Connected on 2010-01-27 16:00:00 from Austin, TX, US
- 2:33pm
- Bugscope Team pumping down
- 2:42pm
- 2:48pm
- 2:53pm
- 3:00pm
- 3:07pm
- 3:12pm
- 3:18pm
- Bugscope Team hi gerri, welcome to bugscope!
- Teacher hi there!
- Teacher i am nervous about this...haven't done this before and i decide to do a demo. am i crazy?
- 3:23pm
- Bugscope Team we just finished setting up presets
- Bugscope Team no no no, it's not a problem.
- Bugscope Team things will go fine, please don't worry, we are here to help
- Bugscope Team let's talk a bit, and get you feeling better
- Teacher sounds good
- Teacher fyi
- Bugscope Team so, first thing, you can control the scope via the controls on the right. if you really don't want to control, we can control for you
- Teacher i am actually connecting via live videoconferencing to schools across the state
- Bugscope Team wow, cool
- Teacher i'll be talking to them live while they see my screen
- Teacher but
- Teacher i would like them to be able to login as well. i can do that, correct? by sending them to the\live screen?
- Bugscope Team are people going to be logging in as guests or students?
- Bugscope Team oh, yes, totally, others can login
- Teacher what should they be? guests or students?
- Bugscope Team if they are from your same network, they can login as students, if not, then they can login as guests
- Teacher ok...they will be guests
- Bugscope Team yep, anyone in the world can login as guest, no password, just visit /live
- Bugscope Team you got it
- Bugscope Team now, about how many are planning on logging in?
- Teacher we officially start at 4:00, right?
- Bugscope Team if we have more than 20-30, then it gets way too much chat
- Bugscope Team yes, 4PM start time
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Teacher i don't think we will have that many login
- Bugscope Team so, if we can have 10-20 logins, the session will go perfect
- Teacher sounds good
- Teacher soo....
- Teacher how do i drive this thing :)
- Bugscope Team you want to pratcice? yeah, just try it out
- Bugscope Team click on "click to center"
- Bugscope Team wait, there ya go!
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team okay, sorry bout that, that was scott moving the scope
- Bugscope Team ok, now give it a try
- Bugscope Team click on any of the mavicgation controls
- Bugscope Team the easiest is magnify, you can zoom in or out
- Bugscope Team when using navigation, try click to center, that is much easier than click to drive
- 3:28pm
- Teacher how do i get back to a preset?
Bugscope Team you can click on any preset at any time and it'll take you there
- Bugscope Team just click on it
- Teacher nevermind! see them now
- Teacher What are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team this is a fly, a smashed fly head
- Bugscope Team oh wait, it's a mosquito, not a fly
- Bugscope Team the compound eye is the bumpy thing
- Teacher is it a smashed mosquito?
- Bugscope Team those bumps are the individual facets of the eye, called ommatidia
- Teacher the crater looking things are on the eye?
Bugscope Team yep, those are the facets, ommatidia, each one has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team and as you can see, insects are very very harry. those hairs are called setae (pronounced see-tee), they help insects the feel their environment
- Bugscope Team The eye is caved in because the skeeter is dried out.
- Bugscope Team normally the eyes are bulbous.
- Teacher how interesting!
- Bugscope Team this is a female mosquito -- the ones that bite
- Teacher what is the gauze looking thing?
Bugscope Team that
- Teacher looks like an upside down U
- Bugscope Team um one of the palps, maybe?
- Bugscope Team oh, that's the eye - the compound eye
- Bugscope Team take the mag and see!
- Bugscope Team yeah, increase the mag, give it a try
- Bugscope Team mag up and see. that is
- Bugscope Team sry meant to say that's the eye, but already answered
- Bugscope Team hey man no problem
- Teacher ok
- 3:33pm
- Bugscope Team check it out now
- Teacher how strange
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia look like little baby marshmallows
- Bugscope Team we moved the scope a bit for ya, now you can see those ommatidia, each one (ommatidium) has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team and you can see one of the scales
- Bugscope Team some ommatidia look like hexagons too, although these are move like spheres
- Bugscope Team try zooming in on the scale near the top, scales are cool, way cool
- Bugscope Team the scales look like palm fronds and indicate that the mosquito is a martyr. it's a saint
- Bugscope Team like in religious paintings...
- Teacher do i center it first?
Bugscope Team good idea, yeah
- Bugscope Team sounds great!
- Bugscope Team center it first, then zoom in
- Bugscope Team there you centered the scale
- Bugscope Team yeah, there ya go, it's not too hard huh?
