Connected on 2008-04-30 17:00:00 from , CA, US
- 4:00pm
- Bugscope Team session enabled, rxl on, YO CATE, starting vac
- 4:13pm
- Bugscope Team Yeah gotta work...
- 4:20pm
- 4:30pm
- Bugscope Team pretty
- Bugscope Team you talkin' 'bout the salt?
- Bugscope Team yes
- Bugscope Team d'oh no extremities
- Bugscope Team heh
- 4:36pm
- Bugscope Team this mighta been good for 3d
- 4:41pm
- Bugscope Team ok
- 4:48pm
- 4:54pm
- Bugscope Team wait
- 5:01pm
- Bugscope Team hi deba, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Hi Deba!
- Bugscope Team one more preset: fruitfly
- Bugscope Team presets are done
- Bugscope Team session unlocked
- Bugscope Team Deba we are ready to give you control.
- Bugscope Team deba, you should see controls on your right, magnify, navigation, etc
- Bugscope Team As soon as you wish.
- Bugscope Team if you have any questions let us know
- Bugscope Team You can also choose from among the presets to the right of this chatbox to get you started.
- Bugscope Team hi mary, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team jodie, laura, welcome!
- 5:06pm
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Laura would you like to drive?
- Teacher what bug are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team this is a compound eye of a fruit fly
- Bugscope Team This is a fruit fly. As alex said.
- Bugscope Team What we are looking at is the individual facets, called ommatidia.
- Student hi scott
- Bugscope Team the spikes are setae which are insect hairs
- Student yes I will try
- Bugscope Team They have setae sticking out from between them.
- Bugscope Team okay Laura you have control.
- Student what do i do
- Bugscope Team each hexagon is an individual fact of the eye, called an ommatidium, and has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team You can try things out and see how they work.
- Bugscope Team facet, not a fact... silly me :)
- Bugscope Team '
- Bugscope Team apostrophe
- Teacher what are those sticks at the triple point of the lenses?
Bugscope Team those are setae, which are hair-like structures
Bugscope Team those are called setae (see-tee), they help the insect to sense its environment
- Bugscope Team this is the vestiture -- the mid part of the head.
- Teacher Hi, Scott, Alex and Cate, This is Sue Neuen
- Bugscope Team hi sue, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team the sticks are setae (see-tee) that help the fruit fly gauge wind speed.
- Bugscope Team Yay! Hi Sue!
- Bugscope Team this is the base of the antenna of the fruit fly.
- Bugscope Team good driving!
- 5:11pm
- Teacher Hi, Scott, Alex and Cate,
Bugscope Team hi Sue!
- Bugscope Team now back to the preset, and back on the road
- Bugscope Team the setae we are imaging now are mostly mechanosensory
- Bugscope Team the tiny setae are microsetae and not likely sensory
- Bugscope Team insects are often covered with many setae (hairs), those setae stick through the exoskeleton and are connected to nerves underneath
- Student what is the hole in the bottom right corner?
- Bugscope Team that is where one of the larger spines has broken off
- Student ok, I'm going to let someone else drive
- Bugscope Team although keep an eye out for other holes in bugs, some are used to breath!
- Teacher In the left corner the measurement says 23 um?
Bugscope Team yep, that's an automatic scale bar, 1 um = one micron = one millionth of a meter
- Bugscope Team the mechanosensory setae function much like cat or rat whiskers
- Bugscope Team yes 23 microns or micrometers
- Bugscope Team about 11 bacteria long
- Bugscope Team if we were thinking about bacilli
- Bugscope Team who would like to drive now?
- Bugscope Team who would like to drive?
- Teacher I will
- Bugscope Team jodie, want to drive the scope? it's fun.
- Student I was woking with 5th grade students today and they want to know if you can see an atom with an electron microscope
- Bugscope Team ok, eddie, you've got control
- Student Eddie got there first!
- Bugscope Team Eddie you got it Dude
- 5:16pm
- Bugscope Team you can see an atom with a transmission electron microscope (TEM), but there are not many TEM's that good.
- Bugscope Team nice imaging!
- Bugscope Team the latest newest TEMs can do it
- Student thanks! I'll look up the TEM and tell them about it. They will be really excited!
- Bugscope Team those setae on the eye are thought to help the fly sense air movement, and that's how it's able to move so quickly away from your hand when you swing at it
- Bugscope Team and that's why a fly swatter works better, because the swatter has holes in it, so it moves less air as it is approaching the fly
- Student makes sense now!
- Bugscope Team it used to be that TEMs had spherical and chromatic aberrations that prevented one from being able to resolve atoms. First they figured out how to correct those aberrations using software; only recently did they figure out how to do it with the actual optics.
