Unit 8 Reflection

In this Unit, we learned about evolution, and different factors that go with evolution or effect evolution. Charles Darwin, the one who first discovered the theory of evolution, taught us many things on how evolution really works. For an example, we learned about artificial selection which is when humans select traits and breed for them, this lets humans breed for the traits that are more useful to them, and the population evolves like the human wants it to. We learned about natural selection which is when the population weeds out traits that doesn't help it survive, evolution is caused by natural selection. A way to measure evolution is through measuring the allele frequency in a population. The allele frequency in a population can change as the individuals of the population produce offspring; as the allele frequency changes, the population evolves. Next we learned about speciation, which is the rise of 2 or more species from one existing species, this can happen because of the separation of a population which can create new traits and eventually a new species. We also learned about how life came about to the Earth so many years ago. Life started as very simple cells, then evolved into more complex cells until finally it formed  small plants and animals. In a broad scale of time, life has evolved very rapidly on Earth both biotically and abiotically. Finally we learned why evolution really is something that takes place, and what evidence there is to support the theory of evolution. Embryology is something that supports the theory of evolution. It shows that many species have similar stages of embryo development, which suggests common ancestry. 

This Unit was very intriguing, and I learned a lot. Although we have learned about evolution before, I feel like this Unit went much more in depth and I have a much greater understanding. I definitely want to go more in depth in certain aspects such as, the reasons to support evolution. I found it very interesting that species have many things in common including the stages their embryos go through. This Unit was also very fun in that we did some very interesting labs. One lab that I really enjoyed was the Hunger Games Lab. The Hunger Games Lab mimicked what survival would be like in the wild, from fighting for our food, to trying to find a mate. This lab helped me visualize evolution and how it really takes place in nature.


In this Unit we watched a video on how to be assertive. It talked about having good posture and good leadership skills, in order to be more respected wherever you are. I have tried to apply some of these to my daily life by trying to keep good posture, and making direct eye contact with whomever I am speaking to. However I can still work on speaking more assertively, so my voice and opinion is heard and taken seriously wherever I go.

Link to Hunger Games Lab

Hunger Games Lab Analysis

1. In this lab we were all assigned a species of bird, either a stumpy, knuckler, or a pincher. Stumpies were at a disadvantage because they picked up their food with their wrists, knucklers with there knuckles, and pincher with their thumb and index fingers. Once we has been assigned a species, we waited until the food was put out by our teacher, and then we gathered as much as we could to survive. This simulated how species have to survive in the wild, with a limited food source and lots of competition to survive and reproduce.

2. The phenotype that was the best at capturing food was the pinchers. This  was because they only had to grab between their two fingers and not something drastic or hard such as grabbing between wrists like a stumpy. Pinching is a normal human, easy, and basic human movement and the rest were not.

3. The population evolved so that the recessive allele ended with the most members in it. I know this by looking at my data. In the very start of the experiment, the polulation was closed to balance with the A allele frequency being .52 and the a allele frequency being .48. By the end of the experiment, the A allele frequency was at a mere .27 and the a allele frequency was at .73.

4. In this lab, one of the things that was not random was the mating. People mated with others that they thought would give them better offspring, for an example a pincher would most likely always mate with a pincher. Something that was random in this experiment was the food placement. The food was placed in random places by our teacher, so that we had no idea where it was. If the food happened to be near you, you were lucky and if it wasn't you were out of luck and not guaranteed to survive through that round.

5. If the food had been smaller, I think it would have made it even harder for the stumpies to survive, because it would have been very hard to grab such a small object with your wrist. However if the objects were larger, it would have made it harder for the knucklers because large objects are harder to fit in between your knuckles, as it is not a large space. Since the pinchers are such an adaptable species I don't think having larger or smaller food would have affected them that much, because you can grab almost anything with your fingers.

6. If there was not incomplete dominance, the results may have been different. This is because the knucklers would not be in the population and so there would be less competition overall. There would just be competition between the stumpies and the pinchers.

