Perfect Paragraph

To find a spiderweb on the UMass campus, I had to go through many trials and errors. The first spiderweb I found was too small for my phone to recognize. I had to go search for a bigger (more-defined) spider web. After a few days of searching, I found a spider web on the side of the Lederle Graduate Research center. On the section facing the main road (N Pleasant St), there was a spider web at about hip height. Photographing this web was quite difficult. I had to try to photograph it at several angles, with and without flash. I found that flash worked the best in making the web visible on in my photo. I had to angle the phone so that the camera was parallel to the main part of the spider web.

    To create the figure, I gathered the location of the spider web on open maps.EU and my photo of the spider web, and put them in the Inkscape app. I put the map on the left side and the photo of the web on the right side. Then, I created labels to point out where the location of the spider web was, along with a label that highlighted the spider web on the photo.

A map was included in the figure to show where the web was located.  To avoid copyright issues, the map was taken as a screenshot from OpenStreetMap.org. To find the location, I typed in the closest permanent fixture near the bush which was Franklin Dining Hall. OpenStreetMap.org is not too detailed so I screenshotted a larger area to show more buildings and the whole Permaculture Garden. This screenshot was wider than it was tall. The screenshot showed from the Shade Tree Lab past Clark Hall and the grass area past Franklin. Due to the large area covered in the map, I included a red circle which showed the exact location of the web on the bush. In order to not confuse the viewer, I also constructed a key in the bottom right-hand corner that showed the same circle and wrote location of web next to it. The key was placed onto a white background that was outlined in black to make it easily seen.

Many components of the figure were like the original, but there were numerous differences. These differences highlighted details that were missing from the methods section or not written clearly enough. One oversight at the root of a number of the differences was the lack of units of measurement. Each component of the original figure was described with the dimensions in terms of the width and height, but none of them contained the type of unit being used. This resulted in the smaller font in the component label boxes. Had I designated that the entire figure utilized millimeters as the unit of measurement, then the three label boxes would have had a font size that resembled the original more closely. Furthermore, the length and thickness of the red line over the quarter would have also been more like the original. More clearly stating that the line was meant to encompass the diameter of the quarter would have also increased similarity. The objects in the background were more difficult to control because of the weather during the week the replicate was created. Thus, the moisture seen in the replicate was not necessarily due to the instruction of the methods because the weather and time were clearly stated. But, the images showing the location did not include the bike rack structure due to it not being mentioned in the methods that it was in the figure. I only stated the location from where the photograph was taken, not the details of the scenery.

 

All living plants produce energy in their cells through the process of photosynthesis. This process takes place in the chloroplasts of plant cells, and consists of several chemical reactions that allow plants to harvest sunlight and produce carbohydrate molecules. This experiment used two model systems to study the effects of light on photosynthesis rates. The chloroplasts of spinach, also known as Spinacia oleracea, was the first model system studied. Spinach chloroplasts have been used as a model system in several experiments, including being used to study chloroplast DNA synthesis in relation to chloroplast growth and replication (Possingham,1976). The chloroplasts of kale, also known as Brassica oleracea, was the second model system used in this experiment. Kale is not widely used in laboratories when studying chloroplasts, but has been used as a model system in experiments involving the changes of chlorophyll pigment concentrations (Lefsurd, 2007).

African lungfish live in areas where there is a heavy wet season and a very dry season. When it is wet, the lungfish will live in, generally shallow water or very muddy, wet land. It is during this time the lungfish will reproduce. Female lungfish will make a burrow underwater, which it will fill with decaying plant material. The males then guard the egg chamber until the eggs hatch. During this period, the male lungfish will develop pelvic gills. Pelvic gills are very different from respiratory gills. In fact, they act in the opposite direction. Rather than taking in oxygen, they expel it. This is done to oxygenate the water surrounding the eggs, allowing the lungfish embryo’s to survive in stagnant water with their limited gills.

