Final 20 Time Blog Post

During the course of the long 20 Time project, I learned and reflected about myself and the topic that I have been researching and exploring for a few months: hypertension(high blood pressure). This post is the compilation of all the work and research that I have come up with, and there were some pretty interesting results that came up.

One of the first things I did was take a poll about awareness about hypertension and people who knew people who had hypertension, the results were pretty interesting(although some results were not completely accurate):

The next thing I did was an experiment in order to get a better understanding of blood pressure and things that affect blood pressure. I called this experiment the Controlling Blood Pressure Experiment and it was one of the first steps in my 20 Time experiment. The next big step I took in my project was a Blood Pressure Log, where I recorded and compared a person with normal blood pressure(me) and a person who has hypertension(my dad), and it yielded pretty interesting results.

Finally, I put all my research into one final paper(Hypertension: A Growing Problem), where I discussed the subject of hypertension in a little more detail and compiled my thoughts and ideas about the subject.

In the end, I think I accomplished the goal I set at the beginning of the project: to really explore and find out what hypertension is and how it applies to the real world. After doing experiments and researching the topic further I gained a better understanding of what hypertension is and how it affects normal people like me. Overall, I think I would give myself an A in terms of my learning experience from this project both scientifically and personally.

Pig Dissection

During the pig dissection, we set out to observe and discover pig anatomy, which is similar to human anatomy, and as a result not only did we learn about the different systems and parts we were also able to see the things we learned about in the unit in a real world scenario. As we learned about the how the systems of the body maintain homeostasis in an organism, dissecting a fetal pig was a really good way to observe how systems such as the digestive, circulatory, and respiratory fit in the organism and how this would, therefore, contribute to maintaining homeostasis. In addition, the dissection was quite fun, as we got to have a hands-on way of learning, and my favorite part was observing the organs in the fetal pig and how they connected and worked together to create a working organism. 

Overall, I think the pig dissection was a valuable experience, as not only was doing it a fun hands-on lab that was educational, I think it was a unique way to learn about anatomy and function of the human body through a fetal pig. I would recommend any future students to really get the full experience of dissecting the pig and observing the anatomy, as it really gives a new perspective to the unit "Physiology", even if it may seem a little gross at first.

20 Time Individual Reflection

In the beginning of the 20 time project, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do and I was pretty clueless about what I was going to do for the project. The idea of hypertension popped into my mind when I thought of my dad and how he suffered from this unfortunate condition, attributed to his lifestyle as a child. I realized that this was a problem that few people knew or knew very little of and decided to research deeper into the topic. At first, I was not sure about what I was going to do with this subject, after all, hypertension isn't the easiest thing to do a project on. In the end, I decided to do research on the topic as well as doing an experiment, and even keeping a daily log of me and my dad's blood pressures. In effect, I had a wide variety of things that I wanted to do with this project and it was definitely a bit of a challenge.

By the end of the project, I was proud to say that the 20 time project was pretty successful. Although I had to revise my original plan and had a few time management problems as a result, I would say that I got a better understanding of hypertension. I did some research on hypertension for my own knowledge, as I wanted to know more about what really happens when someone has hypertension and things that could potentially prevent it. In addition, I did an experiment with a group of people, where I put them through different tasks such as exercising or listening to music and recorded the effect on their blood pressures. I also took a daily log of me and my dad's blood pressures for 30 days and compared the results as a way to compare a person with high blood pressure versus a person with normal blood pressure. After I finished all of these I got a better understanding of what hypertension was and how it affects people internally and externally.

During the course of the project, not only did I learn about hypertension, and its effects on people, I also learned a few things while doing the project. Time management was a big part of the project and in the beginning of the project, I didn't do much work on the project as other work from other classes took priority, and by the end of the project, I was running out of time. I also learned about adaptability, as in the beginning of the project I really had to change the idea for my project, as coming up with ideas for my project was fairly hard. Finally, if I were to do this project again, I would definitely plan better in terms of ideas and time management, and I would also consult an "expert" before I started or someone who knows a fair bit about hypertension, before starting the project. Overall, I think my project was successful and I learned alot about hypertension and about myself at the same time.

