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"ICE AGE" - SALEM

Part 3/3 of "Out of Africa and Into the Wood"

#outOfAfrica #andreiSalem #groupPortfolio

"THE GENETIC BOTTLENECK" - CORTEZ

Part 2/3 of "Out of Africa and Into the World"

#outOfAfrica #allenTan #groupPorfolio

"THE GRAND EXODUS" - OPISO

Part 1/3 of "Out of Africa and Into the World"

#outOfAfrica #dannaOpiso #groupPortfolio

INDIVIDUAL PORTFOLIO - OPISO

#indivPortfolio #dannaOpiso

SELF-REFLECTIVE ESSAY - OPISO

And, as seen from the previous quarters, I am still not done with my portfolio, although it is halfway through. So, yes, another reason to pause for a while and think of why and how I came up with this topic.

We have been informed of the more “popular” Homo species from Biology 1 and Social Science 3 – Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Lucy, for example – and those facts led me to my next question, “Were there others?”

Evolution is a random thing; we all know that. You don’t know when it will happen, it just does. And so given that evolution is something unpredictable, that must mean that there were several other species that evolved with us. I mean, if we normally have to make a lot of guesses and make TAE (trial-and-error) before we get the right answer in some insanely, mind-blowing Economics exam, evolution must have been like that as well. There must have been other “errors” or species that survived for a brief period of time but eventually died off because, well, let’s face it – they weren’t as cool as humans are.

And it really made me interested that there really were species like that – two of which are the “hobbits” and the Denisovans. The hobbits, who were really like the tiny beings from J.R.R. Tolkien’s book series, were said to have lived in complete isolation in the island of Flores, Indonesia. The Denisovans, however, were the “sister species” of the Neanderthals. Think of the North and South Water Tribe in Avatar: they were separated by geography yet they came from the same ancestor.

Both tribes were said to have lived around the time modern day humans and Neanderthals were killing each other off in Europe 80,000 years ago. However, both outlasted the Neanderthals. In fact, Denisovan genes were said to be present in Melanesian people! Could they have mated?

Actually, there are a lot of issues concerning both species; even calling them species is an issue. Some scientists say that they could’ve been just a subspecies of Homo sapiens since it would’ve been very impossible for them to produce a healthy offspring who can help in repopulating the earth after the Ice Age if they weren’t of the same species. Many things are yet unknown, many questions are still unanswered, but I believe that more advanced techniques will be invented and more answers will be revealed…in the future.

#selfReflectiveEssay #dannaOpiso

INDIVIDUAL PORTFOLIO - SALEM

#indivPortfolio #andreiSalem

INDIVIDUAL PORTFOLIO - CORTEZ

#indivPortfolio #popetCortez

SELF-REFLECTIVE ESSAY - CORTEZ

I made a visual aid that looks like a family tree to show where certain Philippine dialects originated. I was interested in the pidgin and creole discussion, so I decided to apply it to our own language, with the knowledge that the Filipino language has Malay, Spanish, and American influences.

I was able to look up some Philippine history while doing this portfolio. In doing so, I was able to compare the similarities of our 175 dialects, of which only one is a Spanish creole, Chavacano, which is spoken in Zamboanga. I also found out that 90% of the population speaks at least one of 12 major dialects. Taglish and Bislish (Tagalog and Bisaya with English) are not creoles, however. They are merely code-switched languages.

I was not able to fit everything into my portfolio. Perhaps if a brochure was added to it, it would guide viewers better, but because of lack of space and lack of time, I was unable to make one. Of course, I was also unable to research on all the major dialects in the Philippines, because that would take an unnecessary amount of time.

Although this portfolio is not so biology related, it showed how through time, languages developed. In less than 500 years, the language of a small group of islands was transformed. This portfolio left me wondering about thousands of years ago, when our ancestors first developed and expanded their language. Language which led to writing, which led to civilization, which led to where we are now. It’s simply amazing how advanced we our from our ancestors, and it’s even more amazing to find out how we got started.

#selfReflectiveEssay #popetCortez

SELF-REFLECTIVE ESSAY - SALEM

Third quarter is a lot more fun than the previous quarters. We have activities, reporting, and documentaries, but we did not have a legit topic discussion this quarter. I had difficulties in finding a good topic for my portfolio because the quarter is full of activities and I don’t have time and resources to replicate the activities and ask my sisters to do them. When ma’am posted the topics, I still have no other choice but to stick with human evolution.

