Hello, folks —

Only two items on the agenda for this week. We’ve got Lab Exam 2 on Wednesday. You’ll also be passing in your Histology Notebooks on Wed afternoon.

I think the class that’s normally in our lab up until 2:50 is going elsewhere for something (that I don’t completely understand)…. If that’s the case, I’ll be able to get into the lab early and get everything set for you so we can start right at 3:00. In and out, I say!

Until then, good luck studying and let me know if you have any questions.

P.S. Your grades in the MasteringA&P Gradebook are up-to-date. To figure out your current standing, take your total number of points and divide by the total (1310) to get your grade as a percentage.

Well, this is it! This is the last week of new material, and probably the shortest week of material. It covers the autonomic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that controls involuntary body activities. Once you finish the autonomic nervous system, you’ll be ready to begin A&P2. Many of the body systems in A&P2 – the endocrine, the cardiovascular, the respiratory, and the digestive, for example – are tightly integrated with the ANS.

When we meet onsite on Wednesday, we’ll have Lecture Exam 3, which covers Weeks 11, 12, and the first half of Week 13 (spinal cord only). Afterwards, we’ll have open lab time with slides and models.

In the past, there has been some confusion regarding what is and what is not fair game, especially with regard to where I “draw the line” between the spinal cord and the PNS. In reality, we only cover two aspects of the spinal cord in this class. First, we cover the gross anatomy of the spinal cord (Marieb Fig. 12.29a). The rest of the material is simply cross-sectional anatomy and how nerve impulses are routed to and from the spinal cord. This was featured in a Lecture Art file that you can see here. I consider both of those topics (gross anatomy & pathway to and from cord) fair game for the exam. I realize that the pathway information is covered again in the section on reflex activity in the PNS, but we see that info here (in the section on the spinal cord) first. Once the spinal nerve leaving the vertebral cavity splits into the dorsal ramus, ventral ramus and rami communicantes, that’s PNS material and will NOT be covered.

Next week, there will be no new material, so that you can catch up, focus on the Lab Exam, and get ready for the final. The Lab Exam is next week, and the Histology Notebooks are due when you finish – no exceptions! You’ll get them back when you take the final.

That’s it for now. See you on Wednesday!

This week’s material is relatively short and covers the spinal cord from Ch. 12, as well as the beginning part of Ch. 13 on the peripheral nervous system.

The big event this week is our last lab. On Wednesday, we’ll do Lab 10 and Lab 11. Lab 10 will introduce you to some nervous system histology and the sheep brain. We’ll look at three slides, and these will be the last slides for your notebook. I’ll demo the sheep brain dissection, and then you’ll work on it yourselves.We’ll take a short break, and then work on Lab 11. Lab 11 is dedicated to the special senses of vision and hearing. Unfortunately, time constraints don’t let us cover the senses in any great detail, and that’s too bad; there’s some really interesting biology there. I’ll lecture on the basic structures and functions of the eye and ear, and then we’ll do the cow eye dissection. This is a really nice dissection that I really like to do because it’s relatively easy to see all of the parts.

Next week (May 4), we’ll have an onsite meeting that will have three purposes: We’ll have Lecture Exam 3. This will cover material from Weeks 11, 12, and the spinal cord only from Week 13. The remainder of the Week 13 material (the PNS) and the Week 14 material will appear on the Final Exam. As before, we’ll take the exam in the physics lab, and then you’ll have open lab time in our regular room to work on slides, muscles, and/or models.

In two weeks (May 11), we’ll have Lab Exam 2. It will cover the muscles, muscle histology, nervous system histology, CNS, PNS, and special senses. The Lab Exam 2 Review Sheet can be found here. Your Histology Notebooks are due by the end of the lab exam. No extensions! I’ll have them back for you when you take the final. Information about the FInal Exam can be found on p. xvii in your Course Guide.

I’ll see you on Wednesday. Until then, send me any questions you have.

Well, now we’re really coming down to it!

There are only three weeks of new material left, and it all deals with the details of the nervous system. This week, it’s the brain. Of all of the topics that we cover in A&P1, the brain remains the most mysterious. I really try to steer you towards the definites, although you’re welcome to explore the more nebulous material, if you wish.

We do not have a scheduled onsite meeting this week, but you’re encouraged to come in and work some more on the muscles. They miss you (they told me so)! One quick note about open lab this week: the class that’s in the lab after us has a lab exam on Wednesday, so we’ll be shooed out around 5:00-5:15.

That’s it for now. If I don’t see you in person this week, enjoy the holiday and I’ll see you next Wednesday for our last lab!

