Henrietta Lacks

Over spring break I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot. I had previously heard of the story last year and was immediately intrigued. Basically the story is, an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks was treated for cervical cancer at John Hopkins. A sample of the cancerous tissue was sent to a lab and scientist, George Gey discovered that these cancerous cells kept dividing in the lab. However, neither Henrietta or her family knew about this sample and the experimentation that was going on. The cells were a great medical and scientific breakthrough, but Henrietta’s name was not associated with the cells. So Rebecca Skloot wanted to bring the truth to light and share the story of Henrietta.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but I think I liked the movie better. Although the book focused more on the science side and the movie focused more on the family of Henrietta and their relationships the movie was more emotional to me. The book evoked anger but the movie evoked sympathy. To be quite honest I would be awfully mad if a doctor used one of my family’s cells for research and not tell me about it.

So I want to pose a question to you, how would you feel if your family member’s cells were taken without consent?

Click here to buy the book!

May 17, 2018May 19, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: ap bio, ap biology, book, cells, cool, hela, henrietta, henrietta lacks, lacks, movie 2 Comments

AP Biology Exam Reflection

Over the 2017-2018 school year, I have been a part of the AP Biology class. This class was special because I was in the class every day rather than normal block schedule. Because I had the class every day I felt that our class got an advantage to the AP test in comparison to other AP courses at the school. We ultimately got the most time to prepare for the AP Biology exam on May 14.

With that being said, after taking the AP Bio exam I am feeling confident that I passed. The multiple choice part of the exam was very much like our tests in class so I felt good with that part. However, for the short answer questions, I felt that I was rushing to get everything I wanted to say down on the page. Also for one of the questions, there was only half a page designated for the answer which I struggled trying to condense my thoughts to fit on the lines. Overall, I felt prepared for the exam through all of our preparation in class with practicing tips and tricks and the material. If you have a chance to take AP Biology, I highly recommend taking the class, biology is super interesting!

May 17, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: ap, ap bio, ap bio test, ap biology, ap biology test, ap test, bio, biology, reflection, test, work 2 Comments

CSM Cadaver Lab

Our final field trip with the AP Bio 2018 team was to visit the anatomy and physiology department at the local junior college. The department actually receives cadavers from a university in San Francisco. We were told that to respect the deceased we could not take pictures and that people actually donate their body to science. We were only there for around an hour which we packed a lot of information in that time. We split into groups and rotated through stations. The first station I went to was to see the cadaver. I was surprised at how the human body looked like after being preserved in chemicals. In previous science classes I have dissected fetal pigs, frogs, rats, and a cow’s eye so I was familiar with the smell of the preservative and seeing the organs of something that was living at one point. However, I did not know that the nails of a deceased person still grow after they have died. Next we saw the three different types of muscles (skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscle tissue) under a microscope and learned about the organs in our body. Lastly, our group saw the brain of the cadaver in the very first station. I did not want to hold the brain because frankly I thought it’s weird and a little creepy, but from what my group members said, the brain was heavier than what they expected and very dense. I surprisingly enjoyed this field trip because I do not think I would have had another opportunity to see a cadaver. So for future AP Bio students, if you every get this opportunity, take it!

Below are pictures relevant to our field trip!

College of San Mateo

Different lobes of the brain!

Three types of muscle tissue, can you guess each type (cardiac, skeletal, smooth)?

May 4, 2018May 8, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: ap biology, apbio, cadaver, cadaver lab, cool, csm, field trip, lab 2 Comments

Save The Bay Reflection

AP Biology went on another field trip this week to wetlands in Palo Alto. Save The Bay is an organization that helps cities around the Bay Area restore wetlands. The wetlands in the Bay Area serve an important purpose as a habitat for a diverse set of species and help protect the area from floods. Save The Bay restores the wetlands by planting native plants around the wetlands and removing invasive species of plants as well.

