cwcasey's blog

Across all species, there are three categories in which a fetus develops in utero. While each are different on their own accord, they can all be traced back to the original embryonic egg called microlecithal development. In order to be classified as microlecithal the eggs must have very little yolk, divide uniformly (2,4,8,16, etc.), be of similar size, and go through a complete division before the next stage of development can begin. Organisms that practice this mode of development belong to the amphioxi and lampreys. Mesolectihal development arose next in amphibians like frogs and salamanders. This development is characterized by the formation of two poles in the egg; one vegetal and one animal. The animal pole is the sight of active equatorial division whereas the vegetal pole doesn’t divide as regularly. Amniotes developed the third and final category of development. Macrolectihal development is categorized by a very large yolk sac on which the embryo develops. The top of the egg has a very small disc of rapidly dividing cells which gives rise to the embryo. Once the embryo forms, it envelops the yolk sac and draws nutrients from it so that it can later form surrounding materials and organelles for waste and gas exchange. This process is very similar to that of placental organisms. The only difference is that placental mammals secondarily derived a microlecithal process from the macrolecithal mode of development.  

While getting the location on a detailed map, I searched the internet for OpenStreetMap. Once on the website, I entered the address for the Student Union building which is 41 Campus Center Way Amherst, MA. After the address was entered, the map was focused so that the Student Union was in the center of my screen and then I screenshotted the image. Afterwards, I emailed the picture to myself in order to be able to access the picture on any computer, especially those located in the BCRC. Once the image was loaded onto the computer in front of me, I cropped the picture so that all that was shown now was the Campus Pond, the Union, the Campus Center, a portion of the library, and about three quarters of the parking garage. Now, the Student Union is the primary point of focus on the map.

    Now that all three images were saved into my email and I could essentially access them anywhere, I proceeded to the BCRC and opened the images on one of the computers provided in the lab. For organizational purposes, the three images were placed into a folder which I created. The program used to assemble the figure was Inkscape. After the program was launched, each image was imported from their folder and embedded into the document. The first image I resized was the picture of the web. This image was made to be 138 pixels wide by 173 pixels tall. The image of the map has the same dimensions as the picture of the web and the two were placed next to each other in the figure. Since the image of the environment was taken horizontally, I decided to make this image 276 pixels wide by 173 pixels tall. This way, it fits uniformly beneath the picture of the web and map. Once it was all assembled, the web is in the top left corner, the map is in the top right, and the environment in beneath them forming a rectangle that is 276 pixels wide by 346 pixels tall.

    Now that the figure is ordered the way that I wanted, I began to label the figures. To start  I made a perfect circle that had a white fill and a black border with a stroke of 1.5. The circle itself is 27 pixels wide, large enough so that a lowercase “a” sized 64 can be fit and centered into the middle of the circle. The circle and “a” were grouped together and triplicated so that labels “b” and “c” could be made. Both letters were also font size 64 and they were also centered in their respective circles. The labels were put into the top left corner of their respective picture; the web was labeled “a,” the picture of the environment was labeled “b,” and the map was labeled “c.” The labels and the images were then grouped together so that they all moved as a cohesive unit and could not be separated. In order to complete the figure I added a filled red circle, measuring 13 pixels wide, to the map at the location of which the web was photographed. Afterwards, a rectangular box was placed around the portion of ductwork that the spider web is located. The box is roughly 35 pixels tall by 40 pixels wide, no fill, and a red border of stroke width 2.0. The box is oriented roughly an inch from the bottom of the image and an inch and a half from the right border. With these additions, I deemed the figure to be complete and exported it as a png file so that I could email it to myself once again and upload later on in the project.

While looking for a spider web to photograph, I found myself in front of the main entrance to the Student Union building. Once there, I noticed that there was a stone pathway abutting the left side of the Union, but before the grassy patch near the Campus Center. This path connects to the tunnel system that joins the Campus Center and the Student Union buildings. While walking down the stairs, I saw metallic ductwork on the right side of the path coming from the Union. Underneath the first set of ductwork, closest to the stairs, I noticed a partial spider web running from the brick wall to the bottom right side of the duct. In order to capture the picture of the web, I stood on the second step from bottom of the stairs and aimed my phone’s camera at the back right corner of the duct where it meets the brick. The camera was held vertically, roughly five inches from the web at a 45 degree angle to get the best view of the web. In order to incorporate my scale, I held my UCard horizontally between my thumb and forefinger, almost pinching it at the bottom for stability. Once I took a satisfactory picture of the web, I climbed to the top of the stairs and turned around to face the pathway once more. At the top of the stairs, I held my camera horizontally at eye level so that the entire environment was visible and snapped the picture.