Unit 9 Reflection

In Unit 9, we learned about the classification and taxonomy of life on Earth. In this unit, we discovered the several billions of species that lived and evolved on the planet, creating the environment we live in today. In order to study and observe the evolution and survival of organisms, we use taxonomy to name and classify these organisms. Organisms are classified into 8 different taxonomic levels: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, depending on their phylogeny(evolutionary relationships) and their characteristics. Based on biochemical and genetic differences, life is organized into three domains: the Archaea who live in extreme places like hot springs and digestive tracts of animals, bacteria who can be harmful or helpful, and eukarya which include animals, plants, fungi, and protists. Domain bacteria include mostly unicellular organisms which come in varieties of shapes and act as decomposers, nitrogen fixers, and can even be used in biotech. Viruses, on the other hand, are small nonliving infectious particles that are enclosed in a protein coat or membranous envelopes, which can help virus infection.

Domain Eukarya is the largest domain and contains animals, plants, fungi, and protists. Fungi are made of chitin and hyphae, which helps absorb food, and act as food, antibiotics, and pathogens. Plants on the other hand are photosynthetic and come in four main phyum: Bryophyta(mosses, seedless, nonvascular), Pterophyta(ferns, vascular, roots, leaves), Gymnosperms(cone-bearing plants, pollen, seeds), and angiosperms(flowering plants, fruit). Finally, animals are the most diverse and come in many different shapes and sizes, like invertebrate(Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Molluska, Annelidia, Arthropods, and chordata, which are mostly vertebrates,(Agnatha, Condricthyes, Osteicthyes, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves, and Mammalia).

A large portion of our unit was dedicated to the What on Earth Evolved Presentation, where we had to pick a significant species in the evolution of life and do a presentation on that species. For my presentation I picked the honeybee, and as I worked on my presentation I definetely felt a lot of freedom and choice as I created my slides, learning a lot about the honeybee along the way. Probably the hardest part was giving the actual presentation, which had to be between 4 and 8 minutes, in front of the whole class. Luckily learned that practice makes perfect (the easy way) and the presentation was pretty smooth, even though I was a little nervous. In the endd, not only did I learn that honeybees are essential to our environment and our lives, I also learned that giving a good presentation requires knowing and understanding your information and practicing it before hand to make it as good as it can be.

Geological Timeline Reflection

Earth's history is long and ever-changing, shaped by major events that altered Earth as we know it, but three major events were especially important in constructing the world we live in today. Probably the most important event, that allowed most if not all life to thrive, is the oxygenation of Earth which occurred about 2.3 billion years ago and was caused by the photoautotroph cyanobacteria. Oxygen produced by photosynthesis (cyanobacteria), helped to give rise to other organisms and eventually multicellular eukaryotes. In addition, the movement of arthropods onto land and eventually larger vertebrates was also a big event in Earth's history. Movement onto land led organisms thriving off the plants, eventually leading to more advanced organisms like reptiles and mammals. Finally, the evolution of mammals, specifically humans, was one of the most important events in the history of the Earth. Humans, Homo sapiens, have had one of the greatest impacts on the Earth in such a short time.

During the course of the geological timeline project, we had to observe and measure out the scale and size of Earth's history, and throughout this process, several things surprised me. First, is how long the Earth took to develop: the first bacteria/prokaryotes appeared about halfway through Earth's history and the first eukaryotic life forms appeared about 500-600 million years ago (Earth is 4.6 billion years ago). Another thing that surprised me was how short of time humans have been on the planet, so short in fact that it was impossible to mark how long humans had been on Earth on the geological timeline we made. Finally, another interesting thing I observed that is somewhat related to the scale of Earth's history, is how life has exponentially evolved in complexity so much that we as humans have only been here for about 200,000 years back to our oldest ancestor.

