. But what about the gases that are already in the atmosphere? I acknowledge that if we suddenly stop releasing greenhouse gases the threat of global warming will be a, well, a lot less threatening. But even so the effects of global warming have already started. Glaciers are already melting at an increased rate, the world is already experiencing more extreme weather and more ferocious storms. Even if we stop heating up the world now, we've already made a difference, so it seems the next step would be reversing the damage we've already done.
Last year, milllions of people from around the world united for one purpose, to highlight the need for reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. And nature has provided us with a way of doing so, trees! So if we plant lots and lots of trees instead of cutting them down, the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere will go down as well, right?
But what about the other gases? Gases like carbon monoxide, methane and nitrous oxide? How do we get rid of those? Trees don't absorb those too.
I haven't done any research into this specific topic yet, so for all I know, there could already be a way to get rid of them or, at the other extreme, scientists and environmentalists could have no clue whatsoever and there would be nothing for me to test in my research task. I'm hoping that there are a few theories circulating as to how to deal with these gases which I can compare and test.

Whew! It just took me about 5 minutes to access this page because I'd thought I'd forgotten my password. Turns out I was using the wrong username. Anyway, back to the science task.

I wanted to do an experiment with some form of environmental aspect, I don't know what environmental aspect but, well, it's better than nothing. I've drawn a sort of mind map during my attempt to think of a topic. It's a very simplified (very very simplified) description of global warming, with blue lines branching out listing some possible sollutions to these problems and pink lines suggesting possible research tasks.