Special blog post

Progress: We went up to the School Janitor and he revealed to us about the number of trash bags which he changes daily and the answers are truly surprising.
Each day, the trashbags are being replaced in the classrooms, teachers' offices, cafeterias, football fields, restrooms and out door campus around school.Trash cans cover a wide area at school and an estimate of 75 trash bags are changed to view every day.Yes, this sounds insant and what good actions can we implement to reduce the plastic usage which is harmful to our planet?
There are some action steps we can help save the planet. First, if each smaller size trashcan is not full by the end of day, the janitor should combine the trash with others. Secondly, students should consider to use reusable containers to store food so less disposable plates or utensils are being thrown in the trashcans.Last but not least, we only found two recycle bins in the cafeteria and to our action proposal, we must add few more on campus because we drink water in bottles or soda in cans in between calsses and we tend to fill up the trashcan space withour any considration. Because of that, more space is occupied with no rebybling action being taken.

Sponges Recycle Carbon to Give Life to Coral Reefs

This Tuesday, I watched a video about recycle carbon, and it can give life to coral reefs.I didn't understand the video at first, so I looked some informations online.It's hard to think of a sponge as an animal, especially if you have a dried up non-synthetic one in your bathtub. Living sponges don't have circulatory, digestive or nervous systems, and they can often regenerate themselves from small fragments. But sponges are indeed in the kingdom Animalia and, as this report from The Company of Biologists explains, they are critical to the survival of coral reefs.Coral reefs support some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, yet they thrive in a marine desert it is fascinated by the energy budgets that support coral reefs in this impoverished environment.Sponges grow in the deep dark cavities beneath reefs, and 90% of their diet is composed of dissolved organic carbon, which is inedible for most other reef residents.Some reserchers had to find out where the carbon was going to back up his measurements. Essentially, the sponges recycle carbon that would otherwise be lost to the reef.They knew that they had seen some loose cells, and thought that they were artifacts from cutting the samples, but when they went back and looked at the samples, they realized that choanocytes were shedding all over the place. And then De Goeij remembered the tiny piles of brown material he found next to the sponges in the aquarium every morning.

sustainably grown garlic

Consumer interest in new and diverse types of garlic is on the rise. Fueled by factors including the growth of the "local foods" movement, interest in world cuisines, and widespread reports touting its numerous health benefits, demand for high-quality, locally grown garlic is increasing throughout the U.S.Hundreds of garliccultivars are available from seed companies, retailers, and germplasm collections. Increasingly, growers purchase bulbs from nonlocal sources and are often disappointed by unpredictable yields. Garlic bulbs resulting from seed stock purchased in other regions may not display the characteristicssuch as bulb size, shape, and color, they featured in the catalogs.In 2005, garlic bulbs obtained from producers in Washington were distributed to 10 garlic growers who practiced sustainable production methods with minimal or no chemical inputs. Small-scale garlic farmers were provided with planting stocks from the same original sources and were asked to grow them on their farms for two consecutive years using their best practices.

H2Os in human body

We all know that our bodies are made up 70% of water, we had mentioned this last week in class when we were learning hydrogen bond. “I'm dying of thirst!"Well. We just might. It sounds so simple. H20. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. But this element, better known as water, is the most essential, next to air, to our survival. Water truly is everywhere, still most take it for granted.Water helps nearly every part of the human body function efficiently.Most of the human body is made up of H2O, with cells consisting of 65-90% water by weight.Therefore, it isn't surprising that most of a human body's mass is oxygen. Carbon, the basic unit for organic molecules, comes in second. 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Brain is 75% water, moderate dehydration can cause headaches and dizziness. Even when you breath, it also requires water。Our health is truly dependent on the quality and quantity of the water we drink. It contributed to and even produces pain and many degenerative diseases that can be prevented and treated by increasing water intake on a regular basis. But sometime, drink too much water can also be a bad thing. Drinking too much water in a short period of time can cause a medical condition that's known as "Water Intoxication" or "Water Poisoning." This condition can be fatal. We wanna to live healthy, and drinking clean water can be a important role in it.

calories we need every day...