- Bugscope Team good job, Gerri
- Teacher no, it is good :)
- Teacher what part am i looking at now?
Bugscope Team the scale is centered
- Bugscope Team if the focus is out of wack, try to change it, that can be hard though, go one way and if it gets worse go the other way
- Bugscope Team Gerri there are 25 presets on the stub, so far, so you can choose from among any of them, and you can drive around from wherever you are
- Bugscope Team oh look it magically focussed!
- Teacher this is really amazing
- Bugscope Team the scale gets really interesting when you get even closer
- Teacher i am getting ready to get the sites from around the state connected
- Teacher will do an overview of Bugscope
Bugscope Team okay cool, just let us know when you need us for anything
- Bugscope Team gerri, also, make sure to keep in mind, we can give control of the scope to ANYONE who is logged in, a guest, a student, anyone who is logged in
- Bugscope Team Gerri try any of the presets, when you feel like it; you can scroll through them
- Teacher and then will be back right at 4:00
- Teacher fantastic
- Bugscope Team cool we will be making a few more presets
- Teacher can i go ahead and log out and then just come back?
- Bugscope Team sure, see you in a bit
- 3:38pm
- Teacher bye
- Bugscope Team chow
- Bugscope Team see ya
- 3:47pm
- Bugscope Team i'm in larry hanks' lab
- Bugscope Team working on cerambycids
- Bugscope Team getting a project started on a genus endemic to the hawaiian islands
- Bugscope Team just started this past fall
- Bugscope Team that sounds like a good plan
- Bugscope Team might have to do a few field trips
- Bugscope Team but you won't need an electron microscope 'cause they should be really huge dudes, right?
- Bugscope Team yea money is the problem writing some grant proposals now
- Bugscope Team like industrial sized cerambycids?
- Bugscope Team they're sort of medium sized
- Bugscope Team are they nice colors?
- Bugscope Team an sem would help to see if they have these gland pores that annie had found
- Bugscope Team on cerambycids in the same tribe
- Bugscope Team Dude you're gonna be looking at prothoraces.
- Bugscope Team yup
- Bugscope Team professional thoraxes
- Bugscope Team they're actually kind of drab surprisingly
- 3:52pm
- Bugscope Team awww
- Bugscope Team most of them do have a light coloured stripe to them
- Bugscope Team and they look somewhat streamlines
- Bugscope Team *streamlined
- Bugscope Team so racecars?
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team are they found only in Hawaii?
- Bugscope Team as far as i know
- Bugscope Team there's another grad student interested in joining in
- Bugscope Team is there room or would that clog up the system
- Bugscope Team nvm
- 3:57pm
- Bugscope Team Sorry I hadda go help someone for a sec
- Bugscope Team certainly there is room
- Bugscope Team ah it's ok, she was actually just interested in joining at another time
- Bugscope Team i misunderstood
- Bugscope Team hi gerri, welcome back to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team hi Gerri!
- Bugscope Team Hi Ponder!
- Teacher hi guys
- Bugscope Team Hi small g gerri!
- Teacher Hello
- Bugscope Team hi
- Teacher i just gave an overview of who bugscope is
- Guest Hello Gerri from New Caney ISD :)
- Teacher let's give them a minute
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope everyone
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team awesome. let us know when you have questions. Gerri is driving now, and we can let other people drive, one at a time, as you wish
- Teacher giving them another 30 seconds or so
- Bugscope Team on this end we can confer control to whomever we wish
- Guest I'm a guest now :)
- Bugscope Team for example if a teacher wants us to give a certain student control, we can
- Teacher scot...you can give control to students as well, correct?
Bugscope Team yes we can, one at a time, but we ensure that it is alright with their teacher
- Bugscope Team Ponder we can give you control as a guest no problem
- Bugscope Team this is a fruit fly and it looks particularly good because it was not airdried
- 4:02pm
- Bugscope Team this fruit fly was critical point dried from ethanol, which we can do when we have time
- Guest org
- Teacher scott...one of my participants was having problems....all is good now
- Teacher soooo...
- Teacher i can drive and move around, right
Bugscope Team yep, you have control gerri
- Bugscope Team Gerri let us know if you want anyone else to drive. Yes you can!
- Teacher this is a fruit fly?
Bugscope Team yup
- Bugscope Team yep, a fruit fly's head
- Bugscope Team you can see the compound eye
- Teacher i want to look at his eyeball...so let's see if i can do that now
- Bugscope Team it's mouth parts are pointing to the upper left
- Bugscope Team also, all those hair like things are not actually hairs, they are called setae (pronounced see-tee)
- Bugscope Team and you can see the antennae and the palps, and the sponging mouthparts
- Bugscope Team hi Becca!
