Green Plastics

ChemMatters - Episode 2: Plastics Go Green from ACS Pressroom on Vimeo.
How are these plastics being developed?
Scientists are looking for the "monomers" that are needed to make plastic in different areas where they naturally occur, like sugar cane, or corn. Then, though different chemical processes that I don't understand, the monomers are turned into plastic.
What makes these plastics "green?"
In normal plastics, the monomers that are used to make the plastics are taken from crude oil, which is oil that is pumped from the ground and is used in many ways, like as fuel for cars, boats and planes. However, the Earth's supply of crude oil is running out. These plastics are green because they are made from alternative sources, which are not running out.
What are some issues with plastics that were mentioned?
Both conventional and green plastics have their downsides. Conventional plastics are made from crude oil, which is a dwindling resource. It also requires power to process and turn into plastic in a factory, which often comes from some form of crude oil. Transporting the plastic also takes power. Usually the transportation is done by trucks, which require fuel to run, and they pollute the environment. Green plastics also need to be processed in a factory, which requires power to do. Like before, the power often comes from crude oil. Also the plastics are usually made from corn, which needs to be grown and transported. Some analysts say that too much land is being devoted to farming from non-humans, and not enough for human consumption. If they are right, there might be food crises without proper arrangement of our farm resources. 
How might these green plastics change packaging practices?
Green plastics are often viewed as "eco friendly" and "good for the environment," which might boost sales of products who make their packaging out of green plastics. When companies see that green plastic could make their product more popular, they will switch to green plastics. Also if a company switches to green plastics, they might reevaluate their packaging design and minimize it so the product has less packaging.

Ultimate Survival Reflection

Reflect on what has helped you in understanding the "big idea" of the unit. 
(Big Idea:  Students will understand the use and management of natural resources, the transformation of resources into human capital, goods, tools and machines as well as sustainable development of human society to maintain the delicate balance between man and the natural environment.)
I think watching the 2 and 1/4 movies really helped me understand the "big idea", because they give real-world examples and explain them in depth. Also the project about packaging was helpful because you could go into more detail about a specific product than even a movie could.




Reflect on the unit question (What is a necessity and how does an organism ensure survival of its species within its environment?) and how it relates to the unit title:  Ultimate Survival. 


All of the necessities and the ways an organism survives are part of its survival. Our unit title could be rephrased as "Highest in degree or order necessities and ways an organism survives", with yellow meaning Ultimate and blue meaning survival.  
How did the unit question allow us to view survival through The Area of Interaction: Environments:(FOR EXAMPLE:  The effects of one environment on another, the roles our environments play in the lives and well-being of humankind, and the effects of our actions, attitudes and constructs, such as sustainable development and conservation.) 
Rather than just studying biology or adaptations to an environment, we also studied how organisms, and other things interact, as well as the human effect on the environment. Our unit question was very broad, and we could have studied whether Darwin's theory is correct or not while still remaining directly within our unit question. However, we interpreted it in two different ways throughout the unit. First we started out the unit by studying our question in a strictly ecological sense, with things like symbiosis. Later, we studied the human impact on the environment is still within our question because we were studying how humans adapt to our environment and how humans adapt their environment to them. We also studied the impacts of our actions, and for a while we were a little off topic.


What would you have liked to do more of?  Less of?  
I think that we watched a good amount of movies. I wouldn't add any more or take away any. We did a seriously excessive amount of reflecting. I personally hate writing reflections, but I can tolerate a few. However, I don't think it was really necessary to write a reflection after every movie or youtube clip we watched. Although I liked the real world learning in the movies and the packaging project, I think that it would have been great to get out of the classroom, perhaps for a real world, concrete example, like visiting a river in Serbia and discussing the pollution.
In your point of view, how well did we investigate the unit question, concept, and area of interaction?  Include this in your reflection as well and give specific examples to support your opinions.  
We started out investigating the unit question really well, but later on we sort of veer off-track and investigated other things. I would loved to have stayed on the track of our original investigations a little longer, and then moved on. However, I think that as a whole we addressed the unite question well a few different ways. (e.g. looking at it from an ecological and scientific point of view, and then from an environmental point of view.
Before you write your response, go towww.bubbl.us.com and complete a web of all the related concepts and knowledge you gained throughout this unit and paste a jpg image to your blog post.  Then, respond to the above writing prompts using various words from your web. 
I am not good with mind maps, but if you really want to see mine, here it is:

