Environmental Groups Progress

So far, in the Encourage group, we have made pretty good progress, but our execution slightly lacks. We have made posters, but have we put them up? Not exactly :) Have we written letters? Yes! Have we given them to anyone? Well, I have them in my binder. Unfortunately, our execution skills have been over powered by the oh so wrathful power of STRESS, oh and that nice thing called Finals and Homework, the joy of our lives. I think we are all still on track, just lost for time at the moment. The Environment is kind of an important thing, yes, so we should want to help it, therefore, we should make the time. In the New Year we all think, but we need to just have a deadline or call it quits. If we can re-group, make an action plan and get some of our ideas into ACTION then I think we will jump right back on the ball, but currently, we all jumped off the ball and are attempting 7 hours of sleep a night. Plus, Freshman are freaking out about Finals, which, yes, may be comedic, but does cause them to forget things, as the rest of us do naturally. :) Save the Earth! Reeeeeecycle. <-- That right there, is the take home message. :D

Being Thankful

As the week of Thanksgiving has just passed many people like to express their gratitude for people, events or situations that have changed them, blessed them, or simply made them smile. But sometimes we can be generic unemotional when we think about how thankful we should be about the amazing life that God has given us. Down to the very smallest cell that contains Ribosomes and the Golgi and the ER, both smooth and rough and without that cell performing it's duty, something might not work, something inside of us may go wrong, something that in turn may change our life. Without the Golgi the newly finished proteins couldn't be packaged and sorted. It is a bit like not having any mail sorters. Sure the mail gets to the post office, but if there is no one to sort and bundle the mail, how is the postman meant to know what to do with it? Without the Endoplasmic Reticulum there wouldn't even be any proteins for the Golgi to sort. Do you ever sit and think to yourself that it is amazing that you are alive and your body can keep functioning on it's own as long as you exercise, give your body nutrients and energy and keep hydrated? By doing so you keep every little cell doing it's job and without the ER and the Golgi, who make and package the proteins which do all the specialized jobs of the cell, you wouldn't be functioning. It is a huge blessing to be healthy and be functioning normally because as soon as one little thing in a cell goes wrong, a lot of things can go wrong causing diseases like Cancer to begin. In just one little cell, a disease that changes millions of lives, begins. 1 cell. That is all it takes. So maybe instead of just saying that one is thankful to be healthy and not thinking anymore about it, think about how grateful you are that you do not have to deal with that one little cell that went wrong. Happy Thanksgiving!

Wisdom Teeth

So, this past week and a half I have been blessed with a splitting pain in my jaw bones. Top and Bottom. Oh the joys of Wisdom Teeth. All four are coming round the mountain, pressing down on my gums, pushing all my other teeth out of position. Well, not yet, that's a little dramatic, but they are definitely not happy. So why do we even have Wisdom teeth? What is there purpose in life? They remind me of the appendix. Fine to be part of you, but doesn't really matter if they are there or not. So really? Why on earth do some of us have to experience this oh so joyful pain. Well, I went and saw my dentist today to get this all figured out and here's the scoop. Wisdom teeth are just an extra set of molars. They help you chew stuff, but because you already have two pairs, it is not the end of the world if you don't have them or you get them removed. It is usually a genetic thing, he said, and since both my parents had them, mine are right on schedule. The pain, is the tooth breaking the surface of the gum, literally splitting the protein fibers apart in the tissue to make their debut in life. They slowly pass through the area of the gum, starting off as a sharp little point. The dentist said I should feel that point in about a week. LUCKILY, for me, in the last couple months, my wisdom teeth decided to straighten on up on my top jaw and are coming in nice and smooth and will be like a Christmas present for me. Oh joy, but what really is joyful is the fact that I won't need them extracted. Yippee! Wisdom teeth are bigger than your other teeth in terms of their roots in the actual jaw. Today looking at my x-rays, my dentist pointed out how big they were in comparison to my other teeth, which was quite interesting and explains quite a bit why they hurt so much! He did offer to slice open my gum so that the two top wisdom teeth would come through faster and less painfully, but all I could visualize was a knife in my mouth cutting my gums open and then heading back to school with a bloody mouth. Not my idea of fun, so I passed on his gracious offer. I did, however, leave the dentists office with a smile on my face and a new toothbrush, knowing that I, am a lucky lucky little girl!

