Drafts

In one of my first drafts, my entry was about my newly purchased aloe vera plant. It was mostly in good shape besides a few brown spots on one of the sprouts. Today it has been a month since the purchase. Unfortunately, though the plant is in average shape, it is slowly dying. The sprouts contain more brown spots, and the plant has even begun to spread. At first, I thought this was because I had not watered it, but the plant itself does not need water for at least every 3 weeks. Then I thought it was because the plant wasn’t exposed to enough sunlight. Taking it outside in the sun for a few hours a day only made the plant worse. I researched and did everything I could but for some reason the plant was not healing. This leads me to believe that the pot it is in is too small and there is not enough/not the right type of soil. This week I will be buying a larger pot and also purchasing cactus soil to see if it helps better the condition of my aloe vera plant before it withers.

Goldenrods are members of the family  Asteraceae (asters) and are in the genus solidago. They are common plants in the local area, often growing on the edges of disturbed habitat such as roadsides and on the borders of agricultural fields and forests. They flower bright yellow from the end of summer into autumn and often occupy large areas of land, creating vast fields of shades of yellow, ranging from yellowish white to schoolbus yellow. Their stems are often hairy (pubescent) and have thin ellyptic leaves. Goldenrod leaves, especially  those from the Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima) are often used in teas as a decongestant. their bright flowers can be made into dye or paint. They are closely related to asters which as afformentioned share the same family with goldenrods. Asters present as daisy-like flowers usually white, yellowish, and a bright purple. Flower size can vary between aster species. They bloom around the same time as their close relatives the goldenrods. Asters are also used as a decongestant and have been used by herbalists and ancient peoples as a fever reducer. 

It's amazing to me just how much stress can affect us and our every day lives. When we feel stressed it is because our brain is releasing high levels of the hormone cortisol - the stress hormone. High levels of stress can affect how much sleep you get, and lack of sleep has been proven to have a number of detrimental effects. A combination of stress effects can lead to depression and severley limit levels of productivity.  Lower levels of productivity can lead to results in work that are less than satisfactory and may keep the cycle going of negative experiences. It is important to manage stress and try to keep cortisol levels low. While stress is just another part of life that we have to face, it's important to get to know how to manage stress levls when they get high so that it doesn't affect day-to-day life so much. Regularly taking small breaks from work and breaking tasks up into smaller portions can be an effective way to manage workloads and the stress that comes with them. While there is no end to the stress that may come our way, it is still important to acknowledge that it will be coming and that there are steps we can take to try to lower stress levels and make the best of what's in ahead of us.

Today I got the flu vaccine. It is commomly known as influenza and can be a potentially serious disease that can be so severe that you need to be hospitlized. Millions of people get the flue every year, and so many people die from when it is too severe. I got the flu vaccine to make sure that I do not get sick during the swim season. An annual vaccine is very important to protect yourself. The vaccine can help you avoid getting the flue. Flu vaccines cause antibodies to develop in the body for about two weeks after the vaccination. These antibodies provie protection against infection with the viruses that are in the vaccine. 

I would like to talk about nutrition. Nutrition is the science that interprets the interaction of nutrition and other substancs in food in relation to maintenance and growth. I think it is a very important topic as I believe not many people know the importance of proper eating. As an athlete, I need to consume a certain amount of calories and if I do not do this, I will be burning muscles instead of burning fat. I think it is important to see a nutritionist and consider what nutrients are in the foods. For example, it is important to differentiate the good fats from the bad fats, and to know that avocado's are good fats, but McDonald's is bad fats. To know that it is better to eat many meals during the day rather than eating large meals few times a day.

