20 Time Final Post

For my 20 Time project, my partner, Leena Elzeiny, and I raised awareness on the amount and harm of plastic in the oceans through advertising, which we paid for through fundraising. I don't have the product itself but all of you, who go to Saratoga High School at least, can check our final product on page 3 of The Saratoga Falcon newspaper on the May 27, 2016, issue. We basically brought half a page, through fundraising, of a page on the May 27th issue; Then we designed and made an advertisement, that raises awareness on the harm of plastic in oceans, that we placed on that space we brought.

I think Leena's and my TED talk actually went very well, a lot better then I thought it would go. Pretty much everything went well, going by plan as to what we would say and when we would say it. I can't really think of any thing we could've done better, our timing was off but it was only a bit off so I'm not too hungover that. There were also times where Leena and I stuttered but it really only happened once to both of us throughout the presentation and I think that's really impressive; I expected us to stutter more and make more mistakes than we actually did. Watching the video, I think I would grade myself as Mr.Orre, my biology teacher, did, a 96, points off for the timing and also for how our third fact wasn't really clearly said. The experience of preparing for this talk was a stressful one; The day before, Leena and I met up for more than 6 hours, practicing and preparing at both the library and Starbucks, trying to perfect our presentation. We should've probably started preparing earlier but it was all so quick and we had to bend around our own personal schedules. The experience of giving the actual talk, though, wasn't as bad; It wasn't as stressful as I thought it was going to be and I was planning on just going by the script word by word, but during the moment I actually felt confident enough to just improvise and talk as if I was just in a normal conversation, talk more like myself and less formally basically. From this, what I have taken away is that practice is key to giving a good presentation and that feeling confident in yourself when doing a talk in front of everyone is so so important and is one of the best realization and feelings you could experience.

Pig Dissection

I think the purpose of this lab was to understand the humans' body more through using a pigs' body since they're both very similar. This dissection relates to the unit we recently just learned, Physiology, by helping us understand more about what our body has/does to keep us alive: the different systems (Circulatory , Respiratory, Nervous, Endocrine, Digestive, Immune, and Lymphatic) and how they work. My favorite part of this dissection was cutting the pig. I enjoyed this part the most because I've never really cut a animal open and when I was cutting I could feel through the scissors how thick the skin was and it was just interesting cutting a real organism open. I do think that this dissection was a valuable experience, due to it causing me to realize more about how our body works and how hard it works just to keep us alive and well. 

(Or here's the link if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3AikCAgpjY )

Unit 9 Reflection

This unit was about "What on Earth Evolved?". The first thing we learned about were the basics of evolution. Evolution is a very slow process, having mutations and sex served as the source of new phenotypes. Populations evolve, not individuals. The fossils we find and study from are the individuals of a population. Evolution is the change in allele frequency of a population, over time, whilst speciation is the rise of two or more species from a common ancestor. There is also classification, taxonomy, and phylogenies: Phylogeny is the evolutionary history and relationships of species using taxonomy; a phylogenetic tree/cladogram showing this shared ancestry. Taxonomy is the study of naming and classifying organisms. And there is classification, where there is also the 3 domains of life: Eukarya, Archaea, and Bacteria.

In terms of evolution and classification, it's been a good unit and I think I have learned enough. Something I would like to learn more about are human emotions, how they're triggered, and just about them. 

For my What on Earth Evolved presentation, I think it went pretty well, I was short of time and I could've done better in terms of that but I feel as if everything else was pretty good. I didn't procrastinate on it and finished it in time and the presentation itself was no that bad; waiting to go up was more nerve wrecking if anything. To my TED talk, I'll definitely won't procrastinate on that either and I'll time myself better so that I reach/be inside the time limit. 

My Inner Fish Reflection

This video series was about how us humans evolved from being fish to what we are now. Though we might not exactly look like them, we share many characteristics with them. The first question I would like to elaborate more on is: "Even though we don’t look much like fish what are some things that we have in common with fish? How does this give evidence for common ancestry?". Our hands came from fish. There is a specific gene that starts the development of hands; this gene was found first in the fossil of a fish, thus we, who have hands, have evolved from fish. My question though is could there be an organism that had that gene earlier than fish? The second question I would like to elaborate more on is: ""How and why did hair first evolve?". At first, hair evolved as whiskers but later on they evolved all over the body, providing organisms with warmth. With this I also have my own question: What would've happen if hair were just whiskers and never evolved to cover our body? 

