Connected on 2011-10-17 15:30:00 from Alameda, California, United States
- 2:34pm
- Bugscope Team 'scope is pumping down...
- Bugscope Team almmost there.
- Bugscope Team almmmost
- Bugscope Team onnne more tennnth
- 2:39pm
- 2:44pm
- Bugscope Team hello Aveo!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Guest Hi, very cool!
- Bugscope Team I am cruising around the stub, trying to find cool places to save so that today's Bugscope session participants, at 3:30 our time, will have presets they can check out.
- 2:50pm
- Guest What are the little "particles"?
- Bugscope Team a few of the upper ones are bacteria
- Guest Thanks for letting me "look around". Very interesting!
- Bugscope Team we are happy to have guests. Thank you.
- 2:55pm
- Bugscope Team hello CSUEB!
- Teacher We will be online in about 30 minutes :) M Korb
Bugscope Team Cool! Thank you, M.
- 3:01pm
- 3:06pm
- 3:11pm
- 3:20pm
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll
- Guest Very nice images Scott....I like the idea of presets.
Bugscope Team Thank you!
- Bugscope Team Please let me know if you have any questions. Our session starts in 9 min. or so.
- 3:25pm
- Guest I expect that comments should be confined to the students in the class. Do you know how many will participate?
Bugscope Team this is a class in which the professor demonstrates various online teaching resources to her college students -- pre-teachers
- Bugscope Team so this is a little different, and I am not sure how many students she has
- Bugscope Team it is fine if you would like to comment, and I will answer questions when I can. Of course I favor the classroom we're working with.
- Guest Great! It would be nice to know how many teachers (pre-) you are reaching.
Bugscope Team I'll see if I can look it up in Dr Korb's application.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-121
- Bugscope Team She has 30 preservice teachers in this session, I believe. She is running three sessions with us.
- Bugscope Team Elementary Science Teaching Methods
- 3:30pm
- Guest I love to hear the #'s because we have so many to reach. This is wonderful.
- Bugscope Team Dr Korb has been working with us for 8 or 9 years, since before she got her PhD. For years she connected from Marquette University.
- Bugscope Team We have had other lecturers working with pre-service teachers, but Michele was there first and has never stopped.
- Bugscope Team She also coauthored a paper in Science that resulted in Bugscope being given a SPORE award (by Science). That has given us a lot of publicity, and we have maybe triple the normal number of applications now.
- Bugscope Team Science Prizes for Online Resources in Education
- 3:36pm
- Guest Wow! What do you think your capacity limits are?
Bugscope Team really only an average of two sessions per week, with some exceptions
- Bugscope Team we need an hour before each session to set up, and we usually have an extra hour at the end in case there are timezone problems, someone wants to run longer, or another school would like to run a short test session.
- Bugscope Team we share the microscope with researchers...
- Teacher We are ready!
Bugscope Team fantastic!
- Bugscope Team the plumose setae and other branched setae you see now are on a spider's head, near the eyes
- Bugscope Team spiders are kind of delicate, and some of the larger ones, at least, have what are called 'urticating hairs' that they release when, for example, a dog sniffs them. Those hairs irritate the nasal passages and discourage the dog from doing any more probing.
- Teacher Why do they have these structures?
Bugscope Team but the majority of the setae we see are likely mechanoreceptors that help the spider sense vibration.
- 3:42pm
- Bugscope Team often, but not always, spiders do not see as well as they sense their prey through vibration
- Teacher Do spidrs re-grow the urticating hairs?
Bugscope Team yes, if they are tarantulas, for example, that go through molts as they age
- Teacher Why do some hairs have "branches" on them?
Bugscope Team I believe they are better equipped to sense wind than the others. But I should say that I am not sure just which hairs are the urticating hairs and which spiders we should expect to see them on.
- Bugscope Team now you can see all of the spider's eyes
- Bugscope Team insects and arthropods like spiders have an exoskeleton -- they are invertebrates and have no bones inside their bodies. That means that they have a kind of chitin shell that protects them, and it is analogous to (in humans) wearing armor. Meaning that it would be difficult to feel things touching you if you were in a suit of armor.
- 3:47pm
- Teacher Do all spiders have fangs?
Bugscope Team yes I believe they all do, and they almost all eat the same way -- they inject a corrosive venom into their prey that dissolves the internal organs. Then they use those same fangs to suck it all up like a milkshake.
- Teacher Who is NOTINTHISCLASS?
- Teacher We are looking for fangs...
Bugscope Team because we got to see the eyes, we cannot see the fang, which are too far down on the face.
- Guest to be honest im not in this class i just stumbled upon this sight
- Guest site*
- Teacher welcome....
- Teacher We can't find the fang....
- Guest What spectrum of light are spiders eyes typically capable of seeing?
