Basic Biology
clock | March 16, 2007About a year ago, there was a great paper about polyphenism in moth caterpillars.
Now, in the new issue of Seed Magazine, PZ Myers uses that example to teach you all about it. Cool reading on one of my favourite topics (outside clocks, of course).
clock | February 15, 2007This is the last in the 16-post series of BIO101 lecture notes for a speed-course targeted at adults. As always, I welcome corrections and suggestions for improvement (June 17, 2006)...
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Last week we looked at the organ systems involved in regulation and control of body functions: the nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, we will cover the organ systems that are regulated and controlled. Again, we will use the zebra-and-lion example to emphasize the way all organ systems work in concert to maintain the optimal internal…
clock | February 8, 2007
The penultimate installment of lecture notes in the BIO101 series. Help me make it better - point out errors of fact and suggest improvements:
It is impossible to cover all organ systems in detail over the course of just two lectures. Thus, we will stick only to the basics. Still, I want to emphasize how much organ systems work together, in concert, to maintain the homeostasis (and rheostasis) of the body. I'd also like to emphasize how fuzzy are the boundaries between organ systems - many organs are, both anatomically and functionally, simultaneously parts of two or more organ systems…
clock | February 6, 2007There are two new additions to the Basic Concepts and Terms in Science list that appeared today:
Voltage Gate: What Is Ecology?
The World Fair: Epistemology (what is a flower?)
Any others?
clock | February 4, 2007I don't know how many of you check out the constantly growing list of links to posts that cover Basic Terms And Concepts in Science, but you should. Our Seed Overlords are cooperating and will soon set up a place where all those posts will be re-posted, commented upon, edited, etc. - a one-stop shopping for all basic stuff useful, for instance, in teaching at all levels from Kindergarden to Postdoc!
Until then, here is my unofficial list - not the one compiled by Wilkins - that also includes some of my own posts, as well as some of the other people's posts that I found useful in teaching…
clock | February 3, 2007A-ha! Finally! Now I understand the connection between Creationism and the overall anti-sex sentiment of the Fundamentalists!
New reseaarch shows that E.coli swim upstream due to the Design of their flagellum! And where do they swim from and swim to? Yes, you guessed it right! And you can also watch the movie.
clock | February 1, 2007Next in the series of BIO101 lecture notes. Chime in to correct errors and make it better (reposted from June 11, 2006):
------------------------------------------------------Anatomy is the subdiscipline of biology that studies the structure of the body. It describes (and labels in Latin) the morphology of the body: shape, size, color and position of various body parts, with particular attention to the internal organs, as visible by the naked eye. Histology is a subset of anatomy that describes what can be seen only under the misroscope: how cells are organized into tissues and tissues…
clock | January 28, 2007In the series of "Basic Concept And Terms" (yup, I know, John is well known for misspelling people's last names, including mine), several people have already chimed in with their own definitions of the "gene", demonstrating how unclear this concept is and how much disagreement there is among the practitioners depending on the type of research they are doing (e.g, molecular biology, developmental biology, population genetics, evolution, etc.).
See how the term was defined and explained by PZ, Sandra and Greg so far and you'll see those differences in emphasis.
Now Larry Moran joins the fray…
clock | January 27, 2007Considering I've been writing textbook-like tutorials on chronobiology for quite a while now, trying always to write as simply and clearly as possible, and even wrote a Basic Concepts And Terms post, I am surprised that I never actually defined the term "biological clock" itself before, despite using it all the time.
Since the science bloggers started writing the 'basic concepts and terms' posts recently, I've been thinking about the best way to define 'biological clock' and it is not easy! Let me try, under the fold:
A biological clock is a structure that times regular re-occurence of…
clock | January 25, 2007My SciBling John Wilkins is regularly updating the list of 'Basic Terms and Concepts' posts (which you should check dilligently every day!), at least until a more permanent repository is made.
Today, he included my Lecture #13 on Current Biological Diversity on the list, though my reposting of it was a part of my regular Thursday noon series of educational posts, not intended specifically to be picked up for the 'Basics' series (though I believe it belongs there).
