Big Bird test finished and an assembly ...

Still having issues with my Picasa account and the amount of storage I need.  Will try and fix it to put on pictures tomorrow.

We had an assembly first block ... a motivational event on behavior.  The guy that did the program is on youtube as the one man volleyball team.  No genetics today but, we were able to get our gels analyzed and watered our F2 fastplants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVaeLB7E5Qo

Selected Topics took the Big Bird Test today.  Some perfect scores ... you have to know animals are out there before you can care about taking care of the environment and wildlife.  We started our plant unit today also.

Selected Topics is getting close to finishing their last assigned problems ... we will start checking them next week and then students will generate/program a student final project.

Got home in time for a walk ... lots of birds and squirrels but, I only saw one deer.  They are all hiding out during hunting season!

Last fly count and Big Bird test tomorrow!

Busy day in genetics since we will have an assembly tomorrow first block.  We loaded our gels to do some DNA analysis today, counted our F2 flies for the last time (all together a count of over 1600 flies between two crosses) and played our F2 fastplant seed to see if our Hardy Weinberg equilibrium is maintained.  Tomorrow we will do some measurements on the gels before going to the assembly.  All analysis will be done on Monday.

In Selected Topics we went over our animal science and taxonomy test before review our bird ID cards.  Test tomorrow and we will begin a mini-unit on plant science.

Computer programming students are working on their geography tutorial problem.  I did a demonstration today on how to use invisible buttons in a program.

Got home in time to take a walk to Long Creek today.

Still working on my Picasa picture problem!

Milkweed seed and PD after school ...

During genetics today, we harvested fastplant seed to plant.  We also worked removing milkweed seed from pods ... not an easy task.  We are ready to load our gels tomorrow morning.

Selected topics had a quick review before taking a test on taxonomy and animal science.  Tomorrow we continue to work on bird identification and start a small unit on plant science.

Computer programming are working on their geography tutorial and making some progress on our last Visual BASIC problems.

PD after school today so we got home late.

I have some pictures but, I am having some problems with the Picasa picture storage program limiting my picture usage on this blog.  Will try and fix before tomorrow.

Birds, Belted Kingfisher and Restriction Lab

Tomorrow in genetics,  we will be doing our restriction lab using electrophoresis to separate fragments of DNA for analysis.  We will not have class on Friday due to an assembly first block ... we will have to squeeze to get everything done tomorrow and Thursday.  I will try and take some pictures of the lab tomorrow ...

In Selected Topics we continue our study of animal science with bird identification.  Tomorrow, we have as test on invertebrates and vertebrates.  Bird identification (about sixty local birds) will continue until Friday.  It is amazing that students in high school know so little about their environment ... how can you protect something that you don't know exists!

Students are working through their last set of visual BASIC problems.  Today we looked at programming timers and for animation of objects in small groups.  Tomorrow, invisible buttons.

Tomorrow, we have professional development after school from 3-5.

Students were most curious about the belted kingfisher today during our study ... frequently found along Long Creek and Barren River.  A male below ...

birdwatchersdigest.com

Fly count today and frost flowers ...

We made our first F2 fly count today in Genetics.  We have F2 flies from a sex-linked cross and a dihybrid autosomal cross.  We will count again on Thursday.  Tomorrow some work in the book over the history of DNA discovery.  We will miss class on Friday due to an assembly.

We finished up our study of vertebrates today in Selected Topics and tomorrow will start our review and work on some bird identification.

Computer science is hard at work on their last set of Microsoft Visual BASIC problems ... decision statements, random number generation, invisible buttons, timers and animation.

Raining here this evening. First basketball game of the season tomorrow evening ... good luck to both teams!

A link for weather in Allen County on Kentucky Mesonet

http://www.kymesonet.org/#!sctv

Also,  local Allen County resident,  former state climatologist and my wife's Uncle Glen has pictures posted on NWS - Louisville ... link below and sample picture.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=frost_flowers




From website above ...


Frost flowers are thin layers (perhaps credit card thickness) of ice that are extruded through slits from the stems of white or yellow wingstem plants, among others. Their formation requires freezing air temperature, soil that is moist or wet but not frozen, and a plant's stem that has not been previously frozen. (Practically speaking, a once per year event, although not all individuals produce frost flowers on the first day of good conditions). The water in the plant's stem is drawn upward by capillary action from the ground. It expands as it freezes and splits the stem vertically and freezes on contact with the air. As more water is drawn from ground through the split, it extrudes a paper thin ice layer further from the stem. The length of the split determines if the frost flower is a narrow or wide ribbon of ice. It curls unpredictably as it is extruded, perhaps from unequal friction along the sides of the split, to form "petals". These flowers, no two of which are alike, are fragile and last only until they sublimate or melt.

