Tuesday, March 5, 2024

CRISPR-Casp9 is the Real Game Changer!!


In year 2020 and for the first time in history, a Nobel prize was awarded to two women, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, from the University of California at Berkeley. They made key discoveries in the field of DNA manipulation with the CRISPR-Cas9 system, so called "genetic scissors", which came to revolutionize the scene. 

March 8th is International Women's Day


I would like to share with you these two poems by the great 20th-century American poet Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.


A Mark of Resistance


Stone by stone I pile
this cairn of my intention
with the noon's weight on my back,
exposed and vulnerable
across the slanting fields
which I love but cannot save
from floods that are to come;
can only fasten down
with this work of my hands,
these painfully assembled
stones, in the shape of nothing 
that has ever existed before.
A pile of stones: an assertion
that this piece of country matters
for large andsimple reasons.
A mark of resistance, a sign.

Monday, March 4, 2024

The Writers' Cooperative

                                      

It's been a pleasure to read all your "stories with a twist". I really appreciated your joint effort in our first writers' coop, so I'd like to say thanks to all of you. 
Below follows the story co-authored by your classmates Diana and Julita. Enjoy the read!


PS: Diana and Julita would like to thank everybody for their title suggestions. 
Title credits: Ana Gibello.


Power and Social Issues Vocabulary KEY