Connected on 2008-04-08 19:30:00 from Minhang district, Shanghai, China
- 6:50pm
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Guest what is that
- Bugscope Team we are setting up now for shanghai
- Bugscope Team we were looking at a mosquito
- Guest cool
- Bugscope Team this is one of its claws
- Bugscope Team those little soccer-looking balls are brochosomes
- Bugscope Team which are made by leafhoppers
- Guest sweet
- Guest what r leafhoppers
- Bugscope Team just a certain class of insects that live on plants, as you might imagine they like to hop
- Guest ok
- Guest i got to go
- Bugscope Team ok thanks for hanging out with us!
- 6:57pm
- 7:04pm
- Guest hello
- Guest what ae we looking at now
- 7:10pm
- Bugscope Team right now we are looking at a decaying beetle that doesnt look very good
- Bugscope Team hello by the way
- Guest thats so neat! My 7 year old is looking also
- Bugscope Team this is a tiny beetle, you can tell by looking at the scale bar in the lower right hand corner
- Guest she says WOW
- Guest can you see this beetle at all with the unaided eye?
Bugscope Team you can but it is very very tiny. I could barely pick it up
- Bugscope Team we were looking at a mosquito and a fruit fly earlier that looked pretty cool as well
- Bugscope Team this is a butterfly wing
- Bugscope Team you can see the individual scales now
- Bugscope Team the scales act like the feathers on a bird
- Guest she is clapping her hands and says look at the ridges!!
- 7:15pm
- Bugscope Team this is a bee we think
- Guest what is this
- Guest oic
- Bugscope Team where are you located miller?
- Guest Maryland
- Bugscope Team it has some juju all over it
- Guest lol
- Guest great technical term
- Guest Sarah says it looks like a junk yard
- Guest hello
- Bugscope Team this is a pollen grain
- Bugscope Team the spiky ball is
- Bugscope Team it looks like the compatibility test worked...we were on a wireless...for the real thing we will be contacted
- Bugscope Team hello anthony
- Guest what is that
- Bugscope Team this is a pollen grain with crystals on it, which is currently sitting on what we think is a bee
- Guest got to go
- Bugscope Team there was no stinger though
- Bugscope Team ok see you later anthony
- Guest wonder why...already got someone...
Bugscope Team maybe
- Bugscope Team you can see it has "hairs" all over it. we call the hairs on insects setae (see-tee)
- Teacher HI!
- 7:21pm
- Teacher Rachel here, the kids aren't here yet though
- Bugscope Team Hello
- Bugscope Team hey there rachel!
- Teacher hi!
- Bugscope Team Yay Hello!
- Bugscope Team Hey Scott
- Bugscope Team Hi Smiley!
- Bugscope Team Grade 1 you should be able to click on a preset, if you would like, and the 'scope will move to that place.
- Teacher we're just all getting set up in the room
- Teacher that sounds great
- Bugscope Team We have a ladybug, a couple of true bugs, a moth, a mosquito, a fruit fly, and a few other critters on the stub today.
- 7:28pm
- Bugscope Team Cate and I are here at Beckman, in the basement, with the electron microscope; Chas is at home; Annie is at yoga, for now; and I am not sure where Alex is.
- Bugscope Team Oh and Smiley is in Florida!
- Teacher Ni Hao! that means hello in Chinese
- Bugscope Team Ni Hao!
- Bugscope Team Ni Hao =D
- Guest Ni Hao
- Teacher Our first question, is what is a "stub"?
- Bugscope Team The stub is what the samples are all mounted on -- it is an aluminum disc.
- Teacher what are we looking at right now?
Bugscope Team these are setae (which are insect hairs) on what we think is a wasp
- Bugscope Team all of the critters are stuck to the stub with doublestick carbon tape and silver paint
- Teacher is that hard to do?
