Desert Biomes

     One the major biomes of the world is the desert biome, they are big barren wastelands that is covered by sand. It is very hostile to plant and animal life and gets less than two inches of rainfall each year. Only the strongest and the most adaptive organisms are able to survive here without food or water. A fun fact you may not know is that the two poles are considered as deserts. The world's largest sand desert is the sahara desert in Africa nine million kilometer squared in area. Rarely any animals are able to live and sustain in the bizarre of Sandstorm. The Atacama Desert in south America is considered the driest place on earth. Its conditions is often compared to Mars. There are many reason why the two poles are considered as deserts, the most obvious one being that it is a flat barren wasteland with rarely any life form living there. And second, they get harsh storms and blizzards.
     Deserts covers one fifth of the world's land masses. There are four major types of desert classification. The Hot and Dry desert, the Coastal deserts, the Semiarid, and the Cold Desert. The deserts that we are the most familiar to is the hot and dry deserts, they consist of harsh weather where temperatures and reach over 100 degree Fahrenheit. These conditions are never meant for life but we humans have found a way to build on the unstable structure of sand and live in it.
     The types you may not be very familiar with is the Cold Deserts. These cold deserts are basically the two poles of the world, the north poles and the south pole also known as the arctic and antartica. These deserts are even more deadly than the Hot desert for these can cause death if not prep properly. These deserts have dangerous predators such as the Polar bear which would consume human beings. But the most dangerous of all is probably falling into the cold arctic water. Being exposed to these water for over a minute will be able to kill you.
     The coastal deserts such as the one in chile is more accessible to human beings, these coastal deserts are more suited for life as they are near the ocean where there is cold ocean breeze and fishes in the ocean to catch. It is quite easy for birds and predators to live here as there are more life form near by. Such as turtles, and etc. They are basically a gigantic beach that goes on for hundreds of miles.
     Finally there is the Semiarid deserts. They are basically what Los Angeles is. Los Angeles is considered cold semi-arid climate. Los Angeles have cold and hot climates, rarely any rainfall. These types of deserts are suited for dry life as they have a constant but not large amount of water source. Luckily, Los Angeles can be considered as both a semiarid desert and both a coastal desert.
     Deserts is a fascinating biome as they have thousands of years of history, agriculture and many more. I mean the silk road was through a desert.

Level of organization

The six levels of organization in ecology are species, population, community,ecosystem, biomes, and biosphere. Species is the most basic unit of biological organization. Many individual species make up a population just as multiple population makes up a community. And they all go on from there. A population is a group of animals living in a given area. A community is all the animals that live in a certain area. Communities are made from multiple populations since communities are basically enlarged version of a population. Then there is the ecosystem, an ecosystem is a biological community where species live and interact with other species. Ecosystem is a sum of communities just as communities are a sum of populations. Biomes is the sum of ecosystems. An example of a biome would be a desert or an amazon of South Africa. Biomes are large naturally occurring communities and a biosphere is like earth. The combination of all the biomes of the planet, this combination creates a beautiful and adventurous planet we now love on known as Earth 

Is lifestyle sustainable on earth right now?

     At the moment life is abundant and sustainable on earth. We have an efficient source of energy, and an abundance of food and resources for the human race. But that is only at the moment of 2014, who knows what will happen in 2024 when fossile fuel runs out and our major source of energy, transportation is gone. Will our human race give up what we possess? or will we go into a chaotic battlefield with one another. Resources will run out on earth and when it does, our population may go down. In today's age, the human race's backbone is fossile fuel, without fossile fuel, we cannot run tractors to create food efficiently, we cannot operate trucks to transport food, nor can we burn fossile fuel for energy. Petroleum Engineers recently have been trying to calculate the amount of Fossile fuel around the world today so we can prepare and figure out ways that we can generate energy, and run cars, and also production lines.
     Life is currently sustainable on earth because we have a large amount of petroleum that we can use. Can you imagine a world in which we do not have petroleum? Our currently lifestyle is all based on Petroleum, because everything we use is a petroleum product. The t-shirt you are wearing right now is a petroleum produce since petroleum shipped it from one place to another, and petroleum is what runs the production line. The device you are reading this on is a petroleum produce because the energy that powers your device is generated by burning petroleum. Although Petroleum has a sustainable for many years before. But its bound to run out soon. So our life style right now is not so sustainable if we can find new ways to live, generate resources, and transportation.