Here were my original questions that I started the unit with. I don't think that they were very good questions. When I am asked to write questions like these, I always think of questions with extremely specific answers that don't really help me understand my topic and that I would never learn.
I did some research on these a while ago. I don't really remember what the answers were, but I did put them on a poster so they are somewhere.
I tried to answer them if I could.
Things I want to know about biology:

• How long have humans been on the top of the food chain?
• This I am answering mostly from knowledge I gained in humanities. Humans were only top of the food chains when they developed very advanced tools and were evolved almost to the way were are now. I think that by 40,000 years ago we were top of the food chain, but we could have been before that. I don't know for sure.
• Who's second on the food chain?
• Would a human be harmed if you took a random 1000 cells out of his body?
• No, humans lose many more cells than that each day so 1000 cells woudn't harm the human body.

 

Piracy

"It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor."
Steve Jobs 



Piracy is probably the worst thing that the music, movie and possibly also the game industry has to face nowadays. It is defined in a modern way as "the unauthorized publication, reproduction, or use of a copyrighted or patented work". You can get pirated content by illegally downloading things, buying them from illegal distributors or recording them from a concert or other place.  One study says that piracy has cost the music industry $12.5 billion dollars.
In Serbia, piracy is very common. What you do online is never ever patrolled, ever. There are also sellers that download illegal content, and them put them on CDs and DVDs. They have a "fleet" of hundreds of different DVDs, all extremely cheap. Buying a movie is cheaper than legally renting it. Buying software like Windows 7 is a fraction of the real cost.
However, the big music, movie and software could learn a thing or two from the people who sell pirated content. Unlike real, expensive products, pirated CDs have very minimal packaging that is much better for the environment than real packaging. A real copy of Windows 7 has think plastic, and glossy paper labels and manuals. A lot of that is waste. However, a pirated copy has only one printer-paper label, the CD and a plastic label. I think that big companies should look at how the small, illegal sellers are packaging their products, and see if that can make their packaging minimal like that.

Food Inc. Reflection

Food Inc Reflection

After watching Food Inc, what are your impressions of how science, technology, and society are interrelated?  

Now I know that much of our society relies on engineering from scientists. Also we rely greatly as society on technology to eliminate dirty work or make our lives in general more pleasant for us. If scientists hadn’t genetically engineered chickens to make them grow faster, be larger and have larger chicken breasts, maybe the Chicken McNugget would not exist or would be expensive.

How did the film describe science & technology as a positive or negative impact on society or the environment?  

The film showed science and technology in both a negative light5. However, it focused less on the good side, because when you are presented with the positive facts of science and technology, it is easy to figure out why it is good. For example, when you learn that chickens have steroids in their diet to make them grow faster, it is easy to figure out that growing faster results in more chickens flowing in/out of the feedlots at a higher rate, which means more efficiency and cheaper, more easily available chickens.

How do our consumer choices affect what is out on the market and therefore, our own survival?  

When we buy something at a supermarket, what we purchase is saved in a database.  The database is later analyzed to see what is purchased most frequently so they can stock more of it, and what is purchased the least, so they can stop stocking it. When you stop buying milk from cows with steroids, the store will have less incentive to keep stocking it. If it stops stocking it or decreases how much it stocks, the farmer making the milk will make less or switch to a different type of food (e.g. milk from cows without steroids), because he sees he is not selling the milk from the cows with steroids.

How are we as humans connected to how the Earth is used?  

Whatever we consume has to come directly or indirectly from the earth. When you eat a carrot cake, there is a carrot in there that comes from the earth. Even totally artificial foods are made from things from the earth. When we eat things that are made in a sustainable way, then the way they were made is not harming the environment, and that is good. However, when we eat something that relies on nonreliable resources or was produced in a non-sustainable way, then

it harms the environment, which is bad.

A few ideas that popped up in conversation throughout the movie were:  

When do we say no to more high tech devices and go back to what caused the problem in the first place?  Why are we only into the "HOW" and not the "WHY?"