I learned so much of the history of the Bay Area wetlands through documentaries we watched in class before our field trip and from our amazing guides. I also learned about the diverse species that are only seen in the Bay Area. The history of California has always been interesting but I have never learned about the ocean we live so close to. While watching the documentary I was surprised and proud that the people who founded Save The Bay were three women who wanted to protect the waters from the trash that had been dumped.

If you are ever in the Bay Area, I would definitely suggest to volunteer at Save The Bay. The work that we did was not hard at all but very tedious. We first had to calculate the biotic factors in a quadrat that was provided. We counted every species that was in the quadrat and then calculated the Simpson’s Biodiversity index to see how diverse each plot was. Then we calculated the abiotic factors of each plot through measuring the soil moisture, pH, and salinity. The work is easy enough for anyone to volunteer.

Link: Save The Bay

April 26, 2018May 8, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: ap bio, ap biology, cool, field, field trip, fun, marsh, save the bay, work 2 Comments

Botany of Desire Reflection

Botany of Desire is a documentary by PBS which discusses human interaction with plants. There are four main chapters of the documentary: How Sweet, Beauty, Cannabis, and Potato. The first chapter, How Sweet, talks about apples and their history within the United States. Throughout time, apples have once been sold with a wide variety, but now there are only a handful of apple species we eat. In the past, wild apple trees were abundant and those apples, because of their bitterness, were used to make hard cider. Apple orchards are only growing a monoculture, one variety, of apples because those are the apples that will be sold and eaten. However, there are still people who grow, what they call, antique varieties of apples. Because most of these apples are not sweet enough to be on the market, the growers use the apples to make hard cider.

The next chapter is Beauty which discusses flowers, specifically tulips. In the past there was a tulip bulb market because tulips were a sign of high status and wealth. However, the tulip trade was hurting the European economy so tulips were now seen negatively. Today, tulips are still seen as beautiful and there are now breeders that create new varieties of tulips, these breeders are called human bees. There are tulip farms all around the world and flowers are a multi-billion dollar trade.

Following flowers, the discussion about cannabis is presented. Cannabis, also known as weed, marijuana, or pot, has been a controversial topic for the past several decades. According to the documentary 15 million Americans smoke cannabis per month. Another interesting fact about intoxicants that was presented in the chapter was that in every society there are about 1-2 intoxicants accepted and promoted but the rest are condemned such as alcohol is widely accepted in Western society. Because marijuana farms in Mexico were being taken down by United States forces, marijuana growers mixed two cannabis plants to make the new version, short to be able to grow the plant inside and unintentionally made the plant more potent.

Lastly, the discussion ends on potatoes. Potatoes are a substantial food source since  1/2 acre of land for growing potatoes can provide enough for a family to survive for a year. Thus potatoes were adapted by Europe to end the famine. However, the single potato species in Ireland were destroyed by a disease and led Ireland into an awful famine killing many people. To avoid this famine to ever happen again, scientists genetically modified potatoes and now use an abundance of pesticides. However, the moral of the documentary evidenced by each chapter, is for farmers and society to stay away from monoculture.

 

 

I definitely suggest watching the film so here are the links to the Botany of Desire documentary:

Botany of Desire part 1

Botany of Desire part 2

Botany of Desire part 3

April 13, 2018May 8, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: ap biology, apbio, biology, botany, botany of desire, desire, documentary, earth, food, fun, interesting, movie 1 Comment

LIMPETS Field Trip

 

Some of AP Bio went on a field trip to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Half Moon Bay to visit the tide pools in the intertidal zone. The objective of the field trip was to collect data for an organization called LIMPETS so the team of researchers can see the changing diversity of different organisms. When we were there our field guide explained that when collecting data there is a box to check if there is any bare rock where no organism is currently growing. To count rock as “bare rock” the space with no organism on it much be larger than a pencil eraser. One of my favorite parts of the field trip was touching the aggregating anemone. The anemones are covered in sand and shells for both camouflage and protection from predators. The anemones attempt to sting us if we touch it but cannot actually hurt us because our skin is too tough. Lastly, an organism called “sand tubes” were found in the tide pools but were very hard to find. The field guide told us that the sand tubes were in crevices, covered in sand, and hard. Because we could only distinguish the sand tube by touching the organism, the field trip was very hands on!

