brettconnoll's blog

The Nova special The Great Human Odyssey follows the story of Homo sapiens and how we were able to become one of the most successful, and prominent species on the planet. The documentary starts with man’s origin using different fossils to piece together where our species originated. It was found that Humans originated in Africa and most likely the Great Rift Valley. From there the documentary goes on about how man was able to leave Africa taking on many different climates and ecosystems and conquering them all. This documentary does a great job of telling the entire story and kept me engaged the entire time. This documentary also does a great job at using evidence to support all of their claims, and hypothesis and they even let the viewer know where scientists just aren’t sure about things. One of my favorite parts of this documentary is when they begin explaining how humans adapted to living near the ocean. I find it fascinating that after so long humans are still able to do some of these great feats underwater, and it’s as if some people are born to swim. I had never thought of how strange it was that humans were such good swimmers and that we can hold our breath for so long. Humans really are an incredible and adaptive species.

            The end of the documentary had one of my favorite pieces of evidence, which was the sweet potato. This piece of evidence along with the burial site found in North America showed how man was able to colonize the New World. The sweet potato is especially important because it showed that humans were able to cross the Pacific Ocean from Asia and make it to South America. This great achievement would not have been able to happen if it weren’t for our great minds. Humans were able to build sophisticated boats, had intricate and accurate forms of navigation, and knew how to survive. Early man was everything but primitive and without our superior minds and stamina, we wouldn’t be in the same place we are today. 

Neurons are constantly using ATP and need to perform cellular respiration constantly. This requires a large amount of the bodies oxygen and glucose. In addition, the brain has low levels of Lactate dehydrogenase(LDH) which is in charge of converting pyruvate into lactate during anaerobic cellular respiration in humans. If the nervous system were to have a higher level of LDH then the cells would be able to operate better under conditions with little oxygen. Brain tissue is also unable to store glucose in the form of glycogen if levels get low having a storage of glucose could be beneficial to brain tissue. The brain is unable to break down fatty acids as a source of energy having a source of energy besides glucose could be beneficial when glucose is scarce.

Acetylcholine(ACh) is a neurotransmitter that is predominantly located amongst the peripheral nervous system but is also found in the central nervous system. Acetylcholinesterase(AChE) is an enzyme that removes excess acetylcholine from the synapse. The removal of the enzyme will cause a buildup of ACh, and in return, this causes overstimulation of glandular cells, autonomic ganglia, glial cells, the central nervous system, skeletal muscle, and smooth muscle. The two types of cholinergic neuron receptors nicotinic and muscarinic will both be affected differently. The nicotinic receptor controls a sodium and potassium ion channel the increased concentration of ACh will cause the channel to remain open. The muscarinic receptor controls the release of G proteins which can do a number of things in a cell-like open or close an ion channel, and activate or deactivate an enzyme.

What I learned in Statistics

                I had the opportunity to take statistics (stats) twice in college because I transferred schools. Both classes were geared towards science majors and had very similar goals. The first stats class that I took was team-based and they wanted students to get a good understanding of data collecting and understanding data distributions. The second class I took was online and was taught its students the general concepts of stats and how they can be applied to understand and organize data sets. Both classes have been applicable to many of my biology classes such as ecology, genetics, and general biology. The skills from stats that I used included finding the standard deviation, calculating the probability, understanding p values, and learning how to use programs like Microsoft Excel. In the advancing times, we are living in taking a stats class is incredibly important to anyone in the biology field.

The methods project showed the importance of a detailed methods section in a scientific paper, and the importance of how the methods section is formatted to present this information. In this project, I created a figure and wrote a methods section on how I created the figure. Then I had someone try and recreate my figure based on only my methods section. The differences in the figures in this paper can best be explained by a lack of detail in the methods section and the creator of the replicate not fully reading the methods section.

    Personally, I love koalas they are adorable and the thought of them being extinct is very scary. Currently, koala populations are on the decline and while people may be trying to help there still is no vaccine to help them. There has been some research done that shows that some populations of koalas do not have Chlamydia, however, how long will it be until they do have it. In my opinion, this is a terrible disease and needs more attention. If more attention is not given to the koalas it's only a matter of time before they are gone from this world completely. One of the more problematic things this disease causes is infertility. This could be catastrophes to wild and captive koalas. There may be a time where we have plenty of koalas left but they are unable to reproduce. Hopefully, more studies like this are done on Chlamydia and its effects on the koala.

The study looked at a total of 160 koalas outside of Moreton Bay in Southeast Queensland, Australia. They did full physical examinations of every koala and clinical tests for things like Chlamydia. Koalas are known to get two kinds of Chlamydia ocular, and urogenital each with its own set of symptoms and transmission. They found that 31% of the population tested positive for Chlamydia, with 4% having only ocular, 17% having only urogenital, and 10% having both ocular and urogenital. They also found that 29% of the koalas that were between ages 9 months to 13 months have Chlamydia. Koalas aged under 13 months are considered sexually immature. The prevalence of Chlamydia in young koalas suggests that the mothers giving their offspring Chlamydia, as well as passing it onto other individuals through sex. This broadens the diseases capabilities of infecting more koalas and brings researchers one step closer to creating a vaccine.

The goal of this study was to get a better understanding of the transmission of Chlamydia in Koalas in Queensland Australia. In addition, this research will later be used to help create a vaccine in order to help the rapidly declining populations of koalas. Currently, koala populations are being decimated throughout Australia due to Chlamydia and not much is being done to assist the koalas in fighting this disease. The research team wanted to get an idea of how prevalent Chlamydia was in the populations of koalas around Queensland Australia. They hoped that the information gained from this can help in fighting the proliferation of this disease.

  The main difference between the two figures which is the addition of panel D in the replicate can be explained by the creator of the replicate not fully reading the methods section. There is no mention of a panel D anywhere in the methods section only three panels a, b, and c were described. If the creator of the replicated figure did not fully read the methods it could also explain some of the other differences that were observed between the two figures. It could also explain why some of the figures were labeled the wrong letter. However, while misinterpretation and not fully reading the methods can explain some differences there were some faults in the methods section itself that lead to the differences in the figures.