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Poster Assessment Activity

Submitted by cslavin on Mon, 04/08/2019 - 11:19

The design of the overall poster has a nice flow. There are defined columns, and the section headings are highlighted and the same size and color which easily allows the veiwer to digest the material. The abstract and introduction, which are the only sections writen as paragraphs, have the same size and color text. The conclusion is writen a bit bigger as bullet points. This imediately draws the eye to the main focus of the project. There are some spacing issues throughout the poster which is a bit distracting.

The poster is organized efficiently. All of the necessary sections are completed. The literature is cited. The information flows nicely. It follows the format of a lab report going from abstract to introduction and so on. Each section is the appropriate length. The graphs and images are confined to the same area and followed by a conclusion. However, there is no figure description, which would have been useful.

The writing is done in paragraphs in the abstract and introduction. It is nicely reduced and to the point. There are few assumptions made in the writing. Overall, there were no gramatical, spelling, or typocraphical errors. There is a few spacing issues that may have been caused due to formating issues. Key points have been reduced to bullet points in the conclusion. Appropriate scientific writing is used on the poster. 

The poster is very informative. The highlights from the study are presented. Some of the data is raw, but it is explained in the conclusion. The graphs are very clear with high resolution. They are eye catching and all have similar color schemes. The poster is ulitmately very persuasive. 

Draft: Hair color genes

Submitted by aspark on Mon, 04/08/2019 - 00:34

It was once unexplained why European hair color varies so greatly, from black to blonde to even red. This article is about how scientists have discovered over 100 genes linked to European hair color. This article clearly explains that hair color is polygenic, which is a concept we discussed in class. A trait is polygenic when it is controlled by two or more genes, which causes them to be continuously variable. Here, we can see hair color is controlled by a plethora of genes throughout the genome that cause European hair to vary as much as it does. According to this article, the researchers who discovered these genes hope for their work to contribute to finding treatments for pigment disorders. They believe that some of the genes that they found affect hair color may also be associated with diseases such as Crohn’s disease and skin cancer. In other words, they believe that some genes that influence hair color are pleiotropic, which is a also a concept discussed in class. Pleiotropy is when a single gene affects several traits.

Week 12/ Draft 2

Submitted by scasimir on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 23:59

All cellular RNAs are synthesized from DNA templates through the process of transcription. Transcription is in many ways similar to the process of replication, but a fundamental difference relates to the length of the template used. In replication, all the nucleotides in the DNA molecule are copied, but in transcription, only parts of the DNA molecule are transcribed into RNA. Because not all gene products are needed at the same time or in the same cell, the constant transcription of all of a cell’s genes would be highly inefficient. Furthermore, much of the DNA does not encode any functional product, and transcription of such sequences would be pointless. Transcription is, in fact, a highly selective process: individual genes are transcribed only as their products are needed. However, this selectivity imposes a fundamental problem on the cell: how to recognize individual genes and transcribe them at the proper time and place.

Ducks and Ethograms

Submitted by sditelberg on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 21:46

Waterfowl ethograms for observational studies are of the specific type and can include differing categories of behaviors depending on the organisms observed. Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) behavioral categories in one ethogram include social and reproductive, agonistic and alert, foraging and related, locomotive, resting and comfort, and other, each of which were further scrutinized into approximately seven observable behaviors (Downs et al. 2017). These were observed in a subtropical, urban university campus. An ethogram of Anas platyrhynchos categorized behavior through locomotion, resting, resting on water, comfort, courtship, agonistic, alert, surface feeding, subsurface feeding, and land feeding (Mason et al. 2013). These were observed in a semi-urban environment. Another ethogram of Anas platyrhynchos categorized behavior through locomotion, ingestion, vigilance, comfort, resting, and aggression (Welsh et al. 2017). These were observed in a rural environment. Although these behavioral categories assist in understanding waterfowl, it is crucial to evaluate when species display them based on their environment. It remains unclear exactly when Anas platyrhynchos display these behaviors on an urban university campus set in a rural environment.

Ethograms

Submitted by sditelberg on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 21:46

Ethograms serve as useful tools to objectively categorize the behaviors of a species. Early ethologists such as Tinbergen, Lorenz, Frisch, Whitman, Craig, and Huxley utilized ethograms to record the frequencies of instinctive behaviors that occur under specific circumstances (Matthews 2009). These provide a database of behaviors for future researchers to check and further supplement with their own data. There are two different types of ethograms: species and experimental. The species ethogram describes all known behaviors for the given species, whereas the experimental ethogram focuses only on behaviors relevant to the hypothesis being tested.

