Drafts

There are two ways that the pressure of the heart can be affected immediately. The first is by reducing the volume of the container without reducing the volume of the liquid. This causes a pressure buildup in the hearts chambers. Another is to increase the volume of the liquid without increasing the volume of the container. This also causes a pressure buildup. 

The ice replacement was not as consistent throughout the experiment as we would have liked, and we believe this could have had an effect on the results. Due to the fluctuations in ice replacement and amount of ice added, the consistency of the temperature in the chambers was partially sacrificed. We were able to obtain a temperature reading from three of the four days of the experiment and consequently have an average temperature for the condition. But due to the methods of temperature reading acquisition and instrument used, we do not consider the values to be absolute. This takes away from the result of our experiment and for any future experiments of similar vein. To correct it, we would need to ensure a more consistent ice refresh schedule and implementation of better instruments to constantly observes the temperature as compared to periodically.

Other alterations to the design of the experiment that would be beneficial to the results include a more streamlined environment chamber design and a more consistent ice refreshing procedure. In particular, the cold condition chamber presented some challenges over the course of the experiment that were likely the reason one of the spiders escaped. Because ice was melting within the chamber at any given time, moisture was also accumulating within the environmental chamber. Although this was occuring at a slower rate compared to normal conditions due to the insulatory properties of the styrofoam box, it was still occuring. This in conjunction with ice being added periodically to the chamber lead to the deformation of the divider platform suspending the enclosures within the chamber. We believe that this created an opening and allowed one of the spiders to escape from its respective enclosure. To compensate for this, changes to the design and material for the cold condition environmental chamber would have to be made.

In order for the results of this experiment to be more meaningful, a number of changes to the experiment itself would need to be reevaluated. For example, more spiders involved in the experiment would add much needed numerical significance to the data collected. Using only twelve spider across two groups was simply not enough. Also, the species of spiders was not homogenous and that definitely had an effect on the results; although all of the spiders looked similar enough and came from roughly the same environments (residential basements), their specific web making tendencies could have differed dramatically. Thus, the necessity of using the same type of spider and a larger sample are highlighted.

The findings stated above could be attributed to a number of different explanations and we will now discuss a subset of them. For the observation that the warm condition and the control condition resulted in a similar amount of web production, the increase in temperature did not seem affect the spider's ability to construct webs. Perhaps the temperature we raised the enclosures to (28.2 degree celsius) were not enough to make a meaningful impact on the amount of web produced. Another possibility is that the increase in heat actually affect the spider’s ability to produce normal web; maybe they did make a larger web but the heat caused it to comprised of thinner strands.

The data we collected partially partially coincided with our original hypothesis. We assumed that the warm condition would have a greater mass compared to the control after the experiment was completed. In addition, we believed that the cold condition would have the lowest web mass of the three conditions. We observed that there was not much of a difference between the warm and condition and the control condition in terms of web production. That being said, the cold condition did show the lowest web mass at the end of the experiment. However, we believe these findings to be incidentally biased due to the circumstances and occurrences during the course of the experiment.

After allowing four days to elapse, all the data was collected. We observed that the condition with the least amount of web mass was the cold condition. Furthermore, the warm and control conditions did not vary significantly in terms of the amount of web mass. The observation of the cold condition resulting in the lowest amount of web production had some confounding variables. Mainly, one of the spiders escaped its enclosure on the third day of the experiment. This would certainly lead to less web production because the spider was not present to produce web on the final day of the experiment. In addition, the ice replacement was relatively inconsistent due to time constraints. However, the other three spiders completed the entire experiment and the effect was still observed among those three.

The electron carrier’s role in energy transfer is to act as a middleman in the transfer of elections between reactions. A typical example of an electron carrier is Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD⁺), which has an oxidized and reduced form (NADH). The term oxidation refers to the loss of electrons while reduction is the gain of electrons. For every oxidation, there must be a reduction because there cannot be any free electrons in the cell. The oxidized and reduced forms are called the “conjugate base pairs” within a reaction. Reduction potential, or the affinity for electrons, is determined experimentally using a volt meter to measure electron flow. It is related to the H⁺ ions in a reaction; if a reaction has a positive reduction potential, the oxidized form has a higher affinity for the electrons than H⁺. On the other hand, a negative reduction potential has an oxidized form with a lower affinity for electrons than H⁺. Additionally, a transfer of e^- from molecules of low affinity to high affinity releases energy and is spontaneous. 

Metabolic coupling is the process of using energy released from an exergonic pathway to provide energy needed for an endergonic pathway. The main goal of metabolic coupling is to end up with a negative change in free energy (delta G). A negative change in free energy indicates a spontaneous reaction. Metabolic coupling can exist in three forms: between biochemical pathways, within biochemical pathways and within chemical reactions. Energy transfer within metabolic pathways involves the removal of phosphate groups through hydrolysis, thus resulting in a large negative free energy value. The amount of free energy available in the bond is called the phosphoryl group transfer potential. Phosphorylation is the reverse reaction of adding phosphate groups through the input of energy (ATP).

Transgenic Organisms can be used in three different ways. They can introduce new genes into the genomes of target species (for example making the target organism produce a certain protein that is doesn't naturally. They can be used to remove the function of certain genes in the target organism either by target distribution or by inhibition of translation. The third way they can be used is to edit Genes or make specific changes to the genome of the target organism.