This is a Liger, a cross between a male lion and female tiger. It is the largest of all known cats. Something that i find interesting is that the Liger is only found in captivity, because the two parental species, lions and tigers, do not mate in the wild.
http://ahsbiocolleen.blogspot.com/
This is my biology blog, on it i blog about different things that we have covered this year.
Forensics Reflection
We started this project by listening to stories about exoneration, such as the story of Colin Warner, a man from Brooklyn who was wrongfully convicted of killing an adolescent. These stories got me interested in this project early, the stories of corruption and violence in the judicial system and the police force were appalling to me. We also did a lab using electrophoresis gel, and did all of the steps necessary to compare and analyze DNA. It was just about the exact same process and what has caused any of these people to be exonerated, instead of using pre-prepared samples like we did, scientists in forensics labs would collect samples at a crime scene isolate the DNA from the blood, semen, or whatever was collected, and they would then proceed through the steps of amplification, separation, and analysis.
The subject of my project was a man named James Bain, who in 1976 was wrongfully convicted of raping a nine-year-old boy in Florida. He then served a 35 year sentence before being exonerated by DNA evidence last year. Our tape figure, which held Lily’s figure, was presented in a laying down position with the hands over the head, which was supposed to symbolize a feeling of defeat. To the latter, he was also wearing a shirt that says “not guilty” symbolizing the hope and determination that eventually led Bain to be exonerated. Also, when he walked out of the courtroom on the day of his exoneration, he wore a similar shirt.
This project seemed different to me than any of the other things that we did in bio this year, it seemed more real. Throughout the year we have learned many things, many on a cellular level, and some on a larger scale, such as evolution. I had an extremely hard time connecting to these things, mainly because I did not see their relevance in my own life. This project had a subject that has had great effects on the lives of my fellow man, and could even have an extreme effect on me in my adult life. This really helped me connect to the content. I learned the content of the DNA processing, but one of my favorite intellectual parts of this project was the social sciences that can be related to it. During this project I have spent a lot of time thinking about police brutality and racism in the government. The vast majority of the people studied in this project were African American males. And most of the cases that I saw, race was a major factor in their conviction. After I have seen the work completed and I have reflected on the work that I have done, I am very happy about my work on this project. It was very new for me to feel any kind of strong connection to biology work, but I did on this project and I feel that I reflected that in my work. If I were to change something on my work, I would have maybe worked faster. There were sometimes when I thought that I was on or ahead of schedule, so I worked slow, but instead I would should have tried to work more on my artistic aspect of the project so I could be even more proud.
Respiratory System Reflection
For weeks ahead of this project we had begun to delve into the specifics of different bodily systems. One of my favorite parts was making the Mr. Goodbody, when we did this we traced one of our group member’s bodies
On a large sheet of paper and then outlined the inner workings of our bodies on the sheet. After some gaining some background knowledge it was time to put this project into motion.
During this project we were put in groups and assigned to create and educational website about the bodily system that we were assigned. In the end our websites should have looked professional and the goal was to teach the reader something that they did not know before.
At the beginning there were different jobs already created for the project and we were randomly assigned one. The group I was in was assigned to study the respiratory system, a bodily system that I find interesting and something I was happy to study. Although our group was working towards the common goal of creating a website we ended up splitting into groups according to the people who had the same jobs within their groups as us.
The job that I was giving was the researcher. What that entailed was basically to conduct some kind of independent study on your system, being in the respiratory system I went for a common subject in that department, smoking. What I did was I recorded people’s lung health using a device called a spirometry. Once I had done that I had the subjects take a survey in which I asked them about there experiences in smoking both tobacco and marijuana. After that I graphed the data so that it would show how smoking either tobacco or marijuana effected a person’s breathing.
If I were to have the opportunity to do another project similar to this one, there are a few things that I would do differently. The most important being that I would plan out exactly how I was going to go about things more carefully. I was very excited about this project and what I was doing was ambitious. I now know that the graphing is hard and I would try to narrow down what information was important and put it in, in stead of having to narrow down gradually through the project as I figured out that what I was doing was not working. I also wish that I had more time so that I could have made it better put together and create and essay that I was more satisfied with.
