vvikhrev's blog

Observation: A child starts crying and looking for their mother when she leaves the room
Inference: The child is attached to his mother and finds comfort when he is with her

The heart is located at the center of the circulatory system and delivers blood to every part of your body. Before deoxygenated blood coming from veins fills the right atrium, it is assumed that the pressure in the right atrium is 0mmHg at diastole. The blood flowing though the right atrium passively fills the right ventricle as it passes the open atrioventricular (AV) valve. This stage is called diastole because the heart is relaxed and not contracting yet. Systole (contraction) begins when the pressure in the right atrium increases by a small increment to push the rest of its contents into the right ventricle. This causes the pressure in the right ventricle to exceed the pressure of the atrium above it and the AV valve to close shut. The valves close tightly with the aid of the chordae tendineae and papillary muscles. The right ventricle pressure begins to rise. The aortic pressure is the determinant of our blood pressure and has a normal range of 80-120 mmHg. As the ventricle builds up in pressure by isometric contraction, it surpasses the aortic pressure and the aortic valve opens. As the right ventricular pressure begins to decrease after it ejected blood into the aorta, it reaches a pressure below 80 mmHg and the aortic valve closes. The ventricle will cease systole and go into diastole. The ventricle ejects 70 mL of blood into the aorta. The right ventricle's pressure will decrease to a point lower than the pressure in the right atrium, the AV valve will open and the right ventricle will be filled passively once again. This similar process occurs on the left side of the heart as the left atrium fills with oxygenated blood that came from the lungs. This blood vessel network is crucial to survival and any deviation from it can cause serious heart disorders.

- it is very humid and moist when you walk in
- most things aren’t labeled in the first section of the conservatory and instead there’s a map at several places that contains “coordinates”
- there are a lot of trees and flowerless shrubs/bushes
- everything is green
- theres a small bridge with a small pond with a little bit of fish
- there are 2 benches on the left side
- you can’t see the outside
- it’s actually very clean and organized here
- second section contains a funny looking tree that is called “powderpuff tree”
- the cattleya was located in the 3rd section on the right side
- it is a very small plant with only three pale yellow flowers
- isn’t eye-catching, leaves are bigger than the flower itself

This chapter included two examples of lab reports. The first one was a typical lab report written during an undergraduate biochemistry lab that particular week. The second lab report was for a much longer inquiry-based microbiology project. The weekly lab report is less formal, more “raw” and probably not as detailed as the second report. It appears that the abstracts of both of the papers follow the same format and contain all the necessities. The differences start to appear in the introduction. The weekly lab report contains less background information therefore it contains a more thorough explanation of purpose and a general overview of the experiment. Both of the materials and methods provide the steps and purpose of the method. I didn’t expect to see calculation and formula steps but considering this is a short lab report and is not as formal, it is acceptable. Also, lab reports such as the first one usually include raw data (and calculations) to let the instructor evaluate howw you arrived at your conclusions and your thinking process. I didn’t see any citations for other sources. The results and discussion section were combined which allowed the student to state and interpret their findings and discuss possible limitations and answer any questions that were asked by the instructor. There is no comparing and contrasting with other sources and there is no “conclusion” paragraph.
For the longer report, there is a more informative paragraph. The introduction contains a paragraph of background information and citations, it is much longer, the unknown is stated, the purpose is clearly stated in the last paragraph and so is the experimental approach. There are separate titled sections in the Materials section and provide enough details so that someone else can repeat the experiment. For every experimental approach, potential outcomes and their meaning are described. The results section is very long and also subdivided into sections. It is important to follow the order of content that was presented in the materials and methods section. Figure titles start with a short title and additional information such as explanations or abbrevations. The first paragraph in the discussion section contains main findings. This section also compares and contrasts the stdy with others in the field. Last paragraph summarizes results, provides the conclusion and significance.

Theory: broad explanation and prediction concerning phenomena of interest
EX: Diffusion of Responsibility Theory: the more # of bystanders/witnesses to an event that calls for helping behavior, the more responsibility for
helping is perceived to be shared by all, therefore the more people, the smaller the share of responsibility/person
- how do we test this theory? formulate an operational definition of the hypothesis by conceptualizing it in a way that could be tested
Hypothesis: narrow prediction stated in a way that allows it to be tested
Operational Definition: the translation of a hypothesis into specific, testable procedures that can be measured and observed in an experiment
• Protection of participants from physical and mental harm.
• The right of participants to privacy regarding their behavior.
• The assurance that participation in research is completely voluntary.
• The necessity of informing participants about the nature of procedures before their participation in the experiment.
• All experiments must be reviewed by an independent panel before being conducted
Informed Consent: a document that participiants must sign and is key to ethical principles
- Participant must sign a document affirming that:
1.) they have been told the basic outlines of the study and are aware of what their participation will involve,
2.) what risks the experiment may hold, and
3.) the fact that their participation is purely voluntary and they may terminate it at any time
- The only time informed consent and a debriefing can be eliminated is in experiments in which the risks are minimal, as in a purely observational study in a public place
Bias: comes from both the expectations of the experimenter and the participant, preconcieved notions, etc
Placebo: false treatment
Double-blind procedure: the experimenter doesn’t know who was given the placebo and who was given the drug for example
types of descriptive research: Archival, Naturalistic Observation, survey, and case studies
- Archival: inexpensive, but could be in incorrect form, incomplete, collected haphazardly
- Naturalistic: record what you see, people in their “natural habitat”, but inability to control factors of interest
- Survey: sample chosen to represent group of interest/population, but could not be representative of the population, need a “random sample,” lying
Random Sample: everyone has an equal chance of being included in the survey
- Case Study: in-depth, often include psychological testing, drawback is that each individual is unique therefore it’s hard to make generalizations
Psychological Testing: a procedure in which a carefully designed set of questions is used to gain some insight into the personality of the person
Correlational Research: two sets of variables are examined to determine if they correlate
- when 2 variables are strongly correlated, it is easy to assume that one causes the other,
EX: studying more gives you higher grades is just a guess, but it does help us make predictions
- correlational findings do not permit us to determine causality, there could be so many more other factors involved
experiments are the only way to establish cause and effect relationships!
- conditions are created and controlled by the researcher = experimental manipulation
- the manipulation cannot be viewed by itself, in isolation; if a cause-and-effect relationship is to be established, the effects of the manipulation must be compared with the effects of no manipulation or a different kind of manipulation
- hypothesis predicts how a dependent variable depends on the manipulation of the independent variable

