Semester Reflection

So this semester has been interesting.  I like memorizing things more than the other stuff.  The skeleton labeling project was super easy and I could still label my part of the skeleton if I had labels with me.  Memorizing what things are called and where things go has always been one of my strong points.  Probably because I've always loved doing it.  I like knowing what things are called.  It's a lot more fun than watching a red line go up and down as Seth eats stuff. Even during the homeostasis lab I didn't have as much fun as I did learning about the neuromuscular junction or the skeleton.  And I was dipping people's hands in ice!
I'm probably just not very good at teamwork.  I've always preferred working by myself so I can control everything without having to worry if I'm being too bossy with the other people.  THE CONTROL IS MINE!  Even during team projects like the neuromuscular poster I'd catch myself starting something alone without telling anyone what I was going to do.  I know what I'm doing, I know what I want, why do they need to know?  Because you're a team you crazy!!  I'm just going to trust that that will sink in some day.

Basically, I want to do everything myself. Everyone else can just follow along and try to keep up.

Only otaku will understand how fitting this is... (From gametrailers.com)

The Nueromuscular Junction Saga

Okay, maybe that's not exactly how it happens, but I like it!

What really goes down is this:

Action potential travels down to the presynaptic terminal.  This opens the calcium ion channel.  The calcium ions enter the presynaptic terminal and cause the acetylcholines to move out into the presynaptic cleft.  In the cleft the acetylcoline molecules attach themselves to either side of a sodium ion channel and let all the sodium ions into the postsynaptic muscle fiber.  This allows for movement.  After the sodium ions have left acetylcholinsterase splits the acetylcholine into choline and acetyc acid.  The choline molecule returns to the presynaptic terminal alone and bonds with another acetyc acid inside the terminal to start the process all over again.  Pretty cool, huh?

Now, to give credit where credit is due! I drew the little people and Megan Crawford drew all the bad guys.  Then, Jenna and Seth helped us color.  Yay the magic of teamwork!

EMG Lab

Logger pro is freeeeaaaky!  And I think it hates me because it won't let me do what I want.  And I can't take screenshots on the mac because it sucks too.  Unfortunately this blog shall not have the pictures of Seth's diagrams from eating food but I'll describe them!
In this lab we hooked Seth up to a computer, attaching electrodes to the top and bottom of his jaw muscle.  We did this so we could measure the activity of his muscle while he ate.  Different foods displayed more activity, narrower wavelengths and higher altitudes, than others.  Things like the marshmallow and poptart required more activity out of his jaw muscle than things like gatorade and bananas.   Every time Seth chewed on something it sent recordable impulses to the electrodes and we were able to see the measurements on our graph.  When the lines were higher and closer together it meant that Seth was taking more work to eat the item.  When he drank the gatorade the line was practically flat, just little bumps going along it.  I've been told that we'll learn more about what this means next semester.  I look forward to the enlightening!!

The Interminable Bone Chronicle

The skeletal system build the framework of the body, protects our internal organs, and helps us move around. Our skeleton is always regrowing and rebuilding itself. We have a new skeleton about every ten years. Osteoclasts are cells that break down the bone matrix crested by osteoids. Osteoblasts create ossification centers that create bone from other tissues.
Hormonal controls in the body decide when you start and stop growing.  When bones grow, they form cartilage on the ends of the bones that harden and become bone over time. If something is messed up in the hormone signal then you would grow forever or stop growing too soon.  Wolff's Law states that bones grow or remodel in response to forces or demands placed upon it.  For example, bones would grow differently in space than they do under the strain of Earth's gravity.  Bones will form to match the duties they perform, so if you are in space and unable to walk around you'll lose bone mass.
But what happens when bones break?  Bone fractures are classified by the completeness of the break, the position of the bone after the fracture, and the orientation of the bone to the long axis.  Cominuted breaks are fragmented breaks.  The break of the bone looks kind of frayed and splintered.  Compression breaks are usually found in the vertebra.  The bones are kind of smashed together looking, compressed on top of each other.  Spiral breaks happen when the bone has been twisted, this usually happens in contact sports.  epiphyseal breaks are breaks in the cartilage and take the longest time to heal.  A depressed break is a break that has been pressed inward.  Greenstick breaks don't go completely through the whole bone and are usually only seen in children.  When a bone breaks the torn blood vessels hemorage and blood clots around the break, causing the area to swell.  This is called hematoma formation.  The bone needs to be set when the fibrocarilaginous callus forms, osteoblasts and fibroblasts move to the area of the fracture and begin reconstructing the bone.  The bone must be set so that it can be properly reconstruted.  Capillaries grow into the tissue and start cleaning out any debris inside the break.  Finally, the callus begins to harden and creates a firm union between the two ends of the bone.  The whole process takes 2-3 months.
In class we had a wee contest for the skeletal structure.  We split into groups of five and began memorizing bones.  I took the thoracic and pelvic region of the skeleton.  In the race I correctly placed 55 labels on my area of the skeleton.  I didn't get to place two of my labels but that's only because 4 minutes isn't enough time to figure out how to place labels comfortable and securely on the rib cage of a plastic skeleton.  Altogether my team placed 181 labels, meaning we totally pwned the other groups.  The race was fun and we gained eternal glory!
And that concludes the skelly-ton!

