Love: Real or Chemical?

What do you think of when you hear the word love? Maybe you think about romance, Romeo and Juliet, chocolate, or even your own true love. Most people associate love with the feeling of complete happiness and attraction; the feeling of just wanting to spend time with one person for the rest of your life, the person who makes you happier than anyone else. Love is often though of with romance and marriage and the fairy tale ending of being happily together for life. Romantic love is a real thing, it’s an emotion that is described as stronger and better than any other, but what leads to love? The answer is simple: Chemicals.

Studies by many scientists have proven that a person falls in love with someone because of a chain of chemical reactions in the body. Chemicals such as estrogen (in women) and testosterone (in men) create the sex drive in love. The chemical norepinephrine is released when we fall in love, raising our heart rate. Dopamine and phenylethylamine are two other major chemicals released in our brains when we fall in love and can cause sweaty palms and flushed skin. Serotonin, a chemical that is found in very small amounts in people with OCD, is also found in small amounts in people who are in love. People in love usually feel a very strong obsession and addiction to their partner, purely due to the chemical reactions trigged inside our bodies when we fall in love.

Certain chemical reactions occur in our bodies when we first fall in love due to four major categories illustrated below:

Appearance: In most cases, the first thing that lovers are attracted to is each other’s appearances. A study conducted by David Perrett, a psychologist working out of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, revealed that a person is attracted to people of the opposite sex who look like their parents. Further more, you are more apt to fall in love with a person of the opposite sex whose appearance reminds you of your own.

Personality: A person is more apt to fall in love with a person of the opposite sex whose personality reminds them of their parents.

Pheromones: The best way to describe pheromones is as scentless prints of yourself, which the vomeronasal organ, located in the nose, of other people can detect. It has been proven that you are more attracted to a person with pheromones that indicate an immune system different enough from your own, so your offspring will be healthy.

Aphrodisiacs: Certain chemicals in foods like chocolate or asparagus trigger chemical reactions within our bodies, releasing sex hormones and making us more apt to fall in love.

Those four categories suggest major reasons why people fall in love with the people they do, but as animals we are also programmed to reproduce and to parent with our lovers too. We are chemically driven to reproduce and then to love and parent our offspring, in turn keeping people in love together for life.

Romantic love is a very real emotion that is unlike any other, but it is one that is created by chemical reactions that occur in our bodies. Therefore, I believe that love is both real and chemical, but chemical reactions and science can’t account for everything in love. Some things in love are simply unexplainable, and that’s what makes romantic love and attraction such an interesting topic, one that I believe is better left unanswered.

Source: http://people.howstuffworks.com/love.htm

Link From Obesity to Type Two Diabetes: "Diabesity"

Link between Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes on Prezi

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-15/obesity-link-to-diabetes-found-in-white-blood-cells-australian-study-says.html

Osmoregulation in Dolphins

          The study of osmoregulation in organisms is a very widely studied topic, and the comparisons between terrestrial and aquatic, and salt water to fresh water are very interesting. Certain organisms that live in either hypotonic or hypertonic solutions are forced to adapt to regulate their osmosis. These animals are called osmoregulators, and the one that I focused on is the Bottlenose dolphin.

          
           Bottlenose dolphins are aquatic organisms, but they can be found in two different types of water environments. The first kind of water they can be found in is fresh water. Dolphins that live in fresh water are hypotonic to their surrounding environment (the solution within them is more concentrated then the solution outside of them), which can pose a problem because certain nutrients that dolphins need to survive could theoretically diffuse out of their body, while water could diffuse into them to create an equilibrium. In order to avoid this problem, dolphins take in fresh water (70% diffuses in through their skin, and 30% is inhaled through their mouth) and urinate it right back out. Their ufr (urine flow rate) increases immensely, and their urine is extremely diluted (meaning that it has a very high concentration of water, and a very low concentration of substances, such as chloride and sodium). By urinating often and a diluted urine, dolphins are able to keep their high concentration of nutrients and substances within their body, while getting rid of all the extra water that is being diffused through their skin and inhaled through their mouth.
          
          The second type of water environment that dolphins can be found in is salt water. Bottlenose dolphins are hypertonic in relation to their surrounding salt enriched environment. In order to achieve an equilibrium, the water within the dolphin would diffuse out into the salt water, and the salt water would diffuse in (the same way as fresh water, 70% through their skin, the rest inhaled through their mouth). However, the Bottlenose dolphin is an aquatic animal which needs to retain a certain amount of fresh water in its body to survive. In order to obtain this amount of fresh water they take in the salt water, filter and pee out the salt, and then retain the fresh water. Bottlenose dolphins living in a salt water environment have an increased ufr, and their urine is highly concentrated with salt.

        
         Bottlenose dolphins have to osmoregulate in both fresh and salt water environments to keep the right balance of ions within their body, and the correct amount of fresh water in their body. In both cases they osmoregulate by urinating more often, and they get rid of the unnecessary fluids (in the freshwater environment) and substances (in the salt water environment) through their urine.

Mets Cell Community

Bad Bacteria: Escherichia Coli

Escherichia Coli, more commonly known as E. coli, is a bacteria that can be found in the large intestine of warm-blooded organisms. It can be totally harmless, and in some cases helpful by producing vitamin K. However, there are also many other cases where E. coli can be a harmful bacteria, and in some cases even lethal. Harmful E. coli usually only causes mild disease in humans, but it can be life threatening to children, the elderly, and immunocompromised people.





