TIME TO RENEW YOUR STRENGTH

This is a season to stop, relax, recollect, ponder and take stock of the year's activities,

 Both failures and successes.

 A season to climb to higher grounds and to leave behind the past.

 A season with a reason yet abused and misused because of lack of knowledge. 

It is a time to tap into your God-given strength through the birth of the giver of life, 

the Lord Jesus Christ, the new born king! 

He came into the world to take away all our, shame, sorrows and sins, 

and to restore us back to the rightful place that God has purposed for our lives. 

You were made to be a powerful and resourceful person. 

Tap into your inner self and allow God to empower you and renew your energy for greater things in the coming days.

 May this season bring you joy as the new born baby brought 

JOY INTO THE WORLD! 

MAY THE PEACE OF GOD BE WITH YOU THROUGHOUT THIS SEASON!

 MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME THROUGH. 

RELAX and LET NOT your HEART be TROUBLED!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL MY USA FANS!

We must not forget to give thanks to the Almighty, Supreme, and Infinite God, each day that we have the breath of life. If your heart beats 72 beats per minute automatically, if you can perform the basic functions of life, if you can see and hear, or even reason and think, you must be grateful to your maker and creator. As you eat your turkey and drink various drinks, take a moment to say a

PRAYER 

OF

THANKSGIVING 

TO 

THE ONE WHO CREATED YOU

 AND 

BROUGHT YOU INTO BEING.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL MY FAITHFUL FANS 

AND 

FOLLOWERS IN THE USA!

THEORIES OF EVOLUTION

Charles Robert Darwin was one of the founders of evolution. Other people who contributed to this were Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Alfred Russel Wallace.

• Darwin Theory or Darwinism: This states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations (traits) that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

• Thomas Henry Huxley, for the purpose of economics, coined the word Darwinism in April 1860, in which he used it to illustrate the survival of the fittest in economic terms.

• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was associated with the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics (soft inheritance). He proposed the "Use and disuse of characteristics."

• Natural selection was coined by Alfred Russel Wallace and popularized jointly by Darwin in their joint publication in 1858.

• Natural selection is the process by which animals and plants with traits considered desirable by them are systematically favored for reproduction. 

• Survival of the fittest is central to natural selection. Individuals that are more fit have a better chance or potential for survival.

Examples of natural selection:

• The sickle cell anemia have low fitness potential in the general population but the trait confers immunity to malaria. So in areas where malaria infection rates are high, it has a high fitness value in that population. 
• Finches of the Galapagos Islands differ in the shapes of their beaks. The beaks of over 13 species is suited to its preferred food, suggesting that the beak shapes evolved by natural selection.

Natural selection can act on any inheritable phenotypic traits. The selection pressure can come from any aspects of the environment. This include sexual selection where the female organism chooses which male it prefers to mate with, or competition with same or other species for food or space.

There are different types of natural selection which I will discuss in the next post. Stay tuned!

TYPES OF NATURAL SELECTION

In the previous blog, I explained what natural selection is about. Today, I will delve into the different ways in which it is classified.

SELECTION BASED EFFECT ON A TRAIT

1. Stabilizing selection: This acts in such a way that the trait is held at a stable optimum. For example, tall plants in a forest are susceptible to being blow down by the wind; short plants are susceptible to competition for sunlight; so that compromise leads to the development of medium height plants.

2. Directional selection: This acts during transitional periods when the current mode of the trait is sub-optimal, and alters the trait towards a single new optimum. For example, the shortage of food at ground level made it difficult for the giraffe with short necks to survive. The development of long necks

3. Disruptive selection: This acts during transitional periods when the current mode is sub-optimal, but alters the trait in more than one direction. Example: If there are three types of plants in an area, tall, medium, and short, that are pollinated by three individuals. If the pollinator of the medium plant is no more there, the medium plant's population will decrease while that of the short and tall will remain. 

SELECTION BASED ON EFFECT ON ALLELE FREQUENCY

1. Positive selection: This effect leads to an increase frequency of an allele.

2. Negative selection: This effect leads to a decrease in the frequency of an allele.

SELECTION BASED ON EFFECT ON GENETIC DIVERSITY

1. Purifying selection: This acts to remove the genetic variation in a population.

2. Balancing selection: This acts to maintain the genetic variation in a population.

TAKE A VACATION TRIP TO RELAX THE BRAIN

For those who want to take  a great vacation, one of the best places you would not regret visiting is the state of California, USA. Check out this blog to see what you would experience. Click here!

RELATIVE ATOMIC MASS/RELATIVE ABUNDANCE QUESTIONS

Question 1:
Calculate the relative atomic mass of silver if it occurs naturally as 51.84% silver-107 and 48.18% silver-109.

Solution:
Relative atomic mass = 0.5184 (107) + 0.4816 (109)
Relative atomic mass = 107.96

Question 2:
Calculate the relative abundance of each isotope of copper if it consists of two isotopes, copper-63 and copper-65. Its relative atomic mass is 63.62.

Solution:
Let Abundance of copper-63 = x
Then, Abundance of copper-65 = 1-x

Relative atomic mass = 63x + 65(1-x)
                                      63x + 65(1-x) = 63.62
                                       x = 0.69
That is, 69% of copper-63 and 31% of copper-65

THE MASS SPECTROMETER

The mass spectrometer is an instrument used for analyzing samples of elements and compounds. It consists of six basic stages: Injection, Vaporization,  Ionization, Acceleration, Deflection, and  Detection.

Click to view a diagram of the mass spectrometer.

• The sample is injected into the instrument.
•  It may be vaporized by heating. 
• The vaporized sample is then passed into an ionizing beam of electrons which knock electrons off the sample to create positive ions.
• These positive ions are then accelerated by some electrostatically charged plates into a magnetic field.
• The magnetic field then deflects the particles according to their mass/charge ratio.
• The deflected ions then arrive at the detector.

You can test yourself on the atomiser by clicking this link. It is a timed quiz.