Sunday, March 20, 2011

Why do we die if our cells are constantly replacing themselves?

This is a question that came to me while learning more about how cells reproduce.  I always felt that our cells just started to shut down and in turn our organs and other things.  As I learned more about cell reproduction I noted that the cells are constantly being replaced and they are checked for problems as well.  So why do we end up dying?  Unfortunately my question was not answered on ask a scientist but with the help of my colleagues responses and some searching on the internet, I believe that I have found the answer.

Just as when we get sick, there are genetic and environmental factors that effect our health.  Our cells can be effected by environmental factors such as radiation or they are simply getting older.  When they make a copy of themselves they are bringing these factors over.  The radiation or other environmental factors have aged or altered the cell in some way or the cell that was copied is an older version than the cell was when it was first made so the copy is an older copy.  Eventually these copies get older and older or more and more effected by the environment that all the copies are effected.  So we are not constantly making copies of the original new cell it is always slightly older or environmentally effected eventually leading to the death of the organism.

Yahoo Answers (2011) Yahoo answers: why do we die of old age? Retrieved from http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100311214000AAeutl4

Jordan Coffed (2011) SCIE-6662S-2 Investigating the living world: week 2 discussion board post. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4889695&Survey=1&47=6876975&ClientNodeID=403157&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Dr. Samson Lyman (2011) SCIE-6662S-2 Investigating the living world: week 2 discussion board post. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4889695&Survey=1&47=6876975&ClientNodeID=403157&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Web 2.0

Web 2.0

I am really excited to learn new ways to presents ideas.  I also enjoy giving these ideas to my students, who are always looking for alternative and technological ways to present their projects.  I have exposed my students to prezi.com but have not had time to become familiar with it myself.  I have gone through the tutorial but that is about it.  So far I really like prezi.  It is a fun new twist on power points and I feel that it keeps the students engaged while they are creating and presenting.  I really like that I can make just one login for all of my classes and then students just keep all of their work there.  Also they can then work on presentations outside of school because they can access it at home through the internet.  I have had some problems with prezi in that sometimes the website is down.  When this happens there is no way for my students to work on or present their presentation.  Hopefully this is something that the company is working on to make it reliable.  Even with this I would really like to continue to learn more about prezi.com and use it for my project during this class. http://prezi.com/  

The other type of technology that I explored was the museum box.  I really like the idea behind the presentation.  I feel that if my students look at their presentation as a museum box it will help them to better organize their ideas.  The problem that I had with it was that there was no tutorial like there was with prezi so it was hard to try and get started and figure out what the end product would look like.  Also you have to register your school and they have to call the school and accept it.  On top of that you need a separate login for each student. I am hoping that I could just come up with one login for everyone as setting this up for 80-100 students would take a while.  http://museumbox.e2bn.org/