Lab

Investigation Report Expectations (Middle School)

TITLE: 

 (Title of the lab, your name, grade, date)

I.                    GUIDING QUESTION:  How do the weight, shape and color of the brown beans change in a given population? And is this the result of adaptations or just a variation?

II.                  HYPOTHESIS:  I believe that the beans will vary in all three categories. But the most visible differences will be in weight and color, while the difference in shape may not be as visible, but when present the difference will be the greatest.

III.                VARIABLES: 

For this lab there are no controlled variables, because I am testing the difference between beans, and there is no one been that is perfect or that you can say is the control. The only controlled aspect is the type of beans I chose, and those are brown beans.

But there is a manipulated variable and that are in fact the beans, which will always have different weight and shapes and color, recording their color, weight, will give me the necessary results. 

I expect that each bean will be different, either in weight or shape or color. But I predict that the difference won’t be extreme, unless in specific cases where the bean is either extraordinarily different in weight, shape or color.

IV.               EXPLORATION (Plan and do a test): 

                      (Materials)   25 beans

                                         Notebook

                                        Basic school supplies (pen and paper)

                                        Plastic tray, for sorting beans

                                          Plastic cup, to place sorted beans in

                      (Procedure) Lists the steps required to replicate the experiment

RECORD & ANALYZE:

A.      IMAGES/VIDEO: 

B.      B.  Data Tables

Bean Type	Weight in grams	Shape (observation)	Color
Brown bean	.8	Smooth	Brown with light spots
Brown bean	.9	Smooth	Two Tone
Brown bean	.5	Smooth	Brown
Brown bean	.8	Wrinkled	Purple
Brown bean	.6	Smooth	Brown
Brown bean	.7	Smooth	Brown with dark spots

Brown bean	.8	Smooth	Brown With light spots
Brown bean	1	Smooth	Two Tone
Brown bean	.4	Wrinkled	Brown with light spots
Brown bean	.5	Wrinkled	Purple
Brown bean	.6	Smooth	Purple
Brown bean	.8	Smooth	Brown
Brown bean	.6	Wrinkled	Brown With dark spots
Brown bean	1.1	Smooth	Two Tone

C.       

Brown bean	.7	Smooth	Brown
Brown bean	.5	Wrinkled	Purple
Brown bean	1.3	Curve and bent in an unusual way	Three tone Purple, Brown and white
Brown bean	.8	Smooth	Purple
Brown bean	.9	Smooth	Brown with darks spots

D.     Graphs:    

Variation in weight graph: (below)

E.      

           

G.     Analysis of Data: 

From the data table above, I observed that purple beans are generally bigger than brown beans. They are always heavier and are smooth most of the time and don’t have spots. Interestingly the biggest bean was a two town bean, which I believe was mutated. The data table shows the weight of the beans, their color and if they are wrinkled or smooth. These categories are the ones that vary the most; therefore I decided to record them.

After carefully analyzing the data, the weight of beans, their color and their shape, whether they are smooth or wrinkled. I noticed several important things.

Firstly: the weight of the beans spans from .3 grams to 1 gram, the lightest bean was wrinkled and was light brown with dark spots. While the heaviest bean was two toned, half was beige half brown; it was smooth and had no indentations. 

These observations were not repeated again for the same colored beans. But I did notice a different type of pattern; generally purple beans are the heavies and the largest, while dark brown beans are the smallest. The purple beans all ranged from .6 grams to 1 gram, while the brown beans never exceeded .6 grams. Of course there were some exceptions to this pattern, like the large two toned bean.

I believe that my data is accurate. There are several key reasons with which I can back up my thoughts. First and foremost I measured the beans carefully making sure that the scale was accurate, and I always put them to the side, so that I don’t accidentally measure and analyze the same bean twice. Another measure that I applied to ensuring my data’s accuracy is I made a system of describing the beans, the colors are light brown, medium brown, dark brown, purple and two tones, while the textures are smooth and wrinkled. This meant that all of the beans would have the same color names, making it easier for myself to notice patterns.