Human footprint on earth

     A lot of us don't realize the amount of materials and resources need to raise a human being. Even when we are a three year old baby, we have already used a lot of resources from the Earth. We humans take a lot more resources now than ever before. As the earth grows in population, the demands for more food, luxury, and also daily items grows with that number. And every time get those resources, we created and generate waste. The plastic wrappings that comes with it, or the metal box that comes along with it. These are not necessary, but the human's eyes tends to require and think that these wrappings and extra luxury is necessary when it actually isn't. An average american family will enough plastic bottles and container to fill an entire class room. These are our human footprint that we leave behind every time we buy, create, and throw away plastic waste. In a life time, we drink enough water to fill multiple olympic swimming pools, require enough shampoo to fill a kiddy pool, and generate enough plastic to build a building the height of the empire state building. Efforts have been done to try to reduce a human's footprint by using biodegradable material such as paper instead of plastic. But no matter how much we try, we will always use a lot of the earth's resources, and one day those resources will run out and humanity will just have to figure it out from there.

California science center

     I have been able to go to the california science center in the 7th grade as a field trip with my class. Back then the endeavor sighting have yet to been set for the california science center. And a lot of the sighting we have now wasn't available back in 2012. But now that we can go back again, it was quiet amazing. We went though they ecosystem as we have learned in class. Seeing examples of an ecosystem in a controlled environment is much much different from the examples set in the text book. I was able to see all the different types of ecosystem in action. From the desert of north Africa to Amazon jungle of south America. And I was quiet cool to see that that L.A. being one of the region. L.A. was full of gravel, concrete and rocks. And one of the most famous being there was the TV morning news.
     As we move onto the the human body, I see more and more of the things we learn in class. This is something amazing because there was example of how our body works. There was a man explaining to us how our brains work and also the intestines of our body. There was also the breath of our lungs and how they use a balloon to show us how when we breath our lungs expands and how when we exhale, our lungs contracts. This was really cool to see.
     The technology portion of the museum shows modern computer technology such as new computer processor and how signals or messages can be sent between two computers. This had been amazing to see these innovation to be invented by man kind. And how our human mind is capable to invent these things.

Rose Garden

     Recently, I went to the rose garden near the natural history museum,  when I entered. It wasn't as I expected it to be since, i have expected the flowers to smell more. But I couldn't smell anything when it has been covered by the smell of food, candy, and the sour taste of trash. This shows the footprint that humans leave behind as they create trash and how it influence our environment. As we walked in through the garden, we see plastic wraps, French fries,  and many many other items that has been used left behind by humans. These waste that we create ultimately effect out environment.
     Seeing all these roses here at the garden was something different, this is an experience that I have not experienxe before. Seeing the amount of roses that we saw was staggering and seeing the different types of roses here was amazing. We all know that roses belong in the same rose family and that these flowers have different color because their evolution of location. I suggest that one type of roses was first present and then it was spread all around the world by birds and animals carrying seeds to another place. Similar to how the Island of Hawaii got its plants and grew from there on. These types of flowers are all different, some smell better than others and that some look better than other. They do this to attract attention. If they don't have smell to attract,  they would use their colors to attract, and those who have neither trait would have been long extinct.

National College Fair Credit

     Being at the national college fair was really amazing, I went to the college fair at USC at MESA and it was no where close to the scale and the amount of people in this one. The amount of people and the amount of colleges attended was just an amazing amount of number. Over 300 colleges attended to introduce and describe themselves to us and tell me about what they are and what are the advantages of attending their college. The colleges there are not only just the colleges within the United States, the scale of the fair was international since colleges from all around the world came. I saw the universe of Hong Kong and even the University of Manchester. 
     This was not the most amazing part of the fair. The most amazing part of the fair was the college workshops. They explained to us why extra curricular activities at helpful and how to stand out among the crowd. And how to use an ability that everyone has, and use it to make ourselves special.
     Then I went to the essay writing workshop. This really helped me because I didn't know how to write a college essay until now, it taught be how to use the challenges in our lives and turn it into an essay that helps me. And how I can connect my awards and achievements to my struggles.
     It was overall and amazing experience and I am glad I went, i learned a lot about colleges and how they work. I am better prepared now.