Sometimes it is easier to eliminate the effect of the problem than to eliminate the cause. If you take cold medicine that eliminates your symptoms, it doesn’t completely heal you, but it does make your cold go away for a while. In a similar way, it is easier to irradiate meat to kill germs than to implement a massive change in the way we grow and slaughter meat, because the massive change requires revamping farms and slaughterhouses, while irradiation is only another step in the manufacturing process. In that way, we are addressing the “How?”, and not the “Why?”, mainly because it is easier to address. However, sometimes if you cannot completely or effectively address the “How?”, you should address the “Why?” instead of trying complicated and ineffective solutions for “How?”. I disagree with the question here, because it suggests that addressing the “Why?”  is better to do than addressing the “How?”, yet that is not always the case.

What is the difference between natural farming and industrial farming?  Which is better?  Are they both necessary?  

Natural farming is the kind of farming that is usually small-scale, and doesn’t use growth hormones. The animals in a natural farm are usually fed the foods that that their bodies are meant to be fed and that they can digest. Industrial farming is focused more on speed of growth and quantity. Because of that, they use growth hormones and steroids to make the animals on an industrial farm grow faster. There is no easy way to define the “better” of the two, because they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Natural farming is safer and more natural, yet it is more expensive and produces less food. Industrial farming is less safe and has a slightly higher risk of disease in the food, but has a high output and is the more viable and cost effective way of feeding many people for a low price. Both are necessary, because in some situations (in a fancy, expensive restaurant), more expensive, higher quality food is needed, but in other situations, (a fast food restaurant), lower quality, cheaper food is needed. If the whole world used natural farming, food would be much more expensive, and I doubt that it would be possible to produce the amount of food that we need using natural farming.

If technology and industry have improved so much that we are getting faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper, how are science and technology involved in our survival? 

Without the technologies that enable us to make plants and animals “faster, fatter, bigger and cheaper”, producing enough food for the entire world would be nearly impossible. With these technologies, we can grow more food in the same time and space than using traditional farming methods. Without the technologies, sustaining all 6.8 billion people in the world would be mighty difficult.

What economic costs, environmental costs, ethical costs, health costs, and cultural costs did you observe while watching the film?  

With the abundance and extremely low price of fast food, it is a quick and easy option for a meal. However, fast food contains a lot of sugar, salt, fats and other things that are not good in excessive quantities for the human body. Because fast food is so appealing, ubiquitous and cheap, people consume it often, and that causes people to get fat and be negatively affected in terms of health. In America, heart disease is the number one killer of people every year. A large cause of heart disease, but not the only one, is eating fast food. If there were no fast food in the world, many million people fewer would not die.

  

Current Events 8: Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth

Don't ever think that your brain is a simple thing.
Some new research by Stanford students has found that there are more switches in the human brain than all the switches in every computer on earth added up.
In you brain, there are things called nerve cells, or neurons. Those are hard to define, but I found that they are "cells that are specialized to conduct nerve impulses". In other words, they are the controllers of the nerves in your body. If you didn't remember what nerves were, let me remind you: nerves are the things in you body that control you feelings (pain, hunger etc.), and they also help you control you movements. 
Back to neurons: you brain has 200 billion of them. They are connected together with 100s of trillions of synapses. Synapses are basically just connections between the neurons. (I know this is a lot of vocab for one post!) Although not every neuron is connected to every other neuron, that's still a lot of synapses. In order to fit so many synapses into your brain, they are extreme small. They're less than one-thousandth of a millimeter wide each. All of this was discovered by students in the Standford University School of Medicine. They were creating a new imaging model, in other word a new way to scan and represent the brain. They call their new model array tomography. Array tomography can be used with some computer software that can make a 3d image of the synapses in a brain. When the Stanford researchers  created this model, they were amazed by how complex the brain is. Just look:

Source:
Elizabeth Armstrong Moore
November 17, 2010
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html

This was my hardest current events ever. I didn't even understand the article myself when I read it, and there were seemingly millions of terms to look up.

Percent of Owl Prey in Class Owl Population

Reflections/Answering Questions

 Based upon the class data, rank the most frequently consumed prey for the class “owl population”

Based on the data, I can tell that the most consumed prey for the class population is the rat, because 42% of all the biomass consumed was rat biomass.