V.                 Concept Acquisition (CONCLUSION): 

VI.               How do the weight, shape and color of the brown beans change in a given population? And is this the result of adaptations or just a variation?  Based on the recorded data, I can say that the weight, shape and color all change in a given population, at least in the brown bean population. Unlike my original hypothesis, the data showed that the weight was the greatest changing factor; it varied from weights of .5 grams to weights of 1.1 grams. Of course this could change for other populations, where color and shape may vary more. I believe that these variations are the result of a variation, because beans have no need to adapt, their environment could not have changed over the course of time, because the earth’s soil has remained similar. The bean that we know today, was not present in pre-historic times, therefore the soil had roughly the same amount of minerals and rocks within it. But if the soil were to change, I believe that the beans would also adapt, presumably in weight and shape. Because the color of the bean has no real affect.  

VII.             Concept Application (FURTHER INQUIRY):  

My data is valid, or as valid as it can be in the giver circumstances and with the given equipment. Of course, as always, there is room for error, the greatest place would be the weighing of the bean, because even though I tuned the scale, it could still miss represents the results due to old age and constant use. The color and shape aspect of measurement was accurate, because I constantly used the same words in my observations, brown, purple, two toned, and brown with light, or dark spots. Whereas the shape was smooth or wrinkled. Taking into consideration that I had observed many beans over the course of this experiment it is safe to say that I have a trained eye for spotting the defenses within beans. I could have improved the accuracy of my data by using a digital scale, and by perhaps asking other people to determine the shape and color as well, but this would take the lab to a whole different level, requiring more than the given time and more people and materials. Another area which I could have changed, was the areas of measurements, I could have also measured the length, and diameter. This would either disprove or further prove my current findings, because as always the more areas tested the better. All in all I believe that this was a successful lab, which showed me how to document the change within a population.

Tortoise lab

Data Analysis:
The reason why the short neck turtles are affected, and are a part of a depleting population, is because of the evolution in the trees, food source. The trees are growing, and so are the bushes, and with short neck being ineffective in this environment, the short necks are evolving, and adapting. After three generations, we came to the newest, most recent generation, in which the short necks are on the verge of extinction, even though they posses the dominant trait, while the recessive long necks have grown in population.
If you were to only look at the genotype and not consider the environmental situation and circumstances, this case would seam odd, and out of the ordinary, but if you consider the fact that the food source has changed, it is obvious that the recessive and adapted turtles ill outlive the dominant short necks.
Conclusion:
As we look through the generations, and have a tortoise with a dominant trait who you would expect that you in an ideal situation as generations pass you would have a lot more of dominant trait tortoises, but in this example that wasn't the case since the environment changed in a way that does not suit the tortoises and the recessive trait ones had an advantage and therefore thrived
After repeating the "mating" procedure multiple times, and established several generations, you would asume that there would be more of the dominant short neck turtles, but this assumption would only be valid in an ideal situation. And since the natural environment is not idea, the assumption was wrong. In our experiment the exact opposite happened, the environment changed, leading the long necks to thrive and the short necks to disappear .
So we can conclude that the environment around a specie affects whether it will survive or not, because if the surroundings changed drastically and the creature doesn't have enough time to evolve it can die out. Through this we can also make the conclusion why evolving through generation to generation happens so the creature enables further survival.

Epidemiology: Sex ed Essay

Luka luketic


Epidemiology is the branch of medicine dealing with the prevalence of diseases in large populations, epidemics.  Epidemiologists also determine the cause of the epidemic and trace how it was spread. It is one of the most important aspects of public health research, it helps bring in new policies and identifies the risk of diseases and how to prevent them. Today the major epidemiology centers are the World Health Organization ( epidemiology branch) and the Center for disease control and prevention, both of these organizations work around the world in an effort to prevent major epidemic outbursts and to aid the countries whose population is already struggling with a epidemic.