My first topic was about the nine bases of human race and its relation to human migration. It’s a really difficult topic to do and I already used the topic as the overview in our group portfolio last quarter. I will put the basis of human race like the differences in autosomal SNPs, Y chromosome, mitochondrial DNA, and genetic distances in my portfolio and relate it to how first humans migrated to other parts of the world and were isolated from each other forming different human races. When I was doing this, I thought that this might not be considered as a portfolio topic because I “slightly” used this topic in our group portfolio. I shifted my topic to the relationship of languages and human migration. When I was doing this, the Piktochart application underwent server upgrade so I had no choice but to return to Microsoft Publisher. My mom went in my room and told me that my portfolio is so boring to read and it contains maps again. Yes, I’m discouraged to do this and became lazy. I wasted about two hours trying to do this portfolio.

When the servers are up, I can finally do my infographic portfolio. I changed my topic again to the effects of climate to human evolution. This topic was mentioned in the documentary but it only stated that the amount of UV light changed the skin color of humans. When I searched the topic on google, I was shocked that some aspects of human evolution came from climate oscillations. The less stable the climate, the more of the need to adapt and evolve. Also, bipedality and the use of stone tools somehow accelerated the evolution of humans since bipedality enables humans to go to diverse environments and stone tools unlocked more food sources. Humans should adapt to different environments and human teeth should undergo change to diverse food sources.

After doing the infographic, I thought that adding the future of human evolution would be nice since not only nature but also technology shaped humans. The predictions were shocking especially in the part that human feet would only have four toes. I hope that the infographics are clear and a good resource to learn something.

#selfReflectiveEssay #andreiSalem

LEARNING LOGS - OPISO

Adaptation of Modern Humans to a Changing World: How the Earth Made Man

I admit that I was pretty unconvinced with this documentary, because some of the other explanations just did not make sense, or were just put there to have something to say. I’m not discounting all the effort made by those scientists who researched about it, but I think saying that our hiccups came from our fish days is a little bit far-fetched. Or push-ups came from fish that used their primitive arms to rise from the water to live on land.

However, the explanations of our ability to throw (from our hunter-gatherer days) and jolting awake when falling asleep (from our sleeping-on-trees days) made sense to me. And no matter how much I disagree with some of the examples, I cannot deny that I learned something from this documentary.

The Human Brain and Perception:

Jelly Bean Taste Test

This activity is the most thrilling activity of the quarter, and I loved it.

I absolutely adore surprises (as long as it’s not a 2.75 in my card), so being surprised by the thing I’m going to taste was really amazing for me. Although, no matter how exciting it was, you cannot remove the fear of tasting something really icky, like those from Berty Botts’ Every Flavoured Beans from Harry Potter. Well, not icky, because I know Ma’am loves us, but a certain taste that I wouldn’t like.

Guessing the flavors was a little tough, because I’m not good with my sense of taste. I mean, I once said my very own “ketchup-on-kalabasa” recipe tasted like fried chicken (I still think it does), so I was really kind of surprised to get one flavor right, but only because it’s one of my favorites, which was lemon.

I learned that different people have different ways of describing the same candy flavor, like how three blind men would describe an elephant. It was interesting how funny others’ guesses were and how close my guesses were with my other classmates.

What Color Do You See – A Color Sorting Activity

This activity was really challenging because I admit that I already forgot the rules of colors from my Physics 1. However, I realized that I didn’t need to remember them, because it was kind of obvious which candies were red, except under the red light since orange and red look almost the same under that light. You really had to look carefully to distinguish the two.

Uniquely Human: Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee - How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live (by Jared Diamond)

Bridges to Human Language

I’ve never really thought about language as anything complex (except for its grammar when you’re not a fluent speaker). I mean, we all have different languages and we use it as a means of communication or self-expression, but I didn’t realize that there was more to that.

And that was exactly what I learned in this report. I’ve never really thought about how people first learn their native language, although I have wondered how I learned mine. This report made me appreciate languages more.

