Writing in Biology

Another example given by the book is Linda Barnes’ study of acupuncture in the American city of Boston. What she has found is that among the many schools of acupuncture, there are different views of what it treats and what it is used for. Most European practitioners view it as a treatment for the spirit, while others view it as a form of religious and physical healing. It is most often used in conjunction with, rather than in place of, western medicine. The effectiveness of the treatment is variable, with some claiming that it helps the healing process without fixing symptoms, while others claim it to be an effective treatment for nausea, back pain, and even asthma.

Red blood cells are comprised of Hemoglobin, which contains 4 subunits with a Heme group in each subunit. Each Heme group contains 1 iron atom, and each iron atom can bind to one oxygen molecule. Having her anemic condition, she has a low red blood cell count. Due to this, each breath she takes will only allow a small amount of oxygen to be connected to the hemoglobin. The respiratory system is key to promoting the homeostasis of the body, involving pH stability in humans due to O2 intake and CO2 release. Development of anemia in people with Crohn’s disease is often seen due to the low iron levels caused by bloody stools. Her body would be severely weakened by the oxygen deficiency, likely causing her shortness of breath. Oxygen deprived cells within the body cannot perform as they normally do, and thus it would be much harder for her to breathe than regularly.

This experiment examines Morrill buildings III and IV located in the University of Massachusetts, Amherst which are situated at opposite ends of each other. Arthropods thrive where there are plants or where the environment is warm. Temperature and attraction of arthropods to warmer temperatures is the relationship that will be examined. In this experiment, we aim to observe the distinct types of living or nonliving arthropods. Window sills were chosen and recorded in the Morrill III and Morrill IV buildings. Signs of arthropods present or signs that arthropods were once in the environment were taken note of. Visible signs of arthropods previously inhabiting include wings and dead arthropods. Our dependent variable will be the number of living or nonliving organisms present along the windowsills observed versus environment temperature in Celsius. Understanding the type of environment the arthropods thrive in will be a key feature and main take away.     

The temperature which changes the data of graph 2 from other graphs could be due to recording the temperature when the window was open. The number of arthropods found could have been disturbed by the wind blowing the remains of arthropods away before the data was collected. This is because the windows could have been opened or closed by the public many times throughout the time period the data was collected. There are also chances that arthropods could have been removed by the janitors that clean the buildings.

The emergence of arthropods is driven mainly by temperature. A change in temperature only by a few degrees will affect whether arthropods will be present or absent (Hannson et al. 2014). If the weather is colder, there will be less arthropods compared to when the weather is warmer. Therefore, if the temperature inside a certain area of a building is warmer than other areas, there is a high chance that there will be more organisms present and vice versa. This statement will be used to guide our experiment regarding the relationship between temperature and the number of arthropods found. We will try to determine if the correlation between higher temperature and higher arthropod count is true.
 

In 2004 there was a high demand for humanities in foreign relations when an issue was made calling for National Foreign Language Capabilities. The reason they released this issue was becasue they wanted people who studied how other cultures work and understanding their ways of thinking. Acknowledging humanities as a key aspect in the government helps us understand our nation and the value we hold and support. Another reason humanities holds a key value in our society is in awareness of surroundings during meetings, conferences, and group projects. I feel a key characteristic to hold is understanding others which is a key idea in humanities since during meetings, conferences, or group projects we must respect others even if we don’t agree with their ideas.  Circling around to the idea of being open-minded.

Our poster illustrates our study done on periphyton density and diversity in Fort River, located in Amherst, Massachusetts. The study was set up by making periphyton traps and placing them in three different locations along Fort River, each separated by roughly 100 meters.  Two sets of traps were put out at each of the three locations. The first set of traps was collected after 5 days and the second set of traps was collected after 15 days. After we collected the traps, we analyzed them under a microscope to identify the species diversity and to quantify species density. The diversity was simply calculated by looking at the different types of species, not by identifying them. The species density was calculated by counting all the individual organisms found on the microslides. After gathering all of our data, we found a moderate amount of diversity and a relatively high density. Based off this data, we can conclude that the pollution concentrations in Fort River are relatively low.

We conducted several experiments with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in order to study the life cycle of yeast, the principles of complementation, and tetrad analysis. The life cycle of yeast can be easily studied at various stages because it reproduces through budding and exhibits predictable morphological changes in this process. Genetic complementation is the reappearance of the wild-type phenotype in offspring when there are two different homozygous recessive mutations present in the parent organisms. Complementation can be easily observed in yeast using the ADE mutations. If the ADE mutations, which inhibit adenine biosynthesis, are on separate genes, then complementation will occur. Complementation in yeast would result in the ability to produce adenine, even though neither of the haploid strains are capable of doing so. Tetrad analysis involves examining the completion of the entire yeast life cycle.

Yeast can reproduce both sexually and asexually. The two mating types of haploid yeast are MATa and MATα. Each mating type produces unique pheromones that facilitate mating by allowing cells to sense nearby mating partners and grow toward them. Each of the haploid mating types are capable of being maintained indefinitely if kept seperate. If the two separate mating types encounter each other they may fuse, and produce a diploid cell through a process called conjugation. Conjugation is the sexual process by which haploid cells of the opposite mating type form a diploid zygote. Once the diploid state is formed, it can also be maintained indefinitely, given sufficient nutrients. If the conditions are not adequate the diploid cell will undergo meiosis, or sporulate, and produce four haploid spores known collectively as an ascus.

We collected periphyton by allowing them to grow on glass slides. We took three microscope slides and sandwiched them together using rubber bands with poster board in between; this allowed room for water to run through and periphyton to grow on the slides. The contraptions were put into three spots in Sylvan stream roughly 100 meters apart. Two sets of slides were placed in each location; they were tied to a string attached to a stick in the ground next to the stream to secure them. The slides were submerged roughly 12 inches under the water.

We collected one set of the slides from each location after one week. We counted different species in a 2 mm diameter circle from all 9 slides under a microscope; the different species were put into five categories based on their shape which include, slivers, small tinted rectangles, small clear rectangles, large rectangles, and ovals. We collected the second sets after two weeks and performed the same counting technique for the slides.

We created two different types of graphs to display the data. We created a bar graph for each location showing the average number of species found on each slide. And we created a pie chart that shows the average proportion of each species at the three locations.