Jokes for biologists

A boy was assigned a paper on childbirth and asked his mother, "How was I born?"
"Well honey..." said the slightly prudish mother, "the stork brought you to us."
"Oh," said the boy, "and how did you and daddy get born?"
"Oh, the stork brought us too."
"Well how were grandpa and grandma born?" the boy persisted.
"Well darling, the stork brought them too!" said the mother, by now starting to squirm a little.
Several days later, the boy handed in his paper to the teacher who read with confusion the opening sentence: "This report has been very difficult to write due to the fact that there hasn't been a natural childbirth in my family for three generations."



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A biologist was interested in studying how far bullfrogs can jump. He brought a bullfrog into his laboratory, set it down, and commanded, "Jump, frog, jump!"
The frog jumped across the room.
The biologist measured the distance, then noted in his journal, "Frog with four legs jumped eight feet."
Then he cut the frog's front legs off. Again he ordered, "Jump, frog, jump!"
The frog struggled a moment, then jumped a few feet.
After measuring the distance, the biologist noted in his journal, "Frog with two legs jumped three feet."
Next, the biologist cut off the frog's back legs. Once more, he shouted, "Jump, frog, jump!"
The frog just lay there.
"Jump, frog, jump!" the biologist repeated.
Nothing.
The biologist noted in his journal, "Frog with no legs - lost its hearing."

Insectivor-ism & Wildlife pictures

My friend got me in the mood for some insectivorous plants (specifically, the Venus flytrap) on our trip to Cameron Highlands. I still haven't heard the end of it from him. This is the little pot he got for his garden (I'm tempted to grow some myself now). And here are 2 sites that he introduced me to:

http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq2000.html (excellent site for you readers out there)

http://www.botany.org/bsa/misc/carn.html (excellent site for you non-readers out there)


Wildlife pictures



Want to know what this picture is all about and who took it? Go check out http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/best-animal-pictures/photo5.html

More controversial body parts

This time it's the appendix. The function of the appendix, if it even has one, has been long debated by doctors and Bio lecturers alike. ;) The conclusion? More debate!

I decided that I'll just provide these links which I think are credible and let you decide for yourself.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i1/appendix.asp
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-function-of-t
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/10/2055374.htm

Teachers' Resource

Just thought I'd share a link for teachers out there who might stumble upon this blog looking for fun resources. I came across this link for a free crossword puzzle maker. It's a very useful tool for fun assessments and it's easy to use. Go check it out! ;)

http://www.eclipsecrossword.com/

Pregnancy Test Kit

Here's a link to an animation that I used in my teaching to show the principle behind a pregnancy test kit as an application of Biotechnology.

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/pregtest.html

List for Educators

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Smoking and your body

Since everyone have been talking about this which is still ignorant to many out there, I thought I'd just leave the link to this animation on the blog so anyone who's interested can access it and use it as a reminder of what smoking does to your body.

http://www.mydr.com.au/default.asp?article=4215#

Endangered Species Lists

Here are the links of the 2 important websites that i feel has importantance in preservation of fauna. The most interesting parts of the websites would be to actually look at the pictures of the different species.


http://www.cites.org/ (This is where you get the CITES Listings. Go to the photo gallery link on the right and you'll end up with an index with all the different species that are on the list. My favorite picture is the one below.)


http://www.iucnredlist.org/ (This is the link for the IUCN Red List. Click on Photo Gallery on the menu and you'll be able to access photos from the lists of previous years as well.)


Common name: Tomato Frog
Scientific name: Dyscophus antongilii
CITES listing: Appendix I (22/10/1987)
Distribution: Madagascar
Photo: © Franco Andreone [http://www.francoandreone.it/]

