Lily Monahan
Current event 20
Forensics
March 26th, 2018
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
I read the New York Times article “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers” by Gina Kolata.
The article starts out discussing the fact that authorities in africa had been wanted in several countries for killing rhinoceroses and selling their horns. He was on the run for years, but thanks to a forensic scientist he was able to to be caught and prosecuted for his crimes. Researchers in South Africa have developed a tactic to solve poaching crimes that involves matching DNA from the carcasses of Rhinoceroses to their horns, which tracs poachers discovered with horns back to the bodies of the rhinoceroses found dead. Scientists compiled a large database of genetic samples taken from African rhinoceroses, which has reached almost 20,000 samples. Now it is protocol for park rangers to collect tissue samples and blood for every poaches rhinoceros that they find dead.
This article is not only interesting but relevant to our study of forensics because it mirrors the CODIS system of DNA collection with a system called RHODIS. Rangers who find dead rhinos have learned and are currently following the same practices that forensic scientists use when investigating crimes, and even maintain a chain of custody for rhino samples. The senior director of Traffic, which monitors illegal wildlife trade, said about these new practices “If you want to get through detection and investigation and prosecution, treat it as a crime scene and use forensics.”
This article was very well written and provided important details on the new collection methods that are being used in South Africa to punish poachers. Many quotes were incorporated which made it clear how important the issue of poaching was and how the new system of identification was going to help bring many poachers to justice. The article was slightly repetitive at times, but other than that I have no criticisms.
13 comments:
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection
From Lily’s review of In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers, I felt that I was able to learn many new things that she explained. Lily incited many great details in her review. For example, Lily did a good job explaining the background of the story and kept the timeline throughout the review very clear. This made it easy for readers to understand her review. Secondly, Lily added quotes from the article which gives the reader another incite about what others thought about the case. For example, Lily used the quote “If you want to get through detection and investigation and prosecution, treat it as a crime scene and use forensics.” to help set up her own opinion. Also, I thought Lily did a good job on adding her own thoughts and opinions into the review rather than just straight facts.
Although, Lily could add a few more ideas to his review to make it perfect. First, I think that Lily should add more about the forensics part of the crime. Along with this, there are parts where Lily can make his point more clear and concise through the review.
Overall, I think Lily did a good job summarizing the article and adding her own thoughts and opinions. I found this review interesting and informative because I have never heard of this case and I am happy Lily brought up this article for her review.
Catherine Faville
Current event #20
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection
From Lily’s review of In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers written by Kolata Gina , she gave a lot of detail from the article in her review. Lily gave immense background information of the story, and added details throughout. This made it easy for readers to understand and interesting to read. Lily also added valuable and important quotes from the article, giving the reader another form incite about other views about the case. Also she added a lot of her own personal opinions on the matter, making it personal and a interesting read.
Although her review was good, she could have talked more about the forensics side to the case, rather than just focusing on the poaching aspect. If she steered more towards how these poachers were caught, rather than the fact that animals were getting poached, it would have made it a lot more interesting to read from a forensics point of view.
Overall, I think Lily did a good job summarizing the article and adding her own thoughts and opinions. I found this review interesting and informative toward the unspoken poaching problem, and how it is being solved.
Ayten El-Hennawy
Current Event 20
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection
Lily’s review of the article “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” was very well written and interesting to read. First of all, I liked how she started off her review by explaining what the article was talking about. I also liked how she included some quotes in her review. Lastly, I liked how she used the quote “If you want to get through detection and investigation and prosecution, treat it as a crime scene and use forensics.” to make sure she provided her opinion in her review.
Although her review was pretty straightforward and interesting i think she would've made it better by providing more quotes in order to strengthen her review. I also think it would've been better if she talked a little bit more about how this article related to forensic science.
I thought this article was very interesting to read and i also thought this topic was interesting as i have never read about it before.
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New
York Times, 8 Jan. 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection
Lily wrote an excellent current event report to the article “In Africa, Geneticists are Hunting Poachers” by Gina Kolata. Lily begins with a succinct and informative summary that provides the reader with all of the necessary information. She did a great job of including quotes from experts and people involved in the case. In this way, she found a way to offer new perspectives to her piece and support her arguments. I also really liked how Lily connected the article to forensic by explaining the importance of RHODIS in comparison to CODIS.
While Lily wrote a thorough and well-written response, there are two areas where she could improve. The grammar in the article could use a little work, so if she fixed that her report would be easier to understand. I also think that Lily could have included information related to how this new tactic is actually performing in the field.