 

Figure 1. Size Comparison. This picture of a female jumping spider serves to show how large the spider is in comparison to the flower it is resting on. "Don't Blink I'll Jump" flickr photo by Mike Keeling https://www.flickr.com/photos/pachytime/3195623214 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

During the rise of the Amniotes over 330 million years ago, a shift in skull formation took place that is now being used to classify ancient organisms that used to roam the Earth. As a little background, the Amniotic family includes subfamilies like mammals, testudines (turtles), Lepidosauria (lizards, snakes, etc.) and the rest of the vertebral phylogeny. Each subsequent family is unique in that their dermatocranias each formed a fenestration, or hole. The location and number of holes in the skull allow us to classify the organisms into smaller groups. For example, an anapsid organism has no fenestrations in its skull. An organism, like a lepidosaur, would be a diapsid organism and have two fenestrations in its skull. The first of which is the dorsal fenestra located at the junction of the parietal, post orbital, and squamosal bones. The second is the lateral fenestra located at the junction of the jugal, quadratojugal, squamosal, and post orbital bones. Lastly, mammals are synapsid organisms meaning they only have one lateral fenestra in their dermatocranium.

The central dogma of microbiology is the idea that there is movement of information from our genome to a movable RNA strand, and then it is translated into a protein. In relation to cancer, this process is extremely important because the function of the protein can be traced back to the coding of the DNA. Any issues with said protein could help identify how cancer cells pass down cancerous behavior, how such a behavior is transcribed, and what happens when this protein tries to function. The mutation in a genome can elicit a mutation in a proto-oncogene (pushy positive proteins in healthy cells) and tumor suppressors and thus a tumor is now able to form. When a proto-oncogene is mutated it becomes an oncogene and always remains active, signaling to the cell to continuously grow and develop without stopping.

The purpose of this project is to generate a multipanel scientific figure of a local spider web. In order to do so, three pictures were taken; one of the web, one of the surrounding environment, and one of its location on a detailed map. These pictures were taken with a great deal of thought as later on, a peer will be tasked with replicating the figure based on my methods. When selecting a web to photograph, it was important to choose an area that my peers would have regular access too so that they would be able to replicate the figure as best as possible. For example, the spider webs in my basement werent photographed because not everyne would have access to my basement. The figure presented was set up in order to provide a smooth flow between photographs so that it would be easy for the reader to visualize the location, size, and environment which you can find said spider web. A lot of thought and detail was put into the project so that it would be relatively easy to replicate the figure.

This figure comes from “The Journal of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses” under the section  “Short Communication Decresed Incidence of Dual Infections in South African Subtype C-Infected Women Compared to Chorts Ten Years Earlier.” I found this figure to be particularly fascinating because of the way it arranged the four groups of data to use space efficiently while still being easy to look at and follow. This figure does a great job of flowing through the panels and getting the information presented in a clear and concise manor. The legend below also does a good job of explaining the details put forth and walking the reader through the datawithout overwhelming them with information.

Animals communicate within their species via four major modalities. The first of which is auditory signals. These are the calls, whines, and noises that each animal makes to communicate. Each noise has its own meaning behind it and context is extremely important for such situations. For example, during mating season, black-back gulls make a “mew” sound which is a sign of hunger and the desire to nuptial feed. This same sound is made by the gulls outside of mating season in order to call in back up for territorial disputes. Visual cues such as body position, colorations, and even dance or other ritualistic movements are the next modality of communication. These visual cues can be used as signs of aggression, dominance, and of course fertility. The third modality is the animal’s chemical signals. As we all know, each organism has a set of pheromones which elicit a response in a partner. This chemical signal is used to signify the beginning of mating season and the organism’s ability to mate. Lastly are tactile signals. Organisms may touch, poke or prod at each other to send a signal. An example of this once again comes from the black back gulls whose females often rub their heads on a mate’s neck to beg for food and/or sex. Each modality has unique characteristics, and all send different signals to members of the species. Therefore, it is important to analyze the situation to try and decipher the message being broadcasted.

           Animals communicate through four major modalities. The first is via auditory signals. These are the calls, whines, and noises that each animal makes in order to communicate. Each noise has its own meaning behind it and context is extremely important. For example, during mating season, black-back gulls make a mew sound which is a sign of hunger and the desire to nuptually feed. This same sound is made outside of mating season in order to call in back up for territorial disputes. Another modality would be visual cues such as body position, colorations, and even dance or other ritualistic movements which can indicate a number of things as well. The third modality is the animals chemical signals. As we all know, each organism has a set of pheremones which elicit a response in a partner. This chemical signal is used to signify the beginning of mating season and the organisms ability to mate. Lastly are tactile signals. Organisms may touch or poke or pro at each other in order to send a signal. An example of this once again comes from the black back gulls who's females often rub their heads on a mates neck to beg for food and/or sex. Each modality has unique characteristics and all send different signals to members of the species. Therefore, it is important to analyze the situation in order to try and decipher the message being broadcasted.