7. Natural selection selects certain genes that are advantageous for survival, which leads to evolution. This is because as they pick the traits that are better suited to survive, the other traits are weeded out, and the population starts to evolve such that the population now looks like the survivors.

8. Some strategies that individuals adopted to survive were laying on top of the food to claim it, and then taking it all for themselves. This ensured that they got a good amount of food, because no one else could touch the food that they were laying on top of. This would effect the allele frequency, because the frequency of the individuals species with better strategies would go up. This relates to nature because in nature animals adopt certain traits that can help them survive and reproduce such as camouflage.

9. In evolution the species with the stronger traits for survival evolves. Natural selection acts on the phenotype because nature doesn't know your genotype, but it does know your phenotype. So the species that are better suited for survival will continue to reproduce; survival of the fittest.

10. I think this lab was very beneficial to my understanding of this topic, and I do not have any further questions remaining.

Placebo Effect Research

Over the past two weeks, I have done a lot more research and read into studies that have already happened testing the placebo effect. I am beginning to get a better sense of how exactly I will conduct my experiment, and what to expect. Some placebo effect studies tested on whether taking a placebo pill that is said to improve grades actually tricked the persons mind into thinking that it did, to studies that tested whether the placebo effect could improve medical conditions. I have learned that this effect can't be used for something big like cancer, but could very well work on smaller things like chronic headaches.

Some setbacks I have had is getting people to join my experiment. Because I can not tell people that the product they will be receiving is placebo (has nothing in it), it makes it a little tricky to find people who are totally willing to participate in your experiment. I have found two people but I hope to find more by talking to more people about my project. The next steps in my project are to find more people to participate in my experiment, and start conducting it. I have learned that science can be really fascinating, and some of the experiments I have been reading up on are very intriguing. I know that even if my experiment does not turn out the way I hope it does, I have come out of this with a good experience and lots of new knowledge. 

Unit 7 Reflection

In this Unit we focused on Ecology. Specifically, we learned about food chains and food webs, populations in an ecosystem, the overall health of our ecosystem, and ways we can improve the health of our environment. Food chains have 5 trophic levels : At the very top is quaternary consumer, then tertiary consumer, then secondary consumer, then primary consumer, and lastly the primary producer. Although food chains are great, food webs are more accurate because they show the animals eating more than one thing which is usually what happens. As we go up the trophic levels, only 10% of the energy is passed on to the next level. This means that there is a less amount of animals at the very top of the trophic levels, and much more in the bottom (producers). Next we learned about populations, and things like carrying capacity. Then we learned about how our environment is in need of help, and we enforced this idea by watching documentaries like Bag-it and Story of Stuff. We learned that if we ever want a world for the future generations, we need to start taking care of our planet now.

Another thing we did this Unit is the Conservation Biology Project. In this project we picked the Belize Barrier Reef, and did some research on it. We found that a lot of the reef was getting destroyed by pollution and bleaching. Together as a team we put together a slide show and made a video on what exactly was going on with the reef and how we could put a stop to it. Our team did a good job of collaborating, and everyone contributed in every way they could. Each person was assigned a portion of the work, and everybody did their fair share. At times, we would lose focus on our task and stray into fun and conversation, but I think our team did an excellent job with collaboration and working hard.

I learned a lot from this Unit. But some of the facts on how much we were polluting our planet were so astounding. I think we can all learn a lesson from this, and make a conscious effort to recycle more, and reuse more. Our ecosystem is precious and needs to be preserved. This unit was definitely eye opening, and I hope we can continue to learn more about this later on in the year. 

Story of Stuff Notes

Materials Economy - Not a good system because its a linear system on a finite planet, can't run indefinitely. And its reacting with society, cultures, people, etc.

First step in the system is Extraction:
Extraction trashes the planet because we are running out of natural resources. 

