Unit 10 Reflection

This unit was about the anatomy and physiology of the human body and how the different components work together to maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis is the process of maintaining the bodies internal conditions and making sure everything is stable within it. The different systems are the circulatory, respiratory, nervous, endocrine, digestive, immune, and lymphatic. The circulatory and respiratory system work together to supply oxygen to the body through a system of arteries and veins which supply oxygen rich blood. Once the oxygen diffuses into the cells, oxygen is replenished through the lungs and supplied to the the body once again. The nervous system and endocrine system use electrical impulses and hormones respectively to communicate throughout the body. The nervous system is faster, while the endocrine system is longer but has a more lasting change. The immune and lymphatic system fight against pathogens and destroy waste within the body through the use of white blood cells and muscles. Some things I wanted to learn about more were how the lymphatic and immune systems are connected and what exactly a inflammatory response is, since I did not truely understand that.

Posts from this units:

• Pig Dissection Relate and Review
• 20 Time Final Post
• 20 Time Individual Reflection

     Since the beginning of the year I have not only grown as a scientist, but also as a person. I have learned to cooperate with others through our many projects and tested my limits by accomplishing different tasks and gaining valuable experiences. I am proud of my blog and the work I have put into it. At the beginning of the year I was skeptical about the idea of blogging, but running this bio blog has not only made science more interactive, but also made it more interesting. 

Pig Dissection Relate and Review

     In this lab we dissected a pig and discovered its different body parts and how they correlate to each other. This dissection tied together all of our previous topics within this unit because we were able to see where everything is and how the blood and different molecules move throughout the body. The video itself tested our skills and knowledge since we not only had to recognize the different parts but also point out their function and how it works within the body. It related back to previous years of biology where we did dissections. but also within this unit where we learned the knowledge behind the dissection. 

Pig Dissection Video:

Final 20 Time Post

Here is the data we collected from our project which helped us reach our conclusion. The conclusion we reached is that impaired senses can in fact improve you memorization and concentration. Below is our ted talk on the matter and links to other blog post pertaining to this matter.

Our TED talk went as anticipated due to our preparation and hard work on this project. Our fluency and passion were well articulated due to our knowledge on the topic and our previous public speaking experience in speech and debate. If I was to do anything differently I would have timed myself up there and I would have properly changed the slides to our content changes. The timing was important since we spoke faster due to our nerves and thus forget critical information and fell slightly under time. If we had timed ourselves it would have forced us to stretch our content and speak slower. I would keep our grade since it gave points in the areas which we deserved and took of points due to our incorrect picture citations. It was a really fun experience though it felt a little rushed due to the time constraints it really helped my presentation skills and public speaking. 

Links:

• http://bio20timenevinronit.blogspot.com/
• http://nevinsbioblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/20-time-individual-reflection.html

20 Time Individual Reflection

During my 20 time project experience, I challenged myself in many ways. My group had a very hard time choosing topic since the majority of our ideas were either to large to accomplish with our resources and current knowledge or were very simplistic and un-impactful. Our main challenge was to tailor our project in a way that could have an impact on people and that can be used by others for their own benefit, and we sought to accomplish this through our project itself. Our goal was to come to a definite conclusion in our project and to hopefully discover an idea that would help others. In the process I also created the goal of self improvement since I had to learn to compromise and work with my partner to achieve a unified goal. Our plan to achieve this goal was through multiple experiments that would test a base question that we had and to see the applications of this research in real life.
The question for out project was "Can impairing different senses enable students to retain information better?" We tested this question through multiple experiments in which we deprive the sense of one patient and leave the other untouched. We would then have them memorize a piece weather through hearing or sight, and recorded which patient had the better results. We found that in the case of hearing and sight, depriving one of their senses did in fact allow them to memorize information more efficiently and increase concentration. However, we had to run our experiment multiple times in order to come to a definite conclusion, and in doing so ran into the problem of finding willing test subjects. Luckily, we found members in our class who were willing to participate, and their results corroborated our conclusion. We learned that sensory deprivation can improve concentration and memorization not only through our tests, but also the research we did on brain plasticity and other information of interest. 
If I had a chance to do this project again, I would try to collaborate with professionals within our field of research so as to gain more insight into our question and use different tools to see weather parts of the brain had actually plasticized or weather the results were the result of different outside factors. In the future we hope to share our experiment and results with others and if given the opportunity do more research into our challenge and further our goal.