Bugscope Team I am not sure what spectra they see in -- the few spiders that do see well at night. Those few are said to have very sensitive eyes, but the wavelengths I am not sure of.
- Teacher Whats up?
- Teacher OK..no fangs...next bug.
Bugscope Team the closest you will get is the scorpion stinger, which resembles a large single fang
- Teacher I am Mo.
Bugscope Team Hi Mo!
- Guest What do earwigs eat?
- 3:52pm
- Bugscope Team they eat plant material, often, and things that rot at the base of plants; sometimes they eat other things
- Bugscope Team you can see a moth scale on the front of the head here.
- Bugscope Team you could see some nice mandibles there, plus palps that are accessory feeding structures.
- Bugscope Team to the right you see the tip of one of the palps.
- Bugscope Team the tips of the palps often have chemosensory setae that function like tastebuds
- Guest Those are some nice mandibles
Bugscope Team yes we just slipped down to where we can see only the smooth edge of one of them to the upper left
- Bugscope Team right in front of us, diagonally across the foreground, is a plan fiber
- Teacher What is the tube inside the mandible?
Bugscope Team that is where the chemosensory setae are -- the tube is one of four palps, two mandibular and two maxillary, usually
- 3:58pm
- Guest It looks like the tube has teeth or little hairs inside of it
Bugscope Team some of the little hairs (setae) are mechanosensory, so the insect can feel when it makes contact with something; and some are chemosensory -- the smaller, budlike ones
- Teacher Are the mandibles the same for ants?
Bugscope Team they are comparable, or analogous
- Guest What's the difference between a housefly and a cranefly?
- Bugscope Team ants seem often to have longer palps, and their mandibles vary greatly in size just as the ants themselves vary in size depending on their 'job'
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a cranefly. they resemble industrial-sized mosquitoes but are harmless.
- Teacher What are palps?
Bugscope Team palps are also called 'palpi,' and they are accessory limbs, in a way, that help the insect taste and manipulate its food.
- Bugscope Team spider palps are a little different. in the males they are larger, like boxing gloves, and they deliver packets of sperm to the female.
- Bugscope Team so you may be able to differentiate male and female spiders of some species by the size of the palps
- Bugscope Team here I just focused a bit
- 4:03pm
- Guest Do spiders bleed?
Bugscope Team they are full of hemolymph, or something analogous, and if they lose a lot of it they will die.
- Bugscope Team spiders have the capability of jettisoning a given leg, if they wish, for example if they sense that venom from another spider biting them has entered that limb.
- Bugscope Team that is called 'autotomy' -- the ability to spontaneously let one of your limbs fall off.
- Guest So the leg can grow back?
Bugscope Team not in most spiders, but we believe yes if the spiders are the kind that molt
- Bugscope Team back to the cranefly head
- Bugscope Team you can see that its eye is a bit collapsed. that happened almost certainly after it died and the head started to dry out
- Teacher random question.
- 4:08pm
- Teacher i've heard that stepping on a cocroach just spreads the eggs
- Teacher if i step on a cocroach, is the white stuff inside really eggs?
Bugscope Team it is possible there are some eggs coloring the hemolymph, which is usually clear, white.
- Teacher ah thank you
- Bugscope Team cockroaches deliver their eggs in little egg cases; I am not sure, if you squash a cockroach and eggs come out with the hemolymph, whether the eggs will be mature and/or whether they will not just dry out.
- Teacher which ones have protein and which are poisonous? i.e. could i (hypothetically) eat this bug?
Bugscope Team they all have protein, but some are tastier and have more protein.
- Bugscope Team you would not want to eat "Spanish fly"; ladybugs are said to taste bad; and Monarch butterflies taste bad and are poisonous to many other species.
- 4:13pm
- Teacher is it true that the more colorful the more poisonous/dangerous?
Bugscope Team the colors may be warning signs, either that the insect is poisonous, or tastes bad. But some other insects will then mimic those warning colors and actually be quite edible.
- Teacher how sharp (comparitively) are these pinciers?
Bugscope Team some of them will draw blood if they are large enough to pinch your skin; it depends on the size of the insect
- Bugscope Team sometimes you will click on a preset and not see what we had saved for you. that is because the specimen may have moved since we made the preset. But it also shows you that this is live imaging -- what you see is not 'canned.'
- Bugscope Team you are operating a $600,000 microscope from your classroom
- 4:18pm
- Guest what are those feather structures?
Bugscope Team those are scales, which are modified setae. one of their purposes is to fall off easily. so if you flew into a spider web, your scales might stick to the web but you could slip out.
- Bugscope Team scales may also help with thermoregulation, keeping the body temperature more constant, and they also provide the colors we see on butterfly and moth wings.
- Teacher do you know how to distinguish between bugs one can eat and ones can't?