As I begin to observe the history of the Earth, I realized that humans have made such a big impact on the planet in such a small amount of time. Humans have been on the Earth for a micro-fraction of time, and yet we have become so advanced surpassing any other species in intelligence by a longshot. And yet we over the past 100 years, which is a blink of an eye in geological terms, we have also damaged the planet heavily with pollutants, causing global warming and other climate change issues. Earth has existed in the universe for 4.6 billion years, but the human race, which has only become civilized has caused more damage to the planet than any other organism that has ever existed on the planet. There have been a total of five mass extinctions in the Earth's history and if we don't do anything about it, there might be a sixth one.

First Experiment and Moving Forward (20 Time)

During the past few weeks, I have been working on my 20 time project with a steady pace. In addition to my research, I have done an experiment to test ways to lower blood pressure. I have taken a group of friends and ran them through some tests, such as playing video games, listening to music, etc. and see how these tasks affect their blood pressure. I got good results from the experiment and I might run some more tests on other people so I can get more data for my experiment. As a result of this experiment, I have learned about what simple tasks people with high blood pressure can do to lower their blood pressure. Although I have done this experiment, I plan, with the data I have gathered, to maybe do a longer term experiment and for a length of a few weeks to a month try to lower my blood pressure, recording my progress over the weeks. In order to do this, I can use the data from my previous experiment and other sources to determine what I can do to lower my blood pressure and increase my overall health. I hope that I can use the information I have gathered during 20 time to spread awareness about high blood pressure and potentially help others manage their health.

Unit 8 Reflection

 In Unit 8, we learned about the concepts of evolution and natural selection and how this affected and continues to affect ur world today. In order to have evolution, there are a few things that must be established. First, is variation, or differences in traits within a population, allowing, therefore, artificial selection, human breeding, or natural selection, the process of weeding out the not beneficial traits and letting individuals who have beneficial traits survive and reproduce. As a result, allele frequency begins to change, as natural selection weeds out the bad phenotypes, causing the population to evolve. Although natural selection is the most common cause of evolution, there are other causes of evolution, including genetic drift(a random event), gene flow(movement of alleles), mutations, and sexual selection(selecting for traits that improve mating success). Speciation, caused by reproductive isolation, is a result of evolution, as a species can be behavioral, geographically, or temporally isolated, eventually evolving until the two separate populations cannot reproduce. Even though evolution is a very reinforced theory, there is little evidence, only things like embryology, vestigial structures, and fossils like homologous or analogous structures give us proof of evolution. Throughout Earth's history from the Precambrian Era to the Cenozoic Era, evolution by natural selection has played a big role in creating the world we live in today.

During the course of the unit, I have been working on being more assertive as we learned in Unit 7. Throughout the unit, I have been working on speaking more clearly, louder, and generally more assertively. In addition, I have been trying to speak and share more in not just biology, but in other classes like English or math. Furthermore, I am also working on being more on improving my body language and I have also improved on my overall teamwork skills by working more assertively in a group. By the end of Unit 8, I was a lot more assertive than at the beginning of the unit and I hope to improve on my assertiveness as the year goes on.

Hunger Games Lab Analysis

1. In the Hunger Games Lab, the class split into three different phenotypes: the Stumpys, who picked up food with their wrists, knucklers, who could only pick up food with their knuckles, and pinchers, who could only pick up food with their fingers. The goal was basically to get the most food in order to survive and reproduce with another individual. This essentially simulated a real-world population of organisms trying to survive and reproduce in the real world and evolution as a result of natural selection.

2. The phenotype that was the best for capturing food were the pinchers because they could pick up the corks, which were the "food", the best and were, as a result the most adapted. In addition, the pinchers were also tied with the knucklers if not more in population.

3. Yes, the population did evolve, which was proven by the change in allele frequency, as the "a" allele became more common and the "A" allele became less common. In the beginning of the lab, the allele frequencies were equal, and by the end of the lab, the "a" allele was about two-thirds of the total alleles.