- Student what is that?
- Bugscope Team this is the antenna,
- Bugscope Team both parts -- there is a sort of pad part and a part that looks like a branch
- Student so the TEM is kind of like looking at images from outerspace that need to be fixed by software?
- Bugscope Team the mouth, here, is dried and not like it looks in life
- Bugscope Team nice driving eddie, you are finding some cool stuff
- Bugscope Team well lower mag images work fine in TEM, but atoms were pushing the limits
- 5:21pm
- Teacher Is that a hole in the wing?
Bugscope Team that is probably where i poked a hole in it when I was picking it up
- Student How big is the whole fly we are looking at?
- Bugscope Team as you drive around the system automatically saves images and stores them onto your member page for later study. all chat is saved on your member page as well
- Student These hairs on the legs, are they tactile or do they sense taste?
- Bugscope Team TEM is how you see cell organelles such as mitochondria and Golgi, etc.
- Bugscope Team your member page is: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-037
- Bugscope Team butterflies can taste things through their feet setae
- Bugscope Team Cate is more careful than the rest of us. If I had mounted it we would be lucky to have its head.
- Teacher What is the fly resting on?
- Bugscope Team haha with my luck, I wouldnt even realize it was missing its head
- Student The hairs on the legs - are they tactile or do they sense taste?
- Bugscope Team silver paint on top of carbon doublestick tape
- Bugscope Team probably mostly tactile but like a Monarch there could be chemosensory setae as well.
- Bugscope Team claw!
- Student any suggestions on the best types of bugs to send in for observations?
- Bugscope Team sometimes we can see a tiny pore in the tip of a chemosensory seta.
- Student Why are the images in black, white and gray with no other colors?
Bugscope Team the microscope uses electrons to gather the image, not light. the electrons are beamed at the bug, and then bounce off (along with gold-palladium) and are collected by the secondary electron detector. that detector can sense different intensities and that's how you get different shades of grey
- Bugscope Team small, for a start
- Teacher Please pass the driving to Joe
- Bugscope Team smaller ones are always good. Specialized insects are interesting, unlike roaches which are streamlined from years of evolution
- Bugscope Team go for it joe
- Bugscope Team earwigs, fruitflies, mosquitos, ticks (which I realize are not insects), flies...
- 5:27pm
- Bugscope Team earwigs very often have mites on them
- Bugscope Team scott, can correct me on that color answer, he's the expert in electron microscopy
- Bugscope Team the wavelengths of visible light are 400 to 700 nm, and the diameters of electrons are much smaller than that
- Bugscope Team so we are using something much smaller than light to get our images
- Teacher What is the procedure to send in bugs?
Bugscope Team all that info is on our website, we've tried to make it very simple to understand and get to: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/
Bugscope Team here's a better link, with more detailed instruction: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/help#specimen
- Bugscope Team dry, preferably dead, wrapped in Kleenex
- Bugscope Team and then in a noncrushable container
- Teacher what are the structures that look like tongues between the compound eyes
- Teacher How many bugs can a class send in?
Bugscope Team as many as you want. if you give us extras that's great and it can go in our personal stock for future sessions :)
Bugscope Team 116
- Bugscope Team the best ones come in baby Tupperware in Kleenex and are already dead and dry
- Student I'm seeing two pads in the eye area above the mouth. What are they?
Bugscope Team those are a set of antennae
- Bugscope Team yeah I was just kidding
- Student does anyone know how evolved the fruit fly is in comparison to other insects?
- Teacher How bout 41?
- Bugscope Team be sure to try another preset -- there are many today
- Teacher ;)
- Bugscope Team the pads are the antennae
- Bugscope Team Eddie that would be great.
- 5:32pm
- Bugscope Team the mouth does not look good here at all.
- Teacher what do the antennae sense?
Bugscope Team they can sense pheromones and chemical smells in the air
- Teacher Is the microscope scanning top to bottom or side to side?
Bugscope Team top to bottom it is kind of hard to see through the browser, but if you were in front of the microscope computer, you would see it
- Student I just came in and did not find out which fly this is. It looks like the mouthparts are sponge like. Does it feed by soaking up material?
Bugscope Team if this fruit fly were critical point dried, it would look better. Yes it has sponging mouth parts. It kind of spits up some juices to dissolve what it will eat and then it sponges them back up
- Bugscope Team so we could have told you that if we get insects in 100% ethanol we can critical point dry them, and we can get them to look even better.
- Teacher How do we see other preset insects?
