Extreme Environments and Their Inhabitants

One example of an environment that is highly toxic to many forms of life is a place called Mono Lake in Mono County, California.  It is listed as one of the oldest lakes in North America and it has no outlet to any other body of water; the only way for water to get out is by evaporation.

This results in increasing concentrations of salt and other minerals, and this lake has incredibly high salinity and alkalinity.  The lake has one main species of endemic brine shrimp that thrives off of plankton that flow into the lake via streams.  Populations of these shrimp are so high that they bring millions of bird individuals to the lake to feed on these aquatic crustaceans.

Also unique to this area is a bacteria, called GFAJ-1, which uses arsenic in its structure instead of phosphorus in small amounts.

This discovery leads scientists to believe that bacteria such as this could have existed around thermal vents around the time of the origin of life.

Sunflower

2/14 Planted the sunflower seed in a small white dixie cup in general potting soil.  I punched three holes in the bottom for drainage.  The cup currently rests on a tupperware lid on a window sill.

2/15 After sitting in the sun for an afternoon the soil dried out slightly so I wet the top with a little bit of water.

2/20 A small sprout formed I will most likely water it again once it rises completely from the soil.

2/27 The sprout fully came out of the ground and the petals opened.

3/1  I moved the sprout to a larger Tupperware container probably too soon.  The roots seemed pretty small, hopefully it will turn the corner.

3/18 Newer larger leaves have sprouted but the plant does not seem to grow vertically very much

3/23 More leaves have sprouted but the sunflower continues to grow slowly vertically.

4/10 Growth continues upward and the root ball has spread through almost all of the container.

Inductive v. Deductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning: inductive reasoning is where you take specific knowledge or observations and make generalized statements, or educated guesses, about things even if they are false.  For example, through my direct observations I could say every college student goes to class, but this statement is inherently wrong because some students take classes online and never physically go to class.
Deductive reasoning: deductive reasoning attempts to make conclusions at the combination of statement of facts. For example, basketball players are tall and Lebron James is a basketball player, therefore Lebron James is a basketball player.  This is an example of a deductive argument.  While one could find exceptions to my example most deductive arguments, based on deductive reasoning, are very sound.