sliding muscle filament

     To break it down:  Muscles composed of muscle fibers---> Each bundle of muscle fiber is separated from each other by connective tissues known as endomysium---> Individual cells are striated in appearance meaning that they group together and function like like this ======== with the top and bottom lines being connected to each other and those filaments sliding against each other as we move our muscles.  This of course is a very rough idea of what I'm trying to get at but bare with me.
     Now, the muscle cell it self (gettin' microscopic here), is composed of different connected subunits called myofibrils.  Myofibrils composed of two myofilaments made up of Actin, and Myosin proteins.  when those combine they look like this(again, bare with me here):  =-=-=-=-=-.  The dash(-) represents the Myosin.  The equals sign(=) represents the Actin.  The Actin protein is very thin and surounds the Myosin protein as is some what connects it self around that Myosin protein.  Now in the process of our daily muscle movements, the interconnected myofilaments slide in and out of each other as we move our muscles.  So, in my make shift example of dashes and equal signs, the dashes (myosin) slide in between the top and bottom lines of the equal signs (actin).  Ok, I'm sorry but just one more division of the muscles is needed for even more understanding of the sliding myofilament.  A sarcomere, being two actin proteins surrounding one of the myosin proteins (=-= sarcomere), is a sort of subunit that connects to other sarcomeres to make up the basics of our muscles.
     The action of the sarcomeres contracting and then relaxing is the actin proteins coming closer to each other and then moving away from each other as the muscles are relaxing and contracting through out our daily processes.  As the actin proteins contract and relax, they slide up against the myosin protein that lies in the middle of them.  Its very much so like a chain.  The links don't ever separate unless extreme conditions lead to one of the links breaking, and when the chain does not have allot of tension on it, it allows the links to move fairly freely within them selves.

The green marker cap would be the Myosin protein.  My nasty fingers, would be the Actin proteins.

Better than dashes and equal signs I guess :)

Not so humerus (eh well it is now)

 This would the left elbow.  Notice anything that may be different about it?  There is a pin in the humerus.  Although you may not be able to see it well in this picture, the humerus was chipped off and what was left connected to the elbow joint was hanging on by the width of a piece of yarn.  How do I know this from this picture?  Truth is, I can't even tell either.  This is my elbow.  I broke it in a wrestling match in eighth grade, and it friggin hurt.  This image is just a good look at the pin.
      But take a look at the picture below, and you'll see a better look at the injury.

     In this x-ray mid way through the pin, you may notice a crack in the bone where that piece of bone had chipped off completely. But, now look at the connection to the joint, and you'll notice a thin piece of the unclipped humerus still connected to the joint.








     

   










      My elbow was a displacement fracture because of the fact that the bone had been completely removed from its' original position, and then chipped as well too add to the damage.  When the end of the bone had been chipped off, the doctor said that hopefully the body will either reattach the chip, or get rid of it.  Instead, that chip floated into my elbow joint and got jammed in there.  This prevented me from getting my elbow to move out all the way.  So off to denver I went, twice before I got surgery done.  They ended up bolting that chip back to the elbow and letting the osteoblasts get to work and glue that chip back on to where it belongs.
      Once that was all said and done, the therapy and healing stages took place.  My elbow was so swollen that my friends would push there fingers into my skin and it would leave a crater.  The swelling occurred because of the torn blood vessels that were in my now newly repaired humerus.  It was swollen because it was providing new ground to now start connecting to its' self.  The swelling then started to go down leading to the new blood vessels to be formed and start getting blood flow to that chip of humerus bone.  Trabeculae (spongy type of bone)  then forms between the chip and the humerus in the second to last step to complete healing.  The newly formed border, is now solid bone and the osteoblast cells go to work and get rid of any excess bone that may have been left.  Now, I wrestle, lift, work laborious jobs, and walk on my hands perfectly normal.

it puts the lotion on its' integumentary system (skin)

prezi on the skin

http://prezi.com/1tkf-lf1w1na/epidermis/

This prezi I made is pretty informative about our skin.

