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Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in america. Valvular heart disease is a type of heart disease that revolves around the valves in the heart. These valves play a major role in controlling the flow of blood, and preventing backflow between the separate chambers. Although some heart valve issues can be fixed via drugs and therapies, sometimes patients have to get their valves replaced.  When a patient is considering this option, they can either get a mechanical valve or a bioprosthetic heart valve (BHV). Each option has its pros and cons, however BHVs offer more pros than the mechanical option. The main issue with BHVs is that they come from another animal, usually from cattle or pigs, and this triggers an immune response in the human body. This immune response leads to calcification of of the heart valve and severely reduces the shelf life of the prosthetic.

We studied the effects of urbanization on periphyton density and species richness in the local Amethyst Brook.  Amethyst Brook is a good site for a study due to it being conservation land where houses butt right up against some points of the river.  This allowed us to chose one site that represented close proximity to urbanization and two other sites farther away from human development.  We constructed a three-slide apparatus to place at each of the three sites, removing them at one and two week intervals. Microscope analysis of the slides provided us with multiple species types and overall density.  We hypothesized that urbanization would have an effect on periphyton in the brook, and predicted that there would be lower densities and less species at the site closest to houses. We also hypothesized that our week two collection would comprise of higher densities of periphyton.  Our data showed no correlation between periphyton density and proximity to urbanization. Interestingly, there was also a decrease in density across sites 1 and 3 after two weeks. This was due to heavy rains during the beginning of the second week that increased turbidity and strength of the water flow.  A more elaborate experiment with multiple sites and longer ‘grow periods’ would be necessary as a follow up to this pilot study.

Our data in the results section supported the information that was gathered from the studies researched by Lee, Lim, and Litwhiler. According to the luxury effect that affects the reptiles the strongest, the fourth floor should have the greatest number of arthropods since it is the closest to the reptile room. It also has the least amount of foot traffic which is another major factor. Because the first floor has the heaviest human traffic, there were the least amount of arthropods with only three spider webs combining both trials. The second floor only had nine arthropods or signs of arthropods. Third floor had twelve arthropods including dead bugs, live bugs, and spider webs. Fourth floor had eighteen including dead bugs, live bugs, and spider webs combining both trials for all three. Based off of our sources, our data proves the luxury effect and the theory that foot traffic along with the presence of reptiles reduces the number of arthropods.

We were interested in determining if there was any correlation between how many arthropods were in rooms and how far away the Morrill Greenhouses are. We found a very small insignificant correlation and a lot of our quantitative data deviated from the average. This probably means that there are other variables that play a role in how many arthropods (and spider webs) you can find in various windowsils. However, this proved to be a very interesting study because we can now compare our results with the results of the other groups that looked at other variables besides distance from the greenhouses such as temperature and distance to the reptile rooms. If we had more time, we would be interested to look at how outside temperaure compared to indoor temperature affects the arthropod count indoors. Also it would be helpful to know if room use also has any correlation with arthropod count in windowsills.

In the 1970’s Mexico responded to a global oil shortage by increasing its export of oil, and from this began a prosperous time of rapid economic expansion. Once there was a global oil surplus in the 80’s, Mexico had to quickly adjust for the lost income and abruptly change the rate they were borrowing money, which left them with many international debts that they could no longer pay. Match this dependence on an export with falling value with a corrupt single party system of government and the outcome is failing nation. The story is similar in Venezuela, including political corruption and single export dependence. US corporations take advantage of troubled governments by moving factories to these countries and paying thousands of workers very low wages. This leads to more economic disparity and thus, lower living standards for these countries while the corporations take their business to places like the US and Europe.

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.

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.