The Invertebrate of my Choice

The invertebrate of my choice is the Cnidaria. The domain of the my invertebrate is Eukaryote and the kingdom is Animal. Cnidaria, a phylum containing over 10,000 species of animals found exclusively in aquatic environments, are mostly marine species. The name Cnidarian comes from cnidocyte cells, which mostly have a nemoatocyst - a stinging cell that injects a toxin. Only Cnidarians have a nemoatocyst. Cnidarians have no excretory or respiratory system.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidaria

Unit 8 Reflection

In this unit, one of the first things we learned about was Darwin's research and how Evolution is caused by Natural Selection. Darwin had 4 observations: All sexually reproducing species has variation, traits are inherited, all species have capacity to grow over limits, and that there are lots of competition (two types being - introspecific, which is competition between same species, and interspecific, competition between different species. From these observations he concluded with 2 conclusions: the first one being that in the natural world there are winners and losers; he second conclusions was that in the end population usually looks like winners because of natural selection, a process of weeding out traits in a population that do not help individuals survive. So, because of natural selection: traits that are neutral or DO help an individual survive will be passed on. With natural selection comes change and in the gene pool there is constant change. The gene pool is the total of all the alleles, which are different variations of a gene that give different variations of that trait, in a population. Hence, genetic variations is stored in the gene pool and the pools change as new allele combinations form when individuals of the population give birth to offspring. In order to measure the genetic variation, the allele frequency needs to be measured. The allele frequency is how common an allele is in a  population. Though the beneficial and "good" alleles are passed on to offspring there are non-beneficial alleles that stick around called lethal alleles. If recessive, lethal alleles, can stay hidden in a population in heterozygotes, and then can be passed one when two creatures with the recessive lethal allele mate will have offspring that contain that allele. Natural selection results in evolution and in evolution there is speciation, the rise of 2 ore more species from 1 existing species. Without isolation there cannot be speciation and that is why speciation is caused by reproductive isolation, when a population is split into 2 and eventually the 2 populations can't reproduce with one another. There are 3 different causes of speciation. The first cause is called behavioral isolation which is caused by changes in courtship (mating behaviors or occupying different niches). The second cause is geographic isolation, which is when some kind of physcial divides the species into groups. And finally the third cause is temporal isolation which is when timing prevents reproduction between populations. With the different causes of speciation comes the two different patterns of it. There is gradualism which is when speciation occurs slowly but over many generations and there is punctuated equilibrium which is when new species arise "suddenly" and extremely fast. There are evidences of evolution, one of them being fossils. Natural selection can change a distribution of traits in one of 3 ways: Directional selection, stabilizing selection, and disruptive selection. On Earth, life may have formed through chemical and physical processes on early Earth that may have produced very simple cells through sequences of stages that result in the origin of self-replicating molecules. There are 3 main eras in history: the Precambrian Era, the Paleozoic Era, the Mesozoic Era, and finally the Cenozoic Era. Each of these Eras have periods in them where mass extinction and development of the world occurred (evolution).

I would like to learn more about how exactly the development of humans shaped the world. Thus my questions is: How exactly did the development of humans affect Earth?

In order to be more assertive and less aggressive when I'm under stress now I try not to speak too much because when I do speak I tend to say not so nice things to people. I'm also being more direct and speaking up more. For me, in terms of this, I still need to work on how aggressive I am when I'm under stress, I think for this I'll probably ask my peers or research on what I can do in order to stay calm during stress.

Geologic Timeline Individual Reflection

There have been a lot of major events in Earth, but 3 stand out to me. The first event that stands out to me is the large extinction that occurred during the Permian era. This extinction wiped out many marine communities and created many niches, one of them being land, that helped the dinosaurs survive. This event is significant because if this extinction had not happen then Earth would've been still covered with marine life and would have barely any niche that would help us survive. The second one is the "Cambrian Explosion" that happened during the Cambrian Era. In this explosion, the diversification of life boosted throughout Earth, in a small amount of time, only about 40 million years. This explosion is significant because it resulted in new species and wide diversity. The third event that stands out to me is the mass extinction of the dinosaurs that occurred in the Mesozoic Era. The dinosaurs were all wiped out and this is significant because if they had not been wiped out, then humans would not have been able to dominate the food chain and perspire as we have, due to dinosaurs ultimately being the more powerful creatures when compared to humans and mammals.

The scale of Earth's history is massive, taking it a long time to grow into what it is now. Most of it is the Precambrian Era and about 542 million years ago was the Paleozoic Era, in which the oldest creatures existed. Also, about 251 million years ago, there was the Paleozoic Era, where the existence of many plants and animals started. There is also the Mesozoic Era, about 65.5 million years ago, and the Cenozoic Era, which is an ongoing era that started 65.5 million years ago. What surprised me is how recent Earth started developing and having life and diversity.

To us it seems like we've made a big impact on Earth with our technology and our creations but really we are just a very small part of Earth's history; we are merely a speck. Though we are just a speck, I feel as if we are a very important speck because of how we've used Earth's natural resources to our benefit to the point that we're ruining it (global warming, pollution, etc.). We are a little part of Earth's timeline but we have been impacting it a lot, changing it's natural flow with our creations. 

My question is what would Earth specifically been like if dinosaurs were still alive and haven't been wiped out?