A predator expends energy when hunting for food. Which is more “energy expensive” cuisine, 35 insects at 1 gram each or one 35 gram vole?

It would be more energy expensive to eat 35 insects than 1 gram each than one 35 gram vole, because It would take many trips and a longer time hunting to get 35 insects, rather than 1 vole. However, if voles were extremely rare and the owl found a new insect nest and scooped up 35 insects, then it would be more energy expensive to spend a long time hunting for a vole rather than scooping up a huge portion of insets at once. that situation would be rare though, so it would be safe to assume that in general it is more energy expensive to eat 35 insects rather than one vole.

Try to define the food-getting “strategy” for a predator.

The food getting strategy for a predator, although it varies for each animal, is basically the systematic plan that the predator uses to get it's food. It can also vary according to what environment the predator is in. For a barn owl, the strategy could be to swoop down from high above and snatch up mice to eat. For a bat, the strategy could be to find insects using echolocation and eat them.

Current Events 7: In Twenty Years Chocolate Will Be A Rare Delicacy

This might be upsetting for you: in about 20 years, chocolate will be very expensive. It's going to happen because the demand for chocolate is increasing faster the then production. IN other words, people are wanting chocolate more and more, more than the chocolate growers are growing. This has been coming for a long time. IN the past six years alone, cocoa prices have been doubled. Another factor that is influencing this is the fact that chocolate can only grown within 10 degrees of the equator, which means that chocolate can't be grown everywhere in the world.  A small-time grower earns about 80 cents each day, but they could be earning much more money if they grew other crops like rubber. That's why farmers don't replant the cocoa plants when they die. Many farmers are also moving into cities where more money can be made. One of the few things that could stop this is the fact that scientists have "sequenced" chocolate's genome, which means that they now have the ability  to alter the chocolate crop to produce more and be able to grow in a wider variety of locations. However, the most likely result of this whole dilemma is more expensive chocolate. According to John Mason, who is the director of a Ghana Nature Conservation group, a chocolate bar could cost around $11 in 20 years.
I am disappointed by this news. I hope that more farmers start growing genetically engineered chocolate so that it won't be much more expensive.
Source:
Rebecca Boyle
Sept. 9, 2010
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/future-chocolate-will-be-rare-delicacy-analysts-say

Reflection about Carbon Footprint

The video spoke a lot about sustainability.  What is sustainability?
I searched for the definition of sustainability, and I found that "the property of being sustainable". Since that didn't really help me, I continued searching. I found that there are many ways to define sustainability, but sustainability in an environmental sense means "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." In other words, continuing whatever you are doing now, and doing so in a way that wouldn't harm the environment if you continued doing it for a million years.
 Define this in your blog post and give examples of ways that you can lessen your human footprint.  What is a human footprint?  What do you think the video was trying to get across to you?  
Human footprint is much easier to define. It means "The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems." In other words, how much of Earth's resources you are using in your existence on earth. I think that the whole movie was trying to show you that you are not small at all, and that you do have a very large impact on Earth's resources, in other words a large Eco Footprint. I think that it was pretty effective in that respect.What does Earth have to do with our footprint?  Find out what makes an Ecological Footprint by clicking on each icon in the circle under:  What Makes an EcoFootprint?  Describe some global impacts that occur because of consumerism.  Now, follow the link on my original post and play the game.
The earth has to do with our footprint because it provides us with all of our resources that allow us to live and have an ecological footprint. Without the Earth, we obviously would have nowhere to live. Even if Earth and life did exist, but the Earth stopped producing resources, we would die because all of our food, electricity, and water and other vital things come from the Earth
Using the website below, calculate your Eco Footprint and reflect on what you learned about your family behaviors and actions and what type of Footprint you are leaving on the planet.  Write down some ways that you believe you could lessen your footprint.  