In class we learned that seaweed is not actually a plant but rather than a protist. During the field trip there were a lot of different seaweed and algae that were populating the tide pools. Another cool thing that we were learning in class were the different phyla of invertebrates. On of the phyla was cnidaria which contained sea stars. On the field trip there were two sea stars present, one orange and one purple.

Photo of purple sea urchins in tide pools by me.

March 28, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro 2 Comments

“Never Give Up” Ted Talk

Here’s Diana Nyad’s Ted Talk about her journey being a 64 year old achieving her goal of swimming from Cuba to Florida, a 100-mile journey.

As of late I have been trying to go zero/low waste, meaning I create little to no trash and recycle less. I have been researching about how to achieve a zero waste lifestyle and the process seems challenging to me but saving the environment is important to me and makes me want to work extra hard to achieve my goal of zero waste. I have doubted a lot of times if I can achieve a zero waste lifestyle because the beginning transition is the hardest part (like being able to not use plastic packaged products, using reusable bags, and overall not use single-use items like straws or plastic utensils). By seeing other people living a zero waste life, I feel that I have to be perfect. However many videos and blogs that I have come across has made me realize that people do make mistakes and that the people a part of the zero waste community are here to help. The most important thing that Diana introduced in her talk was in order to not give up, you need to have supportive people in your life to help you through the hard times in you journey. Also the overarching message of Diana’s Ted Talk, never give up, may be cheesy but is very inspirational.

 

Some zero waste resources:

Infamous Lauren Singer’s (4 years of trash in a mason jar girl) blog Trash is for Tossers.

A San Francisco based editor, Anne Marie, focusing on zero waste home management in her blog The Zero Waste Chef

My favorite zero waste YouTubers: Taylor Nicole, Alli Cherry, Going Zero Waste, Lizzie Bombini, and Sustainably Vegan.

Other videos: why takeout is so bad, beginning zero waste, and grocery shopping zero waste.

January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: cool, give, never, talk, Ted, Tedtalk, up, zero waste 3 Comments

Semester 1 Overview

Over the past 5 months I have been working on growing my knowledge on creating a website and blog! Although the time was fun learning there were multiple uphill battles on figure out WordPress. WordPress is very complex compared to Blogger or a Google website; however, I enjoyed challenging myself and learning new skills. Some new skills that I learned was how to write more casually for a blog, obtain a copyright license, and overall manage a website.

My favorite part of creating this website was making the site cater to my liking. I am very pleased with the layout of the website as the site is easy to navigate and visually appealing. Another thing that I really enjoy about my site is that creating a new blog post or page is very calming because I am writing all my thoughts down which is great!

Some new skills that I obtained when building the site are very useful and I can use later on. Since my site contains a blog I am now writing as if I am speaking to someone and this took some time getting used to but I am more comfortable with doing so. Also WordPress challenged me a lot of the times because I am unfamiliar with the site so I had to learn how to make the site user friendly through creating pages, dropdown menus, a blog, and finding a suitable theme for my intentions. By far the most challenging aspect of my site are the dropdown menus, and to create the menus, I had to dedicate several hours watching videos and asking friends how to enable dropdown menus. The menus are finally in place and although the process was long, the outcome is satisfying. Another useful skill that I learned through the process of creating a blog was obtaining a copyright license. Getting a copyright license was actually really easy, all I did was use Creative Commons, a copyright licensing website (click the link!), choose what type of license I wanted and inserted the license into my website, that easy! I will definitely be using Creative Commons again for other works of mine.

