Drafts

There might be a cure for tuberculosis with a short treatment that’s better than the traditional one we have now. Tuberculosis (TB) has been treated with antibiotics since the discovery of streptomycin since 1943. According to a published study in Nature Medicine almost ten million of patients with active tuberculosis are diagnosed every year, that could benefit from this new treatment. 

We rewatched the videos and choose a 5 minute period and 10 behaviors that occurred in that time frame for a reliability analysis. One group member watched the 5 minutes worth of video and used Jwatcher to indicate the times at which each behavior took place. This member rewatched the same five minutes of video and used Jwatcher to indicate the times at which each behavior occurred a second time. The reliability was determined between the two data sets and we redid the indication of when each behavior occurred until the reliability was above 65%. A second group member watched the same 5 minutes of video and indicated when behaviors occurred using Jwatcher. This was redone until there was above a 65% reliability between the first and second group member.

The Infrared Spectroscopy (IR) that was created from the product produced two major peaks outside of the fingerprint region. One peak obtained two spikes, one at 2959.90 and the other at 2873.09. This peak resembles the C-H bonding on the product’s structure. The second peak outside of the fingerprint region occurred at 1739.87. This peak resembles the double bond between the carbon and oxygen atom in the product’s structure. Within the fingerprint region, there was one meaningful peak occurring at 1465. This peak resembles the C-C bonding within the product’s structure.

While I have learned about the cell cycle many times in high school as well as college, I never realized how complex this cycle truly is. I was aware of checkpoints and the steps, but there are so many different "switches," mechanisms, and regulations to make sure cells going through replication come out normal. It amazes me that even though the cycle is so complex, for the most part, our cells and we come out fairly normal and function properly. I guess the many regulations prevent errors from occurring, but it still is amazing! I wasn’t sure what nucleating microtubules was or its purpose, so I looked it up. Microtubules nucleation is the process in which tubulin alpha-beta heterodimers begin aggregation to form an oligomeric tubulin structure, also known as a microtubule seed. The microtubule seed then eventually forms into a microtubule. This means that microtubule nucleation is the initiating step in the formation of a microtubule when there are no microtubules present.

There are many reproductive strategies that fish use. For instance, many fish species reproduce through polygyny, where 1 male will have multiple partners. With this method, the female partners usually choose the territory, not the male. A male will determine and defend its territory and build nests which the females will visit or say in. This of course depends on how sutible the nest or territory is. Fish which are polyandrous have 1 female which reproduces with multiple males. An example of this is the anglerfish. The female in this species is very large. Males are tiny tadpole looking fish, which latch onto the female. Eventually these males become parasitic and literally fuse with the female, becoming a sort of male gonad on the female. This even goes so far as to share the same ciruclatory system. Whenever th female wants to reproduce, the male is signaled and sperm is released into the eggs, fertilizing them.

During the S and G2 phases of the cell cycle, along with the growth and DNA synthesis, part of the cell’s preparation for M-phase includes the duplication of centrosomes. Centrosomes are the microtubule organizing centers in cells and create the spindle poles during M-phase. Microtubules are protein fibers made of tubulin and along with actin and intermediate filaments, make up the cytoskeleton. Not all microtubules are the same and the differences give polarity and directionality to the fibers. They are made of subunits of alpha and beta tubulin. The microtubules extend from the spindle poles of the centrosomes on either side of the cell during M-phase and overlap in the center where other proteins hold them the overlapping units together, thereby stabilizing the spindle system. This utilizes kinetochore microtubules and interpolar microtubules. Meanwhile, the third type of microtubules, aster microtubules, connect to the cell cortex with other proteins.

In this lab, 3-methylbutyl propanoate was synthesized via a reflux of an 3-methyl-1-butanol and propanoic acid. The reflux was performed with the intention to remove the excess water from the solution. The product was weighed 1.12 g and obtained a sweet, banana/pineapple scent. The percent yield was 70.88%. Although this is a relatively high percent yield, it is not 100%. Some reasons as to why the percent yield was not as high as expected could be due to loss of product during transfers between glassware, not allowing the water to completely evaporate in the reflux reaction, or not thoroughly mixing my solutions before and after the reflux reaction. By not allowing the water to fully evaporate or not mixing the solution completely, impurities may have remained in the product, causing a low percent yield.

Nowadays there are genetic investigations that identifies any risk of diseases. By doing this, it allows for people to select a better medication and to be able to get a better personalized care. Gathering this genetic information, it facilitates doctors to choose a better medicine and the correct dose with less side effects for the patient. In many countries around the world the study of genetics in their population successfully identified the risk of developing hypertension. 

Our RESEARCH DESIGN is modeled after a paper that studied spider web production in terms of web mass and temperatures. Fruit flies were dropped into the web with an relatively complex apparatus, beyond the scope of our project, so our inverted cup and straw apparatus will serve as a practical substitute. The methods we will follow also closely resemble Barghusen’s paper. We will run the experiment over the course of five days because six days gave indicative results in one of the papers we studied (Barghusen et al). A temperature gradient was created using Aluminum pans and a hot plate. Our experiment will create a similar gradient using styrofoam boxes and a heat lamp for the warm condition and ice for the cold condition. The Barghusen paper found that web mass was significantly lighter in the colder conditions, so we expect similar results.

Another famous experiment that supports General Relativity is deflection of light by the sun. Previous theories of gravity held that light would not be affected by gravity since it has no mass. However, Einstein showed this idea to be incorrect. Taking a look at Einstein’s Equivalence Principle which relates to gravity, we can imagine this idea. Einstein’s equivalence principle states that the effects of a gravitational field are the same as the effects of those in an accelerated frame of reference. Gravity would cause a person in a gravitational field to accelerate with g, the acceleration due to gravity. However if the person’s frame of reference were to be accelerated at g when they were not in a gravitational field, all of the effects on them would be “equivalent” to how they would be in a gravitational field. Thus, in essence, a gravitational field can be created. Now if a person were in the accelerating frame of reference and were to shine a beam of light out into an inertial reference frame of space, it would appear that the light is curving downward, since the particles of light emitted earlier will be lower than those emitted as the acceleration proceeds higher. And since this accelerated reference frame is equivalent to a gravitational field, the same thing would apparently happen in a gravitational field; light would curve. But according to classical physics, the force due to gravity is mass times acceleration… so how would light be affected since it has zero mass? And the curvature of spacetime explains this problem perfectly, since light doesn’t need mass to follow the curve of spacetime. Thus, according to Einstein, light is deflected by gravity.