I couldn't really understand the game footprint calculator, but I used the calculator on the Eco Voyagers site to find out that if everyone on Earth lived like I did, we would need 2.66 Earths. That was surprising to me. I believe that my family is not doing to badly environmentally, because we almost never use our car (which is a hybrid) we always reuse plastic bags and we do other things to lessen our Eco Footprint. I guess that is not enough though. I could lessen my footprint further by buying less heavily packaged food, possibly living in a smaller house because ours is larger than we absolutely need and also conserving energy use further.
Now, go back to the Ecovoyageurs website and click on Earthly Impacts at the top of the page.  Visit both the Global and Personal impacts pages.  Were there any facts that surprised you from the website?  What about from the video we watched in class?  What were some facts that stuck in your head and really made you think about human behavior on our planet?  
There were a few facts that really struck me, like:

The wealthiest 5% of the world's population consumes 58% of energy.
That surprised me because although I knew that the wealthier part of the worlds population used a lot of energy, I didn't think that it was this disproportionately high.
The least wealthy 20% of the world's population consumes 1% of paper, while the most wealthy 5% of the worlds population consumes 84% of the world's paper.
Again, this was surprising because I knew there would be a large difference, but I didn't know it would be this big.


Finally, click on You Can Help to get some ideas about what you can do to help lessen the footprint you leave.
I clicked through here, and the section that I focused on was energy consumption, which is the area that I think that I can improve the most in. There didn't seem to be any easy solution here, though. Global warming is a very complicated problem. They suggested switching off TV/Computer, and doing something that doesn't require electricity. That would be very hard for me.

***Remember all the things that we consume or use throughout a lifetime, you may be young and just one person, but that all adds up in the end.  What are some changes you and/or your family can make?  
Like I said before, (this is the same text) I could lessen my footprint further by buying less heavily packaged food, possibly living in a smaller house because ours is larger than we absolutely need and also conserving energy use further.



*Old Reflection*
Don't read this or grade this visitor. This is the my high-speed reflecting that I did during recess. Obviously I redid the whole reflection once I read the instructions.

I took the quiz that Mrs. M linked to on her site. I got these results:

Your total ecological footprint is 4.84 hectares

If everyone lived the same as you we'd need 2.66 earths!

I found it pretty surprising. In the quiz, it asks for many, many things, like how big my house is (I probably got that wrong), but telling me that I need 2.66 Earths to sustain my lifestyle is shocking. I'm glad not everyone in the world lives like that! The movie that we are watching in class also shows some shocking numbers, while backing them up with a real picture. However, they don't tell you the alternatives, or what you can do to avoid using so many resources. I find the fact that Earth is still able the (mostly) cope with so many people living like that surprising. In the movie, they do waste a lot of resources showing you what they want to show you. Especially in the scene when the dump thousands of eggs onto the floor, that seems quite wasteful. I guess that it is OK in the name of science, to waste all those eggs. Maybe people will eat fewer eggs, now that they know how many they are eating. If everyone reduced their egg consumption, then they could make up for all the eggs wasted.

Overall, I think that my quiz results plus the movie both show me that I do have a large impact on the earth, and that I can really negatively impact the environment if I don't conserve.

Current Events 6: The Truth Behind the Everlasting Happy Meal: Burgers That Size Don't Rot

Recently a big fuss was made of some images released by a person named Sally Davies. She took a Happy Meal, and left it out in the open for 6 months, taking a photo of it every day. She made a video of it, and her experiment showed that the Happy Meal didn't rot at all. However, later research by Kenji Lopez-Alt, a writer for Serious eats, a well known, reliable internet food site, showed something interesting: hamburgers don't rot. Using a good scientific method that Mrs. M would be proud of, Kenji researched whether mold would grow on a McDonalds burger, or a normal home-made burger. You can find his research here. He left a McDonalds burger and a burger he made himself using a store-bought patty and bun. He also tested many other burgers, small ones and big ones like an Angus 1/4 Pounder, which you can read about on my , and source link. He testing found that all of the small burgers, both the McDonalds one and the home-made one didn't rot. However, both of the larger burgers he tested, the Angus 1/4 pounder, and a home-made version of the Angus, did rot. He concluded that the smaller burgers didn't rot because they have a large surface area, and are small, both of which help cause the burgers' inability to hold moisture. Moisture is one of the key factors for creating mold, so without the moisture, the mold couldn't grow. He also stated that another reason that the burgers didn't rot is that they were cooked at a very hot temperature, which could have killed the bacteria on the meat. When he put any of the burgers into a closed environment like a plastic bag where moisture couldn't escape, the mold grew.
I think that this is really interesting because it proves a very shocking piece of information wrong. I don't eat at McDonald's very much, but I don't think that it is fair for people to criticize McDonald's for someting they haven't thoroughly researched ad tested. 
Here is the video of the Happy Meal that started all this fuss:


