Blog # 6 Food Pyramid

 Of all the food groups, fruit, veggies, grains, dairy, and junks i think the most inportant would be the grains group.Not only because it is the bigest in the food pyramid but because it is estencial for humans to go through their daily lives. The other foods in the pyramid are also inportant and must be consumed also in order for the body to keep its normal growth and energy rate. I think the most important thing for humans besides water is energy. Without energy the human body wouldn't be able to go around doing all the necessities for the day. What a human's body needs is carbohydrates and in grains like bread, pasta, ceral, and rice are stocked full of the carbohydrates humans need. Another thing the human body needs is nutrients and protien that the grains also has. However grains doesnt have that many protiens as in dairy and fruits. So even though i think the most important group in the food pyramid is grains it is better if humans eat everything of the food pyramid except of course the junks group that are full of fats and oils. Still even the human body needs the junks to build other things needed for a human to go on throughout the day. It is always good to have a little of everything in your diet but too much of one thing is never good for your body so even though grains are good for you and even if junks taste good you shouldn't eat too much of it.
http://www.mypyramid.gov/
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/pyramid/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_guide_pyramid

Blog #5 Causes of Extinction

The five major extinction events in history was the mass extinction that took place at the end of the Ordovician where 60% of both terrestrial and marine life worldwide became extinct. In the late Devonian period enviorments that had nurtured reefs for a long time turned bad and the world once again fell in to a second mass extinction. The Permian mass extinction showed about 80-95% of marine species went extinct and the reefs didnt appear for millions of years. In the Triassic mass extinction about half of the marine invertbrates went extinct and 80% of land quadrupeds went extinct. Futhermore, in the end of the Cretaceous mass extinction 65 million years ago caused the widely know extinction of dinosaurs. Not only that almost on large land animals survived and plants where also affected. Now it seems humans are causing the 6 great mass extinction. It is because of the growing population of humans that are pushing some species into enviorments they aren't adapted to causing them to be hunted and eventually becoming extinct. Besides that the main cause is the changing climate which is caused my humans waste products and green house gases or known as global warming. With global warming the ice caps are melting which will eventually cause the sea level to rise like in the 5 mass extinction when sea level rised and many land animals went extinct.

 http://www.skepticalscience.com/Earths-five-mass-extinction-events.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110303/sc_livescience/humansonvergeofcausing6thgreatmassextinction

Blog #4

 Directional selection is a mode of natural selection in a phenotype that is single and favored. Making the allele frequency continuously move in one direction. Stabilizing selection also know as ambidirectional selection a type of natural selection where genetic diversity is decreased because the population slowly stabilized on a particular trait value. Another name for disruptive selection is diversifying selection, this is because it describes the changes in the populations genetics where extreme values for a trait are favored over intermediate values. Unlike stabilizing selection, disruptive selection the varity of the trait is increased and the population divides into tow distinct groups. To make the distinction between the three types of selections, here is an example of stabilizing selection. The weight of a newborn human if too light lose heat rapidly and tend to get infectious diseases. It also works the other way around, if the baby is too heavy they endanger not only themselves but also their mothers when passing through the birth canal. To help stabilize the birth weights a small range of birth weights had been selected to assure the stabilization. A good example for directional selection is the breeding of the greyhound dog. Breeders had selected from a group of hounds that were the fastest and then from their offsprings they selected again the fasted hound. It soon became a dog who could run up to 64km. The fur color of rabbits is a good example for disruptive selection. This rabbit has a incomplete dominance between white and black, now if the rabbit was to live in a enviorment with black and white rocks then the rabbits that would survive would be the black and white furred rabbits. However the gray furred rabbits that stand out and are unable to blend into their enviorment would be likely eaten which is when disruptive selection comes in. To ensure the species survival the selection allows only black and white fur to be showed but not the gray since it would decrease the species rate of survival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_selection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizing_selection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_selection

Blog #3 Microevolution

Microevolution is the change in the gene frequency within a population or species. Microevolution occurs in four different ways. The first way is mutation, next is natural selection or artificial selection. In addition another process is gene flow and a genetic  drift. Microevolution is the result from small specific genetic changes that can lead to a new subspecies. Microevolution occurs usually when there is a environmental change. It occurs so that a species has some differences or sometimes creating a new species. This is because the environment is changing so the species need to adapt along with the changing climate. In the movie the Future is Wild the modern day animals evolve into a different animal completely so that they can survive in the changed climate and environment.   answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090920160125AA1tK3Uhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_variation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microevolution

Blog #2 Fossil Records

Fossil records tend to hard to interpret because they are vague. A fossil can only form if the organism or animal had a skeletal body. If the organism doesnt have a skeletal body then there wouldn't be a fossil since the parts that form a fossil are usually the bones or hard and solid parts of the body that dont decompose over time. Also many things that happen in nature can damage the fossil making the record incomplete, and though it still gives us some information about the creatures that existed on earth long before us sometimes it is useless.  This makes fossil records are hard to explain because so many of the other fossils are lost or have been erased from the face of the earth by erosion and even becoming the sediments. Not only that fossil dont give us that much information about the organism. Fossils give us information about what the organism may of looked like as in shape and size but how about what color their skin or fur looked like? Fossils have no way of telling us about that. In addition there is also that problem of whether the fossil is real or not. Whether the fossil has reached all the requirements of being a fossil, like being old enough.
                                                         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080312052712AASeKXV
http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/evolution/g.html

Blog # 1 Theory

The main reason Evolution isn't a law is because it cannot be repeated and get the real results. Evolution is the change over time. In this case evolution changes an orgainism such as a finch. The finche's beakes changed over a time period so that it could survive more easily in the changed enviorment. Evolution happens to orgainism and animals because of an enviormental change like a decrease in food or maybe an earthquake. Mostly its because the normal cycle for an animal or orgainism had changed so it has to adapt or die out. This process is called natural selection-change so that a species wouldnt die out. Another
reason evolution isn't a law because it hasn't been observed and still hasn't been able to be proved.                                                                       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html

Semester Ending

My favorite activity this semester was the kimchi lab, i liked this lab because it was really interesting and kind of like cooking. Even though it really smelled i was pretty interested because i have been dying to try some Korean food. Another thing is that i have always been curious about fermentation. It was really fun mixing all the ingredients and it seemed like home ed class.  My least favorite activity was the karaoke project, i really don't like standing in front of the class and singing because i know my voice is horrible. Moreover my lyrics sounded really weird and confusing.Not only that my group practiced a lot but we hadn't thought of practicing together so we weren't singing in sync. The thing that i would change about this semester if i could re-do it would be reading the textbook. Throughout most of the semester i hadn't really had a chance to sit down and actually read the book and try to understand it. Another thing is i would want to change is the quizzes, if i had taken the time to really read the book then maybe most of my quiz scores would be better. In addition,(i know its more than one, so many regrets) i would like to re-do the karaoke project, improving the text and maybe singing louder (>////<) .

http://www.eagleswings1959.blogspot.com/