Drafts

It is a well documented phenomena that flowering times of plants have been occurring earlier while global temperatures continue to rise (Bartomeus, Ascher, Wagner, Danforth, Colla, Kornbluth, Winfree, 2011). The New England Cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is not astray to this phenomenon (Ellwood, Playfair, Polgar, et al. Int J Biometeorol 2014). Cranberries in New England have long been important to New England culture, economy, and ecosystems. With cranberries requiring specific cooling hours between the temperatures 32 °F and 45 °F, the climate of southern Massachusetts provides perfect ecological conditions for cranberries. These conditions allowed Massachusetts to be the second largest producer of cranberries in the United States. With global temperatures rising, flowering of cranberries have been occurring earlier (Tikuma, Liepniece  2015). This has proposed issues for cultivators and pollinators alike. Earlier flowering times may be affecting Lycaena epixanthe, the bog copper butterfly (Ellwood, Playfair, Polgar, et al. Int J Biometeorol 2014). A mismatch in flowering times and emergence of the butterflies may have negative impacts on both the livelihood of the butterflies, but also cultivators. After using records of flowering times from the nineteenth and twentieth century, it was found that indeed flowering times occur earlier (Ellwood, Playfair, Polgar, et al. Int J Biometeorol 2014). A total of 43 species were studied to have shown that those species are flowering earlier with warmer temperatures. The cranberry is also flowering earlier with warmer temperatures (Miller-Rushing, Primack 2008). Earlier flowering times have brought on both ecological and economical concerns.

Caffeine is a well known stimulant, and an ingredient in some of the world's most popular beverages. Coffee, tea, and soda are some of the most well known sources of caffeine, beverages that are consumed by people every day all over the world. Caffeine can also be found in chocolate and other foods. Over recent years, I have come across many articles claiming the negative health effects of caffeine, while also seeing other articles claiming the benefits of caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulant, and in general stimulants increase heart rate, blood pressure, and cause the person who has ingested it to be more alert. I'm inclined to believe that too much caffeine is not good for you. Just like anything else, take it in moderation. Continuously increasing your heart rate/blood pressure by the use of anything is not good for the cardiovascular system, and caffeine can have adverse effects on sleep schedule/sleeping in general so it is important to know when caffeine intake is affecting your sleep habits, as bad sleep habits can have many negative effects. That being said, don't think caffeine should be dropped completely from your diet, just remember to take everything in moderation and be smart with your choices.

Today, in my neurobiology and physiology lab, we dissected zebrafish brains that were treated with 0.5 mM PTU and 300 nM T4. Drug treatment with PTU induces hypothyroidism, while treatment with T4 induces hyperproliferation. We are measuring how the different levels of thyroid hormone affects neural stem cell proliferaation. After dissection of the brain, we will mount themn and look under a fluorescent microscope to count indivial cells in the posterior recess and later recess. These two regions make up the hypothalamus which is where neural cell proliferation occurs. 

Foraging has long been studied with the underlying assumption of optimal foraging theory, which states that a foraging animal will try to maximize its energy intake. Thus, foraging behaviour can be described using two simple models: the prey choice model, and the marginal value theorem. The prey choice model has three elements: caloric value of a prey item (E), handling time (h), and search time (S). Profitability is the rate of energy intake for a prey item: Eh. There are two canonical prey item types, prey type 1 and prey type 2, the former has the highest profitability and the latter has the lowest profitability such that: 

E₁/h₁>E2/h₂

Therefore, the only time a predator should eat prey type 2 is when:

E2/h₂>E1/(h₁+S₁)

This yields three predictions: the animal will always try to maximize caloric intake; the animal will instantly shift to the less profitable prey type once the inequality is met; and S2 will not affect the animal’s choice to eat prey type 2. The marginal value theorem is a description of the movement of an animal from one patch to the next. This is a graphical model that describes the optimal amount of time the animal will spend in a patch. The cumulative energy gain in a given patch will increase rapidly and then level off, the tangent to that curve from the point indicating the animal’s travel time gives an optimal point at which the animal should leave the patch to maximize caloric intake.

In a 25 mL Erlenmeyer flask, add benzoin (0.5 g) and ethanol (4 mL) and gently swirl the contents for several minutes at room temperature.  Even if not all the benzoin dissolves, add sodium borohydride (0.1 g) using the microspatula in small increments over the span of five minutes.  For 20 min, swirl the mixture at rt.  In an ice water bath, cool the mixture.  To the flask, add distilled water (5 mL) and HCl (.3 mL, 6 M).  After 15 min in the ice bath, add more water (2.5 mL) to the mixture.  To collect the product, vacuum filter the mixture using the Hirsch funnel and wash the solution with a small amount of ice-cold water.  After the solution dries on the filter for 15 min, determine the crude mass and percent yield (0.544 g, 107.8%) of the product and save some of the crude product (~1-2m g) for thin layer chromatography analysis and melting point determination (134-135 °C).  Using acetone (~2 mL), recrystallize the crude product in a 25 mL Erlenmeyer flask.  Erlenmeyer flask is removed to the heat, add an equal portion of room temperature hexanes (~2 mL) to the solution.  When the white crystals are dry are dry, determine the mass and percent yield (0.278 g, 55.1%) melting point of the pure product (136-137 °C).  For thin layer chromatography (TLC) analysis, dissolve a small amount of benzoin (starting material), reserved crude product, and recrystallized pure product (~1-2 mg) in ethyl acetate (~2 mL).  On one silica gel plate on a line 1 cm from the bottom of the plate, spot the starting material in lane 1, crude product in lane 2 and co-spot the starting material and crude product in lane 3.  On the second plate one a line 1 cm from the bottom of the plate, spot the starting material in lane 1, in lane 2 spot the recrystallized product, and in the third lane co-spot both the starting material and recrystallized product.  The solvent used to run the TLC of each plate is a 9:1 CH2Cl2 solution.  To view the results of the TLC, view them under shortwave UV light.   