Sources:
Kyle VanHemeret
Nov. 5, 2010
http://gizmodo.com/5682815/the-truth-behind-the-everlasting-happy-meal-no-burgers-that-size-rot
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html?ref=carousel
If you are interested, here was McDonalds' official response to the non-rotting Happy Meal. It was made before this new research I reported about, but some of the points they made were proved to be valid by the research:
http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/mcd_faq/spam_recruitment_fraudulent_email_messages.html

Current Events 5: Echolocation Forces Poor Bats to Nosedive Into Metal

Many people know that bats find bugs using echolocation. That's where they send out sound waves, and depending on which waves bounce back and where, they can tell the location of a bug. Now, new research says that bats also use echolocation to learn about their surrounding environment. Wild bats both young and old were placed in a room with smooth and textured wood and metal plates. All of the bats, both the young ones and the old ones, tried to drink from the smooth plates, but never the textured plates. They did this because when they found a smooth surface using echolocation, they thought it was water, and attempted to drink from it. Water (and smooth surfaces) have a smooth surface which sound waves bounce cleanly off of, while rougher or textured surfaces make sound waves bounce in more directions. Even the young bats that had never seen a large river or lake, would theoretically not know what a large smooth surface represents because they had never seen one, but they still tried to drink from the smooth surfaces. That means that the feature of recognizing smooth surfaces is engraved in all bat's brains, whether they had seen smooth surfaces before or not.
Here's a video that explains this topic really well, along with some cute footage of bats skimming the surfaces:



Sources:]
Sam Biddle
Nov. 2, 2010
http://gizmodo.com/5679971/echolocation-forces-poor-bats-to-nosedive-into-metal
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/video-reliance-echolocation-drives-bats-try-drink-metal-plates

Q1 Grades Reflection

I was supposed to do a reflection about my grades in Q1, more specifically my grades on my science essay, test and lab. I got all 6/6 for all 3 projects.
I am really happy with my grades for these projects. Obviously, they couldn't be better at all, because they are the maximum possible grade. However, although the grade was perfect, the projects themselves weren't totally perfect.
My strengths in my essay were that I chose a difficult topic but still wrote a full essay on it. I also met the minimum length requirement, and my essay was clear and hopefully moderately easy to understand. However, a few things that I could work on include explaining the my topic of more clearly and maybe choosing more reliable sources than Wikipedia. I recently reread my essay and realized that my explanation of my topic didn't sound as good as when I wrote it.
If I were to rewrite the essay, I would give a little more background information and try to explain my topic better.
I also think that I did well on the lab. My strengths were that we had a good data table, and my partner and I followed the lab procedure very closely. Our weaknesses were that in our lab, we used two different plants in a part of the lab where we were supposed to compare two of the same plants, and the most likely skewed our results.
My test is a little harder to reflect back on because I haven't looked over it again much. A few things I did well tat I didn't rush and I took time to fully explain things where necessary. I was one of the later people to hand in m test. Also, I think that I studied well which helped me get a good grade. However, I could have maybe studies even more so I wouldn't have missed the 2-3 questions I did miss.
Overall, I am very happy with my grades, and even though I couldn't improve in numbers, there were a few ways that I could improve in real-life performance.

