Three Little Pigs - Poem

Three little pigs left their mother
and set off all together.
They want to find their own destiny
in the hope of independency.

The first little pig built a straw house,
sure that that was a sturdy house.
He was glad and proud of itself
and spent the day enjoying itself.

The second little pig built a stick house,
and sure there won't be any louse.
He went to bed and slept through the day
thinking he was great, feeling gay.

The third little pig built a brick house,
sure that it would keep out mouse.
He was sure that he was safe
from wolves that weren't his fave.

Then the wolf came to haunt them,
big and bad and caused mayhem.
He huffed and puffed
and the straw house crashed after a sough.

to be continued

Talking Through A Microphone

This is what you get when you say "I am going to play Plants vs. Zombies on my computer soon.": "I am going to plead times the size of these are my complete the zone." -_-"

Science Secondary 1 Biology Project 2010

Q1. Columba Livia (Rock Pigeon)

Description
The Rock Pigeon is a bird in the bird family Columbidae. It is also known as the rock dove but in common terms, as the pigeon. It has been domesticated, and those that were let loose or escaped evolved to be Feral Pigeons, a species found in Singapore.

Appearance and Behaviours
Rock Pigeons are rock grey in colour. Their wings have two black bars each. The male and female differ in looks, and these are visible. Rock Pigeons, like human beings, live as pairs (each pigeon is of opposite gender) and give birth to 2 offspring.

Habitat
Rock Pigeons can live in many places, regardless if they are open or semi-open. Roosting and breeding usually occurs at cliffs and rock ledges.It used to be found exclusively in Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Today, it is found in many parts of the world including Singapore.

Classification using Linnaean Taxonomy

Kingdom – Animalia
Rock Pigeons do eat seeds and grains and sometimes, garbage. For an organism to be an animal, it has to digest other organisms to continue living.

Phylum – Chordata
Chordates are animals with backbones or those that have what looks like a backbone. They must be ‘put in place’ through a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail at one point of time in their life.

Class – Aves
Aves are birds. For an animal to be classified as a bird, it must have wings, have backbones, lay eggs, are warm-blooded and primarily moves on 2 legs.

Order – Columbiformes
Columbiformes are consisted of pigeons and doves. As the name suggests, the Rock Pigeon is a pigeon. Columbiformes must be able to drink water by sucking it up and not tilting its head up, unlike what most birds do.

Family – Columbidae
Columbidae includes doves and pigeons. Birds that fall in this category must be near-passerines, which are animals that live in or scale trees but may not perch.

Genus – Columba
Columbia consists of stout doves and pigeons ranging from medium-sized to large-sized.

Species – C. livia

Q2. Fatal Familial Insomnia

OverviewFatal Familial Insomnia, or FFI, is a genetic disorder. Having affected only 50 families worldwide, it is a rare autosomal dominant inherited prion disease. It has killed Rick White, a former cameraman and at the time of his death, a news assignment editor at his local TV station.

History
People with FFI were once thought to be insane and were condemned to die. Ignazor Roiter, an Italian doctor, was the first person to detect FFI. 2 sisters apparently died of lack of sleep. Later investigations showed that many family members had died of similar reasons. Another man suffering from this disease showed up years later. He was confirmed to suffer from FFI. Destined to die, the man allowed the doctor to examine him. For 8 months, he struggled to survive and was on an overdrive in his final weeks of his life. Eventually he also died. Scientists started to study brains with such disorders.

Details
Once thought to be a passageway for nerve signals, the thamalus (a part of our brain) not only does that. It actually controls our sleeping habits and not the hypothamalus and brain stem. When a protein called prion protein (PRNP gene) mutates, aspartic acid is replaced by asparagine-178. This causes the thamalus, which controls our sleeping habits, to malfunction, causing the patient to be unable to sleep and die of exhaustion. However, sufferers have been known to dream although they suffer from this genetic disorder. This shows that the patient was in REM sleep. However, REM sleep was unable to provide rest for the brain as it was not deep sleep. Experiments carried out on mice later on confirmed this. Offspring have a 50-50 chance of getting this disease if one of their parents is suffering from this genetic disorder. For further illustrations on this open the document below. The disease only starts to show up when the patient turns 30 to 60 years old, on average, at the age of 50. Symptoms range, even if the patients are of the same family. Death occurs within 3 years of the onset of the disease. Symptoms at the beginning include phobias, paranoia and panic attacks. As time goes on, hallucinations and insomnia sets in. Eventually, they suffer from dementia in their dying stages.

