Cur. Ev. 2nd quarter No 4

Petra 6A

http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2164471825

Saturday November 5^th

The Plain-Tailed Wren

            The plain tailed wren is known for an amazing skill. When the female and male are put together, they sing a duet that sounds like one bird! The plain tailed wren is about the size of a starling, and it is brown in colour with a stripe that goes over the eyes.  They live in thick bamboo forests on the sides of the Andes Mountains. They alternate singing with such speed and precision that their song sounds like one. What is also interesting is that the birds sing alone as well. When the female sings alone, there are gaps where the male should be, and vice versa. Scientists found that the duet singing is used mostly for the female to test the male’s ability to sing his syllables in the short span of time she gives him, or to test whether the male is good enough for her or not. Dr. Eric Fortune, of the Department of Physiological and Brain Sciences at the Johns Hopkins U. in Baltimore, conducted brain tests on these amazing animals.  He thought that the strongest memory would be of the cues to tell the bird when to sing, but it was actually the whole duet. Instead of knowing just their part and when to sing it, they knew their partner’s part as well to help them sing theirs. Dr. Fortune also found that you could put a male and a female who were 1 kilometer apart together, and they would learn the duet in only a couple of hours.

                                                                  My thoughts                     

            I think that it is amazing to learn about this incredible creature, and that discovering more and more things about our planet-mates could really help us in understanding our world and how to protect it. Also, it’s just really cool to learn about this stuff.

Cur. Ev. 2nd quarter No 3

Heart of a Snake

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

Oct. 29^th 2011

The Bermese Python

             The Bermese python barely eats, but when it does, it hunts giant prey, prey that can be as big as the python itself. After killing the unfortunate animal, the python swallows it -- whole. But how? On one episode of Quirks and Quarks, the host Bob McDonald interviews Dr. Leslie Leinwand, a professor of molecular biology at the U of Colorado., about this fascinating animal. She says that digesting the prey would take a lot of digesting, and a normal sized stomach couldn’t handle it. So the python’s organs double in size in only 2 days time. Dr. Leinwand studied this characteristic, and found at least three fatty acids in the python’s blood that made this change possible. She and her colleagues found that this blood could work in other animals. They tested it on healthy mice, and their organs nearly reached twice their normal size. Dr. Leinwand hopes that one day this blood could be used to treat patients with heart disease.

My thoughts

             I think that this discovery is amazing. The Bermese python could be the start of more healthy people and fewer deaths. I am really happy that there would be less deaths, as would many others, but it would create a problem with world population. Think about it: If everyone in the world was completely healthy, and no one could die of sickness, then the world would overflow with people. I only hope that won’t be any time soon

Cur. Ev. 2nd quarter No 1

Dinosaur Speed Demon

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

22^nd October 2011

Carnotaurus

          You’ve probably heard of the tremendous Tyrannosaurus Rex, or the amazing Albertosaurus, but have you heard of the road runner of the dinosaurs, the Carnotaurus? On one episode of Quirks and Quarks, the host Bob McDonald interviews Scott Persons, a PhD student at the University of Alberta, about this fantastic beast. Persons was studying the Carnotaurus, and he noticed that its tail bones looked very strange. They tilted steeply upward, overlapping each other. This bone structure would cause a very stiff tail, restricting quick turns. But why? In dinosaurs’ tails, there was a muscle called the codothimeralis. This muscle, when it constricted, would pull back the leg, helping the dinosaur run. In the Carnotaurus’ tail, the bones tilting upward gave more space for the codothimeralis, allowing it to expand. So this dinosaur gave up quick turns for sheer speed. It could probably run 30-35 mph, as fast as a racehorse. That is really fast for a dinosaur.

My thoughts

Finding out about this dinosaur and how it was structured was really interesting for me. I think that learning about past life forms is very important, because it helps us understand how we and our Earth as we know it came to be. It’s also really cool to learn about. =D

Cur. Ev. 2nd quarter No 2

Cur. Ev. 1st quarter No 3

Water fingerprints

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

Saturday, October 8^th 2011

        Ever wonder how water came to Earth? Well, astronomers think that water couldn’t have existed on Earth at the beginning. The sun was so hot, any water would have evaporated. So where did the water come from? In one episode of Quirks and Quarks, a radio show on CBC, the host Bob McDonald interviews Dr. Darek Lis, a Senior Research Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He and his colleagues have found a trace of water on Comet Hartley 2 when it hurtled past in 2009. They found that the water on this particular comet has the same chemical fingerprint as the water on Earth. This suggests that the water that’s on Earth came from the same place as the comet, the distant Kuiper belt, rather than perhaps the much closer asteroid  belt between Mars and Jupiter.

My thoughts

       I think that this is very interesting, and that it really could help us learn about the Earth, the solar system, and the universe. Knowing where all our water came from would help us understand who we are and how we came to be. It could also give us a hint about alien life. Who knows, maybe there’s a planet out there that sustains life because of the water. This article really sparked my interest, so maybe you should check it out, too.

Cur. Ev. 1st quarter No 2

Japan Earthquake

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12709598

11 March 2011

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

       You’ve probably heard of the earthquake that struck Japan earlier this year. Can you imagine just walking around, minding your own business, when suddenly the earth begins to shake and tremble? Can you imagine what fear these people must have felt when the saw the giant wave hurtling toward them? This terrifying earthquake was 8.9 on the Richter scale, making it one of the strongest earthquakes in history. Cars, ships, and buildings were swept away by the tremendous tsunami that followed. Officials say that 350 people are dead and approximately 500 missing, but it is feared that final death toll will be much higher. The tsunami rolled across the Pacific at 800km/h before hitting Hawaii and the US West Coast, but there were no reports of major damage from there.

         
          The earthquake was the fifth-strongest since 1900, so I really feel sorry for the people who had to experience it. All those people who died… there must have been many, many sad families. I think that earthquakes are horrible, even though they are natural, and we can’t prevent them. It’s really sad that this happened. The good news is that people are helping Japan by donating, and that, even though its slow, things are getting better for Japan.

Current events 1st Quarter No 1

Mad Like Tesla
Bob McDonald
CBC.ca
Saturday, 24th of September 2011

        MAD LIKE TESLA

In one episode of “Quirks and Quarks”, a radio show on CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation), the host Bob McDonald interviewed Tyler Hamilton, author of the new book - Mad Like Tesla. In the book, the author writes about people in this world who are much like Tesla was back then, with brilliant ideas, but ideas that some might think are crazy. These scientists are working on environmentally friendly ways to produce energy. An example is a group of people in British Columbia, Canada who have an amazing idea from the ‘70s. The idea was created, but, because the materials they needed didn’t exist at the time, it was put away and forgotten. Now these people have uncovered it, and today we actually do have the materials, and they’re trying to build it. The machine being invented is a fusion reactor, used to create environmentally friendly energy. It is much cheaper to build than all the other ideas that are being created today (the price for this idea is estimated to be 30 million dollars, while others cost billions). This idea is being put in to motion as you read this, as well as many others.

       I think that this idea and other ideas that I heard about are very smart, and not crazy. I think that because they sound like they would work, and also because they may be the only things that could keep the human race from sinking into oblivion because of the environmental issues.