To find them, look for tall weeds, especially in locations that are seldom mowed. They seem to like the same habitat as purple ironweed, blackberries, and wingstems, with the actual frost flowers forming on the wingstems.

Thanksgiving, sandhill cranes and turtlehead

Wrapping up Thanksgiving vacation tonight with some school work.

Tomorrow in Genetics we will begin our fly count, discussion questions on Chapter 9 ... DNA and Chromosomes in our Ricki Lewis book.  We have about five chapters remaining to finish our book.  We will be doing our restriction analysis of DNA using electrophoresis later in the week.

In Selected Topics, we will be back to animal science, vertebrates, tomorrow.

Our computer programming class will begin their last set of Microsoft Visual BASIC problems tomorrow.  We will end the semester with a student generated project.

Sue Neal and I had a good Thanksgiving.  We had over 30 members of Sue's family over for Thanksgiving dinner.  Lots of turkey and ham!  In the afternoon, Jimmy Neal and his son Yancy with Hannah, Arlo and I took a long walk back of the goat field ... over a two mile trek to get rid of all we ate! Two of our children were in for Thanksgiving and it was great to see them!

On Saturday, I put the bottom boards and entrance reducers in our hives ... should have done it earlier. While outside, I saw four groups of sandhill cranes heading south.  Occasionally, they would stop and circle in a thermal to gain elevation.  They were really high and you could hear them long before you could see them.  The picture (not really that good) below is with my Canon point and shoot ... maximum zoom ... we will see them on their return in mid-February.

I was able to harvest some turtlehead and lobelia seed after the freezing weather the last two weeks.

AP Unit Test Tomorrow ...

Tomorrow we have our unit test in Genetics ... Chapters 16-22, Bacterial Transformation Lab, and H-W problems.  We reviewed today and cleared the F1 flies from our Drosophila tubes.

Selected Topics began our study of Vertebrates ... this continues tomorrow.

In computer programming, we started checking our Microsoft Visual BASIC programs ... we have ten students to check tomorrow before heading out on Thanksgiving vacation.

Applications for the MarineLab trip started today ...

It was warm again today but got home late.  Picked some turnips for a teacher at school with a flashlight ... lots of deer on the move!

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving!

Su ... last day at AC-S HS ...

Su (from Korea) has been part of our genetics class this year.  Su is moving to Bowling Green and Friday was her last day.  We had a farewell breakfast on Friday morning ... biscuits, honey and more.  Best of luck in Bowling Green!

AP Meeting and BLAST

Sue Neal and I were in Louisville from Friday afternoon until this evening.  The Advance Kentucky AP Meeting went well.  Several good speakers and I got to work on the new BLAST lab to compare DNA and protein sequence between organisms and a lab generating Hardy-Weinberg data using Microsoft Excel.  The best part of this conference is to talk with other AP teachers across the state and exchange ideas. 

On Friday we finally had Genetics but a few students did not have their discussion question ready... ummmm!  The fly lab continues as did our fast plant lab.  Unit test on Tuesday.

Our selected Topics class has wrapped up invertebrates and will start our vertebrate study on Monday.  Computer programming finished their first set of Visual BASIC problems and we will check these starting on Monday.

The BLAST site is below ... we will use this in an upcoming genetics lab and next spring in AP Biology

http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

from wikipedia...

In bioinformatics, Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, or BLAST, is an algorithm for comparing primary biological sequence information, such as the amino-acid sequences of different proteins or the nucleotides of DNA sequences. A BLAST search enables a researcher to compare a query sequence with a library or database of sequences, and identify library sequences that resemble the query sequence above a certain threshold. Different types of BLASTs are available according to the query sequences. For example, following the discovery of a previously unknown gene in the mouse, a scientist will typically perform a BLAST search of the human genome to see if humans carry a similar gene; BLAST will identify sequences in the human genome that resemble the mouse gene based on similarity of sequence. The BLAST program was designed by Stephen Altschul, Warren Gish, Webb Miller, Eugene Myers, and David J. Lipman at the NIH and was published in the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1990.^[1]

Fly Lab underway ...

ILP's for sophomores today so they were out of class for a block updating the learning plan.  Writing and other meetings after school ...

All students were present for starting our fruit fly lab this morning.  We have F1 flies so this lab last about two weeks.  We use to buy pure mutant cultures which meant we had to expand cultures to get virgin flies and then do our parent cross which also required virgin females.  This added an extra month to the experiment ... ordering F1 cultures saves a lot of time.  We are using sepia eye, vestigial wing, and white eye mutants in these crosses.  Fly sorting picts below:

In Selected Topics, we studied arthropods, review the invertebrates we studied and watched a short film on giant squid and whales.

We have a good start in Microsoft Visual BASIC.  Several students are working on their third program.  We will be able to check the first set of problems before Thanksgiving break.