4. In the lab, the things that were not random were the phenotypes of the individuals and their ability to get their food, but the dispersion of the food and the offspring of two individuals were random.

5. Yes, the results could be different if the food was larger or smaller. For example, if the food was too large for the knucklers to pick up, then disruptive selection would act upon the population and the pinchers and stumpys would become more common. But if the food was smaller, then the stumpys would have a harder time, and directional selection would occur, moving toward the extreme phenotype.

6. There would be a difference if there was no incomplete dominance because there woud be no knucklers and there would be a more likely chance to get a stumpy than a pincher if a stumpy and pincher mated. As a result, the results of the lab could have been altered.

7. Natural selection causes evolution, as natural selection weeds out the alleles that are not beneficial and leaves the best alleles, therefore causing a change in allele frequency and evolution.

8. In the course of the lab, some individuals "cheated" as they did not follow the phenotype they were assigned, giving them an advantage. In nature, there really is no "cheating", instead the behaviors and traits that the organisms have are used to survive and give them an advantage over other species so that they can survive and reproduce.

9.  In evolution, the individual doesn't evolve, the population evolves because an individual is stuck with the traits it gets but as natural selection acts upon the population, it slowly causes evolution as every generation changes. In addition, natural selection acts on the phenotype, as it weeds out the traits or the phenotypes that don't benefit the population, not the alleles or the genotype.

10. One question that I still have after this lab, is why do organisms in the same area have different traits if only the best traits are left in population? Why don't species in the same environment evolve to have the same best traits, for example, if a big strong jaw with sharp teeth is such a successful trait in tigers, why don't gazelles or giraffes have big, sharp teeth?

 

Preparation for Experimentation (20 Time)

My 20 Time project is about finding the causes and effects of high blood pressure, in order to spread awareness about this common disease. So far the first two weeks of 20 tie have been used to gather information about high blood pressure which I have been doing in class and also creating my hypothesis for my experiment. In addition, I have consulted my dad, who is a "victim" of high blood pressure and I have learned the main causes of high blood pressure, which will become the variables that I will be testing. Furthermore, my dad gave me advice on measuring blood pressure and the types of medication that are used to treat high blood pressure. My next step is to start my experiment and begin to collect samples for my data and analysis. Overall, my end goal is to spread awareness about high blood pressure/hypertension, as it is a serious medical issue that many people don't know or have little knowledge about.

Unit 7 Reflection

In Unit 7, we mainly focused on ecology, the study of interactions between organisms and the environment. There were two main, or big, ideas in ecology that we studied and focused on through the course of the unit: homeostasis which is the balance and health of an environment and interdependence which says that all living things are dependent on one another for survival. Furthermore, there were other main ideas that we focused on, including the habitat, the niche which is the role/place of an organism, biotic and abiotic factors, and the different levels of organization. So in order to show the connections between the organisms (interdependence), the energy flow, and homeostasis, food webs and ecology pyramids are required. For example, food webs can show the interdependence between animals of an ecosystem and energy pyramids can show how each trophic level must be in balance (homeostasis) in order for the ecosystem to be healthy. Similarly, in population ecology, the boom and bust cycle can show how predator and prey share an interdependent relationship and carrying capacity shows homeostasis must be maintained so that the ecosystems are healthy. Ecosystem recycling and health both showed how nature balances out the environment through processes like cycling and extinctions. Even though the environment can balance things out by itself, human activity such as overexploitation and climate change have affected many species, killing off species and hurting ecosystems. This is where conservation biology comes into play, and how each of us can work together to save and preserve the natural wildlife, through methods like identifying hotspots, protecting what we still have, smart planning, restoring, and sustainable development.                                                        
                                                                                                       Here is a food web I created:

So in order to learn more about the health of our planet and the subject of conservation biology, we set out to do the Conservation Biologist Project, where we were assigned a biome to research and make a presentation about the wildlife and its threats. As a result, we learned about the organisms as well as the threats that the ecosystem faced and how we could potentially solve these problems. During the course of the project, we had to work in a group with three other people and in addition to learning the educational concepts, we also learned how to work in a group with different types of people and collaborate with them efficiently. Me, personally, have always been more of a passive-aggressive person, so when someone made me upset I would have to get back at them. But while I was working on the Conservation Biology project, I had to learn to be more assertive and compromise with other in order to get the task done in a reasonable time and manner. Overall, during the project not only did I have to learn the material I also had to collaborate and compromise well with my partners and be assertive rather than passive or aggressive.