After reading the article and this current event response, I have now learned of a new tactic - the genetic fingerprinting of rhino DNA- to try to catch poachers. I think it is incredibly interesting that forensics can be used to solve crimes beyond humans. I expect that more breakthroughs like this one will emerge in the future and I can’t wait to hear about them.
Liam Grealy
Mr. Ippolito
Forensics
March 27, 2018
Current Event #20
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
In this current event article, Lily was able to summarize the article, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers” This article was about how Researchers in South Africa have developed a tactic to solve poaching crimes that involves matching DNA from the carcasses of Rhinoceroses to their horns, which tracs poachers and leads to their prosecution. Lily did a good job talking about the important point of this article, describing how poaching is a big problem and how we need more research to help to discourage poaching In addition to this, Lily was able to talk about the relevance of this article, and how it mimics the system of DNA collection in missing persons cases using the same practices that forensic scientists use when investigating crimes, and even maintain a chain of custody for rhino samples. The last thing Lily did well, was criticize the article by saying it was repetitive. Although Lily did a good job addressing the main points, I think she could have gave more quotes in her summary, she talked about how there were great quotes but only included one. Another thing Lily could have done was improve her grammar and format of paper. One last thing that Lily could have worked on was add additional information on the topic, although she did a good job summarizing it, I had to go back into the article to learn more about the process of how they find the poachers.
One thing I was impressed with from reading this article and review was that scientists have gathered almost 20,000 samples of DNA of the rinocerontes.
Lucy Rizzo
April 7, 2018
Forensics
Current Event 21
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2f Timestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection
For this week’s current event I read Lily Monahan’s review of the New York Times article, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” I thought Lily did many things well in this article summary. Lily did a very good job describing in detail the background of the story and keeping the events in order. This was very important in keeping the reader engaged and able to follow along. I also really enjoyed the quotes and references from the article Lily chose to include. Direct quotes were very helpful in illuminating the article and giving it structure. I also thought that Lily did a good job keeping her voice present throughout the article. She did a very good job incorporating her thoughts and opinions on the piece throughout her summary, which I really enjoyed.
There are some improvements Lily can make however. I think that incorporating more of a forensics involvement on the hunting and poachers crime would be very helpful. To go above and beyond she could have researched further if the article did not proved her with this information. I also think Lily would have tightened her thoughts and summary so that it was extremely clear and consistent.
Overall I think that Lily did a fantastic job on this current event. I learned a lot about this epidemic concerning the Rhinos in South Africa and would recommend to my classmates to read her review.
Zixi Chen
Mr. Ippolito
Forensics
Current Event 21
4/11/2018
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
Lily Monahan’s review on the article named “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers” written by Gina Kolata is very well structured. She opened the review with a description of the scenario about the poaching of rhinoceroses, which draws the readers in very quickly. Another good thing that she did was that she used quotes from the original article, and this gave the readers direct information from the author while establishing credibility for her own review. Also, Lily used specific data such as the 20,000 samples collected by the researchers in order to track the horns to the dead bodies of rhinoceroses. This makes the review more precise with the information.
Even though this review is very interesting to read, there are some areas of possible improvements. First of all, Lily did not use any transitional sentences between the last two paragraphs. Adding some transitions between the can help the readers absorb the information better before moving on to something else. Also, it would be nice if Lily could relate the information discussed in the article to the materials we learned in the Forensics class.
This article was very enjoyable to read for me because I am happy to read about a great effort to protect wild animals from the forensic scientists. By applying their forensic knowledge and doing research on the rhinoceroses, they will be able to save the lives of many wild animals and protect the natural environment.
Maggie Miller
April 10th, 2018
Forensics A/B odd
Current Event Comment 21
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
Lily Monahan submitted an excellent review of the article, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers” by Gina Kolata. One thing I felt Lily did well was that she jumped right into the summary of the article and explained to the readers exactly what the article is about. Lily also included a great use of quotes, you could tell she really thought out which pieces to include in her review in order to support the articles facts. She also gave a great take on how the article is relevant to our forensics class having to do with the system of DNA collecting in missing persons cases.
However, there were two things I might suggest for Lily to improve on if she were to go back and edit her review. The first thing being to go back in and spell/grammar check, as I was reading I found a small number of errors. A good end to Lily’s summary would have been to elaborate on the current standards used by scientists and how this new method is different and how it could impact further investigations.
I was unaware of the concepts of the rinocerontes and am fascinated by the number scientists have collected to study, so am fascinated to learn more.
