Biology

Most of the time, I make normal airy-sounding yawns. Occasionaly I sometimes make this burping-like sound while yawning that I can't or never could explain. My sister makes the same sound when she yawns. My mom and dad don't make the sound at all when they yawn (normal). My classmates don't even make this sound. When I'm in class and I make this sound, my friends laugh and try to imitate what I do. I think this is not normal, and I need an explanation.

Is anyone able to identify what this microscope video is showing? (What the process is and why it is happening) Any help would be apprciated. http://70.85.12.34/~tonedfit/undermicroscope.mpg

Fish have a lot of vertebrae, i guess they're the only bones they have, but have they got more than any other animal?

This guy lives in Boulder and worked for Colorado State University, where I used to work: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/dec/08/inventor-turns-algae-into-fuel/ His idea is to trap the CO2 output from coal-fired power plants and funnel it into enormous fields of enclosed algae pools. Coal-fired power plants produce 40% of America's carbon dioxide emissions, at least according to the article. The basic premise is to collect CO2 from power plants and use it to feed pools of algae with carbon dioxide-enriched water: The result? Biodiesel:

hey guys I am trying to find out if by eating and viewing different foods, will my heart rate increase, especially with foods that I like? I have done an experiment and now I just need some info to help back up my results (I found that eating foods like ice-cream and chocolate slowed my heart rate, and foods like wasabi and chilli increased my heart rate, although I don't know if my results were very accurate)

I am a student from hong kong who is preparing the biology syllubus in form six. overall speaking, the syllubus is easy while there are some points which for me as confusing as I believe the evidence and information provided by the book is not convincible enough; I have tried asking my teacher while he said this is what the marking scheme limits and could not be changed and the issue is controversial and could not give me any relatively absolute answer. The issue I am concerning is about comparative biochemistry used in the study of evolution. For instance, consider the haemoglobin protein in chimpanzee and in human, which differ in only one amino acid. It is then ass…

Why do some antimicrobial agents affect bacteria, but not humans? Does anyone know?

Personally I find this area of research to be fascinating. I simply could not digest all to well the idea of just genes alone when viewing life as many would have it. I don’t think such research undermines the role of genes or the overall importance they hold in life, I just could not simply digest evolution as just genes alone. Here is a wiki article on some of it, of course the internet alone is full of information on the subject for anyone interested. "Among the more surprising and, perhaps, counterintuitive (from a neo-Darwinian viewpoint) results of recent research in evolutionary developmental biology is that the diversity of body plans and morphology in organisms …

Please take a look at the Science Daily article below.... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070820175435.htm from the article... I thought this was awesome, one of the hurdles of pinning down key events of early life on earth is obviously piecing together the time periods of events, so this is definitely a significant piece of the jigsaw.

Recent probes inside comets show it is overwhelmingly likely that life began in space, according to a new research paper by Cardiff scientists. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology have long argued the case for panspermia – the theory that life began inside comets and then spread to habitable planets across the galaxy. A recent BBC Horizon documentary traced the development of the theory. Now the team claims that findings from space probes sent to investigate passing comets reveal how the first organisms could have started. More at Cardiff University....

Looking at the various forms of homeostasis, such as not directly internally but more on an ecological point of view I would like to propose an idea or question really about human evolution. IN many ecosystems or most that I learn about you find a general balance of nature overall. In this it seems that niches of course come to be occupied over time by organism and populations of such adapted to such via natural selection. Now not to speak in an homologous tone in regards to migration over life in general here, just that in the course of human evolution did our species/genus ever spend a great deal of time in any particular ecosystem? It seems to me that our species …

Hi, I've recently came across term "shock" in my Emergency Responder class. In the textbook by American Red Cross, the book defines "shock" as body's failure to some sort of event. I thought "shock" meant like electric shock that hospital people do to resuscitate hearts? Can anyone clarify on this term? Thank you.

When it comes to understanding biology and finding cure it seems the 21st century we are going back in time. disease,AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria each kill over a million people annually. HIV remains without a cure or vaccine, and is growing rapidly in India and much of the African continent. Antibiotic resistance is a growing concern for organisms such as tuberculosis. Other diseases, such as SARS, ebola, and flu variations, are also causes for concern. The World Health Organization has warned of a possible coming flu pandemic resulting from bird flu mutations. World Health Organization deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_killer By disease, conditi…

It's known that astonomers use red flashlights and planes have cockpits lit with red light, in order to preserve a person's night vision. So if red light preserves night vision, would an ultraviolet flashlight do the same, if it's on the other end of the spectrum? What effect does ultraviolet light have on a person's night vision?