Intro of the body, Our mechanism

     In our bodies, there is lots of different things that make it up.  Cells combining to make tissue.  Tissue being used to make our structures.  Certain structures would include the heart, liver, muscles, tendons connecting our muscle to bone, or bone to bone.  Different studies include cytology (study of cells), embryology (study of body when in the womb) and histology (tissue study).  Our bodies in a sense are mechanisms.  They can communicate, do physical tasks, digest fuel, circulate oxygen through it, and send electric currents through the nerve all at the same time.  Theres many different walks of studying the body.
   
     But in analyzing the body for study, we go into anatomical ways of studying it.  Such terms as anterior. posterior, proximal, distal, superior, and inferior to name a few pop up to show different sides/sections of the body.  When dividing the body into cut up sections, you go into scientific terms to describe simple parts of the body.  Instead of right and left side, you would call it sagittal.  "That part lies in the right sagittal area."  Or Medial, which would be smack dab in the middle of the right and left sagittal sections.  Frontal and coronal division is when the front (anterior) and back (posterior) get separated.
     Then the oblique section, a section of nine important parts divided up like a tic tac tow board.  the top right of the "oblique board" is the right hypochondriac region.  Opposite side of course being the left hypochondriac region.  In between those two, is the epigastric region.  these three regions are right below the chest muscles, and right above midway between the belly button and the chest.  Below that is the right and left lumbar, with the umbilical region inbetween the two.  The umbilical region as you might of guessed, includes the belly button towards the bottom of it.  Finally under that layer, is the right and left iliac with hypogastric between those.  Hypogastric includes the top of the pubic region, and just below the belly button. 
     In cytology, you study how cells are layered in different ways in order to make tissue.  Many, many different types of tissue.  Different tissues make up different organs.  But, back to cells, cells can be arranged in different sizes, shapes, and texture. or other wise known as epithilia.  Squamos, very short and fat shaped cells are similar to a checkers set piece.  Cuboidal would be shaped like an alphebet block that young children play with.  A culumnar type of cell would be similar to an unused pencil that is vertically standing upright.  These cells can combine to each other to make different types of tissue.
     If these epithelia are simply combined the simple squamos would look like train cars going down the track.  Short, fat, one strata'd cells combines to each other.  But if they were stratified, then it would be train cars stacked on top of each other.  Strata meaning layers of course.  Simple cuboidal would be when the baby try's to spell out words with his/her alphabet blocks.  But when the baby try's to build a house or a pyramid with the blocks it becomes a stratified cuboidal cell structure.  In a stratified columnar structure, the pencils I was talking about earlier would be stacked on top of each other and some what inner twined as well.
     That is just a short description of what cell structures tend to look like.  I like using analogies to describe what i'm talking about.  I feel that it gives you a pretty good idea of what the cell structures would look like.  Then when a real picture is seen, it binds the memory that much more.

experimental homeostasis

the ice bath was friggin cold.  I also believe Audie has a high heart beat regularly.  Because often times he'll check it just sitting in class, and it will be abnormally high.  Maybe testing Katrina and Steven would of had turn outs towards the data collection.

Tuned into Homeostasis

Homeostasis in short is just the body in it's self trying to maintain normal balance of weight, hydration, energy (food), oxygen, etc. But this type of regulation if the body is a bit different for each individual person. You see, some people may have more of an active life style leading to more of a need for calories and water, and varying weights because of exhaustion of the body after work outs. Then there are others that may not be as active as most and this leads to less of a need for calories (fuel) and also water for that matter. Ever wonder how you can eat 3 meals a day every day and not be huge? Well homeostasis is the regulation of using up all those colories throughout your day and preparing it's self for some sort of action. Homeostasis, the wonderful action of the body that keeps you finely tuned like one of Eric Claptons guitars. But with different guitars comes individual tuning.

the dissection of officer wallace

In the dissection of a pig, i was appointed too investigate the outer workings and digestive properties of the pig.  Not surprisingly they look very similar to the human digestive system as well.  in the lab, Dillon and I found the lungs, esophagus, liver, small and large intestine, rectum, colon, and kidneys.  The name of our subject was officer wallace, a mean cop who hates fun.
    Ok so besides that fact, the pig was allot more complex than first thought.  There was three different sections people were assigned to study.  Digestive, circulatory, and reproductive.  I studied the digestive.  After opening wallace up, we found all the parts.  Pry the most interesting thing about the pig was the fact that you could possibly jump rope with its small intestine.  We cut the mesentary off of the pig and stretched out the intestine.  As far as it would go it was probly 6-7 feet long.
     At least o learned something this time around doing the dissection.  In middle school my group just mutilated the poor thing.  I now have a better idea of how things work inside the piglet.  RIP Officer Wallace :)

evolution (eh-va-loo-shin)

