Week 5 the first reading journal

How Coffee Affects Biodiversity

http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/how-coffee-affects-biodiversity/?ref=science

Summary

  A doctoral student confessed the difficulty of her study in Costa Rica. She investigates how many numbers and kinds of mammals the tropics area, a coffee plantation in Turrialba, Costa Rica, has. According to the article, recent coffee trees in Latin America change their circumstance because the export of coffee beans became more familiar to the area. Couple of decades ago, coffee trees grew up within native forests. But now, farmers replace their land to only coffee trees. Most of biodiversity studies around the area focus on birds and insects. So, she decided to focus on mammals in the area.
   She faces much trouble during her studies. First of all, she faces the difficulty of catching mammals in the area. She prepares a combination of direct and indirect traps for catching them(The direct trap is that they set bait for animals, and the other one is used a camera to identify their paw print). They mark each place with a bright colored flag near the trap. But the flag is chewed by ants(They do not realize why ants chew the flag) and fell down the ground. The expensive devices such as cameras are stolen by somebody. They guess the culprit must be a man who belongs to a factory nearby that buys scrap metals.
   The most dangerous trouble is machetes. They use machetes to cut the trails and set up the traps. They make two rules to use the tools, but sometimes the tools cause a serious trouble. One day, an assistant was injured with the tool. They called an emergency room, and they were given advice by using a telephone. It took approximately 1.5 hours. And taken another 1 hour, the patient was carried to the emergency room.
   She hopes this study will make success without any serious trouble.


My opinion
   Dissertations are very important for doctoral students, however, I think this study is really tough for her. She has the possibility to face the risk of death. I also hope she can come back home with no injury and will be a good scientist in the near future.


Vocabularies
1)biodiversity
Part of speech
noun
Definition
variety of living things in an area
Synonym
food cycle????
My sentence
There are much biodiversity in tropical areas in the world.


2)paw
Part of speech
noun
Definition
the foot of animals which have claws
Synonym
foot, hoof
My definition
We looked for the paw traces to catch wolves.


3)machete
Part of speech
noun
Definition
a large heavy knife to use, especially Latin America, cutting sugarcane and clearing underbrush
Synonym
blade
My definition
The suspicious man swung a machete suddenly.