Bugscope Team well, when we setup for a session, we decide what presets to make. then when the session starts, the teacher can click on any one of those presets. it's just a way to create bookmark like places, in case one gets lost during driving the scope
- Bugscope Team so if you collected fresh insects and put them right into EtOH that would be totally cool.
- Bugscope Team Joe can click on one of the presets to the right of the chat here
- Bugscope Team the presets scroll...
- Bugscope Team but perhaps for obvious reasons only one person can drive at a time
- Bugscope Team this is a true bug (Hemiptera)
- Bugscope Team sort of truncated -- the abdomen is gone
- Bugscope Team heh
- Bugscope Team there is a hole in it where a pin was
- 5:37pm
- Bugscope Team that's a serious antenna, huh?
- Bugscope Team if you do not like a preset try another -- we made a whole boatload of them
- Bugscope Team the samples are on a 1.75 inch disc
- Bugscope Team the sample stage of the microscope can move only 50 mm, so that is about right for the aluminum discs, which we have machined for this
- Bugscope Team this microscope in particular will allow one to image nonconductive and uncoated samples, but for bugscope and most other applications we coat our samples
- Bugscope Team the pad on down the tarsus here has tenent setae on it that allow the insect to climb vertical surfaces
- Bugscope Team the tenent setae are on a pad called a pulvillus
- Bugscope Team this is a rolypoly
- Bugscope Team pillbug, woodlouse, sowbug
- 5:42pm
- Bugscope Team these are isopods, and they are also crustaceans -- they are not insects
- Bugscope Team also known as a doodlebug
- Bugscope Team they have I think seven pairs of legs
- Bugscope Team or a potato bug, or according to a former vice-pres, potatoe bug
- Bugscope Team and the legs are all the same -- so they are called isopods
- Bugscope Team rolypolys thrive in damp areas, actually they require it, because they have special breathing organs which are a lot like gills
- Bugscope Team you can see plant material on this little dude as well
- Student can we see their breathing organs?
- Bugscope Team let us know if someone else would like to drive, if Joe is tired
- Teacher where are the eyes
- Bugscope Team we can barely see the eyes, to the left of the head here
- Bugscope Team ha
- Student Are those teeth in the mouth?
Bugscope Team no but it has 4 pairs of jaws, that might be someof them
- Bugscope Team the eyes are more easily seen from its back
- Student Pass to Debby
- Bugscope Team okay, debby, you've got control
- Student ok, why 4 pair of jaws?
- 5:47pm
- Bugscope Team they have a lot of chewing to do?
- Teacher With 4 jaws, what does this eat?
Bugscope Team they commonly feed on vegetation, under logs or other damp areas
- Bugscope Team insects/arthrpods often have very novel mouthparts, not at all like ours
- Bugscope Team arthropods sp.
- Teacher debby has no control
- Student Scott - What does sp mean?
- Bugscope Team what is also interesting to me is that we are seeing this creature at a fixed moment in time, and in life they are often very dynamic
- Bugscope Team aquatic rolypolys can get up to 20cm big
- Bugscope Team okay, trying to fix
- Bugscope Team someone did something, is it working debby?
- Teacher no
- Student I might be her computer pass
- Student pass it to Laura
- Bugscope Team it's the same with TEM -- we are seeing cells at a fixed moment in time and they are so busy -- there is so much going on
- Bugscope Team okay, hold on, i'm going to switch, and back again
- Bugscope Team oops who wants to drive?
- Student debby
- Bugscope Team okay, debby, i've given you control again, do you see the controls on the upper right of your browser?
- Bugscope Team thanks Alex had it straight and I goofed it up
- Bugscope Team if not, try hitting refresh F5
- Bugscope Team no prob scott
- Teacher yes, nice to know i have control of something
- Student debby has it dno
- Student debbie has it now
- Bugscope Team coolness
- Bugscope Team debbie, take us for a spin!
- Bugscope Team Debby you can scroll through the presets and find something else to image as well, if you want
- 5:52pm
- Bugscope Team this is right in the middle of the Monarch wing, and it is very bright in part because the scales do not ground very well.
- Teacher What part of the ant are we zoomed in on?
- Bugscope Team you can adjust the brightness in the adjust control
- Bugscope Team when we want to look at scales we look near an edge that we have stuck down well with silver paint
- Teacher Ooops, I guess we moved to a monarch wing...
- Teacher why silver paint
- Bugscope Team we moved beyond the ant, Randy, to the Monarch wing
- Student I see Fred is a guest can anyone log in to see this?