Hippocrates the famous greek physician, also known as the father of medicine, was the first epidemiologist. He is the first known person, to examine the relationship between the occurrence of the disease and its causes and how are they related to the environment. He came up with the terms pandemic, a disease found only in some places and epidemic, a disease that occurs only at some times. Later in the 16th century Girolamo Fracastoro, a Verona doctor, Proposed that diseases were spread by very small, unseeable particles that kept the disease alive. He said that they were spread by air, could multiply themselves and were destroyable only by fire. Fracastoro also wrote a book, in which he promoted personal and environmental hygiene as a way of preventing disease.


In epidemiology, an epidemic, is when new cases of a certain disease occur in a population, at a given period, the amount of cases should exceed the normal number, based on recent experience. The disease spreads quickly through the population and affects a large percentages. It is usually spread through infection, meaning that when one person is infected, he can pass the disease on, and then the infected person will again pass it on. In most epidemics the infection spreads rapidly, from one person to the other, resulting in a large percentage of the population being infected. One of the most notable examples of a epidemic is the 1919, Spanish Flu, which spread around the world and killed around 20 million people. The fact that the disease was highly contagious, meaning that it transferred very quickly from one person to the other. When there is an epidemic outburst, the flu virus could be spread in many ways, even through the air we breath, or by touching an infected person.
Even though there are rapidly spreading viruses, epidemics, there are others that spread slowly. The AIDS virus cannot travel through the air, it is transmitted mostly through sexual intercourse or by coming in contact with the infected person's personal items (toothbrush, bed sheets, or clothes) . This means that the AIDS epidemic travels more slowly than, for example the Spanish flu. Diseases also spread in other ways, through insect bites, and dirty water. Dirty water is the largest cause of diseases on the planet. The World Health Organization estimates that 25 million people a year die because of infections from water born diseases.

Current events

In September 2011, scientists working on the OPERA Italian experiment reported a measurement that was too astonishing to be true. They found neutrinos, supersmall and ultrafast particles that can travel through almost anything. The scientists measured the speed of neutrinos that zipped from one underground laboratory to another one and reported that they flew faster than light.

This exited some scientist and troubled others, the speed of light was the universal speed limit, and it was the fastest thing in the universe. If neutrinos can move faster than the speed of light, many ideas about space time and the nature would be proven wrong. The OPERA results meant that either our understanding is based on an error or the experiment was wrong.

The explanation had more to do with the broken machinery that the breaking of the laws of physics. Which still means that light is the fastest thing on earth.

In a February press conference. The OPERA scientist reported that a loose cable probably caused the mistake in the measurement which would mean that neutrinos did nothing unnatural after all. They traveled from a laboratory on the border of Switzerland to Italy. The faulty cable carried signal to the main clock that measured the time, which cause inaccurate measurement.

 “We should have been more cautious in the way we framed the results,” physicist Luca Stanco toldScience News. Stanco works on OPERA at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Padua, Italy. “Now we are a little embarrassed.”

“It was always clear to me that the results could not have been true,” he told Science News.

Gatacca

.16.I Believe that there should be some restrictions placed on the genetic engineering advances, because people can easily misuses this for there advantage. Genetic enineerging should not be allowed at all since it can corrupt this world and cause a lot of chaos powerful people can easily start enginnering whoever they want. It should be alowed to get rid of serious diseases but only with the goverments approval since without these diseases the world might become overcrowded17. Human Cloning should have been forbidden all together, since, people with more and money can soon replace whoever they want, and illegally start controlling entire countries through human cloning. Cloning of animals in order to make food should be permitted but of people, no. If someone cannot have a child they need to find a different solution since if this is under the wrong hands it can turn into chaos.