On one hand, I feel silly to repost stuff that I just reposted a month or two ago (moving it from the old blogs to the new one…
clock | January 25, 2007The latest re-post of my BIO101 lecture notes (this one originally from June 05, 2006). I know I will have to rewrite everything about the Three Domain Hypothesis, but you also tell me if I got other stuff wrong or if this can be in some way improved for the classroom use.
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BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 4, Part 3
In the first two parts of this lecture we tackled the Origin of Life and Biological Diversity and the mechanisms of the Evolution of Biological Diversity. Now, we'll take a look at what those mechanisms have produced so far - the…
clock | January 22, 2007In the wake of the conference, I suspect that my blog is getting checked out today by many a science teacher, so I thought this would be a good time to point out all the posts written so far by my science-blogging friends on 'Basics Terms and Concepts' in math and science. Here they are:
Good Math Bad Math:Normal DistributionMean, Median and ModeStandard DeviationMargin of Error
Uncertain Principles:ForceFields
Pharyngula:Gene
Discovering Biology in a Digital World:GeneHow do you sequence a genome?
Sandwalk:EvolutionThe Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
Evolving Thoughts:CladeFitness
Greg…
clock | January 18, 2007Part 12 of my BIO101 lecture notes. As always, click on the web-spider icon to see the original post (from June 04, 2006). Correct errors and make suggestions to make this better. Perhaps this entire series can be included in the "Basic Concepts" series.
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BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 4, Part 2
In the previous segment of the lecture, we looked at the Origin of Life and the beginnings of the evolution of biological diversity. Now we move to explanations of the mechanisms by which diversity arises.
Although traits can be inherited by non-DNA…
clock | January 11, 2007Continuing with the Thursday series of the BIO101 lecture notes. Check for errors of fact. Suggest improvements (June 01, 2006):
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BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 4, Part 1
Adaptation vs. Diversity
Biology is concerned with answering two Big Questions: how to explain the adaptation of organisms to their environments and how to explain the diversity of life on Earth.
Much of the course content so far engaged the question of the origin and evolution of adaptation, and much of the remainder of the course will also look at particular adaptations of humans…
clock | December 28, 2006Here is the next installment of my lecture notes for teh adult education speed-class in biology. As always, I ask for corrections and suggestions for improvement (May 20, 2006):
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BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 3 - Part 1
Imagine that you are a zebra, grazing in the savannah. Suddenly, you smell a lion. A moment later, you hear a lion approaching and, out of the corner of your eye, you see the lion running towards you.
What happens next? You start running away, of course. How does that happen? Your brain receieved information from your sensory…
clock | December 21, 2006The eighth part of my lecture notes series. As always, please pitch in and make my lectures better by pointing out the factual errors or making suggestions for improvement (originally posted on May 17, 2006):
----------------------------------------------------------Evolution
BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 2 - Part 4
Imagine a small meadow. And imagine in that meadow ten insects. Also imagine that the ten insects are quite large and that the meadow has only so much flowers, food and space to sustain these ten individuals and not any more. Also imagine that the genomes of those ten…
clock | December 18, 2006Just How Useful Are Animal Studies To Human Health?:
Animal studies are of limited usefulness to human health because they are of poor quality and their results often conflict with human trials, argue researchers in a study online in the British Medical Journal.
Before clinical trials are carried out, the safety and effectiveness of new drugs are usually tested in animal models. Some believe, however, that the results from animal trials are not applicable to humans because of biological differences between the species.
So researchers compared treatment effects in animal models with human…
clock | December 14, 2006The seventh part of my lecture notes. Let me know if I made factual errors or if you think this can be improved (from May 15, 2006):
-----------------------------------------------How Genotype Affects Phenotype
BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 2 - Part 3
One often hears news reports about discoveries of a "gene for X", e.g., gene for alcoholism, gene for homosexuality, gene for breast cancer, etc. This is an incorrect way of thinking about genes, as it implies a one-to-one mapping between genes and traits.
This misunderstanding stems from historical precedents. The very first genes were…