Three types of Natural Selection

     What is natural selection in the first place? Well natural selection is when an organism adapts to their environment and tend to produce more offspring. Natural selection isn't one subject, it is separated into three different types of Natural Selections. They are directional selection, disruptive selection, and also stabilizing selection. These three differently types of natural selection all have different characteristics of how new babies are born within a population.
     The first type being Stabilizing selection. Stabilizing selection is when natural selection work against the two extremes of a trait to make the population for similar and more controlled. An example of this can be the weight of a human baby at birth. We all want to keep the baby at a intermediate weight since baby born too heavy and too light maybe be unhealthy in many ways.
     The second types of natural selection being directional selection. This is when the selection work work with the extreme, not against it like stabilizing selection. Directional selection works with the extreme to select one trait. Such as in flowers and plants, the brightest flowers may be selection just so that during its life time it can contract the most pollinators.
     The third types of natural selection is disruptive selection. This is when the selection disagree with the mean of the population.  It goes against the means of the population.  For example, there are only two types of seeds as a food source for a bird population. the bird can have two different types of beak. And neither of them are good or as effective as an average sized beak so, this would be an example of disruptive selection since neither traits would be as effective or support survival than one that isn't available to them.
     These are the three types of natural selection. This applies to many of the population of species that lives on earth and how their traits are selected. This supports genetics and also evolution.

Natural History Museum Extra Credit

     Over the weekends, I went to the Natural History Museum. The natural history museum was very fascinating, we were able to see fossils, artifacts, gems, models of animals and many more. I was able to learn a lot just by reading the signs on each type of mammals and species.
     My favorite part of the museum is the dinosaurs exhibit, it was quite amusing seeing something that big. It was really cool when it explained how they were able to rebuild the entire fossiles bone by bone.
     Then we went to the African mammals, there we were able to recognize many mammals in their ecosystem and their environments. There was many animals there all adding upb into a community such as the elephants and giraffe being in the same ecosystem.
     We then saw the artifacts that was discovered, we saw many artifacts from stone swords to stone spear heads and even some bowls.
     All in all, I was able to learn a lot from this trip, being able to see something in real life from the things we learned in the text book was a completely different experience. It was really fun to be there.

LA Zoo Extra Credit

     Being the first time I went to the LA Zoo, I didn't know where most of the animals were. But when the entered through the gates, the first aquatic organisms we were able to see was the alligator. But when we entered deeper into the Zoo, we saw the aviary, we saw many birds, and these birds have various wing and beak sizes meaning that they evolved due to their needs of needing a big beak or needing more lift from their wings.

     Then we moved onto to look at all the other amazing animals that the Zoo had to offer, we saw all the animals in their cages. The cages they were in had plants and other things that represent what the ecosystem is like from the place these animals came from. Some of them represented the Jungles of South America, and others represented the deserts of Western North America.

     As I made my way to Australia area, I saw Kangaroos. I was told that kangaroos are one of the few land mammals on earth that can drink sea water. They have developed a strong enough liver to be able to digest and break down the salty bacteria filled sea water. This is a proof of evolution due to surroundings since these kangaroos lived in seashores where clean water was rare. They were forced to drink sea water and eventually they grew and got used to the sea water and was strong enough to digest it.

     We then learned that most Kangaroos and Wallabies are not endangered. We then started to wonder how can Kangaroos be only in Australia but still be able to thrive their population. As we thought about it, we came to a conclusion that it could be the way some kangaroos breed. We saw something that told us that Kangaroos can start to breed few hours after giving birth, which is something that really allows the population to thrive and keep going. Since Australia is so big, these kangaroos will hardly reach the population limit.

   I have learned a lot from seeing these animals, it sure is different from seeing it in the text book, so this was an interesting and fun experience.

Conversation between Mendel, Darwin, and Lamarck

     In a world where different people thinks differently and have different opinion. It is hard to setting on a conclusion of what exactly happen. Gregor Mendel believes in genetics and Darwin and Lamarck believes in the theory of evolution. However these two topics can be related to each other quite easily.