Last Saturday, my family went out for dinner with my dad's friends. We went to a korean BBQ restaurant, and the foods there are so good so my mom ate a little bit too much.After we got home, my mom asked me she is going to start dieting because she gained some weight in pased 3 weeks. I searched about how much calories do we need each day online to help my mom to diet.And I realized that generally a person who do house works need intake calories around 2000 to 2200.By subtracting 500 calories from your daily intake value you will lose around 1 pound per week. This is based on the fact that one pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories, and 7 days worth of 500 calories = 3500 calories. That help a lot to my mom on her way of dieting, and also she told me to find some foods that have a lot of proteins in to to make her fill full but with less calories.　I told her that eating apples are very helpful to lose weight.Because I heard that an apple is worth 50 calories and to digest it you need 75 calories, and you can eat at same time.

migrate of organisms

Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather, they move to southern part of earth to find foods, and a warmer place to live. Migration is marked by its annual seasonality, they move to south during winter and come back in spring. Every year, they need to fly a long distance for a warmer place to live. And another amazing thing about bird migration is that they use many different ways to navigate themselfs. Many birds have been shown to use a sun compass. Using the sun for direction involves the need for making compensation based on the time. The ability of birds to navigate during migrations cannot be fully explained by endogenous programming, even with the help of responses to environmental cues. The ability to successfully perform long-distance migrations can probably only be fully explained with an accounting for the cognitive ability of the birds to recognize habitats and form mental maps. But sometimes, birds can lose their way and occur outside their normal ranges, there is a term called Reverse Migration, it causesthe genetic programming of young birds fails to work properly, and lead to great rarities turning up as vagrants thousands of kilometres out of range How does bird know when is the time to migration? In a period of time before migration, birds’ body fat increase, so they know it is time to move to another place for winter, and use the fats as energy to fly.

Globle Climate Change

Last week, we talked about how to decrease the damages to our biosphere. As a result of human activities, global climate change is becoming problematic not only to humans but to all living things. It makes the ozone layer thinner and the temperature on our earth becomes warmer because the energy from sun is kept in earth by the atmosphere. What can we do about the global climate change? The decrease in producing CO2 would be a good idea; most of CO2 are produced by burning fossil. In our daily life, vehicles, factories and power stations all produce CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Such gases have shown to trap warm air in the Earth’s atmosphere. Many climate scientists believe that these gases are responsible at least in part for rising temperatures on Earth. We can help to decrease producing CO2 in our every day life, such as to walk or ride bike to school/work instead of driving. Some scientists studied about the recent wild fires in California which confirmed that large fires produce large amounts of CO2 as much as California’s motor vehicle traffic does in a year. Also, to save the energy power of electronics in the household can help us lower the temperature of our earth. It’s helpful to decrease the produce of CO2 if you have a lot of plants in your room and yard as well.

ASSIGNMENT 10-8-09

There are two successful stories of how a nation or a group of people helping to restore the ecosystem. The first one is about United Nations who is willing to contribute great amount of money to assist Kenya in restoring the Mau Forest Complex which has been drastically disappearing in acres of the forest. About 264 acres of forest is disappearing every single year due to the drought and the unfavorable use of land. The United Nations spend $81 million on that but they only could restore 988 acres of the forest so far. Let’s think about it how the Mau Forest Complex will turn out in 100 years. 1320 acres or more forest might disappear if we keep ignoring the problem. Maybe 1000 years later, there will not be a forest anymore in Kenya, and people who live there have to move to other place to live for resources. The United Nations spends that much of money on restoring the Mau Forest Complex to slow down the speed of losing forest every year.

The second article talks about The Colorado Division of Wildlife recognizing that mule deer and elk at the Uncompahgre Plateau were competing for winter food sources and the number of these wild animals are encountering the difficulty in survival due to the limited food source. The collaborative approach to restore and maintain the ecosystem health of the Uncompahgre Plateau, using best science and public input among 50 governmental agencies and more than 600 private citizens is impressive. This project embraces the region’s economic, social, cultural and ecological issues and is impacting 1.5 million acres of private, state and federal lands – 75 percent of which are public! It is pretty hard to cover that far for a protection of species; yet, it’s everyone’s responsibility to well maintain all natural sources as much as we can.