Bugscope Team yes, we allow anyone to log in, sometimes teachers with upcoming session want to see how it works, sometimes people are just curious. we can block anyone from loging in though, in case someone gets feisty..
- Bugscope Team silver paint is conductive and cheaper than, for example, gold or platinum paint
- Bugscope Team yes anyone can log in to see this
- Bugscope Team anyone can log in as a guest, and we can confer control to them as well
- Bugscope Team we've seen fred many times before, he is well behaved...
- Bugscope Team this is pretty cool
- Bugscope Team nice control of the 'scope
- Bugscope Team so pretty
- Bugscope Team pollen
- Teacher So when students send in samples do you set them up as presets?
- Bugscope Team yeppers
- Bugscope Team yes we try to pay attention to what they ask to see
- Bugscope Team as long as they aren't total mush or something...
- Bugscope Team sometimes we will get a shopping list of things people would like to see
- Teacher do you also identify all samples?
- 5:57pm
- Bugscope Team we pick the ones that preserved the best and don't charge up with electrons
- Bugscope Team we try our best to ID the samples
- Bugscope Team we have anohter bugscope member, annie ray, she is a PHD entomology student, working on a thesis specialized on beetles. she is an expert on a lot of the difficult questions about insects
- Teacher is the circle in the center the pollen grain
- Teacher explain charge up w/ electrons
- Teacher Is this the pollen grain?
- Bugscope Team it looks like it
- Bugscope Team the list of bugscope staff is here: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/who_are_we
- Bugscope Team and we spend time learning the characteristics of some of the common insects/arthropods
- Student If I understand correctly, we can use this from our classrooms? Are you staffed during the mornings?
Bugscope Team we try to do session only during our working hours, 8-5 central, but we special occasions, where a class from a foreign country will want to use it, then we are going to have to be here at night. we can do that.
Bugscope Team there is a computer compatibility test that we ask you run, from the computer(s) you plan to use for bugscope
Bugscope Team if you computers pass the test, then all is good! even if it fails, we can still work with you. since i've been on bugscope, we've never turned away a class that wanted to do it
- Bugscope Team this may also be a mold spore -- they are similar in size and appearance
- Bugscope Team yes we've done sessions at all times of the day
- Teacher Is there a way to control the brightness on our individual screens?
Bugscope Team well, not really, we can only allow control of the scope image from one person at a time, so the person who has control now would have to change the brightness
Bugscope Team randy, that is because when someone is controlling the scope, they are literally control the ESEM itself, and we try to make it as true to life as possible, so the kids can see what it's really like
- Bugscope Team we work with you to get the day/time you want to do the session at
- Bugscope Team Eddie charging is when the electrons that impinge on the sample do not run across it and go to ground
- Bugscope Team these are mostly chemosensory setae
- Bugscope Team like taste buds here at the tip of the piercing proboscis
- 6:03pm
- Teacher tissues vs. organs? which would be at the organ level
- Student What is the strangest thing you have looked at under the electron microscope?
- Bugscope Team Debby I missed the first part of that about tissues/organs
- Bugscope Team skin is an organ, i believe...
- Bugscope Team one of the coolest things we have seen is mites
- Bugscope Team yeah, mites are cool, they are bugs on bugs!
- Bugscope Team once we set up a mite war in the 'scope
- Teacher would the setae or any other structures be tissues or organs?
- Student If we see an image that we would like to download and use later, can it be saved. I tried but it did not work.
Bugscope Team all the images are saved to your member page: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-037, check that out. it also saves chat
- Bugscope Team we had prey and predator mites and set the predator mites loose on an island of prey mites on a plant
- Bugscope Team the setae are part of the nervous system
- Bugscope Team whenever the image is still for a second or two, an image is saved to your member page, and chat is saved along side those images
- Teacher What is coming out of the holes?
- Bugscope Team the reason insects and similar arthropods have setae is because they have exoskeletons
- Bugscope Team on the member page, just go to the transcript and it will all be there
- Teacher pass the driving to maureen
- Bugscope Team so they have, essentially, armor
- Bugscope Team oh yeah, good point cate, thanks, once on the member page, click on "full transcript" to see it all
- Student were the predator mites move around or were they all dead?
- Bugscope Team maureen, you've got control now
- Bugscope Team like if we had armor we would not be able to feel our environment
- 6:08pm
- Bugscope Team I used a dissecting 'scope to watch the predators attack the prey, and then I clipped the leaves they were on and froze them using plates of aluminum that were sitting in liquid nitrogen
- Bugscope Team after that I put the little stubs they were on in the 'scope, in wet mode, and took photos
- Student so you froze the leaf and mites?