Say you have a room, the dimensions are 20’ x 20’ x 20’. Inside of it you put an elephant and a mouse. You then seal the room, airtight. Which one would suffocate first? Assume that they mouse and elephant do not interact in any way, e.g. the elephant does not lie down and crush the mouse. They are also not expending too much energy, as in running around the enclosed space. Since the mouse has smaller lungs, will it die first, not being able to draw in as much oxygen as the elephant? Or will the elephant go first, since it requires much more oxygen than the mouse? Are there more factors here at work? Will they die at the same time? By the way, this is purely theoreti…

In an interview with cognitive scientist Steven Lehar, he argues that the world we see is actually a sort of simulation, represented in our brains. It's weird stuff, but his arguments are quite compelling. Highly recommended reading. I went on to read several of his papers as well. They can be quite technical, but I must say that he may be onto something.

New here, so howdy! Looking for an answer to a question that's bugged me for a while now.. Not sure whether anyone will be able to help in here, but I'm hoping so! It all centres around this image here: http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6300/testpngar9.png This is an image I've mocked up, purely for the purpose of experimentation into this problem.. I'd ask that anybody reading please take a look at it, and take a few moments to scan your eyes back/forth across the lines. You see, whenever I see yellow lines in parallel configuration.. No matter if it's on computer screen, paint or otherwise.. I get 'flashes' of red/green/rainbow lines running perpendicular t…

Out of curiousity, does anyone know of any tests done to see how dogs decide what, how much, and when to eat? Pretty much everyone who has a dog as a pet will agree that they always try to get food, but it's generally regarded as fair to give a dog one meal a day. This suggests that either we're underfeeding our dogs or that dogs don't have a good judge of how much they need to eat. Somehow I find the latter unlikely, as if they were to keep eating, they'd never have enough food to survive as a species. Is there perhaps a more proper schedule for a dog's eating habits, and have any tests been done to prove any of this? For example, I've heard of tests on humans wh…

A question if anyone out there can answer it for me: We humans have colour vision based on three sets of different types of receptor, each sensitive to a different range of light frequencies. Birds demonstrably also have colour vision. Is theirs based on the same method of detection? 1) If so, was theirs and ours evolved separately? Or does it go back to somewhere deep in the roots of the vertebrates? Humans, I assume lost theirs somewhere along the way when our ancestors were nocturnal "shrews", but did we lose it altogether and then have to re-eveolve it? Or did we almost lose it and then recover it? 2) If not, what is the bird method?

Ted Prize 2007. E O Wilson's "wish" for "The Encyclopedia of Life" There's a wonderful little film in the middle of his speech. It's really got the "Wow!" factor

Ok, the background. At school we were tasked with a simple experiment to investigate the effect of fertilisers on plant growth, and have been issued with two (singular) cress plants, one as a control and another to be fed on ammonium sulphate. The problem came about an hour after the lesson when I realised that the (NH4)SO4 one had "keeled over" so to speak. Thinking that perhaps the stem had broken I went back to the lab and replaced it with a fresh stalk. However, upon arriving home I realised that it had done exactly the same thing again. The control is growing quite happily, so what's going on? My best guess is that although I mixed the fertiliser as per the instruct…

I’ve been having an argument with my biology teacher about this for a while now. Would it be possible (hypothetically) for a vegetarian to rapidly loose weight following the Atkins diet? Due to the diet's emphasis on maximising protein and minimising carbohydrate intake, would one be able to achieve this without eating meat or fish? If so what food would they have to eat and in what quantities?

i have a great idea for my science fair but i do not know how to do it. I want to find out what attracts insects the light or the heat from the light. If you have any ideas on how to do this expirement or have ideas for another science project please reply. Thank you!!!!!!! :confused:

Hi It seems that over the last few years a large number of advances have been made in suspending and reviving organisms that have been clinically dead and temperature reduced (including many higher mammals). The research of Mark B. Roth and Todd Nystul being very good examples - see http://URL removed It seems however that cryonics (also known as suspended animation) is not treated by scientists as anything more than pseudo science. This results in a distinct lack of interest and funding in this area. Something that I think is a shame when one considers the vast benefits to medicine and to humanity that would be gained from being able to suspend a sick or d…

If we look at our ecosystem - it's one huge domestic war - organisms uses most of energy on competition, fight... It's mainly energy from the cleanest, never ending source - the sun. In the times of threat of energy crisis, overpopulation, one of our hope could be increasing the effectiveness of this changing solar energy into needed sugars, proteins. The other thing is that we are geting closer to the concept of creating completely new ecosystems, like on Mars, where this effectiveness of development of ecosystem is essential for the whole project. I would like to initiate a discussion about the possibility of such increase of effectiveness: is it possible and ho…