rmegarry's blog

My experience at orientation was frightening. I spent the day accompanied by my two friends, Sage and Rebecca, and stayed with their orientation for the college of natural sciences. I did not expect the tour or material to be different by any noticeable margin. We started by attending all of the welcoming presentations before the tour. The fact I was not with my group did not impact the value of the tour, as mostly the same areas were presented to the groups.  I had escorted the both of them to Whitmore in order to get their UCard’s made without having to wait in line, but after I had escortted them to their scheduling appointments, the true terror of my orientation began.

* This reads alot more like a story, I tried to force it into a more scientific sounding narrative but in the end its still a story. I "perfected" most of my other drafts so I felt like I only really had this to perfect for this week
 

Scientific writing requires a certain level of specificity in order to be properly understood and replicated. Science has maintained that in order for a study to be valid, the work must be able to be replicated with the same results. This facet of scientific research puts an incredible amount of importance on the record of how the research in any paper was performed.What factors affect the reproducibility of an experiment? There are many opportunities to document an experiment in a way that it is not reproducible. In order to ensure that an experiment can be repeated, how many factors need to be controlled? As I sought to answer this question I hypothesized that it was most likely an issue of specificity. If a task was detailed explicitly then it would be unlikely to produce different results. The experiment presented was to create a complex multi-panel figure, create the methods, allow for the procedure to be replicated, and to observe the results. In order to gauge the importance of differing factors, certain parts of the figure were carefully controlled and highly detailed, while others were sloppily performed and not nearly as detailed.

Differences listed as being in the overall figure are those that occur in multiple panels or the overall composition of the figure. Differences present across the panels include: every arrow having a much larger head that obscures the length of the arrow, every arrows being shorter in length, the removal of most of the garden hose, the presence of an orange covering on the hose, and there is a decline in the health of the infected plant. The differences present in the composition include: smaller backround boxes in the corners of each panel, proportionately smaller letters in each of those boxes, the space between panels is approximately doubled, and the color of the spacing is set to be transparent instead of white.

*Differences is defined in a previous paragraph as "anything in the replicate that is not present, displayed in an alternate manner, or is an element that is missing from the original figure" and so everything listed can be assumed to be about the replicate figure.

Important Guidelines/ Formatting

5 references of international standing should be cited
Discussion and Results can be merged into one section
All images have to have high resolution
sentances should be short and "very concise"
Types of Papers:

        Full length is 25 pages, 15 figure max, and references are not page length

       Short Papers are 10 pages 5 figure max

        Reviews are 20 pages, 10 figures

        correspondence articles are 800 words and 10 reference max
one person needs to be listed for correspondence
Competing interest statement must be signed regardless of exitence of competing interests which includes full disclosure of all backers and personal relationships that may have an influence (bias) on the work performed
Must use fully inclusive language "he or her" instead of "he" chairperson instead of chairman, flight attendent instead of stewardess
FORMATTING
double space, all lines numbered
Must follow structure Title page; second page contains the Abstract and keywords; subsequent pages include the Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgement(s), References, Figure legends, Tables, and Figures Figure legends should be gathered on a separate page(s), followed by Tables and Figures with a separate page for each one
should keep introduction short, backround info that lead to project

Material and Methods 

Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced, including the information about suppliers and catalogue numbers when appropriate. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.

Results and discussion 

These two parts can be separated as "Results" and "Discussion" or combined into one section. The discussion about each major point of the results is very important, and should not repeat the experimental results; generally citation of related references is necessary.

Conclusions 

This section is not obligatory and can exist as a short paragraph at the end of "Results and Discussion" section. When it exists as a section, it should be short and concise but should not repeat the Abstract. Generally the Conclusion does not cite references, and it is different from the discussion.

General - It looks like one block may have been used and quartered? The letters were 320 font not 80. The location had changed over the past week, the garden hose was most likely used and that resulted in its change of location/ presence in the photo and since the plant was in the middle of the hose it resulted in a trampling effect. The difference in photo resolution may have caused an inconsistency with the length of the specified arrows.  The spaces between the photo’s looks as though it may have been doubled so each photo was moved 15 pixels as opposed to one photo in each direction

Photo A - the hand position was not completely specified, and the thumb is angled differently which may be due to the plant not longer being self supporting. The recreation looks like it had to hold the leaf fully out of the way where a the original needed to support the leaf slightly to keep it above the infected leaf. the photo was taken at more of an angle, because the plant was damaged it was no longer self supporting

Photo B - The camera location wasnt specified well enough, 5 feet was specified but not what was 5ft, the weed wasnt quite centered as specified but the angle wasnt specified well either. The galleries are much more visable which may have been a difference in exposure levels due to the presence of the shining white card and the dark blue card. 

