Session 2007-010 with MIlwaukee Public Museum

Application

The School

The Class

The Project

Miscellaneous

Live Session Transcript

Connected on 2007-02-27 16:00:00 from MIlwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

• 10:11pm
• Bugscope Team Chat and QandA cleared out in advance of the Tuesday session. I'm going to be in class during this one.
• 1:53pm
• Teacher I'll try to check-in when I can. G'luck
• 3:13pm
• Bugscope Team Thanks Chas. First Cathy had to fix the microscope...
• Bugscope Team Bernie are you there?
• 3:22pm

• 3:28pm
• Bugscope Team Okay Cathy is setting the presets for today.
• Bugscope Team It's 3:26.

• 3:33pm

• Bugscope Team ok presets done
• 3:41pm
• Bugscope Team those bugs in the bags are totally smashed, i could maybe put on a cricket, but it will look all disfigured
• 3:52pm

• Bugscope Team Cathy I am back -- I was talking to Ron for a little while. Go ahead and replace everything tomorrow if it's all junk. Crickets are just not interesting.
• Bugscope Team Looks like we are totally good to go here. Chas called to check in but may not have a chance to log in.
• Bugscope Team Not sure about Daniel.
• Bugscope Team k
• 3:58pm
• Bugscope Team Okay I called Ben. Daniel was going to his office to talk about the Open House.
• Bugscope Team I told Ben I'd like to have Daniel in on this session.
• Bugscope Team Now I need to find Alex.
• Bugscope Team Alex is messing with Hera.
• Bugscope Team yeah i saw that email
• Bugscope Team So it's just about time.
• Bugscope Team You've been doing a great job.
• Bugscope Team trying
• Bugscope Team It means I feel comfortable about taking time off.
• Bugscope Team I lost 10 days of vacation last year because I didn't use it.
• Bugscope Team And I don't know how much I had lost before that.
• Bugscope Team ouch
• Bugscope Team yeah you gotta use those
• Bugscope Team If I don't use 15 days by August I will lose that.
• 4:05pm
• Bugscope Team Talking with Terry on the phone.
• Bugscope Team Okay. Terry was not so happy about not being in the loop about the ESEM upgrade.
• Bugscope Team what happened
• Bugscope Team But I had wanted one of the more experienced service guys on that because of bugscope and because of this GBSED.
• Bugscope Team Hi Bernie!
• Bugscope Team oh ok
• Bugscope Team hi bernie
• Teacher Hi guys! Bernie is sick, so we're working without her. (I'm Vanessa)
• Bugscope Team Cathy we need to be able to transfer control to Bernie's new manifestation.
• Bugscope Team Hi Vanessa.
• Bugscope Team If you'd like feel free to log out and log back in as yourself.
• Bugscope Team Vanessa have you seen this setup before? Should we tell you how to run it?
• Teacher Hi from all the girls - I'll just continue as Bernie if that works. We want to know what is this? Ans, louse, something hairy?
• Bugscope Team This is one of those centipedes you see crawling on the wall in your home.
• 4:10pm
• Bugscope Team I'm on now, and will be checking in occasionally
• Bugscope Team V you can change the mag, change the focus, drive to another place, change to another preset and work from there --- you can control the microscope from where you are.
• Teacher A quick review please! I did this last year, but need to know how to move side to side.
• Bugscope Team Hi Chas.
• Bugscope Team It's changed quite a bit from last year.
• Bugscope Team berner: if you click on either the "Click to Drive" or "Click to Center" in the controls to the right, you'll get some instructions there

• Bugscope Team Now you've changed mag. Cool.
• Bugscope Team Berner is Vanessa, Chas.

• Bugscope Team oops, right.
• Bugscope Team Looks like you found a lady bug, and are running past it.
• Bugscope Team you can also choose a preset from the list to move to
• Bugscope Team When you click to drive you have to click when you want to stop as well.
• Bugscope Team suggestion: use the "driving" to make large movements from bug to bug and explore. use the "click to center" to fine-tune position as you zoom in
• Teacher how many legs does it has
• Bugscope Team I just went to the 'scope and moved us back a little. We had been at the edge of travel.
• 4:16pm

• Bugscope Team Alright Vanessa.
• Bugscope Team dan's on his way
• Bugscope Team Looks like we are stuck off the stage again.
• Teacher please help us center again
• Bugscope Team Thanks Ben!
• Bugscope Team Vanessa do you want to select a preset?
• Teacher yes
• Bugscope Team So any of those on the right, you can just click on.

• Bugscope Team This is a teaser Cathy made so you'd want to take the mag down to see what it is.
• Bugscope Team you can also change the contrast and brightness
• Bugscope Team well this isn't a great bug to look at but yeah
• Teacher some guesses are legs ,mouth ,underbelly,body

• 4:21pm

• Bugscope Team And that's what it is .
• Bugscope Team It's really hard to get spiders to look good in the SEM.
• Teacher was that the mouth
• Bugscope Team They have soft bodies, unlike insects, and they shrivel up when they dry.
• Bugscope Team So yeah you were near the mouth but we could not see it.
• Bugscope Team It was bent such that we were not able to see it.
• Teacher what kind of spider is it
• Bugscope Team I think it's a little grass spider.

