Science Class Response

Science Class Response/Owl Pellets

This year in science we studied barn owls, and disected their owl pellets. This activity I found, was very interesting and fun. We learned how you can see what the owls ate bye looking at their pellets. My owl pellet came out to be a rodent as well as many others upon our class. Barn owls have to make pellets because they have no teeth to chew their food, and in their glandular organ their food is broken down and sepreated from the hair and bones to the meat. The owl pellet can be stored in the owl for about 10 hours, but no longer because the owls sooner or later have to empty out their stomach and clear their digestive system. The whole process of the forming of the owl pellets is called regurgitating. After finishing the project and completing a packet about the owl pellets I found this lab very facinating and would like to do something like this kind of puzzle in the future too.

To learn more I went on Biologycorner.com and searched up owl pellets. Owls have feeble stomach muscles from forming the undigested bones into pellets. When we were doing thing lab in science I thought that only the barn owls form pellets but now I learned that hawks, eagles, and other raptors also form owl pellets, because they swallow their meal whole too. The owls and other organisms regurgitate because in their digestive tract they the acids and protein enzymes are not enough to digest their whole prey. In class, when we were trying to construct the skeleton we found in the owl pellet, it was a little complicated because our group had two skulls and various more bones from other places that we didn't need and some groups had more bones to. When, we were doing this one of my partner dropped our bones by accident and a lot of them cracked. This told me that the a lot of the bones were fragile, broken in the process of regurgitating, broken in class, chipped, or not even there, this made it difficult to put together a skeleton. However, when I was reading the article about owl pellets on Biologycorner.com, it stated that in the process of forming the owl pelltes the most fragile bones are unbroken. This left me confounded thinking about how so many of our bones were broken. Learning about the owl pellets and getting in a group to build a skeleton was a nice challenge and fun experience.




http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/owlpellet.html

Science Current Events #2

Science Current Events #2/ Greenland Glaciers

Everyone knows about how the glaciers are melting all over the world, but now the ice sheets in Greenland are disappearing faster then at ever. It has been said that the water level has been rising at a rate of 0.75mm , which is equal to 273 Gt( 1 Gt is equal to 1 cubic kilometre of water) each year. An author of an paper and a professer of the University Of Bristol has said, " It's clear from these results that mass loss from Greenland has been accelerating from the 1990's, and the underlying causes suggest this trend is to likely to continue in the near future..." The whole of Greenland's ice sheets are good enough to have a Global sea, rise seven metres. Fortunetly, some of the meltwater that refroze and the snowfall has helped the ice sheets from losing to much mass, otherwise the mass loss would have been double by now. The mass loss of Greenland's ice sheets has been confirmed by a new study in Science.
The loss of the ice sheets, is an effect of Global Warming. As well as the melting ice, a lot of other damages have been occuring all around the world due to Global Warming. The destruction due to Global Warming is like how all the ice is melting, how animals are getting endangered, and believe it or not us humans are being damaged the most. All of Global Warming is because of us and it is backfiring on us too. Since the water level is rising it will only harm us, and if not stop, we can atleast try our best to slow down Global Warming. We can try to recycle more often, carpool more often, turn of the lights when we aren't using them , and reuse more things instead of throwing something out after just using it once. All the small things can make a major impact on the future. The melting ice will lead to great mishap and to prevent this everyone should take part in helping to make a wonderful and safe life.

http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/qthinice.asp

Science Assignment (current Events)

Science Events #1/ Malaria

Malaria is a diesease that is in mosquitoes and affects people all over the world especially in Africa. Every thirty seconds a child in Africa dies from Malaria. Mama Berta lives in a village called Tanzania and is always in the lookout for mosquitoes, because she worries about her grandchildren getting Malaria. Mosquitoes carry a parasite thats called Malaria, and once it bites a person the disease spreads throughtout the bloodstream and makes a person very sick. One of Mama Berta's grandchildren, named Beatrice already had Malaria twice but has luckily survived. There are no vaccines yet for Malaria, but now an organization created a program called " Malaria No More." This organization gives nets to families that keep the mosquitoes out. These nets hold chemicals that keep the mosquitoes away and kill them. Now, that these nets are out Mama Berta can rely on them for keeping her grandchildren safe.
In my opinion, the nets provided from Malaria No More, are truly a lifesaver. However, I don't think nets are enough to keep these dangerous mosquitoes out. When you walk around, people don't keep these nets on themselves. Basically, you can't keep nets on all the times. Vaccines are very important, and have stopped many diseases and other flu's, and kept us healthy. Vaccines are something that can provide us safety and doesn't require any restrictions and, are something that can be with you for a long time. The nets in Africa will certainly help, but as population grows and more mosquitoes invade, you can't be assured that this deadly disease will not interrupt your bloodstream.

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Malaria