Jolyn's Blog for Hotdawgs

1. In this lab, we simulated a real world population. For this species to survive, they have to eat and survive in order for their population to not go extinct. 2. The phenotypes that were in this population were the stumpys, knucklers, and pinchers. The phenotype that was the best at capturing food were the pinchers. They had the most precised way of picking up foods, while the other two struggled with the handling of foods. 3. The population did evolve. The "a" allele became more common than the "A" allele. During the first trial, they were almost equal, but eventually the "a" allele surpassed. The last trial shows that the gene frequency of the "a" allele was around 78%, making the "A" allele at 22%. 4. A factor that was random was the placement of food. Depending of the scatterness of the food, the different phenotypes could have had an advantage. An event that was not random was the time we had to collect the food. Every ph...

My original plan for my 20-time project was to have an Earth day fair and inform students about environmental issues. Unfortunately, it was unrealistic to think that I could get a day, let alone a week, to educate my peers. I have two ideas to replace my project, but have been struggling to choose which one would be better. The popular, Taiwanese-tea based drink goes by many names: boba tea, bubble tea, pearl milk tea. Whatever you call it, you are familiar with its contents, the little black balls of starch. Also, known as tapioca pearls, these chewy spheres are extracted from cassava roots, native to the north region of Brazil, and now spreading throughout South America. It is said tapioca pearls are “one of the purest forms of starch food”. A german study shows these pearls are linked to cancer. The cancer-causing chemicals are known as polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. The tests were held in Taiwan, where the toxic man-made chemicals are made. American producers for tapioca...

This unit was about ecology: the interaction between organism and their environment. In all environments, there will always be producers and consumers. In a food chain or web, the consumer or producer is shown obtaining energy from something else, but that doesn't necessarily mean an organism. Energy can also be found from photosynthesis or the primary producers in an ecosystem. When a product is consumed, only ten percent will be passed on to the next trophic level. More into depth about organism, we learned about population and the factors that impact the amount of organisms. Immigration, births, emigration, and death are all factors that can fluctuate the statistics. Our world is almost reaching its carrying capacity, the maximum population size the environment can hold. Today, we have about 7.5 billion humans in the world, but it is said that our carrying capacity is 14 billion. We are over HALF way there! What is going to happen when we reach that limit? The nutrient cycles- w...