Drafts

In a study, ghrellin was elevated in mice (either through caloric restriction or subcutaneous injections) showed less depressive like symptoms in forced swim test. On the chronic social defeat stress scale, ghr-KO mice showed more social avoidance than wild-type after periods of struggle with a dominant animal. Systemic treatment with a neuroprotective compount enhanced neurogenesis in the hippocampus leading to antidepressant effects - it was speculated that ghrelin’s antidepressant properties are mediated by neurogenic properties. The same effects were seen after administration in mice that had undergone olfactory bulbectomy, same with group with reduced AVP gene expression. Ghrelin also increases noradrenergic and serotonergic  transmission. Two studies suggested contrasting results - increased long term ghrelin caused depressogenic properties through decreased serotonergic transmission in the dorsal raphe nuclei and pro depression effects; and then injecting anti-sense strand into the lateral ventricle induced anti-depressant effects(but authors did not measure ghrelin level to give a clearer indication that the observed effects are related to ghrelin system).

In intersexual sleection, there are many, nonmutually exclusive indirect benefits to the female and her offspring. Females wnat to receive "good genes" for their offspring, and they ensure this by evaluating a potential male in a number of ways. Females will look for high amounts of symmetry because it has evolved to represent developmental stability. They will look at display vigor and quality, like in spider displays and canary trills. Females will counter in longetivity, meaning that they will generally go for an older male sice he has alreay proven that he can live long. In Bowerbirds, the amount of decorations on a male indicates his age, and therefore his wisdom. Freedom from disease is anotehr factor, and this could be indicated by plumage. Potential handicaps could also be something the female considers, in the thought process that if his male can survive with a handicap, he must be really otherwise fit. Lastly, lots of females try to mate with the correct amount of inbreedng and outbreeding in mind, based on the hypothesis that local mates are better. Swans do this by looking at facial markings, and mating with those that are similar but not identical. 

Intersexual selection in animal behavior involves mate choice, which is usually done by the females since they invest more energy into each offspring. Some direct benefits of a choosy female include nuptial gifts, parental care, territory quality, and resource benefits. Nuptial gifts are things a male might bring a female to encourage her to mate with him. These are a lot of the time rey items, such as in the empid fly, spermatophores, such as in insects or salamanders, or body parts, like how female crickets are allowed to gnaw off the wing of a male they are mating with. Being choosy can benefit the female by providing her with better parental care. This is true in stickeback fish, where males with red bellies are preferrable since they indicate the mall will be better at fanning the eggs with oxygen after they are fertilized. Territory quality is another way the female wins by being choosy. Lots of female birds will assess a territory established by the male before choosing, ensuring her a safe place to mate and rear her young. Lastly, there are other resource benefits a hosen male may provide. In chimpanzees, males provide the females with food, and in dung beetles, males provide a dung ball for feed and a place to mate. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, meaning that in any given species, more than one can be true at any time.

• The reflection assignment helped me build self-awareness of all the projects I conducted during the semester. This assignment helped me take my time and ask my self some important questions regarding my writing process. By doing this, I gained a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. 

• I would like to end by writing a quick note to say that I enjoyed your class.  I always learned something that challenged my scientific writing perspectives and enjoyed doing so! Thank you, again, for such a wonderful learning experience, and good luck in your new class.

• I was excited about conducting my project in the class. Thanks to my team, I had a great time conducting and completing my research project. The research project had us divided into teams to figure out a scientific question. Our work was performed outside of class. Furthermore, the project was one of the most important activities for me because it allowed me to creatively apply scientific and technical practices to use. The semester project has allowed me to learn about the process that goes into creating a science project. Such skills will definitely help me in the future to solve my own research problems. 

• My team wrote about hox genes. I found it difficult to choose a scientific project regarding hox genes. At first, I was confused about how the project was going to go forward, but my team managed to work on the project early and turn it in on time. Similar to the methods project, the proposed project will help me write a proposal for my honor’s thesis. Although the two will not share the same topics, I have learned about the process regarding writing a scientific proposal. Things to keep in mind are to avoid wordiness and use an active voice when writing scientific work. 

• In my methods project, I constructed a complete multi-panel scientific figure of finding an evidence of phytophagy. In my project, I constructed a complete figure that showed care and attention to detail. My title was appropriate for the manuscript. I have learned to keep paragraph content aligned with my topic sentence, to avoid hypotheticals, and to use consistent terminology. Such skills will help me write my honors thesis this coming semester. 

• I thought that the perfect paragraph would be graded based on my grammar. For this reason, I subscribed for a semester-long Grammarly website. I did not realize that my classmates would comment on my writing. Their comments helped me learn basic grammar rules and helped me improve my writing. I think that I got better each week, I posted my perfect paragraphs. At first, it was a bit difficult correcting my drafts and then posting my perfect paragraph. However, with a little bit of practice each week, I have gained the necessary skills to effectively write every day and fix my grammar mistakes. Such skills will be beneficial in the future, such as graduate school.  

• Before writing the drafts, I had not realized that writing every day would have been beneficial. More often I wrote I got better at transferring my thoughts into my writing. I wrote about things when being impressed by something, when events inspired me and I knew that I wanted to remember them or analyze them. It so happened that it’s easier for me to analyze when I write down thoughts, rather than keeping them in my head. Although I do not plan to write every day, the draft assignments have helped me improve my writing thought process. Such skills will be beneficial in the future, such as graduate school. 

The Perfect Paragraphs were easier to do since it was just improving a draft. However, the comments were slightly time consuming as sometimes people did not have improvements to make or sometimes the posts would have reached its limit for comments. The paragraphs helped me refine my writing further and realize that even though I am trying to proofread as I write, there are always corrections to be made if it is read once more at the end. The methods project was very different from all project reports I have written. I had never paid so much attention to detail as much as I had for this project. I personally had a great time doing a write up on it. It was a very unique way of understanding the whole idea of replication as well. I also found the approach for finding differences very interesting – making inferences for the differences rather than finding faults.