Hunger Games Final Analysis

1. In this lab, we split the class into 3 phenotypes that all needed to eat and reproduce to simulate a real world population of organisms trying to survive. 
2. The pinchers were the best at capturing food because they had the easiest mechanism to grab the food, since human fingers are very strong and well trained from doing everyday activities.
3.  In this lab we asked the question "Do populations evolve?". We found that they do, and not always in favor of the "fittest" organism. The population evolved and the evidence of this is that stumpies went from 8 out out of 23 in the population, which is about 1/3 of the population, to 3 out of 23, to completely extinct. This is evidence of various forms of natural selection since the number of offspring fell into different categories based on who survived. This data supported our claim because this process leads to evolution over time. 
4. In this simulation, the beak assignment was not random because it was given to each person and everyone was using the same grabbing technique in their phenotype. But, factors like pocket storage for food, and running speed and aggressiveness were random because different people have unique characteristics and clothes they wore for the lab. 
5. If the food was larger, then people might have gotten more food each because each person could only carry so much food in their hands and clothes. However if the food was less, the competition would be stiffer and people would be more aggressive to "survive". This applies to nature because sometimes there are enough resources and all organisms can live in harmony but when scarcities come up, competition gets much stiffer. 
6. The results would have been different if there wasn't incomplete dominance because stumpies would have shown up instead of knucklers. Actually, there wouldn't be any knucklers or many stumpies in existence because they wouldn't survive. 
7. Natural selection is the main theory behind evolution. Because of competition between organisms, populations change and evolve over time. 
8. Many people mated with others in their own phenotype to ensure survival, which was a good strategy for double dominant or double recessive genotypes. This would affect the gene frequency because it would go higher in the direction of the organisms that mated with each other. This is exactly what happens in nature because each species mates with one another so they ensure having more offspring like themselves.   
9. In evolution, organisms evolve as their genotypes and phenotypes do so. Natural selection also acts on both parts of an organism because as the genotype changes, it usually shows in the phenotype.

How would results vary if we mimicked an ecosystem more accurately? For example, if we placed food in harder to reach places or gave everyone limitations (like with their pockets), how would results change?

Procrastinating on the Project

This week, I did some work on 20 time but mainly I procrastinated. This was clearly a problem so I did a little more work and have made more progress now.  I have decided to use myself as a test subject before asking others to take part in my project. First, I figured out why I procrastinate. This article, http://success.oregonstate.edu/six-reasons-people-procrastinate, explains some triggers in general towards procrastination, and I used this for my initial research but now I'm trying to see which apply to me. In my life, I tend to procrastinate on practicing dance and singing (two of my extra-curricular activities), cleaning my room, and the given obvious, homework. I like to socialize, watch TV, or do other useless tasks instead of doing the important work. My next steps are trying to find out what I feel while I procrastinate and what situations motivate me to keep working. I also want to talk to people who do get all of their work done and see what they think while doing tasks. Hopefully I'll get more done this week!

Bird Beak Lab

Analysis
Recently we conducted a bird beak lab, which tested Darwin's observations and conclusions. We simulated 5 different types of birds' beaks with a spoon, a binder clip, a pair of tweezers, a pair of chopsticks, and a pair of scissors. The goal was for each bird to pick up as many pieces of "food" (rubber bands, macaroni, toothpicks, and paper clips). We saw evidence that individuals with better traits leave more offspring when the tweezers-beaked bird had a total of 15 chicks, the highest among all other birds. A possible explanation for this could be that their beaks were more adept at picking up food. Another of Darwin's conclusions was shown true in our lab: the fact that populations gradually start to look more like the "winners", or individuals with the better traits. The tweezers chicks made up about 21.4% of the population. An explanation for this is that the tweezers chicks collected more food and had more offspring.

Conclusion:
In this lab, we asked the question: if natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?  We also simulated a farming spraying pesticide incident in this lab, where the "birds" were left with 1/4 of their original pile of food. Theoretically, the birds with the most efficient picking up food skills would succeed with this challenge. We found that the tweezers still produced more chicks. This data support our claim because the tweezer bird was the most efficient.
Even though our data followed our hypothesis correctly the expected results there could be errors. The binder clip required the user to apply a decent amount of pressure in order to operate it and pick up the food. When doing the back to back trials, using the binder clip became tiring. This error might cause its  population to decrease, instead of staying the same or increasing. In the lab as a whole, each bird beak was operated by a different student, and each student would have a different skill level in terms of picking up the food. For example, someone who has been eating with chopsticks their whole life would find the chopstick beak very effective. This might have caused certain populations to be too high or too low. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend students switching "bird beaks" in order to make the lab more objective and maybe finding an alternative for the binder clip, because of the finger pressure that is needed to use it.
This lab was done to demonstrate the concept of natural selection, and how every population will have winners and losers. From this lab I learned how natural selection would works in an ecosystem, and I now understand the concept better. Based on my experience from this lab, I can better understand why certain traits are more dominant in certain populations.

