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.