I believe that GATTACA was a good movie, That had an important message. At the time when i watched the movie, i had little knowledge about DNA, or genetic diseases, which of course meant that i didn't always understand what was going on. GATTACA showed the dangerous side of genetic modification, the side that could destroy and divide our society. 
Even though the movie covers the same scientific idea, DNA, as the Documentary Cracking the code of life there are some differences.GATTACA is looking into the future, and shows the negative side of generic, while Cracking the Code of life shows what researchers have found so far, and the plus side of genetic research. GATTACA  also covered more social, and ethical issues, while Cracking The Code of life was strictly scientific and showed genetic research as a great thing. 

Marble lab

Punnet squares in notebook along with All of the data.

Hypothesis: I believe that using the punnet square is the best way to predict the outcome of a genetic cross. Because it shows how the alleles are transferred from the parents to the offspring.

Questions:

2) According to your results in Part 1, how many diffrent kinds of offspring are possible when the homozygous parents(BB and bb) are crossed? Do the results you obtained using the marble model agree with the results shown by a Punnett square?

There is only one possible combination, and that is Bb. This is because both of the parents are homozygous, pure-bred, So one parent has BB alleles and the other one bb, Dominant and recessive. The offspring will be a carrier of the recessive trait, but will have the dominant  trait expressed. My punnet square, was for this situation, 100% accurate.

3) According to your results in Part 2, what percentage of offspring are likely to be homozygous when a homozygous parent (BB) and a heterozygous parent (Bb) are crossed? What percentage of offspring are likely to be heterozygous? Does the model agree with the results shown by a Punnett square?

When observing the results we got in part 2, the crossing of Heterozygous and Homozygous parents, I noticed that my punnet square was once again correct. The punnet square showed that there was a 50% chance of the offspring being heterozygous and a 50%  chance it will be Homozygous. In our data half was BB and half was Bb, with no bb. This showed that the more complex genotypes do not alter the accuracy of the punnet square.

Diffrent kinds of offspring are possible when two heterozygous parents (BbxBb) are crossed? What percentage of each type of offspring are likely to be produced? Does the model agree with the results of a Punnett square?

When two heterozygous parents are crossed, there are three possible outcomes that could happen. According to the Punnett Squares, if two heterozygous parents are crossed, the outcome would be as follows: 25% of the offspring would have the genotype of BB, 25% would be bb, and finally, 50% of the offspring would inherit exactly the same alleles for a trait as their parents, which is Bb. Once again the Punnet square matched my data. 

5) For Part 3, if you did 100 trails instead of 10 trails, would your results be closer to the results shown in a punnett square? Explain.

I think that the results would be further from the punnet square, because then there is more left to chance. With only 10 trials, there is little room for chance, but with 100 trials, many things can change. This is similar to mutation, where some genes are mutated because of the chance.

6) In a paragraph, explain how the marble model compares with a Punnett square. How are the two methods alike? How are they different?

The two methods are rather similar, in the way that both can be used to predict the probability of the offspring . However they do have some crucial differences. The punet square is mostly used for predicting possible outcomes of the genotype, the marble modes is basically a test for the punet square, showing that its reliable or not.

Cracking the code of life

_1: I wouldn’t want to get tested for any genetic illness because then if there was no cure at the time, or it was incurable, like the baby’s disease from the movie, I would have to live with that fact. I also think that it is morally wrong to tell someone that they are diseased if it won’t affect them at the present time, if you for example have diabetes it may not show immediately, but it could come up when you are older, therefore instead of living with the fact, you can find it out when it starts making a problem.

2:  I wouldn’t give my DNA for testing because; I find it weird that people are going to experiment with my DNA. Even though it may provide a cure I still believe that selling drugs based on someone’s genes is wrong, it is basically like selling a replica of a part of the person. In the case that I would give my DNA for testing, I would certainly take royalties because my genes were used in the process of making the medicine, meaning that I contributed in a way. As I said previously I find it morally wrong to tell someone that they are going to have a disease later on in life, because they would carry the burden through their life until that moment when it shows up.