michaelkim's blog

How does alcohol affect our bodies? Well I found out the bad way this weekend by drinking way too much. According to the study done by NIH, alcohol has an effect on your brain, heart, liver, pancreas, and most of your immune system. It is crazy to think and know that many college students knowing that alcohol is bad for us still decide to drink every weekend. Alcohol interferes with your brain's communication pathways and it can also alter how your brain looks and works which I did not know about. Let's be real though, we go to the Zoo for a reason. I definitely do however have to cut back on it because I feel like I function way slower than I normally do which is bad.

I didn’t write how many pictures I had taken and what it consisted of in my methods. My original had 4 pictures as my partner only had 3 which is the main or the biggest difference. I included the name of the plant and my partner didn’t because I did not specify which picture I had used. Also, I didn’t write where I was standing or the position of where the picture was taken and what part of the plant I took a picture of. A is the zoomed in picture of the blossom of the tree in both figures but different blossom was used due to the lack of my description of which blossom it exactly was. Also, the fonts and the size of the fonts used to letter each panels are different. Figure 1 and 2 both have text boxes around the letters yet Figure 1 has a lighter background compared to the darker background in the Figure 2. B in Figure 1 is the name of the plant as B in FIgure 2 is the zoomed out version of the tree with its blossom. C in Figure 1 is the zoomed out picture of the plant or tree itself just like the B in Figure 2 however C in Figure 2 is the map of where the plant comes from. Due to its mismatch in the numbers of the pictures used, Figure 1 has the letter D that shows the map of where the plant comes from just like the Figure 2 C. The location and the position altered the picture that was taken for Figure 1 and 2. Also, the fact that many flowers including my own flower I have chosen were harvested at Durfee conservatory did not help the case of replicating the same figures. Many other factors are included such as the camera that was used, lighting of the room, lack of directions, and arrows.

 First, I went to the google scholar to find the article I was most interested in. Then, I clicked on "Cited by" right below the title of the article. Next step is to click on Get Full Text via UMLinks. Once I did that, I copied the whole link to go paste it to the Simple Text Query. I then typed in my email and then pasted it which gave me the DOI. With the given DOI, I pasted it to the bcrc.bio.umass.edu site where it says biblio, look up with DOI. Then it gave me the citation I needed which ended up like this,

Lo AY, Jim CY. Protest response and willingness to pay for culturally significant urban trees: Implications for Contingent Valuation Method. Ecological Economics [Internet]. 2015 ;114:58 - 66. Available from: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S092180091500097Xhttp://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S092180091500097X?httpAccept=text/xmlhttp://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S092180091500097X?httpAccept=text/plain .

Dark cycle is very similar to light cycle, you would assume that dark cycle doesn't need light as its energy source but it actually does. Dark cycle uses more chemical energy as the calvin cycle enters with its CO2 to make sugars and ATP. As electrons exit the biochemical cycle, electron transport occurs with the help of light. H2O turns into O2 hence why photosynthesis has its formula. There are 3 stages, carboxylation, reduction, and regneration. The products that are formed are 3-phospho-glyceric acid, Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, and Ribulose 1,5 bis-phosphate. We touched upon Rubisco reaction in class as well but not too sure what it is.

Methods :

I went to the conservatory named Durfee located near Morrill I N. It is in between that building and berkshire dining common. There are two doors, I have used a small wooden door that had a sign open 10-4 pm to enter. The first room I entered was the smaller room of the two and cool in temperature yet warmer than outside as it was very windy and chilly that day. The next room was bigger in size of the two and very warm compared to the first room. It almost felt like I was in the tropical grassland as my glasses fogged up by its warm temperature. The plant I found was in the first room, the smaller room of the two. And as soon as I entered the conservatory I looked to the right to find this lovely pink flower with yellow seed-looking things in the middle of it. It is named Camellia Japonica Jarvis Red, skinny tree with pretty pink blossoms or flowers on it. I stood in the middle facing the side with the windows facing Berkshire dining common (to the right as you enter the room) to take the picture of the biggest blossom that was in the corner of the tree. I have used my Iphone 7 plus to take the picture. I decided to take 3 pictures, one of them being the closeup of the flower, and the second one of the same blossom but taking about 3 steps back to get the whole tree. I also took the picture of the name of the plant so it was easily identified. To create the images, I have selected 4 pictures, 2 of them being the flower and tree itself, the third of being the name of the plant and fourth picture being where the plants are from. Furthermore, I made all 4 pictures equal sizes for my multi panel scientific illustration.

Today in class for Biology 494, we read and discovered how to write the cover letter of our resume correctly and properly. I felt that this was important because as we graduate from UMass Amherst, we are going to have to write our resume and submit it wherever we are trying to get into. This class not only teaches you what to do but shows you how to get it done properly which is really nice. It is very similar in many ways with Biology 312 because there are lots of writing done in the course. I am still not sure exactly what I want to do but I am figuring it out as I go. It is scary to know that I will be graduated from college in less than 3 terms.

My methods project needs some work. I felt extremely rushed to create the methods for my partner so it wasn't really good for my partner to follow my directions. It was very interesting to see how my partner took my direction and made the legend. Also, because the directions or what I did was not clear, my partner's and my legend were off. I had 4 pictures and my partner had 3 which was the biggest difference. Overall, it was fun to follow the direction and try to create replication of my partner’s without giving the final product until the end. I found it amusing how we chose the same exact plant in the same exact place without discussing about it. Presenting in the class went smooth and it was interesting to see how different and similar everyone's were.

So I had the first exam for Chem 262 (organic chem 2). It was on spectroscopy, spin-spin splitting, rule of 13, degrees of unsaturation formula, and functional group characteristics. I studied for hours and hours with couple of my friends and I still did terrible on it which I was pretty bummed about. But we all got an email from the professor saying that the class average was way lower than he expected it to be. So luckily for us, it will be scaled heavily. I get chemical shifts and NMR spectrum part but it is extremely hard to draw the structure when given other information. The fact that it was not all multiple choice and the fact that we had to actually draw the structure itself made the exam way harder.

I have been learning about some interesting and incredible science facts. Few I found were pretty cool like the fact that water can boil and freeze at the same exact time blows my mind. Also, when cat falls from anywhere, they always land on their feet because of physics and gravity. This blows my mind because the fact that they can say always is crazy. Lastly, you'd be better off surviving a grenade on land rather than underwater. I would assume that you'd be more safe underwater but apparently it is more dangerous. 

Mine is extremely different compared to everyone else’s that was posted in the main page. It was because I rushed to make the methods and legend of my partner’s methods I think. Also, my direction or I should say what I did was not so clear for my partner so it ended up being way different for my partner’s as well. But overall, it was fun to follow the direction and try to create replication of my partner’s without giving the final product. It was interesting to find out how similar or how different it can be. Presenting in the class went smooth though and it was interesting to see how different and similar everyone's was.