colossal squid- run away! run away!

In New Zealand, a couple of days ago, fishermen caught the largest squid ever lived: the colossal squid. The colossal squid was at least 39' long and weighed and estimated half ton. The fishermen were catching Patagonian tooth fish, sold under the name of Chilean sea bass, when the squid appeared. The colossal squid was eating the tooth fish in the net when they [the fishermen] pulled it up. If estimated correctly, then then the Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni [the latin name for the colossus squid] would be 330 pounds heavier than the next largest creature, the name unbeknownst to me. The colossal squid is a different species than the giant squid and that they would grow up to 46 feet long, for now. These enormous creatures dive up to 6500 feet and are extremly aggressive hunters. The squid was frozen and was transported to the New Zealand national museum, Te Papa, in Wellington, for study. For more on this, go to http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070222_ap_colossal_squid.html

gentics assessment!

The genetics assessment started a few days ago and the students of OMEGA had been placed into the following categories: Therapeutic cloning, the cloning of a healthy organ, genetically modified food, food that has been, well, genetically modified, and designer babies, the babies that design things (actually, the parents get to decide which genes go to the child so they could decide to make their child a literal designer baby). My topic for the genetics assessment is therapeutic cloning, and I have to describe what it is, when and why it was introduced. I have also been helping a new student, Man Ying, out by translating and asking her if she understands.

NASCAR and the "Car of Tomorrow"

On Sunday, February 18, 2007, the fourty ninth Daytona 500 took place, revealing slightly altered cars. Aerodynamics is important to stock car, jungle, and desert racing because it makes you faster, right? Probably not because the faster you go, the more air friction works against you. In racing, there are three D's: drag, downforce, and drafting. There are two types of drag: friction drag and pressure drag. Friction drag is due to the wind breaking over the cars surface. Pressure friction, however, is from the low pressure wake coming from the back of the car and sucks it backwards. Teams make tiny adjustments to make air flow smoothly, therefore reducing friction and pressure. NASCAR drivers say they need more downforce. Downforce is the " negative lift" that makes you go faster on hairpin turns. The physics for this is pretty much the same for an airplane wing, except backwards. Drafting, the third and final "D", the most common situation for drafting is when the lead car blocks much of the incoming wind, reducing the friction drag for a trailing car. This year, NASCAR will allow the " Car of tomorrow" in certain races, but which, are not known... yet. The design is primarily meant to improve the saftey, but it also alters the way air flows over the car. For more information on this, go to http://www.livescience.com/technology/070215_nascar_aero.html

classroom blog 1.0

Today in Green science, we studied chromosomes and how they develop into Sex cells. I learned that the chromosomes, first duplicate themselves, then move to the end of the cell and split into new cells. They duplicate themselves again to make four new cells. I also learned that , in the human body, there are 46 chromosomes in the body cell, and exactly half of that in a sex cell.
In a goldfish, there are at least 90 some chromosomes in the body cell; more than the chromosomes in the human body cell. I learned that the X chromosome is larger than the Y chromosome. According to CNN, the Y chromosome has at least 21 different genes unique to men, which control the operation of the body down to the cell. to read more about this article, then click here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/02/14/gender.brain/index.html
On a different site, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosomes, Chromosomes are a single large macromolecule in the DNA.

Amazing Comet!

The comet Mcnaught was rounding the sun over the past few days and can be seen with binoculars in Broad Daylight! until 11:00 AM eastern time, the SOHO spacecraft can take near-live images of comet Mcnaught. Every noon, the comet will have gone closer to the southern hemisphere and farther from the sun. On the astromoners' brightness scale, where the lower numbers are brighter and negative numbers are the brightest of them all, the comet Mcnaught is negative 5. Comparing with other space objects, Venus is a mere negative 4 (brighter than any star) and the moon is a bright 12.7. Mcnaught was the brightest since 1965, even though it was discovered last August. It is also far brighter than Comet Hale-Bopp, widely seen in 1995. The astronomers started seeing Mcnaught yesterday soon after the local sunset. For more information, click here: http://space.com/spacewatch/070114_comet_mcnaught.html

Current event blog:

British Climate scientists hypothesize that 2007 will be the hottest, because of high levels of persistant greenhouse gases, as well as El Nino, the cyclical warming trend that is, at the moment, occuring in the Pacific Ocean. El Nino happens irregularly; the last one was five years ago, in 2002, as well as in 1997 and 1998. El Nino, this year, added with the steady increase of global warming, due to human activity, may break Earth's temperatre levels. The good thing about El Nino is that it leads to a less chance that Northeastern US will be hit with a hurricane. to find this article and many other related articles, click here:http://www.livescience.com/environment/070104_ap_warmest_year.html

Welcome to my Blog

wecome to my blog

below: my yahoo avatar