• Bugscope Team Sometimes you can see the eyes, sometimes the spinnerettes, and sometimes the fangs.
• Bugscope Team and a hairy one at that
• Bugscope Team Here we can see the abdomen, below. It looks like a football.
• Bugscope Team Abd those two palps above it are over the mouth.
• Bugscope Team And.

• Bugscope Team So the fangs are where we're looking but they're obscured.
• Bugscope Team This, now, is a mite, living on an earwig.

• Bugscope Team And there're two more..
• Bugscope Team many more...

• Bugscope Team A huge colony of mites living on the earwig.
• Bugscope Team scott needs to find more earwigs, this is the last in our supply I think
• 4:26pm
• Bugscope Team There are 30,000 species of mites.
• Bugscope Team Be sure to click to stop...
• Bugscope Team Cool. This can be tricky to control.
• Bugscope Team Back the same way we came.

• Teacher how many mites live on a bug at a time
• Bugscope Team Now you can go down and see the cercopods -- the pinching tail.

• Bugscope Team They can probably have a hundred. Not sure.

• Bugscope Team The mites need to live where they can't be easily scraped off.
• Teacher what do the mites eat
• Bugscope Team If you drive south and a little east you can see the pinchers.
• Teacher what is a earwig

• Bugscope Team Not sure about these. We were thinking that they feed off of liquids from the body of the earwig. An earwig is a pest of plants like tomatoes.

• Bugscope Team Here's the pincher tail.
• Bugscope Team LIke a bottle opener.
• Teacher what do earwigs eat?

• Bugscope Team Annie said they other day that they're herbavors
• Bugscope Team I've found earwigs in my house, and I am not sure what they might've been eating.
• Bugscope Team herbivores
• Bugscope Team oops
• Bugscope Team They are plant pests.
• 4:31pm

• Bugscope Team Is that how Annie spelled it too? : )

• Bugscope Team Holding court.

• Bugscope Team This is the mouth of the earwig.
• Bugscope Team Lots of accessory mouthparts.
• Bugscope Team looks kind of like a venus fly trap mouth
• Bugscope Team at least thats what I thought
• Bugscope Team They're called palps, as in mandibular and maxillary palps.
• Teacher Do they have teeth?
• Bugscope Team The maxilla is the top part of the jaw, like on a person.
• Bugscope Team And the mandible is the lower jaw.
• Teacher how big do they get?
• Bugscope Team They don't have teeth, but they have hardened cuticle that is sometimes serrated and can cut things easily.
• Bugscope Team They get to be a few cm long.
• Bugscope Team 2 or 3 here.
• Bugscope Team 2 or 3 cm, maybe, here.
• Bugscope Team We always have to remember that insects have their skeleton on the outside.
• Bugscope Team The exoskeleton.

• Bugscope Team Now you could take the mag down and see where you are on this wing.
• Bugscope Team You can see microsetae (tiny hairs) on the wing surface.
• Teacher Is this a moth butterfly fly?
• Bugscope Team They probably help the insect lift itself into the air by providing a little more surface area.
• Bugscope Team you can decrease the magnification and see the insect as a whole
• 4:36pm
• Bugscope Team Cathy made the sample; I'm not sure what it is.

• Bugscope Team These are different samples from yesterday's session.
• Bugscope Team Ahh.
• Bugscope Team Now I know what it is.
• Teacher It's a fly
• Bugscope Team You can see a small thing that looks like a punching bag in the middle of the body.
• Bugscope Team That is a haltere. Diptera (two-winged insects, often flies) have halteres.
• Bugscope Team You can drive to it if you want.

• Bugscope Team This is a good time for the Click to center as you're zooming in!

• Bugscope Team Yeah Chas is right.

• Bugscope Team You can try click to center.

• Bugscope Team Nice.
• Bugscope Team Almost there.
• Teacher Why is it black and white?

• Bugscope Team Good question.
• Bugscope Team We are imaging using electrons, not light.

