Basic Genetics H.W

This website's video was very interesting. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/tour/

One thing I learned was that all human cells (except the egg cell and the sperm cell) have two sets of chromosomes with 23 chromosomes in each set. The egg and the sperm cells only have one set, so when they meet and create a baby, the baby will have 2 sets of chromosomes in all of it's cells. The baby will have half of it's mother's chromosomes, and half of it's father's chromosomes. That's why babies resemble their parents. In this way, genes can be passed on for generations.

Another thing I learned was that there are three different types of traits. They are physical, behavioral and predisposition to a medical condition. Physical traits are the traits that you see, like hair color, eye color, and nose type. Behavioral traits are those that tell you how to behave,(obviously.) For example, when a car is coming right at you, your immediate reaction is to move or scream. That is a behavioral trait. Predisposition to a medical condition is having an increased risk of having or getting a disease. If one of your parents or grandparents have diabetes, chances are, you will too.

Pippin's Question Box Answer :)

This is so cool!

1st way to slow down time is to do it in your mind. You can make time go slower by calming down and actually concentrating on your surroundings. In fact, when you do this, it's actually your mind's clock that is slowing down. Scientists believe that each person has their own clock that they control. Your body moves at exactly the same speed, but your mind slows down the clock, which gives the brain 'more time' to shoot out actions. You can take in more information. This is what happens in life threatening incidents. Some parts of this paragraph are from a one hour special on time, which I watched a long time ago. http://www.livescience.com/health/071211-time-slow.html


1 way to travel in time is to move away from the planet. Relativity says that if someone goes into space, then returns, more time would have passed on Earth than for the traveler. I do not understand this, but it is true. See the Time Travel in Theory paragraph on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel

The 2nd way to time travel is to go through a worm hole. Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity makes space and time seem like stretchable fabric. A worm hole is like putting a ball in the fabric. What happens is the fabric sinks with the weight of the ball, and everything around the bowl would fall in. The worm hole would have an opening somewhere else in time, and everything that fell in would come out the other end. Of course, they would have been ripped and stretched into more than a billion pieces. This I got from watching a clip on www. livescience. comhttp://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=Time_travel_deep

The secret to living longer? Current Event Article#2

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/30/live.longer.webcast/index.html?iref=allsearch

Scientists are trying to find a way to increase the life expectancy... by 900 years! Geneticist Aubrey De Grey,Chief Scientific Officer of SENS Foundation, has informed the world that techniques such as stem cell therapy, gene therapy and tissue engineering could one day (in combination) make it possible for humans to live for hundreds of years. SENS is a foundation that researches and promotes regenerative medicine. "The real advantage of applying regenerative medicine to the problem of ageing is that we can actually turn the biological clock backwards," he said. But, it could takes years to find something that is safe to use on humans, so meanwhile, there are simple things that you could add to your everyday life, to add a decade or more to your life expectancy. These things are as simple as eating less meat, and exercising more. And by exercising, I don't mean 30 minutes on a treadmill. Things like walking to the grocery store, and talking the stairs, instead of the elevator. Another threat to life-long health is stress. It is impossible to avoid stress completely, but you could do things to help you deal with it like meditation, praying, and taking a short nap. Best-selling author Dan Buettner has carried out extensive studies to identify places with the highest life expectancy, and found that this includes Costa Rica, Sardinia, in Italy, and Ikaria, in Greece. So, people looking to live longer, pack your bags and move to one of these places.

My opinion of this article is it would be awesome to live longer, but it is also wrong to mess with the natural course of life and death. I mean think about it... if people could live a very long time, they would have many babies, and those babies would live very long, and you would end up with an over crowded Earth. So, first, I think we need to find a planet that sustains life, but very little of it, and invade it, so we have twice the room. Then, this would be a good idea.

Class Response - Biome Project

In Science, we have been learning about biomes. We learned that there are 6 major biomes accepted by scientists. These are; Tundra, Coniferous Forests, Deciduous forests, Tropical Rain Forests, Grasslands, and Deserts. The tundra is cold all year round, and not many plants and trees grow there because of Permafrost. Permafrost is when the soil has water which is captured in ice, and the ice doesn't melt, causing the soil to be hard. The ice doesn't even melt in the spring or summer, which only lasts for a total of 3 months.The coniferous forest is also cold, but is home to many conifers. Conifers are trees that pack their seeds in cones. They never shed their leaves, and can withstand freezing temperatures. Their needles have a waxy coating, which helps them from freezing, dying, and decaying. This is one major difference from Deciduous forests, because these trees lose their leaves, and the leaves decay. The decayed leaves act as fertilizer in the soil, so many, many different kinds of plants can live there. Tropical rain forests are the biome that receives the most rain. It gets more than 200 cm of rain per year! It is always warm, humid and rainy and because of this, many different plants and animals live here. In the tropical rain forest, it rains almost everyday. The grasslands are completely different. As you can guess, the dominant plant there is grass. Not many trees and shrubs can grow here, because of low rainfall, prairie fires, and the animals would eat the seeds before they have a chance to grow. The desert biome is very dry, and can be very hot or very cold.

