Death of Female Penguins by Climate Change

Today I read an article about how climate change affects the population of female penguins because they are exposed to stress and reproduction problems. 


Changes in climate are affecting the female population of the Magellanic penguins, which is one of the biggest penguin colonies. Its not only the climate but from lack of food which is stolen from them. Most of them are exposed to rain in heavy loads which causes them to get hypothermia and die. "It's the first long-term study to show climate change having a major impact on chick survival and reproductive success," said Boersma, who has been in field work since 1983 at the world's largest breeding area for Magellanic penguins, where 200,000 pairs of penguins live. Weather in these colonies has killed 7% of the females per year or there were some years in which 43% of the females died. "Starvation and weather will likely interact increasingly as climate changes", Boersma said. Starving females are more likely to die in a big storm because they are weak and not able to defend themselves against nature. 

This article made me realize that global warming is indeed global. There are many other species suffering from global warming than just humans. This article is kind of a wake up call to take care of our environment more. I think that what this article's author is implicating for the future is that we should take care of our environment and not be selfish and leave fish for the starving penguins and just learn to control ourselves.


MLA: University of Washington. "Deaths attributed directly to climate change cast pall over penguins." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 January 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140129184826.htm>.

Covalent and Ionic Bonding Popplet

This is the link to my popplet about bonding:

http://popplet.com/app/#/1377242

Cilantro Purifies Water?!?

Today I read a very interesting article in ScienceDaily.com (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130912104814.htm) about cilantro being a way to filter chemical and heavy metals. 

Favorite ingredient in Mexico and Southeast Asia could be an inexpensive way of purifying drinking water are on the menu today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Research done by students at a community college, Douglas Schauer, Ph.D., said that cilantro (coriander or Thai parsley)shows promise as a "biosorbent" that removes lead and other toxic heavy metals from contaminated water.

"Cilantro may seem too pricey for use in decontaminating large amounts of water for drinking and cooking," Schauer said. "However, cilantro grows wild in vast amounts in countries that have problems with heavy-metal water pollution. It is readily available, inexpensive and shows promise in removing certain metals, such as lead, copper and mercury, that can be harmful to human health."

 "Our goal is to find biosorbents that people in developing countries could obtain for nothing," Schauer explained. "When the filter in a water purification pitcher needs to be changed, they could go outside, gather a handful of cilantro or some other plant, and presto, there's a new filter ready to purify the water."

Methods for removing heavy metals from water such as treatment with activated carbon which is used in filters in our homes are effective as well. These methods however are somewhat expensive for developing countries. Cilantro is a lower-cost alternative for these countries. Natural materials attach to heavy metals and absorb and adsorb.

Mexico doesn't have a system to filter out heavy metals and that cilantro is grew wildly there. Small experiments say that cilantro will be more effective than carbon to remove heavy metals.

How does cilantro filter water? The structure of the outer walls of cilantro explain it. These walls have a system of sorption so they work as biosorbents. Plants similar to cilantro such as parsley and culantro would work as biosorbents when used like tea bags that are put into water. 

This article is very interesting to me because now smaller countries including ours will have a way to obtain purified water and not waste so much money on carbon filters. Not only is it very inexpensive but fast way of purifying water so we don't have to worry about heavy metals entering our bodies. This encourages small countries to live a healthier life and a contribution to the future seeing as now we have a biological way of improving our health. 

Niels Bohr: What did he contribute to the Atomic Theory?

This week, we have learned the about different scientists that have contributed to the development of the atomic theory to conclude the various parts of the atom. Niels Bohr contributed the idea that electrons orbit around the nucleus in different energy levels. Here is a prezi made be me and my chemistry partners, Lucia Hasfura (http://lhasfurachemistry.blogspot.com/)  and Adriana Guevara (http://adriguevarachemistry.blogspot.com/) about Niels Bohrs and his life, career, theories, discoverings and contributions to the Atomic Theory. 
Here is our prezi: Neils Bohr Prezi

Measurements

Our assignment this week for our chemistry blog was to make a prezi in prezi.com, which is a fun website to make presentations, about measurements. This week in class, we learnt how to use significant figures and do all sorts of math problems using them. If you want to check my prezi presentation about measurements and significant figures, click the link below! 

Measurement Prezi

Stressed Bacteria Stop Growing

I read an article called "Stressed Bacteria Stop Growing" which was published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This article tells us that it has been discovered that stress is very bad for organisms. Experiments tested in the University of Massachusetts Amherst and MIT, have discovered results that if the mechanism of an organism is releasing stress or is exposed to very hot or cold temperatures, cells within the organism will stop growing.

Stressful conditions cause proteins in the cell to change shape or be misfolded and stop working.

“Bacteria deal with stress by destroying proteins. Specifically, we've shown that certain kinds of bacteria respond to high temperatures by destroying proteins needed for DNA replication. Therefore, they stop growing. The signal for this destruction turned out to be the buildup of proteins that were misfolded because of the stress."

Cells grow in stable and favorable conditions which means that your DNA is replication but in stressful conditions, cells prevent the start of replication and instead change their priorities to protection.

Cells, including bacteria, contain various proteins. Molecules that help cells create chemical reactions are needed. The shape of the proteins determine what job they do within an organism. So therefore, if proteins bend out of their shape in stressful conditions, they will no longer be able to do their job and will stop working and growing.

There have been decades of study for this and scientists didn’t understand the molecules that cells use to send information about surrounding conditions affected the reproduction machinery.

“Jing Liv, a graduate student researcher in the UMass Amherst

shows that in the bacteria Caulobacter, can help defend against the effects of stress by cutting up and destroying small amounts of misfolded proteins.”

However, when the enxyme finds too many proteins that are bent out of shape, it will eliminate other protein that wasn’t damaged, then deleting all functioning proteins to complete the DNA replication process.

As the replication process begins to stop, the cells obviously stop growing. When the stress is over, the number of affected proteins drops and then cells start growing again.

Chien says, "In this way, bacteria can respond quickly to stressful, but restart again quickly. Stress and protein misfolding are a universal part of life, so understanding how simple bacteria deal with this kind of stress will help us understand how our cells do as well."

In conclusion, cells put under stressful conditions and environments will bend the proteins inside them into unnatural shapes and those proteins will not be able to perform their vital functions and therefore will stop every chance of the cell ever growing.

Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst. "Stressed bacteria stop growing: Mechanism discovered."ScienceDaily, 15 Aug. 2013. Web. 18 Aug. 2013. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130815172202.htm