Prevent Procrastination

20 time is a concept where students are given 20 percent of their class time to work on a project of their choosing.
My essential question is "Will understanding more about the brain's scientific reactions to circumstances help with problems, like procrastination?"
I was frustrated that I procrastinate so much in order to get work done and I have tried numerous "motivating mechanisms" to help me work more efficiently, all of which have failed miserably. I'm pretty sure I am not the only one with this problem so for my project I will try to use science to stop procrastination.
My goals begin with trying to inform myself about this topic thoroughly and then trying to implement tips I come up with in my life as well as trying these on some others.
I will measure my process and hopefully achievements by having a consistent task(s) that needs to be completed with different ways to go about doing the job.
My plan moving forward is to research for now, and hopefully start coming up with solutions soon.
Not only do I want to figure out how to prevent procrastination, I also want to learn what causes it because ideally everything we set out to do should be something we want to get done instead of putting it off.

Unit 7 Reflection

Unit 7 was about ecology, or the "study of house", whose main ideas in biology are, homeostasis, equilibrium, and interdependence. We elaborated on the known fact that environments are in best condition when they are in balance, or in homeostasis by learning about energy interdependence to ensure survival.  There are 6 levels of organization on the earth: organism, population, community, ecosystem, biome, biosphere that live in habitats and have niches. Personally I was confused between these two concepts but as we applied them more in our learning, I understood them better. Making up an ecosystem, are both producers (autotrophs) and consumers (heterotrophs). There are 5 trophic levels, including primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary consumers, and quaternary consumers. Factors affecting a population's growth are immigration, emigration, births, deaths, disease, predators, limited supply of abiotic factors, and population density and dispersion. All populations reach a carrying capacity (K), which is the maximum population that an environment can support. After a disturbance in an ecosystem a sequence of changes follow, which is called ecological succession. If something remains after the disturbance it is called secondary succession and if nothing remains it is called primary succession. Loss of species has shown to be tightly correlated with human population growth. 4 major threats to species' extinction are: habitat loss, introduced species by humans, overexploitation, and climate change. 
We did many extension activities related to ecology to supplement our learning this unit. First we watched a movie called "Bag It!" which brought light to the issue of plastic's negative impact on the environment. Also we watched a video called "Story of Stuff" which spoke about human waste polluting the planet intensely. Both of these informed us of how careless humans are when it comes to taking care of the earth and set out to motivate people to help the environment. Also, we did a group project on conservation biology, which was really fun and informative. My group made a video which you can watch here. To reflect on our project, we filled out a personal question sheet to see what type of person we are. I got a 13/20 for assertive and passive aggressive, a 14/20 for passive, and a 10/20 for aggressive. This shows that I like to avoid conflict more than anything even though I got pretty close scores for most of the traits. 

Story of Stuff Notes

• extraction, production, distribution, consumption, disposal
• linear system on a finite planet
• missing factors like people (govt.,corp.)
• govt. is more concerned about corps than the people
• we r running out of resources
• if u dont own/ buy stuff u dont have value
• use chemicals to help with resources  emitting toxins into our lives
• human breast milk has the highest dose of toxins!
• people work with this stuff because they have no other choice
• many toxins pollute as byproducts
• even if we move the pollutants to other countries, it comes back! as wind pollution etc
• externalized costs  real cost of making things aren’t captured into price
• we have become a nation of consumers
• 1% of things americans buy are still used after 6 months
• our “ultimate purpose” is to produce more consumer goods
• planned obsolescence: made for the dumps
• perceived obsolescence: throw away things that are perfectly fine! (trends do this)
• Ads make us feel unhappy of what we already have
• Though we have more stuff, our national happiness is decreasing
• we have no leisure time or we just shop in that time!
• incineration: BAD because it mixes and releases toxins
• recycling is good! but not enough
• there are points of intervention!

Conservation Biology Project