The Frozen Star

NASA's gone crazy, because
STARS
AREN'T
FROZEN.
Well, not normally anyway. The star in the picture to the right doesn't really look like one, does it? It's named
WISE J085510.83-071442.5 and is a brown dwarf star. Yeah, I know, it's quite a mouthful. the "WISE" part of the name comes from the telescope that was used to find it, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Stars start out as big balls of gas floating in space. Gravity gradually condenses stars into tight masses. In stars like the sun, the condensed gas causes fusion - which provides us with energy and light. Brown dwarf stars don't have enough gas to have a lot of fusion, so they stay dim. This new one is the coldest and dimmest yet - it doesn't give off any visible light, only infrared light, and is between -54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature.

Well, that's all I've got for this week. Bye!

Links:
Society for Science - "Failed Star"

 

Waffle Wars Episode One: Attack of the Clones

        Welcome back to the Scientific Waffle where today I have some special guests on the blog. Today we will be discussing clo-

        Obi Wan: WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!
Luke: TAKE COVER BEHIND THE SHEEP!
        Anakin: Quick, Luke, clone a sheep army!

        Luke: What's a clone again?

        Anakin: A copy of another organism!

        Luke: Oh. Okay.  


        Yoda: Now, have a meeting and discuss cloning we shall. A subject usually associated with science fiction cloning is, yet in real life can it be done.


        Anakin: How? I thought that only worked in our movies.

        Obi Wan: Well, lets get back to the roots of cloning. The first evidence of cloning was thousands of years ago, when man cut pieces off of plants and planted them in the ground. This process is called "cutting." The next step happened way later, actually somewhat recently. 

        Scientists figured out how to clone animals by splitting an embryo to produce two identical organisms. In Scotland in the 1990's, though, scientists finally cloned an animal from an adult cell, which had never been done before. The animal that had been cloned was a sheep, and it was named Dolly. Many animals had been cloned before this, such as cows, cats, and pigs, but never from adult cells. The process to clone Dolly took three female sheep. An egg cell was taken from sheep #1 and enucleated, or had the nucleus taken out of it. Then, the nucleus from the cell of sheep #2's udder was put into the empty egg cell from sheep #1. The egg cell was then put into the uterus of sheep #3, and Dolly was born!

        Quick fact: Cloning may eventually be able to bring back extinct animals, such as the woolly mammoth, but nobody has done that yet.

        Many animals have been cloned, but not any people. This is because it raises serious ethical concerns, since a human being is going to be made in a laboratory instead of naturally. Many people are against human cloning. I think human's shouldn't be cloned, since one human would live a normal life and the clone would be studied and experimented on, and that could be stressful, since they're still a living being.

        Well, that's it for today on the Scientific Waffle. Bye!
Links:
Clone Trooper Dancing Gif
Sheep Picture
Lots of Sheep Picture
Nucleus Picture
Brainpop: Cloning (If you have an account)
Brainpop: Dolly the Sheep (If you have an account)

JEANS

        Not blue jeans though; those are made of denim. The jeans that we're going to be talking about today are spelled  G-E-N-E-S. "Genes" are just a weird way of identifying a specific section of a DNA molecule in an organism. Today though, the subject is "genetic mutations," not genes. So what is a genetic mutation?

So Trippy

        A genetic mutation happens when a DNA molecule is copied wrong. Most of the time, the change is corrected by DNA repair, but when it isn't the mutations usually are harmful to your body. Examples of harmful mutations, or deleterious mutations, are cancer, which causes uncontrolled cell growth, and sickle-cell anemia, which makes your blood cells be shaped like crescents instead of circles.

        Sometimes mutations can be beneficial though. Occasionally people are born without some or all of their wisdom teeth, which is an example of beneficial mutations. Some beneficial mutations can spread across a whole population. That is the basis of evolution.


        Mutations can be caused by many different things. Radiation, for example, can break down cells and nucleic acids and cause mutations. Exposure to chemicals can also cause mutations.

        
Well, that's all for today, hope you liked the post. Bye!

Links:
Blue Jeans Picture
DNA Animated Gif
Sickle Cell Anemia Picture
Radiation Picture

Ribonucleic acid

Hey guys, The Scientific Waffle here. and guess what: more nucleic acid???!!! Wow! If you read my last post on deoxyribonucleic acid, you know that DNA is a molecule that contains the blueprints for your body. I also talked about RNA a little bit too, and that's what we're going to talk about to day. Let's get started!

