Writing in Biology

Science has come a long way since ancient times. Back then, people believed that bad smells caused disease and good smells kept people healthy. So doctors wore masks with good smells when treating patients with bad smells indicative of disease. I find this ironic because it was a good practice for the wrong reason. It shows that when a belief is widely held, especially if it is held by credible people, it prevails as the truth. In the 1700’s in England a woman named Lady Montagu promoted vaccinations as a means to cure smallpox and was consequently met with resistance from local physicians. After the death of her brother, she had her son “variolated” in Turkey, where they introduced a virus from the pus of someone with smallpox into his system. Although small pox was a widespread problem with no known cure, physicians were unable to consider the idea of vaccination. It may have been because Lady Montagu was a woman, and women generally had no voice in science at the time. She was also not a scientist and did not have anyone in her network that could corroborate her theory. Nowadays, we might believe that we rely on solid evidence to support our beliefs, but I think we will always have a desire to support the ideas of people around us. We will always have subconscious biases we can’t control. As long as we are aware of that, we can challenge false information and come up with new ideas, even if they sound crazy at first. Hundreds of years from now, we might look back on us now and realize that some of the scientific ideas we had were not entirely true. But that is partly what makes science an exciting field, that there is always something new for us to find.  

The study was done on mice to see whether stress can affect the brain and sleep. One set of mice were exposed to stress and their sleep brain waves were monitored. What was found was that the mice that were introduced to the stress had developed depression. This was shown through less interest in their daily activities and eat less. The regulation of stress was found to be part of the hippocampuses job. The was the hippocampus was involved was due to the release of stress hormones. Along with the combination of increased REM sleep and mixing in the stressors there is a change in mood. The brain wants the body to sleep more to reduce the stress that was induced. The increase in REM sleep is an early marker to show how the brain will attempt to compensate for the decreased state of mind.

A disease that was once essentially eradicated from the nation is making a very scary come back. Measles is a highly infectious disease. It infects pretty much anyone that it comes in contact with. It is able to do this because the virus particles are especially small and travel in droplets like spit and mucus through the air. If is so infectious that if someone who is infected with it sneezes in a room anyone walking into the room within the coming hours will very likely contract measles. There is an outbreak currently in oregon and washington that is very concerning just because measles is so contagious and there is a large population of people who haven’t been vaccinated against measles in that area. The government is trying to track the cases of people with measles and measles has made it’s way into a lot places. For example an infected person went to a Portland trail blazers game exposing thousands of people in a relatively confined area. An infected person has visited the airport infecting thousands more. This is a really scary virus and many people have now been exposed. The number of sick people is currently around 45 which is way higher than the normal 1 to 2. This virus was effectively eliminated from the United States but now due to anti-vaxxers and unprotected world travelers it has made it’s way back and will definitely cause a lot of harm to those infected.

The article that I read had an abstract section that gives the reader a little background information on what it is about. The main point of the article was to figure out how urban birds tend to produce smaller and lighter offspring than rural birds. The introduction section talks about how human populations are growing and migrate to urban areas and how this change is having an impact on urban birds. I learn that “in general, life-history theory predicts that adult birds under threat of predation will reduce offspring feeding rates and consequently have reduced nestling growth rates”. I was surprised to find out that urban birds tend to reproduce less because of fear of predation, why not rural birds? because rural birds would have a greater chance of eating by their preys than urban birds.

The invention of smartphones has led almost everyone to be constantly connected, whether that be through messaging or social media platforms. People have implemented time during the day to check applications on their phones to the point where it becomes automatic. Moreover, there’s a pressure to be caught up on people's’ lives and to have read the latest updates. The thought of not having a smartphone is no longer imaginable in today’s society as the age range of individuals with devices also widens. Although phones have provided major facility and convenience to everyday life, they are unfortunately a distraction for most. As for students. smartphones are being brought everyday and being continually checked. An entire lecture or an entire meal cannot go on without checking ones phone. An healthier way to continue the use of your phone on a daily basis while lowering the distractions, is to set designated times during the day when one can check his or her phone. These periods of time should not extend for over 30 minutes and should not be right before bed to avoid interference with being able to sleep. Overall, even the slightest efforts to look up from one’s screen and instead admire the people and places around them is insightful.

