Thursday, November 28, 2019

What Does The American Flag Mean To Me Essays - Vexillology

What Does the American Flag Mean to Me? Freedom. Justice. History. The flag of the United States has a different meaning to it for every person. Whether it's just standing up in class everyday at school and saying the Pledge of Allegiance or if we really have respect for our countries flag. When you say the Pledge of Allegiance, do you really mean what you say? Do you even think about the words that are coming out of your mouth? While I was thinking about what to write for this essay, these questions got me thinking. What does the flag really mean? What was the purpose of it being made? I've always wondered why they chose the colors red, white, and blue to use in the flag and why only thirteen red and white stripes? I learned that the stripes represent the original thirteen colonies. Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. There was an issue when two new states, Kentucky and Vermont, were added to the Union. They were debating whether to add two more stars and stripes to the flag or not. The result was that they did end up added the two new states onto the flag. Later, they noticed that for every new state that was made, they would have to add a new star and a stripe. Someone finally suggested that we change the stripes back to thirteen to represent the first thirteen states that the United States admitted in our country. They would only add a star or each new state admitted. That was successfully followed through. We now have thirteen stripes and fifty stars on the flag. I think that the history of the flag and what the symbols are really important to knowing what the flag represents. Many people may disagree with me and think that the history isn't the most important fact to know about the flag. Maybe you may think that it is all about who made the flag, if what the Pledge of Allegiance means, or what the flag was made for in the first place. Maybe you even think about what the Star- Spangled Banner really talks about when you sing it. These are all important things to think and know about. The flag is really valuable and should be respected by every citizen.

Sunday, November 24, 2019

All About Snow Fleas, a Wingless Insect

All About Snow Fleas, a Wingless Insect For the bug enthusiasts among us, its a happy day when we find snow fleas. At the end of a long, cold, nearly bug-free winter, we feel lucky to find a mass of tiny arthropods hopping about in the melting snow. Snow fleas are actually not  fleas  at all, but a kind of  springtail. Because theyre tiny and tend to jump, they remind people of fleas and thus were given this inaccurate name. What Do Snow Fleas Look Like? From even a short distance away, snow fleas look like bits of dirt or pepper on the surface of the snow. They catch peoples attention because they have a habit of jumping. At times, snow fleas gather in such large numbers they make the snow look black or blue. They tend to aggregate on the surface of the snow around the trunks of trees. Take a closer look, however, and youll find that snow fleas look similar to other springtails. Theyre quite small, reaching only 2-3 millimeters in length. The springtails we find flinging themselves across the snow are usually blue in color. In North America, the snow fleas were likely to find belong to the genus  Hypogastrura. Why and How Do Snow Fleas Jump? Snow fleas are wingless insects, incapable of flying. They move by walking and jumping. But unlike other famous jumping arthropods like  grasshoppers  or  jumping spiders, snow fleas dont use their legs to jump. Snow fleas catapult themselves into the air by releasing a spring-like mechanism called a  furcula, a sort of tail thats folded underneath its body - thus the name springtail. When the furcula releases, the snow flea is launched several inches in the air, a considerable distance for such a tiny bug. Its an effective way to flee potential predators quickly, although they have no way to steer. Why Do Snow Fleas Gather on the Snow? Snow fleas live in the soil and leaf litter, even in the winter months, where they munch away on decaying vegetation and other organic matter. Springtails are actually quite common and abundant, but theyre so tiny that they tend to blend in and go unnoticed. Remarkably, snow fleas dont freeze in the winter thanks to a special kind of protein in their bodies. This protein is rich in  glycine, an  amino acid, which enables the protein to bind to ice crystals and keep them from growing. It works much like the antifreeze we put in our cars. The antifreeze protein allows snow fleas to remain alive and active even in subzero temperatures. On warm and sunny winter days, particularly as we get closer to spring, snow fleas make their way up through the snow, perhaps in search of food. As they gather in numbers on the white surface, flinging themselves from place to place, they attract our attention. How Do I Get Rid of Snow Fleas? Why would you want to get rid of snow fleas? Theyre perfectly harmless. They dont bite, they cant make you sick, and they wont hurt your plants. In fact, they help improve your soil by breaking down organic material. Leave them be. Once the snow melts and spring arrives, youll forget theyre even there - unless you like bugs, in which case you may find yourself searching for them in the soil. Sources: Springtails, by Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University.Springtails and Snowfleas, Insect Diagnostic Laboratory, Cornell University.Snow fleas: helpful winter critters, by Katie Kline, Ecological Society of America, January 28, 2011.Structural Modeling of Snow Flea Antifreeze Protein, by Feng-Hsu Lin, Laurie A. Graham,  Robert L. Campbell, and Peter L. Davies,  Biophysical Journal, March 1, 2007.Snow fleas are conspicuous but harmless, by Jeff Hahn, University of Minnesota Extension, March 26, 2014.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The spatial differences betwee men and women - this is for a gender Essay

The spatial differences betwee men and women - this is for a gender psychology class - Essay Example an others but certain abilities like spatial understanding, mathematical abilities and verbal skills have been shown as having a certain gender component. Kimura (2002) reports the generally accepted observations for human and non human males which show that males of the species tend to have more aggressive behaviors than the females. She goes on to say that, â€Å"We also know that in general males are better at a variety of spatial or navigational tasks (Kimura, 2002, p. 1).† Kimura (2002) is in agreement with Putrevu (2001) who suggests that the differences originate from the biology and the evolutionary path which has been taken by the genders in humans. This focus on evolutionary psychology goes a long way in helping us understand why it is important for men to be more aggressive than the female of the species. For instance, for biological reasons, including pregnancy, childbirth, and nurturing the child, women have made more significant investments in their children. Therefore, women who are more agreeable and nurturing may have caused better chances for the survival of their offspring and created an evolutionary advantage for their genetic code. In this regard, where women have greater sensitivity to nonverbal cues it could be useful to them in evolutionary terms for rearing children. Biological differences certainly extend to the functioning of the brain since one hemisphere of the brain comes across as being dominant for various kinds of processing. Research on the topic shows that the male brain is more functionally lateralized and the female brain is more integrated. This is the basic reason for why men exhibit superior spatial abilities and women excel in verbal and linguistic skills (Putrevu, 2001). Researchers also suggest that sexual hormones and early formation environmental factors are also connected with differences in perceptual-motor skills observed between men and women (Kimura, 2002). Despite the acceptance of fact and research which is the