MAT 135 – Writing Assignment 1

H1N1 escapes again!

Below is a fictional letter that has been written to you. You should develop, along with your
other group members, a response to the letter. Use of Microsoft Excel may be very helpful, and
it should probably be a large part of your attack of the problems posed to you.

I will not list all the items that I would like to see, nor do I want to tell you explicitly how you
should go about completing this project – it is this aspect (I think) that makes this writing
assignment worthwhile. But I will give a few friendly comments:

1. Your written response should be respectful. Jason, the character from the letter below,
has taken the time to write a letter asking for your assistance. You should put some
thought into the manner of your response.
2. Make sure any of the data you give him is easy to understand. Remember, he is going to
communicate what you send him to his bosses and other scientists. If you use graphs,
make sure they are well-organized and easy to understand. It would be best if the graphs
are large, centered, and easy-to-read with axes labels and titles.
3. Do your best. If you think that there is a question you cannot fairly or honestly answer –
and it may very well be that, in your opinion, you cannot answer some of his questions –
say so. Defend what you say.
4. The mathematics of this assignment is not difficult, but modeling the situation may be
non-trivial. Make sure you completely understand the various aspect of the problem. It
might help to define where you want to go before you dive in to the data.

There is one other item you should turn in other than your response. Each group member
should type a short statement, of length no longer than one page, describing what each
group member (including oneself) contributed to the project. It will be worth 10 points,
and will be graded as follows:

1. You should explain what you did on the assignment. This should be its own
paragraph. (3 points)
2. You should explain what each other group member did on the assignment. This
should be its own paragraph. (3 points)
3. You should explain how the group worked with one another (the group dynamic).
Any problems should be specifically addressed in enough detail that I can
understand what the problems were. This should take AT LEAST one paragraph.
(4 points)
4. I will subtract one point for each grammatical error (up to 10 points).

September 7, 2009
Calculus Students
c/o Professor Justin M. Gash
Mathematics Department
Franklin College
101 Branigin Blvd.
Franklin, IN 46131

Dear Calculus Class:

I hope this letter finds you well. My name is Jason Hyderway. I was originally born in Franklin,
but I have since moved up north to Chicago. I work as a lab assistant in a CDC testing lab. We
primarily work with common bacteria and viruses, but they can still be deadly. I am hoping you
can help me out of a self-made pickle… but first, please let me explain what it is I have been
working on.

As I am sure you are aware, the swine flu (H1N1) has been in the news quite a lot recently.
People are expecting a possible epidemic in the United States. The CDC has found a two-step
flu shot that should work against H1N1, and that should be disseminated to Franklin within the
next 6 weeks or so. But just because we have developed a flu shot for this year does not mean
that we are done researching the H1N1 flu strain.

As part of ongoing research, I have been working to eliminate the H1N1 virus’ strength against
the human white blood cell. The good news is that, using some of the information from the
strand of RNA that the H1N1 virus injects into its host cells, I think I have found an effective
way to weaken the H1N1 defenses and give human white blood cells a better chance of success.
The bad news is that I lost most of my data.

I work in a pretty big lab, and we do dozens of tests on hundreds of populations of bacteria and
viruses. This leads to a mountain of paperwork. And since most of our attempts are relatively
fruitless, most of the paperwork is just wasted paper. That’s how I think this happened; I think I
placed the data sheets I had printed out in another file and sent them off for filing. But I have no
idea where I sent it, or when I sent it, or even if that’s true. And I would like to avoid looking
like a complete fool. That is where you come in.

Having grown up in Franklin, I know that Franklin College students care about service. I am
hoping that this spirit extends to lab assistants in Chicago. If you could answer a few questions
for me, I would be much obliged and my research would have a chance at being noticed.

Luckily for me (and you), I have a few bits of data. I was sending some emails off to others in
the lab, and my sent emails are saved in a folder. I made a few comments to some colleagues
about my research. Here’s what I know for sure:

1. We let the virus grow in a host for several days. After 25 hours, there were
approximately 15000 virus elements in the host’s body. After almost 2 days, there were
approximately 245000 virus elements in the host’s body.
2. White blood cells cause a linear decrease in the amount of viruses in a host’s body. Or at
least, that is approximately the case when the virus is first heavily engaged with the white
 blood cells. On average, many of the battles have the same ratio of white blood cells to
viruses and host cells, and they are close to one-on-one.
3. I administered the gene-inspired anti-virus at some point after the second day. Actually, I
ordered it to be done. But I cannot remember when, and the after-hours lab techs don’t
always keep very good logs. (They probably do this because they know we keep the
logs. But, of course, I sent mine off… somewhere.)
4. But I did get excited when I finally made it back to the lab, and I had two blood tests on
order that came back. I know that at 74 hours in there were just over 1000000 viruses
and host cells in the body. I also know that at the 86-hour mark, there were 305000.

There are two big pieces that I am missing. I need to know how many viruses I started with, and
I really need to know when the antivirus was administered. And when I say “when”, I mean the
approximate hour. It would also be very helpful if I could have some sort of graphic that
visually explains what all of this looks like.

Anyway, I have taken up enough of your time. I hope you have a good semester. Please let me
know if there is anything I can do to help.

Sincerely,

Jason Hyderway
Lab Technician, CDC, Chicago

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