Hypertension: A Growing Problem (20 Time Project)

20 Time is a concept that is relatively new and has become a very big part of a lot of professional companies, one of the most well-known is Google. This concept of 20 Time, is where employees of a company (in this case students), use 20% of their time to research and produce something, anything, that interests them and that is productive at the same time. In my biology class, we have been assigned to do a 20 Time project, where we have been assigned to research and address a scientific problem that we are interested in. For my project, I have decided to answer the question: What are the causes and effects of high blood pressure, or hypertension, on a normal person? The main reason I decided to take on this challenge is because my dad suffers the problems of high blood pressure, and I wanted to know why this was happening to him and how I could warn others of this ever-growing problem. In order to answer the essential question that I asked, I will be setting up an experiment where I will take different people's blood pressure. My "test subjects" will vary in age, exercise amount, stress level, amount of sleep, etc. and therefore I will be able to pinpoint the main factors that lead people to have the dangerous medical condition of high blood pressure. In addition, this will also tell me how people can avoid having high blood pressure and the problems that come with it. Furthermore, I will be doing some research in class about how blood pressure affects the average person, in order to spread more awareness about high blood pressure. Over the weeks, I will be collecting data, analyzing that data, researching more about the problem of high blood pressure, and overall spreading awareness of this problem.

Unit 6 Reflection

In Unit 6 we learned about biotech and how it affects our world today. We learned that biotech affected all aspects of our lives, including the industrial and environmental, medical, agricultural, and diagnostic. In addition, we learned that the different technologies of biotech such as PCR, gel electrophoresis, and sequencing allow us to isolate, study, and learn more about DNA and our genetics. One main idea and one of the most important in biotech is recombinant DNA, or rDNA, where plasmids, small pieces of DNA inside bacteria, can be altered to mass produce a certain protein of choice. Recombinant DNA, although simple, is used to make many vaccines and medicines that are used in our world today. One of the most important and controversial topics of biotech is bioethics. This is the study of decision making as it applies to moral decisions that have to be made due to advances in biology, medicine, and technology. Bioethics problems are very controversial in today's world, as a person must be able to weigh the pros and cons and consider values and morals, in order to make an important bioethical decision. For example, a bioethical question would be: should we alter embryos in order to make children more capable and potentially superhuman or should we let them suffer through the normal threats of life? Here we must consider the religious and cultural beliefs of others, weighing the pros and cons, in order to make the best bioethical decision.

During this short but intriguing unit, I learned a lot about the biotech world and grew as a student exponentially. Even though we only did two labs in the entire unit, they taught me a lot about the concepts and how simple yet brilliant they are. In both the candy electrophoresis lab and the pGLO lab I was able to experience biotech firsthand and really understand how simple but powerful the science of biotech was. As I began to understand how we could alter science in biotech to benefit ourselves, I also saw how we could have a negative impact on the world if biotech was used in a bad way. This is where bioethics comes into play because as the biotech world becomes more prevalent, things could grow worse and worse as people tamper with things they aren't supposed to, and in the end could spell disaster for the human race. Going back to my New Years Goal, I feel like I am a step closer to accomplishing it as biotech begins to broaden my understanding of biology and the modern scientific world.

pGLO Lab Analysis

pGLO Observations, Data Recording & Analysis

1.

