[APRU-DLP] Re: [CORRECTION] Re: APRUNet DLPP Minutes and Proposal

[Judy Lemus]

Hello everyone,

My apologies for joining this discussion a little late, and not being able
to make the teleconferences yet.  Zita and I finally had a very enjoyable
call last week during which she was able to catch me up on the DLPP project.
I'm very excited to be a part of this effort.

Based on my understanding of the goals of this program, I thought I might
offer another option for a cooperative distance learning project this
summer.  At the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina, we have been
using a monitoring system with our high school education programs that
allows us to measure the heart rate of crabs with an infrared sensor.  The
system was developed by a group in Plymouth U.K. and basically uses the same
technology as that for measuring heart rate in premature babies.  The system
is called "Computer-Aided Physiological Monitoring (CAPMON)".

In a nutshell, CAPMON consists of an infrared emitter/detector sensor that
can be easily glued onto the back of a crab.  The sensor is removed at the
end of the monitoring without harming the crabs, which can then be returned
to the environment. The heart is dorsal in crabs so the light shines through
the carapace, is reflected by the heart and returns to the detector.
Changes in the shape of the heart will change the quality and quantity  of
the light that is returned.  The sensor is attached to a unit that converts
the light signal into a digital signal.  Simple software converts this
signal into a signwave pattern across a laptop computer connected to the
CAPMON box.  Each spike in the wave can be counted as a beat of the heart
and the software calculates beats per minute.

The CAPMON system has been used in the UK in studies of physiological
indicators of water quality.  There is a good correlation between the
ability of a crab to maintain a sustained elevated heart rate during mild
stress, such as constant motion, and the quality of the water from which
they were taken.

I have been using this system in our high school programs as a way for
students to design and carry out a comparative laboratory experiment.
Students collect the crabs themselves (we use shore crabs, Pachygrapsus
crassipes), determine what variable they want to test, run the experiments,
analyze the data, and present their data to their fellow students.  A simple
experiment can be completed in about 4 hours.  We are not currently using
the system for water quality assessment, but rather as a mechanism for
collecting a range of physiological baseline data on the crabs.  Students
compare the heart rates of crabs under different temperatures, salinities,
oxygen levels, light levels, etc.

The initial impetus for this was an educational project called "Global
Heartbeat", which was proposed by a distance education organization that we
work with in Virginia to create a distance learning network in which
students from different areas could share their data on local crabs with
other groups and discuss their results.  So far the networking piece has not
come together for various reasons. But this would seem to fit nicely with
the objectives of the DLPP.  I could envision a program in which students
conducted studies on their local crab species, in exactly the same type of
process as proposed by Megan, and then could also actually conduct some
experiments and share the data with each other.

The limitation of this system is that it does require the CAPMON hardware
and a laptop computer.  We have been working with the group in Virginia to
develop an educational CAPMON system that is much less expensive than the
original.  These are two channel units that can measure two crabs
simultaneously.  If this group were interested in such a project, I could
check into the cost of these.  However, there are also some units that we
have loaned out to various teachers and education organizations that could
be made available to this group -- we probably have enough for one unit per
site (which is not ideal because you can only measure 2 crabs a time, but it
would be a start!).  Each site would need a laptop computer.

I apologize for the length of this email!  If you want to learn a little bit
more about the concept of Global Heartbeat, you can check it out on the web
at www.globalheartbeat.org.  You can see pictures of the experimental setup
under "Procedures".  If there is interest, I can also send the protocols
that I use for our summer programs.

If the group would like to discuss this on the conference call next Tuesday,
I can participate if the call could be rescheduled for an hour earlier.

Best regards,
Judy


---------------------
Judith D. Lemus, Ph.D.
Assistant Director of Education
Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA  90089-0371
213-740-1965 voice/213-740-6720 fax
jdlemus at usc.edu