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Watch a scientist attach a collar and sensor to a crab! Materials for CAPMON8:
Other materials that you will need:
A. Loading the Software 1. To load the CAPMON software into your computer, insert the 3 1/2 inch computer disk that came with the kit into the floppy (A:\) drive of your computer. 2. From the Start menu, double click on Windows Explorer. All of the drives will be listed in the window on the left under “Desktop”, and the active or selected drive will be shown in the large window on the right. 3. In the window that selects the drive (just below the menu bar), click on the down arrow to the right and scroll down to “3 1/2 Floppy [A:\]”, then click on this drive. The contents of the A:\ drive will be listed in the large window to the right. The “Capmon” folder should be the only item listed on this drive. 4. Click on the Capmon folder and drag it to the left and place it on top of the [C:] drive icon in the list under “My Computer”. This will copy the Capmon folder and application onto your hard drive. 5. Open the C: drive and double click on the Capmon folder to open it. Click on the icon “Capmon.exe” once, then go to the file menu and create a shortcut for this file. The new file will appear in the Capmon folder as “Shortcut to Capmon.exe”. 6. Drag this icon onto the desktop – this will be your shortcut to opening the Capmon application. 7. Restart your computer. B. Setting Up An Experiment 1. Before you begin, you should already have decided on the experiment that you are going to perform, and set up the appropriate experimental and control treatments in separate aquaria. 2. Connect the CAPMON converter box to the computer with the 15-pin gray cable provided in the kit. The “male” end connects to the computer and the “female” end connects to the CAPMON unit. 3. Connect both the CAPMON unit and the computer to their respective power supplies. The power cord for the CAPMON unit has a single pin at one end and a AC converter at the other end that plugs into the power outlet. 4. Double click on the Capmon.exe icon on the desktop to start the program. You will first be asked if you have a color monitor – choose the appropriate answer. Next you will be asked whether you want to save all parameters, or just heartbeat data – choose “N” for just heartbeat data. Last you will be asked if you want to load a particular Scan Rate, Trigger and Bandwidth – choose “N” to let the program determine these for you. 5. The next window will be the CAPMON startup window – hit Enter to continue 6. Enter “1” in the next window for the default port LPT. 7. The next window gives you the key strokes for each of the CAPMON functions. You should write these down on a separate piece of paper for future reference. In the menu bar at the top of this window, you can choose to expand this window to the full screen (the button with 4 arrows). Hit Enter to continue. 8. The computer display will be divided into 8 channel sections (4 blue and 4 green), each of which represents the output from one sensor. Each channel window is split in half to display the continuing heartbeat pattern on the top, and a histogram of the heart rate (in beats per minute) on the bottom. 9. Connect the sensor cables to the sensor ports on back of the CAPMON unit. The channel for each sensor corresponds to the numbered dial on the front of the box directly opposite the sensor ports. Use the sensor with collars if you are using crabs that are bigger than 3 inches across the width of their carapace. Use the microsensors without collars if you are using mussels or crabs smaller than 3 inches. 10. Test each sensor by tapping your finger over the light emitter and observing the change in the shape of the graph on the computer display. At this point, it is also a good idea to reduce the gain to zero on all channels not in use. This minimizes the risk of signals from each channel interfering with one another. 11. Now cover the loose ends of the sensors with a sheet of tissue so that the traces move across the center of their individual plots without fluctuating up and down. Leave them to run like this for several minutes until the dashed threshold lines on either side of the traces move down close to each side of the trace. 12. When all lines are close to the trace, type ‘M’ for manual mode. (If you are working with mussels, type ‘A’ for automatic mode.) C. Locating the Heart Crabs: the heart is located just under the dorsal carapace, near the rear of the animal. A small square-shaped indentation is often visible on the carapace just over the heart. Mussels: the heart is usually located near the edge of the shell, just forward of the shell hinge (closer to the anterior, more pointed end). D. Attaching the Sensors ***IMPORTANT*** Before attaching the sensors, find the heart of each animal by placing the sensor over the appropriate area on the shell (see above) and observing the heartbeat pattern on the computer. A regular and consistent wave pattern should be observed, and the trace should pass up and then down through both of the dashed lines. Regular sensor with collars:
E. Adjusting the Signal On the CAPMON unit: The gain, or amplitude of the signal can be adjusted for each channel with the corresponding knob on the front of the Capmon box. On the computer: When the program is initially activated, it will be in ‘set-up’ mode. Before recording the actual data, you can make adjustments to the gain on each heartbeat signal in the set-up mode for optimal results. Use the A (Automatic) setting for automatic adjustment of the band-width and band-height. These two parameters set the signal cutoff levels at which a heart beat will be detected. Press ‘A’ to activate the Automatic mode. The speed of the trace across the screen can be adjusted by pressing ‘S’ and then ‘5’. Increasing the speed is useful when a heartbeat is particularly long and slow, while decreasing the speed is useful for very rapid heartbeats. F. Recording Data Once the signal for each channel has been appropriately adjusted, type ‘R’ to begin recording data. You will be asked to enter a file name; choose one that gives enough information about the experiment without being too lengthy. You should note the time at which you begin recording. A simple way to generate a recognizable filename is to use the numerical representation of the day’s date, such as 012302 for Jan. 23, 2002, and then use a postfix to identify the individual files generated during that day 012302A, 012302B etc. Make clear notes on the experimental setup used for each recording. Type ‘Q’ (quit) to stop recording. The data will automatically be saved in the Capmon folder with the name you assigned it and a “.dat” extension (name.dat). G. Accessing the Data 1. Open the Microsoft Excel program. 2. Under the File menu, click Open. Change the file type to “All files” 3. In this same window, find the appropriate file in the Capmon folder with a “.dat” extension for the recording session to be analyzed. Double click on it. 4. The program will ask you a series of questions about the format of the data:
5. The data will appear in a spreadsheet with the first line reading “File containing heartbeat data. Data is in pulse/minute.” 6. The next 2 lines indicate the exact date and time that the recording was started. 7. The data is displayed in a matrix format with each channel represented by a single column (1-8 from left to right). The heart rate, in beats per minute, is displayed in rows, with each row representing 1 minute of time. You will now save the data as an Excel spreadsheet file using the same filename. First, highlight and copy all the numbers contained in the 8 columns. 8. You will now need to import these data into a new Excel spreadsheet for graphing and analysis. Open the file in the Capmon folder labeled “DataTemplate.xls”. This is an Excel template file that will allow you to organize your data and graph it within the Excel program. Position the cursor in the cell in the top left hand corner of the template file and then click on paste. The data will appear in the new spreadsheet. The template file will automatically perform mathematical operations to condense the data and display it within plots incorporated into the template file.
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