Pig Dissection Relate+Review

The purpose was the physically see the organ systems and how they worked together. We saw what we had learned about in the vodcasts about the systems in the body that maintain homeostasis but instead this was in the body of a pig. My favorite part of the dissection was cutting open the heart because it was the most interesting part. We got to see the actual veins and it was even more clear because of the color dye that had been injected the pig. I think it was a very valuable experience because I got to get a hands-on look inside a an intact once-living animal. It was my first real dissection, and unless I become a doctor, one of the few dissections in my life. It defiantly increased my knowledge of how the inside of my own body looks and I will keep that idea for the rest of my life.

Fuel Zone 20 Time Reflection

I created Fuel-Zone, a nutrition blog for athletes. So far it has 3 posts, all with gif's to make them more interesting. It will include include information of do's and don't's, recipes, and videos in the future for anyone to see and learn. These are some of the topic ideas I made during the project:

I thought my Ted Talk went fairly well. I stumbled a little bit, but I feel like I got my main points across clearly. Slowing it down was hard for me, but even though I have improved from the WEE presentations I should still work on that. If I could do it over, I would have finalized my presentation earlier because I thought I knew what I was going to say but not in any order. It would have been a lot smoother if I had done that because it would have been in my mind longer. On the rubric, I would give myself a 73 because I feel like I was still rushing a little bit and not completely captivating. My preparations seemed rushed so I tried different tactics to practice the speech. One thing I tried was recording myself on my phone and listening to it through out the day. I wouldn't say you could memorize things from this method, but it defiantly helped. Giving the talk, I was very nervous. I was mainly focused on hitting everything on the rubric and I was a little overwhelmed by how many things there were. By the end I loosened up a little and it was easier. It was very helpful to have flashcards and they organized my thoughts. I have grown a lot by finding my comfort zone on presenting and how far in advance I should be practicing. My biggest takeaway from everything was to stop overthinking and do it. The project itself was hard to get the ball rolling and making the speech was a similar situation. If  I know I have to do something, it is best to start it instead of hesitating for other purposes.

 I liked listening to others presentations because I thought it was interesting to see what topics they chose. There were a lot of topics that I wouldn't have guessed people to choose. I am excited to see if they keep working on them and how they turn out. 20 time was a challenge for me, especially since I am a very indecisive person. I learned a lot about myself and I had a positive experience. 

20 Time Reflection

I challenged myself by becoming the best blogger and a researcher I could be, meanwhile learning and applying tips about healthy lifestyles. I wanted to extend my skills from biology blog into a real life blog that could actually inform people. I chose this challenge because I play a lot of team sports, and myself and the team all have complained about not eating good food at least once. My goal was to inform high schools athletes about how they can help their bodies when they play any sport or activity. Taking care of your body is very important and the first step to that is education. My main focus was to learn and teach others through a blog. My plan was to create the blog then spread the word about it with my teams or social media. This would create a larger audience and help more people. This project just got started, meaning the foundation of it is sturdy but there are not many posts. It took me a while to come up with a name, make my own logo, and plan out the themes of my future posts. I spent too much time trying to perfect the brand of the blog and ran out of time with the actual blogging, which is the most important part. I learned that I need to set my priorities of projects, like letting go on unimportant parts to accomplish the bigger parts. I was too excited about the many topics my blog would entail and instead should have committed to one to write. If I could do it again, I would write my posts first then start the jazz up the blog site. I would like to continue this project and learn  more nutrition for myself  and also for my team. I would like to have more posts for it to feel more complete. 

Unit 9 Reflection!

This unit covered what we define as life and how we separate different organisms. Groups are based on similarities to each other. Taxonomic levels divide large groups into smaller and smaller and they still change. The order is kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species (Kings Play Chess on Fine Grained Sand). Phylogeny shows the evolutionary history of an organism and its common ancestors, basically the roots from which it came from.
 
This GIF really shows how life changed from each species, adding new traits to survive and thrive. Unit 9 could really be summarized by the famous picture with the tree of life, it goes narrow to broad. There are 4 man kingdoms: protista, plants, fungi, and animals.  Bacteria are in the domain prokarya, they are Earth's first organism. They come in 3 shapes: cocci, bacilli, and spirals. They can be classifed by their cell wall that is gram postitive or negative. Viruses are not really living things, but instead a small infectious particle. Fungi are decomposers and come in 3 groups: sac fungi, club fungi and bread molds. Like animals, plants started in water and evolved through natural selcetion, using the same ideas that we learned in evolution labs. Bryophyta are seedless and non vascular, like moss. Pterophyta are seedless vascular plants and have roots. Gymnosperms bear cones and angiosperms have flowers.
 
Animals are diverse but still share characteristics. 97% of species are invertebrates.  Sponges are the most primitive and have no symmetry. There are 4 main classes: scyphozoans(jellies), anthozoans(coral), hydrozoans(hydra), and cubozoans(box jellies). There are 5 groups of arthopods: trilobites, crustaceans, chelicerates, insects, and myrapods.

All vertebrates have similar characteristics, like notochords, hallow nenechords, paryngeal slits, and a tail. Fish are divided into condricthyes and osteoictheyes. Reptiles are diverse group of amniotes who have dry scales, are ectotherms, and a 3 chamber heart. They are divided into turtles and tortoises, snakes and lizards, crocodilian, and tuatara. The class aves are from therapod dinosaurs, and they have hallow bones, fused wishbone, and "hands" with 4th or 5th finger. In the video we watched in class, "Your Inner Fish", we learned about the discoveries in fetus that led to the fused wishbone and middle ear. The last class mammalia have 4 main cahracteristics, hair, mammary glands, middle ear, and strong jaw. They reproduce by either being a monotreme, marsuprial, or eutherian.

I want to learn more about the bacteria and archea domains because the eukarya has so many species and types but the others still seem like a mystery. I wonder about what types of organisms have not been classified yet or even discovered. There are some documentaries about new discoveries that I have heard of and look very interesting.

I thought that my WEE went well and I am proud of the work that I did. I learned a lot of new facts and big words that were very hard to pronounce. My biggest problem was speaking too fast and calming down when speaking to the class. I was nervous because I was really hoping that I would get my information out without staring at my screen and also not to bore the students. Next time, I will do the same way of knowing my presentation very well but I will teach the class in a more conversational way.

Your Inner Fish Review

In the "Your Inner Fish"video, we were taught about how fish came onto land and how they eventually evolved more amphibian-like traits, such as hind legs for walking. It  went over 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 how we fit into the grand idea of earths history.
"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."Why are mass extinctions important?". Mass extinctions pave the way for new species to rise.


 For example, after the dinosaurs ruled the earth all throughout the Triassic, Jurassic, and 

Cretaceous eras, the mass extinction 65 million years ago wiped them all out, creating a new niche for mammals to cover. This extinction was essential for the continuation of mammals as a species, and eventually our success, since we evolved from the earliest mammals that emerged after the extinction.