Science Education
tsmith | June 11, 2007It's been awhile since I picked on the real science journalists (as opposed to we Daily Show-esque "fake news" sites). I don't mean to get down on them too much; I know that there are many out there who do an incredible job, but then there are also ones who write up articles like this one on how "...women in northern Europe evolved with light hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to stand out from the crowd and lure men away from the far more common brunette."
Ugh.
So especially for you infectious disease types, can you spot a glaring omission in this article: "Meningitis A…
clock | June 10, 2007I love Iron Chef (on those rare occasions when I watch it, but I did more in the past), so I am excited about this spin-off - the Iron Science Teacher:
Parodying the syndicated, tongue-in-cheek, cult Japanese TV program, Iron Chef, the Exploratorium's Iron Science Teacher competition showcases actual Bay Area science teachers as they build experiments around a given "secret ingredient" -- an everyday item such as a paper-towel tube, a straw or a soda can. According to astrophysicist Dr. Linda Shore, Director of the Exploratorium Teacher Institute and host of the competition, "We try to show…
sporte | June 1, 2007How does grass grow in the extremely hot soils of Yellowstone National Park? Could a protein from a virus help plants handle global warming? Okay, that second sentence is wild speculation, but we will try to find the answer to our mystery by aligning our protein sequence to a sequence from a related structure.
tags: plants, bioinformatics, sequence analysis, viruses, fungi, global warming,
Read part I, part II, part III, part IV, and part V, to see how we got here.
This week, in our last installment, we will seek the answers in a related structure.
Last week, I found that my…
jklein | May 31, 2007Jack Franchetti, an expert in media and communication skills, coaches two Intel ISEF Finalists on their presentations.
Click To Play
clock | May 31, 2007In the May 18th issue of Science there is a revew paper by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. An expanded version of it also appeared recently in Edge and many science bloggers are discussing it these days.
Enrique has the best one-sentence summary of the article:
The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science.
The article divides that "what children know prior to their exposure to science" into two categories: the intuitive grasp of the world (i.e., conclusions they come up with on their own) and the learned…
tsmith | May 30, 2007As a native Ohioan and longtime creationist watcher, of course I'm morbidly fascinated with (and dismayed by) the opening of the new Creation Museum just outside of Cincinnati. I'm not going to give a full response to its ridiculous "science;" others have done that across the blogosphere (collected by PZ here). However, you may have seen the New York Time's particularly bad piece on the museum opening (if you haven't, you can find it here), where the writer--instead of commenting on the atrocious science--lauds the museum's "daring" more than once, for example. Well, John Hawks has dug up…
clock | May 29, 2007Seed Magazine and Honeywell are having a writing contest. Unfortunately, for legal reasons, the contest is restricted to US residents over 18. The deadline is July 1st, the length limit is 1200 words and the topic is:
What does it mean to be scientifically literate in the 21st century?
How do we measure the scientific literacy of a society? How do we boost it? What is the value of this literacy? Who is responsible for fostering it?
Several of my SciBlings have blogged their thoughts and ideas about the contest and you should try entering: the first prize is $2500 and the second place wins $…
clock | May 29, 2007Remember back in November, when everyone got excited about JoVe (the Journal of Visulized Experiments)?
Well, it is not alone in its niche any more. There is now another site similar to that: Lab Action.
Of course I homed in onto videos of scoring lobster aggression and Drosophila aggression, but there is quite a lot of other stuff there. It is pretty much like a YouTube for science so feel free to post your contributions.
sporte | May 29, 2007The first research assignment for our Alaska NSF Chautauqua course has been posted. Your task is to find a wound-inducible plant gene, learn something about it, and post a description in the comment section. We've already had one excellent answer, but I know there are at least 54 wound-inducible genes, so I expect to see more.
Once we get our genes in order (and possibly before), we'll talk more about designing an experiment for detecting gene expression.
In the meantime, I have some pre-course reading assignments to help you prepare.
tags: plants, Alaska, NSF Chautauqua courses,…
evolgen | May 29, 2007Amongst the other TAs and the lab coordinators in my department, I have a reputation of being a tough grader. At the end of the semester, when the course admins calculate grades, my students invariably get a few points added to their lab scores -- this is done to bring lab scores more in line with lecture exam scores. Does that mean I'm a bad teacher who doesn't explain the material well enough, but grades as if it were explained clearly? Or do I explain the material perfectly fine, but expect too much from my students?
