Writing in Biology - Section 1

Cohesin is a protein that holds chromatids together. Cohesin is established in cell division during S phase and persists through G2 phase and early mitosis. In anaphase, cohesin along the entire length of the chromosome is broken down by an enzyme called separase, allowing the sister chromatids to separate. It is important that separase functions properly so that both the mother cell and daughter cell each get the appropriate number of chromosomes. Forms of cohesin differ between mitosis and meiosis. In meiosis anaphase I, cohesin along the chromosome arms is broken, allowing the two homologs to separate, and cohesin at the centromere is protected by a protein called shugoshin in order to keep the now separated chromosomes to stay together at their respective centromere.

The Drafts assignment was one in which I found myself struggling. I initially thought that posting multiple times a week and commenting on other people's posts would be a simple task. I found that it was much harder than I expected. I found myself frustrated on Fridays, realizing that I had not completed any posts or comments. This meant that if I wanted to complete this assignment for the week, I would have to put more effort into organizing my time. I set up notifications during the week to try and remember to do this assignment. This did lead me to having a better outcome and I learned that if I want to consistently do something throughout my week I have to make more of an effort to remember. I also learned that spreading out my writing does not necessarily benefit my writing. I write when motivated by my anxiety of needing to complete an assignment. In those moments, I write my best. Therefore I realized that when I did write throughout the week, I ended up deleting all the writing because it wasn’t good. It did help me organize my thoughts, but as for content, it was not necessarily beneficial.

Firstly, the methods was extremely interesting as it forced us to get out of our shell, walk on campus, and observe the nature on our campus, something I do not do too often. I was able to walk around and look at the ground rather looking at my phone in fear of being late to class. Before this project, I thought it would be very tedious as it required some detailed work on a computer using the app that was similar to Photoshop (forgot the name!) However, I loved using this app! It was like an art project. As I did the project, I enjoyed looking at the map of my school, as that is also something I do not do often enough. I also enjoyed following someone else's methods, setting this project up like a scavenger hunt and a challenge. It definitely meant a lot to us as a class because we all got to interact with each other and see the cool findings after the methods were followed by another student. In the future, I now know how to approach scientific figures!

In developmental psych we started talking about morality and when it develops in children. Different psychological experiments have found kids as young as 3 months old have a sense of morality. Multiply psychology labs at colleges all over the country have conducted pupet shows for young children in which one pupet is the "good guy" and one pupet is the "bad guy. The researches show the pupets to the children after the pupet show and over 80% of children chose the "good guy" to play with. With young infants, the amount of time they looked at the "good guy" was more than double the time they spent looking at the "bad guy". This study suggests that we have an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. A similar pupet show was conducted in which the "bad guy" struggled to open a box, the "good guy" would either slam the box shut, or help the "bad guy" open the box. Children prefered the pupet who slammed the box on the "bad guy", showing that they believed the "bad guy" should be punished for his actions. 

Overall, there is a trend of increasing activity with higher temperatures and a decrease in insect activity with decreasing temperature (Fig. 2). We used T-tests to determine whether the experimental means differ significantly from the hypothesized means. In the arena where the temperature was increased, we observed a linear increase in insect activity count from 0 at 10.6°C up to 10 at 21.8°C, persisting at 10 above that temperature (Table 1). Similarly, in the arena where temperature was decreased, we recorded an activity count that decreased from 10 at 26.0°C to 0 at 10.2°C, persisting at 0 under that temperature (Table 1). Figure 2 shows similar trends in activity count for both arenas, with increasing activity being correlated with increasing temperature. This increase in activity is strongly linearly correlated in both groups with an R2 of 0.8874 for the decreasing temperature group and an R2 of 0.8893 for the increasing temperature group (Fig. 2).

Drafts: Before the project started I thought it would be challenging to sit down and write so frequently. I found that is wasnt that difficult to do. Although it wasn't really that difficult, I still prefer to write in larger blocks of time. I don't necessarily want to write an entire essay in one block of time but I like to write large sections and not step away from it until I feel satisfied with the amount of work I put towards something. I found that when I wrote in shorter blocks my writing was more choppy and it was really hard to bring all of my thoughts together in a cohesive way so the assignment was organized. To me it felt a little like busy work trying to write in shorter periods and frequently rather than just once or twice weekly. The drafts may have helped me think about writing more frequently and breaking up the work over the week, however I will most likely still write in larger blocks of time on fewer days a week since I feel like my writing is better organized that way.

“JUUL LABS WAS FOUNDED WITH THE GOAL OF IMPROVING THE LIVES OF THE WORLD'S ONE BILLION ADULT SMOKERS BY ELIMINATING CIGARETTES.”  This quote is significant to this research paper because I do believe that this is what Juul wants people to think, along with ; “We did not create JUUL to undermine years of effective tobacco control, and we do not want to see a new generation of smokers. We believe JUUL can accelerate cigarette displacement.” Is that so Juul? I believe that Juul is in fact doing the opposite. I believe they made this product knowing it could help smokers quit, but with the real intention to help college students have a mini, portable device to carry during their night out. Altria told analysts that Juul generated about $200 million in 2017. The person briefed on the latest results told Bloomberg that Juul's 2018 revenue was $1.3 billion and that it made a profit of $12.4 million.  This $12.4 million dollar profit is clearly not for the smokers who are trying to quit; but for the teenagers and young adults who can use it as a “fun device”.

This semester was the first time I have had any classes with independent research projects. That being said, I really enjoyed the project and poster we did on seed germination and seed coat manipulation. Before the project, My group and i had worked on the proposal and we worked very hard on the logistics of it, so planning the project was actually fairly easy. The only real task was incorporating a new group into the project, but we had already addressed multiple groups in the proposal. The data collection for the project went fairly smoothely and making the poster was very straight-forward especially when the work was split among us. I enjoyed making a poster for the final project because we have done so much writing throughout the semester. The class where we went over making the poster I also found very useful, especially format of images, programs to make them on, and what to include on your poster in general. I thought that the porject assignment was a great wrap-up to the semester. 

The proposal project asked us to work as a group to develop a research project focusing on a specific topic. Before the project, I was excited to develop the experiment with a group and all the obstacles that came with it. As the project progressed, we worked together to solve problems within the experiment and the logistics/feasibility. However, once the proposal project was done, I found it unsatisfying. I felt like it was a bit too much work, especially since some of the proposals did not get used at all. I suppose some of the information put in the proposal helped us with the rearch poster at the end, but not enough (in my opinion) that made it worth doing.