Friday, March 9, 2012

Paper Tasting project

In this project, we got little pieces of paper that you taste and see if you taste anything. When i tried it it tasted really bitter and really gross. It's kind of a hard thing to explain? But i have to go home and the relatives that are living her close to me, have them taste it and then come back to school and fill out my pedigree chart on whether they tasted it or not. It's kind of a cool little experiment to see who all can taste it and who can't.
     I went to my family with these little paper tasting test strips to see who could taste them and there weren't many of us who could. Only me, my mom, and my sister could taste the weird taste on the paper.  When my sister tasted it she took it out of her mouth right away and said whatever it was that she tasted was gross. My brother it on his tongue and asked what it was that he was supposed to be tasting because he tasted nothing. My mom was in the shower at the time and i needed to go so i had her stick her tongue out and taste it. She definitely tasted it because she started gagging and asked me what it was. My grandma from my moms side taste nothing too. My grandma and grandpa from my dads side(not blood related)  tasted nothing also. So i guess not everyone tastes things the same as other people.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Genetics

      I really liked that we went over this stuff, because i like learning about genetics and things like that. It interests me, because those things really happen when you have a kid. It's really neat to think about what your child will look like when they are born depending on your looks, and when you meet the partner you want to be the other parent to your kid and what they look like. Doing all the activities we did like we did with the whole making the baby thing was pretty fun. To see what dominant and recessive traits your kid would get from you. DNA is the most important thing when it come to genetics, reproduction and all of the other things like that. Working on what we are now is also interesting, like learning what all of the pedigree charts mean is really cool. It's weird that one person in your family can have one trait and the other  person doesn't. Genetics has so much to do with everything. You can figure out how your offspring will be, and you can also see if you will be affected or if you may become a carrier of a certain disease.



This is a paper that we did to help us understand the concept of genetics. It was a pretty good way to teach us and for us to learn the way it works. 

Reproduction

Going over the whole period of time that we went over reproduction, i learned A LOT that i defiantly didn't know before. Reproduction is the biological process in which new life are produced from their parents. Reproduction is a feature known of all life with both animals and humans. The two main types of reproduction methods are grouped into two different types. Asexual and Sexual. Asexual reproduction is the process by which an organism makes a genetically very similar, or identical copy of itself without any genetic material from another person. Sexual reproduction is the biological progress in which organisms make descendants that have a combination of genetic material from two different members of the same species. Most animals and plants reproduce sexually. By reproducing sexually, you have different sets of genes for every trait, better known as an allele. Offspring get one allele for each trait from each one of the parents, which makes sure that the offspring will have a combination of the parents genes. A diploid is having two copies of every gene within one organism.
      In class we watched a movie type thing showing us a couple and their process of having a baby. It was very informing to me and i thought it was really cool i got to learn about the things i did. It usually happens to every single one of us, so it's nice to learn all these things so you can know what's happening when i does happen to you. Child birth can be a very rough thing to go through, but hearing from other people, it is also one of the most amazing things that an happen to you. Genetics have a lot to do with child birth too, because when the the sperm and egg get together and make the baby, the baby 23 of them moms and 23 of the dads chromosomes which makes up the DNA of the baby. It's actually kind of hard remembering the video and explaining it but i did learn a lot from it. 

Monday, March 5, 2012

In sickness and in health

In Sickness and in Health

Greg and Olga's Pedigree


1. No, they do not.
2. No, just because his mom has two siblings that have it doesn't mean he will.
3. No
4. 50% chance
5. 0% chance
___________________________________________________________________
1. Not everyone can get it, it shows up less.
2.Consanguineous means being from the same kinship as another person. Being descended from the same ancestor as another person. It is pretty much a complicated word for incest.
3. Autosomal gives men and women the equal chance of getting something, but through out the pedigree, no women have factor VIII. It's all men.
____________________________________________________________________
1. The gene that determines what sex a person will become.
2. Because he x chromosome has to come from the mom. They get the y from the dad.
3. She has to have Two copies.
4. (on pedigree)
5. There is a 25% chance that she can be a carrier. There is a 50% chance that she could pass it to her offspring. The males may be affected differently because only males in both families. Not really any women.
6. There is a 0% chance. He doesn't carry it, and he cannot pass it on to his children.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Onion root mitosis

Doing this onion mitosis lab, it was pretty interesting to see all the things that we saw. Actually seeing the different phases such as Interphase, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, and Telophase was really cool. Looking at the pictures on the edmodo site compared to the actual thing was a big difference, but it was also a bug help to help recognize the cells.
   Mitosis plays a pretty big part in the onion root tips that we were looking at. Mitosis is the thing that lets the nuclei of dells to and provide the daughter cells with a full set of chromosomes during cellular division.When a cell is at rest, it is in the phase called interphase. 



