Drafts

Another rare neurological side effect of Crohn’s is the potential to develop cranial neuropathy, causing headaches, vision problems and other brain related issues. Researchers are unsure how Crohn’s leads to cranial neuropathy, but it could be due to the anti- TNF therapies causing brain lesions. It has brought up the debate of changing the recommended treatment if you develop any symptoms of cranial neuropathy.  New recent studies also seem to show that neurological symptoms are more common than originally thought, increasing the severity of this disease.

Known for their hot climates and low precipitation, deserts are known to be one of the most difficult environments for any plants and animals to thrive in. However, different types of deserts are found throughout the world, all in the same 30° to 50° range from the equator. One of these variations is the semiarid desert. These deserts are primarily found in the western states of the United States, Europe and Northern Asia. Semiarid deserts have two seasons, summer and winter. Similar to the hot and dry deserts, the semiarid desert has an average temperature of 23° C during the summer, though it can reach to up to 38° C during the day and 10° C in the evening. During the winter, temperatures can reach as low as -3° C. Average rainfall is very low, at 2-4 cm a year. Although rainfall is minimal, dew accumulates on vegetation during the night which can equal and sometimes surpass the annual rainfall amount. The terrain is comprised of relatively flat land with large rocky mountains in the surrounding areas, the soil is composed of fine sand on the surface followed by loose rock beneath which lacks in vital nutrients needed to grow large vegetation such as trees, leaving vegetation to smaller trees, shrubs and well protected cacti, the shade from these used by the animals as protection from the scorching sun. With little vegetation to provide an abundance of food, animals are present but scares compared to the size of the land. Animals are relatively small such as lizards, snakes and small insects.

    Each of the eight teams will be assigned a location at different spots around the UMass campus. These spots are; next to the stream behind Sylvan dorms, next to the campus pond, in the woods across the street from Sylvan dorms, near the water tower by the top of Orchard Hill, near the pond next to lot 44, next to Mill River in a wooded area, next to Mill River close to the road, and in the garden outside of Franklin Dining Hall. Each team will use “Google Maps” to get the latitude and longitude of the specific spot they choose.

The gas chromatography (GC), which measures purity, confirmed that the sample was not 100% pure because there were two peaks, of 0.663 (36.74%) and 1.084 (63.25%). Had it been pure cyclohexene there would have only been one peak. The bromine and potassium permanganate chemical tests were performed to distinguish the alkenes from alkanes. When bromine in dichloromethane was added to the cyclohexene product the solution did not change color. There was, however, a color change with cyclohexane. With each drop the solution went from light orange to brown. When potassium permanganate was added to cyclohexene the solution turned dark purple and became increasingly darker with each drop. The potassium permanganate formed two layers when added to the cyclohexane with the purple layer on top and clear layer on the bottom. Once again, the percent yield recovered through this experiment was 49.9%. This value could be due to not collecting all of the drops when transferring test tubes or not leaving enough time for the solution to dry after adding the CaCl2 pellets.

The results of the experiment included high glutamate release in synapses between

medium spiny neurons within the nucleus accumbens of the mice brains. It was the opposite in the synapses between medium spiny neurons within the dorsal striatum of the mice brains. It is shown that the mouse lacking VGLUT2 ended up without glutamate release even with dopamine stimulation in the dorsal striatum.

Michelle Facette received her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University in 2008 and now works in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico. I attended her  guest lecture on the fifteenth of February and she summarized some of her work with stomata, cell differentiation, and other developmental aspects of Maize in a concise and understandable way. While she has helped author many papers I believe the majority of the concepts discussed at this job talk came from a few papers that cite her as an author published in 2012, 2013, and 2015. These papers titled: Division Polarity in Developing Stomata, Parallel Proteomic and Phosphoproteomic Analyses of successive Stages of Maize Leaf Development, and The SCAR/WAVE complex polarizes PAN receptors and promotes division asymmetry in maize, all use maize as a model organism to look at intracellular and intercellular chemical cues,  as well as other aspects of leaf development.

S.A node firing of the heart results from a spontaneous depolarization. Acetycholine is released by parasympathetic nervous system and binds to muscarinic receptor which activates G protein coupled receptors and blocks the CAMP pathway normally activated by noradrenaline in the sympathetic system. The release of noradrenaline in the sympathetic system allows an influx of cations in order to reach the threshold and cause action potential firing of the S.A node. Together, these two mechanisms account for heart rate at rest. Electrical activity is then propagated through cardiac tissue to produce timed contractions of various chambers by slowing down at the S.A and A.V nodes to allow for right atrium contraction and repolarization prior to ventricular contraction. 

Carbon monoxide is so deadly because hemoglobin has a higer binding affinity for it than it does for oxygen. In the presence of both, hemoglobin binds to the carbon monoxide. This affects rates of alveolar ventilation and perfusion. Thr higher the concentration of carbon in the body, the lower the PH, the less O2 taken up by hemoglobin. As a result, oxygen cannot be transported to body tissues efficiently. 

Abortion has been a fiercely debated topic in politics, religion, and ethics across the world for as long as medicine has been able to provide the operation. Writers like M.A. Warren and Judith Thomson have written to express their views on why abortion is moral, while writers like Don Marquis and abortion survivor Gianna Jensen argue morally impermissible. I believe that the answer is not as easy as wrong or right and that the issue must be looked at from more than one perspective.

M.A. Warren discusses in “Postscript on Infanticide” her view on infanticide in response to criticism received from her paper “On the moral and legal status of abortion”. Critics argue that through Warrens view that a newborn is not significantly more person-like than an advanced fetus, and that because she believes abortion of an advanced fetus to be permissible, that her argument thus argues for infanticide to be permissible. Warren argues that only people have a full-fledged right to life, and that only people can be murdered. Furthermore, Warren argues that a newborn does not meet the criteria to be considered a person, and thus killing them should not be considered murder.

What we are suggesting isn’t taking away the freedom to drive from other elderly, but merely a check up to make sure they still have the abilities that they had when they were granted a license. The cognitive and physical declines that come with age are something too large to ignore as our elderly population grows faster than ever.