Writing in Biology

    Certain examples would suggest Aristotle’s idea of gravity originating from elements nature to be true, such as dropping an rock and a leaf at the same time. The rock would fall to the ground faster, since it is heavy like the core of the earth. However, Italian scientist Galileo had suspicions about the veracity of this experiment and decided to test it out himself. He experimented by rolling balls of different masses down sloped planes and found that it was possible to have two balls of different masses reach the bottom of the plane at the same time. This discovery suggested that the rate of acceleration to the earth is universal, a novel concept that contradicted Aristotle’s theory of gravity. 

    Physicist Isaac Newton built off of this idea and made a great leap in the theory, shortly after Galileo’s experimentation. He made a proposition in 1687 that was tremendously successful in predicting the strength of gravity. Isaac believed that the force of gravity that causes a ball thrown into the air to retreat back to the earth was the same force that caused the planets to orbit around the sun. His "Law of Universal Gravitation" states that a particle attracts every other particle in the universe. The degree of this attraction is proportional to the product of their masses and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. It is defined by the equation F=(G*m1*m2)/r^2^, where m1 and m2 are the masses of the particles, r is the distance between them, and G is the “gravitational constant."  It took another 250 years before this a new theory suggested the Law of Universal Gravitation to be incorrect, due primarily to the fact that this theory works for most practical purposes. 

Figure 3 shows the effect of thinning Aspen in its early successional stage. Before the thinning of the aspen the morality percent of aspen and fir were both about 5%. After the thinning of the aspen the morality of aspen increased slightly to about 6%. This is not the same for the fir, which instead jumped up to almost 21%. We know the aspen is the early arriving species, and without it fir do worse. This shows a facilitation relationship between the two species. 

The mechanism controlling the interaction between Populus remuloides (aspen) and Abies laslocarpa (fir) is that of a facilitation relationship. Figure 3 shows that when there is less aspen, fir die significantly more.  One reason may be due to fir being able to take over the stands much faster than they would be able to in the normal successional cycle. If fir are taking over faster, and more often then the case of fires is going to occur more. With more fires the cycle will begin again after both species get burnt down. Aspen will then arrive first, and if re-thinned will get taken over by fir again very quickly resulting in more frequent fires and a higher mortality rate for fir. The Aspen morality rate does not increase by a lot because by the time the fire occurs the plot is already overtaken by fir. 

The mechanism controlling the interaction between Populus remuloides (aspen) and Abies laslocarpa (fir) is that of a facilitation relationship. Figure 3 shows that when there is less aspen, fir die significantly more.  One reason may be due to fir being able to take over the stands much faster than they would be able to in the normal successional cycle. If fir are taking over faster, and more often then the case of fires is going to occur more. With more fires the cycle will begin again after both species get burnt down. Aspen will then arrive first, and if re-thinned will get taken over by fir again very quickly resulting in more frequent fires and a higher mortality rate for fir. The Aspen morality rate does not increase by a lot because by the time the fire occurs the plot is already overtaken by fir. 

The mechanism controlling this interaction is most likely facilitation. Figure 3 shows that when there is less Aspen, Fir die significantly more.  One reason may be due to the Fir being able to take over much faster than they would be able to in the normal successional cycle. If they are taking over faster, and more often then the case of fires is going to occur more. With more fires the cycle will begin again after both species get burnt down. Aspen will then arrive first, and if re-thinned will get taken over by Fir again very quickly resulting in more frequent fires and a higher mortality rate for Fir. The Aspen morality rate does not increase by a lot because by the time the fire occurs because the plot is already overtaken by Fir. 

Certain examples would suggest Aristotle’s idea of gravity to be true, such as dropping an rock and a leaf at the same time. The rock will fall to the ground faster. However, Italian scientist Galileo had his suspicions about the veracity of this experiment and decided to put it to the test. He experimented by rolling balls of different masses down sloped planes and found that it was possible to have two balls of different masses reach the bottom of the plane at the same time. This discovery suggested that the rate of acceleration to the earth is universal, a novel concept that contradicted Aristotle’s theory of gravity. 