Photo C - I had described keeping the hand out of the photo and to be fair, he did exatly that I should of specified it was just the edge of the card in the photo instead, otherwise its a fairly good replication its just off slightly, and the rest of the plant being dead causes the other differences present

Photo D - The photo depicted the shade tree lab centered but not on the first quarter. The language may have been confusing to follow, extra buildings that were not specified are also visible. The map was stretched in the orginal which may have been due to the image having to be resized for the figure. Since photographs taken were not the same size as the originals taken, the proportions may have worked out in such a manner where the replicate didnt have to be stretched and

My experience at orientation was terribly frightening. I spent the day accompanied by my two friends Sage and Rebecca, and accompanied their orientation for the college of natural sciences, after all chemical engineering is just a bastard child of math and chemistry (their two majors) anyways. we started by attending all of the presentations on camus life and diversity before roaming about the campus. The fact I was not with my group did not impact the tour, as mostly the same areas were presented to the groups, the true trouble began after lunch. I had escorted the both of them to whitemore in order to get their id's made without having to wait in line, but then I had to escort them to their scheduling appointments. The building for the natural science scheduling was at a much closer location than that of the engineering students. I had also never been to the engineering lab and so I got lost in the nearby buildings as it was difficult to identify which buildings were which. When I did arrive, I was late for the presentation on engineering. I was, however, on time for the scheduling appointment. Because I wasnt present, my worksheet had gotten lost in a "no show" pile, which caused me to wait longer than other students. When I was finally ready to talk about my future classes, we had realized that I was missing two vital prerequisites, mathematic modelling and thermodynamics 2. I was unable to take any class other than those and physical chemistry, but then I would be unable to take any classes in the spring because of the classes I would miss this fall. Falling back on my strong academic record, I was able to reach out to the teachers of the courses and get the prerequisites waived, so that I could fully and properly attend next semester.

Differences will be described as solely in the replicate
General differences - the letter blocks for the photos are smaller, the arrow head is much larger, and the length of the arrow appears smaller The garden hose is much less present. The plant is much worse shape. The space between photo's is larger and a different color.

Photo A - The hand is in more of the photo, the bottom 2 fingers are not curled, the angle of the photo is such that the wall is visable, the photo is further away in general, The underside of the top leaf is visable, the top leaf isnt being held down by the thumb,

Photo B - The angle the photo was taken from is slightly too far to one side causing the wall to be far more crooked, and taken signifigantly farther away

Photo C - the card used for scale is a different color and much more present, more of the hand holding the card can be seen, the leaf is much darker which allows the galleries to be seen more easily in the photo, the photo is very similar as though its just a shot more to the left, the other leaves cannot be seen

Photo D - The image isnt as streched, the magnification is different, all of the buildings around the sahde tree laboratory are visable

SAMPLE INTRODUCTION 1

Scientific writing requires a certain level of specificity in order to be properly understood and replicated. Science has maintained that in order for a study to be valid, the work must be able to be replicated with the same results. This facet of scientific research puts an incredible amount of importance on the record of how the research in any paper was performed. The goal of this paper is to write a record of the documentation of leaf miners and to compare the recreation based upon the procedure reported and to analyze what factors may have been successful or led to an imperfect result.

Photo C was obtained by capturing the less infected leaf from a distance of about 6 inches or less. The leaf is being pushed slightly by the clear back of a standard sized business card on the left side of the photo in a manner to keep most of the hand holding the card out of the photo.

    Photo D is a screenshot of the Shade Tree Laboratory from (Not!google maps get the site ). The screenshot was placed so that the laboratory was centered on the left half of the photograph and at a magnification where the immediate buildings to the north, south, and east are visible to aid in identification of the area. 

Fabrication

    I had used the program Inkscape to create the entirety of the figure with the collected materials. All images came in the size 1688x1688 and were kept at this size. The photos were then laid corner to corner in a 2x2 fashion with A and B on the top while C and D are on the bottom. A space of 15 pixels was then used to separate the edges of all of the photos. A black square sized 100x100 was created with a centered white font size 80 capital sans-serif letter for each photo. These blocks are attached to their respective photos in the corners that occupy the middle of the entire 2x2 figure. Lastly, a horizontal arrow was created with a width of 3mm and length of 150 pixels. The first available arrowhead style was used, and then the arrow was copied 3 times. Two arrows were aligned in the middle of each infected leaf, on photo B, with the tip of the arrowhead touching the edge of the leaves. The last arrow was then placed on photo D with the tail of the arrow touching stockbridge road, and the head of the arrow directly on where the weed is located.

Photographing Leaf Miners

Methods

Location

    The location for this project was the University of Massachusetts’s Amherst campus. The specimen was found at the shade tree laboratory(?) located at 272 Stockbridge Road. I had walked the perimeter of the building and found leaf miner activity in a weed located 6 feet to the right of the front entrance of the laboratory which is on the left side of the building that contains the University Club.

Materials

    Three photographs of the infected plant were obtained in a simple manner.(Consider revision or deletion) The first photo showcases the entirety of the plant in the center of the photo and was taken at an angle from a five foot distance. The wall of the building was left in the top of the photo to aid in orientation and the next largest weed is centered on the right hand edge of the photo while the subject is in the center of the picture.