Drafts

I work in a research lab on campus. We work with anaerobic bacteria, meaning that they don’t require oxygen to make energy, in fact that bacteria that we use in my lab will die in the presence of oxygen. When we make media to put the bacteria in we must gas out the media. We typically do it by using a blend of nitrogen and CO2. To seal the bottle containing the media we place an air tight cap on called a bung. The bung must be place on the jar while the cannula (which is putting gas in the media) is still in the bottle. This task is incredibly hard to do considering the fact the bottle opening is barely big enough for the bung itself. In putting the bungs on I tore all the skin off the top of my middle finger. The wound is still healing almost one week later. It has a gross yellow scab which has grown over the top of it. The scab has begun to split and a slight hint of fresh blood has been coming out for the last couple days. I really need more calluses to form and I need them to form fast because everytime I create an environment for these bacteria to live in I will have to do this process.  

    Between the two figures there are only a couple of differences that stand out when taking a first glance. These differences consist of the labeling, the background, and the quality of both the images. The labeling in Figure 1, the original, consists of using capital letters while in Figure 2, the replica, the letters are not capitalized. The font that is used in both images cannot be correctly identified. In Figure 1 the letters are layered on top of a white square, this white square is not present in the replica. Another difference all the photos share is the color of the trunk. Figure 1 has the trunk of the tree appearing black in color while in Figure 2 the trunk appears to have a white dusting on it.

Many differences presented in these figures can be explained by the weather. The original figure that was created, was taken after a rainshower had fallen on UMass. The rain would account for the dark color on the trunk of the tree that appears in Figure 1 and not in Figure 2. The panels in Figure 2 were created after a snowfall, the snowfall is the reason why the ground is white and why there is a white dusting on the trunk of the trees.

The differences in the labeling would be due to the way the information was presented. There was no mention of capitalization in the methods, just that the labels used were a, b, and c. This would have led to some confusion in the replicators end and a creation of panels with a lowercase labeling. The reason for no white square behind the letters may have been due to more confusion from the replicators end.

I downloaded all the photos I had and placed them onto my desktop so I knew where they were. I downloaded inkscape and opened it and uploaded each image . The two photos that include just the trunk without the ucard I made the same height and width it was the third photo with the ucard that was different. The two trunk photos were stacked ontop of each other and were to the right of the photo that included the ucard. I made the photo with lichens of varying sizes and the trunk image a by using the square box tool and put a textbox within the left corner. I highlighted the box and duplicated it two times but put the letters b and c for the next two. I put the letter b for photo of the trunk with lichens that were very small in size. I put letter c for the image other trunk and the ucard. I placed the letters in the left corners of each box. I exported the Figure onto my desktop and set the width to 1300 pixel.

I found a maple red tree outside of  the Durfee Conservatory and Garden in a rectangularly shaped piece of land that contained multiple rocks and small paths, right in front of a space of grass. The tree did not have any leaves coming off the branches due to the cold weather it was bare on top. It had many lichens covering the trunk of the tree some large some small. These lichens were ruffled pieces of green on the tree. Once I saw these lichens on the tree I got close up the tree a foot away from it and took a photo, using my phone in portrait mode, of the trunk making sure that the trunk took up most of the photo only a fourth of the image showed the background. In this photo there were two very large lichens and three smaller ones as well as a sprinkle of lichens around the trunk. I took another photo closer up to the tree allowing one fourth of the left side of the image to just be the background. This image did not have as many large lichens or smaller ones it just showed a splattering of lichens on the trunk. These lichens appeared more white then green. The next photo I took included my ucard for size reference. Once again most of the image was taken up by the tree trunk which once again was a foot away from me. My ucard was flipped showing the black strip closest to the lichen. These lichen were the two large ones and three medium ones with the ucard being next to the large lichen that appeared the lowest in the image. The trunk looked black in the background. All the photos taken were in portrait mode and I emailed them to myself to get access to them on my computer.

