crmckenzie's blog

    To a 10 mL round bottom flask cyclohexanol (2.004g, 20mmol) and phosphoric acid (0.5 mL, 85% purity) was added. The round bottom flask was then attached to a fractional distillation apparatus and lowered into a heated sand bath (40 °C). The mixture was heated so that one drop collected in the distillation vial every 20-30 seconds. When ~10% of the original mixture was left, the round-bottomed flask was removed from the heat. The flask was then left to cool for the dehydration phase of the experiment. Using a pipet and expelling back and forth the product was removed from the round bottom flask into a test tube to start the dehydration process. The cyclohexene was washed with water (1 X 1.0mL). Next it was washed with 1M NaOH (1 x 1.0 mL).

The petunias displayed many differences and the syndromes were split into phenotypic and genetic components. Several differences were spotted including cell-growth and cell-division patterns in the basal third of the petals, longer ventral stamens, nectar production and metabolism, and enzymatic differentiation in the phenylpropanoid pathway. P. hybrids was studied and one to five tries that could be measured quantitively were identified for a syndrome component. Stamen elongation and nectar volume had large allelic differences. All of this data can provide valuable information for understanding floral syndromes.

I skimmed a scientific paper from genetic.org called "Dissection of Floral Pollination Syndromes in Petunia". It discusses animal.mediated pollination and how it is important for the reproductive ways of many plants that have flowers. Many of these pollination systems display complex traits and are convergent, meaning the evolved separately but display many of the same structural features. This paper focuses on the genus Petunia and describes the complez syndromes for P. axillaris, the nocturnal hawkmoth, and P. integrifolia, dirunal bees. Differences in petal color, corolla shape, reproductive organ morphology, amount of nectar, and scent were studied. 

I read an article titled "Science news: Phsicists to probe BEYOND the beginning of time, before CREATION itself" from Express, an online journal from the UK. It discusses that until now, the beginning of our universe was known as a singularity, or a moment beyond what humans and physics could describe. However, modern physicists claim that this is no longer the case. They believe complicated math and the quantum world cancomprehend phenomena such as black holes and even the creation of the universe. Some of the newly developed formulas are shown in the article. Authors mentioned in the article state that Einstein's General Relativity "predicts its own downfall due to singularities". String theory had been used to study the absence of singularities, however it had its fallbacks. Essentially, this article claims that singularity does not exist, and that becuase of this black holes and cosmology can be studied for their truths.

This data set has four columns: gender, GPA, hour studies, and hours slept per week. Just skimming the chart, we tried to look for correlations between hours studied and GPA and hours slept and GPA. This is difficult to do in this format and would be much easier to analyze with a graph, as we are studying more than one variable. In order to properly study these variable, assuming that the hypothesis of the study was that more sleep correlates to a higher GPA and more hours studied correlates with a higher GPA, we would make two different scatterplot graphs comparing these two sets to each other. In both cases, GPA would be the dependent variable. In the end, we made scatterplot graphs and found that there was a positive correlation between hours studied and GPA, however there was no correlation between hours slept and GPA. We have been able to identify a couple of outliers that do not support this hypothesis, as the individual with the most hours studied (50) has a GPA of 1.12.

We also learned about three basic theories of circulation and came up with physiological justifications for each. The first, the fact that blood flow to each tissue of the body is almost always precisely controlled in relation to the tissue needs, can be explained by either low oxygen for an increase in vasodilating products. These do not have to be mutually exclusive. the second was that cardiac output is controlled mainlly b the sum of all the local tissue flows. We explained that cardiac output is dependent on the volume of blood in the venous system. Third was that arterial pressure is controlled independently of either local blood flwo control or cardiac output control. We explained that heart rate multiplied by stroke volume equals cardiac output and that stroke volume is related to venous return but venous return itself is controlled by total peripheral resistance.

I took Statistics 240 last semester, fall of 2017 with Joanna. I also took the honors section of the class to receive an extra credit for slightly more work and meeting time. First we learned about basic things such as stem and leaf plots, which I had learned about previously, and basic linear relationships within statistics. We then moved on to understanding the normal curve. We did probability and related it to the normal curve by asking "what percentage of the time will this happen" and placed possibilities into percentiles. We also studied t and z tables and found that correlation does not equal causation. Oftentimes, when it appears that two variables correlate, it is because of a lurking variable or a confounding variable, and not because one causes the other. We studied chi square tests and learned when to accept and when to reject a null hypothesis. Statisitcs is a form of sciene is is used all the time in science. Without statistics, there would be no quantitive way to back up data or hypotheses. 

While revising my knowledge for my human physiology exam, a few important anecdotes stood out to me. First of all, we learned about the relationship between cardiac output and venous return. Then we learned about the Bohr effect, a physiological phenomenon in which oxygen affinity for hemoglobi ngoes down as pH is reduced to 7.4. As a result it unloads oxgen much more easily than it does in the pulmonary system. pH then rises to bout 7.6 then affinity for oxgen increases, which allows hemoglobin to pick up oxygen. Getting rid of carbon dioxide causes a pH change in the lungs and carbon dioxide diffuses much more rapidly than oxygen. When a person is anemic, it is harder for their hemoglobin to pick up oxygen. We discussed carbon monoxide poisoning as well. Carbon monoxide has a very high affinity for hemoglobin, but no oxygen gets to the tissues when carbon monoxide poisoning is occurring. In order ot treat this, the partial pressure of oxgen must be increased because this will increase the ability of oxygen to get to hemoglobin and therefore tissues. An increase in carbon dioxide would be effective as well as it would increase ventilation rate.

Today I took my first lecture exam for Mammalogy. I learned all of the dietry, locomotive, physiological, and anatomical characteristics for Order Monotremta, Order Metatheria, and a portion of Order Eutheria. I learned that marsupials and eutherians differ in that eutherians have more specialized and diverse front limbs in comparisons to marsupials. Marsupials also have angular processes on their skulls that eutherians do not have. Many marsupails (Order Metatheria) are diprotodont, meaning they have two large, procumbent incisors on their lower jaw. These species are in Family Diprotodontia. Family Macropodidae and Vombatidae (kangaroos/wallabees and wombats, respectively) have diastema, a long distance between incisors and cheek teeth. Tasmanian devils, members of the Family Dasyuridae, are endangered due to a mouth cancer they can spread to one another due to the fact that most populations are very geneticallly similar.