Structure and Function of the Kidney Assignment 4

Structure and Function of the Kidney Assignment 4

Rivka is an active 21-year-old who decided to take a day off from her university classes. The weather was hot and the sun bright, so she decided to go down to the beach. When she arrived, she found a few people playing beach volleyball, and they asked if she wanted to join in. She put down her school bag and began to play. The others were well prepared for their day out and stopped throughout the game to have their power drinks and soda pop. Several hours after they began to play, however, Rivka was not feeling so good. She stopped sweating and was feeling dizzy. One player noted she had not taken a washroom break at all during the day. They found a shaded area for her, and one of the players shared his power drink with her. Rivka was thirstier than she realized and quickly finished the drink.

In pronounced dehydration, hypotension can occur. How would this affect the glomerular filtration rate of the kidney? What actions by the juxtaglomerular apparatus would occur to restore GFR?

What is the effect aldosterone has on the distal convoluted tubule? Why would the actions of aldosterone be useful to Rivka in her situation?

What does a specific gravity test measure? If someone tested the specific gravity of Rivka’s urine, what might it indicate?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.