Bugscope Team it can be difficult not to smoosh them when picking them up. You will often see them with missing limbs, that could very well be my fault
- Bugscope Team this is the eye of a wasp -- part of it
- Teacher WOW!
- Bugscope Team it is hard to do a good job, so Cate does it
- Bugscope Team Cate is very good at it.
- Bugscope Team I agree
- Bugscope Team She also coats the insects with gold-palladium using a sputter coater. That makes them conductive.
- Bugscope Team Would you like to try clicking on one of the other presets?
- Bugscope Team Hey Cool
- 7:33pm
- Teacher is this a rolly poly?
- Bugscope Team Are those all pollen grains?
- Bugscope Team I am not sure what this is now.
- Teacher apparently a roly poly is a little black insect
Bugscope Team we don't have any roly poly's on here right now sorry. They are also called pillbugs that rollup into a little ball if you touch them
- Bugscope Team Those are very small soccerball like things called brochosomes.
- Bugscope Team Ahhhhh...I should have remembered
- Bugscope Team let's take the magnification down so we can see where we are.
- Teacher what has pollen got to do with insects?
Bugscope Team Many insects will pick them up when landing on flowers
- Bugscope Team there is the pollen grain (spiky ball)
- Bugscope Team They often encounter pollen, and sometimes, like bees, on purpose.
- Bugscope Team they are spiky which makes it easier for them to cling to the setae (see-tee)
- Teacher that is really cool to know
- Bugscope Team we often see pollen, and sometimes we see mold spores, which look similar but are not as spikey.
- Bugscope Team Scott, are mold spores the same size as pollen grains
- Bugscope Team this is cool -- this is a closeup of the edge of a wing scale from a butterfly.
- Teacher WHOA!!!!
- 7:38pm
- Teacher what is a wing scale?
Bugscope Team The scales are like tiny little feathers that coat the surface of the wing. To the eye they look like dust. They're loosely attached, so if the insect gets stuck to a spider's web it can shed a layer of scales and fly away
- Bugscope Team the scales are what make the wing feel soft when you touch it
- Bugscope Team they are kind of slick
- Bugscope Team they are much like feathers, on a bird
- Teacher they are amazing
- Bugscope Team one thing they do is help the butterfly or moth or mosquito escape from spider webs, because they come off easily.
- Bugscope Team silverfish have scales too!
- Bugscope Team this is the surface of an egg that a fruit fly was laying.
- Teacher err!!!
- Teacher what is the egg made of and does it have a yolk?
- Bugscope Team everything ok?
- Bugscope Team the egg is probably made of a protein like chitin
- Bugscope Team I think they are soft and kind of waxy
- Bugscope Team it is very small
- Bugscope Team can you try clicking minus on the magnify control?
- Bugscope Team see if you can take the mag down
- Bugscope Team if you wanted you could lower the mag and see how big it is compared to the fruit fly
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Teacher why is it called a fruit fly?
Bugscope Team they like to eat rotting fruit, or at least an enzyme that is produced from rotting fruit
- Bugscope Team you find them around fruit -- they are kind of pests
- 7:43pm
- Teacher eeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!
- Bugscope Team they seem to like the juices
- Bugscope Team fruit juice is sweet
- Bugscope Team but I thought they eat the mold on fruit also
- Bugscope Team Smiley you are right
- Bugscope Team this is the mouth of the fruit fly
- Bugscope Team bizarre...wow...
- Bugscope Team it is kind of spongy and built to be able to absorb liquids
- Bugscope Team it acts like a sponge
- Teacher really?
- Teacher that is amazing
- Bugscope Team they often do not look so good
- Teacher we have a question about the fruit fly eggs, do you know how many fruit flys are in each egg?
- Teacher what does critical point dried mean?
- Bugscope Team I think there is just one of the little dudes, or dudettes, in each egg
- Bugscope Team Cate has the insects in ethanol, and she puts them into a chamber in which the ethanol is replaced with liquid carbon dioxide.