In recent article according to The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) reports a 4% increase in beach pollution violations from 2007-2008. Based on their study, 10% of water samples at California beaches last year contained more human fecal bacteria than the state allows, creating health and sanitary issues for all beachgoers.Bacteria can flow into beach water from sewage accidents such as the spill that forcedclosures in beaches but also through stormwater flowing through urban areas. The "urban runoff" pick ups animal waste, fertilizer, motor oil and other contaminants that are dumped into the ocean through our untreated waterways. These high bacteria levels lead to sickness and beach closures at some of the most popular tourist destinations in Southern California.What approaches and actions can we do to minimize the increase of harmful waste from polluting the nature which the earth offers? I propose that as a class we presenting MHS, we can start with beach cleaning in beaches in Southern California. We can go to beach as a class on holidays or weekends, to pick up trashes on the beach, and after we finish our job, we can enjoy the rest of the day at beach. It helps the water we use every day cleaner a little bit.

commons on videos

The first video is pretty cool, i just realized that a bee's sting can hurt people that much.And the ants one is kinda special to me, I only know that ants uses their antenna to socialize with others before I watch this video, the way they work together is so cool! I was amazed by the bee dude, how can he let that much bees stay on him without wearing any thing to protect himself!Normal people could be killed if they sting by that much of bees! The snow geese one is amazing too! They travel that far every winter and come back at spring! It's a hard work! And some of them could be lost on the way to the south or back.The cuttlefish courtship video is nice, the male cuttlefish showed his resbonsibility of his baby. We watched a similar video about bird's courtship during class last week. It's cool, every birds have their own special way to let the female notice he,especially the last example in the video.The last video, which is the other video about migration, it is interest that after the baby wildebeest born 2 days!

3 videos

Migration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYM6LqDJLiM

Classical Conditioning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEDJF5u3inY

Dominance Hierarchies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg1RPCfcGZs

PREY DEFENSES

Last week, the class covered organisms' ways to protect themselves which was about prey defenses. A lot of preys have their own way to protect themselves from eaten by other organisms as known as the predators.
There are a lot interesting examples on our Earth. Some animals use protect color to trick their predators, such as hare live under danger, their hairs' color turned to khaki which is the color in forest during autumn. Of course, some chameleon species are able to change their skin colors. Different chameleon species are able to change different colors which can include pink, blue, red, orange, green, black, brown, yellow and turquoise. The most common example of self-defense is turtle. It ducks inside it's shell and stays till the danger is gone. Some turtles also squirt out a foul-smelling fluid to deter a predator. That perfectly saves their life for many times! Geckos, are also good at protecting themselves, when they are in danger, or caught by their natural enemy or human, they would cut their tails immediately so they have chance to run away. Yesterday during dinner, I heard that holothuroidea protect themselves by expelling their sticky covariant tubules to entangle predators; and by secreting a poisonous soap-like substance called holothurin into the surrounding water. That is a lot different from other animals. The animals live in desert, their skin and hairs always turn into the color of desert to have a safer life.

The Coexistence of Different Organisms on Earth

In the past week, the class covered the topic on cells which are important for everything that all living things have. Humans and animals are made of cells. All plants or even bread are made of cells.
What I found fascinating is that one thing about cells that is important to remember is that every person in the world began life as one single cell that grew and divided many times to make the trillions of cells in our bodies. In this way and in many other ways, we are all alike. When we run and play, our movements are caused by muscle cells and nerve cells working together. When we speak, get an idea or decide what to say to somebody, brain cells are working. When we digest our food, cells in our mouth, stomach, and intestines are doing their jobs. Our beating heart, breathing, eyesight, hearing, feeling and even sleeping all require cells.
One interesting fact I learned about cell is that our blood contains more than one dozen different kinds of cells. Some blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body, some form blot clots when we get cut, and others protect us from infections and diseases.Not all cells are beneficial to our body. Some cells living in our bodies can be deadly as well. Cancer cells can out-produce itself and destroy our organs as our immune system weakens or as people begin to age.
The beauty of life begins with the forming of cells. I am eager to learn so many more about biology in order to understand the essence of life.