Bugscope Team no I don't, sorry...
- Bugscope Team these are the cercopods -- the pincers -- at the tip of the earwig's abdomen
- Teacher what is the primary use for these structures on the rear end of the esrwig/
- Bugscope Team they can definitely pinch with them and thus deter prey.
- Bugscope Team if you try to grab an earwig it can quickly whip its abdomen around and pinch you
- 4:23pm
- Bugscope Team I have read that earwigs can use the cercopods to help unfold their wings, assuming they're adults and have wings. they are also used in mating. the cercopods on males are curved, kind of bowlegged looking, whereas those of females are close together, more straight.
- Bugscope Team this is the center of the moth head, and you can see the compound eyes on both sides
- Teacher What is it that we are seeing at the bottom of the screen?
Bugscope Team those are moth palps, covered in scales
- Bugscope Team now you can see the proboscis, which is extended downward
- Bugscope Team when the moth is flying or is at rest, the proboscis, as with butterflies, is coiled up
- Bugscope Team the proboscis is like one of those New Years' party favors that you blow into to to extend.
- Bugscope Team the moth or butterfly pumps hemolymph (its blood) into cavities in the proboscis to extend it
- 4:29pm
- Guest Can I see the spider's eye?
Bugscope Team just a minute -- I would like to ensure that today's classroom is finished.
- Guest Thanks.
- Teacher hi Scot and team - we are going to sign out now. See you tomorrow night online. M KOrb
Bugscope Team Thank You! See you tomorrow!
- Guest Thank you Scott!
Bugscope Team Czech I also gave you control of the microscope.
- Bugscope Team so you should now be able to select from the presets yourself, change mag, etc.
- Bugscope Team please don't crash anything! ;)
- Guest Scott, I did a session with a group on a Sunday a summer ago. I think you have made great improvements in the interaction. This is really much easier to use.
Bugscope Team Thank you! One thing we did was disallow click to drive, which was hard to control.
- Bugscope Team so you can now move around only with click to center, at low mag.
- Bugscope Team I am part of a small team, and it was Chas who did the programming and made those changes.
- 4:34pm
- Bugscope Team Chas had started with us when he was 15, and he is now 28. He has a programming job and is very busy but finds time to help us when we have problems.
- Guest Click to drive....driving with the mouse?
Bugscope Team we used to have it set up so you would click on the screen with your mouse and the 'scope would drive in whichever direction the quadrant of the screen was...
Bugscope Team now you click on the screen, on a particular object, and the microscope centers on that object.
- Bugscope Team what is really interesting, intriguing to me is that some people do not realize that this is live -- it is not canned, and these are not slides.
- Bugscope Team we make a new sample for each session because we do not want you to find that you're looking at something someone else has already seen.
- Guest I really like what he's done. Do use have a summary of the number of students and teachers you've interacted with over the years....?
Bugscope Team we are well over 600 sessions now. once in a while someone totes up all of the sessions, and how many students the teachers reported working with
- 4:40pm
- Guest Thanks again! Signing out.
Bugscope Team Thank you!
- Guest I think....unless you've actually put the sample in yourself and tried to locate your sample or find a location you specifically want to look at it's hard to imagine what's going on in reality.
Bugscope Team we need to work on getting that out, when we can; we do our best to respond to what the classroom asks us, and of course the sessions we like best are the ones in which students have the opportunity to drive, and to chat. but not all schools are set up for that.
- Bugscope Team I mean that we try to explain what's going on but at the same time we want to ensure that we answer the Q's.
- Guest It is really hard to do everything but what you are doing is excellent as an introductory way to interest students in SEMs.
- 4:45pm
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Megln. We use insects/SEM as a Trojan Horse to get kids interested in the possibility of science as a career choice.
- Guest Do you do any materials other than bugs?
Bugscope Team yes we will, and do. but there are few things that sustain interest as well as bugs
- Guest I think I remember you saying you could accommodate a couple of sessions a week. Is this still true?
Bugscope Team we schedule two sessions per week and sometimes add one when we need to
- Bugscope Team we are presently booking into the Spring of next year.
- Guest There are several other universities now offering remote access to SEMs.....have they contacted you regarding their outreach programs?
Bugscope Team we have had occasional queries. I think they are likely quite independent and have their own ideas as to what they want to do. Or often that is the case.
- Bugscope Team we have developed a philosophy and a way of doing this that is intended to reward the kids' interest; we have a few 'rules' we try to follow...
- Guest Did your article in Microscopy Today add to your applicants?
Bugscope Team not nearly as much as the Science paper/award.
- 4:51pm
- Guest Awards are good. Thank you for your time Scott. I'll check in with you again when I can.
- Bugscope Team Thank You! I appreciate your questions.
- Bugscope Team Bye!