Animal Origins of Art

I’m not an art person. I don’t use art to express my thoughts or my emotions, because I just don’t. But I know that some people use paintings or songs or stories to say something, great artists like Van Gogh or Shakespeare and the like. However, apart from communication, art is also made just because you want to, because it makes you happy. But does it serve any biological purpose? Even an author said that “All art is quite useless.”

But that’s where we are wrong. And it’s amazing how species like chimpanzees use art (especially in captivity) to keep them busy. And how bower birds make their habitats really pleasing to the eye to attract mates. It’s like saying that “No, I’m not just showing off, I’m also proving to you what I’m showing off.”

Agriculture’s Two-Edged Sword

Agriculture has always fascinated me. I would like to hear the story of how humans first discovered that we can plant in soil and make water irrigations and all that, because most of those things are very complex that even I, a modern-day human, have no idea how farms work.

However, this report made me think about two things: a) is agriculture really something uniquely human? and b) does complexity equate to efficiency and effectiveness?

I learned that we may have some kind of had agriculture in our genes, especially if we evolved from the tiny ants who demonstrate some agricultural behaviors. And ironically, hunter-gatherers are better off than us. If they really were taller and had a better diet because of its diversity, then that’s a big thing! Although I honestly still believe in agriculture because it had more long-term effects and now everybody’s into it, even the originally industrial countries. Science has also made GMOs possible, so we can “easily” alter the things we have to alter.

We Do We Smoke, Drink and Use Dangerous Drugs

This was a very interesting topic because I often wonder about this, too. I mean, okay, we do these things because we get really high and it makes us feel really good, but do those temporary things overpower the long-term effects they induce?

And what was funny to me was that drug abuse was really marked as “evil”. And it amused me how advertisements use contradictions like cigarette companies using athletic people as endorsers when it weakens your immune system or showing that smoking makes you attractive when it just gives you really bad breath and damaged lungs.

However, I learned that non-human animals actually benefit from being handicapped. They are faster and they easily understand signals. Good job, animals!

Human Migration: The Real Eve – Modern Man’s Journey Out of Africa

The “Real Eve” is probably one of the very few evolutionary theories that sounded convincing to me. The facts just simply added up and so do the fossils discovered. I find it very interesting that humans really are “siblings”. I don’t know, but it gives me hope that (sorry about how sappy this is) wars between nations will stop, or at least, lessen.

The “Real Eve” reminds of a book series I read as a kid – 39 Clues. It was a story about five branches of one family fighting one another to become the most powerful beings on earth. Even if it took 500 years for the descendants of the five children of Olivia Cahill (their “real Eve”) to actually get along, they still managed to do it. And it was the kids who did, because they do not bear the grudges held by their parents, and their parents’ parents and so on.

I hope that same can be said for us. I mean, we came from one mother, shouldn’t that account for something? I hope that being “siblings” gives us enough reason to put down our guns and offer each other a hug.

(PS: I am obviously watching news about France right now.)

Bio in the News – Bulletin

My poster wasn’t really in the latest, but it was pretty new. I myself didn’t know of the Pomodoro Technique until this project.

Being a Pisay student is really tough (I know Ma’am will agree with me on this, too). All the good things and great lessons aside, this school gave me my first all-nighter, late project submission, failing grade and groggy mornings. However, it doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything about it.

Kuya Ed, our guidance counselor, once said that Pisay students, who excel in the acads, fail in one very important thing – time management. And that’s what I wanted to impart using this poster. I wanted to give (and find out, for myself) ways to improve our habits. I wanted to be more productive and to use my time wisely; especially since being a senior means you have a lot of heavy load on your back. And this project really helped me, personally.

Planning for YMSAT Exhibit

This activity just made me love my elective-mates. I loved how cooperative we were, giving our ideas, saying random jokes and just having fun. I, for one, have learned to dislike group works, but this elective-work is just so fun because everybody was working together. Everyone was giving their inputs and no matter how “sabaw” the ideas were, some of them actually made sense.