The Integumentary Summary

From Ludwig's Integumentary notes.

Skin color comes from melanin, carotene, and hemoglobin.  Melanin is produced and gives the skin a darker more tan color.  Carotene is the yellow orange pigment of the skin and hemoglobin is the reddish pigment.  Different glands in the skin keep the skin from overheating or keep our skin soft.  Sweat glands in our bodies secrete cerumen and milk.  The sebaceous glands are found all over the body and soften skin when they're stimulated by hormones by secreting an oily substance called sebum.The skin has three awesome layers.  The epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin.  It's the stratified layer filled with keratinocytes, melanocytes, Merkel cells, and Langerhans cells.  Under that lies the dermis.  This layer is much thicker than the epidermis.  Most cells here are fibroblasts, macrophages, and white blood cells.  The dermis also has two layers in itself, the papillary and reticular layers.  The last layer of the skin is the hypodermis.  It's composed of adipose and areolar connective tissue.
The hair and nails are also part of the integumentary system.  Hair keeps the body warm.  It is made of dead keratinized cells and colored by melanocytes at the base of the hair.  Nails are simply a modification of the epidermis.

Now for the fun stuff.

Melanoma image from Skinipedia.

The major types of skin cancer are melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma.
Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer.  It's very malignant and people often mistake it for a birthmark, or vice versa.
The way to tell if a spot is melanoma is to check it with the ABCD rule.  Assymetry, Border, Color, and Diameter.  A spot of melanoma will be asymmetrical.  The border will be jagged and uneven.  The color of melanoma is much darker than a normal birthmark and can sometimes be shades of red or blue.  And if the diameter is bigger than 6mm, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, then you should get the spot checked for melanoma.  Melanoma is usually treated by removing the spot, but if it's 4mm thick into the epidermis then chances of survival are very low.

Third degree burn from burn remedies.com.  Ouch...

Being on the outside of our bodies our skin is also susceptible to burns.  First degree burns are just a red mark that only damages the epidermis.  Second degree burns damage through the epidermis and into the upper regions of the dermis.  They look a lot like first degree burns but may also blister.  Third degree burns damage through the entire thickness of the skin.  They don't hurt very much because nerve endings have been damaged and they are generally bright red, black, or ashy white.  Doctors and nurses use the rule of nines to estimate the severity of burns.  Burns are severe if 25% of the body has second degree burns, 10% of the body has third degree burns, or if third degree burns are on the hands, face, or feet.  One of the major dangers of burns is dehydration.

The integumentary system is a massive and rather complicated thing.  There are a lot of dangers to the skin but somehow everything works out all right.  Usually.

1st Quarter Reflection

Source, because I have to.

Anatomy is so much fun!  Even when we aren't doing lab stuff I get to look at pictures of rats with human ears growing on their backs and it really doesn't get much cooler than that!
Perhaps learning about epithelial cells isn't the most scintillating topic but the microscopes carried me through that and memorizing histology stuff is going to be helpful when we end up memorizing the bones of the human body.  One can't expect too much excitement from the first quarter after all.
A lot of biology lessons have begun trickling back, like cell structure, organ names and placement, and how to make a slide so I can look at my own hair samples.  This first quarter of Anatomy has been reminding me of all the things I've forgotten from Biology as well as teaching me new terms to use, like histology and homeostasis.  I'm not even sure if those are new terms or not but I'll take it.  Also, learning those terms for the regions of the body as well as the directional terms is going to make me sound like a super smarty-pants later in the class, which is a total bonus!
Basically, this quarter was really great as far as first quarters go.  I can't wait to cut things up.

