cslavin's blog

I walked from the front entrance of Morril 3 down the stair case that was slightly to my left and I then crossed the street. Once on the sidewalk, I turned right. After taking 8 steps, I veered left and walked down the hill towards a tree. I positioned myself facing the side of the tree that was labled "black oak". I then took a step to my left and squatted down about six inches from the tree. Keeping my back at a 90 degree angle to the ground, I took a picture of the moss holding my camera tilted downward at about a 45 degree angle. I then stood back up and took half a step to my right. Still about 6 inches away, I took a picture of the tree with the left edge of the "black oak" sign lining up with middle of the camera screen and vertically centered. I then squatted back down and took a close up picture of the brightest section of moss right in front of me. I took this picture with the camera about 1 inch away from the tree. 

Once I took my 3 photographs, I pasted them on a word document in the order I took them on a Mac laptop. I clicked on each picture and changed the text wrap layot to square by clicking layout>arrange>warp text> square. I made each photo a width of 2.13" and a height of 2.84" and had the edges overlapping to form a smooth rectangular edge. Then I made 3 textboxes and filled them all in black. I centered the text and changed the font to calibri (body) size 16 and color to white for all 3 textboxes. I wrote a in one box and dragged it to the top left corner of the first photograph. Then I wrote b in another box and dragged it to the top left corner of the second picture, and then I wrote c in the last text box and dragged it to the top left corner of the last picture. Then I took a screenshot of the figure by pressing comand, shift, and 4 at the same time. 

I walked from the front entrance of Morril 3 down the stair case that was slightly left and across the street. Once on the sidewalk, I turned right. After taking 8 steps, I veered left and walked down the hill towards a tree. I positioned myself facing the side of the tree that was labled "black oak". Then I took a step to my left and squatted down about six inches from the tree. Keeping my back at a 90 degree angle to the ground, I took a picture of the moss holding my camera tilted downward at about a 45 degree angle. Then I stood back up and took half a step to my right. Still about 6 inches away, I took a picture of the tree with the left edge of the "black oak" sign lining up with middle of the camera screen and vertically centered. Then I squatted back down and took a close up picture of the brightest section of moss right in front of me. I took this picture with the camera about 1 inch away from the tree. 

Figure 1. Dumbo Octopus. The average length of an adult dumbo octopus is between 8 and 12 inches. The average life span is between 3 and 5 years. Photo by NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research, available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanexplorergov/14142089822/   license CC BY-SA 2.0

The main function of the nervous and endocrine system is communication between tissues. The two systems work to complete that function in different ways. The nervous system acts fast to make localized responses, while the endocrine system is slow and makes global responses. The nervous system typicially responds to one area of the body. For example, skeletal muscle will react to a stimuli and imediately illicit a responses. The endocrine system releases hormones into the blood stream. They circulate the body and activate cells with receptors for that horomone. 

There are 8 different types of blood. These types of blood are classifed by the receptors found on their plasma membranes. Red blood cells can have 3 different receptors: A, B, and/or Rh. Different blood types are very specific in reconizing "self" from foriegn substances. Blood types that do not contain a specific type of receptor have antibodies against those receptors. If another type of blood was transfused, the antibodies would attack the foriegn blood. Blood type O- is the universal donor because it lacks all receptors, while blood type AB+ can only donate to AB+ blood. However, AB+ blood can recieve blood from all other types of blood because it does not have any antibodies.  Blood types that have antibodies against a certain type of receptor cannot recive blood from a blood type with that receptor. Likewise, blood that has certain receptors cannot donate to blood that has antibodies against that type of receptor. 

The rate of photosynthesis is primarily limited by light level and carbon uptake. However, resource availability and competition can also limit tree growth. Trees need water and nutrients in order to grow. Specifically, trees need nitrogen and phosphorus in large amounts. These nutrients are often needed in greater quantities than available in soil. Nitrogen, which is needed for growth, reproduction, and photosynthesis, exists in organic and inorganic forms. Trees can only uptake two major inorganic forms, nitrate and ammonium. Therefore, trees have to rely on nitrogen-fixing organisms in order to obtain the large quanity of nitrogen necessary for survival. Likewise, phosphorus can exist in organic and inorganic forms and is not always available for uptake by the tree. Phosphorus binds tightlyto particles in the soil that make it hard for the trees to access, so trees also have to rely on water flow in order to receive most of their phosphorus. They can also get it from microbial activity or decomposition of microbes or other organisms. In addition to nutrients, soil composition effects the amount of water a tree can access.  Large soil particles hold a greater amount of water than coarse soils. Since nitrogen is taken up by roots mainly through bulk transport, particle size can limit the amount of water and minerals taken up by trees. Soil also effects tree growth through cation exchange capacity. A soil that has a large cation exchange capacity is able to attract and hold ammonium, reducing the amount of nitrogen leached from the soil. 

Today in biochemistry we learned about the charges of amino acids and the effect that those charges have on structure. Acidic and basic amino acids have R-groups that can ionize. The individual R-groups have different pKa values at which they deprotonate. Each peptide chain also has an N-terminus at the front of the chain and C-terminus at the end which are cabale of ionizing. Certain amino acids cannot be next to each other on peptide chains due to opposing charges. When two positively or two negatively amino acids are next to each other, they will repel each other. This greatly effects the structure of the protien. This is a problem because protein structure determines its function. Therefore, if there are structural issues then this will effect the overall function of the protien. 

Although other factors influence tree growth, the amount of light receive by a tree has a large effect on growth. Because the amount of sunlight can be limiting to tree growth, the different slopes should have some effect on tree growth on mountains. It is known that the south facing slope in the northern hemisphere receives more direct sunlight due to the Earth’s tilted axis. If sunlight is the only direct factor that determines tree growth, trees on a southern slope of a mountain should grow larger than trees on the northern slope. Sunlight, however, is not the only factor that determines tree growth. Nutrients and water availablity have a significant impact. Plant require abundant amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen. These nutrients are not always readily available in soil. These nutrients come in different forms. Trees can only take up a couple of these different forms. Therefore, bacteria can be necessary to convert the bacteria to useable forms. 

The rate of photosynthesis can be limited by light levels and carbon uptake. However, resource availability and competition are also limiting to tree growth. Trees need water and minerals in order to grow. Specifically, trees need large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. However, these nutrients are often limiting because they are needed in greater quantities than available in soil. Nitrogen is needed for growth, reproduction, and photosynthesis. It exists in organic and inorganic forms in soil, however trees can only uptake two major inorganic forms, nitrate and ammonium. Therefore, trees have to rely on nitrogen-fixing organisms in order to obtain the amounts of nitrogen necessary for survival. Likewise, phosphorus is present in soil in organic and inorganic forms, but it is not always available for the tree to uptake. Phosphorus binds tightlyto particles in the soil that make it hard for the trees to access. Trees also have to rely on other organisms in order to receive most of their phosphorus. They can get it from microbial activity or decomposition of microbes or other organisms. Additionally, the soil composition effects the amount of nutrients and water a tree can access.  Large soil particles hold a greater amount of water than coarse soils. Since nitrogen is taken up by roots mainly through bulk transportation of water through the xylem, soil particle size can limit the amount of water and minerals taken up by trees. Another way soil can play a role in nutrient availability is through cation exchange capacity. A soil that has a large cation exchange capacity is able to attract and hold ammonium, reducing the amount of nitrogen leached from the soil.