- Student so you do not need to coat them with gold?
- Bugscope Team this was using the microscope as an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM)
- Bugscope Team so I did not need to coat them
- Bugscope Team I put them on the Peltier stage to keep them frozen
- Bugscope Team 4 C plus 6.1 Torr water vapor gave us 100% RH in the chamber, at least at the sample
- Bugscope Team the prey mites were a species called urticae, which you know means 'itching'
- Student what are we looking at now?
- Bugscope Team i'm not sure where we are exactly
- Bugscope Team so I had put the prey mites on an island (a Tupperware dish) in a dishwashing tub
- 6:13pm
- Bugscope Team take the mag down so we can see where we are?
- Bugscope Team the island I had to secure with tape so it would not float to an edge
- Bugscope Team fruitfly
- Bugscope Team but the mites walked across the doublestick tape no problem
- Bugscope Team fly's usually have very complex eyes, with lots of ommatidia
- Bugscope Team the prey mites made the predator mites hungry
- Bugscope Team they make people itch
- Bugscope Team so no one wanted to come into the ESEM room for awhile
- Student do the predator mites actually eat the prey mites?
- Bugscope Team they grab them and bite them, probably actually suck the juice out of them
- Bugscope Team sounds like a good horror movie...
- Student sounds like a horror film...
- Bugscope Team sometimes we find ladybugs that have been chewed on by dustmites after they died
- Bugscope Team they cut right into the cuticle -- the chitin
- Student have you looked at head lice?
Bugscope Team yep, scott has before
- Bugscope Team dustmites are actually softbodied and unless we could fix them while they were alive they would shrivel up
- Bugscope Team yes they have little cliinging arms to attach to hairs
- Bugscope Team yes or dermestid beetles
- 6:18pm
- Bugscope Team wow this looks like pollen
- Teacher The bee was on my desk
- Bugscope Team dermestids I think are at least a cm long
- Bugscope Team they can devastate hides in a museum
- Bugscope Team i just found on wikipedia, dermestids can be 1-12 cm long
- Bugscope Team they can be used to strip a skeleton to bone
- Bugscope Team wait wait, 1 -12 mm
- Bugscope Team so they are smaller than we thought, or wiki is wrong. wiki has been wrong before
- Bugscope Team yeah I would be scared
- Teacher I don't think it was a dermestid that big.
- Bugscope Team we are looking at tiny hairs called microsetae
- Student how did you get the job to use the electron microscope?
- Teacher I would of seen that
- Bugscope Team but 1 to 12 mm is not so bad
- Bugscope Team I walked in one day and started working as Scott says. eventually I got trained on the electron microscope and here i am
- Bugscope Team I needed something to do when I was finishing my double major and asked if I could work in someone's lab.
- Bugscope Team yeah Cate just appeared here
- Student are you college students or graduate students?
- Bugscope Team like she just popped out of the elevator here in the basement and stayed
- 6:23pm
- Bugscope Team all of us on now are full time staff at the beckman institute
- Bugscope Team i graduated with a degree in physics
- Bugscope Team annie ray, who is often on, is a PHD entomology student
- Student thanks for all the information, have to go now :)
- Bugscope Team awww...
- Teacher Thank you for your time.
- Bugscope Team okay laura, hope to see you on a bugscope session sometime in the future!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Student Thanks for the great demo!
- Student What fun we had. Thanks for your time to let us see these insects up close. Makes you want to be sure and call the exterminator.
- Bugscope Team bye bye everyone, thanks for being such cool teachers!
- Teacher Thank you for the up close and personal bug demo!
- Bugscope Team yeah when you get into the Outer World and are teaching go ahead and apply from the bugscope web page
- Teacher right place, right time. thank you
- Bugscope Team thanks for all the great questions~
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/apply
- Teacher Scott and team, Thank you for your time today. You are great!!!!
- Student Thank you Scott Alex Cate Scot for taking the extra time to help us learn how to use this cool tool. Be seing you. Joe
- Bugscope Team and here's your member page again: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-037
- Bugscope Team thanks everyone
- Bugscope Team when you apply for your own sessions, you'll have your own member page
- Bugscope Team We are happy to do this, of course, and this was a particularly fun session
- Teacher Until next time,
- Bugscope Team thanks sue!
- Bugscope Team See You Sue!
- Bugscope Team Good bye everyone!
- 6:29pm
- Bugscope Team rxl stopped, session disabled
- Bugscope Team session locked
- Bugscope Team okay, randy, maureen, joe, and laura, we gotta book, so we'll be loging you off in a sec
- Bugscope Team nice session everyone, good bye