- Teacher why do you do that?
- 7:49pm
- Bugscope Team when the LCO2 is put under pressure and heated above the critical point it leaves the tissue in gaseous form and does not cause a phase change that would make the sample wrinkle up
- Teacher so that way we can see the insects clearer, cool
- Bugscope Team yes we think that they release saliva from the holes and then suck it back up with the fungi/yeast that they want to eat.
- Teacher we think it looks like an elephant!!!!
- Bugscope Team If you think about a worm drying on a sidewalk -- it does not look good when it dries in the sun
- Bugscope Team but if we were to critical point dry the worm it would be round like it was originally
- Bugscope Team now you can see the eyes, which are domelike and have many facets to them called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team and the things in the middle of the head that look furry are the antennae
- Bugscope Team flying insects will almost always have bigger eyes than insects that live in the ground like beetles and ants.
- Bugscope Team they depend on their eyes a lot more
- Bugscope Team you can see that the insects have tiny hairs, which we call setae (seetee) all over them
- Teacher it looks like somebody made it from material
- Teacher what do they have such small attenae?
- 7:54pm
- Bugscope Team some of the setae are mechanosensory -- they function like a cat's whiskers
- Bugscope Team the antennae have two parts -- the furry part and the branched part
- Bugscope Team they are indeed small and streamlined
- Bugscope Team if they were much bigger the fruit fly might get blown around in the wind
- Bugscope Team the fruit fly eye, if you magnify to see it, has lots of tiny setae on it as well
- Teacher we need to move onto some more slides but we can't get them to load, can you?
- Teacher whats this?
- 7:59pm
- Bugscope Team this is the mosquito proboscis
- Bugscope Team this is the part that pierces you
- Teacher ooohhhhhhhhhh!!!
- Teacher it looks sharp
- Bugscope Team it must be sharp to penetrate your skin
- Bugscope Team it is very sharp and has little barbs to keep it in so it doesn't fall out too easily
- Bugscope Team the females mosquitos need blood so they can lay their eggs
- Bugscope Team oh yeah...there are barbs...thats so neat
- Bugscope Team they need a blood meal
- Bugscope Team the males do not bite
- Teacher that is cool
- Bugscope Team the lancet we see now is in a sheath that has scales on it
- Bugscope Team you can tell that the sheathe would not stick into your skin
- Teacher is the curvy part a hair?
- Bugscope Team yes those are tiny hairs
- Teacher can we see one more slide, then we need to go
- Bugscope Team we are going to the lady bug
- Teacher yeah!
- 8:04pm
- Bugscope Team so as you can see the head is really streamlined
- Bugscope Team this is the face of the ladybug
- Teacher we still can't see the head
- Bugscope Team the head looks burrowed into the body
- Teacher we are still waiting for the ladybug stub to load
- Bugscope Team um can you try refreshing the web page?
- Bugscope Team it should be on there now
- Teacher we got it!
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Teacher we think it looks like it has plastic around it
- Teacher what are the pointy things on the sides?
- Bugscope Team it is like a little tank turret
- Bugscope Team the things that look like vacuum cleaner nozzles are called palps
- Bugscope Team the palps help it to eat and taste food
- Bugscope Team they have chemosensory setae in them
- Teacher they do look like vacumn cleaner nozzles
- Teacher what do lady bugs eat?
Bugscope Team lady bugs eat other bugs, but mostly they are good for eating aphids
- Bugscope Team one of the antennae, which have club-shaped ends, is broken
- Bugscope Team they eat other bugs!
- Bugscope Team they are kind of mean
- Bugscope Team 'cause aphids are soft and delectable
- 8:09pm
- Teacher we don't want aphids for our lunch
- Bugscope Team no me neither
- Bugscope Team of course not, i dont
- Teacher we want to say thank you, xie xie!
