BIOL 4110, Fall 11, Exam 2 Key

Q # Ver. A Ver. B Q # Ver. A Ver. B

1. A B 31. B A
2. A B 32. B B
3. C D 33. A C
4. B A 34. E D
5. A C 35. D E
6. E B 36. D E
7. C B 37. B B
8. B D 38. B D
9. D C 39. B B
10. C A 40. D C
11. D B 41. B B
12. A D 42. A B
13. C A 43. B B
14. C C 44. B A
15. D B 45. D E
16. E A 46. A D
17. C E 47. B D
18. C C 48. C B
19. B B 49. B B
20. A D 50. D B
21. B C 51. A D
22. C D 52. C B
23. D A 53. B A
24. E C 54. B B
25. E C 55. D B
26. B D 56. C D
27. D E 57. A A
28. B C 58. B B
29. C C 59. D C
30. B B

60. It is well known that testosterone increases hematocrit by increasing production of red blood cells
and that blood hematocrit has great influence on its viscosity. Which gender has greater
resistance to blood flow? (2pts.)
Males

61. What is an EMG? What do the electrodes actually detect, and what cells are generating an
electrical signal used to generate the EMG? (3 pts.)
An EMG is an electrical potential measured across the skin when skeletal muscles are active. It is
generated by currents in the body that are caused by the simultaneous firing of many action
potentials on the sarcolemma while muscle fibers contract.

62. What is muscle fatigue (physiologists definition)? (2 pts.)
Muscle fatigue is a failure of a muscle fiber to contract and create tension when stimulated
repeatedly for a long period of time. Time needed to reach fatigue varies according to fiber type.


BIOL 4110, Fall 11, Exam 2 Key

63. Why is calcitriol so important for building and maintaining bone density in mammals? (3 pts.)
Calcitriol is critical for building and maintaining bone density because it is the only hormone that
stimulates intestinal absorption of both Ca
+2
and phosphate and the kidney reabsorption of both. It
ensures adequate blood levels of both the ions needed for bone deposition while also triggering
bone remodeling.

64. What are the 3 effects of epinephrine/norepinephrine on the heart that were covered in the
lecture? (3pts.)
1. Increases heart rate
2. Increases force of contraction (stroke volume)
3. Increases speed of conduction across heart, particularly through AV node and bundle of
His

65. Which of the valves in the heart was named for the hat worn by bishops in the Catholic Church?
What side of the heart is this valve found on? (3pts.)
The mitral valve, also known as the left AV valve or bicuspid valve

66. You want to investigate the effect of temperature on athletic performance in the long jump.
Success in the long jump is highly dependent on leg strength and length of stride. After lots of
paperwork, you are given permission to use data from a large competition that meets at the same
location twice a year during different seasons when temperatures are generally around 50 F at
the start of the competition, but rise during the day to about 75-80F before beginning to cool. The
difficulty is that you will be collecting data in one spring and the subsequent fall when virtually all
the participating athletes will be different individuals. You decide to restrict your dataset to only
males. All participants are required to wear nice suits to a formal dinner for a presentation of
awards after the meet. Most participants decided to provide information about their height, arm
length, leg length, waist, chest, hips, thigh diameter, and biceps diameter for suit rental from a
local company.

In addition to collecting data on temperature on day of competition at the time of each athletes
performance, what question(s) might you ask each athlete in an attempt to make it easier to
see whether or not temperature might affect long jump performance? You have 10 seconds
to ask your question(s) and get an answer (2 Q maximum). How might you mathematically
convert the raw data prior to statistical analysis to improve odds of finding a potential
correlation between temperature and the length of contestants best jumps. What do we call
these kinds of mathematical manipulations on data? (4 pts.)
Its important to note, that while I stipulated you gathered jump and corresponding
temperature data, you need to ask to get the body measurements.

There are several possible answers to this question, but they should focus on either trying to
normalize for leg length differences or for leg strength differences. You should definitely ask each
athlete for their leg length/inseam. You might additionally ask them for height and/or thigh
diameter. The simplest answer is to divide each jump length (inches) by the athletes leg length
(inches). This creates a measure of jump inch/leg inch for the tested dependent variable.
Obviously fundamental differences in athletic ability will be a problematic confounding variable in
any analysis; welcome to the messy world of real science. Other possible answers include
additionally asking about height, thigh diameter, or training experience/intensity. You might include
these elements in creating a novel divisor for normalizing the data. Adjusting raw data to attempt
to remove influence of a known factor while exploring influence of a different factor is termed
normalizing the data. I accepted the answer transforming the data from some of you, but strictly
speaking transforming and normalizing are 2 different things. Transforming is simply any
mathematical operation performed on the raw data prior to statistical testing; it generally has no
relationship to known independent variables but includes squaring, taking the log, etc.