April 6, 2007
Study Tip #2: Discipline (but not dreariness)
Have you ever read books by or about self-made millionaires? Or have seen successful scientists, athletes, or entrepeneurs and wonder how they got to where they are? One quality they always stress is self-discipline.
Discipline is all about motivating yourself to do what it takes to get to where you want to be. We humans have a natural tendency to do what's easiest right now, and what's easiest right now is to put off studying for the test, wait until later to start the project, think about maybe reading the assigned material sometime when you feel like it. The problem is that doing what seems easiest now makes things harder later when you have to cram at the last minute for the test, rush through the project and do a poor job, or fail to understand the reading and get a poor grade on the test or paper over the material later.
Can you motivate yourself to study when you need to? Do you start projects ahead of time and have them finished on time? Do you manage time well so that you can give your best efforts to the things that are most important to you? If not, it's time to practice some self-discipline.
Discipline requires goals, so that you have a clear vision of why you must do something that maybe you'd rather not do right. now. What are your personal goals, including long-term and short-term goals? Write them down and post them where you can see them daily. Start each day by asking, "What can I do today to make these goals happen?" Choose your actions, then do them. That makes self-discipline a lot less dreary because you know the reward is coming at some point.
Posted by bledsoek at 8:40 AM | Comments (0)
April 4, 2007
Native prairies, not corn, a better source of biofuels
Article: Corn can't solve our problem
(Photo from: http://www.iowadnr.com/energy/renewable/switchgrass.html)
How much fossil fuel is left in the planet that humans can extract? Expert opinions vary, but most estimates place the end somewhere in the next century if consumption continues as projected.
Interest in alternative sources of energy is high. Biofuels are being touted as renewable energy sources. Biofuels are nothing new: people have been burning wood as an energy source for thousands of years, and have extracted oils and alcohols from plants as well. Even alcohol to run cars isn't that new, either. "Gasahol," gasoline mixed with alcohol, has been available at gas pumps for several decades, mostly in the midwest.
What makes ethanol so popular as a biofuel is that it requires so little change in our technology and lifestyle to use. Cars can be retooled fairly easily to burn straight alcohol, and alcohol-burning vehicles allow us to have our own private cars for getting around, something that Americans seem reluctant to give up.
Most ethanol in this country is made from corn. It's cheap, widely grown, and easily available. As Bio 103 students know, corn stems are full of sugar-rich parenchyma tissue in the cortex, and corn seeds are packed with starchy endosperm that is converted to sugars when the corn grains sprout. Usually it's the edible grain that is used to make ethanol, though the stalks are another useful source. Bio 101 students will recall that decay organisms consume sugars and other biomolecules in plant tissues. And Bio 102 students will remember that when certain microorganisms consume sugar and carry out cellular respiration in anaerobic conditions, they're forced to use a fermentation pathway, and produce alcohol as a waste product. The resulting fermented solution is then distilled to separate the alcohol from other substances (see The Dry Mill Ethanol Process).
Fermentation is one way to produce alcohol from corn, but not the only way. Distillation is another. Plant material can be heated in a chamber with little oxygen and alcohols distilled directly from it. Wood alcohol (methanol) can be made this way.
What students may not get out of the biology series, however, is how much fossil fuel it takes to grow corn. From fuel needed for tractors and other farming equipment, to petroleum-based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, corn farming uses up huge quantities of fossil fuel. When one considers how much fossil fuel goes into ethanol production compared with how much is offset by the use of ethanol, the margin is pretty slim.
What's more, using grain as a source of ethanol creates a food-versus-fuel conflict. With about half of the U.S. corn production going to ethanol plants, cattle and poultry farmers are already gearing up for a fight over the best use of corn grain, as are organizations concerned with world hunger.
Soybeans could also supply ethanol, but they, too, rely heavily on fossil fuels for their production, and are also a food source. Brazil has done well in the past with using waste sugar cane from sugar processing to make ethanol, but Brazil has become so ethanol-hungry that forests are being cleared to grow more and more sugar cane just for ethanol production.
