Chemistry Lesson

Summer Assignment 8.27

UPDATE 8.28: The link for the class wiki has been changed to the current year. It went to last years site in the original post.

This will be the final week of the summer assignment this year. Great job with all the comments, I hope you found some of the articles I linked to interesting. There are a few things I have for you to do this week.

• To get credit for this week's entry, comment about what your favorite post was over the summer, and what you are most looking forward to learning more about this year.
• If you are registered for Dr. H's class (Block 1 or 2), please visit this website and request access. If you have used PB Works before, you can use your previous account information and will not have to confirm your email. If you are new to PB Works, you DO NOT need to use your school email account to request access. After I accept you, you will receive a confirmation email. 
• If you are registered for Miss Drust's class (Block 3), she will provide you with the course website.
• Once you have access to the wiki, feel free to have a look around. It is still a work in progress, so there is not too much there yet. There are some things on the front page for you to do.

I also wanted to share with you this comment left on the blog post from last week:

I am amazed by your thought provoking and well written commentary on these articles. I wrote the article about clownfish in Finding Nemo, and was glad to see that this was used in a biology class for a teaching experience. Keep up the great work and don't be afraid to ask questions. If someone doesn't know the answer to your question, then it must be a good question, and is worth exploring for the answer. If you ever have ideas, questions, or thoughts about fish, don't ever hesitate to write us at TheFisheriesBlog@gmail.com, and we will do our best to help you discover the answer!

Patrick Cooney
Fisheries Scientist 

So there you go, its not only me that says you are doing a great job with your comments and insights. Hope you have something fun planned for the last week of vacation. I am looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks.

Summer Assignment 8.20

• Ants may help predict the future of Facebook. I wouldn't hold my breath that Facebook will take the advice and get smaller in order to survive. I would say in 5 years it will be gone the way of Friendster and MySpace.
• Coffee and the brain. I disagree that there is such a thing as too much coffee. Maybe just not enough time to drink it all.
• The "scientifically accurate' version of Finding Nemo sounds so much better than the original.

Summer Assignment 8.13

• Pro: Generating your own food supply. Con: Wearing this thing on your face.
• Newly discovered protein may be key in memory formation. How much would you pay for a few shots right before AP week?
• So they lied to me about carrots helping with night vision. But they did it in order to win WWII, so I guess that is ok.

Summer Assignment 8.6

Really easy assignment this week. Of the below proposed scientific "breakthroughs", which one do you
      a) think is most likely to occur in your lifetime.
      b) most want to see occur in your lifetime.

Via Doghouse Diaries

Summer Assignment 7.30

• Brain control is here, and it sounds really cool and somewhat complicated.
• Spiders have personalities? 
• What is the evolutionary advantage of laughter?

Summer Assignment 7.23

Great comments on the first post last week. Remember that sometimes there may be a short period of time between when you post your comment and when it shows up on the blog. The only time you should worry about your comment getting lost is if posts show up that were not there when you submitted yours. Then, just re-post and it should be fine.

Links for the week:

• If you require iv morphine in order to move your hair, I would say yes, that is a Special Brand of Horror. 

• Turns out women knew how to cure Down's Syndrome all along.

• There is GMO wheat popping up in Oregon fields, and no one seems to know how it got there.

I will be out of town this weekend (Thurs - Tues) so comments will likely not be posted during that time frame. If your comment does not show up by Tuesday night/Wednesday morning then you should repost it.

Summer Assignment 7.16

Welcome to the first official post of the 2013 AP Biology Summer Blog. The rules are simple:

1. Check out the links I include in the post.
2. Make an intelligent comment on them.
3. Or respond in an intelligent way to someone else's comment.
4. Earn points!

Just a note, you don't need to read all of the links I post when there are multiple stories linked. You can always pick the ones that seem most interesting to you.

On to the links:

What You Thought About T. rex Was Wrong, But May Be Right Again

Most people probably envision Tyrannosaurus rex behaving something like this. Basically being a top predator and chasing down its prey. However, a few years ago some researchers postulated that T. rex may have acted more as a scavenger. This was based on the postulated population size of T. rex, and the fact that ecosystems cannot support large populations of top predators. Since behaviors don't fossilize, paleontologists have to look for other clues about how dinosaurs lived their lives. The article describes a T. rex tooth found embedded in a bone from another species. The bone shows signs of healing around the tooth, indicating that the dinosaur survived the T. rex bite. It seems to me to be a bit of a stretch to extrapolate an entire species behavior from one example. Imagine if some future or alien society got one piece of data from one current human, and decided "All humans did this." Scarey idea, depending on who the data came from.

Using Manure on Crops is a Really, Really Old Idea

Interesting point in there about how agriculture may have lead to social stratification and social classes. I always suspected that was all based on poop, now I guess there is evidence.

MIT Researchers Printing New Heart Muscle

If there was any doubt that we are officially in the future, this pretty much erases it.

Welcome to the Summer Assignment

Welcome to the AP Biology summer blog for 2013. I hope to get the first official post (that you will have to comment on) up the week of July 15. In the meantime, some things you can do:

1. Become a follower of the blog. There are two ways to do this on the right hand side. If you follow via email, Blogger to send you notifications of new posts. There is also the option to subscribe to an RSS feed if you use them.

2. Follow me on Twitter (@DrHMTHS). There is a button to the right to do this quickly. I will be posting on Twitter when new posts are up. If you do not have a Twitter account, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and get one; we will be using it in my class next year.

3. Check out the Podcast list to the right. All of these are excellent, and are a great way to keep up with current science topics, and they are very entertaining as well.

4. If you know of a time frame which you will be unable to comment due to vacation, follow this link to complete the form to let us know before you leave for vacation. We will make arrangements with you as far as making the missed weeks up. If you do not let us know ahead of time, the missed weeks will count as zeros.