    Evolution is either a fact or a thoery to different people.  People with strong religous beliefs tend to stray away from the thought of organisms (dogs cats humans elephants etc) deriving from bacteria billions of years ago.  But with others that are open to scientific theory thoughts and may still be a bit religous, who knows, they can see that organisms may have been developing over time.  It's hard not to accept facts, and artifacts that have been found to prove such theories.  With evolution, certain attributes occur in a relatively short period of time.  This is called micro(small)evolution.  
    In micro evolution just judging by the name you can probably tell what it is.  It is the small or minuet changes in an organism to evolve.  Its more of an adaptation than the evolving of a creature.  for instance micro evolution includes a rabbits fur changing to white in the winter to hide itself from hungry wolves.  It could also be a beetles' resistance to pesticides increasing.  Microevolution is a wide variety of small changes that benefit the organism in its' day to day life activities.
   Micro evolution is also known to happen fairly quickly.  In mice that have new foundedly settle in black lava rock, they already begin to evolve. What they do is go from what ever color they were whether it be white, or brown, they begin to turn black through their kids.  It can happen quickly for the mice to avoid being eatin by other predators suck as hawks that will see them from the air.  Micro evolution is pretty much adaptation of a species to their environment.
    On the other hand there is evolution that takes longer to be completed.  For a great example, humans.  We humans took a very very long time to be completed and are still in the making.  Billions of years ago there was an ape-like creature that walked, or rather crawled on four legs/arms.  2 arms up front and 2 legs in the back.  Now today, we humans walk on just 2 legs with ease.  This is macro evolution.  A fine example of it as well.  Macro(large)evolution takes a longer time to complete or can be some what never ending in some cases.
     In the 1800s when "honest Abe" was president he was considered to be a tower.  A very tall person.  But he was only 6' 1".  Today we have people like Shack that are like 7'3".  Humans are still evolving.  in my opinion.  Brains are possessing more knowledge and bodies are capable of doing more that what once was thought of.
     Evolution is a widely accepted theory and is very close to being complete fact.  But The strict religious beliefs people have make evolution a joke.  But, i believe that evolution could be Gods work:), think about it I mean, maybe human kind deriving from bacteria is gods work.  Maybe, even the creation of bacteria is gods work.  God could of even got rid of the dinosaurs as a prototype of life.  Because of the fact that humans wouldn't be able to survive with dinosaurs around.  The thought of Evolution is a very complex one with MANY artifacts that have been dug up in order to prove its reality.  With Lucy's body being found, how can you not believe.  Whether your a believer or not, you can't deny the cold hard proof.

Bac ter ia

    We played with e coli.  What we did was we set a sort of standard to follow and compare to with our tampering of the e coli.  What we had done was segregated a positive pGLO, and a negative pGLO into four groups.  2 positive and 2 negative.  the positive contained plasmid for the DNA to produce and the Negative didn't offer any plasmid for the DNA.  What had happened after we added just one e coli bacterium, is they reproduced up to 17 of them selves in some.  But this only occurred in the positives.  but the negatives didn't have any thing for the bacteria to produce off of.
      What came out the next day was a fair amount of bacteria in the positives and nothing in the negatives. in the positive where the amp was added the bacteria glow under the black light.  the other one just was white.
     we even added ingredients to the bacteria late, and it still reproduced.  this lab helped me gain better understanding about how bacteria like e coli and reproduce.

Gattaca

The movie was i good one thats for sure.   I must say though, it did scare me a bit.  You see, with people having to do tough work the rest of there life based on their genome, and not their own ability, it doesn't give anybody a fair chance.  Imagine though, getting tested when your a few minutes old and being able to know exactly what is going to happen to you and when it will happen.  It is scary.  But i must say that the movie kicked butt for sure.  Very detailed on like scraping off dead skin cells and burning em.  And with all the science, there was even some romance in it ha ha.
      I do also believe that this movie has inspired DNA researchers to excel further and actually try to do some of the things that they do on the movie.  Shoot that movie inspired me too.  To do things that people say you'll never be able too do.  Screw them, vincent proved em wrong.

