For the past couple of months, I have been pretty busy finalizing some things for the upcoming Belle Biology Day this March. On this day, all of the senior biology majors at Saint Mary’s will present their research projects in the form of a poster and an oral presentation. Since my last update I have been able to measure the right knee flexion angles of each participant through ImageJ. I took the averages of all the angles in both the injured sample and the non-injured sample and I compared them using a Mann-Whitney U test where I found that there was no significant difference in right knee flexion angle between the injured and non-injured groups. I was a little disappointed that the data were not significant, however, I’m not giving up on hope! I think that there are several things that can be improved upon to more accurately approach our original objective and there is currently a student taking over this study to expand and address these improvements. Overall, my final steps have included writing my paper, creating my poster, and preparing for my presentation in March. I’m looking forward to completing my portion of the project and seeing what’s left to come in future studies!
Overall, my study was able to recruit a total of 52 female subjects. Of those, 13 reported a history of knee injury (4 individuals reporting ACL-related injuries) and 39 reported no history of knee injury. There was no significant difference in knee flexion angles between the injured and non-injured groups. We think that the failure to detect statistical significance could be due to a large number of possibilities. The small sample size and the variation in knee injury type and severity among study participants are both reasons why knee flexion angles may have differed. In addition, 11 of the 13 injured individuals went through reconstructive mechanisms such as surgical reconstruction and rehabilitation/PT that could have ultimately regained full function of the knee. Despite the fact that our findings were not statistically significant, we still saw the trends that we were expecting to see! The injured group had smaller knee flexion angles than the non-injured group as we predicted. Further research in the locomotion lab will be able to expand the sample size and hopefully gain more participants with ACL-related injuries! Since October I’ve been finishing up the statistics and final edits of my senior comp. I’m glad to finally have found my results.
My research assessed the differences in tail morphology of Ambystoma laterale and Plethodon cinereus and if that had an effect on swimming performance in varying flow rates. I found that tail shape and surface area have some influence on swimming velocity, but A. laterale did not significantly differ in swimming velocity compared to P. cinereus, despite having a significantly flatter tail with more surface area. I also found that slow flowing water did not have a significant impact on either species while swimming. These findings, along with observations of differing swimming styles between the two species, suggest that tail morphology may have a greater influence on swimming performance beyond velocity. Other factors such as tail beat amplitude, swimming gait, and tail beat frequency, may have a greater influence on swimming performance than tail morphology alone, and these factors need also to be assessed to properly compare these two species in terms of swimming performance. What was most interesting to me was finding that my two species, though they do differ in tail morphology, do not differ in swimming velocity, but do seem to differ in swimming gait which may be explained by their morphological differences. There could be an interesting follow up project for a Saint Mary’s or UNDERC student about those observed gait differences. I also found that having these salamanders swim against slow flowing water did not have any impact on swimming velocity as I originally hypothesized. I’m excited to finish my comp and share my findings and all I have learned with my peers and professors at Belle Biology Day, an event where all the senior biology students share their research through poster and oral presentations. I’ve sent my paper to committee and have made the edits they recommended to me. After one more round of final edits, hopefully my committee members will sign off on my paper, and I will officially be done with my senior comprehensive project! I have just started working on my poster and presentation for Belle Biology Day, which is coming up on March 2nd. This last month is the final stretch for my project, and I’m looking forward to completing it. |
AuthorsAlok Agwick Archives
February 2024
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