The Tissue Simulation

An article on PBS offered up surprising information about scientists growing human tissue.  According to the article, The Body Shop, human skin is being grown to aid burn victims.  It's even been approved by the U.S. food and drug administration and the Vatican!  Joseph Vacanti created a scaffold to grow the human tissue on so that its shape could be controlled and customized. The scientists will start growing the skin and then implant it under the skin on a hairless mouse that's specially bred not to reject human skin.
The article also talks about growing organ tissues.  Apparently, organ tissues grow better in microgravity.  Tissues such as liver tissues grow better in a bioreacter designed to keep cells in a sort of constant free fall.
These scientists haven't yet created complete organs, just pieces of the tissues, but this is a huge step towards the future of medical science.  Soon they'll be growing entire legs!!!  But maybe not on a mouse's back.  As cool as the ear thing looks.
This article was really quite amazing.  It was full of information about the tissue growing.  Maybe a few more years from now these scientists will have made a human heart!  This will change the way we do prosthetics, no more weird plastic or metal legs, people could get real legs that grow with them!
And perhaps that's a little too distant of a dream.  But this is a really good start.  Maybe Mr. Ludwig will let us grow our own human tissue in class!! (Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.)  We could grow rats and everything.

The Histology Magnification

I absolutely love microscopes.  They're my favorite part of biology.  Unfortunately, my science teacher couldn't find the cancer samples (Or treacherously kept them from me) and I have only simple slides of tissues.

In this lab we were only observing slides of tissues under microscopes.  My partner and I observed three samples of epithelial tissue, three samples of connective tissue, three samples of muscle tissue, and two samples of nerve tissue.  We sketched all of the observed samples and labeled what they were.

These are sketches of epithelial tissues from mammals.  They looked a lot cooler under the microscope.  There were lots of little cells to focus on.

The connective tissues were also a lot of fun to look at.  These are all mammalian samples as well.  It's really neat to see the cells separated from each other in their lacunas or just separated by the matrix they're in.

The muscle samples had a lot more smooth places than connective tissue and epithelial tissue because of their fibers.  These are also mammalian samples.

I did not like looking at nervous tissue samples and I did not like drawing them either.  They were too smooth, too unbroken!  It was like fresh snow and just begged for a few cells to go plant themselves in the middle of the sample to be interesting.

I've already written extensively about connective tissue and epithelial tissue but I've never really talked about muscle or nerve tissues before.  There's really not much to say.  Muscle and nerve tissues get kind of boring under a microscope because there's more fibers than cells to look at, more smooth than speckled.

I love microscope labs.  It's a lot of fun to look at things really close up and see what things really look like, to watch pink smears become landscapes of cells and nuclei.  I hope we do a lot more microscope things in this class.  I'm really good at adjusting microscopes and I hope Mr. Ludwig will let us make our own slide samples when we do dissections. (Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.  I know you're reading this.)

Tissues, can get a little crazy...

Epithelial tissues are characterized by cellularity, polarity, and rapid regenerative capacity.  Basically, epithelial tissues are composed entirely of cells that rapidly replace lost ones through cell division and have apical and basal surfaces.

Finally I get to use my classmates for science.  Slowly but surely I'll convince Mr. Ludwig to let me try more radical procedures with them.  But I digress, here, my classmates are demonstrating simple squamous cells, or flat cells with disc shaped nuclei.  Squamous cells work for diffusion and filtration. They provide a slick lining in the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems.  Squamous cells are found in blood vessels, sarosae, the lining of the heart and the kidney glomeruli.

These little squamous cells are pseudostratified, which means that they're almost stacked up like a proper tissue.

This happy group of cells are demonstrating a stratified squamous tissue. Stratified squamous cells form a thick layer that protects whatever is underneath it.  Basically, stratified squamous cells form the outer layer of skin, and the lining of the esophagus, mouth, and vagina.

These fellows form a layer of simple cuboidal cells, or cube like cells with spherical nuclei.  Cuboidal cells are found on the ovary surface, in kidney tubules, and in ducts and secretory parts of glands.  Cuboidal cells are used in areas for secretion and absorption.  

Apparently we forgot to do the rest of the cuboidal forms.  Here's a picture of some actual pseudo stratified cuboidal cells from imagerepository.net to make up for my error.

This is an actual picture of stratified cuboidal cells under a microscope.  Brought to you by some kumc.edu.  Stratified cuboidal isn't common in the body but it can be found in some mammary and sweat glands.

My classmates are now demonstrating simple columnar cells.  Columnar cells are tall cells with oval nuclei.  Many of these cells contain cilia.  Those that do contain cilia are found lining the small bronchi and uterine tubes.  Columnar cells without cilia line the digestive tract.

Here we have an example of pseudo stratified columnar cells.  Pseudo-stratified columnar cells are found in the male sperm-carrying ducts and in your trachea.