- Bugscope Team give it a try, just zoom in
- Bugscope Team Becca and Joe are entomology students who are helping us today
- Guest yes
- Bugscope Team Hi everyone!
- Bugscope Team good driving gerri
- Bugscope Team you can see that the compound eye has lots of tiny bristles on it.
- Bugscope Team zoom in every more, yeah, there ya go
- Teacher i am going to focus a little
- Bugscope Team those are mechanoreceptors, and they help the fruit fly gauge windspeed
- Bugscope Team you can tell that focus is either up or down, one way or the other
- Bugscope Team notice that even this compound eye has the setae (hairs ) on it. we think those setae air in the flying in that they sense wind direction and speed, so that helps the fly to make sudden changes in direction
- Bugscope Team you can kick the mag up if you want, as well
- Teacher how do you know that they help the fly gauge windsepped?
Bugscope Team good question. i don't think anyone knows for certain. but, we do know about setae on other parts of the insect, setae have different functions, and many setae are mechanosensory in that they sense movement. these are mechanosensory, so they sense movement
- Teacher i think alex just answered me
- Bugscope Team apparently people have determined that experimentally
- Teacher on the left, you are keeping track of our questions, right?
Bugscope Team yes, when we specifically answer a question, it gets moved to the left side
- Bugscope Team whenever we grab a question and answer it that way it goes over there
- Teacher let's zoom out and look at something else on this fly
- 4:07pm
- Bugscope Team some setae are mechanosensory, some are chemosensory, and some are hot/cold sensors
- Bugscope Team spiracle
- Teacher what is in the center now?
- Bugscope Team the sponging mouthparts
- Bugscope Team and a couple of palps
- Bugscope Team there is some kind of juju on the mouth
- Bugscope Team like the fly spit up, sorry
- Teacher where is the juju?
- Bugscope Team juju is just our name for dirt, grime, stuff like that
- Teacher but where is it in this picture?
- Teacher i see what looks like a clam with spikes
- Bugscope Team if you zoom in near the hairs, that looks like dirt there, some of it maybe
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team normally this part of the mouth would actually look spongy, with pores in it, but there is a bunch of oily stuff at the base of the setae
- Teacher i am going to go to one of the presets
Bugscope Team totally cool
Bugscope Team okay, sounds good
- Teacher in the bottom right
- Bugscope Team mosquito head!
- Guest I'll drive
Bugscope Team okay, ruiz, you have control now
- Bugscope Team this is a female mosquito
- Bugscope Team Ponder you are the supreme ruler.
- 4:12pm
- Bugscope Team one thing to remember about driving: if you use click to drive, click once to drive and once to stop
- Bugscope Team these are scales
- Guest cool
- Teacher scales on what?
Bugscope Team I think that is the facsicle
- Teacher i know the mosquito, but where are they located on the mosquito?
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes, moths, butterflies, silverfish, and some weevils and few beetles have scales
- Bugscope Team the scales are all over the place, they look like think leaves maybe?
- Bugscope Team the tube that holds the biting apparatus
- Bugscope Team right in the center of the image, those are scales
- Teacher kind of look like pantry moths stuck on a wall :)
- Bugscope Team So the hypothesis that those short hairs are used to detect wind speeds and current flow during flight comes from the fact that they are short and highly organized, and also singularly innervated.
- Guest what are the round things in the background
Bugscope Team those are bumps in hte tape that we stick the bugs to
Bugscope Team on the upper left?
- Bugscope Team if you didn't know this was a female you could also tell that it is female from the antennae
- Teacher how do you know it is a female?
Bugscope Team because it has a non-frilly antenna, and because it has a fascicle that it uses to suck blood; males do not bite
Bugscope Team males have a smaller mouth part, and the antennae will be feathery looking
- Bugscope Team this is a crater in the sticky tape
- 4:18pm
- Bugscope Team please be sure, anyone, to ask us questions if you want
- Teacher sorry...was talking to a site via videoconferencing
- Bugscope Team there is another skeeter in here as well
- Guest anyone else want to drive?
- Teacher where is the other skeeter?
Bugscope Team it is to the north and west
- Bugscope Team Joe what is the base of the antenna called? I always forget.
Bugscope Team scape?
- Teacher who wants to drive next?
- Bugscope Team no the scape is part of the antenna; I mean the pad at the bottom
- Guest I'd love to drive
Bugscope Team got it
- Bugscope Team jennden, you've got control of the scope now
- Bugscope Team this is a $600,000 electron microscope you all are controlling
- 4:23pm
- Teacher what are we looking at now?
