Rising Water Part 3

        I am continuing research on my project. While reading a couple reports by environmentalists I have found out how I would be able to spread awareness, but thing is, they have done it on a big scale. For example, giving presentations around the world. So maybe when I give my 'TED' talk to the class I can give a presentation like these people who are touring the world giving their own. My next steps would be to take all the research I have gathered so far and to use it to start creating a presentation. I will look at making some of my own graphs to so I can give a visual on how serious this problem is. The graphs will most likely show how much this problem is increasing, and give some pointers to people on how they can make a change.

Unit 8 Reflection

In this unit we learned about evolution and how it is affected and affects life. I think one really key understanding in this unit is natural selection. In natural selection, an environment that has genetic diversity changes over time to shift the population towards the organisms with the best traits that help them to survive and reproduce. The way this happens is that the organisms that are able to survive can reproduce. Which means that organism had good traits because they were able to survive, so then they give their offspring the best traits to help them survive. At the same time natural selection punishes those who have the bad traits by killing them off. Natural selection is natures way of saying survival of the fittest. Another key to this unit was how long and eventful earth's history. Us humans have only been through a micro fragment of earth's history. What put us on this earth was a mass extinction called the 'Cretaceous explosion'. If there was no mass extinction then us humans wouldn't be here today.

In my last reflection, unit 7, I discussed the process of being more assertive in my group work. Although I may have not been able to implement this in biology because no projects had arisen, I was able to but this quality into use for my English MAP class. In this class there is always some project that is in the working, so this time I got thrown the hurdle of working with a group on a group essay. My group couldn't find a lot of time to do their part of the essay. So I stepped up and took the opportunity to help better manage our time in class, and finish our essay knowing we did our best.

Geologic Timeline

There are lots of significant events in history but I find that there are three major one that I'm going to point out to you. First off I'd like to talk about the Periman era this was when the large extinction happened. This time was when most off the work was covered in many different marine communities. However the mass extinction at the end of this era was the largest ever recorded, which was extremely important because it created many niches is which the could dinosaurs could take over. If that extinction had never occurred we not be here as the world could still be ruled by many marine communities and good animals. Secondly, the Cambrian era which was a series of important sub events rather than one big one. Over the years of this era helped to give birth to many different species which led to the ones we have today. During this era there was a big explosion called the "Cambrian Explosion" where a huge amount of life changed over a short period of time. Finally, the huge and famous mass extinction happened at the end of the Cretaceous which wiped out most of the dinosaurs and led to us humans. This event was definitely the most important because this explosion and era led to us humans. It's also important because if this didn't happened then the world right now would be ruled by dinosaurs and we wouldn't have dominated the food chain - then once wagon would not existed.

Hunger Games Analysis 

1. In this lab, we as a class became a population of organisms trying to survive by collecting food (corks) and making offspring (flipping coins with specific alleles). This simulated natural selection and the change it has on species over time.
2. The best phenotype in my opinion for capturing food was the "aa" alleles (the pinchers). The pinchers has to pick up food between their thumb and index finger. I know this because when I was a pincher vs. a knuckler I found it easier to pick up more corks with my index finger and thumb then with my knuckles. Even though I wasn't a stumpy I still know it would be hard to collect food because the populations of stumpys went down significantly over time because they found it hard to gather food.
3. The population definitely evolved, since the allele frequency saw a dramatic shift towards the small "a" allele. In the beginning, there was a 64% to 35% relationship between the big "A" and the little "a" allele, but after 6 rounds, the small "a" allele controlled 83% while the big "A" had only 17%. Every round, the stumpies were contained to a population size of 1 or 2, while the others had numbers between 10 and 20. The population definitely evolved, since the allele frequency saw a dramatic shift towards the small "a" allele. In the beginning, there was a 64% to 35% relationship between the big "A" and the little "a" allele, but after 6 rounds, the small "a" allele controlled 83% while the big "A" had only 17%. Every round, the stumpies were 
4. There were some factors that affected our procedure, the biggest one probably being the way the food was laid out. Some years all the food would dumped into little piles, and other years it would be placed in a wavy line. However, there were many non-random factors as well. Like for example, the fact that everybody every year had to stand around the same circle and were not allowed to look at where the corks were scattered. Although there were many non-random factors they did not have much of an effect on the eventual outcome of the population. It still molded to look like the "winners", knucklers.
5. If the food was a different size, I think that the results would be different because then the different species advantages would change. For example, if we has used softballs instead of corks then the Knucklers would be at a disadvantage and the stumpy would have an advantage. This is because one of regular size can't pick up a softball with just their knuckles. 
6. If there was no incomplete dominance in the community, then the knucklers would not exist, and the pinchers and maybe even the knucklers would have become the dominant trait across the species, since there would be no mixing of genes to produce the knucklers. 
7. Natural selection is what causes change in the population, which relates to evolution. When the better traits are selected, the organisms that have those traits survive while the others die out, and so over time the population begins to only look like the organisms with the better traits. This is natures way of rewarding the best and killing of the worst. Its like survival of the fittest.
8. Some of the strategies that people used were that they would turn out their sweatshirts over at the bottom to make a pocket/bowl. There were also cheater that would while no one was looking, scoop up the corks with their arms in order survive. Those that had enough food to survive applied and adapted different strategies in order to pass on their traits and survive. 
9. In evolution everything evolves not just one specific species or trait, the whole population evolves. Natural selection acts upon both phenotype and the genotype. The new generation's genotype consists of the dominant allele and the majority of phenotypes is the dominante phenotype. In this case, it would be the pinchers.