Once mating is over and the waters begin to recede, the lungfish will create a burrow in the ground for itself. While in this chamber the lungfish will excrete a large amount of mucus, filling the chamber and making a mucus cocoon. Lungfish can be sustained in this cocoon for months at a time, until the area in which it lives becomes wet again.

While sitting down on the bottom step of the staircase, a picture was taken of the spider web in the hole of the stair railing. A UMass ID card was placed right beneath the spider web to act as a scale for the web size. The IPhone camera was tilted upwards so that the background of the picture was a green tree; this dark background created great contrast that could be manipulated to make the spider web show up, despite it being bright outside. After a picture was taken that captured the small spider web, another photo was taken 10 steps backwards from the Lewis Hall main entrance. This picture was angled slightly to the right, so that the Lewis entrance sign was at the top left of the picture, and the stairs and right side railing were at the bottom left of the picture. This picture would be used to understand where the spiderweb was located.

Based on the fact that female bats usually travel longer distances than males, there should be areas populated mostly by individuals of one sex or the other. If this is true, when the researchers collected samples in New Mexico it is possible that some individuals had already been travelling for a longer time than others, in which case the physiological mechanisms involved in migration may differ because some bats would be at the peak of their performance while others would be on their way to that optimal state. It is mentioned as well that the wintering ranges of the hoary bat are poorly documented, and there is no data in the paper referring to accurate distances travelled during migration, for which further studies with tracking devices should be performed.

Regarding the fatty acid transporter data, the researchers only studied the mRNA expression of these proteins, but the actual levels of the proteins that got translated were not measured. The study did not consider that if there is no need for upregulation the actual amount of proteins present may be significantly high despite having low levels of mRNA expression.

After collecting the pictures of the web and its location, I was required to find a picture of a map that would show my reader where my spider web was found on campus. My first instinct was to use the map on the “My UMass” App. This App has a feature to navigate campus via a map system. By searching for the building I found the spider in, Morrill II, I was able to screenshot its exact location. I kept both the Morrill II and the Morrill III buildings in the map to show that the hallway the spider was found in was connected both buildings. As a result of collecting all of the pictures needed to create my multi-panel figure, I downloaded the program Inkscape. This program required that I also downloaded the program XQuartz. I uploaded all of my pictures onto the Inkscape canvas and began to experiment with some possible orientations. I decided that having my location pictures on the left side and the spider web pictures on the right side would be the most aesthetically pleasing. First, I selected the hallway and map picture and set them both to equal width measurements of 106.6 mm. This was to create a straight midline within the figure. The hallway picture was placed on top of the map picture on the left side. The heights of the two pictures were slightly different because I wanted the map picture to be emphasized, therefore setting the height to be around 10 mm taller. The midline was offset to the right by about 3 mm in order to emphasize the location pictures. I stacked the three spider web pictures on top of each other on the right side, aligning all of their widths to be around 103.7 mm. The heights of the three pictures varied in increasing order down the figure. I believed this format was the most logical and easy to comprehend.

The rise of our cranium came in steps, starting with basic cartilage structures to eventually the hard bone we have today. First, a chondrocranium formed in cartilaginous fishes like lampreys. A chondrocranium is essentially a brain pan; a sheet of cartilage on which the brain and associated cranial nerves rest and branch out to the body. As can be expected, there was not much protection of the vital organs in these beings and that didn’t come until the formation of a dermatocranium. A dermatocranium was the first bony skull and is also referred to as a neurocranium. Early dermatocrania consisted of just six different bones known as the parietal, post-orbital, squamosal, quadrate, jugal, and quadratojugal. The fusion of these bones articulated with jaws, vertebrate, and other bony structures to protect the vital aspects of the central nervous system like the brain and the spinal cord. A third crania arose in fishes and it is referred to as a splanchnocranium. This is the bony (or cartilaginous depending on fish) structure that supports the gills and other thoracic structures. The splanchnocranium evolved into our axial skeleton over time and is now only prevalent in fishes and marine mammals.