Then, last week, SunnyD gave us a project. We chose a biome, and we had to research it, then pick a vacation spot. Then, we had to create a travel brochure and in it had to be the climate, which plants live there, and which animals live there. My biome was grasslands, and at first I did not want to do that biome. I had my mind set on either Tundra, or Tropical rain forest. Then I started to research it, and found that it was not as bad as i had thought. There were many interesting facts, like the grasslands are home to 9000 different species of grasses. The animals that live there are mostly herbivores. These herbivores usually have long legs and hoofs, enabling them to outrun their predators. We had a chance to research our biomes on Monday, and Tuesday. We were allowed to sit anywhere, and i think this was a bad idea, because we all sat with our friends, and spent the entire time talking. Me included. Towards the end of Tuesday, I was determined to at least finish a little bit. I excluded my self away from my friends, and sat at a lab table. Then at the end of class, I was surprised to find that I had finished nearly all my research, in about just 15 minutes.

Two other things have learned about biomes is that grasslands have 2 separate kinds. There are Tropical grasslands, and Temperate grasslands. Tropical grasslands are hot all the time, and Temperate grasslands' climate changes seasonally. http://www.worldbiomes.com/biomes_grassland.htm
Another thing I have learned is that the average winter temerature in the Tundra is -34 degrees Fahrenheit. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/index.php

Overall, the Biome project was really fun.

Bullying (Man's Inhumanity to Man)

If everyone feels that bullying is wrong then why can't society or our own community put an end to it? Relate your answer to either The Wave, Slake's Limbo or The Lord of the Flies.

The problem is that not everyone feels that bullying is bad. Some people might think it's okay to make someone else feel bad, just because they have problems. They think that if they aren't happy, no one else should be, or if they are happy, why should everyone else be? Another reason is that they are feeling insecure. Insecurity can bring out the worst in people. A bully might feel that someone else is more liked than they are, so they might try to make the person feel bad, so they can feel better about themselves. In Lord of the Flies, Jack bullies Piggy because he is jealous of Piggy's intelligence. Jack is feeling insecure.

The reason we can't stop bullying is because we can't stop people from being insecure. There are even laws that prevent people from bullying, but do these laws work? Not at all. This is just something we all have to live with.

Summer Reading: What kind of person do you imagine the author to be like?

Summer Reading: What kind of person do you imagine the author to be like?

For summer reading, I read Dunk, and the author was David Lubar.

I imagine the author to be like a normal person, with things to worry about, people to love, and stuff to do. I think he must have had personal experiences like those of the main character, Chad. I am pretty sure that at some point in time, we all will have experiences similar to Chad's. It's part of life. David Lubar took some of his, and turned them into a book. Or, he could have been observing someone else, and how they respond to situations. If he didn't do either of these things, then David Lubar must be a very interpersonal person. He knows how people would react to problems, and that not everyone can take pain, and rejection well. All in all, David Lubar must be someone who understands people.

Life Saving Poisonous Gas?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/09/cheating.death.suspended.animation/index.html

Yes, it's true. Scientists have proved that death isn't caused by lack of oxygen itself, but of chemical reactions that are triggered by sharply dropping oxygen levels. When we stop breathing, our blood still has oxygen in it, and our brain can survive on that oxygen for a while, provided that the blood is pumped to the brain. What causes us to die, is the chemical reactions that occur from oxygen deprivation. Our cells release toxins, and die, which lead to organ failure, and so on, but for this to happen, the presence of oxygen has to be there.
When Mark Roth, a 50-year old biologist, conducted an experiment where he slowly filled in an air-tight container containing a mouse, with hydrogen sulfide (an ounce could kill dozens of people), the rat stopped moving, and looked dead. After 50 minutes, Mark Roth shut off the hydrogen sulfide, and regular air was allowed to flow through again. In a couple of minutes, the rat was okay, and moving about freely, as if nothing had happened.
The reason, is that the hydrogen sulfide took the place of oxygen completely, preventing the chemical reactions, so no cell failure, and the mouse survived.
The air we breathe is 21% oxygen, and if we only get 5%, we die, because, at 5% oxygen, there is enough oxygen to trigger the chemical reactions that make the cells die. But, at 0.1% we go into a suspended animation but do not pass away.
But, there is still one major set back. This theory only works on small animals.

When I read this article, I was very intrigued. Poisonous gasses aren't really poisonous after all! They can kill only when combined with oxygen. This is so interesting! But I really wouldn't want to be the test subject. A question I have is how can you slowly replace oxygen with Hydrogen Sulfide? Where does the oxygen go? Wouldn't some of it still be in airtight container? This could be next biggest scientific victory... when scientists figure out a way to make it work on humans.

Welcome Science

My Favorite subject is Math and Science, because Math is just cool, and science is interesting. There are so many things to know, and it is just so intriguing! The best book I have ever read is The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. In my free time, I like to read, play tennis or badminton, and surf the net. If I had a plane ticket to anywhere, I'd want it to be to Italy. My favorite color is purple. If I had a pet, I would want it to be a cat, and I would name it Tally. My goal this year is to be the busiest person in school. I don't know why, but I really like to be busy.