Essentially, we’re coming down to the wire now, and this is the last real BIG week’s worth of material. This week begins the nervous system with an introduction to how neurons and their supporting cells work. Luckily, the hardest part of this material (in my opinion) is the concept of the action potential, which we covered back on Week 9.

How it shakes down from here:

• This week:  Introduction to Nervous Tissue (Ch. 11)
• Next week:  CNS: The Brain (part of Ch. 12)
• Week 13:  CNS: The Spinal Cord (remainder of Ch. 12); PNS: Cranial & Spinal Nerves (part of Ch. 13)
• Week 14:  Autonomic Nervous System (introduction to Ch. 14; this is pretty short)
• Week 15:  No new material; catch up and review for Final Exam

As you can see, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You’ll find that once Week 11 is finished, there will be less material for the following weeks. This is when you benefit from the typical end-of-semester chaos that occurs with the day classes. As the semester winds down, class time is swallowed up by days off (such as Patriots Day in a couple of weeks), exams, and scheduling for the fall semester. 

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. As you know, this Wednesday is an onsite meeting day that will be dedicated to Lecture Exam 2 as well as Labs 7 & 8 (both deal with muscle). We’ll start in our lab where I’ll show you the lab materials. We’ll then go across the hall to the physics lab and take the exam. As you finish the exam, you can just return back to “our” lab and work. Probably the most important aspect to Wednesday’s lab is beginning to learn the skeletal muscles for Lab Exam 2. Please do not rush out without working with the muscle models! You can make the most efficient use of your time on Wednesday if you look over the Lab 8 materials before coming to lab!

In addition, your PhysioEx simulation lab (pp. 219-228) is due on Wednesday. Please make sure I get them before you take off.

That’s it for now. See you on Wednesday.

This week’s material deals with muscle physiology at the whole organ level and it’s the last of the three weeks dedicated to muscle. As part of your reading on this, you’ll also be doing a computer activity using PhysioEx, a lab simulation package that’s available either in MasteringA&P or on the CD-ROM packaged in the back cover of your lab manual. In your Course Guide, you’ll find the PhysioEx instructions and lab report (pp. 219-228). (It’s technically Lab 9, so you’ll find it nestled between Labs 8 & 10.) The instructions should be self-explanatory. The PhysioEx lab report will be due next week. (Using PhysioEx is generally easier through MasteringA&P; at the bottom of this post, I’ve included directions for finding it in Mastering.)

Next week (Week 11!): We have an onsite meeting that’s dedicated to two activities. First, there’s Lecture Exam 2. This lecture exam will cover material starting at articulations and continuing up through Week 10.

• Week 7: Articulations
• Week 8: Introduction to Muscle Tissue
• Week 9: Muscle Contraction
• Week 10: Muscle Physiology

Following the exam, we’ll go into the lab and do two lab activities related to muscle (Labs 7 & 8). First, there will be a little bit of histology (although you’ve seen most of these slides during the tissue unknown project), and then we’ll tackle the muscle models that you’ll need to know for Lab Exam 2. We’ll meet in our regular lab first so I can show you the materials that are set up, and then we’ll go across the hall to take the exam in another room (like last time). As with the previous exam, once you’ve completed it, you can just go back across the hall and work in the lab. More on that in next week’s update.

Finding PhysioEx in MasteringA&P:

1. Log into Mastering as you normally would.
2. Click on Study Area (MyA&P) button. It should be someplace in the Michael Phelps banner.
3. On the next page, click PhysioEx 8.0 under Lab Study in the blue sidebar on the left.
4. Click on Skeletal Muscle Physiology.
5. Click on the link for Single Stimulus. You can watch the video first (if you want), but you won’t be using any of the other links on that page.
6. You’re now ready to pick up with MY instructions, starting on p. 220 of your Course Guide.

This is Week 9; we end on Week 14 — you can do the math!

If you haven’t done the Week 8 Quiz, please remember that that’s available until 9:00 a.m. on Monday, Mar 28.

In my opinion, Week 9’s material can be the most challenging of the entire semester. Mind you, there’s not necessarily a lot of it, but what’s there is fairly abstract and conceptual. It’s also crucial that you understand it, as it serves as the basis for what we talk about for the rest of the semester. Both muscle and nervous tissues are considered excitable; this week we talk about why muscle tissue can respond to a stimulus while other tissues (epithelial, dense regular CT, adipose) really don’t. This section will deal with the electrical phenomenon of the plasma membrane called membrane potential. As its name suggests, this is a type of potential energy that the cell uses to perform work. Again, please make sure that you take the time to fully understand this week’s material.