Wheat is a grass grown throughout the world for its seed, and it makes up the genus Triticum. Three commonname types of wheat are Einkorn, Durum, and Bread Wheat. Einkorn, sicentific name being Triticum monococcum, is a wheat that has one seed per spikelet. A spikelet is teh absic unit of a grass flower with one or two florets on the tip. Einkorn wheat is not widely cultivated, and the glumes fit tightly around the seed, providing a seed covering. Durum wheat, scientific name being Triticum durum, is grown in Spain, Italy, and the US. Unlike Einkorn, Durum has naked seeds with no covering, and it is good for making pasta. Bread wheat, scientific name being Triticum aestivum, has several different subspecies and is used for making bread. A big difference between these three types of wheat is that they all have different chromosome counts. Einkorn has 7 pairs of chromosomes, Durum has 14 pairs, and Bread wheat has 21 pairs. 

Recently in my Animal Behavior class, we were required to listen to a podcast that discussed the bias of scientific research being done. The man speaking was speaking on behalfs of biologists that studied invertebrates. He said that when someone he knew submitted a grant proposal for an inverterbate subject, it got denied. Another scientist then replied to this news saying that it was much harder to get a grant approved when working with invertebrate organisms as opposed to vertebrates, which got a lot of immediate backlash from the surrounding researchers. The speaker said he looked into this and found a very clear-cut gap in the amount of research being done on invertebrates vs. vertebrate organisms. So much research was being performed on vertebartes because scientists feel it relates more to humans and they only care about the scientific development in relation to our own species. The podcast the went on to talk about his story and how he attempted to bring light to this issue. I do not think he got very far in his case, but it is still an issue that needs to be addressed and re-assessed. 

Plants are photosynthetic eukaryotes. Photosynthesis is the act of coverting light energy to chemical energy. Phtosynthesis evolved in bacteria, speficially cyanobacteria, and plants and algae are responsible for most of the transfer of energy in the biosphere. Photosynthetic eukaryotes first developed when an archae-like cell engulfed an aerobic bacterium. This is known as endosymbiosis and created a proto-eukaryote. This eukaryote then englufed cyanobacteria, a photosynthetic prokaryote, which then turned into a chloroplast to produce a photosynthetic eukaryote. The first cyanobacteria were like completely identical to modern-day cyanobacteria because they first used electrons from hydrogen sulfide, which later produced our oxygen-rich atmosphere. 

What is and what is not a plant is very unclear and debated. The main criteria of plants are cellulose in the cell wall, they store food as starch in plastids, they have phragmoplasts and plasmodesmata, and they photosynthesize. This creates a general idea of what is a plant, but there are some algae we consider plants that do not fit all this criteria. Nowadays, what people consider plants are mostly our modern-day land plants and green algae. 

Free resources in the scientific field are often hard to come by. There are free online publication websites, sometimes free editing software like Inkscape, and few other options. Usually free versions of things are a reduced sample of what you are looking for, and the total access is only provided with charge. I understand that the requirement of money is in order to sustain the platform, journal, whatever the source may be. There is also the notion that many of the presidents, editors, CEOs, and owners are extremely weathly people that have little to gain from an increased income when their pockets are already as deep as the ocean. The fundemental way of knowledge and research being shared for profit needs to change.

Of course the research requires money sought from grants and proposals and scholarships. But when those funds culminate in a conclusive publication with earth-shattering discoveries and proof of novel findings, why should only those who can afford the luxury have access to new knowledge of the very world they are living in? Scholastic articles should be nonprofit in order for the world to profit from its writing. 

Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced in the adrenal cortez of the adrenal medulla. It has many different functions in the body including, but not limited to higher blood glucose, and regulated metabolism. However, sometimes cortisol levels become too high and can cause levels of stress and anxiety. People with Cushing’s disease have been exposed to high levels of cortisol for a long time. On the opposite spectrum, Addison’s disease is a condition where cortisol levels are too low, and because of this, they rarely feel stress and as a result are unmotivated individuals.

Cortisol is also part of a feedback loop including CRH produced in the hypothalamus, and ACTH, produced in the anterior pituitary. When the cortisol levels are high, it negatively feedbacks/inhibits CRH levels and when cortisol levels are too low, it is not strong enough to have a negative feedback loop on CRH.