Treatment
Gene therapy has not worked as of now. It is believed that treating the symptoms of the disease, however, can improve the condition. Despite this, FFI has no cure.

Effect on Patients
FFI can be diagnosed by doctors. However, many are unwilling to do so due to the fear of hearing the dreaded news. Should they test positive, they are destined to die prematurely. Many who took the test also do no want to know the truth. On a positive note, this disease affects only a few in this world and it’s unlikely you will develop it like how illnesses like diabetes and kidney failures do if your parents do not have it, though there is some controversy behind one case of FFI whereby many think she developed the disease not because of heredity. She was later proved to suffer from another genetic disorder which is not hereditary.

For pictures and diagrams, open the document at this website:
http://www.4shared.com/file/211139920/5cdd3c4e/Science_Secondary_One_Biology_.html

PSLE Oral Today

As the title goes, PSLE Oral was today. However, it was the English one first. The teachers said that it was a micro picture. However, there were so many people. But if you study hard enough, there were only 2 points. But there's literally nothing to say!!!!
No time to write too much, so I will write in a while later. There's still the mother tongue paper tomorrow! And it's also my birthday.
Happy birthday to me (and Usain Bolt)!

Dunman High Maths and Science Olympiad Camp (2 and 3 June) and HCI Camp (22 June)

At Dunman High, there were 'Nerdy Ah Ma' (Oh Hui Xian) and 'Rachel Ah Ma' (Rachel Huang). And there were more Science activities than Maths activities. Then, there was this weird guy called 'Dart' (or Tart?)

Interestingly, the overall winning group of the camp activities received only 2 trophies for the school and nothing else. But for the small activities, the winning group got some vouchers. Well, at least I received $20 worth of Popular vouchers.

HCI Camp ... ... supposed to be 'bi-cultural'. Except for the explanations during the activities, it was all English! And 2 HCI guys (1 nicknamed 黑人 [Black Man] by friends) said '凶兆' (bad omen) in a tone that everyone knows that they were referring to '胸罩' (bra).

Seriously, I prefer the Dunman Maths and Science Olympiad Camp because it was so much more interesting that the HCI Camp because we went with the Maths HOD for the former and the other guys were making the camp much more interesting and the people there were friendlier. The food in the latter event is terrible because they offered only 1 kind of food in every meal.

Questions Worth Pondering About from Brainiac

Some questions worth pondering about from Brainiac: Science Abuse:
1. If you have only one eye, do you wink or do you blink?
2. Why is the word abbreviated so long?
3. Why is the fear of long words called hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia?

A Moving Story

In a village in Africa, there lived a tribe. The tribe's people were Christians, and anti-Christian tribes have been attacking the tribe for years.
There lived a pastor and his wife who had a baby. On a certain Sunday, the pastor brought his baby to their two-storey church for the first time.
Halfway through the church service, gunmen stormed into the church and a man, who looked like the leader of the gang, demanded, “Everybody freeze!”
The people in the church were all startled and all of them did not even dare to utter a word. All except the pastor and his wife. The pastor continued serving sermons while the wife continued listening intently.
The leader, infuriated by the pastor and his wife, went to the pastor wife and held her by her hair. However, seeing the baby in her hands, he let go of the woman.
He snatched the baby from her hands and down went the baby to the ground. The pastor continued serving his sermons while the wife did not react to the incident.
The leader dragged the wife to a side of the church and he started to rape her. The people in the church could only watch in horror, but the pastor did not stop serving sermons.
Once the leader had finished raping the wife, he left with his men.
The wife wore her torn clothes and sat back at her seat, continuing to listen to her husband.
It was noon. The pastor had finally finished his sermons and it was only then when the wife broke down. The people of the church asked her intently, “Why didn’t you seek revenge on the gunmen?”
The wife replied, “Since things have already happened, let it be.”