We got home late because Sue Neal had a meeting on writing at our high school and we rode together today.

Club Schedule ... over! MarineLab

Club schedule today and club pictures so a lot of students out of classes today.  Tomorrow we get back to regular schedule for a few days.

Genetics tomorrow, we will set up our F1 cross of fruit flies.  It will take a couple of weeks to start and finish this lab.  We will do a Chi Square Analysis on our F2 flies at the conclusion of this lab.  We are still waiting for our fastplants to seed in our Population Genetics Lab.  We will hand in our Animal Behavior lab tomorrow.

In Selected Topics, we worked on our animal unit and classification of animals.  Tomorrow we should wrap up invertebrates.  Lots of drawings and some video clips.

A lot of student out of Computer Programming today as we limped through our first Microsoft Visual BASIC problem. 



We met with science students wanting to go on MarineLab VIII (Spring break 2013).  It appears we will have enough students to go if we can wrap up the logistics.  Our first AP Bio trip was in 1993 and since then we have had seven trips by school bus / camping to the Keys and three trips to NYC (via air on President's Day weekend).  These trips get harder and harder to plan and make affordable in the austere times we are in.  Not like the old days ... get a bus and head out!  We have had over 200 students and several teachers take these trips.  School should be more than the questions at the end of the chapter ... true in 1993 and still true.

Check out Mr. Byrn's photos (over 900) from our last trip to the Keys in 2008.

http://www.byrnphotography.com/Academics/2008-ACS-Marine-LabKeys-Trip/5117234_kzztLN#!i=308927971&k=yHncN

Club Schedule and Beekeepers

Home late ... beekeepers meeting tonight.  Phil Craft, state beekeeper retired, gave the program on winter and early Spring hive management.  A nice program.

http://philcrafthivecraft.com/

At school today, we had our Veteran's program.  Our students were well behaved and appropriately responsive.  Our choir and band did a great job!

In genetics today, we did the discussion questions for Chapter 19 ... Biotechnology.  We discussed PCR, bacterial transformations and other vectors to carry DNA from one organism to another.  We also prepped up our Drosophila lab for Wednesday.  Student spent some time finishing their inquiry lab write-up from last week.

In Selected Topics, we continue our Animal - Invertebrate study ... mostly parasitic worms!  Tomorrow, we will wrap up our study of invertebrates and take a practice quiz.

In computer science we started our study and programming in Microsoft Visual BASIC.  We will be doing more demonstrations tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Club Schedule,  most of our genetics students will miss class after missing two days last week for APES.

Deer season starts ... grade check!

Deer seasons started this weekend for all!  There were lots of gunshots on Saturday morning both near and far.  There were not as many today ... too warm and too windy for many deer to be out roaming around.  Even though it was windy, this afternoon, I was able to get the last of the annual rye in areas that might erode in the Spring.

Tomorrow, we will have a Veteran's Day program second block and club schedule is on Tuesday.  The rest of the week looks good for class.

We have two labs going on in Genetics and our fruit flies will be ready to cross next week ... sex-linked crosses and a dihybrid cross.  We want to wrap up the two ongoing labs before Thanksgiving.

We are working on Plant and Animal science in Selected Topics tomorrow ... several students that missed school last week have a test to make up.  Tomorrow, invertebrate study continues with roundworms, segmented worms and mollusks.

In computer science, we start our study of Microsoft Visual BASIC.

The third 4.5 week period is over this week.  Hard to believe that there are only four and a half weeks left in this semester ... AP Biology looming on the horizon.

Lots of work to do this week!

Lottery analysis ... foggy this morning!

One of the worse fogs I have ever driven in this morning.  There were a few accidents in the county but, it was a miracle that our students got in safely.

In computer science, we are finishing our last qBASIC problem on sorting with an analysis of the last 100 Powerball picks.  Students were required to create a user menu for three different sorts ... frequency of white balls, frequency powerball picks, which numbers are picked after numbers the week before ... several single and two dimensional arrays.  A fun program to end up the unit ... we will see how we do on Saturday.
Next week, Microsoft Visual BASIC ...

We took our unit test on physics today.  There was lots of calculations and graphing of data ... we had nine students absent from class.  We will move on to animal and plant science tomorrow ...

Only a few students left in Genetics since the APES program is underway.  We did a 24 hour check of  our ongoing inquiry lab using brine shrimp, pollinated our fastplants and did a review activity.

I got home in time for a walk to Long Creek and back.  Lots of deer on the move, just in time for deer season to open up this weekend.  Checked the giant blue lobelia and turtlehead plants and their seed is about ready to harvest.

Election over, back to work!