Tiktaalik is a monospecific genus of extinct lobe-finned fish. It is monospecific because Tiktaalik roseae is the only species classified under the genus. It lived during the Late Devonian Period about 375 million years ago, and although it generally had the characteristics of a lobe-finned fish, it also had traits similar to tetrapods. Not only did Tiktaalik have gills, scales and fins, like a fish, it also had rib bones, lungs and a mobile neck. It also had intermediate features, such as radiating, fish-like fins coupled with a functional wrist joint, and a half-fish, half-tetrapod ear region. Because of its amalgamation of features, Tiktaalik is referred to as a "transitional fossil": while not an ancestor to any living animal, it is evidence of the intermediate forms that bridged the evolutionary gap between fish with fins and animals with arms and legs.

Tobacco use in teenagers causes paranoia and disturbances in their lives. Scientists attempted to answer this question by factoring in socio-economic status and gender. Scientists formed a study in which 3700 teenager twins were used as subjects in the study. One of the twins were smokers while the other one wasn’t. This allowed for the scientists to eliminate most of the differences between the subjects. It was found that the twin that smoked had more paranoia and was hallucinating more. Paranoia is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Having imbalances would affect how the neurotransmitters are sent throughout the brain. Parents had also noticed that there was disorganized thinking and a lack of motivation.

          Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet is a documentary made by Mark Kitchell and inspired by the book of the same name by Philip Shabecoff. Shabecoff named the book after the phrase used by a forest ranger to describe the look in the eyes of a wolf he had killed, which awakened the ranger’s understanding of his role in the “web of life” and the consequences of chipping away at that web. The film chronicles the environmental movement of the last half century, told through five acts, each with a central story and character. These acts include David Brower and the Sierra Club’s battle to halt dams in the Grand Canyon, Lois Gibbs and Love Canal residents’ struggle against 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals, Paul Watson and Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals, Chico Mendes and Brazilian rubber tappers’ fight to save the Amazon rainforest, and Bill McKibben and his 25-year effort to address climate change. Woven throughout these main stories are shared themes like environmental justice, valuing the land simply for the land’s sake, and humanity’s place as simply one strand in the web of life. Vivid archival footage offers viewers first hand insights into the stories and informative interviews shed light on the events in larger context. The film offers a deeper view of environmentalism as civilizational change, bringing our industrial society into sustainable balance with nature.

A keystone species is defined as an organism that helps to define an entire ecosystem. No other species can fill its ecological niche, and without it the ecosystem would be very different or cease to exist. Passenger pigeons are an example of one keystone species that once filled the skies. They once made up about 25-40 percent of the total bird population when Europeans first discovered America. This would be nearly half, if not more than the current human population. Passenger pigeons were a keystone species because they influenced forests by both enriching them, and also by acting as  a dominating force which must have manipulated their ecosystem with their vast and sky-blackening migrations. I think that we should prioritize keystone species above other conservation to a certain degree because it can be argued that every species has an important role. Sadly, it is usually hard to tell what species are keystone species until it is too late, which is why we should conserve as many species as possible because any of these could be keystone species.

Most biochemical reactions occur in aqueous environments, meaning that these reaction occur in water. Seeing as these biochemical reactions involve organic molecules, the interaction of water with these molecules have to be taken into account. You see, water reacts differently between polar/ionic molecules and non-polar molecules. Ionic and polar molecules have their bonds easily interrupted by water and individual atoms/ions end up surrounded by water molecules. In contrast, water molecules cannot disrupt non-polar bonds and so surround entire molecules. This leads to the clumping of non-polar molecules. Separate clumps of non-polar molecules tend to aggregate due to the stability achieved when water molecules are most entropic. To limit the the amount of water molecules surrounding individual non-polar molecules, all non-polar molecules in the aqueous environment are clumped together. This is referred to as the hydrophobic effect. It plays an important role in protein folding and structure formation.