- Guest This is too cool! Who wants to drive now! Love It
- Bugscope Team this is part of the mosquito
- Bugscope Team the base of the antenna, or maybe a palp, hard to tell
- Teacher let's look at a different critter
- Bugscope Team if you zoom out we could see it better
- Guest are there any bugs on the endangered species list?
Bugscope Team There are several endangered insects, for example, there is a beetle in Nebraska that is only found in a salt creek. I don't know if we have any to look at.
- Guest Thank you for the drive
- Teacher I would like to try!
Bugscope Team Guest you have control now.
- Teacher i'll drive again for a bit until someone else wants to
- Bugscope Team let us know anytime you have questions
- Bugscope Team the edge of the world
- 4:28pm
- Bugscope Team we drove off the edge there, i fixed it, should be working again
- Bugscope Team using "click to center" is much easier than click to drive.
- Bugscope Team you can see two of the spiracles
- Bugscope Team the little black pores
- Teacher they are pretty hairy, right?
Bugscope Team yes they are!
Bugscope Team well, yeah, but not really hairs, those are called setae
- Bugscope Team the round thing is one of the halteres
- Teacher got it
- Bugscope Team setae stick through the exoskeleton, to nerves underneath. that's how the insect feels things
- Bugscope Team the haltere that scott is referring to is the thing between the second and third leg
- Teacher why is it important for scientists to be able to magnify these guys?
Bugscope Team they would like to be able to compare characteristics between and among species
Bugscope Team There are a lot of things going on with the insect structure that can be used to help technology along too, so we can get an idea of how to build spider silk, for example.
Bugscope Team it's also useful in that some structures can't be seen unless they're under such high magnification, for example in my work, you can't really see the gland pores that are on the prothorax of the beetles with your naked. eye
- Bugscope Team There are even bigger hairs we call bristles that can be used for either sensing things or for defense.
- Bugscope Team there are many things that can be discovered by using an electron microscope. for example, brochosomes (tiny excretions from the leafhopper insect) were not even know to exist until someone put a leafhopper in an electron microscope in 1958.
- Guest What is the turn around time from when you receive the bugs that we send for us to be able to see them on the bugscope
Bugscope Team we ask that the teacher send us the bugs well in advance, so we have up to a week to prep the bugs. but often we'll get the bugs 1-2 days before the session and we have to rush the sample together. either way works. we can probably prep a sample in 1-2 hours if we had to
- Teacher Thank you!
- Teacher what is the most unusual thing you have discovered
Bugscope Team lots of cool things -- like earwigs often have mites on them
- Bugscope Team insects are pretty cool because they do many of the things we do, but differently. and they have their skeleton on the outside, which is why they have all of those tiny setae, and bristles, and spines, and trichae sticking through
- 4:33pm
- Teacher wow! this is cool
- Teacher what are we looking at now?
- Teacher Spider Eyes!
- Bugscope Team the big things in the front are the chelicers, or chelicerae
- Teacher anyone else want to drive?
- Bugscope Team they open left and right and at the base are the fangs, which point inward
- Bugscope Team spiders are soft bodied and often shrivel up quite a bit
- Teacher i was telling them at the beinning that you have very good hints on what specimans are good to collect
Bugscope Team the best samples for Bugscope are small, and also we think the more interesting insects/athropods are specialists, as opposed to roaches or crickets, for example
- Guest i will drive
Bugscope Team okay, you've got control now
- Teacher any other drivers out there?
- Guest my p presets are gone
Bugscope Team hit refresh
- Bugscope Team if your screen goes black or you lose the preset, try to refresh your browser, using F5
- Bugscope Team refresh fixes a lot of stuff. F5.
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a hawk moth, I think it was
- Bugscope Team the compound eye is as big as another moth on the stub above it
- 4:38pm
- Bugscope Team click to stop!
- Guest Thanks for the info on endangered bugs - it;'s hard to imagine that!
Bugscope Team Yeah, there are so many of the more annoying insects it's weird to think some might actually go instinct. There may be more endangered than we think - there may be more insects almost extinct in places like the rain forest where we don't have as much information.
- Bugscope Team cool good save
- Bugscope Team this is the wing, part of the wing, of the hawk moth
- Bugscope Team when using click to drive: click once to start moving, then you MUST click again to stop, or else it'll keep moving
- Bugscope Team using click to center is much easier
- Bugscope Team if you get lost, just click on any preset and it'll move there
- Teacher somehow, you are capturing all of this, correct?
Bugscope Team yep, your bugscope member page has all the images and chat from this session: http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-144
- Bugscope Team the stub is only 1.75 inches in diameter, which is why we like small critters.
