A brief memoir of carbon molecule

Memoir of Carl Carbon

12/4/12

            In the brief time I have been part of life about 13,000 years I have seen many things as I started out in the mountains of India as part of a tea leaf a glucose molecule.  I lived this luxurious life for 100 years until I was plucked and put into a stew. This led me to a new life where I was digested by a human and was split away from my companions. I was then thrown around in a small structure called a mitochondrion. After this ordeal I made sure that I would be removed from such a terrible place. To get out of the body I was thrown out allowing me to breathe of relief. I spent the next 10,000 years roaming the planet looking to be a glucose in a tea leaf. It was not until 1,000 years to this day that I had this privilege. The process was not as kind to the protons as I had remembered.  Getting thrown around the chloroplast was not exciting. I moved from the stroma to the Calvin cycle where I was bonded with a new group of companions that I would spend the next 500 years with becoming the most valued tea leaf of all time.  Where I sat in a vacuole waiting to be used for energy I was never called. One day a man walked up our mountain in Nepal and plucked the leaf I was contained in. He then must have noticed how valuable our leaf was and then dried us out. We have now sat on shelves for 500 years waiting to be used so we may continue our life as carbon molecules, yet this has not happened so I wait staring at the membrane of my dried out vacuole.

Into The forest of suburbia

Summary
   Our Plot group made our way into the wet and frigid wilderness in hopes of better understanding the biodiversity, In western North Carolina. As we approached our plot site we noticed changes to our site, from the fact that our trees had lost its leaves to the leaf litter that had piled up in turn of the missing leaves. Our plot also contained many other new objects found in the list below.Our plot site overall was fairly consistent from our last visit. All of the small trees either stayed the same height or died 2 trees died tree 5 and 15 were both maples. which leads to ask the question, was it pure coincidence or did it have to do with the type of tree they were? overall our plot remained significantly unchanged and is in a healthy position for thr up coming winter months.

Newly noticed things                                               

• A type of moss that contains seeds.
• a new type of mushroom.
• the upperside of our large trees bark is falling off turning black.
• All leaves have fallen off creating large amounts of leaf litter
• our branches were facing the lake

What we could have done better
   Our group could have stayed on task better, less goofing around. Our group would highly benefit from a structured plan of once we get out there this is what were going to do. We should have spent more time observing during silent observation time.

Cells R Us a Brief introduction to Ribosomes

 

Mark Broeffle

10/26/12

Cells r us

Ribosomes are tiny organelles that link amino acids into proteins.  A ribosome is found on the rough endoplasmic reticulum of a cell there are approximately fifteen thousand in each cell. A ribosome is about 25 nm in diameter when blown up to four hundred time scale it is one millimeter in diameter. Ribosomes are found in both plants and animals and in plants as well. They are found in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The ribosome is made of two main parts the binding sites on the bottom which is used to link the acids, and the large subunit above.

The Breakdown

Mark Broeffle

10/13/12

Our group consisted of Ali, JB, and myself overall we did a fair job in our lab, but we could have stayed more focused. The question we were tasked with was. Is the enzyme that breaks down hydrogen peroxide in to water and oxygen found in both plants and animals? To tackle the question our group took three items a potato, an orange, and beef liver. With our test subjects, we cut them up into 1 gram pieces and then filled the test tube with 10 grams of hydrogen peroxide. Our results showed that the enzyme was found in both, but not in all items. With the liver it bubbled at such a large rate that it overflowed the test tube revealing that the enzyme was present. The potato did react to the hydrogen peroxide showing that the plants also contain the enzyme. The orange on the other side of the spectrum did not react which lead us to the conclusion that the enzyme is found in both plants and animals but is not found in all organisms. Our group over all was fairly well behaved. Our one big issue was that we ended up talking a lot about different things then just biology. Jb was like our group leader making sure things got done especially with the power point that we presented. Ali also worked very hard, but he does like to talk to Xavier and Luis. Our group managed the task and finished on time. I am without major concern about how our group managed our time or acted well preforming.

Our own little peice of Ashevegas

Mark Broeffle

Monthly plot reflection

 Honors bio

10/5/12

               As we approached our plot site, our group began to organize our utensils and stake the 11 ft radius. Once marked off we found ourselves in a virtual bubble with four sizeable trees, many vines, mushrooms, and a plethora of small trees. The member that did the most work was Austin (Leader), Helping out with other jobs such as the arborists flagging trees. The photographer X-Man did a fantastic job quickly getting the photos taken. Allowing for other jobs to be taken care of. Our naturalist and I (Arborist) worked together flagging measuring and deciding what type of tree each one is. 