Week 12/ Draft 1

Submitted by scasimir on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 04:06

Rifamycins are a group of antibiotics that kill bacterial cells by inhibiting RNA polymerase. These antibiotics are widely used to treat tuberculosis, a disease that kills almost 2 million people worldwide each year. The structures of bacterial and eukaryotic RNA polymerases are sufficiently different that rifamycins can inhibit bacterial RNA polymerases without interfering with eukaryotic RNA polymerases. Recent research has demonstrated that several rifamycins work by binding to the part of the bacterial RNA polymerase that clamps onto DNA and jamming it, thus preventing the RNA polymerase from interacting with the promoter on the DNA.

Statistical Analysis

Submitted by sfairfield on Sat, 04/06/2019 - 13:43

          The bio-archeological dataset from Radovic et al. comprises cranial pathology data and cranial age assessment for 113 individuals from four Mesolithic-Neolithic sites in the Danube Gorges, Serbia. The data quantify the surface wear of left mandibular molars. The occlusal surface of each molar is divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant received a surface wear score. Low values indicate no or little wear and high values indicate substantial tooth wear. We are interested in whether there is a difference in the mean tooth wear of the first quadrant of molar one and three. The null hypothesis is that there is no difference in the mean tooth wear between the first quadrant of molar one and the first quadrant of molar three, and the alternative hypothesis is there is a difference in the mean tooth wear between the first quadrant of molar one and the first quadrant of molar three because first molars develop much earlier than third molars and thus experience many more years of wear. The t-value is 8.7324, meaning the difference between the group mean values is large relative to the amount of variation in the groups. The degrees of freedom are 198, meaning the sample size is 200. The p-value is 1.042e-15, meaning there is a less than 5% chance of getting the observed result, or a more extreme result, if the null hypothesis is true, which means the data does not support the null hypothesis. In conclusion, there is a significant difference in the mean surface wear of the first quadrants of molars one and three.

 

 

Cancer Treatment Analysis

Submitted by ewinter on Fri, 04/05/2019 - 21:18

ELISA will also for HK2 and PKM2, as these should be downregulated if the Ginsenoside 20(S)-Rg3 treatment worked. Since ovarian cancer metastasizes so quickly and mutates in unpredictable manners, we would biopsy each site of metastasis for the primary tumors, and each new metastasis as well. The microenvironment of each individual tumor has the possibility to be different, and the biopsies will aid us in understanding if CAFs, immune cells, or other social microenvironment based cells are becoming amplified. The biopsy results from distant metastatic sites will also provide insight into what kind of mutations the cancer is undergoing.

Research Proposal Design 2

Submitted by ewinter on Fri, 04/05/2019 - 16:21

The Anas platyrhynchos behavior will be characterized according to an ethogram developed using elements from Mason (2013) and Welsh (2017). The nine behaviors are: (1) locomotion on land (walking); (2) locomotion on water (swimming); (3) locomotion in air (flying); (4) resting/comfort on land (sleeping, loafing, body maintenance); (5) resting/comfort on water (sleeping, loafing, body maintenance); (6) feeding in water (7) feeding on land (8) alert (cessation of activities, upright posture) (9) aggression (chasing, pecking, other aggressive behavior). At their assigned time, every day for the two week period of April 7, 2019 to April 21, 2019, each group will stand at the minuteman statue on the west side of the pond and capture a 10 second video in landscape mode using a long range video camera borrowed from the DuBois Library. The frame of view will continuously shift while capturing the video so a 180 degree view of the campus pond is obtained. The groups will watch the video and assign one of the behaviors above to each Anas platyrhynchos present in the video.

 

Research Proposal Design 1

Submitted by ewinter on Fri, 04/05/2019 - 16:20

There will be nine observational conditions: (1) ‘time of day’ recorded as 6:00, 8:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00, 18:00, 20:00, 22:00; (2) ‘weather’ recorded as either ‘sun,’ ‘clouds,’ or ‘precipitation; (3) ‘temperature’ recorded to the nearest degree Celsius by the Wadsworth control service at UMass Amherst. (4) ‘number of humans passing per minute’ will be recorded by standing at the minuteman statue on the west side of the campus pond and counting the number of humans passing by in either direction in a one minute timeframe; (5) ‘number of Branta canadensis’ will be the number of visible Branta canadensis when standing at the minuteman statue; (6) ‘day of week’ will be recorded as ‘Mon’ ‘Tu’ ‘Wed’ ‘Thu’ ‘Fri’ ‘Sat’ ‘Sun,’ (7) ‘number of Anas platyrhynchos’ will be recorded as the number of visible Anas platyrhynchos observed when standing at the minuteman statue; (8) ‘location’ will be the quadrant in which the majority of Anas platyrhynchos are located on the pond or on land and will be recorded as either ‘A’ the northwest, ‘B’ the northeast, ‘C’ the southwest, or ‘D’ the southeast; (9) ‘fountain’ will be recorded as ‘on’ if the pond fountains are on, or as ‘off’ if they are off. Each of the nine groups will be assigned a time of day (6:00, 8:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00, 18:00, 20:00, or 22:00), and will collect data for each condition at that time of day for the two week period of April 7, 2019 to April 21, 2019.

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