Today our school, our top-30 juniors started the local APES program (American Private Enterprise System, see link below).  Most of my first block students will be out of class the rest of the week.  Students today in genetics started their natural selection inquiry using brine shrimp which will wrap up on Friday.  We also prepped up our Drosophila Lab which will start on Monday next week.  Two crosses ... white eye X wild (white eyes is a sex-linked mutant) and a dihybrid cross using vestigial wings and sepia eyes ... yielding a 9:3:3:1 phenotypic ratio in the F2 generation.

http://www.uky.edu/Ag/apes/

We reviewed in Selected Topics class for our physics test tomorrow.  Most of the unit was on motion, electromagnetic spectrum and force/energy.  Good luck tomorrow!

In computer science at least two students are finished with their last qBASIC programs.  We will start checking these problems tomorrow then off to Microsoft Visual BASIC on Monday.  Should be a good change and fun!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic

Grading papers tonight ...

Skippers - Clouded Skipper and Sachem

I was finally able to identify the butterflies I saw on sunflowers last week ... I thought they were peculiar because of their wings.  I believe they are skippers (more than 280 species in North America, most of the tropical) ... antenna that have a club or hook but are short ... long proboscis ... wings at rest are held at angles ...

I think the skipper in the picture on top is a clouded skipper and the one below,  Sachem ???     Peterson Guide - Eastern Butterflies ???  ... best guess

Election Day 2012

No school today because of the election.

Tomorrow in Genetics, we will lose most of the students to the APES program.  We will be able to set up our inquiry extension on the natural selection lab using brine shrimp.  Our fruit flies have been shipped so we will have to prep up our genetics lab using these flies tomorrow.

In Selected Topics, we will review for our physics unit test on Thursday.  Next unit is our plant and animals science unit.

We are working on our final qBASIC program in computer science ... analyzing the last 100 picks from the Powerball Lottery (obvious randomly picked numbers ... maybe).  This program will examine the frequency of the numbers and which occur most often with certain other numbers.  A good lesson on sorting numbers!

I was able to take a long walk after voting at the East Allen fire department this morning.  Did some oak and hickory tree identification.  Also, I did some school work today and some yard work.

Listening to the election results the rest of the evening.

Warm Day Saturday ... bees

Friday, our football team lost to Madisonville North Hopkins in the first round of the 4A football playoffs.  It has been a tough year.  Our cross country teams ran in the 2A Region 2 championship.  Sue Neal and I went over to watch ... we have spent a lot of Saturdays at cross country runs over the years.  It was fun to watch and it is still my favorite of all sports.  Our runners failed to qualify for State.

Today Sue Neal and I pulled up a lot of turnips to take to school and give away.  Some were as big as softballs.

We had a warm Saturday and the honeybees were out joining bumble bee in the remaining sunflowers. Their wings and the wings of the buckeye butterfly are about worn out!  One of our hives below show a lot of activity in and out of the hive.

Remember we will not have school on Tuesday for election day and most of my first block class will be out the rest of the week in the APES program.

Brine Shrimp and 142 lbs.

In Genetics today, we went over discussion questions in our chapter on cancer ... oncogenes, tumor-suppressor genes, p53 and more ... we concluded the first part of our natural selection lab, testing the ability of brine shrimp to hatch at various concentrations of salt in water.  We pollinated flowers again today and had our third quiz on the immune system without having a majority pass ... yet.

Yesterday I did a demonstration on beekeeping ... Wayne tried on one of my bee suits below ... You look like a veteran beekeeper Wayne!

We concluded our structure building lab with a test of student structures today ... congrats of Josh and Ryan below ... they won with their structure holding 142 lbs.  Posing with their prize ... a pound of Pap Downing Honey from Holland KY, each.   Monday we wrap up our physics unit before going on to plant and animal science.

We waited for all to finish the Josh lottery problem today ... our big lottery analysis program will start on Monday... next week will be the last week for qBASIC.

A long walk after school about dark ... lots of barred owls calling out tonight.

Crunch time tomorrow ...

In our Genetics class, we took our morning quiz on the immune system, pollinated our fast plants, checked our brine shrimp experiment and set up my beekeeping presentation.  Tomorrow about the same to wrap up the week and our discussion questions on the Cancer chapter.

I did a beekeeping demonstration in Selected Topics ... anatomy of a hive and a quick year in beekeeping in in preparation for our plant and animal unit.  Tomorrow,  we crush our structures made of popsicle sticks ... 34 grams (about 24 sticks) with at least a 2" clear center and 7.5 - 8.5" tall.  The record is over 250 lbs.  No nails only clue ... we discussed load bearing members and torsion, gravity, and more.  Results tomorrow.

Students today wrapped up the Josh is cheating in the lottery program and we are now working on our lottery analysis of the picks over the last year ... frequency of number and numeric patterns.  We plan to finish up qBASIC next week and move on to Microsoft Visual BASIC.

I hosted after school detention today before heading home.