sworkman's blog

The question whether an organism is intrinsic is a very subjective one. To be intrinsic is to be essential within itself; unlike instrumental which is to be useful to others. In a sense, every living thing has intrinsic value just in the fact that it is living because there is value in life. However, it seems that some organisms may hold more value than others. A good way to determine how high an organism’s value is, might be looking at how long it has existed on this planet and how essential it is for life on this planet. Based on this, single celled organisms like bacteria are the most intrinsic, before them no life existed and without them no life would exist. Bacteria allowed oxygen to accumulate which led to more complex organisms, or prokaryotes, to evolve. The next large step was plants and trees and their appearance seems to jumpstart the evolution of many of the more advanced organisms around today.

To be intrinsic is to be essential within itself; unlike instrumental which is to be useful to others. In a sense, every living thing has intrinsic value just in the fact that it is living because there is value in life. However, it seems that some organisms may hold more value than others. A good way to determine how high an organism’s value is, might be looking at how long it has existed on this planet and how essential it is for life on this planet. Based on this, single celled organisms like bacteria are the most intrinsic, before them no life existed and without them no life would exist. Bacteria allowed oxygen to accumulate which led to more complex organisms, or prokaryotes, to evolve. The next large step was plants and trees and their appearance seems to jumpstart the evolution of many of the more advanced organisms around today.

Humans are rather insignificant in the grand scheme and seem to contribute a much higher amount of damage than good. It is Important for humans to minimize their damage because even though we don’t have much intrinsic value. We inflict a lot of harm to intrinsic organisms. Our species has colonized much of this planet, killing plants and trees in mass amounts. We have also killed large amounts of bacteria and their like in attempts to be sanitized. I believe humans need to take a giant step back, realize our value, and start doing less harm and more good, maybe even raising our value in the process. 

Movement Intention After Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans

Main Points – The point of the experiment was to determine the intention vs action parts of the brain. There are different parts of the brain that when stimulated, make the patient feel a strong will to move a certain region. The regions in the right inferior parietal regions made patients want to move their hand or feet, whereas stimulating the left inferior partial made them want to move their mouths. They also did further stimulation and found patients believed they had moved or talked.

Methods – The method used for this experiment was using electrical stimulation to trigger certain parts of the brain while the patient was undergoing brain surgery for which they were awake. These were all tumor patients.

Shortcomings – This experiment is limited by the amount of people that undergo this type of procedure and it is all based on their responses. There isn’t physical data; the results are based on how the patient describes these sensations.

Figures – The figures are used to demonstrate where the brain was stimulated and makes the experiment easier to visualize.

Questions – It seems that a major question posed was whether the intention or the action came first. The article touches on this briefly, but its hard to tell if they came up with a solution. And how much of this experiment was based off educated guesses or was some of this information known? What is the new information?

Keywords – inferior parietal, intention, cortex, stimulating, SMA

On Wednesday I spent a good portion of the day traveling around campus either by walking or in a car. I walked to the dining hall in the afternoon, then to my first class in the research towers. From there I walked to Morrill where I spent the majority of my day, only walking in between classes to the next room. After three classes there I walked to my dorm before walking to the library. I got picked up in a car from the library to go get food, but walked from the dining hall back to my dorm.

Both of theses scientific articles are dealing with native and non-native species however, they focus on different aspects of the subject and structure the two papers differently. The level 1 headings for both papers are the titles ‘Origin matters: widely distributed native and non-native species benefit from functional traits’ and ‘Non-native species and rates of spread: lessons from the Baltic Sea’. The level 2 headings in the first paper are the headings to each section of the paper such as the Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Conclusion. These sections were split into sub sections such as ‘species selection’ or Trait selectin’. The second paper has the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion and Discussion’, but it never titles a methods section, the paper seems to not discuss methods and jumps right into results. The body of the paper has sub headings, but it would have been clearer if there was a result heading.

            The layout of the papers may be different, but it seems that the structure of the individual sections for both papers are relatively similar. The Introduction and Conclusion sections are more classically set up; the first paragraph serves as an introduction to the rest and it is more conceptual writing. The results sections for both papers are less structured. The first paragraphs tend to lead right into the information and aim to present data not ideas.

            The structure of the paragraphs follow a similar model to the sections. If the paragraph is in a more conceptual section, then it is more structured. These paragraphs have a topic sentence that is an overview of the following paragraph. The paragraphs in the results section tend to dive right into the information. 

The purpose of the methods project is to test whether one's written experiment is sufficient to be replicated by another party. This is an important skill to have in the field of biology because any work that is published needs to be able to stand alone; there is no explaining what you've done, only the paper is able to guide someone else. This project needs to be reasonable enough for someone to try, detailed enough for someone to understand and thorough enough for someone to reach the same results.

Fred Sanger received his education at Cambridge University where he later continued in research on the structure of proteins. His first major project was on the structure of Insulin. He used the Jigsaw puzzle method to break apart the molecule so that he could piece it together based off of the properties of the amino acid chemical bonds. This allowed Insulin to be sequenced for the first time and his method won him his first Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He later went on to work on sequencing DNA. There were some methods already established for this, but they were not realistic for common use due how complicated and time consuming they were. Sanger created a method that would stop the strand in replication at specific nucleotide so that when put through a gel the location of certain letters could be sequenced. This method was common place for some forty years after he published it. Sanger won his second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work, making him one of two people to win two Nobel Prize's in the same field.

An unknown organism was given for observation. The body of the creature is approximately 14mm in length and 3mm in width; it also has a flexible thin tail around 17mm long. The specimen is worm like in movement, extending and contracting its body to propel forward. It is a translucent yellow or tan color so some of the interior is visible through the first layer. Underneath this layer, it can be seen that at both ends of the body it appears to be black, while the middle body is white. At the back the darker portion extends through the tail and is exposed at the tip. The specimen is very active. At first, the organism moved along the edges of the dish it was contained in, occasionally stopping at the edge, but as time went on it tried to scale the sides of the dish more often. It would be useful to know what environment the specimen lives in and what it consumes.

Observing 1/26/18
• Somewhat transparent exterior with a yellow/ tan tint
• Short cylindrical body with long thin tail at end, tail is rigid, approximately the length of the body and a third, black tip that is not covered by transparent exterior
• Moves in one direction in fashion of inch worm, approximately seven sets of feet/ grips
• Can see the head (front) is a darker color, seems to have some type of opening that is exposed when elongated (possible mouth)
• There is also a darker section at the back that extends through the tail
• The middle of the specimen appears to be white, but it does not seem to one piece of material, but possibly separate strands (two lines that run along the back and a more serpentine pattern on the bottom)
• There are black specks covering this white portion of the body
• Constantly moving, often around the edges of the dish, going up sides when able to
• When it reaches up the side it seems to hesitate with head in air (possibly its major sensory location)
• Occasionally flips itself over, but has no trouble correcting itself
• Has remnants of previous space, shavings of some type, possibly normal habitat is underground or someplace where it can burrow
• Tail doesn’t seem to serve immediate purpose, possible stinger, stability support, slightly flexible, possible it helps move through habitat
• Started to learn sides of dish, almost escaped once and continuously tried the same thing, no longer went around the sides, but went straight to edge
• Is this its final state or this a pupal stage?
• What is its ideal habitat?
• What does it eat?
• Is it used to being in an environment with light?
• What is function of tail?
• Is it in the same family to an inch worm?

• Body is 14mm when resting (extended), constricts down to 11mm
• Tail is about 17mm, the black tip accounting for just under 1mm
• 21mm in total length
• Approximately 3mm in width