Computerized Data Acquisition for the Physiology Laboratory

该项目加强了生理学的实验方法。以前，生理学实验室使用的设备和实验方法通常是在20世纪60年代开发的。考虑到当今学生的计算机素养和现代仪器的进步，使用图表记录仪和手工计算进行数据分析既简单又过时。通过这些方法，失去了激发学生对科学兴趣的机会，学生毕业时没有做好在现代研究实验室工作的准备。 为了纠正这个问题，该部门正在从ADInstruments购买MacLab生理记录系统和支持仪器所需的MacIntosh计算机。这种计算机接口的仪器，与现代数据采集和分析程序，提供了一套新的教学工具，动物和人类生理学实验的入门和高级生物学课程。MacLab仪器能够实时捕获数据并通过菜单驱动软件快速分析结果。该软件提供的即时反馈使学生能够对他们的工作得出结论，并提出新的问题。然后，学生可以重新设计，重新测试，或延长他们的实验在同一实验期间。这种方法应该加强这样的想法，即研究工作是一个真正的迭代过程，并提供了实验工作的学生所有权的程度增加。此外，存储和检索数据的能力为学生提供了一些进行实验室实践的新方法。新仪器还使该部门能够进行呼吸生理学的新实验，并扩大其研究运动生理学的能力。

This project strengthens an experimental approach to physiology. Previously, the physiology laboratory has employed equipment and experimental approaches generally developed in the 1960's. Given the computer literacy of today's students and the advances in modern instrumentation, the use of chart recorders and manual calculations for data analysis is both simplistic and outdated. With these approaches, an opportunity to generate student interest in science is lost, and students graduate without being properly prepared to function in a modern research laboratory. To correct this problem, the department is purchasing the MacLab Physiology Recording System from ADInstruments and the MacIntosh computers needed to support the instrumentation. This computer-interfaced instrumentation, with modern data acquisition and analysis programs, provides a new set of teaching tools for animal and human physiology experiments in introductory and upper-level biology courses. The MacLab instrumentation provides the ability to capture data in real-time and quickly analyze the results through menu driven software. The immediate feedback provided by the software enables students to draw conclusions about their work and to ask new questions. Students can then redesign, retest, or extend their experiments during the same laboratory period. This approach should reinforce the idea that investigative work is truly an iterative process and provide an increased degree of student ownership of the experimental work. In addition, the ability to store and retrieve data provides for some new ways of conducting laboratory practicals for the students. The new instrumentation also enables the department to conduct new experiments in respiratory physiology and to expand its ability to study exercise physiology.