Genetics Plays a Role in History

Queen Victoria’s daughter, Alice, married a German prince, Louis, and converted to Lutheranism. Their daughter, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Alexandra was, thus, a German princess, grew up in Germany, and was raised in the Lutheran church. Alexandra, married Tsar Nicholas, the last tsar of Russia, and they had four daughters: Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia. Many people in Russia didn’t like Tsarina Alexandra because she was German, not Russian, and Lutheran, not Russian Orthodox. Her mannerisms, speech, and dress were not what many people in Russia thought of as appropriate for the Tsar’s wife. Also, in Russia at that time, only a male could be tsar, so unless Alexandra and Nicholas had a son, the leadership would pass to another of Nicholas’ relatives when he died. Finally, however, they had a son who they named Alexei. Unfortunately, however, they soon discovered that he had inherited the hemophilia allele from Alexandra, from Alice, and from Queen Victoria. Realizing that chances were very slim that Alexei would survive to adulthood, Tsar Nicholas and his family became very withdrawn to try to keep that a secret (Alexandra was not very outgoing, anyway, which the people didn’t like). However, at that time, there was much social unrest in Russia, and the general public mistook the royal family’s withdrawl for aloofness and as a sign that they didn’t care about the poor living conditions of their people. Thus, Alexei’s hemophilia was probably a major contributing factor in the Russian revolution. On several occasions, Alexei had severe internal bleeding, and a rather disreputable man named Rasputin was somehow able to stop the bleeding. Because of his inexplicable ability to help Alexei, Rasputin became part of the “inner circle” and close confidant of the royal family, which also angered many people who did not trust him.

Thus, when the Russian Revolution began, Rasputin was among the first to be executed. Eventually, Tsar Nicholas and his family were put under house arrest in Siberia. On 18 June 1918, Anastasia, the youngest of the daughters, turned 17 while the family was still under house arrest, and about a month later, just after midnight on 16 July, the royal family and several of their servants were all ordered down into the basement of the house, and the soldiers who had been guarding them shot and killed them all. Then, their remains were taken out of town, burned in a bonfire, then buried, together, in an unmarked grave. For years, no one knew where that grave was until, when Communist rule ended, records became available. In 1991, what was thought to, perhaps, be that grave was found, the bones were carefully removed, and as much as possible, the skeletons were reconstructed. Through the use of modern DNA technology, DNA samples from the bones were compared to DNA from the Tsar’s brother’s body (buried in a crypt in a church in St. Petersburg) and to DNA from someone in the English royal family. On that basis, one adult male skeleton was identified as the Tsar, several young adult female skeletons were identified as several of the daughters, and the DNA of several of the other skeletons didn’t match, showing that they were unrelated, family servants. The skeletons of Alexei and one of the four daughters were not with the rest, and are still unaccounted for. After the bones were studied and identified, a few years ago, the remains of the last Tsar of Russia and his family were given a proper funeral and burial.

In 1919, a young woman jumped off a bridge in Berlin, Germany and was rescued and hospitalized. While in the hospital, on one occasion she showed a magazine article with a photo of the Russian royal family to a nurse, pointing out to the nurse how much she thought she looked like Anastasia. After that, she claimed to be Anastasia and claimed to have escaped and survived. She later moved to the U. S. and went by the name of Anna Anderson. The rest of her life, she stuck to her story that she was Anastasia, but people were dubious and tried everything they could think of (including things like comparing pictures of ear lobes) to figure out whether she was Anastasia, or not. When she died and was cremated in 1984, no one still knew if she was really Anastasia or not. At some point before her death, she had had surgery, and the hospital had kept the removed tissue preserved in formaldehyde. Again in the 1990s, with the advent of modern DNA technology, scientists were also able to test DNA samples from her preserved tissue and compare those to the other DNA samples, with the result that there were no similarities – she was not related.

Another possible use for DNA technology has been suggested. The big question in all of this is, “From where did Victoria get the hemophilia allele?” Neither her mother, Victoria, nor her father, King Edward showed any signs of having that allele. The “standard” explanation which, for many years, has been offered to freshman biology students is that there was a chance, random mutation in that allele on one of Queen Victoria’s X chromosomes. More recently, however, I have heard suggestions that, at that time, if the royal couple was having trouble conceiving a child, it would not have been out of the question to quietly, unobtrusively “loan” the Queen out. People have raised the suggestion that maybe King Edward is not Victoria’s biological father. It has been suggested that perhaps there was not a chance mutation in one of Queen Victoria’s X chromosomes, but that, perhaps, that was inherited from another man. Since the bodies of deceased members of the royal family are in crypts in Westminster Abbey, it would be fairly easy to lift the lids on a couple of crypts to get DNA samples for comparison, but needless to say, the British royal family probably isn’t very enthused about that idea.

Taken from http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Courses/bio105/sex-link.htm