Writing in Biology - Section 1

Animals played key roles in Egyptian beliefs, as they expressed an ideology to support an element of Egyptian social organization. One of these animals, the ferocious crocodile, became of clear importance. This animal displayed two behaviors, one of evil and one of good, which made the crocodile god, Sobek, both feared and worshipped. When hunting, crocodiles hide in murky waters near the banks of rivers in search of their prey. Any unsuspecting woman, child, or livestock who walked nearby could become feed for the crocodile in one quick snap. Sobek may have provided the Egyptians with a sort of public service announcement to keep people away from the Nile or at least vigilant. Crocodiles were creatures to be feared. In the wild they were hunted with spears to keep populations low Why then, were crocodiles also worshipped as a form of good? As annual floods began to recede, crocodiles would be found laying in the fertile soils Egyptian farmers would later cultivate. Therefore Egyptians saw these beasts as a sign of fertile soils. A sign of good. Some crocodiles were even brought into a temple and kept as sacred animals. 

A buffer is a solution that can resist pH change upon the addition of an acidic or basic components. It is able to moderate the pH of a reaction.

A mixture of a conjugate acid-base pair that can resist changes in pH when small volumes of strong acids or bases are added. Buffers are made of a

weak acid and its conjugate base, or a weak base and a conjugate strong acid. In a strong base and weak acid micture, the strong base is added,

and the acid present in the buffer neutralizes the hydroxide ions (OH-). Hydroxide is what makes it more basic. In a mixture with a strong acid and a

weak base, a strong acid is added, and the base present in the buffer neutralizes the hydronium ions (H30+). Hydronium ions make the solution

more acidic (acid H+ or H3O+ workup).

In scientific research, the most reported upon results are the successfully produced unexpected, question begging results that blows away theories of what people thought was true. People only read the conclusive projects, the successful experiments, and the new, best research. This is what sells best, what grabs a reader's attention, what people want to read, and what makes money for the publishing databases and journals and magazines. The world where all science is performed perfectly and all projects end with sweet relief of expectations being met just does not exist. Only the top one percent of the research done in the world gets published and acknowledged. All things are glorified and hyped and the reality gets lost. Expectations get built up that success is measured and you must complete research for it to count. The reality is that failure takes up most of your time in the scientific world. Failure and trouble shooting and learning constantly are all parts of your daily life. You can't find the answer your looking for on your first try ever, and if you do that means it was done before you and thats how you were able to arrive so easily to your conclusion. People who do reserach for the results will never get anywhere because you have to be in it for the learning, the correcting, the fixing, the messing up, the issues, and the wrongs. Otherwise you will never have the patience needed to get to the bottom of anything worth publishing. 

Feedback loops typically include a sensor, control sensor, and an effector which executes the change in the body to return back to homeostasis

How normal feedback loop for blood glucose goes:

1. we eat sugar, blood glucose rises

2. Sensor; pancreatic beta cells sense this and release vesicle stored insulin

3. control center; pancreatic beta cells (still) - insulin travels to bloodstream to fat and skeletal muscle

4. effector: fat and skeletal muscle - stores glucose. has insulin receptors which bind to insulin when it arrives. GLUT 4 (glucose transporters) are signaled to enter plasma membrane to bring glucose via facilitated diffusion back into the cell

5. result: blood glucose levels fall back down 

Steve Lima is an animal behaviorist who was interested in testing a specific form of groiup defense in birds called the many eyes effect. The many eyes effect is described as a strategy animals living in groups use to escape predators. This is the assumption that animals watch their surroundings and are paying attention to the actions of others in the group. 

In Lima's experiment, he wanted to scare a single bird and observe if other birds in his study reacted to the response of fear from the bird he tested on. To do this, he used a long tube with a ball at the end of it and pointed it at the single bird, rolling the ball down the tube to create a scenario where the bird would lock eyes on a ball rolling at a fast speed towards it. The bird fled, frightened, but the other birds did not move. This suggested that in this scenario, the many eyes effect was not taking place.

Signals transmitted between animals usually have to travel some distance, and are often affected by their environmental. The first kind of environmental effect is attenuation, which is simply defined as an increase in the faintness of a sound with increasing distance. Sounds propagate spherically and base attenuation predicts a 6 dB decrease in sound intensity for each doubling of distance. However, sounds rarely conform to this model and experience excess attenuation due to the environment. Excess attenuation is affected by foliage density, temperature, humidity, and many other environmental conditions. Generally speaking, high frequency sounds will attenuate faster because they tend be more absorbed by the atmosphere than low frequency sounds. However, low frequency sounds close to the ground tend to suffer from interference due to sound waves reflecting off of the ground. The second kind of environmental effect on signals is degradation. Sound reflecting off of the environment will cause successive elements to become difficult to distinguish and will blur element form, effects collectively known as reverberation. This effect is especially noticeable in high frequency, rapidly modulated sounds, which suffer from greater scattering and element blurring. Scattering occurs more in high frequency sounds as they tend to bounce off of objects instead of wrapping around them like low frequency sounds. In forests, there are many objects that will cause reverberation, causing element form to break down, especially at high frequency. Rapidly modulated sounds, frequency or amplitude modulated, will degrade much more quickly in high object density environments, due to scattering and interference. Songs with elements in quick succession, such as rapid trills, will become more blurred the higher the object density in the environment. Whistles however will retain their frequency and won’t be blurred when they reflect off of the environment. As such, it is often the case that birds will communicate using lower frequencies and simpler songs in forests as opposed to open environments.

One factor considered in the methods was the time of day the image was taken.  In the creation of Figure 1, the image was taken around 4p.m. on a Friday and there were not many people around while the photos were being taken.  In Figure 2, the outside of Harvest in panel B had a lot more people inside and outside the store. If the image had been taken closer to lunch time on a weekday, this could explain the differences between the number of people in and around Harvest.  In panel C of Figure 2, there was less salad stocked on the salad bar. More customers in Harvest could have removed the salad so the salad bar does not look as stocked as it did in Figure 1. The number of people could have been constantly moving the tongs explaining the different orientations of the tongs in Figure 2.  Since Figure 2’s photos were taken when there were more customers, they could have forced the different camera locations as they were in the way of the photos being taken from the point of view described in the methods. Time was a factor controlled in the methods that may not have been followed in the recreation of Figure 1.