Why Two Ways?

For my talk i would like to go over the idea of metric over standard forms of measurement. The idea of having two ways to measure is a little ludicrous. I feel that as biologists we need to understand how to do simple conversions so that when we get asked a question we can give a better understood answer. Now the question would have to be based on some aspect that involves measurement. I will be going over simple was to explain conversions in a simple and rounded manner to answer qusestions simply and understandably.

Who needs a water treatment plant?

One class that is offered here at AU that not many people register to take but should is Limnology. I'll admit, having only 3 students in our class has been pretty nice this semester but it's a shame not more people are interested in such an important topic as H2O.

There is more to this class than learning about water however. Water affects our everyday lives. The world is about 75% water. Sad to say, a lot of our fresh water sources are being polluted through air pollution which produces acid rain, contamintated runoff from parking lots, agricultural runoff, etc. My presentation is going to be about the importance of wetlands and how they act as natural water treatment plants, cleaning up the water that we dirty.

Our biggies can be gold!

THIS COULD BE THE BEST RECYCLING IDEA YOU'VE EVER SEEN!!












For my presentation, I decided to focus on composition of human feces.
I know people will not like this idea much, but you will see how great it is to help the world!

Right now I'm taking Environmental Science class and we were discussing about composting. Eventually, I came to know that some people started to compost not only foods but also our excretion. This is why I thought about this topic for my presentation. I will talk about all the detail soon!

It's a shame!!

It's a shame to miss a question on insects since I'm taking Entomology RIGHT NOW:(
To show my apology to Dr. Stoffer, I would like to go over the question on malpighian tubules.

It was basically asking the organ of earthworm which has the same function as malpighian tubules of grasshopper.
First of all, we need to know what malpighian tubules are.
According to mondofacto, online medical dictionary, Malpighian tubules is "One of the tubular or hairlike excretory organs arising from the midgut-hindgut junction of many arthropods. Two to several hundred such tubules may be present. They collect waste from the body fluids and discharge them into the hindgut."
Here's some pictures...













So basically malpighian tubules are kidney-like organ, I can say. Now, we need to figure out what is the correct answer!
We had some possible answers; gizzard, crop, nephridia, esophagus, and ganglia.
At first sight, we can eliminate ganglia, because it is just a mass of nerve tissue and has no relation with excretory system. Esophagus can be also eliminated since it is just a tube which food passes.
Then which of these three answers is correct? Let's check all the definitions.

Gizzard: The second, or true, muscular stomach of birds, in which the food is crushed and ground, after being softened in the glandular stomach (crop), or lower part of the oesophagus; the gigerium.

Crop (obviously not the agricultural "crop"!): A crop (or croup) is a thin-walled expanded portion of the alimentary tract used for the storage of food prior to digestion that is found in many animals, including gastropods, earthworms, leeches, insects, and birds.

Nephridia: A segmental tubule; one of the tubules of the primitive urinogenital organs; a segmental organ.

Which is the closest to kidney? Yes, the answer is Nephridia.
Basically, this kind of question cannot be solved without knowledge, so I wanted to get a chance to educate myself. Hope this post will help you in the future at some point!

GRE

I did not find any part of the GRE to be to hard or out of place. Now don't think that i did a good job on it, but I feel that information asked for is what most well educated general biology students should know. The real issue is that it dose not take in to account people that are more focused in the specific fields of study. For myself I study more of the biological mechanisms of receptors and active sites. There was nor lot of questions related to this field so I did not do that well because I only one semester of general anatomy. If the test could be more keyed into the field of study of the student it would be better.

The World's Largest Sauna

Many people would agree that tropical rainforests have a higher level of species diversity than the North and South poles. Why does this phenomenon occur?