During TLC, the starting material is less polar than the product and will be the highest spot on silica gel plate because the presence of the double bounded oxygen decreases the polarity of the substance because it more evenly distributes the electrons on the keytone as compared to an alcohol.  The less polar substance has a less interaction with the silica gel plate and will travel up the silica gel plate more.  Therefore, the product will be lower on silica gel plate because the starting material’s double bonded oxygen was reduced to an alcohol group via nucleophilic addition reaction.  The other two spots seen on the crude material and co-spot TLC plate are the products of the nucleophilic addition of a hydride.  Nucleophilic addition can attack the oxygen from either side and as a result, a mixture of diastereomers could be the product (refer to the image below as the possible diastereomer mix that could be formed from the nucleophilic addition of benzoin).

The other method of identification and purification is through TLC.  Two plates were run, one with a comparison of the crude product with the starting material and another with the final, pure product compared to the starting material.  Because the starting material is less polar, than the expected product as it is a keytone, it will have a larger Rf value because it travels farther up the silica gel plate as it has less interactions with the plate.  The product of the reduction has an alcohol group and therefore more polarity.  As a result, the product is expected to have a smaller Rf value.  In the TLC of the crude 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol, the filter paper of the TLC chamber was likely in contact with the right side of the plate causing the co-spot of starting material and crude product to travel inward. Despite this factor, the results of the TLC were still conclusive.  The spot of just the crude product’s Rf is 0.7708 and there no spot above it indicating there is no remnant starting material.  The Rf of the crude product is also similar to the Rf (0.7917) found in the co-spot of the starting material and the crude product.  In the TLC of the second plate comparing the starting material and the recrystallized pure product, 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol, the results showed a slightly lower Rf value of 0.6808 of just the pure product and 0.7021 of co-spot.  Based on these lower numbers, the recrystallization process must have removed some nonpolar impurities from the solvent.  It also revealed the presence of some of the starting material in the pure product as seen by second higher spot with the Rf of 0.8936 which is consistent with the other starting material spots of the first lane (Rf= 0.8936) and the co-spot (Rf= 0.9149).  Based on the TLC, the final product is 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol with some residual starting material in it causing the lower melting point as well as the second, higher spot of starting material.   

To understand what lead to my sister’s disease and treatment, one has to look at the structure of the hospital.  Biomedicine often tries to find a specific cause to the disease.  For my sister, she was looking for an event which would have caused a UTI which having gone untreated would lead to pyelonephritis. Although she was asymptomatic for a UTI, she recalled a shift she came in early at 11a.m. to cover for understaffing.  Her shift had been so busy that she did not realize until she left the hospital at 11p.m. that she had not gone to the bathroom all day. Likely, this was a the cause of her UTI and she diagnosed it as urinary infrequency, something she consistently suffers from. When she got treated, the ED had been understaffed as well which resulted in her long wait time.  Although the hospital has adequate supplies, the one resource that seemed to be lacking in both these cases were nurses.  Often times, nurses in the ED of her hospital have anywhere from 8-10 patients from critical to stable condition.  For any capable nurse, this patient load would be overwhelming.  There is a flaw to the structure of her hospital which lead to her illness as well as the inadequate care and treatment when she sought out medical care.  Not only did her illness affect her quality of work before she was diagnosed but her disease impaired her from working for a week. My sister’s illness narrative revealed a flaw in the structure of her hospital which perpetuated harm, not only to her but her patients as well as her fellow nurses.  

When she was first admitted, she had her vitals taken as well as blood work and a UA (urinalysis).  With clinical proficiency, she was able to recall her vitals from her stay as all being well above average from her normal baseline.  Her blood work showed a white blood cell count of 22 (above normal).  When my sister told me about her UA results, she said the physician only stated they were “grossly positive.” When I asked her to elaborate on the results, she didn't know precisely the results as she didn't go into much detail with the physician but would assume that meant white blood cells, bacteria, glucose, and blood were all present in her urine.  With these result in hand, the physician started her on IV antibiotics as well as Toradol (IV ibuprofen).  A CT scan revealed her diagnosis to be pyelonephritis (kidney infection) as well as urosepsis.  For most patients, treatment would mean a night in the hospital for monitoring while they administered IV antibiotics.  My sister, unwilling to spend a night in the hospital as a patient, knew exactly what to tell the doctor to make sure she went home.  Although her condition is something that should not be taken lightly, she knew because of her age the physicians would expect her to bounce back relatively quickly upon treatment.  From there, she would just have to inform them she had an appetite and was not in a lot of pain, both things she had become conditioned to over the past week.  She was released from the hospital that night with a prescription for antibiotics in hand.