And I’m really happy because knowing LifeSci; we can pull our plans off. This activity showed me what real teamwork and brainstorming are, and what they can do. I’m so excited for our exhibit! :)

#learningLogs #dannaOpiso

LEARNING LOGS - CORTEZ

1. How the Earth Made Man

This was a documentary about how our own bodies document the Earth’s own history. Drastic changes in the Earth’s environment forced our ancestors to adapt and evolve to what we are now. Some parts of the documentary were questionable, such as hiccuping. Some actually made sense, such as our ability to throw, our annoyance at the sound of nails against the blackboard, and the feeling of disgust. I like how the documentary actually conducted experiments with test subjects in order to validate their hypotheses.

2. Jelly Bean Taste Test

It has long been known that our ability to taste is compromised when our ability to smell is also compromised. This is demonstrated when we have colds. For this activity, we tasted different flavors of jelly beans with our noses pinched. It was a struggle to identify which flavor was which, and I made a few mistakes. This activity proved that with one sense malfunctioning, our brain has difficulty in telling us what we are perceiving.

3. Color Sorting Activity

This was my favorite activity of the quarter. We were asked to identify the red pieces of candy among many other pieces of candy that were placed under different colors of light. I liked the activity itself, but I also enjoyed graphing our results. Even with a small class, it was interesting to see that some of us couldn’t tell which candy was red as easily as the others. Many animals and plants can use this concept to hide themselves from predators.

4. Bridges to Human Language

The first powerpoint presentation that was presented talked about human language and where it came from. Vervet monkeys were observed to have three distinct calls: eagle, snake, and leopard. The powerpoint also talked about pidgin and creole languages, how they emerge, and an example of a pidgin and a creole language. This discussion was more Soc. Sci. than Life. Sci, but it still interested me. With enough research, we could also probably trace how Filipino was influenced by the Spanish and the Chinese.

5. Animal Origins of Art

Where did art come from? On first glance, it serves no purpose. It is something that is not genetically passed on. But certain animals actually use art to communicate. From this presentation, I learned that even elephants make random patterns on the ground when they are bored. I also found out that one species of bird makes beautiful nests in order to impress their mate. Even though art seems sophisticated and unique to humans, in truth, it is not.

6. Agriculture’s Two-Edged Sword

The presentation discussed hunter-gathering vs. farming and how agriculture changed humans and human history. It was argued that hunter-gatherers are better than farmers because they are healthier and have more leisure time, and do not depend on the weather. It also stated that agriculture gave rise to civilization but also to disease and overpopulation. Before this powerpoint, I had never considered that agriculture even had negative effects. But one choice made by our ancestors thousands of years ago defined human history forever.

7. Why Do We Smoke, Drink, and Use Dangerous Drugs?

This powerpoint discussed why humans do all sorts of dangerous vices. It argued that the more handicapped an animal appears physically, it would actually appear stronger (“I can do this even though I’m handicapped”). However, appearing handicapped by taking unhealthy substances does not do good to humans, even though some do it to appear superior. I thought that humans only drink or smoke to forget, and I did not know that there was a biological basis.

8. The Real Eve

This was a documentary about the genetic mother of all humans. It traced the path made by our ancestors when they spread around the world due to climate change. It also talked about how some human traditions started, such as burial, which eventually led to civilization. It showed the change in appearance of our species by using different actors to play the humans in a different time frames. To be honest, this documentary was not as good as the first one, but it was still very informative.

9. Bio Bulletin Board

I put an article about the possible cloning of a frozen mammoth. Scientists found blood, still in liquid form, in their mammoth, and successfully extracted a partial DNA sequence, which would then be completed by an Asian elephant. It was an exciting discovery, but also posed moral questions. It would be difficult especially for the Asian elephant. Scientists still put ethics ahead of science.

#learningLogs #popetCortez

LEARNING LOGS - SALEM

How the Earth Made Man

Humans learned to throw to become better hunters. In that way, humans can hunt more safely.

Hiccups might came from animals that breathe both air and water ex. Tadpoles.

The ability to do push-ups came from ancient fish that pushes itself out of the water

Goosebumps came from hairy mammalian ancestors.

The involuntary and unexpected jolts that we experience when we’re going to sleep came from monkeys or animals that live in the trees to keep them from falling off a tree.

The open plains calms us because you can see potential dangers even from afar. The jungle scene is not calming because you cannot see anything from a distance.

There’s common phobia of snakes and spiders because they are the deadly threats in the African forest.