Unit 9 Reflection

     This unit was about organisms and how they are classified into evolutionary relationships. Organisms are classified based on their similarities and are named through the study of taxonomy. The largest taxonomic level is the domain, which consist of eukarya, archaea, and bacteria. Archaea live in the most extreme of environments and look very similar to bacteria, but are genetically unique.  The kningdoms under Eukarya are the Animals, fungi, protista, and plantae. Their are many phylums under the kingdoms within eukarya, but they all fall under invertebrates or chordates. This refers to weather an organism has a backbone or not. We also learned about transitional organisms through the documentary our "Inner Fish". Transitional organisms such as Tiktaalik and Archeopteryx show how we have evolved over time and the evolutionary changes that have stayed with in our most recent days. All organisms can be shown to connect in a phylogenetic tree, which shows our evolution over time and the different nodes at which we interconnect.

Link

Link

   One of the major projects done in the unit was the What on Earth Evolved project, I did my project on the yeast, and it helped me learn a lot about not just organism interdependence, but also to make a presentation and publicly speak. I had to research information about my organism but had not guidelines as to the critical information or how to present it, so this project forced to become independent and judge for myself what is important and what is not. Having created presentation in previous classes, I knew that it was important to only place the critical content on the board and to speak the rest of it since the audience will lose interest otherwise and will be waiting for the next slide. Using this tactic also forced me to memorize my content and truly understand my organism instead of reading of the slides and being an un-engaging speaker. This experience will help me in my TED talk since I will mainly be speaking and there will be few supplementary slides for the audience. It will teach me to be engaging and to understand my content rather than read from slides.

Blog Posts From This Unit:

• Blue Ringed Octopus Relate and Review
• Inner Fish Reflection

Your Inner Fish Reflection

     For the past week we have watched the documentary "Your Inner Fish" starring Neil Shubin and it went over our inner fish and reptile and how many of our characteristics evolved from them and the physical characteristics which we adapted to own. This series not only taught me about the evolution of man kind but provided insight into my own biology and how fit into the grand scheme of earths history.

Link

     One of the questions asked was "What are some of the forms the descendants of Tiktaalik evolved in their limbs?" This question surprised me because it showed how similar we were to early amphibians and the how their was a transitional fish that filled the evolutionary gaps. Some of the different forms include amphibians, claws of reptiles, arms of primates, and the human hand. This showed how all animals originate from some form of a common ancestor and how only the most vital of adaptations have survived evolution.

Link

     Another question that interested me was "What is significant about the master gene EDA?" Master gene EDA is the gene that controls all of our skin organs such as teeth, hair and feathers. It helped to connect all animals as this gene is present in all species and develops some of our most defining characteristics. It connects to our unit about genes since it shows the regulation of genes and traits, but also about how this gene has survived natural selection and evolution to allow us human beings to evolve.

Blue-Ringed Octopus Relate and Review

The blue-ringed octopus is a mollusk with venom powerful enough to kill humans. They are a apart of the kingdom Animalia, phylum Mollesca, class Cephalopodo, order Octopodo, family Octopodidae, subfamily Octopodinae, and genus Hapalochlaena. The characteristics of mollusks include a complete digestive track, shells, and fully developed organs. The blue-ringed octopus has all the characteristics, and is able to mate through a mating ritual that includes a packet of sperm being forced into a female of the species. The behavior of the blue-ringed octopus is unlike that of regular mollusks, as it can use chromatophore cells to camouflage itself and feed on other sea dwellers. Its diet include other mollusks such as crab or shrimp, and it uses its horny beak to break through the exoskeleton of these species. When in danger, the octopus will turn yellow with blue rings on it as a warning towards danger. This organism relates to our vodcast "Invertebrates 1" since it is a type of invertebrate and fits under a specific phylum. This organism shares all the characteristics of this phylum and has grown more advanced with an advanced warning system and a way of protecting itself from harm.

Picture

Reference:

Wikipedia

The Cephalopod Page