RNA (ribonucleic acid) is a molecule similar to DNA. Well, sort of. The RNA that is most similar to DNA is mRNA, or messenger RNA. mRNA look like DNA with half of it gone. Another difference is that instead of having the chemical bases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, it has the bases adenine, uracil, guanine and thymine. Just like how adenine connects to thymine in DNA, adenine connects to uracil in RNA.

mRNA takes commands from DNA and tells the ribosomes in the cell what to do in the form of the order of the bases on mRNA. For every three bases on the RNA, the ribosome puts one amino acid into a protein. After enough amino acids are combined, a protein is formed. Proteins perform basic functions around the cell.

But ribosomes can't understand the orders given to them by the mRNA. That's where tRNA comes in. tRNA, or translator RNA, translates the orders into something the ribosome can understand. The last type of RNA, ribosomal RNA (rRNA) is inside ribosomes and makes the proteins with the translated orders.

Do all living things have RNA? Yes. RNA is crucial to life. Some scientists believe that in the early times of the earth, life forms didn't have DNA, and the RNA performed the functions of DNA as well as the normal RNA functions.

Well, that's all for today, goodbye!

Links:

Deoxyribonucleic acid

I know what you're thinking, what the heck is deoxyribonucleic acid? The thing is, you already know, even if you don't know about yourself knowing what it is =). Because deoxribonucleic acid is actually... DNA! See, you know what it is! But today, I'm going to  explain how it works.

Let's get back to the basics. DNA is composed of two spiral columns made of phosphates and sugar. The bars in between the columns are made of four different chemicals called adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. This shape is called a double-helix Each half of a bar is made up of a different chemical. Adenine and thymine are always paired together, while guanine and cytosine are always paired together.

But how does DNA make our body work? Well, that's where RNA (ribonucleic acid) comes in! DNA commands the cell to make RNA, which is threaded through a ribosome, an organelle in the cell. The ribosome then makes proteins according to what the RNA says, and that determines your body traits! Cool, right?

One of the reasons we know about the shape of DNA is because of James Watson and Francis Crick, who made the first correct double-helix model using an x-ray image taken by Rosalind Franklin.

Now for how DNA replicates. The DNA molecule splits down the middle, and new halves on the inner side form. Eventually the DNA splits completely, and there are now two DNA molecules.

Well, that's all for today guys, bye!

Links:
Free BrainPOP Video
DNA Animated Gif
DNA Replication Animated Gif

Cell Division and Mitosis

Cells! They're grrrrrrreat! Today we're back at The Scientific Waffle, and we're gonna talk about the cell reproduction cycle.


WARP SPEED!

To produce, cells divide. Here are the 4 stages of mitosis, or the cells getting ready to split.

Prophase: In prophase, the chromatin in the cell (genetic material) condenses into chromosomes, which are chromatids that have paired up. Centrioles in the cell go to opposite ends of the cell and stretch a net of spindle fibers throughout the cell.
[In between these phases is a smaller phase called prometaphase, where the nuclear membrane dissolves.]
Metaphase: In Metaphase, the chromosomes line up along the center of the cell in the middle of the net.
Anaphase: In Anaphase, the centrioles pull back the spindle fibers and the chromosomes are pulled apart back into chromatids.
Telophase: The spindle fibers start to disappear and the chromatids go back to chromatin. A nuclear membrane then surrounds each group of chromatin.

After the four stages of mitosis, the cell membrane splits into to cells and the whole thing is done. The cells then go into interphase, where cell organelles and chromosomes are developed. This time period takes up about 90% of the cell's lifespan.

Well, that's all for today folks, Bye! =)

Links:
Brainpop Video on Mitosis
Mitosis Gif

Goodbye,G Bad Memories!

Goodbye, Bad Memories!

Science = Fun

Waffles = Fun

Scientific Waffles = Fun x2 = SUPAH FUN

Guess what? I'm going to erase your memory of that super cheesy intro! :3

GutBai!

That's right folks, neurologist Marijn Kroes is working on ways to erase the details of bad memories, and maybe erase them completely! A form of severe depression treatment called electroconclusive therapy (ECT for short) can lessen depression. But Kroes is testing with it, and saying that if patients try and remember specific details of the memories right before the treatment, the details are fuzzy and/or gone when they are done.

Well, that's all for today, Buh Bai!

Links:

Student News