Drafts

To make my figure, I needed to get a high quality map illustrating the location. Thus, I went to openstreetmap.org and typed “Amherst, MA” into the search bar. Next, I zoomed till Integrated Sciences Building came to focus. I zoomed until the right side of ISB only showed Life Sciences Laboratory and the left only showed till the Campus Bookstore. The upper perimeter cut off at the East Experiment Station and the lower perimeter showed till Peet’s Coffee. When I had a zoomed-in version of the map that I wanted, I clicked on the link to share and downloaded the image in PNG format.

Observation and inference are two terms that are closely associated but should not be confused as synonyms. Whereas an observation is the direct relaying of what happened, inferences are possible explanations behind those observations. Observation is the direct information we have gathered, and inferences are what we can extrapolate from those information using prior knowledge. For example, if we see smoke wafting through the chimney, we can predict that someone has lit the fireplace. The smoke in the chimney is our observation. We don’t directly see the lit fireplace, so this is not our observation, merely an inference stemming from the fact that normally chimney smoke results from a fire.

The picture of the spider web was taken on an overcast day. The time of day was 11:55am so the sun was overhead, but not shining bright due to clouds. Although clouds filled the sky, no precipitation had fallen. The air was still as there was no wind. It was chosen to take the picture during this weather because in the fall this weather is present a lot during the Fall. 

When categorizing animal behavior to make an ethogram, there are a few things to keep in mind.  Firstly, if a behavior happens only once or for a short duration of time it would be classified as an event. For example, if I were to do a single push up or throw a ball one time, these would be called events. However, if a behavior were to happen multiple times it would be known as a state. Let’s say I were to do 10 pushup or throw a ball five times, these would be sates since they are prolonged, repeated behaviors. The next important concept is that groups of behaviors can be brought together and called bouts. A bout is a series of movements or behaviors that ultimately reach the same goal. For example, a lion would stalk its prey, chase it down, attack it and eat it. All these behaviors are distinct and separate events, but when looking at the broad spectrum, they are all joined together to reach the goal of feeding and can therefore be classified as a bout. Lastly, it is empirical to make accurate observations and record the data thoroughly so that you can have as accurate an ethogram as possible. Programs like JWatcher allow you to enter behaviors as key codes so that the data collection process is fast and accurate.  

I needed labels on each of my pictures to enable me to easily identify them when referencing my figure. I used the text feature on Inkscape and typed the letter “A” off to the side of the figure. The letter would be hard to see on top of my pictures, therefore I used the rectangle and square feature to create a box around the letter. I edited the box to obtain a white background allowing the black font letter to be easily visible. I selected the letter “A”, raised it to the top of the box and centered the letter using the alignment settings on Inkscape. To move the letter in the box as a full unit, I selected both and grouped them. This label is now completed, yet I needed four additional labels for the rest of my pictures. I selected the “A” label and duplicated it four times. The text feature was used to edit the duplicates to display letters “B-E”. The labels were then positioned in the top left corner of each picture. Lastly, I believed an arrow pointing to the corner of the groove in the wall that the spider was found would be necessary to the readers understanding of the location. The straight line feature was used to make a diagonal line that was around one inch in length. I thickened the line and added an arrow marker to the end. The arrow was positioned pointing down, from the top right side, to the bottom left corner in the hallway that the spider was found.

           My figure was finished and ready to be saved and exported. First, I selected document properties to resize page to content. This allowed my image to be the same size as a piece of paper. I set the background color to be white by selecting the bottom “A” column and moving the curser to the right. This ensured that my figure was not transparent. I saved my figure with the title of my username, followed by “-original.svg”. Lastly, I exported my figure as a PNG and set my image width to 1200 pixels. My multi-panel figure of my spider web and its location was complete and exported.

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.  

Processivity is a measure of how much an enzyme can catalyze reactions without freeing its substrate. Kinesin, a motor protein that moves along microtubules, has notable processivity. It can move over a large number of subunits on the microtubule before it detaches or diffuses away. This is a rare trait for cytoskeletal motor proteins. Myosin spends most of its ATPase either weakly bound to actin or dissociated from it. It is very beneficial for kinesin to have such a high processivity so that new tubulin subunits can be added to the filament before many dissociate, which allows the microtubule to grow rapidly. This is important because microtubules are required to be dynamic and must grow to transport organelles, separate chromosomes, and sometimes facilitate in cell movement.

After you eat a meal, the glucose levels in your blood rise. This stimulates your pancreas to secrete insulin, which binds to receptors on your liver, muscle, and fat cells. When insulin binds to the extracellular domain on these receptors, it causes the intracellular domain to phosphorylate itself, which triggers a whole phosphorylation cascade including different proteins. This cascade prompts glucose transport proteins to fuse into the cell membrane, allowing glucose in the blood to pass through them and into the cell, where it can be utilized to provide energy by making ATP. 

The lipid bilayer that surrounds most cells is an integral part of how life developed. As the name suggests, a bilayer is composed of two different layers of molecules, in this phospholipids. The phopholipid has polar phosphate head and a nonpolar fatty acid tail. The two phosphate heads are pointed toward each other on the inside of the membrane and the fatty acid tails point outwards toward the extracellular environment and inward towards the intracellular matrix. However, this makes it difficult for polar molecules to cross the boundary. Special transmembrane transport proteins are needed to transport different molecules. In the case of water, a critical molecule for life and one that is polar, it falls to the aquaporins to be the transport molecule. Water transports across membranes through osmosis, the diffusive transport of water, but due to the high permeability of epithelial cells, it was suspected that there were additional molecules helping in the transport of water. Some cells leak water and water still moves by osmosis, but cells with aquaporins transport water much more rapidly. Aquaporins are selective in their transport of water molecules in and out of the cell, and do not allow for the passage of other solutes and ions.

Voltage and current for the resistor have a positive linear relationship. As voltage increases, current increases and there is a directly proportional relationship. Voltage is equal to the product of the current and the resistor constant. The parameters in the model are the slope and the intercept because the model is a straight line. The y-intercept is 0 because when the potential difference is zero, the current is also zero. The slope of the graph represents the resistance of the circuit. According to the LINEST function, the slope is 96.20658458 and the intercept is -0.01947332587.