Drafts

2. Good Samaritans, Minimally Decent Samaritans or Not a Samaritan at all.

-        Example 3: Man on the road. Thomson refers to a story from the Bible where a man is robbed and left injured on the road. A priest and then a Levite pass by and neither offer help. However, a good Samaritan passes by and offers help to the man, providing care and brings him to an inn. Jesus tells his people to do as the good Samaritan had done. Thomson however states that this may be urging people to do more than they are morally required to do. (62-63)

-        Example 4: Kitty Genovese. This example discusses the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was killed while 38 people had either stood by or heard as she was murdered but did nothing to help. No one called the police, which Thomson state a minimally decent person would have done. Thomson argues however, if helping Kitty put the people in danger of their own lives, then they are not morally required to help. She uses this conclusion to argue that people are thus not morally required to give a long stretch of their lives, be it nine years or nine months to help others. She states that people are not morally required to sustain the life of a person who has no special right. (62-63)

Because tree growth rings vary in width with annual precipitation, scientists have used tree rings to reconstruct the fire history of an area for decades. This year, exceptionally dry conditions have been seen in Arizona and rain does not seem to be coming any time soon (which means this area of the country is set up for a dangerously big wildfire in the near future). A wildfire of that magnitude would result with a loss of vegetation that would not only leave the area vulnerable to post-fire flooding that could wipe out roads but could also clog vital water infrastructures that would inevitably lead to the displacement of many people.

Figure 1. Mycena, sapotrophic mushrooms characterized by white spore print, growing on decaying leaves. Creative commons licensed image by AJC1. https://flic.kr/p/21JDXUY

Figure 1. Oxalis Triangularis Purple Shamrock. The plant on the left depicts a Oxalis Traingularis Purple Shamrock that is fully grown. The leaves are triangular and much bigger than its adolescent plant, which is shown to the right. Creative commons licensed image by Maja Dumat. https://www.flickr.com/photos/blumenbiene

Figure 1- The Thylacine, Thylacinus cynocephalus, is a mammalian anomaly due to a jaw adaptation that allows it to open its jaw 180º.

Figure 1 - The Thylacine, Thylacinus cynocephalus, is an extant species of carnivorous marsupial that was hunted to extinction by farmers because of predation of domestic sheep.

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

On the methods project -
This morning I went to the greenhouses that we have here at the university. The greenhouse I entered was called the “tropical garden” I believe. This is something that I will definitely have to double check. The species name of the flower I chose is: Haemaria discolor. If belongs to the genus: Ludisia and to the family or: Orchidaceae. It’s common name is the Jewel Orchid. It appeared to be in its optimal environment because it was in full bloom, looked very “plump” and healthy. It was definetly a beautiful flower and caught my eye because it closely resembles the flowers that grew near my childhood home (their species name is: Convallaria majalis, but most people know them as the Lily of the Valley). Another intriguing characteristic of these flowers were their leaves. They are about 3 inches long and are a deep green color with some hues of maroon. They also have white lines that run parallel to each other from the base of the leaf towards the peak. Their stem is long and thin and the flowers that have already budded are white with some type of yellow center.

-        Example 2: Chocolate. In this example, a box of chocolates was initially given to two brothers, but the older brother had eaten them all for himself, acting unjustly. In this modified example however, the chocolates were only given to the older brother. If the older brother refuses to share, Thomson argues, he is being greedy but just. (60-61)

-        Example 3: Henry Fonda. In the initial Henry Fonda example. A man with a cool hand can save the authors life, but he is across the country and must fly to her to save her life. However, in this new example, Fonda need only walk across the room and touch the author to save her life. Here he is making little sacrifice to help in comparison to the initial example. (61)

-        Thomson argues that even when the task is easy, it does not make refusing to do so unjust, She states “Nobody is morally requires to make large sacrifices of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitment, for nine years, or even nine months, in order to keep another person alive.” (61-62)

In my plant physiology class we are discussing the properties of water and how exactly the hydrogen bond properties allow water to interact the world around us and its truly fascinating. Waters hydrogen bonds are easily broken, but they are also very easily remade, meaning it requires alot of energy and heat in order to permenatley excite the molecules and raise the temperature of the water. This phenomenom of raising a substances temperature is called specific heat and in the realm of organic molecules waters​ specific heat is extremely. Another fascinating property of water cohesion, whihc is its ability to stick to itself via the hydrogen bond network. But its binding partners arent limited to other water molecules. It also has a property of cohesion, which is the ability to bind to other organic molecueles using the same hydrogen bond network. Lastly water is a superb solvent, this is mostly attributed to its polarity and charged complex, the polarity of water means its able to interact and dissolve other polar compounds, which is extremely useful in a lab setting. Overall I've found this weeks in class discussion fascinating, I never knew that water was such a unique compound.