Obtain your team plates.  Observe your set of  “+pGLO” plates under room light and with UV light.  Record numbers of colonies and color of colonies. Fill in the table below. Plate Number of Colonies Color of colonies under room light Color of colonies under   UV light - pGLO LB too many to count white/transparent white/transparent - pGLO LB/amp N/A N/A N/A + pGLO LB/amp 9 white/transparent white/transparent + pGLO LB/amp/ara 7 white/transparent green glow

2.	What two new traits do your transformed bacteria have?
	The transformed bacteria that contained the special pGLO plasmid had two different new traits. The first new trait is the ampicillin antibiotic, as a result, only the bacteria with the pGLO plasmid will survive in ampicillin. The second new trait is the fluorescent glow that comes from the jellyfish gene and allows the bacteria to glow under UV light.
3.	Estimate how many bacteria were in the 100 uL of bacteria that you spread on each plate. Explain your logic.
	In about the 100 uL of bacteria, there was only about one a fraction of one colony of bacteria, but after the bacteria was plated and grew multiple colonies grew from just a fraction of a colony.
4.	What is the role of arabinose in the plates?
	The role of arabinose in the plates is to trigger the GFP in the pGLO plasmid so that the bacteria containing pGLO will glow under UV light.
5.	List and briefly explain three current uses for GFP (green fluorescent protein) in research or applied science.
	GFP can be used as a visual tag for the expression of other genes or other visualization of cell structures. In addition, it can be used to observe small organisms and track viruses. Finally studying protein to protein interactions can be performed using GFP.
6.	Give an example of another application of genetic engineering. One application of genetic engineering, and arguably the most important, is using bacteria to mass produce vaccines and antibiotics.

Candy Electrophoresis Lab

When we analyzed the results of our gel we found a few oddities in the results. First, the blue reference dye moved the shortest distance and the band was the largest of the colors. In addition, the purple dye was a different color than any of the reference dyes but traveled about the same distance as most of the dyes. Furthermore, the yellow dye for both the reference dye and the candy dye traveled the furthest, farther than any other color dye. The structure of dye that would most likely migrate similarly to the dyes that we examined would probably be Fast Green FCF because one side of the structure is negatively charged so it will move toward the positively charged cathode. Many dog food manufacturers put food coloring in dog food to make dog food look more appealing to dog owners, but this can cause problems with the dog as food coloring can contain bad chemicals.

In our daily lives, there are many foods that have artificial food colorings which can be bad for your health. For example, hot Cheetos, instant noodles, candy, and even cereal can contain artificial food colorings to make the food seem more appealing but at the same time more unhealthy. While we were doing our experiments there were two factors that could control the distance that the colored dye solutions migrated: was the amount of colorants in the dye and the size of the dye. The force that helps move the dyes through the gels is the electric current that was run through the electrophoresis gel.

On the other hand, the component that helped separate the food were the fibers in the electrophoresis gel as it would be harder for the larger molecules to travel through the gel. For example, if there were several DNA molecules with the molecular weights of 600, 1000, 2000, and 5000 daltons, the heaviest, or the 5000 dalton molecule, would move the shortest, and the smallest, or the 600 dalton molecule, would move the farthest.

New Years Goals

     The first New Years goal that I will achieve is for this class and it deals with my growth and development. In this semester I want to really understand the subject of each unit and take it to the next level, not only learning the material but applying it into the real world. In order for this to happen, I really have to get a good understanding of the subject by taking in the things I learned from the vodcasts and doing labs to really strengthen my knowledge so that I can apply what I have learned into the real world. In addition, the unit reflections will come handy as I can record my understanding of the unit and apply the subject, and as a result, I get to take more away from the unit and overall the biology semester.

     The second goal that I will achieve is outside of school and deals with the swimming, a sport that I do competitively. In order for me to become a better swimmer, I need to set hard yet attainable goals. My goal by the end of the semester and continuing into summer is to attain at least one far western qualification time if not two or three. The main way I will attain this goal is to not only try to attend every swim practice but also to work hard in every practice and give my very best. In addition to water exercise, I have to work hard out of the water too, building up strength so that I have the tools to attain my goals. Overall, although difficult, my goals will help me improve not only in the subject but in being a better person as well.