Energy Transfer Comic

Energy transfer from worms to birds

This comic strip shows a mother bird feeding her babies worms she has picked from the ground. The energy transfer is only ten percent in each turn. The amount of energy is decreased by ten percent each time. As the birds eat the worms, they are gaining all the nutrients and necessary products from the worm. It isn't shown in the comic, but when a predator eats the birds, such as a hawk or snake, the energy of the worm will be transferred through the birds but at twenty percent less. This fact makes difficult for food chains to be infinite. There is always a loop. Also, the ten percent decrease each time makes it necessary for top carnivores to eat more of their prey to get more of their needed energy intake.

Sexual selection in Peacocks

Before

After

I decided to model sexual selection as a evolutionary process for my model.  I modeled the process by drawing the peacock before and after the evolutionary process took place. Before the evolutionary effect, the peacock had white feathers and after the process it had vibrant green and blue feathers. The white feathers were too bright for the peacocks and white peacocks were easily spotted by predators, therefore, many males would chose the colorful peacock over the white because they were more appealing. This made sexual selection a selective process as opposed to random since the males had to chose which female they would want to mate with.

First ever somatic stem cells obtained

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, have successfully isolated and gathered somatic stem cells from skin cells. Hans Schöler and his team took unique protein growth factors that stimulated cell growth. The key was a growth factor never used before in this type of research, Brn4. Before this breakthrough, pluripotent stem cells were obtained from fully differentiated somatic cells. These cells can go as far to differentiate into every type of cell in the body. But, the pluripotency also presents many dangers. According to Schöler, "pluripotent stem cells exhibit such a high degree of plasticity that under the wrong circumstances they may form tumours instead of regenerating a tissue or an organ." Schöler's skin cells, however, can only be multipotent which eliminates the dangers of pluripotency. 


I found this very interesting because Schöler and his team found new stem cells that can be the cure to many fatal diseases and even cancer. These cells are multipotent which does not leave fear of tumors forming from them. It seems everyday we are coming closer and closer to the answer to many cellular diseases found commonly in humans. Each breakthrough is leading us to our goal of eliminating these horrible and deadly diseases.