Overall the process was challenging but the outcome of my website is amazing! Some works that I am very proud of are my videos, Banana DNA Extraction, Meiosis in Motion, The Mysteries of Water, and Junior Breakthrough Challenge 2017. I am most proud of these works because filming and editing videos are very time and energy consuming but all the videos turned out awesome so check them out if you have not already. Publishing to a wider audience has been fun and I look forward to what’s to come in my last semester in high school!

Here’s a great mini series on chromosomes that was shown in class (my favorite videos that we have watched) that has so much information about our genes but is presented in a way that is very comprehensive for anybody to learn!

Here’s to the class of 2018 for making it through high school! ❤        

January 8, 2018January 8, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: 2018, fun, new year, one, semester, semester one, skills, website 7 Comments

Body Worlds Decoded

On our first AP Biology field trip, we went to The Tech Museum in San Jose specifically for the Body Worlds exhibit. Body Worlds consists of human bodies that have been plasticized, injected with plastic, and put on display. In the exhibit I saw lungs that were both from a smoker and ones that were healthy. I also saw the entire digestive tract which was very strange and makes me wonder how all that can be packed in our bodies. Another interesting subject I saw was a spine with scoliosis. I thought that was interesting because I have mild scoliosis and to see what my spine potentially looks like is crazy. Lastly I saw entire human bodies including muscles, tendons, bones, and brains. The bodies were absolutely amazing because of how well thee bodies are preserved and how the bodies are posed. I learned that the bodies and parts are specifically donated to the Body Worlds exhibit for plasticizing and putting on display. The Body Worlds exhibit is a huge step in educating people on their bodies and the effects of different situations, like smoking, can affect our body.

Overall the Body Worlds exhibit was really interesting. There were many kids and adults walking around as well, meaning that the exhibit is appropriate for any visitor. The content of Body Worlds is not inappropriate, but people could definitely be sensitive of the elements. I would just suggest know what you are going to and if seeing plasticized bodies makes you uncomfortable do not go! Walking around the exhibit I had a great sense of empathy towards the people who donated their bodies to the exhibit. For one to donate their organs is a big deal to them and especially to their family and to take that a step further and donate your body to science is inspirational. By having bodies donated to Body Worlds there can be medical and scientific advances to come.

The very first exhibit our class went to contained videos of how technology can be used to better the world. In this exhibit I learned that technology can be used for good and to help people in need like depression, vaccines, and a voice. Secondly we went to the BioDesign Studios which contains interactive activities to teach exhibit goers all about biology. The most interesting part of the BioDesign Studios was the synthetic biology, and how you can distinguish the different smells when they are all together. Our next exhibit was the Body Metrics area. Body Metrics is all about how our health. There was a table to measure your heart rate and breathing, screens to measure your ability to stretch and balance, and a station to measure your emotions. One of the most interesting things that I learned in the Body Metrics exhibit is that to be considered zen all you have to do is have rhythmic breathing! I would say that these exhibits were just as interesting and worth going as Body Worlds.

Link to The Tech Museum

November 27, 2017December 12, 2017 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: apbio, body worlds, cool, field trip, ndbtiger 1 Comment

Cracking the Code of Life

Cracking the Code of Life Video was very interesting.  The video focused on the Human Genome Project and how the project can help with determining mutations in a person’s genome sequence.  There are many mutations which occur with a slight differentiation in gene pairing that make a mutation.  Such as 4 out of 3 billion pairs are arranged differently and then that person can have a disease that can hinder there life and even lifespan.  I thought the most interest part of the video was the information about how the mispairing of nucleotides can create a huge difference.  Also the fact that if a protein is misshapen then the protein’s function changes and a child can have cystic fibrosis.

Overall I thought that the video is super helpful in understanding how important genes are.  At the end of the video, we were posed a question on if a parent can pick their child’s DNA, should they do it.  I believe that if you could prevent a deadly disease but should not be done to “pick” a perfect baby.  Although the human race shares 99% of the same genes we are all super different and unique.

November 21, 2017December 12, 2017 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: apbio, chromosome, cool, cracking the code of life, DNA, gene, genetics, movie, ndbtigers 2 Comments