Article 9/22 - In a galaxy far far away...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/science/in-a-breathtaking-first-nasa-craft-exits-the-solar-system.html?pagewanted=all

This article published in the New York Times talks about a great achievement NASA just reached: having a spacecraft leave the solar system. In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft to take pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, but stopped its picture taking to conserve energy in 1990. More recently, the Voyager team detected that it was getting close to the border between our galaxy and interstellar space. So, in order to gather more data they needed to write some more code. The problem being that the Voyager computer system is very old and most people today are not experience with that old of a system. So finally, they found the person for the job,  Lawrence J. Zottarelli, a retired NASA engineer who came up with a solution. With his solution the team was able to estimate that the Voyager left the solar system approximately August 25, 2012. The purpose of this article is to inform the general public about a great achivement by NASA. The intended audience is readers of the New York Times, but also those who are interested in astronomy and space. Some rhetorical elements are flashback, and explanation. The organization of this article is somewhat chronological, but the author jumps around slightly.

Article 9/15 - Caveman Running

http://www.runnersworld.com/sports-psychology/caveman-gym

This article from Runner's World talks about why people as a whole experience boredom while running on a treadmill. It states that why treadmill running is so boring to us may be because of our "caveman instincts" still somewhere in our brain. Way back when during the Pleistocene age our ancestors only had one goal: eat or be eaten. Our ancestor would kill the mammoth and have dinner, instant gratification. Compared to today where we have to train for months for our reward of a successful race. Also, while our ancestors were running, there would be a stimulus from a change of scenery and terrain compared to a treadmill where there is neither. Even with both of these setbacks, the author tells us that we can still train our brain to cope with treadmill running by reflecting on ourselves, like how we feel. The author's purpose is to give reason why runners have such a hard time running on a treadmill. The intended audience is runners and possibly other athletes that use treadmills. Rhetorical appeals are ethos (the author wrote a book about the subject), logos (not much factual evidence but the argument is logical), and pathos (talking about the mouse and the usual running on a treadmill situation).

Article 9/8 - Possible cure for cancer and diseases

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/rx-every-disease

This article from popular science talks about the use of protein killers to treat cancer and other various illnesses. The idea of this comes from a biotechnology company called Alnylam, which had great success when it tested a protein killing drug on liver cancer patients after chemotherapy had not worked. The science behind the drug is that RNA makes copies of strands of DNA. These single strands, called mRNA, signal cells to make proteins. In the human body, RNAi regulates these functions. So what Alnylam did was make a synthetic RNA strand that matches the one for specific functions of a cancerous cell: blood vessel production, and overly rapid cell division. The RNAi in the patients bodies recognized this and stopped the production of protein by that strand, causing the tumor to stop growing. There are hopes that this idea could be used to treat many illnesses just by using synthetic RNA strands. The author's purpose is to inform a person with little background knowledge of cell biology of a possible cure for cancer. The intended audience is a person who has interest in biotechnology and other science subjects. A rhetorical element is process analysis.