Myocardial Infarctions

Myocardial Infarctions have touched the lives of nearly everyone on this planet. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, we first need to back up and go to the beginning of the problem. YOU. Well we must travel deep into the body to the capillaries. Capillaries carry red blood cells which deliver oxygen to the cells in the form of the hemoglobin. When one consumes too many saturated fats that cannot be broken down as easily as unsaturated fats. FACT- Saturated fats turn into solids at room temperature and clog your blood vessels. This is NOT good at all as you can probably assume. Once the lipids build up, the tubes can become constricted and not as much blood will flow creating a disease called atherosclerosis. If the blood tubes are blocked then the levels of oxygen and glucose for energy traveling the cells will be lessened. If a blockage becomes completely barricaded, then one will go into cardiac arrest. This means that there is no blood going through that blood vessel any more which effects every cell in the path of that vessel. This means that the patient has a myocardial infarction. HEART ATTACK. Blood flow is constricted to the heart and can potentially lead to death. NOT good.

The Left side shows the healthy heart and the right is a heart that has had a heart attack. The heart on the right is described as hard, larger and paler in color as all blood supply was cut off. This is NOT what you want to have happen to you. So what am I trying to say as I tell you all this. Well listen to this, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute says that about 1.1 million Americans have heart attacks each year with about 50% of that 1.1 million dying. Heart Disease is the biggest killer in the United States of both men and women. You may know someone who is part of that 1.1 million, you, yourself even may be in that 1.1 million, so what are you going to do about it? Change, so that you or a loved one won't be part of that 1.1 million.

Pumpkins

As the time comes to dwell upon Halloween, a large number of the population flock to Pumpkin Patches to choose their victim. For Jack-o-lantern carving of course! But could these festive holiday decorations be a trap for disease and germs that we then throw away in our trash can?
We all have experienced that about 3-5 days after our fun and festive pumpkin carving celebration that we have some friends that decide to make our pumpkin their new home. MOLD. FUNGUS. ROT. DECAY. ANTS. DETRITIVORE CENTRAL. So, we decide, the pumpkin lived a good life and now it is time to send it on a little trip to the dump. Maybe though if we left the pumpkin their or put it in the compost bin, our soil and source of nourishment for our garden would be a whole lot better. Pumpkin and Pumpkin seeds are good for the body so maybe they may be a benefactor to the soil, but possibly by adding the rotting pumpkin to the compost could cause a fungus or bacteria to grow rapidly out of control and end up harming the plants, not helping. Maybe the spores that are growing out of control inside the pumpkin could be hazardous to humans? Maybe the best place for our pumpkin friends is the dump where they will help decompose some of the other materials around them? Who knows?!!?! Hope you had a spooktastic halloween!

No Impact Man

Thought this was kinda cool seeing as our project is all about conserving energy and trying to save the environment. We have hope!

Butterflies and Ants

On Sunday when I came home from church I spotted this little beauty from the corner of my eye on the back table. I thought "Wow that is such a pretty butterfly!" When I looked closer I had noticed that it was a very bright color and had a little part missing from it's wing. I know that butterflies are just starting to arrive in California for the winter time and I thought that this one was extremely special. Not only has it made an adaptation to life and flying, because of it's injury, it has made the long journey from the warmer, more humid regions, to sunny California for the winter time and I feel like it was all by itself. The color of my friend Betty the Butterfly was at first a surprise as I thought that being so bright would be like holding a sign that said "EAT ME" over your head, but when I thought harder, I thought that this would actually be a warning sign and a form of Müllerian Mimicry as well as Aposematic Coloration, which is basically warning coloration. This butterfly just kind of reminded me that the time of the migration was coming, as already this week I had been thinking about migration.

Speaking of migration.....Last Sunday, when my brother was going to play outside, he came across some very unexpected and unwanted visitors. ANTS. Personally, I have a mild case of Myrmecophobia, the fear of ants. Just so you can see how many there were I will put up a picture at the end of the post. Hurriedly, my mother goes to the cupboard to find we have no ant powder/spray/killer. NONE. The ants were going to have to be here to stay. We thought it would be okay, but as the rainfall increased, their number increased. Not only did they decide to migrate to my brother's bathroom, but they decided to grace me with their presence as well. Because our bathroom's are directly on top of each other, they crawled up through a space in the wall and invaded my bathroom and then my backpack (as it had a lollipop in it), then the bin in the hallway (I thought I could hide the lollipop from them!) until, finally my mother bought some ant spray and we could get in control of the crazy ants. Not only did we realize the back door needs to be sealed better, but we also found that there is a giant ant nest under the house that needs to be taken care of. Good thing the pest and insect man comes next week!

(I cannot find the photo, but I will post in the next few days!)

Nemo and the Angler Fish

Unlike most children who love animals, I love fish! So as one may guess, I love the movie "Finding Nemo"! I even have a blue beta fish named Nemo... :) Any ways... so the other day in Bio Class, we were talking about Angler Fish and Mr H says "You know, the scary, glowing fish in Finding Nemo?!" ANGLER FISH in Nemo.

