Nature High Summer Camp

This camp is so awesome!  I was a counselor last year, so I'll put up some pics and stories below, but first off, here's the promotional video they made for the camp which shows a lot of awesome footage from last summer!  If you or someone you know is a High School student in Utah, you owe it to yourself to check this opportunity out!





Wondering what to do this summer in Utah? Summer camp, teens, teenagers, resume builder During summer 2013, it was my great pleasure to work as a camp counselor for Nature High Summer Camp in Ephraim Canyon, Utah!  Here's my awesome group of students:

Under Construction, sorry! I'm a busy college student, please forgive me. :)

Blood Clotting

Blood clotting or coagulation (also called hemostasis), is complex, but we want to try to understand this in "big picture" form first off.

When an injury occurs in a blood vessel, here are the steps we go through.

Classes.midlandstech.com

Platelets and Fibrin are the important things that we actually get as products of coagulation that seal up a wound.  But the activation of them is a complicated process.  Which is a good thing for your body!  If it were an easy reaction, we could get our blood spontaneously clotting on us and that would be BAD.

Here's another way to visualize this:

studyblue.com

In first forming the platelet plug, it's important to note that it's the exposed collagen fibers that are attracting platelets.  The normal, healthy state of things is to NOT have platelets sticking to blood vessels.  The ability to not stick is ensured by the blood vessel lining cells (endothelial) releasing prostacyclin to prevent platelet sticking.  But with damage, that isn't released and instead collagen causes platelets to stick.  This can be visualized here:

dc416.4shared.com

Now for the actual clotting part after the platelet plug, for now I have some videos.  If you want to cut right to the chase and a great explanation, watch the last video.



Videos
Here's a not fabulous animation but an animation nontheless...


This short clip I just found helpful to visualizing how the different factors work together to activate factor X then prothrombin, to activate thrombin which they refer to as the "thrombin burst" because it creates a large amount then creates a positive feedback loop to further increase the effect.


This is the best video I found!  I like how concise and understandable he makes it, looking at the big picture and working backward from there.  Hope it's helpful for you too.

All clotting factors are made by the liver, except 8 and PAF3. (Platelet activating factor is made by white blood cells.)

Theodore Schwann

Theodore Schwann (many sources also spelled his name Theodor) was a man who lived in the 1800's and is remembered as a great scientist.  His actual scientific career only lasted five years!  And yet, in that short time (1834-1839), he made many very important discoveries in Biology and Physiology.

Source

Cell Theory
Shortly after German Botanist Matthias Schleiden discovered that plants are made of cells, Schwann discovered that animals are as well (Source).

Alcoholic fermentation
He hypothesized that fermentation wasn't a reaction with nitrogen in the air as people then believed, but that tiny organisms (yeast) were eating the sugars of the fruit and then excreting carbon dioxide and ethanol.  People in his day noticed yeast multiplied with fermentation, but he was the first to suggest they were the thing doing the fermenting, rather than just a byproduct of it.  He also stated that yeast were living plant-like organisms, firmly establishing fermentation as a biological process.  He was publicly ridiculed for this hypothesis which came at the end of his short career and probably helped lead to its demise, as he could no longer get funds or promotions to continue doing scientific research.  (Paraphrased from The Other Brain, by R. Douglas Fields, 2009, and Wikipedia- Theodore Schwann.) 

Digestion
He suspected that hydrochloric acid wasn't the whole story with digestion.  He discovered Pepsin, the enzyme that helps break down proteins (The Other Brain). He also showed that bile is essential to digestion, and coined the term "metabolism" describing chemical changes in animal tissue (Source).

Schwann cells
The myelinating cells in the Peripheral Nervous System are his namesake, since he first described them.  He studied nerves, noticing they had little dew-drop like structures running the length of them.  He thought that a neuron being built during development must join with other cells to create the long axon by fusion, and the Schwann cells were remnants of this process from those fetal cells.  Although his speculation was incorrect, these cells still carry his name.

Source

There's a brief summary of a great scientist's work.  I read about him in the book I've currently got my nose in (and hoping to finish before school starts back up), The Other Brain, by R. Douglas Fields.  It's all about Neuroglia, aka glia, glial cells.  To read an overview of all the types of Glia, go to this post: http://biogeonerd.blogspot.com/2013/08/neuroglia.html

Astrocytes

I was so fascinated by Astrocytes when I learned about Neuroglia (see my post on Neuroglia), that I wanted to know more. So I wrote a paper and did a presentation on it for my Neuroscience class.  Here are the fruits of those labors.

This is my Power Point presentation, which isn't really a stand-alone, it requires some explanation on most slides.  Maybe some day I'll learn how to narrate something like this and post it on YouTube.

Now I'm reading The Other Brain, by R. Douglas Fields.  It's rather fascinating.  Can't wait to learn more about everything in the brain.  This semester I'll be taking Physiological Psychology which should be a great way to follow up Neuroscience.

Neuron Ion Channels - Detailed

Inward rectifying potassium channels.  This is what started all this.  Just a little paranthetical aside in my Neuroscience teacher's notes that left me curious.  One thing led to another, and here we are.  Ion channels.  Hope you learn something like I did.  Enjoy!

A plethora of potassium channels
Here is a short video showing the molecular structure of a Potassium channel and how it can be perfectly selective to allow Potassium and not Sodium through.

And look at this beautiful top view of a potassium channel with a little purple potassium ion in the center.

Inward-Rectifying Potassium Channels
What does inward-rectifying mean?  Simply put, it just means that voltage travels inward more easily than outward.  So this name tells us that Potassium will move into a cell when open.
(Example - cardiac muscle cells- responsible for the long refractory period between beats, to avoid tetany; kidneys, regulating potassium ions

Action Potentials: Delayed Rectifier Potassium Channels & A Type Channels (outwardly rectifying)



Tandem Pore Domain Potassium Channels (Leak Channels)

Voltage Gated Potassium Channels




********This post under construction!  I just found a textbook with an entire chapter on ion channels, so after I study for my test I will dive into this and finish the post...  thank you for not hating me too much for leaving you hanging.  You'll just have to subscribe to learn more! :)