DNA graph

     From the looks of this graph, it appears to have 2 people that are fairly  normal people and one thats a little off.  But in further analysis that Mr. Ludwig went through, Abby and Bob aren't all that good off.  Abby contains signs of CF(cystic fibrosis)  Although its not likely to become such a major problem, it is present.  Also Bob is in a position where his body doesn't make enough protein to keep up with the rapid making of the DNA strands his body does.  But Carrol, shes a different story.  shes got alot of differences.  but the reason why she has so many is that the pattern in her DNA was offset.  Meaning that it went from being just one mistake, to leading on and having allot of mistakes as the pattern continued on.  All from just one offset pattern. 

booger degreasing of wheat germ (DNA extraction)

     When I mixed up wheat germ, water and soap together I thought, "what in the world are we doing". i hadn't a clue why in the world we would be mixing these three things together.  Then after slowly pouring in some alcohol to the mixture, white DNA began to appear in between the layers of the detergent and the alcohol. 

Kinda looks like a layer cake or something

     The DNA from the wheat germ has the fatty phospholipid on the out side of its cells.  Now, what does detergent do, or what is is used for?  Its used to clean off the fatty foods from our dishes and what not.  It does that by breaking apart the fats, the make up of the outter cells of the DNA.  So when we added the soap/detergent, it broke up the fats in the cells and allowed us to view them.  Then after we added the alcohol, it extracted the broken up DNA into the alcohol mixture and allowed us to see them in a clean, boogery looking texture.

Is it stupidity, or just Eugenics?

     In a recent assignment given to me by my teacher, I was most horrified.  It was  a tutorial of Eugenics.  E U Jenics.  Now you may be sitting there wondering what in the world this is and if you guessed "something to do with Genetics", your on the right track.  But you see, Eugenics wasn't just innocent observations of the many diversities of possible genetic combinations that people can make.  Rather than observe, they were forced experiments in a way.  Eugenics was the breeding of people.  Yes I said BREEDING.  There were scientists out there trying breed better humans for the future.  The humans that were up to par for reproduction mated with those of whom the scientists believed would make better humans.  This was all taking place around 1910-1930s or so.
     There was odd reasoning for the scientists to do the things they did.  Basically what they had in mind, was making most everybody in the US able bodied, mentally capable, and racially up the standard (white).  Now you tell me, didn't some crazy guy in germany try to do the same thing during WWII?  What did that physco call it?  Oh yeah, STERILIZATION.  The scientists were trying to be-rid of people they believed weren't up to their standards.  Only they didn't throw people into ovens, or line them up to be shot. They preformed medical operations on those of whom they believed needed to be sterilized.  Men, women, black, mentally disabled.  They would use certain tactics such as "inspecting" the subjects baby and seeing if they thought the baby was good enough to be made again.  The very first person to be sterilized, Cary, went under operation because of the fact that her baby she had didn't quite make it up to par with the scientists.  Some states even took it to the extremity of passing Acts that prevented blacks, male or female, from marrying whites.
      These measly scientists termed there studies with words like positive, and negative eugenics.  Positive Eugenics is when they would mate people that they believed would go on to produce and even better person.  Athletes, harvard grads, white predominancy people would produce positive results in the Eugenics experiments.  But, the mentally challenged, physically challenged, black, Jew, or any other type of social impurity would produce negative results.  Is this Science?  I think prejudice.
      They used certain experiment tactics such as phenotypical traits of chickens and pea pods.  Mixing Black and white and what not to see what all they could discover about the mixing and further processes of breeding.  They would mix the chickens just by what they saw on the outside and just see what happened.  But that is exactly what they were doing wrong.  You see, when they were doing all these experiments, they hadn't yet found out about DNA.  The genotype baby.  So while they were out thinking that they could just take any human of the desired trait they were looking for and make a reproduction, they failed by over looking the possibility of recessive genes.  So if momma was picked and dad was also picked, they weren't necessarily guaranteed the baby they were looking for because of the fact that either mom, or dad could be carrying the recessive trait.   Boo YA!  eat that you radical scientists.
     Eugenics tore a big fat hole in the social boundaries and norms of the US.  Trying to purify, or sterilize based on race really created tension.  Non-whites were extremely angry, and just the tension of having people be pretty much neutered because some dumb scientist didn't think that they were good enough to reproduce.  Thats bull.  Shoot, some states thought this was actually a good idea.  1924, Virginia passed an Act that restricted interracial dating/marrying.  By then, 3000 people had already been sterilized.  Eugenics had an obvious negative impact on american society.  Its one though that i do not believe allot of people know about, and should be publicized a bit more.  Maybe if more people knew about the Eugenics experiments, they would be a little less likely to be prejudice towards others.