               Our plot is laid out on the side of the old rowing lake, on a large slant. Our plot also contains a downed tree toward the water, a large ditch where the tree roots stood, many hanging vines that wrap around the four large trees, and many small trees. My big question I would like to figure out is how much will the small trees grow and how many more will sprout. The most important observation I made was that the plot is surrounded by human interference with a highway half a mile away and  drainage tubes 20 yards from it make this plot a perfect way to see how much humans actually change the nature around them.

Three hips Foray

Mark Broeffle

Ms. Lawrence’s class

9/25/12

The mushrooms

Today I write to my fantastic followers, telling them how not to be saying oh shroom on a mushroom foray. To start off there are many types of mushrooms about 10,000 known and 250,000 over all unknown. There are a few basic characteristics of mushrooms first being that it has pores to reproduce, they have a cap which is the top many but not all have a stalk depending if it’s a shelf mushroom, and all have either gills teeth or pore underneath containing the spores. The life cycle of fungi starts out with the roots of the fungi called mycelium which grows to the point where it can then spring a mushroom filled with pores that can reproduce asexually. Once the mushroom has grown out of the ground its spores will start to be released allowing the species to reproduce. The returning link in the process is that the spores fall to the ground and create new mycelium which creates more mushrooms. Depending on the species the time that it would take to create a mushroom from the mycelium could be a hundred years or a month to produce s fruit the mushroom.

When going on a foray You do not hurt the fungi when picking the mushroom due to the fact that the mushroom is only the fruit , like an apple on a apple tree. A clue where to find some great mushrooms are where there are many dead organisms to feed off of loggs are great for this. The best time to find mushrooms are 3 to 5 days after a rain during warm weather. once you gather your mushrooms you can take them home to eat once you identify them by using the spore print which depending on its color may help you to figure out what type it is. you can also use the shape, color, type of gills or teeth , and the type of stalk to help narrow down your search.

During my first foray I found 2 veery elaborate mushrooms. One very small the other a cluster of mushrooms that were fairly easy to identify. If I had the chance to redo the Assignment I would Spend more time on my blog post, I also would find more mushrooms so I would have an easier time finding out the mushrooms identity.

Test essay

Mark Broeffle
Ms. Lawrance's bio class
9/18/12

Are birds really dinosaurs?

    Many scholars believe that birds are the ancestors of avian dinosaurs, such as theropods. according to a recent paper I read “using proper terminology birds are avian dinosaurs.” Many other scientists are largely against this theory stating a large fossil gap between such species, and a lack of relevant data. all of this can neither be proven nor disproven, like the big bang so it is a very controversial topic. I’Il give you the facts so you may make your own educated opinion.


Birds have many similar body parts and bones as their ancestors the dinosaurs, both are actually reptiles due to the scales on their feet. along with the fact that some dinosaurs may have had feathers. The Archaeopteryx commonly known as the london specimen shows a fossil that seems to be a bridge between dinosaurs and birds.

shows of evolution from the dinosaur to the bird today. Are the london specimen found in germany showing a mix of the two species, and all of the same body parts such as the same pelvis, same wrists bone structure, their s shaped necks, and their scales on their feet. What these all show is that being smaller was a favorable trait perhaps in the ice age when food was scarce, and the growing in of feathers kept the birds better protected to the weather. In the case of the london specimen the fossil shows a bone structure of that of the modern bird having hollow bones this seems to be favorable in this case most likely allowing faster running or flight even from predators. Which in both cases allowed both to create more offspring becoming dominant .

Birds have many same bone and organ structures as reptiles showing that there must have some common ancestors. with so much controversy on the topic we may never truly know if modern day birds were once dinosaurs. The amount of data on both sides are huge.The question I leave you with is are birds actually dinosaurs?

Group I biology blog reflection

Blog reflection

Honors Biology

In my opinion group 1 in d block worked very well together during the lab, but during the presentation our group had some organizational failures. During the beginning of our lab we worked swiftly coming up with ideas, and coming up with reasons they would fail. A great brain storming group.  During our lab in my opinion we did a great job setting up our experiments, but could have used a little more practice on the microscope. Other parts of our lab that could have been better would have been better ways of taking notes on the raw data. As far as collecting samples that went very smoothly. This allowed our group to make a swift conclusion about our unknown object if it was alive or not.

                Our presentation though was well done but poorly managed in my opinion. There was not enough forethought for our presentation and most of the prep happened well we were going over the slides. Our handout should have been emailed and printed earlier. Our team should have met in the morning of to discuss how the presentation would work. The biggest thing though that went wrong was the PowerPoint, our power point was being done during the class and that made me very upset. Over all though I can say that our group did well for a first crack at Biology at Asheville school.

my first bio post

Hello Ms.Lawrence I have set this up.