- Teacher very nice!
- Teacher i'll share it with the teachers
- Bugscope Team we keep a database of all the images and chat, for every single session, and that is available to the teacher and class anytime after their session
- Bugscope Team this is the claw of one of the fruit flies
- Teacher tell us about your research and now you got interested in your field
Bugscope Team I was always interested in biology, and after taking a course in undergrad, insects seem like they are really cool and do a lot of neat things while also serving as a great model for biological studies. Then after a couple of internships and jobs, I decided not only did I enjoy the lab portions, the outdoor field work is also really awesome, and here i am~
Bugscope Team I'm still figuring out what I want to do, but I am planning to look at mating behavior of longhorned beetles. I got interested from a high school class about insects. They're so weird, almost like little aliens, I was just fascinated by it.
- Bugscope Team there are brochosomes on the tip of the claw
- Bugscope Team yeah Becca and Joe...
- 4:44pm
- Bugscope Team scott is going to get a good view of the brochosomes now
- Teacher tell us what is the best way for the teachers to send/ship the bugs
Bugscope Team it's all documented on our website, in complete detail. but bascially: freeze the bugs in an airtight jar of some kind, then ship in a film canister in some toilet paper or something like that
- Bugscope Team scott is an electron microscopist, he's an expert at using the scope
- Guest what is an Ommatidia
- Bugscope Team these are some of the ommatidia -- the indivdual facets of the eye
- Bugscope Team our website contains everything a teacher should need to know: bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu, however we will answer any questions they might have as well: bugscope@beckman.illinois.edu
- Bugscope Team this is the other skeeter
- Bugscope Team a compound eye is made up of hundred of individual facets, each with a lens in it. those facets are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team this is one of the palps
- Guest anyone want to drive
- Teacher scot
Bugscope Team Yeah!
- Teacher can you show us a few more things?
- Bugscope Team This is cool. This is one of the true bugs (Hemiptera) on the stub today
- 4:49pm
- Teacher he needs a cool name :)
- Guest are the large circles to the side the eyes
Bugscope Team Yep!
- Bugscope Team true bugs have piercing/sucking mouthparts like this, and they have a particular arrangement or orientation of the wings/elytra that characterizes them as well
- Bugscope Team yes
- Teacher any other questions from the group?
- Bugscope Team compound eyes
- Bugscope Team and you can see the bases of the antennae
- Bugscope Team this shows part of the piercing/cutting part of the mouthparts
- Guest what are we looking at
- Bugscope Team oh and a little hole there...
- Teacher what is the dark hole area?
Bugscope Team heh, that's where a pin was stick into the bug to hold it down
Bugscope Team looks like it's been pinned?
- Bugscope Team this is the thorax of the true bug.
- Teacher ha!
- Teacher any final questions from the group?
- Guest I see a preset called Aztec salt?
Bugscope Team yep, it's salt from Wendy's, it has a cool structure to it
- Bugscope Team it's one of those 'Terminator' wounds
- Teacher as in the fast food Wendy's?
Bugscope Team yep, the "where's the beef" place
- 4:54pm
- Bugscope Team we think it looks like cool Aztec carving
- Bugscope Team it does!
- Bugscope Team quality is their recipe!
- Bugscope Team I've never looked at salt before - does salt from different places look different?
- Bugscope Team we put it in there for kids, just to give them something different. and most can ID with wendy's
- Bugscope Team the sodium chloride crystals are cubic, but from Wendy's they have that particular shape
- Guest What would be a good number of bugs to send for a class?
Bugscope Team 11 or 12, depends on the size
Bugscope Team well, it depends on the size, we have a 1.5 inch stub to put bugs on. so 5-8 small bugs would work fine
- Teacher thanks for doing this session! pretty fascinating
- Bugscope Team this is an aphid!
- Bugscope Team Thank you Gerri!
- Bugscope Team remember your member page, all the chat and images are stored there: http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-144
- Bugscope Team No problem, I had fun, too!
- Bugscope Team You can see the cornicles.
- Bugscope Team like little jet exhausts
- Bugscope Team 1.75-inch stub...
- Teacher thanks so much
- Teacher i'll get my evaluation done
- Bugscope Team See you next time!
- Bugscope Team Thank You Everyone!
- Bugscope Team bye!
- Teacher thanks
- Teacher get ready for more texas teachers to sign up!
Bugscope Team Yay!
- Bugscope Team you are very welcome gerri
- 4:59pm
- Bugscope Team over and out!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team okay, closing down the session, nice session everyone
