Ever thought how Plants excrete their waste?

Like animals, plant also is 

a living thing so many wastes are produced in its body too during different processes and plant needs to eliminate these. As the plants don't urine then how does it remove harmful substances from its body?

As oxygen is produced as a by-product during the photosynthesis process and the carbon dioxide is produced in the respiration process and how are these gases removed from the plants? A plant eliminates the carbon dioxide oxygen through the stomata in the leaves and the excess water absorbed by the roots is also lost through stomata via transpiration. The plant store many wastes in the leaves, fruits etc. Hence the plants shed leaves to get rid of these ways. The fruits fall down from the trees once ripe.

You know the malic acid in the apple, citric acid present in the lemon, and the tartaric acid in the tamarind are actually the wastes of the plant.

Some plants store the waste in the fruit. A fruit falls down from the tree once it is ripe. Few of the ways of the plant are valuable to us.

The gum, raisin, latex etc which we get from plants are actually the waste of the plants. The rubber is obtained from the latex of the rubber tree this ways comes out of the bark of the rubber tree as a liquid which we call latex. Also the raisin is used in the paints varnishes adhesives etc. It is obtained as a viscous liquid exuded by the plants like the pine tree.


Apart from these ways, the plant roots also sometimes excrete waste materials. 

Introduction to Animal Skeleton

The Skeleton is tough and rigid framework of the body of animals which provides protection, shape, support to the body organs. It is composed of inorganic or organic substance or both. 

There are three main types of skeleton in animals. 
1) Hydrostatic Skeleton
2) Exoskeleton
3) Endoskeleton

Hydrostatic skeletons: 

Hydrostatic skeletons are found in soft-bodied in vertebrates like sea anemones, worms and jellyfish. Such animals have a fluid-filled cavity called a coelom which is surrounded by muscle wall. The pressure of the fluid pressing against the muscle wall provides the animal with rigidity which acts as a skeleton. The hydrostatic skeleton gives the animal structural integrity and allows limited mobility. 

Exoskeletons:

The exoskeleton is that type of skeleton which lies outside the soft parts of the body insects like all arthropods have an exoskeleton comprised of rigid plates that provide protection and support, however, it is jointed so that it does not restrict the movements and mobility of the animal. In insects, the exoskeleton is made up of a hard slightly flexible carbohydrate called chitin. Crustaceans like lobsters and crabs have an exoskeleton - its exoskeleton is divided into several distinct sections making mobility a little easier. The exoskeleton is made mainly from chitin and crystalline substances such as calcium carbonate. This makes the plates that make up their exoskeletons very hard and rigid. In order to grow, arthropods have to shed their whole exoskeleton at once. A new exoskeleton is produced beneath the old one. The process of shedding the old exoskeleton is called molting.


Endoskeletons:

The third kind of skeleton is the endoskeleton. It is a bone or cartilage based skeleton that exists wholly inside of an animal's body. All vertebrates including humans have endoskeletons. The endoskeleton gives shape and support to the body and has bones that meet at joints muscles attach to the bones provide a means of movement and mobility.
A skeleton also protects a body's soft organs and provides attachment sites for muscles. 

How your body keeps the balance?

 Body keeps balance because of Homeostasis.

Now what is homeostasis? 
"Homeostasis is the relatively constant state maintained by the body".

 Mainly this means that over time, the internal body will maintain a stable environment. /
So, for example, if the external temperature is cold or hot, the internal body temperature will remain relatively constant at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees celsius , the internal body temp may vary a little above or below this number but that will still be considered normal. 

Homeostasis doesn’t just apply to body temperature, but many other conditions as well. The human body needs to maintain a certain range of nutrients in the blood stream, such as water, glucose, sodium, and other elements as well. We get our blood work done from time to time to check and make sure we don’t have high glucose or cholesterol levels, or too low levels of certain vitamins or minerals. This in essence is to check and make sure our body is maintaining homeostatic conditions. Set point is an important term when discussing homeostasis. 
"Set point is a normal range that the body tries to stay in".

For instance, the normal range for systolic blood pressure is between 80 and 120. So homeostasis is sought by the body to keep systolic blood pressure in this range or set point. However, the body can change the set point. In many people weight gain leads to higher systolic blood pressure. This could be due to many factors, but the point is that the body changed the blood pressure set point to keep homeostasis. So now, maybe after the weight gain, someone’s systolic blood pressure may be at 140, which is considered unhealthy and at a risk for some diseases, but the body felt to keep homeostasis it needed to change and pump blood harder. The ability of the body to maintain homeostasis is crucial to life, and each of the systems in the body plays important roles. It is often times easier to understand homeostasis by constructing a model to make the concept clearer. 

