Essays on Purves

Discussion Board 5

Part 1 Various plants have unique adaptations that help them in surviving in their environments and carrying out various biological activities such as flowering and reproduction. These modifications are either present on the leaves, stems and roots. An example of a plant with such a modification is the potato plant. The potato plant, has an underground stem (stem-tuber) which is a swollen part of the stem that is used to store food, mainly starch, for the purposes of reproduction when the stem is detached or removed from the rest of the plant (Lakhotia et al., 2014). While this is ...

Stem cells are rapidly differentiating cells that can differentiate into different types of cells (Sadava, Heller, Orians, Purves and Hillis 408). Stem cells are normally found in multi-cellular organisms (Banzhaf and Yamamoto 102). The stem cell is located in the different tissues of a fully developed adult organism. Examples of these tissues include the skin tissue, inner lining of the intestines and the bone marrow (Sadava, Heller, Orians, Purves and Hillis 408). These tissues usually require frequent cell replacement. The stem cells are also found in the meristem of plants. The function of the stem cell is to replace ...

The Left versus the Right Sides of the Brain: Their Impact on Learning

The higher brain – the cerebral cortex – is anatomically divided into two hemispheres – the right and the left. Although the two hemispheres are basically similar in structure, microscopic differences exist, and their functional abilities and propensities are different. These functional differences are described as ‘hemispheric asymmetry’ (Hellige, 1993). The left hemisphere controls sensory and motor functions of the right side of the body, and vice versa. The layman’s percept is that the left hemisphere is responsible for symbolic processes, production and perception of language, and rational thinking, while the right is involved in artistic, intuitive, and creative thinking. This ...