vvikhrev's blog

Today in my Anthropology Human Anatomy class, we explored the human heart. Here are some of my notes from class:
- walls of atria are very thin, ventricles thicker b/c have to work against gravity, blood enters here goes through pulmonary semilunar valves and through the pulmonary trunk and pulmonary arteries (right and left) to get oxygenated at the lungs
- right ventricle wall (And left) have rigids called Trabeculae carnae (bundles of myocardium)
Function: Their structure is important to their role. Had the inner surface of heart ventricles been flat, suction could occur and this would impair the heart's ability to pump efficiently (source: Google)
- papillary muscles and chordae tendinae attach to cusps of tricupsid valve (and bicupsid valve) that control where the blood goes
Function: papillary muscles contract, shorten and pull and close the valves so that the blood can be shunted where it is supposed to go and not back into the atrias
- Right and Left pulmonary veins from the lungs bring oxygenated blood back to the heart into the left atrium and to the left ventricle and out to the body through the aortas
(heart murmur: a little bit of blood goes back into the atria b/c valves are closing incorrectly)
- the heart contracts (1st!) and relaxes, pressure change, valves open and close with the help of the tendinae
Something that I found interesting was how significant the trabeculae carnae are to the rhythmic and normal pumping of the heart. If someone was born with less than average trabeculae carnae in the ventricles, would their entire body adjust to that throughout its developmental stages or would there be health complications in the individuals life? Would they have smaller than average ventricles? How affected would the circulatory system be to a more than average amount of trabeculae carnae? I wonder if there are any case studies that exhibit these kind of abnormalities.

My first draft about the two assigned articles for this week talks about their structures. After reading chapter 7 in our books this morning on what the overall structure of our papers should conform to, I got a clearer understanding on the purpose of our assignment. The structures of the different sections play a big role in the flow, clarity and what we want our reader to know is important. In this draft, I would like to compare the introductions of both of the articles. Before doing that, I would like to point out the biggest difference between these articles. The article from the Ecology Matters journal is about an experiment performed by the researchers that includes a materials and methods section. The authors of the other article (the Biological Invasions publication) have not performed an experiment but rather have formulated a hypothesis, collected information from other articles and tried to "answer" their hypothesis. Therefore these articles will have different structures because of the underlying purpose of each. However, since I am comparing introductions, I am going to assume that they are similar since all introductions serve the same the purpose such as to contain the background information, state the hypothesis and introduce the purpose. Some things that our textbook points out that sound be included in the structure of the introduction are: funnel-shape organization with the known, first paragraph to be the background, the second to last paragraph to be unknown and the last paragraph to be the question/purpose and maybe the significance.
The first paragraph of the introduction in the article from the Ecology Matters journal starts with very general background information such as why one should study non-native species, funnels to a more specific background such as why/how this is being studied and by whom. The second to last paragraph contains phrases that are lead to be the unknown such as "should be." The structure of the last paragraph contains the the purpose and the hypothesis. However, it doesn't contain the experimental approach which I am going to assume is probably in the methods section. I liked the structure of their introduction but it would be helpful to know how they approached their question.
The first paragraph of the introduction of the other article also begins off broad and then the subsequent paragraphs become more specific with information that pertains to their research. It is interesting how their first sentence underlies their purpose just like in the other article. The second to last paragraph doesn't contain any unknowns which is probably because this is not an experiment. The last paragraph is very short and contains only the experimental approach.