Many sources use a fish tank comparison. The water represents body fluid, or the internal environment. The glass that encloses the water or fluid would be the skin creating a barrier separating internal from external. The fish in the tank represent cells, which obviously want to stay alive. But the cells need nutrients from the external environment in order to survive. The cells need oxygen, so we can put an air pump in the tank, which would represent the lungs, pumping oxygen into the tank. A filter will get rid of wastes, which would represent the kidneys. A heater to keep a constant temperature, and the heater would represent the muscles. Food, or at least the nutrients contained in food, so, we hook up a feeder to our fish tank to feed those fish, or cells, and the feeder would represent the digestive system. So, fish tank is complete, and with everything working together, we have relatively stable and constant conditions, which equals homeostasis. Keep in mind that our fish tank model only covers a few of the aspects involved in maintaining homeostasis, as there are actually far more mechanisms involved in the body keeping at a state of homeostasis. And that, be the basics on homeostasis.

Has your brain ever wondered what the parts of brain are?

 Brain consists of five divisions.

First, the myelencephalon, or medulla, and the metencephalon, consisting of the pons, and the cerebellum. These first two regions comprise the hindbrain. Next, there is the mesencephalon, or midbrain. 
The diencephalon, comprised of the thalamus and hypothalamus, as well as the telencephalon, which together comprise the forebrain. The telencephalon is the largest part of the brain and the most familiar looking, with its two cerebral hemispheres covered by the cerebral cortex. 

Stacked on top like another scoop of ice cream is the limbic system, or the so-called rat brain. And all the way on top is the cortex, or monkey brain, since this region evolved most recently once primates came onto the scene. Zooming in further, inside all of these regions, there are specialized cells called neurons. Basic knowledge regarding neuronal structure and the generation of the action potential that is used to relay signals through the body. 

In addition to the neurons of various types, their are neuroglia, also called glial cells, or simply glia. These are the other cells present in nervous tissue that are not neurons. 

In the brain, the first of these are called oligodendrocytes, which form myelin sheaths that wrap around one or more axons to protect them, and which speed up conduction along the axon, just like Schwann cells do in the peripheral nervous system. 

Next are astrocytes. These are heavily branched cells that attach to neurons, supporting them, and also anchoring them to nutrient supply lines. They absorb and secrete various substances, thus allowing them to perform a variety of functions. Then, microglial cells. These have long processes that monitor the health of the neurons, and can perform phagocytosis to get rid of dead ones. 

And lastly, ependymal cells. These are the cells, typically ciliated, that line the central cavities of the brain and spinal cord, forming a barrier between the cerebrospinal fluid and the fluid surrounding the cells of the central nervous system. This cerebrospinal fluid cushions the brain and protects it from physical trauma. 

Speaking of protecting the brain, we must also mention something called the blood-brain barrier. The circulatory system, throughout the body, substances readily diffuse through the walls of blood vessels so as to service tissues with nutrients and collect waste. Between hormones, ions, and many other things, lots of exchange is taking place. 

In the brain, many such substances would interfere with the ability of neurons to fire properly, so blood vessel walls within the brain are not as permeable. Most large molecules, like proteins and many drugs, are not able to get through, while molecules that are critical to the survival of neuronal cells, like oxygen and glucose, can make it, as well as psychiatric drugs. The endothelial cells in these blood vessel walls form tight junctions, which are what restrict the permeability. This blood brain barrier is critical in preventing certain substances from entering brain tissue that would interfere with the firing of neurons. 

How does Breathing takes place in Animals?

Every animal in nature breath either through lungs, gills, skin or spiracles. 

Mammals like birds and 

reptiles breathe through their lungs. Lung is an organ of the body that facilitates the breathing process.

When we talk about mammals, human beings can be considered as the best example. Breathing process in human beings involve lungs, nose, diaphragm and ribs. The process of breathing in air is called inspiration and the process of breathing out air is called expiration. When a person takes air through the nose, the nose hair works as a filter protecting the inside of the body from the dust coming alongside the air. The diaphragm in the chest helps in drawing the air during the breathing process. The ribs moves up and diaphragm moves down to facilitate the breathing process and as the pressure in the lungs decreases, the air rushes into the lungs. That's how breathing takes place particularly in mammals.

Now, the breathing process in birds and reptiles take place differently. As birds have small holes near their beaks which helps in breathing. Reptiles and birds do not have diaphragm like mammals, they only use ribs in their process of breathing. 