These are my notes, nothing special.

o What is eugenics?  The “breeding” of new people based on parents

o What were the social origins of eugenics?  Scientists wanted the majority of the population to be able bodied and mentally stable

o What were the scientific origins of eugenics? Positive Eugenics, and negative Eugenics.

o What research methods were used to study eugenics and what were their flaws? Mendel used chicken color experiments, as well as pea pod breeding to demonstrated his genetic mixing.  But they failed to notice the genotypic traits of each subject.  Mental state, and brain capability was difficult to measure because back then, DNA wasn’t discovered yet.

o How did eugenics research impact American society?  The research Mendel did effected society in racial tensions.  In fact Virginia had an Act they put forth In 1924 that restricted inter racial dating.  By then 3000 people had already been sterilized in attempt to keep purity of race in the states.  People were actually tested by checking their children for signs of impurities for reason to sterilize. 


Source:  http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

Makin Babies baby

      In a  create a baby lab that I participated in with a fellow classmate, we would flip a coin to see if certain traits such as mouth shape, nose size, even the presence of dimples would show up on our "baby" based on the predominincy of our genes.  In order to get the certain Genotype that we were sposed to be carrying to pass on to our baby, we would flip the coin twice to either get a predominint, or dominint homozygous gene, or a heterozygous gene. 
      Now, the best thing about this lab is that it gave me one heck of a better understanding of how genes can be passed onto the child of new parents.  Well, Bikini Bottom Genetics lab helped out with recessive genes as well.  But any way, when you have both parents carrying homozygous genes of a particular trait, it a pretty good chance that your going to have that trait show up on the child, whether it's a dominint, or predominint trait.  But, when you have heterozygous genes being carried by just one of the parents, then things start to become a gamble.  You don't know what the baby will turn out to be like.  For example, if the genes are represented by letters lower and uppercase to show hetero, and homozygous genotypes, then two sets of capitals such as (DD, DD) combined will 100% show up on the baby.  But when you get something like (DD, Dd), the chances reduce because of the fact that heterozygous genes (Dd) are recessive, and can be skipped a generation.
     One of the biggest things that I needed to get some comprehention on was the Pheno, and geno.  But, i learned that recessive genes tend to be a genotypical subject becuase of the fact that recessive genes ane hidden most of the time.  Meaning that you can't see them phenotypically.  When you can see them Phenotypically, then you got dominint genes that were passed on.  If that didn't make sense, let my clarify.  Phenotype is the genes you can see because they show up on the child, and Genotype is the genes that the baby is carrying, but doesn't show.  The phenotype can be either be dominint or recessive because of the game of chance, but all genotypes are recessive based on the fact that they didn't show up on the child.  But don't think the Genotypes can't become phenotypes.  The genotypes lie inside the baby, waiting, lurking, for their chance in later days when the baby grows to be an adult and reproduce.  The recessive genotype could turn into a, dare i say it, phenotype.
     The labs brought me up to a better par on how genetcs work, i just need to get the vocab matched up and what not so i can have some what of an expert understanding.  But, i do know why i look more like grampa than i do my poppa now, so i guess i got SOMETHING outta these labs.

