BIOLOGY CURRENT EVENTS FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

Hurricane is a Natural Selection Experiment 1. Shorter back legs and larger toe pads gave a survival advantage to lizards, not longer back legs. Figure: There were more lizards that had larger toe pads and decreased femur and hind toe length- less exposed surface are less likely to be blown off Computerized Chemical Toxicity Prediction Beats Animal Testing 2. Alternative to animal testing by using a computer program that can "predict the toxic effects of new chemicals better than animal testing can" Figure: Force layout graph of 10 million chemicals, each dot is a chemical and the distance between each dot represents similarity in chemical structure. In image D, the length of grey lines represent percent similarity between chemicals Better Data Could Mean Better Dating 3. Online dating shows that men and women pursue people about 25% more desirable than themselves; it concludes that if we had more data and knowledge of where we stand in the online dating world, it could improve our chances of getting a date Figure: Figure shows the difference between the desirability of men and women as they age- men get slightly more desirable and women get much less desirable- taken from 4 cities. Freeloading Ants Help the Workflow 4. Fire ants work very efficiently when excavating their tiny, intricate underground tunnels with only a small percentage of the colony doing most of the work Figure: Productivity increased when the most active ants were removed. Total ant entries and reversal events have a roughly linear relationship. As more ants enter, there is an increase in reversal event behavior Primate Conflicts Play Out in the Operating Room 5. Operating room teams cooperate best when there is a male surgeon working with a female surgical team or vise versa Figure: Higher percentage of females in OR teams led by male surgeons, higher the cooperation and same vice versa. A lot less when teams have female and males prevalent in OR teams Rising CO2 Means Monarch Butterfly Bellyaches Higher CO2 levels lower the amount of toxins in milkweed that the caterpillars use to protect themselves from a deadly parasite that produces spores Figure: shows the lifespan of the adult monarchs when they were infected with parasites. This means that adult monarchs which were affected with more CO2 tend to live shorter lives. Current ecological problems facing the Chesapeake bay Fertilizer Trash & bacteria Eutrophication Microbes using up Oxygen Pollution from runoff (residential, urban, and agricultural) 3 Solutions : 1. Link to Sewer Systems INSTEAD OF SEPTIC 2. Rain Barrels 3. Requiring chicken farms to limit manure run-off into streams 1. Would alleviate the amount of runoff and contamination that is being found in the river, would be a large step in the right direction. However, the biggest thing preventing something like this is the involvement and willingness of stakeholders to help out. Would need major governmental funds and permission, employment of people to get this done and also the support of the communities. 2. Good way to catch run-off, especially off the roofs and could prevent more of this contamination water from getting into the bay. Would be a good way to get a lot of people involved and could make a big difference if enough people do it. Hard to implement because the communities would be the stakeholders, the home and property owners would want to take part. Would also need local governmental organizations to help implement 3. Reduces run-off and and helps prevent eutrophication from occurring. However, the time or money cost associated with farmers and might harm the farmers outputs of products Why is it hard for politicians to address an ecological problem? It is difficult because in order to address an ecological problem, change has to happen, and usually this change is costly and can hurt communities of people, specifically stakeholders like farmers, or can have a large push back from large corporations such as housing/ development industry Medical Marijuana 1. Conditions that medical marijuana is used to treat Cancer therapeutic, neurodegenerative diseases like alzheimers and parkinsons, eating disorders, mental health, epilepsy, anxiety, depression Also conditions like nausea, pain and Crohn's disease Medical Marijuana Why is there not very much data about whether medical marijuana is useful Marijuana has be categorized as a schedule 1 drug, which is defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule 1 drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence. Thus, it would be dangerous to perform studies with schedule 1 drugs according to the definition. Since it is labeled as schedule 1, makes it very difficult to do research on, would need proper funding from government to implement clinical trials How widespread is medical marijuana in the USA Has been cited that around 21-31 states have legalized marijuana, some have only legalized CPD, others have legalized any form Would marijuana legalization affect the opioid epidemic Table 1: a few studies have been done to investigate this hypothesis, but these studies have shown that legalizing marijuana may lead to less prescription opioid use, thus translating to fewer patients becoming addicted and dying to opioid overdose. Marijuana derived drugs are less addictive than opiates for treating pain, and they could be used for post- surgery pain relief rather than the opiate alternative Table 2: May decrease opioid epidemic. Instead of treating pain with opioids, marijuana can be prescribed instead. Marijuana is less addictive than opioids. Oxytocin Deficiency and Autism - Explain Autism and possible causes - What can oxytocin do for autism Condition related to brain development that affects how a person perceives and socializes with others. Includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior. Caused by genetics (mutations, genes affecting brain development, etc) , environmental factors (viral infections, medications, complication in pregnancy, air pollutants) 2. Oxytocin is released when a mother and child are bonding, during physical touch, or social bonding. It is known as the love hormone. Oxytocin is believed to help with social interaction in patients with especially low levels of oxytocin to begin with. Could be used to treat ASD's repetitive behavior and social anxiety. Changing landscape of new media outlets providing information about science discoveries IFLScience- read about the oxytocin study. It was made by bloggers and science writers, which varies from the traditional landscape of finding out the information only in scientific papers. However, some cons about this format is that it includes exaggerated titles and the summary of the findings may lose some relevant details such as the study allowing participants to take other medications during the trial. May also oversimplify the science presented, no clear check on the credibility of the information. Also, bloggers never talk about negative results, so all the facts cannot be known unless negative results are mentioned. Bioterrorism What causes anthrax disease and how does vaccine protect against it Release of toxic biological agents Bacterium for anthrax disease: Bacillus Anthracis Vaccine: targets protective antigen, part of the killing complex and the protective antigen specifically attaches to the body cell membrane to form a donut-shaped pore Three Potential Bioterrorism Weapons- compare them- how harmful and can it affect many people at once Ebola- rare disease, severe and often deadly, no approved vaccine or treatment- can remain in bodily fluids after person has recovered, highly contagious and can spread quickly in healthcare settings Cholera- causes watery diarrhea in 10% of cases- can experience dehydration which can lead to death in these cases- cannot spread person to person- but can affect many people at once since it contaminates drinking water Plague- without antibiotics in 24 hours can lead to respiratory failure, shock and death- if pneumonic form, can be transmitted between humans, long incubation periods leads to people traveling over large areas and exposing many people