An Astronaut Sets the Record!

In Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams spent more time in space than any other woman, setting an amazing record. On Sunday, Sunita broke the previous female spacewalking record of more than 21 hours! Now isn't that amazing? She and her partner completed three spacewalks in nine days!

The new record is 22 hours and 27 minutes! That is almost a whole day! Can you imagine going up to space and accomplishing that? Sunita must have had a lot of paitence and courage.
During the spacewalk, small amounts of toxic ammonia leaked from a fluid line. The liquid ammonia, which freezes when it hits the vacuum of space, luckily did not touch either astronaut.

The Mission Control told them to continue their task of hooking up ammonia fluid lines from a cooling system to a permanent one.
Once they were back in the space station's airlock, Mission Control made the astronauts test for any serious contamination. Fortunetly, there was no sign of contamination.

Lopez-Alegria (her partner) and Sunita Williams hooked up the permanent cooling system sucessfully, and covered a radiator that was retracted by remote control from the ground and stowed a fluid line that was connected to an ammonia reservoir.
Then, they continued to work. Some of the jobs that they still had to finish were: removing the sun shade, taking a picture of a solar array, and making electrical connections.

Lopez-Alegria planned a fourth spacewalk with Mikhail Tyurin, a flight engineer, on February 22. After Sunday's spacewalk, Lopez-Alegria moved up to third on the list of the most time spacewalking!
It is expected for him to surpass Jerry Ross' U.S. record of more than 58 hours over nine spacewalks by the end of February.

In my opinion, I think this article is very interesting! I would definitly not be brave enough to stay in space that long. First of all, I'm not even planning to go to space! Sunita and Lopez-Alegria must have a lot of courage to never give up and to incite their wonderful goals.

This article could be found at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/04/spacewalk.ap/index.html

Reading Punnett Squares!

At first, I thought Punnett Squares were extremely confusing and hard to understand. Little by little, I finally understood the concept. For example, In class, we made a Punnett Square for the possibilities of varieties of colors for an egg.

Example:

B: blue-dominant
b: green-recessive

~If there was a combination of B+b, then it would be dominant (blue) because upper case is dominant.

~It there was a combination of b+b, then it would be recessive (green) because lower case plus lower case stays the same.

~If there was a combination of B+B, then it would be dominant (blue) because upper case plus upper case stays the same.

Lets say there was a Punnett Square that came to a conclusion of PP, PP, PP, and PP.

P: pink
p: purple


The Phenotype would be: A 100% pink egg

The Genotype would be: 100% PP

In my opinion, I think that Punnett Squares are very useful, especially if you want to become a scientist or are a scientist. They really work! You can even predict the color hair your baby will have! They take you step by step, and you will finally recieve a conclusion.


*Punnett Square: A chart which predicts all possible gene combinations in a cross of parent genes.

*Reginald Punnett was the creator of the Punnett Square.

*Each trait is controlled by two genes


If you want to learn more about Punnett Squares, go to:

http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/CURR/Science/sciber00/7th/genetics/sciber/punnett.htm

Want to calculate your own Punnett Square? Here's the site:

http://www.changbioscience.com/genetics/punnett.html

Meiosis Square Dance

In science class, we are learning about Meiosis and Chromosomes, and how they work. Last week, our teacher showed us a video called "Meiosis Square Dance" to help us understand the process better. It turned out to be funny, but it really helped me understand the concept of the Chromosomes splitting and separating into two different ends. Later, half the cells moved to the middle, then both of the cells they took from the parents, move to the center and create a totally different cell. I my opinion, I think the video helped me understand the process in a fun and easy way.

Meiosis: The process that allows one diploid cell to divide in a special way to generate haploid cells in eukaryotes.

The word "meiosis" comes from the Greek meioun, meaning "to make smaller."

Meiosis consists of two nuclear divisions, meiosis I and meiosis II. Each division consists of four important stages: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase.


If you want to take a look at the video, check out this website:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaf4j19_3Zg


Want to learn more about the process of Meiosis? Check this out!:

http://www.biology.arizona.edu/cell_bio/tutorials/meiosis/page3.htm

Dolphins

In east Hampton, NY on Jan. 14, a very strange inccident occured. A school of dolphins, feeding in the local bays last week, four of them died over the weekend and the others became tired and showed signs of severe pain.

On Sunday, thirty dolphins first entered the bays and rescuers slowly began to try to save a group of them who were located in a small cove.
The rescuers tried three times, but the attempt was unsuccessfull. Later, some boats decided to give it another shot, and try to save the dolphins once more. They used small devices called pingers to get their attention. Each time they neared the harbor, they got afraid and went back to the cove. They went back because they realized that the water was gettin more shallow as they became closer to the harbor.

A supervisor, Chuck Hamilton, called the next few days critical for the dolphins’ survival, because he expected that cold weather might make them more nervous and rough seas would make it harder to reach the dolphins. More than 80 dolphin rescuers, including a crew with a dolphin ambulance, were in the harbor on Sunday.

Unfortunately, the rescuers didnt find any evidence of the dolphins’ not eating on Saturday or Sunday. The team is still working on rescuing the dolphins, and I will try to let you know when they get rescued. In my opinion, this article is very interesting. I really hope that the rescuers find a way to rescue the dolphins.

This article could be found at: Check it out! Its very interesting!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/nyregion/15dolphins.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fScience%2fTopics%2fAnimals

Drinking too much water is bad?!

Drinking too much water can lead to a condition known as water intoxication. In fact, a while ago, a woman named Jennifer Strange, 28, died from drinking way too much water. She competed in a Sacramento radio station contest to win a Wii for her three kids. To win one, she had to see how much eight ounce bottles of water she could drink without going to the bathroom. The size of the bottle even got bigger moment by moment. The event managers had warned her and had said: "If you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk." It was also found out that she had drunk two gallons of water before the radio event. Hours after the competition, Jennifer Strange's head started to ache, and sadly, she was found dead.

In my opinion, I think that Jennifer should have listened to the judges and stopped when she started to feel dizzy and uncomfortable. Well, If she had known that drinking too much water could lead to water intoxication, I don't think that she would have taken that risk.
This article relates to science because water intoxication is a serious and science related disease. From this article, I learned to be extremely careful with how much water I drink. By the way, twenty people who worked at the radio station were fired!


This article can be found at: check it out! Its interesting!

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/01/13/water.intox.ap/index.html

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