the things I'll wish I woulda known

As I skimmed through the LONG passage/speech thing that this guy wrote, I noticed a few things.  He put allot of time into it, allot of analizing of different point of views, and allot of typing.  I did like it quite a bit though because when you think about it, many teens do end up making the wrong decision right after highschool about what to do cause in todays society, its almost like you HAVE to know what your going to do after words.  He is so reassuring in his words its amazing.  almost comforting.  I myself have been racking my brain trying to think of what i'm going to do after i graduate.  I do know that i DON'T WANT TO SIT IN A CUBICAL ALL DAY!!!!  I think as long as I don't have to do that, I'll be pretty o.k. with what ever i end up doing.  but then i really get to thinking sometimes.  And there is a couple of words that he mentioned in his passage about not letting other peoples opinions get to you and that is one of my biggest things.  The things I happened to accel at and accomplishments i've made all came when i just shut off every one elses' voice, and did what came natural.  Just went with the flow.  like he had said in the passage.  This man knows his stuff.  And i do also believe i'll be showin this to some people.  This material is uplifting, good quality stuff.  i do believe that I can honestly say i'll be refering back to it too. 

Meosis

So we got MITOsis, which is the asexual reproduction of cells in plants.  But then theres MEOsis.  Meosis is the sexual reproduction of organisms' cells.  When meosis takes place, there are a couple more stages that take place which differ from the mitosis process.  For one there is no S phase in meosis.  And there are 2 phases of metaphase, and anaphase.  Before meosis can take place, the chromosomes (all 46 of em) must be assambled.  Then it can begin to divide.  Meosis requires even numbers of chromosomes to begin.  Then they turn into bivalents.  Then the bivalents divide from oposite poles and seperate.  Then telophase as usual, and eventual complete division of the cell. 

PS.  i'm pretty glad i did this post cause if i wouldn't of done at least this much on the subject, i would be completly lost.  It's comin' back to me now though, its all comin' back to me.

Cells of stem (Stem cells)

     Stem cells that reside is our bodies as we grow and mature are the construction workers of the society of the inner workings of our bodies.  That is, when we are 5 day old fetuses any way.  Stem cells, depending on what type, from from 2 places.  Embryonic Stem cells come from, well, a 5 day old fetus.  And semantic or non-embryonic stem cells come from the organ, and our tissues.  If you think about it, the word EMBRYOnic kind of gives away the origin of the cell. 
     I learned that the stem cells that are derived from embryos are only, well, DERIVED from embryos.  Not taken from an imprenated lady.  I mean, the ladies have to donate the egg, but the ladies aren't pregnant when they "abtain" the egg.  ANYWAY, from there, the confusing stuff is all done in the lab. 
     Wtih stem cell research that is taking place, there is a wide variety of great things that are possible to take place in the medical feild.  Cause if the studies that the scientist are doing on the star fish and rats turn out to work, then i would like them to use it on me.  I got a finger thats missin a nail, and is fractured.  O and it hurts like heck.  Thing is, I gotta wrestle next thursday, cause its the LAMAR dual.  Maybe stem cell research could get me fixed before then. 

Mitosis

Mitosis occurs in different phases.  There is a beginning stage of it where the cell is at rest, and does not change its' nucleus in any way.  This is also known as interphase.  But then, the cell enters a phase called prophase.  Pro, meaning beginning or before, is the first actual phase of mitosis.  In prophase, the cells chromosomes begin to shorten and thicken and start to begin to segregate.
     Then in the metaphase, the spindles inside the cell begin to separate and align inside the middle of the cell.  Then, anaphase kicks in.  This is when the spindles have each separated evenly to one side of the cell and begin to split it in two.  Then in Telophase, the cell is pretty much completely split in two, and the cytoplasm of the once one complete cell, has been divided by a not yet complete new cell wall.  Then the wall forms and it has been divided into 2 daughter cells.

     In a lab that me and a few class mates recently participated in, we examined the number of cells that were in interphase, anaphase, prophase, metaphase, telophase within a certain view through a microscope.  Out of around 250 cells that were in view, 46% of them were in prophase, and 47% of them were in interphase.  Those 2 phases were pretty much the majority.  Then 2% or so was the amount for telo, meta, and anaphases.  This kinda gives you an idea of how long each phase takes compared to the other.  The phases that have the most being seen must take longer to complete thats why you see so many of them.  The smaller percentage is less time taken to complete the process so then you don't see so many of them.