Bio Geo Nerd: November 2012

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Happy Anniversary!

Today is the 1 year Anniversary of Bio Geo Nerd! Now that is an anniversary I can get excited about. :) And, this post marks a momentous milestone....(drumroll)......

Post #100!!!

:D Happy Dance...
So I had a rough average of 2 posts per week for a year, and it's been very fun. Obviously I had some times that were busier than others for the blog, and times when the busy-ness of life prevented me from posting very much. The viewership of the blog had a very slow start and has begun to expand greatly, going from 20,000 hits just a couple months ago, to now almost 45,000.

Year in Review
Here is a review of some of my favorite pictures from my favorite posts. I had such a blast learning about these topics and then creating the posts about them. Fond memories. :)

Giant Pacific Octopus Beak

Anapsid Skull Rock at Capitol Reef Field Station

Treetop Barbie :)

My little guy is famous for this funny little quote

Realizing the Zygomatic Arch was the human "temporal fenestra" was a cool "aha" moment for me in College Bio II

Monday, November 19, 2012

Physiology Tutoring

I love physiology. I have been telling myself that for almost a year now. :) It began as a positive affirmation in order to do better on the weekly quizzes and tests. But it has also become an absolute truth. I love learning about the human body and how it works.

Please see the following posts that are tagged as Physiology:
http://biogeonerd.blogspot.com/search/label/physiology

I love getting to tutor the subject and hope to be able to flesh out and add more Physiology posts as I have time. (Time has been very scarce this semester, so hopefully I can do this more in the near future, perhaps over Christmas break.) Thanks for visiting! Please comment!

Respiration

Two types:
1- internal respiration = cellular respiration (metabolism)
2 - external respiration = body respiration (breathing)

External Respiration
CO2 triggers breathing. High CO2 levels will lower pH (making it more acidic), which can quickly cause problems. Exhaling is the main drive for respiration.

The other factor is Oxygen. But what is the main purpose of oxygen that we need? It ties in to metabolism. Oxygen is simply needed as the "final electron acceptor".

Source

Slide from Dr. Ashworth's Power Point

Bacteria

This post was originally written in September, and I am just now publishing it

Bacteria are such little buggers. I have some living in my sinuses at the moment and they seem to be unresponsive to Penicillin. I hope I'm not carrying a resistant strain. It's day 3 so we'll know soon. Or perhaps I have a virus. I just learned from the CDC website that most sinus infections are viruses. I hope my doctor knows what he's doing.

So, in honor of this disgusting sickness that has been cramping my life for a couple weeks now, I'm doing this post on Bacteria. They are very annoying when they make you sick. But they are also quite amazing. The very fact that something so tiny can cause such big problems is incredible in its own right.

See my post on leukocytes to learn about how the body fights off the bacteria who are causing our body problems. (There are also a lot of bacteria which are beneficial.)

Post on White Blood Cells (Leukocytes)

Good Bacteria
Beneficial bacteria are very linked to digestive health. Anyone who has been on an antibiotic only to get digestive problems afterward knows what I'm talking about.