It doesn't take much to imagine a conversation between these three scientists.

Mendel: I think i have finally found a connection between evolution and genetics!

Darwin: Oh really, would you like to share what it is?

Mendel: Well, according to your theories on evolution, parents are suppose to have the same traits as their kids and if the parents have gone through mutation, then doesn't that mean the mutation gets passed onto their offspring and that offspring have the mutation of the parents.

Lamarck: Are you try to say that, if a parents have gone through a mutation in their genes, which changes and therefore evolves them, then their children will have that change or mutation since the parents have gone through it.

Mendel: Yes! couldn't have said it better myself.

Darwin: But how does this mutation in Genes have effect on evolution ?

Mendel: Well if a parents pass on a mutated gene, then their children will have that mutation which changes them, and if the mutation offspring have children then the children will have that mutation and it goes on and on.

Lamarck: and then eventually a portion of that population will have that mutation therefore having evolution.

Darwin: Wow, thats ... really really good.

Mendel: I know, My genius is ... almost frightening .

Extinction

Extinction is when a speies of organism is wiped off of our earth. But many of us don't want that, we want to save these endangered speices from going extinct. Among popular beliefs that we must save these mammals, extinction is a natural cycle of evolution. Extinction helps other species grow and evolve by allow up more space for another spcies. Without the extinction of dinosaurs, we would not be on the face of the earth today due to the fact that the dinosaurs would have eaten all the mammals we have evolved from. So having an extinct species would not be too bad, if one species dies, then another one can flourish with life and future evolution, who knows what that future evolution would be. Maybe it can finally be a species of bears that can understand languages and talk human languages. So Extinction may be a sad thing toward the earth, but it brings new chance of evolution from other animals

Should Creationism be taught along side of Evolution in school

There are many types of creationism in the word today. To me, creationism seems more like a religion rather than a science topic. What creationism basically say is that the world is directly created by God and that we didn't evolve but rather created from his image. From my point of view, I think that creationism can be taught in school as a choice. I think creationism can be taught along side of evolution in school and we ourselves as students and human beings should decide which one we want to believe and which one we choose to live with. However this can also be a draw back since, the main type of creationism directly negates the scientific explainination of evolution. But many have been able to link these two topics in a subject called Evolution creationism. In some states creationism is taught at school, but not all. As much as I like to think that humans evolve from prehistoric mammals, it would be nice to have a change to see and learn how the others feel about where we came from. So yes, i think creationism should be taught in school.

Evo Weblabs, Exploring Evolution

In this weblab, I will explore the line of evidence that scientists use to reconstruct the evolution time line in all the organisms we see today. Whales were believed to be evolved from mammals like humans, and my hypothesis is that Whales evolved from mammals due to DNA evidence. However as i continued my experiment, i found out that whales actually evolved from a group of even toed animals. meaning that my hypothesis was wrong. The idea that whales actually evolved from an even toed mammal is support by DNA evidence, anatomy evidence, and also fossile evidence found by scientists. Their skeletal shape is more similar to an even toed mammal than it is to a human.

Evo Weblabs, Natural Selection

In natural selections, I have decided to do an experiments on birds. What I have been told was that birds, or all organisms for that matter, evolve based on adaptation. Meaning they evolve to adapt which basically means that they evolve into organisms that help them survive. Birds with big beaks can crack seeds, but birds with smaller beaks and eat worms inside of the trees. However, after running the experiment many time with different inputs, I can come to a conclusion that having a small beak will not guarantee survival, where as having large beak will guarantee survival on the planet. What eventually does happen is that the birds with larger beak will have a larger population where was the birds with the smaller beaks will evolve into birds with larger beaks.