So is ethanol's future dead? Not necessarily. Enter native prairie grasses into the story.
Native prairie grasses are much better adapted to the midwest climate than are corn and soybeans, and as a consequence, they require less effort to grow. They compete well with herbaceous weeds, their roots run deep into the soil and help prevent erosion, and they're highly efficient in creating biomass. Prairie grasses can be grown on marginal soils where growing corn or soy may be impractical, reducing the "food versus fuel" battles. And native grasses are terrific at sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and moving it into the soil.
If biofuels are to have a future, they must be cheap, efficient, and must solve more problems than they create. Despite the current high use of corn for ethanol, native prairie grasses show greater promise as a fuel of the future.
Posted by bledsoek at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Study Tip #1: Apply a business model to your studies
Instead of thinking of the instructor as the supplier and you as the recipient, turn the model around. Think of your instructors as your clients and you as the supplier of the products they request. Make it your job to find out the exact specifications of the products and quality standards expected, then work to exceed those standards. This mindset can motivate you to do your best all the time and move way beyond only doing the least you can get by with.
Why do you want the "business" of these "clients?" Because extra effort gets noticed. Your "clients" can provide more than grades; they may also open unexpected doors of opportunity, including scholarships, job leads, letters of recommendation, and more.
Try applying this same model to your job, if you have one. Even if you work for an hourly wage, think of yourself as an entrepeneur, supplying your skill to your client (your employer), and see how you think differently about your work!
Posted by bledsoek at 4:14 PM | Comments (0)
April 2, 2007
Everyone a universal blood donor? New process may make that a reality.
Article: Blood group breakthrough: What are its implications?
(Photo from South Carolina American Red Cross)
In a medical emergency, when a trauma victim needs an immediate transfusion, precious minutes can be lost while doctors determine the victim's blood type and find donated blood to match. Wouldn't it be better if there were no blood types at all to deal with? If every pint of blood that is donated could be given to anyone?
A new technique created by Danish researchers may make that a reality. As students in Biology 102 learned, the basic blood types (A, B, AB and O) are the result of genes coding for antigen proteins on the surface of the red blood cell. People with type A blood make at least one allele for type A antigens, those with type B blood have at least one allele for type B antigens, people with type AB blood have an A and a B allele, and people with type O have neither the A nor the B allele. Now researchers have developed an enzyme (a catalytic protein, if you remember your Biology 102) that will inactivate the antigen proteins. In essence, this enzyme turns all blood into type O.
There would still be the Rh factor, caused by a different protein, to contend with. But by making all blood available to all recipients, the current blood supply could go much further.
Posted by bledsoek at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)
The importance of keystone species: shark shortage upsets marine ecology
Article: Too Few Jaws: Shark Declines let Rays Overgraze Scallops
Students who have taken Biology 101 learn the importance of keystone species. Here's a fresh example from the pages of the weekly magazine Science News.
Sharks, of course, are a top predator in the world's ocean. Fishing industries have decimated the shark population world wide, both intentionally as some boats harvest sharks for their fins, and unintentionally, as sharks get snagged in fishing gear. Now scallop harvesters on the east coast of the United States are feeling the effects. Sharks over two meters long are the main predators of the cow-nose ray, which in turn is a predator of scallops. With fewer large sharks to keep the ray population in check, rays are flourishing and are gobbling down scallops. Scallop beds that have not been protected with exclusion nets have become no more than ray-feeding stations.
When we teach our students about food webs in biology, so often we focus on bottom-up effects: what happens when a producer or a first-order consumer is removed from the ecosystem? Ecologists today are recognizing that top-down effects are just as critical: what happens when the top predators are removed from the ecosystem? Hence the importance of keystone species, and the importance of initiating protection for sharks and other large marine predators worldwide.
Here's one way fisherman are coping with the problem: cow-nose rays are being promoted as the new fashion in seafood.
Posted by bledsoek at 8:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)