Next is Production:
This is where we use energy to mix toxic chemicals with the resources. Many of these chemicals mix with our environment and people and harms them. A lot of this toxic is in products but a lot more toxic is in pollution. 

Distribution:
Sell these products at stores. We don't pay for the real price of things, instead child laborers pay with their future, and the environment pays by it getting destroyed. 

- planned obsolescense means "planned for the dumps" meaning products are made so they can be thrown away such as paper cups, new versions of electronics, etc.

- perceived obsolescence means making us buy new things so we have the latest designs and so we have the "latest designs" 

- National happiness has gone down since the huge consumer boom, and half of the stuff we buy gets trashed

Disposal:
Majority of the products we buy gets trashed. Some of this gets incinerated or dumped into the landfill. Both wastes an enormous amount of energy. Incineration creates super toxins which is even worse than just plain pollution. Recycling helps but is not the solution.

Solutions:
- We can still transform this system into something that works much better
- Renewable Resources

20 Time Project...Does the placebo effect really work?

This is an introduction to a new project I am working on for 20 time in my biology class. 20 time is a certain amount of time given in class to students, so they can explore topics and  experiment with things they are interested in.

For my 20 time project the essential question I have asked is whether the placebo effect really works. The reason I chose this as my project is because I have read about this effect in multiple books and I have always wondered whether it really works.

My goals at the end of this is to become more knowledgeable and to figure out if the placebo effect does actually work. I will measure this experiment by assembling a group of people who are willing to participate in this project and giving them a pill with nothing in it, and telling them it will help them be less groggy in the morning. If by the end of the experiment they tell me that this pill has helped them and they are much less groggy in the morning, we know that the experiment worked. My plan moving forward is to do more research into the the effect, and then hopefully start testing!

Unit 6 Reflection

In this Unit we learned about, Biology and its applications in the real word. We learned about the many fields biotech is used such as agriculture, engineering, and medicine, and their applications in the fields such as genetically engineering food or GMOs. Then we learned about processes and things done in biotech such as gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing. Gel Electrophoresis is when electricity is used to separate  DNA fragments based on size. We did a lab on this, where we did the electrophoresis and saw how the tiny gene particles moved farther or closer together and clumped together based on their size. We also learned the applications of phoresis which is studying proteins and genetic fingerprinting. The next thing we learned about was recombinant DNA which was kind of an overlap with what we had learned in the previous semester, the central dogma of biology. Recombinant DNA is the inserting of DNA of one organism into the DNA of another organism or in other words genetic engineering. The final thing we touched on was bioethics and what it means. Bioethics is the study of decision making as it applies to moral decisions that have to be made because of advances in biology. Some examples of bioethical questions that are faced is should drug companies be allowed to patent genes? or Should we genetically modify embryos?

Some of my weaknesses in this Unit were understanding certain concepts like pGLO, and getting a good grasp on the different types of bioengineering and biotech because I didn't realize biology could be applied to so many fields. Some of my strengths were bioethics because I do a good job of keeping up with the news, so I knew about the problems biotechnology was coming across and  the many bioethical questions that were being posed. However for the concepts I didn't fully grasp, the labs did a good job of enforcing the concepts. In this Unit we did the pGLO lab and the candy gel electrophoresis lab.

I want to go more in depth with biotech because I find some of the things we can do with such advanced tech in biology extremely fascinating. Especially things like altering genes to make a totally customized human or animal, or even cloning living things. Some of the articles that we read in class were extremely fascinating as well. I think I did a good job of fulfilling my new years goal that I set for myself.* My goal was to never skip vodcasts and listen to the full thing without skimming to better understand the concepts, and I definitely did that. My second goal was to not procrastinate and get my assignments done on time, and this Unit I have been doing a good job of that, I think overall I have learned a lot about Biology and its applications in the real world and have improved as a student.

*http://iisiyonaii.blogspot.com/2017/01/smart-goals.html