Writing in Biology - Section 1

As global temperatures rise, phenological changes have occurred causing flowering times of plant species to occur earlier than previously recorded in the past (Bartomeus, Ascher, Wagner, Danforth, Colla, Kornbluth, Winfree, 2011). The New England Cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is not an exception to this phenomena. Cranberries act similar to wild plants in the case of the phenology differing in warmer temperatures. Since cranberries have been an important part of New England culture, cultivators have kept records of cranberry growth and production. Cranberry cultivators have been spraying fungicide on the crop when 10% of the flowers are bloomed. This quantifies timing of cranberry flowering over the years. The earlier flowering times of cranberries affects not only cultivators, but other species that interact closely with the plant. Cranberry shoots and leaves are an important food resource for the bog copper butterfly, Lycaena epixanthe. As global tempertatures rise, the concern for earlier flowering times affecting both human cultivation and other species interations continues to grow.

The visual cliff is a psychological test given to babies of different species. The visual cliff is exactly what is sounds like; a visual illusion of a cliff. The baby is placed on the side that looks solid, and on the other side of the table is a glass pane with a dropp so that it looks like a cliff. The baby's mother stands across from the cliff and tries to pursuade the baby to cross the cliff to test their depth perception. When a baby first starts to sit, they reach right over the cliff, not noticing the dropp. Once a baby has been sitting for a while they do not readily reach over the cliff. Then when the baby first starts to crawl it readily crawls across the cliff to it's mother. However when a baby has been crawling for a while, he does not crawl over the cliff. This pattern continues for when the baby starts walking. The baby must re-learn depth perception at each stage of development. The baby learns through experience sitting, crawling, walking. 

Photosynthesis is the process plants use in order to make food from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. Chlorophyll in the leaves is most responsible for this process. In the spring and summer months, the chlorophyll is abundant and gives the leaves their green color. In the fall, the days become shorter and shorter and the UV index generally decreases. This causes the chlorophyll to decrease in number and therefore the green color fades. The fading of the green color allows other colors to apear on the leaves like yellow and orange, which are caused by different pigments in the leaf. Once winter rolls around, ther temerature, UV index, and daylight hours are too low for the leaves to survive so they die and fall off of the trees. 

Polymerase chain reactions, or PCR, is a technique used in labs to quickly amplify strands of DNA. This lab technique can copy millions of strands of DNA in hours. The process can amplify a known strand of DNA, or an unknown sequence as long as there is a known sequence directly around it. The section of DNA you want to replicate is boiled in order to break the hydrogen bonds holding the double stranded DNA together. A primer is used in order to bind to the now single stranded DNA to make a small section double stranded. Millions of nucleotides, as well as DNA polymerase is added to the DNA. This allows the DNA to grow into a new copy of double stranded DNA. The primers as a part of the new strand of DNA, so you need millions of copies of the primer to create millions of copies of DNA. PCR is an extremely useful technique; it allows scientists to replicate enough DNA to be visible in a gel. 

Children are usually seen as too innocent to do the wrong thing, or lie and make up an incriminating story. However, researchers have discovered that children are extremely susceptible to persuasion and immagination. When being questioned in a crimial trial, children are asked highly leading questions by the investigators. The use of leading quesions over a period of time causes the child to create a story around these quesitions, and believe the invented story actually happened. The children truely believe the story they created happened in real life. Many children studied added details to their stories that were never brought up by the interviewer. A similar study was also done without using leading questions, but by simply asking one question every week for ten weeks. Before the end of the ten weeks, the kids had believed that this quesiton was something that had actually happend to them. For example, one of the questions was: have you ever gotten your finger stuck in a mouse trap and had to go to the hospital? One boy told this story with great detail including how it happened, where it happened, who went to the hospital with him.

Stereochemistry is a term used to describe the orientation and spatial arrangement of molecules, and has very important implications in society, especially in the fields of medicine and pharmacology. A famous case of stereochemistry at work occurred in the late 1950’s. A drug called thalidomide was developed by German scientists in the 1950’s as a sedative and was eventually marketed and sold as Contergan. At the time, not much was known about the effects of medicine on developing fetuses, and pregnant women took thalidomide to relieve their morning sickness symptoms. When producing the drug, it existed in the form of two enantiomers, one form with re medical benefit and the other causing serious birth defects in children. Shortly afterwards the sale of thalidomide was banned. Thalidomide was later discovered to have positive effects on people with leprosy and even cancer treatments. Thalidomide was found to inhibit angiogenesis (the growth and development of blood vessels) which helped treat some cases of blood cancer.

At the end of every summer, we are get to witness the beauty of fall. The gradual process of changing is seasons is hard not to notice. Every fall, the changes in the length of daylight and the drop in temperature causes the chrolophyll in the leaves to break down. As a result, the leaves start to lose their green colors and start falling off because they cannot make food through photosynthesis. The sight that is even more captivating is the variations of red and orange that we see in leaves. Light, temperature and the amount of water available affect this gradient. During low temperatures (above freezing), leaves in maple trees tend to produce anthocyanin which causes a bright red color. The intenstiy of this color increases with rainy days and decreasing with freezing temperature. 

Reid CR, Latty T. Collective behaviour and swarm intelligence in slime moulds Gibbs K. FEMS Microbiology Reviews [Internet]. 2016 ;40(6):798 - 806. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/femsre/fuw033http://academic.oup.com/femsre/article-pdf/40/6/798/10741808/fuw033.pdf

Evangelidis V, Jones J, Dourvas N, Tsompanas M-A, Sirakoulis GCh., Adamatzky A. Physarum machines imitating a Roman road network: the 3D approach. Scientific Reports [Internet]. 2017 ;7(1). Available from: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06961-yhttp://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06961-y.pdfhttp://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06961-yhttp://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06961-y.pdf

I have always been interested in the ways in which dolphins communicate. I spent some time looking into this topic to try and learn more about their communication methods. Dolphins and whales have similar forms of communication. They both create sounds, make physical contact and use body language. They also use echolocation, as a way to navigate underwater. This sense also allows them to hunt efficiently. The way echolocation works is incredibly interesting. They use sound waves that bounce off other objects to get an understanding of their surroundings. The waves that bounce off lets them build an image in their mind of what they are looking out. Dolphins have a more advanced form of echolocation which gives them the ability to hunt in murky water or find food under the sand.