Experiment 1:

Experiment 2:

Diamante poems

Mexican Grizzly Bear

Large Extinct 

Eating Killing Sleeping

Same Scientific Classification of U. Arctose 

Living Fishing Preying

Fierce Threatened 

Grizzly Bears

A Career in Paleontology

     What does it mean to be a paleontologist? Or better what is a paleontologist? Well a paleontologist researches, searches, and studies prehistoric fossils.  Fossils, which are preserved remains of ancient life, are usually found in rocks. They record the history of life on earth. These amazing people study things from a full sized dinosaur to a prehistoric piece of poop known as coprolites. But to most people this doesn't sound like a fun job, but that isn't the fun part, the fun part of being a paleontologist is so that you can travel around the world visiting sites and probably have the opportunity to study it and get close to it. And whats best, is that you get paid visiting the world and sleeping in comfortable hotels.
     There are many major type of paleontologists, the first kind being the micro-paleontologist, who studies micro fossils such as prehistoric bacteria or fossils that have been crushed to pieces too small for the human eyes to see. another type being that they are called Paleontologist, these are the scientists who studies prehistoric fossils from plants such as leaves, tree bark, and etc. 
     However, this may seem all fun and games, but this is not an easy job to get into. Many years of education in this major is needed. Many paleontologist that are working today have a Ph.D. level of training. Many colleges recommend taking as much science class and math classes as possible in highschool and a foreign language since as a paleontologist, it is required to travel around the world a lot. Many colleges refer to this topic as a part of geology.
And a minor in another area of science is recommended in many colleges.
     Although this job sounds too fun to have a good pay, it is a good pay though. Minimum pay will be around $40,000 and can even go all the way up to $80,000 and above. However, this job may seem fun and has a high salary, it isn't an easy job to get. Thousands of Paleontologist are trained every where in the world making it very competitive similar to the computer engineering major. Not many company that accepts these jobs exist, and those that do exist only hire the best of the best. Overall this is a good career to get into and it will be really fun. 

Source: http://www.fallsoftheohio.org/ACareerinPaleontology.html

Bioengineering

     What is bioengineering? Or Biological Engineering? The term biological engineering means that using the concept and knowledge of engineering and apply for Biology and only for biology. It is often confused with Biomedical Engineering where, the knowledge is only for medical uses. This confusion is also similar to how people get confused with computer engineering and computer science.
     Biological Engineering is the studying and solving life problem related to living organism. But bioengineers had been making Genetically modifying our food. Genetically modified organisms also known as GMO, are basically bioengineer's creation. What and how GMO works is that GMO are organisms that have had their DNA changed for a positive reason. Genetically modifying an organism to being either to grow faster, have a better shape, or maybe even have a better taste.
     With the amount of organisms and food that we eat daily that are GMO, biological engineers have yet to find the side effects to eating GMO, we do not know if there are any lethal side effect to these GMO organisms. With the unsure, the FDA have still been allowing these Genetically modified organisms to be sold to citizens with the hopes that it will not cause diseases.
     With these, I strongly believe that GMO organisms should be stopped until these biological engineer find the answer to whither or not these will cause side effects. If they insisted to feed genetically modified organisms, they should at least tell the citizens that the food they are eating are genetically modified.

Letter to Gregor Mendel

Dear Gregor Mendel,

     I am quit amazed at your discover of traits that can be passed on from parents to offsprings. Luckily, in the years that follow, many scientist have found out relations from DNA, to your experiment of traits or as you like to call them factors. As you might know, traits are passed onto their children by the parent's genes with is contained within the chromosomes. These chromosomes are then inside of DNA, the DNA's double Helix allows everyone's DNA to be different even from parents to offspring.
With this discovery of how DNA is related to gene which controls the trait that will be expressed on a person's face, your discovery of factors being passed on from parents to offspring is related to DNA by the fact that genes that control the trait belongs in DNA. Your discovery have lead these other amazing people to make discoveries and let us humans have a better understanding of who we are and where we came from.

Sincerely,



Bryan Kwong

Dominant and Recessive Allele

     Well what are Alleles? They are basically genes that determine traits. Still don't understand? it is the thingy that lets you have different color hair or different color eyes, and maybe even your skin color.

     This is not a complicated concept ... sort of. There are two types of Alleles, Dominant and recessive. A dominant alleles is basically, well, dominant. It will only require one of your parent to have a specific trait for their children to have that trait. But a recessive is complete different, requires both of your parents to have that trait in order for the children to have the trait. So this is why some traits are more rare than other. 

