college biology homework

college biology homework

Exploring the Foundations of Biology: A Comprehensive Guide for College Students

1. Introduction to Biology

Inquiry is the questioning and examination process that biologists use to explore the world around them. When a biologist suspects that a new or significant event is taking place in the world of living things, they actively seek to find out more by inquiring and talking with people who are knowledgeable about the subject. Since inquiry relies on mutual trust and one’s ethics, it can take many forms — from a single person pondering a question before publishing a research paper to a group of people making careful observations with a microscope. The one thing that all inquiries have in common is that they are continually fed by new questions and powered by accuracy, persistence and insight. This process of questioning helps biologists to push the frontiers of the world ever forward, just as the arrival of a unique animal behavior bends the branches of what is known. It is the background, but quite dependent, process needed for real biological research.

A complete understanding of the foundations of biology does not come easily. It requires a strong foundation built from basic principles and disciplines. College-level study centers around two towering, interrelated ideas: inquiry and the scientific method. Inquiry is the ongoing process of discovery in science. It includes an examination of intrinsic properties and a look at life in our evolving world. Scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making an unbiased and constructive inquiry, collecting information, identifying sources for judgment, and sharing that information. You can think of inquiry as the convoluted road you travel while asking and answering questions, while the actual scientific method is the map you use along the way.

The world of biology is full of life and growth and change. It is a study of living things and the ways that they develop and inhabit various environments. Think about it. Long ago, no one knew all the fabulous structures and inner workings of a single cell. Today, contemporary biologists know everything about cells. In fact, learning about cells is just the beginning for today’s student of biology. We live in a truly revolutionary time, a time when the world of living things is as open as the vastness of space. There are new developments in biology nearly every day, and as we stand at the great door of the future, its wonders have no boundaries. Our world of many biological creatures and plants and the extremely small stuff of the genetic code is unraveled by the chaos and randomness of change. We create life and then we kill that life. We are obsessed with our genetics. Biological research is constantly blazing trails and creating new branches of study such as biochemistry and ecology. All of our activities depend on the remarkable changes that occur in life.

2. Cell Biology and Genetics

The highest life-replicating unit is the ecosystem, which consists of, and is generated by, the continuous interactions among the three basic life elements: natural fluxes, living organisms, and minerals. Solar energy fluxes (photons) sustain the ecosystem functions. The key actors are the autotrophic organisms (photosynthetic prokaryotes, algae, and plants) and some chemotrophic fungi, which use the endosymbiotic green algae and some autotrophic prokaryotes to harvest UV light (photoautotrophic organisms). They use energy and materials from these fluxes to supply organic materials through the primary production process. Without primary energy, the ecosystem will disappear. To support itself, the ecosystem body needs construction material, produced from weathered rock. Also, the organisms need solutions, produced from the weathered minerals subjected to biotic processes, for growth and metabolism. Many energy and waste nodes appear associated with the different organisms. Lichenized prokaryotes and fungi formed from previous associations are more or less successively settled on rock or partially weathered rock surfaces. Their primary and secondary metabolism products, mainly organic acids, bind mineral surfaces. Newly formed biota is deposited on the previous biota and organic products nearing rock fragmentation are consumed by heterotrophic organisms. The organic products of this early colonization will also enhance the processes of oxidative dissolution or solution editing of rock debris that depends on the continuity of the phototrophic and chemotrophic primary production fluxes.

When life is considered from these points of view, it appears as driven by a continuous flux of electrons. As the asteroids fall toward the Sun, Sun electrons emit electromagnetic radiation proportionally to the decrease of the asteroids’ distance. Life is based on cycles around the Earth due to the Sun-Earth-Moon electromagnetic decrements of energy, mainly driven by water molecules, gravitation, heat, and the flow of Life-shaping Earth electrons. Earth’s surface, where life can evolve, is a sophisticated interface between three energy flows and heat diffusion. The special life domain is a self-organizing chemical dissipative system of electrons and photons, where electrons follow exergonic redox reactions and photons initiate the endergonic reactions. Green plants harvest the energy from photons to synthesize large organic molecules in opposite reactions to the solar ones, discharging low-energy photons, catch CO2 and H2O, and deliver O2. They also fill chloroplasts with energy, water, and oxygen recycling each day. Different hydrospheres, ozone, and the mineral nutrients participate in such a complex energy dynamic. The products of the biotic processes are used in secondary abiotic processes and in other biotic processes, changing the local relative equilibrium.