Then the real thing, or as close as they can get since they live sooooo deep down!

So, some cool facts about Angler Fish. So one would presume that this feisty, scary looking thing would have to be a dude fish, but actually, male Angler Fish are only 1/10 of an inch in size. The scary creature above and all that are like that are all females. Pretty cool, ay?! Woman Power to the extreme right there! So there are tons of different species of Angler Fish and their Latin name means Log Toad Fish because they look like roots are all over them and the light thingy is like a plant glowing. They have amazing capabilities. Their stomach can expand to be twice the size of their body and they can turn their light on and off without eating for two whole months, talk about energy conservation! Yes, they are highly unattractive, but they are vicious killers. They lay on their back and open their mouth nice and wide then put their little light right in front of their mouth. The poor little fish who happens to be for lunch is attracted to the light and swims over to it, straight into Mr. Angler Fish's mouth. Trying to escape, the little fish swims with all its might, but the Angler Fish is to smart. Inside their mouths, they have their teeth pointed backwards and in so that nothing can escape and inside their throat's they have a second set of teeth making their little to no chance of escape! The glowing lure that protrudes from most species' head is usually filled with living bacteria that reacts with itself to glow. So, if you weren't already impressed by the super amazing Angler Fish, be prepared for it's mating rituals. So as males a so tiny in comparison to the females that their digestive tracts start to degenerate at one point in their life so they have two options: die or mate. Females release pheromones and then the males now that they won't be eaten by the females. They swim up to the female and bite on to her underbelly, releasing an enzyme that deteriorates their body in 3 weeks time, leaving only their testicles. They fuse their bodies together so that they become one meaning the female can fertilize her eggs at any time. Depending on their size, female Angler Fish can support up to six male bodies attached to her at one time. Pretty weird, huh?

Angler Fish live way down deep in the benthic areas of the sea and lead fascinating lives to those who live in, well, let's just say, more photic regions of the Earth!

October 4th

My Uncle David and Aunt Allison lived in a place formerly know as Inrianjaya, but now commonly referred to as West Papua on the island of New Guinea. They were missionaries with my three cousins (who were young children at the time) for a large number of years. The area they served was without a place to get clean water close by, without electricity, proper shelters, and many without substantial food. Little did the people know that my Uncle would change some of that. He had always been a very skilled carpenter and builder and made it his second mission to build these people some water pumps. Over the course of the years he installed many water pumps all over the island so that the people living there could have faster access to cleaner water. The pumps helped to filter the water from the streams and rivers for human use. He set out to building better shelters for the people that lived on the island and adding some adjustments or improvements to others. Everything my Uncle did, he did with the little money he was getting from his church back home and the money from his own pocket. People living back in Australia would send him tools and supplies, for they knew that he would be building something. My Uncle did all he could to help the community around him in such a way that we have access to each day when we turn the tap on to wash our hands or face without even worrying if one day nothing will come out.

Australia Zoo is a special zoo. Their mission is to only have animals that are injured or endangered in their zoo. They help the injured to get better before releasing them and the ones that are endangered can be put into special programs to track their progress and development when they are also released back in to the wild. This means that if you went to the zoo once a year, each time you went, new animals would be there for you to see. They work with a large group of animals ranging from the Asian Elephant, which is nearly extinct, to the common Australian Wombat. Each animal comes into their zoo for a special purpose. Their biggest specialty is their alligators and crocodiles. Many times you will find that the crocodiles that they have there are recovering from injuries or a special species that is rare or endangered. The Australia Zoo is maybe one of a kind and an amazing place to be in. They try to do the best they can that is right by nature and help those in need whether it be mammal, reptile, bug, or any other living creature. They give back whatever they can to the environment and the zoo is a must to visit! (http://www.australiazoo.com.au/conservation/projects/)

We as a class can be challenged to live well for the community in many ways. My proposal is that for two class sessions a week, instead of using the smart board and having all the lights turned on, that we as a class, re visit the past and use the old and faithful white board. As well as turning off the computer and smart board, we turn off all the lights and allow our classroom to be powered by the sun. You may think, oh this is only a tiny thing, but an extra additive that we can ensure we are trying to help, is to install energy rated light bulbs in the lights, so that even if we need to turn the lights on, we can still be headed in the right direction, to preserve our planet.

Comments about Vid's on Mr. H's Blog

After last week when we all posted videos, I watched the videos that Mr. H had put up on his as great examples. My favourite three were: 1. CRAZY Pheromone Bee Dude - Catherine, 2. Snow Geese Migration - Miles, and 3. A Wife & A Mistress - Sam.

