Exploring Science

  Veganism can be a very sensitive topic for some. Primarily because of the hypocrisy surrounding it. For example, some vegans eat honey even though it’s made by bees and some vegans wear leather or wool even though they’re technically animal products. Which is why many people don’t take it seriously.  Thoughts that surround the term veganism are that people who are on this diet are really healthy. Which can be true in some aspects, but not entirely. Especially because there’s so many plant-based meats that are frozen and easy to make that contain high amounts of sodium i n order to increase shelf life . Compared to most meat products there is a large difference in saturated fat and sodium per serving. Since there are so many meat products though it really depends on the type of product. For example, grilled chicken can be recommended for people on a diet whereas red meat like ground beef is known to cause heart problems. A research article talks about the impacts of red...

     US Filtration System      There are a number of things a person needs in order to live: food, shelter, and most importantly, water. The average person can survive without water for 3 days whereas food is more like 2 weeks. All 7 billion of the people on this Earth need water to survive so, what happens when we run out? In the United states it is a law that there must be a clean and available water source for every living environment. In some countries this is not a bare minimum requirement and even if there are water sources available, not all of them are completely uncontaminated.  A research article suggests the types of chemicals some are being exposed to and the effects on people after exposure. Some examples of the possible chemicals are lead, arsenic, nitrates, fluoride, cadmium, and mercury. These chemicals are extremely dangerous to anyone who drinks it and especially to children who are still in the process of development. These chem...

Every animal has to have some sort of anatomical feature that enables them to stay alive when a predator attacks. Some animals even gained the ability through evolution to release their own limbs in order to keep from being prey. Animals like the lizard have a specialized feature on their body that allows them to let go of their tail if a predator has grabbed a hold of it. When doing this, they leave behind their wiggling limb that distracts the predator while they make a break for it. Contrary to what you may think, they aren’t tailless for the rest of their lives, they are actually able to regenerate a new one. So, the question arises: how does this work? A lizard's tail is segmented into parts that act as fracture planes which is where the tail will break when a predator grabs onto it. These fracture planes are not easily broken though, they consist of muscle fibers that are very dense. A recent research study described the fragments of the tail as dense structures that conta...

The Boa Constrictor is a non venomous snake that kills its prey by wrapping around it multiple times, until stopping the blood flow in its unlucky victim. Scientists have long wondered how they are able to go minutes at a time holding their breath during this deadly hug. New studies show that they actually don’t, they have a specific way of breathing that differs from other reptiles that allows them to breath while constricting.  Contrary to how snakes may look while slithering they are not squishy, but they are very bendable. Their skeletal backbone (pictured above) extends throughout their entire body, so basically their entire body is ribcage. A snake's physiology consists of 2 lungs, a liver, a heart, small intestine, stomach, etc. The lungs though aren’t small, they are actually quite large and take up a good part of the snake, extending from its neck past its midsection. Therefore, it is not as hard for the snake to breathe as we would think it would be. While constricting ,...

     My researcher's name is Aparna Zama and she is my professor for my Careers in Animal Science class. Before becoming a full time teacher Zama did research in the genetics field, specifically in epigenetics which is the study of how altered genes are expressed. Being a genetics major made this type of research really rewarding for her. As a research assistant she spent a lot of her time getting foundations to give her grants in order to keep the research up and running. This was the biggest obstacle that she faced and it sometimes and analyzing data in the lab, which is what she enjoyed the most. Specifically, her main research focus was on the epigenetic effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the female reproductive system. Her research consisted of in vivo methods only and she watched the effects in real time in mice and rats. Her article talks about a variety of chemicals that can do some major damage to the female reproductive system. After conducting my int...

66 Million years ago in the mesozoic era Dinosaurs ruled the world. Until one fateful day in Spring when a huge rock came down, causing the demise of most life forms. That rock was actually an asteroid, or as scientists have named it, Chicxulub. The question remains, why did this asteroid hit the Earth and how did it happen? Scientists suggest that an asteroid was the only possible way that the dinosaurs could have been completely wiped out. The bulk of the evidence behind this theory is within the layers of the outer crust of the Earth. Scientists kept an account of the process of them drilling into the area where they believe the asteroid struck earth. Their research talks about how “large impact craters have ‘peak rings’ that define a complex crater morphology,” (paragraph 1). Peak rings are basically craters that are more shallow and less defined than the asteroid one was initially. Using this evidence they were able to come to the conclusion that the only thing stron...