Cannabalism! One of our trout has decided that it doesn't get enough to eat and took matters into its own hands. However, it looks as if it bit off a little more than it could chew. Someone 3rd period today pointed this out and the little guy struggled to swallow its meal all day long.

In class we had a great time learning about some common human parasites today. Someone brought up the "tree man" that has been on TV lately. It turns out his condition is the result of a virus however....although, you could argue that viruses are parasites too. Here is the website with video we watched.

Mr Ott's college biology class just finished up some amazing Earth
history timelines. Be sure to check them out in the hallways. The best
one, in my opinion, is in the high school science wing. Great work!

I spent some of break up in the Adirondacks snowshoeing and cross-
country skiing in the High Peaks region. On my way up Phelps Mtn. I
had a couple visitors stop for some of my trail mix. I hope you all
enjoyed break and come ready to learn about the animal kingdom tomorrow.

Wow....I found an amazing article on National Geographic today about flower pollen. It is pretty fascinating stuff and fits in perfectly since we discussed flowering plants today (angiosperms). They've included some pretty cool scanning electron micrograph picturesas well. Be sure to check out the whole article. This picture shows pollen on a geranium.

"Then one day more than 375 million years ago, it happened. One lineage of plants evolved pollen grains and seeds, and from then on nothing was the same. Let's not mince words. Pollen is plant sperm—two individuals per grain—surrounded by a single, often golden, wall that offers both protection and chariot. If the tension in the long story of plants was the distance between lovers, pollen was what would bring them together, over feet or even across continents. It was an evolutionary trick that transformed the world."

This week we're covering the Plant Kingdom and it's amazing diversity...everything from the very simple mosses that rely on diffusion for water and must live near these water sources to the very advanced angiosperms that we're mostly familiar with. Today we dissected a lilly to see the male and female parts of a flower. The dissecting microscopes gave us a great look at the pollen-covered anthers.

Check this site for more information on flower parts.

Food vacuole formation in Tetrahymena.

Video courtesy of Cornell Tetrahymena ASSET Program

Tetrahymena sexual reproduction

Video courtesy of Cornell Tetrahymena ASSET Program

Today we set up a lab to understand sexual reproduction in Tetrahymena protists. Usually they undergo asexual reproduction but occasionally bond with a mate to help "revive" their genetic composition...roughly every 200 generations. In Tetrahymena, there are 7 different mating types (contrast to only 2 in humans). We mated an unknown sample with each of the 7 types and tomorrow we will observe them under the scopes to witness how they undergo the swapping of their genetic materials. Above, Luke and Dillon mix the samples in today's portion of the lab.
Bottom photo courtesy Mr. Syracuse's classes and their snazzy digital microscopes.

Swing by room 302 to see our beautiful morning glories in full bloom.

This week we're working closely with Cornell University on a new lab they are working on called ASSET. We are observing characteristics and behavior in the single-celled protist, Tetrahymena. Today we learned a little about them and noted observations under our microscopes. We learned that they move by cilia, twist while swimming, have observable organelles, and are about 50 microns long.

So far we've documented 12 species of feeder birds at our school bird feeder. None, however, are as cool as THIS bird. Check out this video from the "Life of Birds" series:

Today Bill was in to do this month's brown trout lesson. The above shows a food chain. We have a sample of algae on the right and one of the brown trout on the left. In the middle we are missing an important link in the chain that eats the algae but acts as a food source for trout; the Daphnia, or "water flea." We fed daphnia to our trout to see if they would recognize it as a food source because up until now they have just been feeding on fish food. We concluded that these fish instinctually fed on these prey even though they had never encountered them before.
Curtis Observes his hungry brown trout.

Bill Davenhall: Your health depends on where you live | Video on TED.com


Great Video! Makes you appreciate how clean the Finger Lakes area is.

Midterm Review

Here is the presentation from class. Please use this to fill out your review sheet.

Midtermreview

View more presentations from Chad DeVoe.

My highschool class is currently testing the anti-microbial properties
of different spices. We created about 10 agar plates with a different
spice in each one. Tomorrow we will see if any spice inhibits the
growth of a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli, the bacteria we
innoculated the plates with.

Video from today's skits!

Today we checked for bacteria growing in certain locations of the room and school. Here, Trevor and Alan swab and label their agar plate. The plates will spend 24 hrs in the incubator. Bacteria grow best in dark, moist, and warm places so we've created the best conditions and an optimal food source for them to thrive.
Sam and Courtney test for bacteria on the exoskeleton of our pet cockroach.

Students have been hard at work researching an infectious disease during our unit on bacteria and viruses. These are due tomorrow (Wed) and students have the opportunity to act out their skits if they'd like to. It should be interesting.