Rising Water: part 2

2 week progress report

           Over these couple weeks I have been doing a lot of research, reading articles, looking at graphs, and watching videos made by Nasa. I've learn that our sea levels are eventually going to rise rapidly, faster than we think. Around 2030 San Francisco may be flooded. There is a couple ways to stop this from happening. This is for people to start using less things that create pollution and in affect make green house gases. The other way to prevent this from happening is to build a levy or a super dam in the bay to stop the water from flowing  in the city. We actually have plans for the levy and super dams but that is more of a last resort plan. My next steps is to see if I can find someone in this field or area to give me some more information and give me some advice on what I should do to help this cause. I'm also planning to go out and complete some community service in order to set an example to my peers and spread awareness. Hopefully I can also get some of my friends to join in on the community service.

A video on the Arctic melting:

Bird Beak Lab

In this lab we were asked the question, "How do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?" We found that through natural selection, and through different beaks, that the population changed to have significantly more spoon billed birds. Our data clearly showed that the spoon beaked bird had the most offspring. The spoon beaked bird had 26 offspring, the binder clip beak had 20 offspring, the tweezer beaked bird had 12 offspring, and the scissored beaked bird had 14 offspring.  The spoon billed beak made up 36% of the total offspring and the binder clip beak made up 27%, but non-the-less the spoon billed bird still had the most offspring. This data supports our claim because the trait of the spoon birds had extended through the population in such a short amount of time and the population had begun to look like them, or the "winners".

Some potential errors that we could have had would definitely be the variation in the amount of food. Obviously, some of the beaks were better suited to picking up different types of food. Some group had many rubber band seeds, and some had many macaroni seeds etc. For example, I found that picking up rubber band seeds and the macaroni seeds were most easy as I played the spoon billed bird. Our group in particular had many many rubber bands and that is partly why the spoon billed bird excelled in the kind of environment. Another potential error that we could have had could have been the amount of offspring produced per food. We had one offspring for every 5 pieces  of food that were collected, and the second time for every 10. This is not a real example of what would happen is the real ecosystem. 10 pieces of food does definitely not guarantee one a healthy offspring. There could have been a lot of variation, like the bird not being able to find a mate, or maybe the ecosystem was out of balance and there were to many predators.

This lab was done to demonstrate how natural selection and changes in the environment can affect the evolution and traits of a population. I learned from this lab that there are many different variables that help contribute to making just one offspring. Also, just one trait of a species chooses how successful they are in surviving. Based on my experience from this lab, I now know that evolution is really not such a complicated process. It is really just natural selection, and the kind of ecosystem.

Graph #1

                    Graph #2

Different kind of bird beaks

Rising Water

20 Time is a project made for students to take 20% of their class time and to spend it learning about something that interests them. Students have a chance explore what they are passionate about and love what they are learning about. The essential question that I asked was what can I do to make people more aware of global sea level rises. I, a student in Mr. Orre's, till the end of the school year, will work on raising awareness and learning about about sea level rises and global warming. I chose this idea to be the topic of my project because I find that this problem is growing and not much by authorities is being done to try and solve it. I'm not sure that many people know how serious this problem is, so my job is to point out facts and things that will happen if sea levels do rise, educate them on this rising problem. My goals are still being set, but it will try to go out and educate people locally. How? I'm still not sure, this also means that i'm not quite sure how I will measure my success. I'm going to move forward by deciding if i'm going to run a test and record my data that way. I'm also working on spotting a mentor to help me brainstorm ideas and out them to use.