     For example, a couple have a children. The father has brown eyes(BB) and the Mother has blue eyes(bb). Since brown is a dominate trait and blue is recessive, there is only a 25% chance for their children to get get blue eyes according to the punnett square. The reason for that is that the dominant trait does not need both letters to be capital in order to gain that trait, rather only one. However even though that the allele for the blue eyes is still in the children, but the dominant trait is the one that shows.

If Animals could regenerate like Planarians

     Planarians are non parasitic flat worms. They are very unique because they they are similar to starfish, they can regenerate a missing part in their body. These worms are able to get sliced in half, and regenerate into two living organism, also like a cell's division.
     This ability to regenerate a missing body part is amazing because if this was the case for all animals, then extinction is no longer a word that we would use in our dictionary. This would effect the ecosystem dramatically because, animals would be over populated due to the fact that they cannot die from the loss of an arm, where as if they weren't able to regenerate, they would just lie on the ground and wait for death. However, this does not apply to all animals because, if these regeneration abilities can be apply to extant, but almost extinct animals, this would be fantastic because these species of animals are able to keep on living on this earth.

Child Reproduction

"Mommy where do babies come from?" one of the most feared question of parenting. Well little Timmy, here is how the cookie crumbles. It all starts off with a mommy and daddy who love each other very much, and they have a special night where ... well you don't want to know. Then the sperm and the egg join together to form a new cell in a process called fertilization. Then these cells go through Mitosis, where the cell that went through fertilization divides into 2 other cells and then eventually have so many cell that it forms a human body. Since the new born Baby is actually made up of billions of the cell that was fertilized, the baby and the parents may have the same traits, and these traits can be anything from the eye color to their lips shape. These traits are carried from the parents to the baby through genes, A sequence of DNA that determine and passes on a certain trait from parent to offspring. And this is how a baby is made, simple enough?

Genetic disease that runs in my family

I am not sure if having really bad eye vision is a genetic disease. Everyone in my family has bad vision. My uncle, he doesn't even have a computer or television at his house and his is extremely near sided. All of my uncles, aunt and even my dad needs to wear glasses, all of them have different profession so doing a job that is vision intensive is not a variable of why all of us need to have glasses. One of my uncle is a ship builder, another one is a bus driver and another one is an IT specialist. even my half brother's son has glasses. Since some of my relatives are born with our eyes a little bit near sided .

Should we have a community like Gattaca?

No i believe that we should not have a community like Gattaca. A person's possibility of being successful is depended whether or not they choose to work hard or not. It should not be depended upon a person's genes. This is close to racism since a person is born a specific race and they can't change that, and so is a person's Genetic. If we have a community like Gattaca, most people wouldn't be happy with their lives since they cannot be in the professsion they want to be working in. If a person is born to be a dentist, then why can't they be a teacher? The person can be a teacher if they work hard enough to achieve it, and also if they steal someone else's identity.

Should we know our own Genome?

In my point of view, yes we should know our Genome. Knowing our own Genome may be very important to us, when we can know our risk of a certain genetic disease so that we can take early precaution to these diseases. Knowing our own Genome may also be important, since we could have a chance of passing this genetic disease off to our offspring when we don't even know we had the disease or that we could've been a carrier. So i believe that knowing our own Genome is very important due to the fact that knowing that we might be at risk for a genetic disease or maybe even the fact that we could pass it off to our offspring

Career: Genetic Counseling

     Genetic counseling is a career in which the counselor calculates a person's probability of passing an inherit disease onto another person. They can also figure out the probability of a person developing it and or passing it off to their offspring.
     The working condition for Genetic counselors are fairly simple. This profession keeps expanding since more and more people will be wanting to seek a counselor before they have a child. As more people have a better understanding of genetic diseases and knowledge of basic science, more counselors will be wanted in the future.
     The Training to be a Genetic counselor isn't simple, it will take six years in school but the annual pay is quite rewarding coming in at around $68,000 per year.
     These genetic counselors will have to help the couple undergo a series of genetic test to determine the risk for certain diseases. These diseases may be passed on to their offspring at a certain percentage based on the mother and the father's genetic.

reference:
http://explorehealthcareers.org/en/Career/53/Genetic_Counselor