Current Events #4: Bees Solve Hard Computing Problems Faster Than Supercomputers

Bees Solve Hard Computing Problems Faster Than Supercomputers
Here's something I never thought could have been possible: bees (yes, the tiny 2-3cm insects) can beat a supercomputer in solving a super-difficult problem that even some supercomputers have problems with. That problem is called the traveling salesman problem. I looked this up, and I found that the traveling salesman problem  tries to find a route between multiple cities, with the shortest possible total distance between the cities, all while only visiting each city once. The way the bees were tested is that researchers set up artificial flowers, and the bees were observed and were found to always find the shortest route between the artificial flowers. The reason that the bees have the ability to do this is that bees need a lot of energy to fly, and so by optimizing their route between flowers, they can pick up as much pollen as possible while using as little energy as possible for transportation. This seems to be some kind of evolutionary adaptation, that must really help the bee.
However, this whole post could be wrong, and could have been proved wrong by a comment on my source article. The comment stated that the bees are obviously successful at a smaller level, but that involves only 10-15 flowers, but that is also the level where supercomputers can quickly and easily solve the problem. The bees have not been tested with 100 flowers, or other high numbers like that, which a supercomputer cannot solve within the lifetime of the universe. Presumably, the bees can't handle that either. Even with their limitations, the bees are very successful for a creature of that size, and I think it's amazing how much they have going on in their little bee brains.
Sources:
Rebecca Boyle
Oct. 26, 2010
 http://gizmodo.com/5674050/bees-solv
e-hard-computing-problems-faster-than-supercomputers

Current Events 3: The Science of Prohibition, 1919-1933

The magazine/website Popular Science, also known as PopSci, recently went through its archives and featured some of its articles from the 1920s and 1930s about Prohibition. The Prohibition was a time when alcohol was banned in the USA. The Prohibition Started on January 19th, 1919 and ended on Dec. 5, 1933. During the Prohibition, people started illegally brewing their own alcoholic beverages (those brewed drinks were called moonshine), and also smuggling them from other countries. One thing that the magazine reported a few times about was how over the course of the entire prohibition, thousands of people had died while drinking bad moonshine that was poisoned with a bit of wood alcohol. I looked up wood alcohol and it turns out that wood alcohol is just a name for methanol, which can be used as an antifreeze and a fuel. Over time the bootleggers got good at producing safe-to-drink moonshine. According to Pop Sci, the Prohibition produced a new breed of chemists: the bootleggers. Whether or not they were really chemists is more debatable. Surprisingly, even real scientists got in on the alcohol action: around 1920, a scientist name John C. Olsen created solid alcohols called jellied cocktails, but I read in a Google Books version of the February 1920 Pop Sci that he didn't want to share the formula for the jellied cocktail formula or sell his jellied cocktails. The reason these were legal is that the prohibition law, (the 8th amendment) only covered liquids.

I found all of these stories interesting, because they show how desperately Americans wanted alcohol, and the crazy things they would invent or risk in order to get it. The prohibition was finally cancelled for a number of reasons, one of them being increased violence because of the smuggling, but I think that it was an interesting period in history.
Sources:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/archive-gallery-secret-science-behind-prohibition
http://bit.ly/dsxsMs

Current Events 2 - Deleting "Homer Simpson Gene" Creates Super Smart Mice

Deleting "Homer Simpson Gene" Creates Super Smart Mice

Adrian 7A

September 29

Scientists from Emory University have made a pretty surprising discovery: There was a gene in mouse brains, when deleted, makes the mice smarter. The mice with the gene removed remembered objects and navigated around mazes than mice with the gene intact. The article I read called the gene-removed mice "Mensa mice," and I did some researching on that topic, and it turns out that Mensa is a club for people/geniuses with very high IQs. The gene the scientists deleted is the RGS14 gene, which is located in the CA2 region of the Hippocampus. (great naming, right?) The hippocampus is the part of the brain that deals with learning, and although scientists know a lot about the hippocampus, the CA2 region is  almost unknown.

It seems surprising that the brain has things in it that make it dumber, and not smarter. You would think it would have gotten deleted during evolution, or maybe it has some hidden purpose. This scenario is similar to a story that made news in the tech world recently, that there was a leaked image that showed  that Intel would be putting fully capable processors in laptops but limiting their functionality, and to unlock full performance and functionality, users would have to buy a card with a special code for $50. Maybe in the future, students will routinely have an operation at a young age to remove the gene, and all students would be smarter. It's hard to see where this is going.
Sources: http://gizmodo.com/5642016/deleting-homer-simpson-gene-creates-super-smart-mice

Questions from Mr. Watts's Presentation

When does reproduction occur?

It occurs when the organism finds a place to give birth where the newborns have food and are safe.

How did this presentation help tie in everything we have learned?