A simple answer to this is the availability of resources. At and near the equator there are continuous growing seasons unlike more temperate regions that have a growing season of just a few months out of the year. Because more sunlight and water are available in tropical areas this allows more species of vegetation to compete and grow. This steamy atmosphere decomposes biomass much more rapidly than temperate and arctic regions. Decomposition provides abundance of nutrients that positively influence the growth and diversity of vegetation. More vegetation diversity can support a larger diversity of animal species.

It has been estimated that half of the world's animal species live in rain forests. Although this estimate is astonishing, many species are categorized as endangered due to loss of habitat through clear-cutting of trees and agriculture. Some of the endangered and threatened animals include the Golden Lion Tamarind Monkey, Toucans and Parrots, Jaguar, Orangutan, Manatee, Bengal Tiger, some Poison Dart Frogs and Harpy Eagles.

One of the lesser known on this list is the Harpy Eagle. They are the largest and most powerful eagle known, with a wingspan of over 6 1/2 feet! Their habitat ranges in tropical lowland forests from southeastern Mexico to northern Argentina and southern Brazil. Harpies feed mostly on animals that live in trees such as sloths, monkeys, opossums, reptiles and other birds. Their enormous talons as big as bear claws, help them capture their prey while flying up to 50 mph through the forest. Because of deforestation the Harpy Eagle's prey populations have decreased and also their roosting sites. These eagles can weigh up to 20 pounds so they must consume large quantities of meat for flight energy, but if there are less things to eat some cannot survive.

Because the tropical rainforests are so abundant and species rich, we should help protect them from clear cutting operations. If they are not protected, lowered species diversity is inevitable and the loss of unique plants and animals only found in these areas could be lost forever.

So...it is found out that I'm a cheating vegetarian:P

Truly, this is the last post for my entire vegetarian chronicle! Thanks for keeping reading.

OK now, let’s look at the last topic; usage of the land.
I got an article called “livestock’s long shadow” which is published by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This article has so much data about what I have been discussing, but also it has some detail on land usage. Here is a good figure that is easy to understand.











Can you find the rapid increase of pasture?

The problems of deforestation, fire agriculture, and desertification have been already discussed so long time in all over the world. We all know we should not lose any more of the trees. Then isn’t it out of sense to cut the trees and make some lands for livestock??

Many other studies have been done, but to be brief,
We can conserve water, slower the speed of global warming, and save lands and forests if we change our diet into vegetable based one which is energy efficient.


Though…you know…






















WE ALL WANT TO EAT MEATS, RIGHT!!!????
Mmm...looks yummy!

I want to introduce a great phrase to the people like you.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”-- Michael Pollan

Yes, the key word is “Mostly plants”.
We don’t have to remove 100% of meat from our dinner. I think all of you have been thinking like

“I shouldn’t waste any paper…”
“Let’s recycle all the plastic bottles!”
“Oh man, he’s wasting a lot of food…I shouldn’t be like that.”

or things like that. And I think we can do the exact same thing toward eating meat.

“I thought we’re gonna have steak tonight, but let’s be nice to earth. We can cook tofu steak”
“It should be good for environment. Let’s have some fish instead of beef.”

We might not be able to say “Mostly plants” with this, but better than nothing! To change our diet a little bit for environment is really easy to do.

Well, I think I came with this idea and became kind of cheating vegetarian about a year and half ago. I think I’m categorized as Pesco-vegetarian. Pesco-vegetarian is a person who's diet excludes all meat except fish. This can include or exclude eggs and/or dairy according to individual choice.
I wish I could avoid milk and eggs because those are also from livestock, but I didn’t have confidence to get enough protein without those. If I were in Japan, maybe I could avoid them since we have much more of soy products.
But in anyways, I’m not strictly avoiding meat. You know, I’m not doing this because of my religious view. Many of the case I eat meat is when someone cooked them for me, or when my sister brings back leftover chicken from her working place.

So don't be shocked like "oh gosh, she's not going to eat meat anymore! She is really weird!!" I'm just doing this in the same mindset of recycling the water bottle!