G-reg and Olga's Pedigree

                             Olga's

                                  Greg's

Eugenics Paper

     When I looked up the definition for eugenics it said: "the applied science or the biosocial movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population". Reading this definition over I had to think that it was wrong. Eugenics was the process of elimination in the 1800's all the way to the 1960's. This experiment opened a whole new way of science, it changed everything in good and bad ways.

    The social origins of eugenics started during the Civil War and around the time of economic and social struggle. The American industry  grew as well as cities and most importantly immigration. There was an increase amount of immigration after World War I. With declining birth rates in the wealthy and powerful class industrialization demanded a change from Laissez-Fair to manage capitalism. Therefore progressivism was created. Progressive reformers grew a strong faith in science and discovery in this new science brought  discovery of eugenics.Genetics became the explanation for al of people's problems, such as pauperism, feeble-mindedness, alcoholism, rebelliousness, nomadism, and many more. Eugenics argued that their society was affected by letting these individuals be supported by the state. New immigrants were seen as a problem and heir genes were blamed for it. This led to immigration restriction. Being a way as to solve all of these problems eugenics was used as the cover of science to blame different people for their problems.

     Scientific origins of eugenics started in the 20th century as well. Only then the concerns of the environment influenced the idea that ill health, early death, insanity, and defected offspring were because of a bad environment. Thus leading to the degeneracy theory in the 1700's. With this theory the act of masturbation or "onanism" was presented as the first cause of degeneracy. Harry Sharp, a prison physician decided to perform experiments on prisoners in 1899. Sharp and his colleagues made a law in Indiana for the sterilization of degenerates. This act was the first sterilization law in the U.S.

       Research methods became a huge source at this time. Research became an effort to apply the findings of Mendel's laws to human traits. Family tree's and pedigrees were researched to find basic patterns in families. It was said by Mendel that "factors" or genes is the key to visible traits in a person. Dominant and recessive genes came into the picture from research from Mendel. Dominant genes being when there is a dominant trait expressed from a gene being inherited from one parent and a recessive gene from another. Although many traits were found, it was difficult to score traits since eugenics attempted to measure complex traits. Today we use DNA makers to follow trait inheritance which makes it easier for families to trace back in time.

Source= http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

Babies :) and Genes

Since we have been learning about reproduction and how there are different ways to make a baby these days I thought i would explain a few terms in making a baby! The first term I have learned would be the word: Homozygous. This word sounds like a character out of a Dr. Seuss book but really it means 2 of the same copy of a gene. For example AA, or aa. The opposite of Homozygous is another term Heterozygous which means two different copies of a gene. And an example of this would be Aa or Bb. Dominant and Recessive also play a big role in genetics. A dominant gene is a gene that shows up in a trait. A recessive gene is a hidden gene in a trait. Phenotype is a visible trait in the child for example blue eyes or big ears. A genotype are the genes that make the phenotype the genes that are present. Knowing these terms help so much when we are progressing into the baby making process!!!!

I made a baby TODAY!!!!

Last week we were paired up into groups of two of either a a male/ female group or same sex group. We both filled out a "Create-a-baby" table by flipping a coin for parent 1 and parent 2's genotype. Thus then figuring out what traits the baby would have from "mom" and "dad". As a class we learned that XX represents the females traits and XY represents the male. Having fun with this on Friday, we go together the following Monday to draw our baby. My partner Derek and I were separated to do this so that we could experiment with what we thought our baby would look like. Unfortunately his version of our son looked like an ogre and mine looked like a mamas boy! But i had fun and I learned a lot about how a child gets most of it's traits from the mom and dad!!!!

What I wish I learned in High school

I have been stressed about graduation since the first day of my senior year. I have a pretty good idea about what I want to go to college for, but then again it has changed about a million times in the last two months. Just recently I have finished my college applications and essays and although I sigh with relief, the stress of waiting to see what college I get into following the stresses of college is getting to me. The day Mr. Ludwig assigned us to read this article written by a man that was supposed to read it to a high school but had gotten kicked out for some reason, I started reading it right away. It talks about how you don't have to decide who you are going to be in the world by the end of high school. People always ask you what your major will be or what are you going into, but the truth is is that they only ask you this to start up a conversation. We are raised in the society to follow rules or follow what "the big man" says. But really college is a place to find yourself; to get to know who you are and what you want to do with your life. There is no time limit to figure this stuff out, you could figure it out the first day as a freshman in college or on your college graduation day. It doesn't matter as long as you are happy with yourself and feel confident to go out not the world and do what you want to do. This article sort of decreased my stress level and made me realize that life has no schedule to follow it's all up to you!

Onion root lab

This Onion root lab really helped me not only to understand the types of phases that are in mitosis but also to understand how to identify them. I thought that this would be a complicated task on my part because I didn't think that I could identify a tiny cell and be able to compare it to another tiny cell. This lab helped me to realize that everything in this world will never be the exact same. With the tiny cells we identified yesterday each cell of the onion root had it's own little detail and process. Interphase is a bunched up cell then the process moves on to prophase which is still a bunched up cell but the nucleus is very clear and shows p as a black dot usually in the middle of the cell or close to it. Then Metaphase comes next in the process and you can identify it as the cell slowly separating, then moving on to anaphase where there is a defined divide in the cell. The last stage is Telophase which you can identify the cell because it is divided into two separate parts and looks like halves of egg shells. Learning about the process of mitosis will probably be my favorite part of biology because I feel that even after high school I will remember what I learned about it and how to identify which stage of mitosis is which!

Mitosis lab

1.What percent of cells were in interphase?

55%

2. What percent were in mitosis?

100%

3. Which phase of mitosis takes the longest?

Interphase

4. During which stage is the nucleolus visible as a dark spot?

Interphase

5. How can you recognize a cell in metaphase?  By the two squiggly lines opposite of each other.