-Spring Break trip to Palmdale cancelled for the time being
-Next meeting in two weeks
Speaker: Dr. Marc Tishler
Topic: Space Flight Experiments in Biology
-In the 1st experiment studied what happens when you don't bear weight on muscles
-Wanted to do experiment on the role of gravity on how insects develop -On Earth the insect egg takes 5 days to hatch, there are 5 larvae stages which take 19 days to take place, they spend 3 weeks in the pupal period (metamorphosis), and then the adult experience
-What happens when they are brought up in a 90 degree head up position?
-Hypothesis:This may change their circulatory system
-In the on Earth experiment there were differences in development, there was a slow rate in amino acids coming out, the muscle was 20% larger, and produced 80% more steroid hormone
-If these changes happened because of a change in the gravity vector, what would happen when the gravity vector was removed? -NASA funded this research for 3 years
-During the shuttle experiment the insects only grew from a phase 3 to a phase 6
-They only developed for a few days
-The reason for this wasw because of the way the canisters were sealed and the CO2 levels
-What was learned was that the insects are very adaptable
-The experiment will refly on the shuttle in May
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