YiFei Wu
Mr. Ippolito
Forensics
Current Event 21
4/11/2018
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
For this current Forensics related Events, I read Lily’s review of the New York Times article, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” She did a great job on summarizing and commenting in this article. She did a really great job on giving the audiences detail about the original articles. “Scientists compiled a large database of genetic samples taken from African rhinoceroses, which has reached almost 20,000 samples. Now it is protocol for park rangers to collect tissue samples and blood for every poaches rhinoceros that they find dead.” This quote shows how detailed it is. Second, I like the fact that she explained what “RHODIS” and “CODIS” are as well as compare those two. Third, her flow and logic of her comment is really good, which make the audiences easy to follow.
Lily has some areas to improve as well. First, in my opinion, she can dig deeper into the forensic science relations to the hunting. Second, she can improve her grammar use in the article.
This article is very interesting for me whereas how hunting wild animals can be related to forensics.
Timmy McGrath
Bronxville School
Forensics Current Event #21
April 10th, 2017
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
Lily wrote a report of the article, “In Africa Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” I thought that Lily did a lot of things very well in the review. One of which was describing the background of the story. She was able to keep the reader intrigued in the review by making sure that they knew what was going on. She also used great quotes that helped the reader understand the author's tone towards the article. She also did a great job making sure that her opinions were felt in the review.
While Lilys review was great there were some things that could use some improvement. I think that she could have used a little bit more transition between her paragraphs this would have made the review flow much better. She also could have related the article back to forensics class a little bit better.
The article was a great read and I found that it was great that there is such a strong efforts to protect the wild animals from scientists who only care about their own personal gain.
forensics
Charles Ippolito
Current Event 21
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018,
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html
Lily monahan wrote an amazing write up of a NY times article titled, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers”s”. This article pretained to the Poaching epidemic for Ivory in Africa. Lily used vivid quotes and condensed inportant information from the original source.
Ultimately, The article was captivating and informative but it had a few flaws. Menial grammitical errors and runnons did not really take away from the article.
It was interesting to read of Forensic scientist shapinga brighter tonmorrow. It is ccok to see these procedures we do in class may be worthwhile at all. Anton
Charles Ippolito
Current Event 21
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018,
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html
Lily monahan wrote an amazing write up of a NY times article titled, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers”s”. This article pretained to the Poaching epidemic for Ivory in Africa. Lily used vivid quotes and condensed inportant information from the original source.
Ultimately, The article was captivating and informative but it had a few flaws. Menial grammitical errors and runnons did not really take away from the article.
It was interesting to read of Forensic scientist shapinga brighter tonmorrow.
This article had been written by Kolata Gina and its title was, “In Africa, Genetics are Hunting Poachers”. Lily analyzed this article and she did a great job bringing forth the points expressed in the article. There was a nice flow to it and the information was not too overwhelming while remaining factual. This was something that she did a really good job on. She also had quotes from her analysis which enhanced it and gave the article more weight. The quotes were detailed and provided statistics that gave the whole article and its topic some perspective. Her use of statistics was very good as well; since they did not overwhelm or confuse but were informative and digestible. I think she did a very good job with this analysis.
There are a few things that she could improve upon in her writing. I think the analysis should have gone into the forensics of this situation and case more. Though it was mentioned, it is such an obscure use of forensics that most likely we do not know next to anything about, that some more information could have been useful. She also had some issues with grammar, but that is an easy fix.
The analysis was fascinating and it brought on a perspective on forensics that I had never heard of before and through a lense of animal conservation. This was eye opening and shows the wide arrangement of applications that forensics can have.
Kolata, Gina. “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/science/dna-rhinos-ivory-poachers.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection.
Lily summarized the article, “In Africa, Geneticists Are Hunting Poachers” This article was about how Researchers in South Africa have developed a tactic to solve poaching crimes that involves matching DNA from the carcasses of Rhinoceroses to their horns, which tracs poachers and leads to their prosecution. She did a good job talking about the important point of this article, describing how poaching is a big problem and how we need more research to help to discourage poaching In addition to this, she was able to talk about the relevance of this article, and how it mimics the system of DNA collection in missing persons cases using the same practices that forensic scientists use when investigating crimes, and even maintain a chain of custody for rhino samples. The last thing she did well, was criticize the article by saying it was repetitive. Although she did a good job addressing the main points, I think she could have gave more quotes in her summary, she talked about how there were great quotes but only included one. Another thing she could have done was improve her grammar and format of paper. One last thing that she could have worked on was add additional information on the topic, although she did a good job summarizing it, I had to go back into the article to learn more about the process of how they find the poachers.
One thing I was impressed with from reading this article and review was that scientists have gathered almost 20,000 samples of DNA of the rinocerontes.
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