 It showed how organisms survive in an eco system with adaptations and how they interact.

What interactions between these animals did you notice? (For example, think about these various forms of interactions that you have been studying for your project: producers, consumers, decomposers, predation, commensalism, parasitism, mutualism)
There is Why do animals migrate? (What is occurring within their environment that triggers this response?)

They need to always have food and a suitable environment. If the environment loses its food for the winter or gets too cold, then the organism must migrate. What adaptations did the animals exhibit in the polar region? (For example: body shape, appendages, wing span, food, coloration, stream-lined bodies, teeth, beaks, blubber, fur, group formations, hooks on tentacles, etc...)

What adaptations did the animals exhibit?

Some animals had thick fur or blubber to protect from cold. One of the birds had an extremely large wingspan to help it fly better. What various (breeding) mating rituals do species have?

As far as I know, many species always come back to a certain spot for breeding. How did this presentation provide examples of what we have been studying?

Mr. Watts showed us what adaptations animals had to survive, how they interacted with other organisms, and what heir ecosystem was and when they went there/what they did there, all of which are things that we are studying.
What are you wondering about now?

I think that it would be interesting to have a similar presentation to this, except for a completely different biome, for example a desert.

When Plants Cry for Help, Predator Bugs Answer

When Plants Cry for Help, Predator Bugs Answer

Plants have a big perpetual problem: they need to protect themselves from pest, but they can move a centimeter. So how do they do it? In the case of the wild tobacco plant (Nicotiana attenuata), when a caterpiller start eating them, they can release compounds that attract predator bugs too eat the caterpillars. Those compounds are called Green leaf Volatiles, also known as GLVs. GLVs are also found in freshly mowed grass. When a caterpillar eats the plant,  its saliva causes changes in the GLVs that the tobacco plant releases, then attracting predators. This information was found out recently in a study done by a science institute in Amsterdam.
I find this amusing, that even in nature without humans, plants have a way to "tattle tell," and in nature the punishment for being caught is death. I always thought that plants where dumb, defenseless organisms, but I guess that this proves me wrong. I wonder if this system could ever fail, possibly if the tobacco plant doesn't have enough of a specific type of GLV that attracts predators.

Sources
"When Plants Cry for Help, Predator Bugs Answer." EurekAlert! - Science News. 26 Aug. 2010. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. .

Survival

    In the video that we watched in class, I learned that animals make certain adaptations to help them survive in a sometimes difficult-to-survive-in environment, some frogs can freeze themselves to hibernate through the winter.



In this video, although it is aimed at younger students, it shows that all animals make adaptations. For example, a turtles, feet are webbed to help push him through the water. Other adaptations that animals make that I got from out class video included using bright color's on a frog's body to indicate poison in its body, and using camouflage to hide oneself from a predator. Another adaptation is drinking water from fog in areas where there are no lakes, seas or rivers.

What did I learn?
I learned that when an environment that an organisms lives in isn't ideal, over a long time the organisms can adapt itself of the environment to mike life more livable.
What was interesting?
I found it interesting how complex and clever the adaptations can be. For example, the snapper turtle has a tongue that looks like a worm to lure food into its mouth. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Living Things and the Environment

What needs are met by an organism's environment?
Need like food, water,  and shelter are met by and organism's environment.
What are the two parts of an organism's habitat with which it interacts?
Biotic and Abiotic factors are the two parts of an organism's habitat with which it interacts.
What are the levels of organization within an ecosystem?
From smallest to largest, the levels of organization within an ecosystem are as follows: 
1. Organism
2.Population
3.Community
4. Ecosystem
Why do you find different kinds of organisms in different habitats?
Because many different organisms need the same type of ecosystem.
Think about what will soon start happening within Belgrade. How do animals prepare for such a change?
Soon animals will start hibernating for the winter.


This is a video about a team of researchers, and gray whales. I'm focusing mostly on the whales.
What would happen if we took away one or more of the living or nonliving factors in its environment? Which factors could they survive without?
If we took away one of the biggest factors in their environment, the water, they would die. Similarly, if we took away their food, plankton and small fish, they would starve and die. One factor the could EASILY live without is the pollution and trash in the water. They probably could live without a few other factors like some larger fish that they don't eat.