InterphaseProphaseMetaphaseAnaphaseTelophase
number of cells201032136
percent of cells55.527.808.305.502.7100%



Doing this table, the only things that were filled out were the totals on the right hand side, and the headings on the top and side. After getting help from the teacher with the table, the bottom row the total i came out with was 99.8% so i was very close to the 100% total that it was supposed to be. 
    We then looked at onion roots underneath the microscope ourselves and we had to make a table just like the one above from the things that we had observed from underneath the microscope. In the pie chart, it is a little easier to understand the different amounts found. 



InterphaseProphaseMetaphaseAnaphaseTelophase
number of cells61914645648
percent of cells.96.02.009.006.0081.003




Observing underneath the microscope we found that there were a lot of interphase cells in that root. There weren't many of the others, and on top of that, they were hard to see. Being honest, all of this mitosis stuff confuses me, and it was a little hard for me to learn, but i guess i took some of it in and learned a little. In this pie chart, you can see that the thing that took up pretty much everything was the Interphase. It was a really big part go the cells we found underneath the microscope. 

Friday, February 3, 2012

cancer

     Melanoma is the most severe, dangerous type of skin cancer, and it is the number one cause of death from skin disease. Changes in cells called melanocytes that make a skin pigment called melanin. Melanin is in charge of your skin and hair color. It can show up on your skin, or it may start as a mole or another region of your skin that has changed in the way it looks. Some birth marks eventually turning into melanomas. The four different types of melanoma are:

  1. Superficial spreading melanoma, which is the most common type, usually being flat and different in shape and color. It is usually more in light skinned people.
  2. Nodular melanoma, which mostly starts as a raised area that is dark, usually a black, blue, or reddish color. But sometimes they don't have any color at all.
  3. Lentigo maligna melanoma, which is most common with elders. It is mostly common in skin damaged by the sun on the face, neck, and arms. Most of the time these areas are flat, large, and tan with areas of brown.
  4. Acral lentiginous, which is the least common form. You usually see it form on palms, soles, or under the nails.
Melanoma is not as common as most of all of the other skin cancers but it is increasing by a lot. The risk of getting this cancer gets higher as you get older, but it is more commonly seen in younger people. Developing melanoma is more likely to develop if you: have blue or green eyes, red or blond hair, and fair skin. Live in high altitudes or a place with a sunny climate, have spent a lot if time in the sun because of jobs or other things, have had more than one blistering sunburns as a child, or use tanning devices regularly. Some other risk factors are: having close relatives with a history of melanoma, coming in contact with cancer- causing chemicals like arsenic, coal, tar, and creosote. Certain types of moles or multiple mirth marks, or a weakened immune system because disease or medication.
     Cancerous cells can spread to any part of the body at various rates, depending on how serious the melanoma is. The cells multiply by dividing and going into healthy cells. Melanoma begins as a topical skin cancer, but can turn into cancer that goes deep into the skin, lymph nodes, blood, brain, lungs, bones or the entire body. In addition, melanoma can also spread through blood and lymphatic fluids to other areas in your body. This may cause cancerous tumors to form.

-Here is a photo of melanoma cells in the body.

    Wednesday, December 21, 2011

    Photosynthesis dry lab

    In this lab we didn't actually do it, we just did a write up. Doing this you realize that it's pretty had to to a lab without actually doing it. In this lab the facts were:

    • Carbon dioxide in water produces carbonic acid
    • BTB is a blue green liquid which changes to a yellow color in acid and back to blue green when returned to a neutral pH.
    • Carbon dioxide and water yields star and oxygen when chlorophyll and sunlight are present
    • animals respire
    • Green plants photosynthesize in the light and respire all the time. 
    • Sugar and oxygen yields carbon dioxide and water and energy.
    • Elodea is in the kingdom planate and is a producer.



         Interpreting the observations, i got that

    1. water + BTB----> neutral pH-----> blue green. This means that if you have water plus BTB, it is a neutral pH, which keeps you at a blue green color.
    2. Fish----> respire -----> sugar + O2 + CO2 + H2O----> CO2 in H2O----> acid----> yellow. This means that the fish respires and gives off sugar and oxygen, carbon dioxide and water. The carbon dioxide and water all make an acid which makes the color yellow.
    3. In this one lodes is in kingdom planate and is a producer. Green plants photosynthesize in light and respire all the time. Which makes carbon dioxide and water yield and sugar and oxygen wen chlorophyll and sunlight are present.  BTB is blue green liquid which changes to a yellow color in acid and back to blue green when neutral.  So it is blue green in light and yellow when left in the dark for 3 hours. 
    4. Elodea is pale blue green in light and yellow when left in the dark for 3 hours. The animal is doing desperation, giving off carbon dioxide and giving off BTB acid making it yellow. The plant does something different though. The plant picks up the carbon dioxide and stays blue green, not making any acid.