BioEntrepreneurial Idea

Photovoltaics:

Photovoltaic technology is a great idea for a bioentrepreneurial idea because it uses the sun's energy to work some useful items in the house. The sun's energy doesn't affect our enviroment and it helps us save power using oil and gas. Photovoltaics do not pollute the air and it helps the economy. This is very useful to the enviroment and its free. Photovoltaics also do not contribute to greenhouse gases which causes global warming. It's also costs very little money to build photovoltaics, and has no impact on nature.

I think this would be a really good idea for the future because it might stop global warming and it could help save up energy and less pollution in the air. I also find it awesome that you wouldn't need to pay for something like this because all the energy it uses is coming from the sun.

Biological breakthrough

William Roberts and his colleagues made a discovery on rats. They found out that rats are able to track how much time has passed since they last discovered a piece of cheese, but they can't remember where exactly they found that piece of cheese. William Roberts used a experiment to show everyone that rats can remember how much time has passed since they found cheese. He got rats in the 'arms' of the maze at different times of the day. In the maze he placed moderately diserable food pellets and highly diserable cheese. Rats were then being tested on when, how long, or both. This discovery lead researchers to think that episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memorys.

I think this is a very interesting discovery because i didn't think rats could actually track how much time has passed since they found cheese. In the future i think rats will be able to remember where they last found the cheese and remember how much time has passed.

Bio Entrepreneurs: Bill Gates

One of the most famous Entrepreneurs is Bill Gates. He is famous for being the richest man in the whole world and creating Microsoft. He entered many different kinds of courts fighting legal battles. He thinks that every office desktop and home should have a computer. Using Microsoft makes the computer easier to use. He left his junior year of college to go start the largest company the world knows of; Microsoft Corporation.

I think it's really cool that he created Microsoft because everyone uses it. Im surprised that he's the richest man in the world. I think he made the right choice creating this corporation because it has made computers a lot easier to use. I think in the future Microsoft would get even better and better programs will be made for everyone.

The Eye

On Thursday we had a lecture given by Dr.Pamela Fong,a optometrist, about the eye anatomy and pathology. She told us about the different parts of an eye including the iris, lens, cornea, pupils, vetrias, and optic nerves. The iris is the color part of your eye and the pupil is the barrier for your eyes. The pupil grows bigger when your in the dark because it is relaxing and when your in a room with light your pupil grows smaller because it's blocking the light. She told us that the lens are the secondary adjustment for the eye and that the first adjustment is the cornea. She also mentioned that if you are "near sighted" you have myopia meaning your cornea is too strong, if you were "far sighted" you would have hyperopia meaning your cornea is too weak. She showed us a couple of pictures of young eyes that still had sheens in them still. She explained to the class that sheens are in young eyes and it would go away once you get older. She talked about the eyelid protecting you from diseases and other infections.

After the lecture we went on with our lab, Sheep Eye Dissection. It was interesting seeing all the different parts of the eye preserved so nicely. When we started cutting the eye apart the vitreous humor started oozing out of the eye. Inside of the eye i could see its lens along with its cornea. The lens were round shaped, and a transparent yellow kind of color. On the side of the eye we could see a very nice green and blue color mixed together, which i thought was very pretty.

Overall i think this was a great experience. The Sheep Eye dissection was very interesting and i learned alot from it. I also enjoyed the lecture about the eye. I think the eye isn't as simple as it looks, there are many parts to the eye and its different functions.

Cladophora rupestris, green seaweed!

Taxonomy:

Domain- Eukarya

Kingdom- Protista

Phylum- Chlorophycota

Class- Cladophorophyceae

Order- Cladophorales

Family- Cladophoracease

Genus- Cladophora

Species- rupestris

The Cladophora rupestris, also known as Green Seaweed, grows on rock pools, on the surface of rocks, hanging in 'ropes' in crevices or forming undergrowth to macroalgae at all levels on the shore. Cladophora rupestris means rocky or rock-dwelling in latin. People usually serve Cladophora rupestris in salads or in soups. Sea slugs usually feed on Cladophora rupestris. Cladophora can grow up to 15-20 cm in height. It is usually a bluish or dark green color. It has a coarse texture, and it feels somewhat like a rope.

Mills Canyon Cleanup![;

Today I went to Mills Canyon for some cleanup duty with my friend, KaYan, to get some extra credit in our biology class. It was a fun experience and it was cool to learn about the plants that would affect nature. When I woke up today at 9am it was a total disaster because when we were going we got lost using the map. We thought it would be a forest of some sort, but it turned out to be a hiking road where a lot of plants grew. We got there a bit late, but it was better late than never! At Mills Canyon we met Bobby Benson, Ross Webber, other volunteers from BHS. We started working right away clipping poison ivys and brooms. Bobby told us it is best to pull out brooms while their still young. We used clippers when we can't pull poison ivy branches any further. We continued doing this for about 2 hours. At around 12:30 we finished and ended up with 3 huge bags of weed and other plants. We worked together to pull the bags up a hill. It was tiring but in the end they rewarded us with donuts and water! It was fun volunteering, they even emailed us just to say thank you!(:

Evolution(:

On Thursday, a guest speaker, Dr. Louise S. Mead of the National Center for Science Education, came to our biology class to explain to us about evolution. When people first hear the word "evolution" they would think about "survival of the fittest", but Dr. Louise explained that evolution isn't necessarily about "survival of the fittest'. Evolution is the change in species over time. A fact she told us about evolution was that Darwin was the first man to explain evolution with evidence and detailed information. She also talked about the five main processes of evolution, which were natural selection, genetic drift, evo-devo, and mutation. A power point presentation was shown to help us understand more about the five types of evidence for evolution. The five evidence are:

-biogeography: distributions of fossils around the world and how they got there.

-comparative anatomy: distribution of similar characteristics in the great diversity of species.

-molecular biology: study of how the number of human chromosomes and DNA differ from other species.

-fossil record: how vertebrates came to live on land.

-developmental biology: comparison of the genes.

I think this presentation helped me to better understand about the process of evolution.