Human and Head Lice

Recently in science class we learned about symbiosis. One symbiotic relationship is human and head lice. This is a form of parasitism and the host, the human, is harmed by this parasite. The head lice need to drink blood within 24 hours or they starve to death. If the head life starve to death the population of head lice will decrease. The flat bodied parasites attach their nits or eggs to their hosts scalp and soon the nits hatch into nymphs and later the nymphs turn into full grown adults. They will grow larger in size from the blood they drink. These wingless insects have claws on their legs that grip hold on their hosts scalp. The nits on the human scalp can be easily mistaken for hair spray droplets or even dandruff and that is why it may take a while for the human to find them. Once the human does find the lice they can be removen with shampoo or creme rinses. Overall, this is an important relationship in nature.

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http://www.co.lucas.oh.us/health/images/lice1b.jpg

Scientists Hop Into New Info About Kangaroos

Recently scientists have found that an Australian kangaroo named Matilda has a lot in common with humans than they thought. Matilda, a Tammar wallaby is small and has a lot of the same genomes as humans. This shows that the kangaroo shared a common ancestor with humans about 150 million years ago. The scientists also found fourteen other unknown genes that they believe also belong to humans. "Great chunks of genomes are virtually identical", said Jenny Graves, director of the government-backed research effort. The scientists started working on Matildas sequenced her genes last year and last week they finished putting all the pieces of the sequence together. The group of scientists plan on publishing their research on Matilda next year. Many other scientists are have also unraveled 24 other mammal's DNA. These studies are important so they can learn more about DNA and genomes and they can learn new things about the animals they are testing. Overall, this study on Matilda was very useful and we learned more about kangaroos due to it.

Article-
http://www.newsday.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-as-sci-kangaroo-dna,0,1250231.story

Picture-
http://myanimalblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/gray-kangaroo.jpg

Be a Friend, With Warm Hands

Have you ever been extremely nice while holding a cup of warm tea? Well, studies shows that while holding something warm or being warm makes people feel more generous. In the 24 October issue of Science Magazine suggests that people that are warm are more favorable and nicer than people who are cold. Many sayings such as "Cold Eyes" show that someone is selfish and rude. On the other hand, the saying "Warm Heart" means that someone is nice and sweet. This is exactly what scientists have found in this study. The first experiment conducted by psychologist Lawrence Willams, asked 41 undergraduates to hold a hot or cold cup of coffee and were told a short summary of "Person A". They were to rate "Person A"'s personality. Those holding hot cups were had more nice rates than those holding cold cups. Experiment 2 had 53 participants holdong hot or cold therapeutic pads for a period of time. At the end they were told they would get a "reward" that they were able to keep or a voucher for a friend. 54% of those holding a hot pad chose a voucher for a friend and only 25% of those holding a cold pad chose the voucher. These studies show that when someone is feeling warm, they have a warm heart as well.

I believe that these studies are correct. Many people who are drinking hot tea or holding it have been nicer to me. I think that doing this study was wonderful because many people might not believe that holding something warm will warm your heart as well. These studies have been done in a great way to learn whether or not this is true. When holding something warm, you will warm your body and while warming your body you will fully warm your heart. Now when you are not feeling so nice, drink a warm cup of tea.

Article-http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1023/2
Photo-http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/content/vol2008/issue1023/images/2008102321.jpg

Hubble Telescope Fix

The Hubble Space Telescope has encountered some problems and has not been working so well. This glitch is causing the amazing photos not to beam down to Earth. Some of the computer parts of the telescope have been sleeping for about 18 years, and need to wake up. On Wednesday a group of 40 NASA members will work on getting this problem fixed. They will start a difficult remote-control fix, but little science is needed for it. They also need to turn on the data-handling system which has not been on since the telescopes launch in 1990. This fix means they are delaying the upgrade mission from October to next year. They believe to around February. This delay is costing NASA approximately 10 million dollars per month.

I believe that this is a great idea even though it may cost millions of dollars. I think that the Hubble's pictures are very important to scientists and need to come back. Now that the telescope has not been working we may have missed many important things in space. NASA should do this fix as soon as possible because we are missing so many amazing pictures. Overall, I think even though this is a difficult, expensive repair, we should still do it for the sake of science and astronomy.

Article- http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/10/14/hubble.repairs.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

Photo- http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.worth1000.com/web/media/242660/parrotsrcs/Hubble%2520Space%2520Telescope%2520-%25201024x768.jpg&imgrefurl=http://spaceports.blogspot.com/2006/10/nasa-administrator-expected-to-approve.html&h=768&w=1024&sz=128&hl=en&start=5&usg=__gX18IwAFNOXvvPbX4spLZJEfr_E=&tbnid=ALNRg_fbzMJrKM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhubble%2Bspace%2Btelescope%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

First Blog

This is my first blog!