Posted in Project Ideas on Oct 30th, 2012 Comments Off
Surrounding aquatic organisms is a boundary layer across which molecules must move via diffusion. As the rate of water flow around an organism increases the size of the boundary layer shrinks. Using this information, determine how the rate of nutrient uptake in aquatic plants/algae change as water flow rates change. Theory Diffusion (Neuhauser, Claudia. Calculus for [...]
Posted in Project Ideas on Oct 25th, 2012 Comments Off
Microbes convert substrate through enzymatic reactions into products that are then converted into microbial biomass. Using this knowledge, determine microbial growth in a chemostat (substrate-limited growth) under varying enzyme and substrate concentrations. Theory Michaelis and Menten model for enzyme reactions (Neuhauser, Claudia. Calculus for Biology and Medicine. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000. 624; Stephen P. and [...]
Posted in Project Ideas on Oct 4th, 2012 Comments Off
The mark recapture method involves capturing, marking, and then releasing a portion of individuals in a population. After a sufficient amount of time for the marked individuals to reintegrate back into the population has passed, another portion of the individuals from the population are captured. From the number of marked individuals that are recaptured the [...]
Posted in Project Ideas on Sep 16th, 2012 Comments Off
The purpose of this project is to predict the time it takes for malaria to become potentially fatal. An equation will be used to calculate the proportion growth of parasitic cells within a micro-liter of blood. Two trials will be tested: 1)a small initial load of parasites, and 2)a large load of parasites. From these [...]
Posted in Project Ideas on Sep 5th, 2012 Comments Off
Fish and trees continually grow, but their growth is restricted, so as they grow older they grow proportionately more slowly. Determine how long it would take for a pet shop goldfish (5cm in length) to reach the size of a whale shark (12m in length) with and without restricted growth constraints. Alternatively, determine how long [...]