          E. coli is a fairly simple structured bacteria. It is a bascillus bacteria meaning that it is rod-shaped (see the picture to the right). The inner part of the cell contains cytoplasm, and in the cytoplasm DNA is stored. There is a cell membrane that surrounds the inner components of the cell, and many, but not all E. coli bacteria have a flagellum.


          There are many different strains of E. coli, some harmful and some harmless. Each strain is different in it's characteristics. There are many different strains of E. coli because E. coli is strongly drug resistant and is constantly evolving to avoid the antibiotics that are used to try and fight it (such as streptomycin or gentamicin.) The strong drug resistance of E. coli can make it hard to fight, but when diagnosed early on, there are many existing drugs that can identify, locate, and exterminate the harmful strains of E. coli in you. E. coli can cause a variety of diseases, and also a wide range of severity of these diseases depending on age, immune system effectiveness, how early it is diagnosed, and how well and properly it is treated.


Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli
http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/Currents/Archive/Mar-05-2004.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/cellular-microscopic/cell1.htm

Investigation of Living Things: Lab Reflection

         In the Investigation of Living Things lab, we took different foods (Egg whites, egg yolks, apples, onions, potatoes, lemons, and strawberries), and did different tests to each of them which identified if the food had protein, starch, glucose, or lipids, depending on the test. In the test for protein we added 10 drops of a solution that identifies protein in substances called Biuret solution, to 5mL of the food and waited to see if the test was positive of negative. The Biuret solution itself is blue, but after a while, a caramel-brown color should appear on the sides of the test tube if the food contains protein. If nothing happens then that food does not have protein. In the glucose test we added 3mL of Benedict's solution to 5mL of the food, and then heated the test tube that they were in for 5 minutes. If the test was positive, the color in the test tube should have changed dramatically, into a sort of cool orange/red/yellow color. In the starch test we added 5 drops of Lugol's iodine solution to 5mL of the food, and if it tested positive then the color in the test tube should have turned a dark black. And lastly, in the test for lipids we smeared some of the food onto a piece of brown paper, let it dry over night, and then observed the piece of paper the next day. If the test was positive, when held up to light a glossy cover should be visible where the food was smeared.

         I thought that this was a cool lab because it applied what we had learned about macromolecules to foods that we eat on a daily basis. I had always just thought that an apple was an apple, and that was it, but after doing this lab i realize that an apple contains glucose and starch, and is made up of millions of microscopic cells all bonded together. I think it was a fun and active way to put what we had learned in chapter one in perspective, and to really put the idea in our heads that everything in the world is made up of cells, which are made up of many different atoms, elements, molecules, and macromolecules which we have just started learning about.

Disregard my pronunciations of amino when i talk about amino-acids, I know how it's pronounced now.

The 5 Properties of Water

1. Water is the "Universal Solvent"
• Water is able to dissolve so many things because water is a polar molecule, with the hydrogen side of the molecule slightly positively charged and the oxygen side slightly negatively charged. Thus, water can dissolve both positively and negatively charged molecules.
• Water is also able to dissolve so many substances because of the constant ionization of the H20 compounds. The ionization allows things to dissolve because if a substance is positively charged it will be attracted to the negatively charged OH molecule, and if something is negative it will be attracted to the positively charged H molecule.
2. Water is Adhesive
• Water molecules stick to other things, whether they are solids, liquids, or gasses.
• The adhesion of water allows for capillary action (when water "climbs up" on something).
3. Water is Cohesive
• Water molecules stick to themselves.
• The surface tension of water is caused by the hydrogen bonds which exist between the polar molecules of water (H20). The molecules are bonded together and therefore cause the surface tension. This is why in class we were able to have a paperclip rest on the top of the water in the beaker without breaking the surface.
4. Water has a high specific heat
• Water has a high specific heat (amount of energy necessary to raise 1 gram of a substance 1 degree in Celsius) because the water molecules are bonded together with hydrogen bonds, and it takes a lot of energy to shake the and break them up. 
5. Water has a density of 1 (gram per mL)
• Water has a density of exactly one which is important because if something has a density greater than 1, it will sink in water, and if something has a density less than 1, it will float.
• Water is also the only thing that is less dense when it is in its frozen form (ice). This is because when water is in liquid form, the molecules are packed very tightly together because of the hydrogen bonds. But, when water is frozen the molecules actually spread out a little because water molecules freeze in a geometric pattern, in turn reducing water's density. 

Prologue Reflection

            After reading the prologue in the BSCS text book i am excited to learn and explore the subject of biology this year. Many of the topics discussed in the prologue (AIDS, HGH, Cloning, etc.) are modern issues, and ones that our generation will probably have to face throughout our lifetimes. I hope that this biology course will help us understand the ins and outs of the issues, which will then help us to make more firm and educated decisions on the topics we face. I think it will be cool and interesting to learn how living organisms function and interact with each other, because those are things that we experience in our day to day lives. It seems like biology teaches and explains very modern topics (AIDS, HGH, Cloning, etc.), ones that we will be able to apply and discuss in our everyday lives, and I am looking forward to learning about and gaining a deeper understanding of those topics. 
              The new technological advancements that have been made in the past few decades allow scientists to venture even further into prior theories and to even create new ones. This provides us with new and unseen material that needs to be explored and sorted. I hope that this years biology course will be a start to understanding this new material, to a level where I can comprehend the issues and make my own educated decisions about them, and I hope that I will be able to back my decisions up with solid data and information. That's what I'm hoping to get out of biology this year and I'm looking forward to diving into the course after OAT.