- avoid passive voice “it was concluded” “this was demonstrated” “the fungus was discovered”
- avoid judgements (good, bad, important, smart, sensible, correct, right, etc), use assertions (past tense unless in proposals, present if universal truths)
- avoid vague modifiers “while both the original and replicated figure came out to be about the same, there are a few key differences”, many, few, extreme, basic, simple
- if you need to make estimates use universal comparisons
- avoid personification, “it was taken from above the fungus, looking down onto its face” “the larvae tried to climb out” etc
- avoid conversational speech “just after ___ I found a group of trees that seemed like possible cadiddates for fungus” , thankfully, “it was a beautiful day”, you, idioms, slang “to start off” use “to begin” instead, “have to”
- avoid metaphoric. figurative lang, humor, anaglogies, luck, feelings, exaggeration
- avoid sensationalism/hyperbole: exciting, drastically change the results, unbelieveable, interesting
- avoid personalities “Dr.Brewer told me..” references to individuals, we,us (except as authors of multi-authored paper) names (except cited or in acknowledgements) team names
- avoid references to fantasy or fiction
- avoid narrative “then, then, then”, dialog, suspense, mystery, surprise, drama,

Before deoxygenated blood coming from the inferior and superior vena cava fills the right atrium, it is assumed that the pressure in the right atrium is 0mmHg. The blood flowing from the right atrium flows passively into the right ventricle because the atrioventricular (AV) valve (or bicupsid) between them is open. This is called diastole because the heart is relaxed and not contracting yet. Systole (contraction) begns to occur when the pressure in the right atrium increases by a little bit to push the rest of its contents into the right ventricle. This causes the pressure in the right ventricle to exceed the pressure of the atrium above it and the AV valve to close shut with the help of the chordae tendineae and papillary muscles. The right ventricle pressure has to exceed the pressure in the aortic valve in order for the aortic valve to open and blood can go to the lungs to become oxygenated. The aortic pressure is the determinant our blood pressure and has a normal range of 80-120 mmHg. As the ventricle builds up in pressure by isometric contraction, it surpasses the aortic pressure and the aortic valve opens. As the right ventricular pressure begins to decrease due to ejection of blood into the aorta, it reaches below 80 mmHg and the aortic valve closes. The ventricle will cease systole and go into diastole. The ventricle ejects 70 mL of blood into the aorta. It's pressure will decrease to a point lower than the pressure in the right atrium, the AV valve will open again and the right ventricle will be filled passively once again.This similar process occurs on the left side of the heart as the left atrium fills with oxygenated blood that came from the lungs. 

Methods:
To locate Haemaria discolor, I visited the Morrill Greenhouses through the entrance located inside the Morrill building. The plant is located in the Tropical Garden greenhouse. As I entered the second half of the greenhouse, the potted plant was on the left side and on the ground. The long stems of the white flowers reach out in various upward directions. Next to the large pot of Haemaria discolor is a smaller pot with one flowering stem growing upwards. This is the flower of the close-up image taken from the top angle that fits the entire flower into the frame. The far-out image of the entire plant (including the pot) was taken standing directly in front of the plant. The plant takes up the entire frame of the image.

Figure 1. 3 day old embryos of the Barred Tiger Salamander. Creative commons licensed image by John Clare. https://flic.kr/p/eJzAN3

FIGURE 1
What are we dealing with? Tip-links connect two stereocilia = mechanical sensitivity
- it is risky to include the model at the beginning because it can lead to circular logic but it can also help us as readers to understand the paper better (image k)
- why use guinea pig because they have lower frequency hearing + longer stereocilia, b/c w/ higher frequency hearing you have a lot shorter stereocilia
- it is easier to identify locations with longer stereocilia
- if you break the tip link, the CDH23 will move up, this is one way to prove that the cadherin is part of the TL
- they can predict the position of each of the antibodies from the base of the lower stereocilia
- b/c you know the sequence and repetition, you can predict the distance b/w the EC domains
- the experimental results are somewhat far from the expected distances for images f-h, is this good enough? yes
- you are req’d to provide a SD, you can do this by providing a bar graph with SD error bars (for images f-h) but it is better to
- there are 40 measurements falling between 1-20 nm and if you average all of them together get 37 for instance
FIGURE 2
- His tag used to purify the protein,
- there is a homodimer and multiple strands to anchor into the membrane
- there is better agreement
- why is there such a small difference compared to the experimental results they show in Figure 1
- it is in a much controlled environment, you already expressed the protein, and purified it
- image 1 is in the live cell and can have different tension b/c of position in stereocilia which gives them different lengths
- what about orientation, it looks like 100% have parallel arrangement of filaments, homodimers
- the evidence looks very convincing but of the 195, only 131 were on one end