• Bugscope Team With light, color comes from objects reflecting or absorbing different wavelengths, energies, of light
• Bugscope Team The wavelengths of electrons are much smaller than those for visible light.
• Bugscope Team our eyes sense the different wavelengths of light and interpret it as color

• Bugscope Team however, our electron detector doesn't sense the wavelenght of the electrons because it doesn't carry any useful information (due to the way the microscope images)
• Bugscope Team The funny things is that if this was in color it would be silver anyway.
• Teacher What is the haltere
• Bugscope Team so we only know intensity.... a.k.a one channel... a.k.a grayscale
• 4:41pm
• Bugscope Team Because we coated the whole set of samples with gold-palladium, which because of the palladium is silver.
• Bugscope Team The haltere is right in the center.
• Teacher How long do they live?
• Bugscope Team It is like a little gyroscope that balances the movement of the wings.
• Bugscope Team It stabilizes the fruit fly's flight. Did we tell you this was a fruit fly?
  Bugscope Team no you didn't
  Bugscope Team but now they know ^^
• Bugscope Team The haltere beats in a motion opposite that of the wings.
• Bugscope Team If you take the mag up you can see where it has hypertrophied mechanosensors that sense its motion.
• Bugscope Team Some flying insects have longer halteres -- they stick out further from the body.
• Bugscope Team Thanks Cathy.
• Bugscope Team Vanessa take the mag higher here if you'd like.
• Bugscope Team Whenever I see those ^^ I think of a cat.

• Bugscope Team Topcat.

• 4:46pm
• Bugscope Team Cool. Now you see the compound eye, one of them, and you can see two of the ocelli on top of the head.
• Bugscope Team These guys actually have (Hi Daniel!) five eyes.
• Bugscope Team Hi guys, sorry it took so long to get online. Ben wanted to talk about BOH issues. This looks pretty good.
• Bugscope Team If you count the compound eyes as onl two.
• Bugscope Team (I also needed to talk to our BOH help in the lab here to get them scheduled.)
• Bugscope Team Vanessa is driving, and she worked with us last year.
• Bugscope Team Daniel Claudi can help you as well if you need it.
• Teacher Why are the eyes so big?
• Bugscope Team survival
• Bugscope Team They need to be able to recognize fruit, see where they're going. But probably a big part of recognizing the fruit comes from chemosensors, not the eyes.
• Teacher how many sections are in that eye?
• Bugscope Team Fkying insects do have larger eyes, usually.
• Bugscope Team It does give a wider field of view too.
• Bugscope Team I bet there are a thousand. The individual facets are callled ommatidia.
• Teacher how much does the eye waigh?
• Bugscope Team The ommatidia have tiny setae between them that help the fly sense winf movement.
• Bugscope Team I don't know. Probably micrograms.
• Teacher what eats fruit flys?
• Bugscope Team wind movement, sorry
• 4:52pm
• Bugscope Team I don't know. I bet ladybugs would eat them if they could catch them.
• Bugscope Team Try taking the mag a little higher Vanessa.
• Teacher do they blink/

• Bugscope Team They haven't any eyelids.
• Bugscope Team So they have to use their limbs to clean their eyes.
• Bugscope Team or tears
• Bugscope Team Flies will typically use their front legs to wipe any crud off their eyes.
• Teacher bye bywe
• Bugscope Team You can see this a lot with houseflies, which spend a surprising amount of time cleaning themselves given what they eat and land on...
• Bugscope Team Now you can start to see the setae between the eye facets -- the ommatidia.
• Bugscope Team You're not leaving us are you Vanessa?
• Teacher We would all like to say thank you! We had 2 girls driving today, so we all had fun that way! All the Lincloln School girls say Bye!
• Bugscope Team bye and thanks
• Bugscope Team Glad to have you and your girls on Vanessa

• Bugscope Team Bye! :-( We hope to see you again. Soon!

• Bugscope Team Cool. Thank you!

• Bugscope Team Now you can focus a bit.
• Bugscope Team nice. a little more will cinch it

• Bugscope Team I did that.
• Bugscope Team They are hairs.
• Bugscope Team They are used to sense windspeed and motion.
• Bugscope Team that looks pretty cool
• Bugscope Team They are mechanosensory.
• Teacher Cool! we have to go - thanks again!
• Bugscope Team So they send signals to the brain.
• Bugscope Team Thank you!
• 4:57pm
• Bugscope Team Alright.

• Bugscope Team Who's driving?

• Bugscope Team One of us?
• Bugscope Team Not me.
• Bugscope Team Unless my computer is somehow sending this.
• Bugscope Team Chas, you still online?
• Bugscope Team I'm not
• Bugscope Team ... driving
• Bugscope Team Oh you mean Hal 9000?
• Bugscope Team Here's a thought: perhaps there should be some sort of indicator as to who is sending the commands in the login list.
• Bugscope Team deux ex machina
• Bugscope Team The deux you say?
• Bugscope Team isn't that the right spelling?
• Bugscope Team Sheesh I wish I could type.
• Bugscope Team Deus.
• Bugscope Team Ex Machina
• Bugscope Team ah
• Bugscope Team Deus means God.
• Bugscope Team Or Deos, sometimes.
• Bugscope Team Or Dios, in Spanish.
• Bugscope Team OK, I gotta run now
• Bugscope Team I was typing and hit some combination of keys that killed the whole page.
• 5:03pm
• Bugscope Team maybe backspace
• Bugscope Team ok, now I'm really leaving