Fish and other animals that live in water use gills for their breathing process. Gills consists of threadlike structures called filaments. Each filament contains a capillary network that provides a large surface area for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. As the water passes over to the gills, the oxygen is taken in and carbon dioxide is released to the water. Water is then passed out of the gills through gill slits. 

Breathing through skin and spiracles take place in frogs. Frogs have very thin skin which allows the gases to pass through it. When the frog is underwater, it uses its skin for breathing. When the frog is on land, it uses its lungs to breath. 

The organisms like mosquito, grasshopper and cockroach do not have lungs or gills for breathing. Their blood does not carry oxygen. They use spiracles for breathing. Spiracles are connected to air tubes called trachea. Trachea is in turn connected to the smaller tubes, these smaller tubes are further connected with the body cell. This connection facilitates the breathing process in these organisms. 

How Do Plants Respire?

 The plants do not have any special respiratory system so they have to respire in all of their individual parts like leaf, steam and root.  r plants respire

Plants respire all the time because their cells need 

energy to stay alive but plants can only photosynthesize when they are in the light each plant part bleeds through its external layer of cells roots breathe through root hairs stems breathe through epidermis leaves have numerous small pores called stomata for breathing.

The exchange of oxygen and carbon 

dioxide in the leaf occurs through pores called stomata. Normally stomata open when the light strikes the leaf in the morning and close during the night the immediate cause is a change in the pressure gradient or the turgor of the guard cells. The inner wall of each guard cell is thick and elastic when turgor develops the thin outer walls of the stoma bulge out forcing the stoma to open.

When the guard cells loose turgor the elastic inner walls regain their original shape and the stoma closes.

Woody stems are covered with suberin a waxy

 waterproof substance so cork is as impervious to oxygen and carbon dioxide as it is to water however the cork of woody stems is perforated by  lenticels. They enable oxygen to reach the intercellular spaces of the interior tissues and carbon dioxide to be released to the atmosphere. Plants also manufacture their food with the help of sunlight water and carbon dioxide from the air.

Respiration and photosynthesis are opposites. Respiration uses oxygen and produces carbon dioxide, photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and produces oxygen. Plants respire all the time whether it is dark or light they photosynthesize only when they are in light. The presence of light also affects the plant physiology and the effect of light on the processes of photosynthesis and respiration in plants.

What Is Biology?

Biology, an important branch of Science.

We may have learnt to classify a rose or a human as ‘living’, rock and water as 

‘non- living’. But why is this so? If we say that ‘living’ is something that moves but then flowing water can be called living, right? That’s not entirely true. Life has a set of properties that an organism has to follow to be called ‘living’. And a wonderful discipline of science studies life in great detail it. It is called biology. The word bio means "living" and logy means "study".


So biology means the study of living things. 

Simply put, anything which interacts with its environment, use energy and reproduce are known as living things. For example, we humans eat food to get energy, feel and respond to our environment and reproduce to make more of ourselves. Many other living things like insects, birds, and animals have the same properties like us so they are all living organisms. Now the question arises how many types of living things are there? And how they are different from us? Biology is a field which answers these questions and many more questions related to living things. 

Characteristics:

There are seven characteristics that a living thing follows and therefore we study this in the vast field of biology. These are:

1) Order:

If you examine a rose from near, you will notice it is very ordered; the petals are whorled around each other with the centre bearing seeds. This illustrates the highly ordered structure that typifies life. Living cells are the basis of this complex organization.

2) Reproduction:

Organisms reproduce their own kind. A mother giant panda will always give birth to a panda not a horse (we all have known that from Kang Fu Panda too).

3) Growth and development:
Inherited information in the form of DNA controls the pattern of growth and development of all organisms. You most probably look like your parents or a close relative, thanks to the genes.

4) Energy processing: 
Humans eat food to get energy. The food they eat has also eaten some food to utilize its chemical energy stored in order to power its own activities and chemical reactions. 

5) Response to the environment:
All organisms respond to environmental stimuli. This is why we laugh when we are tickled. 

6) Regulation:
Many types of mechanisms regulate an organism’s internal environment, keeping it within limits that sustain life. This is also called homeostasis. A lemur sunbathes to help raise the animal’s body temperature on cold 

mornings.

7) Evolutionary adaptation: 
Lions use camouflage 

to blend in with the savannah so they can easily hunt down an animal. Such adaptations 

evolve over many generations. Some new concept like ‘genes’ and ‘DNA’.