Enhanced color and 3D vision enables us to see camouflaged animals

Sweating while we are in fear makes us slippery and harder to grab by predators.

The noise made by scratching the nails on a board has the same frequency of the cry of a female macaque monkey when it is giving birth and piercing warning cries.

We see faces in things like electric plugs and cabinets as a method of safety and survival in a chaotic environment

Humans are violent like chimpanzees

Déjà vu is a “bug” in brain’s circuitry

Disgust and gut feeling is a way to prevent disease and danger

Jelly Bean Taste Test

We perceive taste using both the sense of taste and the sense of smell

What Color Do You See - A Color Sorting Activity

Our accuracy to get a certain colored object depends on the color of the light.

Bridges to Human Language

Humans are unique because they just don’t do grunts and cries to communicate, they spontaneously make new words.

A newly-introduced language will be spontaneously changed by non-native speaker turning them to pidgins and later, creoles.

Animal Origins of Art

Art doesn’t help in survival, and is usually seen in captive animals.

Agriculture’s two-edged sword

The advantage of agriculture against hunting is a misconception. Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time and work no harder than farmers, have more diverse diet, and no famines.

Why do we smoke, drink, do drugs?

Smoking, drinking, or taking drugs is bad for the health, a strong motive explains why we do such dangerous things

Example in animals: handicaps

Real Eve

Humans came from Africa and migrated to other parts of the world by crossing the Red Sea.

#learningLogs #andreiSalem

"The Landlocked Countries" - Juan Pablo Cortez

Part 3/3 - Population History

#populationHistory #popetCortez #groupPortfolio

"The Isolated Tourist Destinations" - Danna Mae Opiso

Part 2/3 - Population History

#populationHistory #dannaOpiso #groupPortfolio

"The Isolated Countries" - Andrei John Salem

Part 1/3 - Population History :)

#populationHistory #andreiSalem #groupPortfolio

INDIVIDUAL PORTFOLIO - OPISO

#indivPortfolio #dannaOpiso

LEARNING LOGS - OPISO

Exercise on the Hardy-Weinberg Principle

Oh this one. I admit I got really confused with this activity, especially since I think my groupmates and I weren’t really expecting some Math in LifeSci. It was fun to do, however, especially when we made up some of our answers based on the knowledge we got from class and from outside class and when we debated and laughed about them. It was also fun learning about something new, and I don’t know, but I have always been fascinated with how Math can solve just about anything. It’s like it was some ancient written book of laws that has secrets to the best-tasting pasta in the world to laws that govern the universe. It’s pretty mind-blowing.

Investigating the Gene Pool Changes

I had so much fun in this activity. I wonder if this is how God feels while picking our unique genes (I know I might get religion and science mixed up a little bit, but this was just a feeling. Don’t get me wrong, I love both God and science) – I bet He has fun picking up all those tiny “beads” and assigning them to people. I don’t know! It’s amusing and amazing how in the different groups, there were so many different probabilities in the combinations, like how one group never had any recessive beads. It showed how random genotypes are really possible, and can therefore cause a genetic variation in the population. The smaller the population is, the more it is prone to more evident deviations, which also means that in a given time, a certain “bad” trait may be eradicated while giving way to the beneficial trait.

Beauty and the Beast

Oh, I had fun here, too (I had fun in everything, haha). It felt nice just sitting down and listening to others read through the story and for once learning about one version of Beauty and the Beast, aside from the Disney version. I learned that beauty isn’t always in the outside. At first glance, it is, of course, but overtime, when you try to get to know a person deeply, you start seeing them as more beautiful than the eyes can tell. It is during this time that the heart (or hypothalamus, to be biologically correct) that tells you that person is beautiful. Also, I really hated how the ugly evil sisters did not have any character development, since I believe that everyone is allowed to change for the better. I believe that we should learn how “man up” and admit our mistakes.

Survey

I loved holding surveys! It was nice knowing what my friends and eventually schoolmates would want to find in their mates. I wasn’t surprised at all with the variation in the answers (although pretty eyes, height and a really good smile were pretty common in the physical traits) and to me it shows that different people really have different preferences. It made me appreciate differences more. However, it kind of sucked how some people treated our project like a joke when they wrote some rude comments on other people’s honest answers.

#learningLogs #dannaOpiso

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