We have two weeks off from onsite meetings, so I won’t see you for a bit. Please keep in mind that the College’s withdrawal date is April 9 (a week from this coming Saturday). I won’t see you in person before that deadline, but I’ll dedicate that for a different post so this one won’t get too long.

Good luck on this week’s material, and send me questions about that, too!

At our last meeting, you had your first milestone in the course — Lecture Exam 1. This week, you’ll have your second milestone — Lab Exam 1. We’re going to have the Lab Exam in our regular lab. We’ll start around 3:15 or so (I need a few minutes to kick out the class in there ahead of us and set up).  The Lab Exam is designed to take about an hour, but I won’t time it, as long as you finish in enough time for me to get things disassembled by 5:15-5:20 or so (before the next class comes in). It is also is the only scheduled event on Wednesday. If you’d like to look at slides, you’re welcome to use the black boxes in the small study room (S-545) until I have the main lab cleaned up (by 5:30 or so).

For the one-billionth time, I want to remind you that you should be following the Lab Exam 1 Review Sheet for the Lab Exam. Also, take a look at the links from last week’s post for items that may help you.

As far as the Week 8 material goes, this week is the first of three weeks dedicated to muscle and it’s the first part of the class that gets significantly difficult. Typically, students who have a solid background from Bio I will manage fine.

The material for muscle is broken down like this:

• Week 8: Introduction to Muscle Tissue
• Week 9: Muscle Contraction
• Week 10: Muscle Physiology

Week 9’s material is especially challenging – it requires a mastery of membrane transport from Bio I and it serves as the foundation for how the nervous system operates. What you learn in muscle will carry through and be built upon up until the end of the semester. If you’re not on top of the material by the time we finish muscle, the rest of the semester will become impenetrable.

This week’s material focuses on articulations (joints), and it is the stepping-off point between the skeletal and muscular systems. Overall, this material is quite basic, but it does have a good deal of vocabulary that comes with it. When you get to the section on types of synovial joints, make sure you print out the table called Lecture Art: Types of Synovial Joints. That’s exactly what I cover in the day class.

We have an onsite meeting this week on Wednesday. We’ll start our meeting in the physics lab (S-327), where you’ll take the lecture exam. (I’ll put a note on the door of the lab to remind you.) After you finish the exam, you’ll have open lab time with the lab materials across the hall in our regular room (S-546). There will be no new lab material this week. Please remember that there are sample lecture exams available here.

The first Lab Exam will be held at our onsite meeting after Spring Break (3/23). The Lab Exam only takes about an hour (you’re not timed, though) and it’s the only activity scheduled for that meeting. You should be using the Lab Exam 1 Review Sheet to review. There will be figures, slides, models and bones on the exam. While nothing can completely replace the experience of working with the real bones, there are a couple of online resources that can somewhat help.

• the CD-ROM packaged with your lab manual called Practice Anatomy Lab (PAL)
• the MyA&P Study Area in MasteringA&P has a section called Bone Review (note: this is a fairly old internet activity and my browser doesn’t seem to run it anymore, so you’ll have to try this on your machine to see if it’s still functional)
• another very popular site for learning the bones is Bone Box

That’s it for now. Please feel free to send me questions if you’re unclear on things. Otherwise, I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Can you believe it’s already Week 6? We’ve passed the one-third mark of the semester!

As promised, this week’s material is very short. We’re covering the appendicular skeleton, but not all of it. I only cover the bones of the pectoral and pelvic girdles in class. The remaining appendicular bones are fairly straightforward and we’ll tackle them in lab only.

We have an onsite meeting this week where we’ll work with skeletal system slides and the bones. We’ll be doing Lab 5 & Lab 6. These will be the last two labs prior to Lab Exam 1.

We’ll have our first Lecture Exam next week. It will cover the material from Weeks 1-6. I realize that that probably seems like a lot of material to you, but compared to what we’re heading into, I think that it’s pretty basic. In general, people do their best on the first exam. Exams 2 & 3 may have fewer topics on them, but they are covered in much more detail and that’s what gives people trouble. P.S. Don’t forget to check out the sample lecture exams here.

After the exam next week, there will be open lab time for you to get ready for the lab exam. Please consult the Lab Exam 1 Review Sheet to prepare. In this course, much more than in Bio I, the lab material really complements and fleshes out the lecture component of the course. I think you’ll have a better idea for what I mean when you experience a lab exam firsthand.

One last reminder: the Week 5 Quiz is available until 9:00 a.m. Monday. That’s it for now. I’ll see you on Wednesday. As always, send me any questions that you have.