I went onto the blog and clicked on Catherine's to begin with and was shocked, amazed and flabbergasted to see all those bees! The Crazy Bee Dude covers himself with a mix of pheromones that attract the bees, but not to sting. He is covered with 100,000 bees on average at a time. All those bees start to weigh a great deal and produce large amounts of heat from their tiny little bodies so he can't stand there long with them. All he does to get out from the bee suit is shake his body and they fly off WITHOUT stinging him. Can you say CRAZY?!?!?

I watched a few more and then came to watch the Snow Geese Migration Video and thought that it would be boring, but when I heard that the number of Geese that travel is 5 million, I was shocked! 5 million birds travel each year in the Spring from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Arctic Tundra's then back again when Winter comes just to stay alive. They travel a huge 3,000 miles over 3 months to get to each place. So really, in a year, they travel for 6 months and live in each place for only 3... Not my kind of deal!

The last I watched was the Pied Flycatcher Bird video. It started off with the cute little bird singing his song and then finding a girl and showing her the little box he chose in the forest and they fall madly in love! Then, unknown to the wife, Mr. Bird flies off to impress another lady bird and show her this other stylish box he has found and then when the mistress lays her eggs, he flies back home to his wife. He knows that now the chicks from his wife have hatched and he must be the ideal father. When the mistress' chicks hatch she must care for them all by herself because the Mr. Bird is back with his wife and isn't coming back. While one family is thriving the other is deprived and dying. Lo and behold in the end, wily Mr. Bird gets the pleasure of fathering five chicks with his wife and having two surviving from the mistress. I didn't think birds could be so mischievous and sneaky, but at the same time good and protective over one nest. You would think they would just leave all the women to fend for themselves, but no, they know how to work the system!

Just for fun!

My sister's name is Laura so this is kinda funny! Just released in Australia a few weeks ago.... Enjoy

Week 3 Blog

Migration

Courtship

Classical Conditioning

Camouflage

This week in Bio we learned about an array of things but the one that I thought was really cool was the way an organism could camouflage itself into it's environment.

The camouflage gives the organism the stealth factor as Mr. H put it! Camouflage is when something can blend into it's surroundings or make itself look like something it isn't. This helps to protect and defend the organism from predators. For example some larvae of certain moths are colored to look exactly like a bird dropping when the moths lay the eggs in the habitat. This super cool adaptation that the moth has made provides the larvae to grow without being someone else's dinner before the larvae even gets a chance to live. This moth is not

the only organism that can use camouflage to protect itself.

The Giant Stick Insect can take on the appearance of its surrounding to protect itself from being eaten. It blends right in with it's surroundings and they can be extremely difficult to spot when out on a hike which is exactly what they want to happen because if it is hard for a h

uman to spot them then their predator will have just as hard or an even harder time trying to find them.

Many other organisms can do the same thing for protection in their habitat and uses these characteristics as a defense mechanism against other predators. As the prey they fight to survive and evolve to have special characteristics that help it to survive and protect its self.

Picture of Moth from ttp://gocb.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/moth-on-mayapple-that-looks-like-bird-poop-july-11-2008/

Picture of Giant Stick Insects taken at Wildlife World, Darling Harbor Australia by Emma

Week 1 of Bio

This past week we learnt about relationships between organisms and what effect they had on each other. There were two that really stood out to me: the relationship between Follicle Mites and Humans, the Cortyceps Fungus and insects.

So, on the eyelashes of any human right now, there are Follicle Mites. These microscopic mites are attracted to the sebaceaus gland behind the eyelash, an yummy and warm environment for the mite to live. They get on you and then burrow into your eyelash follicle and make it their home. They only live for a day or so and do no harm to humans. This was an example of commensalism.

The Cortyceps Fungus was really cool! It is a fungus that has many different types, each pertaining to only one type of insects. It gets into the body of the insect and slowly kills it from the inside out, first attacking the nervous system. Insects obviously die from the relationship but the Cortyceps Fungus shoots out new heads of the plant throughout the dead insects body and use the body as a starting point as a new farm. The deadly fungus to insects actually keeps the numbers of the population down keeping it in balance with the surroundings as to not have too many of one insect, which would then throw off the scale. It is so highly deadly that even if some insect groups smell it they will be the fungi's next prey. Ants who get the fungus are first paralyzed and as soon as another worker ant sees them under the influence of the fungus they carry them far away from the colony in attempt to protect the others. Where Cortyceps Fungus benefits and the insect doesn't (and even dies) a Parasitic Relationship is occurring.

The relationships and the way these organisms use something else to keep them alive is quite fascinating to me and I can't wait to learn what we talk about this week! Until then, Happy Biology learning!

Quote of the week: "That fly is a wanna-BEE" haha

From Mr. Hillegass' whiteboard on Tues. 8th Sept