Ch. 3 – Fundamental of Scientific Writing Part 1: Style
It is important to write with the reader in mind. You have already formulated your hypothesis, performed all the necessary experiments and steps, now it is time to focus on who is going to be reading your writing and what is the most important piece of information you would like to convey to your audience. We need to write clearly. For instance, I liked how the first paragraph of this chapter mentions that we need to take into account how the reader is going to interpret our writing. If we were trying to appeal to a feeling or evoke some kind of emotional response from our reader then we would use fancy, and flowy language. However, in scientific communication, that is unecessary and instead it would make more sense to use precise, clear language that is easy to understand and is correctly worded. There was a list of words that should be omitted entirely that I didn’t think were a problem before, such as: actually, basically, essentially, very, really, etc (pg 26).
At first, it seemed strange to me that the goal of scientific writing is to make our writing as short and clear as possible. I always thought that there was some type of positive correlation between using more words, longer sentences and a more academic and “smarter sounding” scientific piece of writing. But, that is not the case! Something else I found interesting was how human genes are in all caps and italics and human proteins are in all caps but not in italics. Mouse genes and proteins are also the same way except that only the first letter is capitalized. It is important to establish importance in a sentence as well. Depending on where a certain phrase is placed and what punctuation is used, it can be viewed as something negative or as something positive. Old information is placed at the beginning of a paragraph and new information that needs more emphasis, is placed at the end of a sentence. I think that this grammatical rule is often forgetten but as scientific writers we need to try our best to place the verb right after the subject and not include a lot of information in the middle. When we write our methods introduction, we should not use the first person, however, use of the first person is okay to do in other sections. Last but not least, remember to use past tense for observations, unpublished results, and specific interpretations and use present tense for general rules, accepted facts and established knowledge (pg 24).

1.) “Origin matters: widely distributed native and non-native species benefit from different functional traits”
2.) Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods with 3 subheadings: “Species selection”, “Trait Selection, “and “Trait-status interaction models,” Results with 3 subheadings: “Phylogenetically uninformed simple generalised estimating equations,” “Phylogenetically informed simple generalised estimating equations,” and “Multiple models,” Discussion with 4 subheadings: “Shared responses of native and non-native species,” “Differences between native and non-native species,” “Introduction pathways bias non-native species success,” and “Environmental filters and anthropogenic selection impact species frequency,” Acknowledgements, Authorship, and References
3.) Both articles begin with a paragraph called the “Abstract” that provides the overview. Following that, is a list of several key words. Both of the introductions are longer, containing several paragraphs and citations
- this article has a material and methods section that is also in paragraphs and about 2 pages long
- this article is divided into right and left panels
- the results section contains some figures and longer, detailed legends
- the discussion section appears longer, does it include the conclusions too? or is that the same thing?

1.) “Non-native species and rates of spread: lessons from the brackish Baltic Sea”
2.) Abstract, Introduction, Barriers, vectors and rate of primary spread into the Baltic Sea, Rate of secondary spread within the Baltic Sea, and Vertical spread, Discussion and Conclusions, Acknowledgements, and References
3.) see #3 above
- without reading the article and just looking at structure and headings, it first appears that there is no concrete
materials and methods section as the other article has
- this article is no divided into right and left panels
- there is no concrete results section but there are figures with short legends, there is a table that takes up 2 pages
- the discussion and conclusion section is shorter than it is in the other article

The color of the larvae body is a creamy white with a black thin tail that is about 15 mm long. The tail is about one millimeter longer than the body itself. It appears that the tail is dead and stiff due to the black color. It moves around like a small caterpillar, shortening and lengthening with its bilaterally symmetrical and tiny legs. Its' organs are inside of a translucent cocoon that has very small ridges on the outside. There is some sort of hole in the front region from which a dark mouth pokes out every time it pulls itself forward. This could be a way that the larvae senses its immediate surroundings. The larvae is trying to escape over the edge of the container but appears to have a difficult time climbing up and out, probably due to its tail. It would be interesting to know what its optimal environment is and what stage of development it is in.

- color: creamy white body with a black thin tail that is about 3/4 of an inch long, longer than the body itself
- moves around like a small caterpillar with tiny little legs, however its tail is stiff
- appears that its larva body is inside some sort of transulcent cacoon
- outer surface is somewhat sticky to small particles, but otherwise it is easy to roll over
- white insides
- some sort of hole in the darker mouth region that pokes out before every time it moves forward
- appears to have a difficult time climbing up and out, probably due to its tail
- crawling alongside the outer edges, outer surface is ridged
- symmetrical, bilaterally symmetrical

Total (fully extended) Length: 31mm
Body length: 15mm
Body length (when at shortest): 13mm
Tail length: 16mm
Body width: 2mm
Tail width: <1mm, about 1/3 of a mm

Things I would like to know:
- does the outer portion of its body have muscular functions or does it just serve for protection/movement?
- what does it eat?
- where does it live?
- in what stage of development is it at or is it fully mature?
- can it see? if not, how does it sense its surroundings?