          Because of the spiritual connection they felt to their land, as well as the desire to preserve their traditional way of life that would be threatened by these development projects, the indigenous people protested in response. One group even detained some miners, in an effort to force the government to negotiate with them and restore their promise of conserving the tribes’ land. Some protests resulted in violent confrontation between the between the tribe and government police, which garnered sympathy for the tribe’s cause from many within the broader Peruvian populice. However, the tribes were labelled by the government as backwards and primitive, and their concerns were dismissed by the Energy Ministry of Peru as evidence of their ignorance of modern extraction practices, which the government and the mining companies insist does not cause pollution. Environmentalists disagree, and argue that the forests and rivers of the area are sourced out of the same mountain range where extraction projects are meant to take place, and this will potentially contaminate the natural resources on which the tribe relies. The companies also try to sow discord between members of the community with promises of jobs and money, to make easier their incursion and weaken the tribes’ united front against them. This succeeded and resulted in internal conflict, causing the disruption of social bonds within families and communities, and thus further threatening traditional practices.

Three main factors that could have accounted for the differences between the overall figures as well as the images of the panels were identified. Some could have resulted from the conditions in which the photos were taken. Other possible causes for differences could stem from an interpretation of the methods description, and the methods itself, as in the description that was provided or variables that were not controlled.

There are four differences between the contents of the pictures.  First, the figures do not represent the same interspecific interaction.  This is evident because the original contains the forest green scale-like leaves of the juniper (Fig. 1 - B), while the replicate does not (Fig. 2 - B).  Second, the backgrounds of the pictures are not the same. There is no background in the original picture of the juniper only (Fig. 1 - A), while the background of the bush 1 only picture includes a tan structure on the left side (Fig. 2 - A).  The background of forsythia and juniper includes two LSL windows separated by tan brick, with the left window being shown more than the right window (Fig. 1 - B), while the background of bush 1 and bush 2 includes an LSL window in the top right corner and a glass panel that meets the ground on the left side (Fig. 2 - B).  The background of forsythia only is solely tan bricks (Fig. 1 - C), while the background of bush 2 only is snow and a tan brick structure on the left side (Fig. 2 - C). Third, the colors of certain elements that are present in both figures vary between the two. The snow has a bluish tint in the original (Fig. 1 - B) while it resembles true white moreso in the replicate (Fig. 2).  The tan color of the LSL building also has this bluish tint in the original (Fig. 1 - B) while it appears more of an orange-tan in the replicate (Fig. 2 - B). Fourth, the figure components that are specific to one organism show much greater detail in the original (Fig. 1 - A, Fig 1 - C) than in the replicate (Fig. 2 - A, Fig. 2 - C).

The blueish tint that characterizes the elements of Figure 1 as compared to those same elements in Figure 2 is likely due to the pictures being taken at a different time of day.  Time of day was specified in the methods. It is also possible that a filter was added to the pictures comprising Figure 2.

The difference in relative size of each component of Figure 1 vs that in Figure 2 can be attributed to different sizing of images in the figure making programs used.  The image sizes for Figure 1 are specified in the methods. The different labeling of the Figure components is also due to technical differences in figure making. In Figure 2, white boxes were not made and periods were added after each letter.  Also, contrary to Figure 1, the letters in Figure 2 were not centered in the upper-left corner using the program’s tool to do so.

From google maps, it is evident that the interspecific interaction documented in Figure 2 is approximately 10 feet to the left of the interspecific interaction documented in Figure 1.  In order to create these pictures, the physical position of the camera in space must have been different. This also explains the difference in backgrounds between Figure 1 - A and Figure 2 - A as well as Figure 1 - B and Figure 2 - B.  The background difference between Figure 1 - C and Figure 2 - C is due to both the position of the camera being different, but also the angle of the camera. The camera that took the picture that comprises Figure 2 - C must have been facing downward because of the snow on the ground.  In Figure 1 - C, the camera was parallel to the ground because the background is the LSL wall. The level of visual detail that may be discerned about the organism from the individual organism pictures differs between the two figures. This is due to the distance of the camera lens from the organism differing.  The distance of the camera from the organism was specified in the methods.