Perfect Paragraph

My first glance I noticed a minuscule living creature, circling the perimeter of the container in which it was held captive in. The creature had shades of light/dark brown along its segmented rod-shaped body. As it had little motility, I noted the way that the creature moved; in such movement similar to a slinky. At its assumed posterier, I observed two circular dark brown dots, which helped with the organisms movement and sensation to the environment. In comparison to its posterior, the head was much darker in color and took on a more cone shape.

After noting some of the creatures characteristics, I can now predict that this creature is in fact a larvae. Larvae tend to have very limited motility and take on a rod shaped segmented figure. I then began to observe some of the larvaes behavior as it was contained in this environment. As mentioned above, the larvae would circle around the perimeter walls of the container; that is when I decided to move the larvae into the center of the container and realized that it quckly found its way to the edge once more.

What might this prenounced larvae turn into? I had no idea. However, I'm sure that in a couple of weeks that the organism it might evolve into will be something along the lines of a caterpiller or even a moth. I was soon pleased to discover by my professor that this was indeed a "wax worm". A wax worm is simply a caterpiller larvae of a moth. Who knew that after looking at an organism for about thirty minutes we'd be able to specifiy its species.

The worm is approximately half an inch in length and is made up of 10 segments. One end of the worm is smaller than the other end, similar to that of a cone. The end that is smaller has a darkened tip which appears to be the head. On the larger end there are two dark end spots. The two dark spots are dorsally placed when the worm is moving. The skin of the worm is transparent, which makes it possible to see inside. Inside the worm is a white fluid that moves when the worm moves. The worm moves by inching forward starting with the head, first by lifting it up and the rest of the body follows, similar to a wave. When the container was shaken the worm shrinks into itself and stays still for a few minutes. After, the worm just resumes squirming around the perimeter of the container. The worm takes 1 minute to travel the perimeter of the container. There are side bumps that may assist with movement, when it doesn't have a perimeter for it to follow, the worm rolls when it moves. The worm just moves forward in one direction. The way the worm moves just changes its direction, it doesn’t appear to be intentional. When the container is flipped upside down and then back up, the worm was able to stick to the surface for a few seconds before falling.

It looks like some sort of larva. The way that the larva moves is similar to that of a worm. It doesn’t appear to have limbs anywhere on its body, therefore it moves in a fashion that resembles a wave. The larva never looks to move inward into the container, rather it circles the container always remaining on the outer perimeter. Occasionally the larva looks up towards the lid of the container making a weak attempt to escape out of the lid. Sometimes the larva stops moving as if it has lost all energy to move forward. Other times it the larva stops and changes the direction it was going as if it has forgotten the which way it was going.

    After violently shaking the container containing the organism a few times, the organism still demonstrated the ability to move around and behave normally. Through this test alone, it can be hypothesized that its central nervous system is not complex and/or is well protected. Otherwise, the organism would have demonstrated an inability to move around after being violently shook. It was observed that the organism scrunches up after being violently shaken, and contracts its body immediately in response. This behavior is most likely a reflexive response in order to better protect its body. More tests were done, and it was realized that the longer or more violent the shake, the longer the organism stays in shock until it demonstrates the ability to move around again. A final test was performed, and the organism was shook for about 5 seconds violently. The organism was in shock for about 4 minutes before being able to regain its ability to move around again, supporting the initial hypothesis. The test was not redone for a longer time in fear that the organism may die if the shaking duration lasts too long.

This is a yellow-tinged, cream-colored larvae that is approximately 3 centimetres long with six legs (three on the left side and three on the right, and two per segment of body) at the front of the body. There are 8 stub-like structures on segments 6-9 of the body that do not move (4 on the left, 4 on the right, 2 per segment) and 2 stubs on the end of the last segment (12th segment) that move independently. It has a dark brown head, and the first segment after the head is a lighter brown color. On the head, two eyes are visible and two hair like structures protrude from the side of each eye (perhaps antennae?) It has a brown dot on both sides (left and right) of segments 4-11 (could be pores?). The latter third of the body seems to move independently from the rest of the body. The larvae moves very slowly, if at all, which may indicate that it is nearing the pupal stage of life.

Mechanisms of Diabetes

Diabetes can lead to major health complications such as nerve damage, kidney damage, and cardiovascular disease. The three mechanisms which influence these diabetic complications are: blood pressure, glucose control, and lipid control.

Nephropathy, a disease/damage to the kidneys, is characterized by the development of proteinuria and a decline in glomerular filtration rate. High glucose levels and high blood pressure are the main causes of nephropathy. The high levels of glucose in the blood cause an increase in glucose reabsorption which then leads to both hyperfiltration and increased intraglomerular. This extra pressure on nephrons over time weakens their ability to filter, ultimately leading to kidney damage and leakage of proteins into the urine.

Retinopathy, described as lesions within the retina, is also caused by high blood pressure and poor glycemic control. Hyperglycemia causes changes to the blood vessels in the retina by damaging or killing pericyte cells (The cells that line blood vessels and help regulate blood flow) which then alters the blood-retinal barrier and vascular permeability. Damage to the retinal blood vessels eventually results in ischemia. In response to ischemia, neovascularization takes place which is the formation of new blood vessels. The new fragile blood vessels that grow in the retina are prone to leaking blood into the back of the eye. The leaking of the fluid into the macula (Area responsible for clear central vision) causes the macula to swell, thus leading to vision loss.