- Teacher and good night
- Bugscope Team it would take a lot of aphids to fill you up
- Bugscope Team some aphids excrete a sticky wax to keep from being eaten
- Bugscope Team xie xie means thank you?
- Bugscope Team good night, and good day to you
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team how do you pronounce that?
- Bugscope Team My advisors wife is from China and her name is Xixi how funny
- Teacher yes shay shay (xie xie) is thank you
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Teacher goodbye
- Bugscope Team thanks cool
- Bugscope Team Bye
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team See you next time?
- Bugscope Team Ciao.
- Bugscope Team Tschuess
- Bugscope Team Salut
- Teacher that was great guys thank you so much for staying up late to talk to use
- Teacher us
- Bugscope Team yeah I am so sleepy ; )
- Bugscope Team -_-
- 8:16pm
- Bugscope Team Smiley do you want to try driving? We have had a little trouble and are not sure it will work.
- Bugscope Team Cate is going to restart the server.
- Bugscope Team Sure...not sure whether my connection will be fast enough...
- Bugscope Team Do I need to do anything while you restart the server?
- Bugscope Team Claudi we are out of luck here.
- Bugscope Team Awwwwwwwwwwww
- Bugscope Team So if I go to a preset it will not work?
- Bugscope Team It is not working for us and Colonel Chas and Alex are not available to help.
- Bugscope Team Cate says we are not cool enough to be able to fix it.
- Bugscope Team Can I try =) ??? I am curious
- Bugscope Team but you could try a preset for sure.
- Bugscope Team try it
- Bugscope Team I would not know either...you are still cool to me =D
- Bugscope Team try it
- Bugscope Team actually Cate and I are not too concerned...
- Bugscope Team wow...please wait while this command executes...and then nothing...=(
- Bugscope Team Lol...I guess driving lessons are postponed =)
- Bugscope Team yeah that was what happened to us
- Bugscope Team oh well...it was fun seeing both of you...and fortunately the session went semi okay =)
- Bugscope Team I am sorry.
- Bugscope Team I think the teach still thought it was really cool.
- Bugscope Team I will put your session down on the piece of paper you sent
- 8:21pm
- Bugscope Team No worries...you guys made my evening..life has made any planning hard...and I am still in lab waiting...thus joining you guys made my evening...
- Bugscope Team ?
- Bugscope Team Cool, Mademoiselle.
- Bugscope Team We are out the door in a minute.
- Bugscope Team Hope you are staying cool.
- Bugscope Team What do you mean you put my session down...I am confused
- Bugscope Team Trying to...want to hide under my covers tomorrow...so much stuff to do...and all those long days at work...but it will be another busy day...unfortunately,
- Bugscope Team you sent me a sheet of paper upon which to write down your volunteer work
- Bugscope Team Did you know Tiffany Li from here?
- Bugscope Team yup...just fill it out as last time...that would be great...
- Bugscope Team She is going to grad school in Miami.
- Bugscope Team Yup...she will be moving to FL...
- Bugscope Team =D
- Bugscope Team I am excited I like her a lot...
- Bugscope Team are you guys moving down here soon too including the SEM???
- Bugscope Team miss you guys tons...
- Bugscope Team Lol
- 8:27pm
- Bugscope Team Okay Claudi we are out the door girl. We miss you too.
- Bugscope Team The weather never changes here in the basement.
- Bugscope Team anyhow...Cate and Scott have a saf drive back home...and get some rest...I will not be able to be part of the fun tomorrow morning...I will be sitting in on a honors defense
- Bugscope Team Gah! I missed the whole thing!
- Bugscope Team Good night Annie
- Bugscope Team Hope you had fun at Yoga =)
- Bugscope Team I did...I am very relaxed
- Bugscope Team time to go
- Bugscope Team bye bye
- Bugscope Team Awesome....I am not still in lab...next time do a Heart center for me, yes???
- Bugscope Team Bye Annie...bye everyone...
- 9:37pm
