Week 4 in Review
Skipped week 3's review on account of birfday. Not going to try to go back unless absolutely necessary.
Computer Science for the Sciences
- Turned in assignment on creating functions and using if-statements. Felt very clever about two aspects of my assignment. Almost let a float/int error ruin everything.
- Learned about for loops, strings, and lists
- Lab didn't work. Need to redo.
Animal Behaviour
- Sexual selection: Intersexual selection and intrasexual selection
- Alternative strategies:
- Conditional strategies are not hereditary, environmentally determined. All individuals have the capacity for all strategies, use the best one for their given situation (can be behavioural or physiological)
- Distinct strategies are hereditarily determined. Each individual has capacity for only one strategy. Theory says multiple hereditary strategies should only be maintained if they all yield equal fitness. I feel like that's an oversimplification of the situation.
Organic Chemistry
- Studying alkenes:
- IUPAC names for alkenes
- Reactions involving alkenes: addition reactions
- Carbocation intermediates, and stability thereof
- 1,2-hydride or -alkyl shifts
- Bromonium and mercurium ions
- Solubility lab: identifying compounds by solubility and extracting components from mixtures using solubility. Four hours of nonstop stress ruining my whole week. I'm so glad I only have lab every other week.
- Markovnikov and anti-Markovnikov addition, stability of intermediate depends on more than just carbocation stability: steric strain
Microbiology
- History of tree of life: 5 Kingdoms to 8 Kingdoms to 3 Domains and no Kingdoms
- SSU rRNA as universal homologous trait for phylogeny of all living things (except viruses)
- Eucarya more closely related to Archaea than Bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts nested within Bacteria, prokaryotes are not living fossils
- Life originated in hydrothermal vents, thermophilia and hyperthermophilia is a less derived trait, not more derived. Cool. (Or, you know, hot).
- Life originated 3.85 bya. Not the most conservative estimate.
- Lab: identifying unknown organism. Gram stain worked perfectly (purple, +ve), acid-fast stain worked well enough to tell acid-fastness (pink, +ve), but smear was clumpy. Need to redo because slides are marked on quality of smear. Practiced endospore staining. Next week check for motility, endospore, and capsule, and redo acid-fast stain. This lab should really be an hour longer than it is.