Physicist Isaac Newton built off of this idea, shortly after Galileo, and made a great leap in the theory. He made a proposition in 1687 that had tremendous success in predicting the strength of gravity. Isaac believed that the force of gravity that causes a ball thrown into the air to retreat back to the earth was the same force that caused the planets to orbit around the sun. His Law of Universal Gravitation says that a particle attracts every other particle in the universe. The degree of this attraction is proportional to the product of their masses and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.  It took another 250 years before this a new theory showed this one to be incorrect, and this is because for most practical purposes this theory is “correct.” Newtonian gravity, in combination with Newtonian motion, explains the orbit of the planets around the sun, the orbits of the moons around the planets, gravity as we see experience it here on earth, and the ocean tides. Whenever astronomical measurements seemed to be in discordance with Newtonian gravity, it was ultimately found that the measurements were for some reason incorrect. One example is the course of Uranus rotating about the sun. Measurements of it’s orbit appeared to violate Newtonian gravity. However, scientists speculated that some undiscovered planet could possibly be pulling on Uranus and altering it’s orbit and a man named U.J.J. Le Verrier decided to put this theory to the test and calculated where this mysterious planet may be based on Newton’s laws of gravity and motion. When he trained his telescope to aim at that spot, there the planet (Neptune) was, exactly where Newton’s Laws said it should be.

Sexual selection, is the selection of certain traits based on sexual preference by one of the sexes. This is typically seen as female choice driving the evolution of ornate plumage and elaborate songs used by males during courtship. Sexually selected traits are often very costly for males and can lower survorship, however they increase fitness. Traits can be costly due to the energy required to have them, or they can attract predators. Brightly colored feathers can be a sexually selected trait that lowers survivorship because it makes the bird more peceptible to preadators. However, colorful wings increases fitness because females are attracted to colorful wings so the male is more likely to attract mates and therefore produce more offspring. In some cases, sexual selection can result in "run-away" sexual selection in which the males evolve very elaborate forms of ornamentation that keep evolving as female preference evolves to prefer more elaborate traits. 

Sexual selection is the selection of certain traits based on sexual preference by one of the sexes. This is typically seen as female choice driving the evolution of ornate plumage and elaborate songs used by males during courtship. Sexually selected traits are often very costly for males and can lower survivorship, however they increase fitness. Traits can be costly due to the energy required to have them, or they can attract predators. Brightly colored feathers can be a sexually selected trait that lowers survivorship because it makes the bird more peceptible to preadators. However, colorful wings increases fitness because females are attracted to colorful wings so the male is more likely to attract mates and therefore produce more offspring. In some cases, sexual selection can result in "run-away" sexual selection in which the males evolve very elaborate forms of ornamentation that keep evolving as female preference evolves to prefer more elaborate traits. An example of this is the tail feathers of peacocks. Peacocks that have a larger surface area of eye spots have more young that grow to reproductive age, so the fitness of peacocks increases with the number of eye spots they have on their tails. This provides evidence to support the hypothesis that female peacocks have a sexual preference towards males with many eye spots, indicating high ornamentation increases fitness. 

Chronic myelogenous leukemia is a cancer that affects the stem cells of white blood cells and causes them to become over-proliferative. These cancerous white blood cells look as if they properly differentiated, but they are not capable of fulfilling their proper function. Thus, the immune system suffers the consequences since white blood cells play such an important role. If a person with CML is left untreated, they will die in short order. Prior to the 1950s, patients would survive for an average of 2.5 years. Then, Busulfan was introduced to the market and the average life expectancy was increased to about 3.5 years. However, Busulfan was found to kill stem cells and was considered to be very detrimental to the health of the patient. Following the introduction of Busulfan, drug known as Hydroxyurea was created. It further increased the life expectancy to around 4.6 years, but also came with its own side effects. One more drug was introduced before oncologists discovered a drug that worked better than all of the others and had low side effects. This miracle drug was known as gleevec and as of 2011, it increased the survival rate of CML to 95%. Since the introduction of gleevec in 1998, the mortality rate of Chronic myelogenous leukemia has gone down dramatically, providing a ray of hope for those who suffer from the cancer.

  In the lab, 0.064 g sodium hydroxide and 0.200g 2-naphthol  were added to a flask. 3mL ethanol was then added to the flask. Then the solution was refluxed for 25 minutes and cooled for 3 minutes. 0.2mL N-butyl iodide was added to the solution and the solution was refluxed for one hour. Around the 10 minute left point in the reflux, 25 mL water was cooled in an ice bath. The reaction mixture was poured over 10 g of ice in a beaker and stirred until 95% of the ice had melted. The product was then collected via suction filtration. The product was rinsed with ice-cold water and dried under suction for 25 minutes. The melting point of the product was then taken. To analyze the polarity of the product, thin layer chromatography (TLC) was performed. A small amount of product was dissolved in ethyl acetate and a small amount of 2-naphthol was also dissolved in ethyl acetate. Then three TLC plates were prepared with three spots A, B and C from left to right (A was the 2-naphthol solution, B was 50% 2-naphthol solution and 50% product solution, and C was the product solution). One plate was run in 75:25 hexanes:EtOAc solution; one plate was run in 25:75 hexanes:EtOAc solution; and the third plate was run in 60:40 hexanes:EtOAc solution.