And finally the stratified columnar. Columnar cells function in the secretion and propulsion of mucus.  Stratified columnar, like stratified cuboidal, aren't found very often in the body.  You can find them in the pharynx, male urethra, and lining some glandular ducts.

 Ignoring the 'Simple' sign, these classmates are an example of transitional cells.  Transitional cells have several layers of different cells, cuboidal cells form the basal layer and the surface layer is composed of dome-shaped cells.  Transitional cells line the ureters, bladder, and some parts of the urethra.

Connective tissues are a little different.  Connective tissues are characterized by distantly spaced cells in a matrix of some nonliving ground substance and fibers.  Connective tissues come from mesenchyme and have varying degrees of vascularity.  Connective tissues include cartilage, bone, and blood.

Hyaline cartilage follows a connective pattern, the widely separated cells are surrounded by lacuna.  Hyaline cartilage is found in the nose, ribs, trachea, larynx, and caps every joint.  Hyaline cartilage is also the hardest to heal because the cells are so few and far apart.

Elastic cartilage has more elastic fibers in it.  It's found in the ear, the epiglottis, and in the throat.

Fibrocartilage has a lot of collagen and is in the intervertebral discs, discs of the knee joint, and in pubic symphasis.

Bone consists of cells in a calcified matrix with lots of little blood vessels threading through.  These cells function in fat storage and hematapoisis.

Blood is characterized by red and white cells in a fluid matrix, which is the plasma.

And that pretty much covers the tissues.  For the next post I'll scan my microscope drawings for the Hyaline lab.  I love microscopes...

The Procrastination Validation

Technology is great and all, but most days I'd rather gut a fish with my teeth than post a blog.

Hopefully this Prezi makes up for my neglect.

Homeostasis Lab

The purpose of this lab was to become more familiar with homeostasis and how it works with the human body.  My lab team and I decided to test how pulse reacts to skin temperature.  If the temperature of the skin was lowered, we believed the pulse would go up to keep the skin warmer but if we heated the skin then the pulse would go down to help cool it.
Seeing as I didn't have a freezer or oven big enough to stick our entire bodies in we had to settle for sticking our hands in buckets of water.
We held our temperature probe (it looked like a probe I'm calling it a probe) in one hand for one minute each and measured our pulse from our necks with our fingers for one minute.  After we had our base temperatures and pulses for comparison we stuck our hands in ice water at about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, one at a time, for one minute and then measured temperature and pulse for one minute.  Once our hands returned to normal temperature we followed the same procedure, only we stuck our hands in hot water that was around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

This awesome graph shows all the measurements we got for pulse and temperature at normal, cold, and hot temperatures.

In the end, we determined that if you got cold your pulse would slow down, most likely to conserve heat energy to the core of the body.  And, if you got hot, your pulse would speed up to keep the core cool.  Our hypothesis was backwards but we were on the right track.
Next time, my results will be more drastic because I'll find an oven.

Homeostasis is for the living!! OKAY??!!

So stop bothering me about it already!!!!
Homeostasis is something only alive things need. Why? Well, what is it first! You have to ask questions in the right order!
Homeostasis is the process yout body uses to maintain balance. Homeostasis is anything from chemical reactions to physical changes that occur to keep the body stable.

Negative feedback is an output from your body to shut off the original stimulus, a sort of reverse trend.  Negative feedback includes anything your body does to counteract a change in your system.  If a bacteria entered your system to make you sick, negative feedback would be the immune system attacking the bacteria to keep your body stable.  Negative feedback also occurs in other, more common ways.  When you go for a run your body works to keep your internal organs cool by sending more blood to the skin.  As your muscles use energy the body breaks down foods its stored in fats and sugars to keep itself energized.  Whatever you do, your body works in an opposite way to keep your body from going into extreme conditions.
Positive feedback is when the original stimulus causes more and more response and is more often a bad thing.  Positive feedback is when something happens, and keeps happening until your body has been thrown out of balance.  Cancer works as positive feedback, the cells keep replicating and dominating the body's immune system and it doesn't get any negative feedback to deter the changes the cancer cells make by invading the body.
In the integumentary system, homeostasis would cause the body to sweat in the heat in order to keep the body cool.  In the skeletal system homeostasis would repair damaged bones, synthesize more blood from the marrow and other such things.  In the muscular system homeostasis would break down fats during a run to keep the muscles fed and energized.
Homeostasis keeps the body stable. If you get hypothermia, your pulse will slow down to conserve energy.  If you work out, your body will break down the sugars it stores for fuel.  Unless you get really sick, or start giving birth and get contractions, negative feedback will keep your body stable and maintain a healthy balance.