Because I'm such a hard-ass, I often get complaints from my students --…
clock | May 28, 2007...but I am teaching tonight! No rest on Memorial Day for speed classes. Furthermore, I am giving the first exam (the hardest of the three). Ah, how the students are going to love me....
clock | May 26, 2007Larry just won the Triple Crown (or a trifecta, betting on the Triple Crown) with the third post in a trio of posts on a very important topic:
Facts and Myths Concerning the Historical Estimates of the Number of Genes in the Human Genome
The Deflated Ego Problem
SCIENCE Questions: Why Do Humans Have So Few Genes?
Alex Palazzo, madhadron, Ricardo Azevedo and PZ Myers add thoughtful commentary as well.
Of course, this is something that has been debated and studied (yes, in the laboratory) for a long time by people like Dan McShea so the issue is not going to be solved any time soon with a few…
sporte | May 25, 2007tags: plants, bioinformatics, sequence analysis, viruses, fungi
How does grass grow in the extremely hot soils of Yellowstone National Park? The quest continues.
Read part I, part II, part III, and part IV to see how we got here.
And read onward to see where will we go.
In our last episode, I discovered a new tab in the protein database (well, new to me anyway).
Related structures
If you select this tab, you get a list of protein sequences that are similar, by blastp, to the amino sequences in protein structures.
Naturally, I clicked the tab, and then the Links link, to see…
clock | May 24, 2007Good news for two local schools:
Two Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools have received grants to fund school projects.
Carrboro High School received a $5,950 grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Science teacher Robin Bulleri applied for the grant to fund a biotechnology project at Carrboro High.
Smith Middle School received a $5,000 Lowe's Toolbox for Education Grant from the Lowe's Charitable and Educational Foundation. Teachers Kelly Sears and Melinda Fitzgerald received the grant to fund a proposal entitled, "Sediment Rangers: 8th Grade Stewardship and Outdoor Classroom Project."…
sporte | May 24, 2007tags: PubMed, PubMed Central, medical informatics, bioinformatics, finding scientific articles
I meant for this to be a three part series, but in part II, I learned that one more experiment had to be done. I had to know if the articles I found in PubMed Central were the same articles that I found in PubMed.
Part I and part III cover the background and my favorite method. Now, we're going to find out if my favorite method is really enough.
In other words, I had this kind of problem (shown in the diagram) and I just had to know which case was correct:
The method:
To test this, I did a…
sporte | May 23, 2007tags: math, math for biologists
Keith Robison from Omics! Omics! and that fellow Evolgen, with a curious fixation on manatees, have been reminiscing about their college math requirements and speculating on which math courses biologists should take.
They've raised some interesting questions that, I think, make a good meme.
If you answer the questions, let me know, and I will add your link at the bottom of the page.
Here are the questions:
Are you a biologist, if so what kind?
What math did you take in college?
What math do you use?
What math do you wish you'd studied?
How do you…
sporte | May 23, 2007tags: PubMed, PubMed Central, medical informatics, bioinformatics, finding scientific articles
This is the third, and last part in a three part series on finding free scientific papers. You can read the first part here: Part I: A day in the life of an English physician and the second part, where I compare different methods, here.
Today, I will show you how to use my new favorite method.
How to find free scientific publications
1. Go to the NCBI.
2. Choose the link to PubMed. (It's in the top blue bar, under the DNA icon)
3. Click the Limits tab (circled below).
4. Click the box…
sporte | May 22, 2007tags: PubMed, PubMed Central, medical informatics, bioinformatics, finding scientific articles
This is the second part in a three part series on finding free scientific papers. You can read the first part here: Part I: A day in the life of an English physician
Today, we do an experiment with PubMed and PubMed Central to determine the best way to search for free articles.
The biggest problem that our doctor friend, from part I, faced, wasn't that he couldn't find the information he wanted. His problem was that he found too much information. And, most of what he found, he couldn't get at.…