The foundations of life on Earth consist of different life units, from atoms to ecosystems. Different scientific theories and laws describe elements and how they interact in different environments over different scales. These elements and interactions can be described as life-replicating units, forms of energy, and natural processes. The forms of energy that permit the organization and operations of such life-replicating units are also responsible for natural equilibration processes, called stability, and stability transformations, only within a thermodynamic framework. Stability preservation may constrain the range of suitable forms of life. Sustainability principles may provide overarching themes for life preservation in an ethical and justice framework.

3. Evolution and Biodiversity

During its roughly 3.8 x 10^9 year history, biological reality took many different forms, changed, and diversified massively. Life emerged early in the history of the planet Earth, the process of speciation has allowed life to diversify greatly, and change has been the persistent hallmark of living systems from the time life began. The study of the products of evolutionary change is referred to as biological diversity. Living systems exhibit vast ecological diversity of function and an equally impressive diversity of form. The constellation of forms is integrated by history such that the rationale for existence and function within the world comes to be a product of the evolutionary process. Importantly, the steps in this process appear oddly recent, the processes of life start as soon as the planet is habitable. We are far from the first living things; we are the end paradigm in a long, if not contemporary, collection of living species.

Species must be stable entities, usually constituted from more than a single generation, but exhibiting transmission stability. A species is seen as an interbreeding genetic population. This entity is made possible by the pervasive circular causality experienced through the genetic system that is an integral part of species membership. The idea of species, involving as it does the idea of a biological blueprint, is appropriate for all known members of the biota and, in fact, has not been violated by any property of any living system, past or present.

“Species” is a category applied to living organisms reflecting a common structural blueprint. This category is a biological reality, not a mere concept, and is derived from biological processes. For example, botanists infer that two plants belong to two species if both grow in the same area, have different flowering schedules and physical structures, and cannot hybridize in the wild without assistance from humans. The formation of a new species occurs when there is a breach in the transmission of the genetic information from the DNA of parent organisms to their offspring.

Species Last a Very Long Time

Chapter 3: Evolution and Biological Diversity

4. Ecology and Environmental Biology

This chapter ties together concepts from ecology and the environment through the use of experiments and a real-life ecological problem – namely the changing Nile River in Sudan. The complexity of the scientific method, the source of biological phenomena, and ecology and the environment are examined, as is the question of whether the planet is overpopulated. Quantifying natural selection is tested with urban birds, senescence and technological progress are linked, ghettos of the United States are compared to El Salvador forests using the concept of ecological dividends, and the causes of pollution are explored. The chapter examines patterns and processes in ecology, population growth (the major cause of environmental stress), the major environmental problems, and qualitative data that indicate the sustainability of human goals. Finally, the issue of just human behavior is addressed. All of these tests are shipped in the context of internal tests, wealth maximization, resource management, pollution, and environmental quality, all of which are measured in the context of supporting details of the natural environment on whether changes in human behavior would be politically desired and economically attainable. The epilogue summarizes the tests and implications of the changes in human nature internal tests test.

5. Human Anatomy and Physiology

The study of the anatomy of the nervous system provides information about the individual parts of the nervous system and their relationship to each other. The study of the physiology of the nervous system provides information about how the nervous system normally functions. When something goes wrong within the nervous system, physiological knowledge allows us to predict the effects of the injury, disease, or other deficits. Knowing the effects, the location, and the cause of a disorder can help medical professionals to treat nervous system-related problems. Each nerve cell has a neurotransmitter and specific action potential thresholds. In most cases, nerves do not touch, meaning that there is a tiny gap across which neurotransmitters must travel in order to activate neighboring nerves. Some common neurotransmitters are acetylcholine, norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and GABA. It is the action potential threshold that determines whether or not a nerve will send an action potential. If a nerve impulse arrives and the threshold is met, an action potential is initiated; if the nerve impulse does not cross its threshold for activation, nothing happens in that specific cell.

The body is composed of various systems, including the nervous, muscular, integumentary, endocrine, skeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, immune and lymphatic, urinary, and reproductive systems. Each system has a unique function, but they all work together to maintain homeostasis in the human body. Homeostasis is a dynamic equilibrium in the body that is maintained through numerous feedback mechanisms. These feedback mechanisms monitor the changes that occur in the body and can adjust them to correct the change. The body can make adjustments very quickly or very slowly.