Summer Assignment 2017

Welcome to the AP Biology summer blog for 2017. The summer assignment will work as follows:

• Once a week, I will post a few links to current science articles that I find interesting/entertaining
• You pick a few, or all, of the links and read through them
• Post a comment on the blog post about the article(s) that you read. Comments can be anything, as long as it demonstrates that you have read the article and put some thought into your response
• If your comment occurs within the week of posting, you will receive maximum points for that week
• Comments are moderated, so it may take a few days for your comment to show up

I hope to get the first official post (that you will have to comment on) up on the week of July 10; the final post will be the week of August 28. 

In the meantime, some things you can do:


1. Become a follower of the blog. There are two ways to do this, both can be found a little ways down on the right hand sidebar. If you follow via email, Blogger will send you notifications of new posts. There is also the option to subscribe to an RSS feed for both posts and comments.

2. Follow me on Twitter (@DrHMTHS). There is a button to the right to do this quickly. I will be posting on Twitter when new posts are up. If you do not have a Twitter account, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and get one; we will be using it in my class next year.

3. If you know of a time frame which you will be unable to comment due to vacation, follow this link to complete the form to let us know before you leave for vacation. We will make arrangements with you as far as making the missed weeks up. If you do not let us know ahead of time, the missed weeks will count as zeros.

Summer Assignment 8.4

• Ebola virus has been in the news quite a bit lately, and being the virus fan that I am, I can't let the opportunity pass. But instead of the usual stuff here are some good reasons not to worry too much about it.

• It's not a global pandemic.
• Even the patients coming to the US are not that big of a deal.

•  I wouldn't normally link to a Cosmo post, but since this one has a picture of flesh-eating beetles, I can't resist. Oh, and it is also the great story of an artist turned scientist/science educator.

Summer Assignment 7.28

• Newest viral discovery may be surprisingly common. So why did it take so long to find?
• Really big insect found in China.
• Do non-human animals create art?

Summer Assignment 7.22

Just one story this week; a longer piece on why we have blood types by one of my favorite science writers Carl Zimmer. You probably (hopefully) remember something about blood types from previous classes, and may even remember how to do the genetic crosses to figure them out. But have we ever thought about why we have different blood types? I know I never had until I read this article. Lots of interesting stuff in here, and overall it highlights a very important fact of evolution: If it exists, it most likely has an adaptive advantage.

Summer Assignment 8.27

UPDATE 8.28: The link for the class wiki has been changed to the current year. It went to last years site in the original post.

This will be the final week of the summer assignment this year. Great job with all the comments, I hope you found some of the articles I linked to interesting. There are a few things I have for you to do this week.

• To get credit for this week's entry, comment about what your favorite post was over the summer, and what you are most looking forward to learning more about this year.
• If you are registered for Dr. H's class (Block 1 or 2), please visit this website and request access. If you have used PB Works before, you can use your previous account information and will not have to confirm your email. If you are new to PB Works, you DO NOT need to use your school email account to request access. After I accept you, you will receive a confirmation email. 
• If you are registered for Miss Drust's class (Block 3), she will provide you with the course website.
• Once you have access to the wiki, feel free to have a look around. It is still a work in progress, so there is not too much there yet. There are some things on the front page for you to do.

I also wanted to share with you this comment left on the blog post from last week:

I am amazed by your thought provoking and well written commentary on these articles. I wrote the article about clownfish in Finding Nemo, and was glad to see that this was used in a biology class for a teaching experience. Keep up the great work and don't be afraid to ask questions. If someone doesn't know the answer to your question, then it must be a good question, and is worth exploring for the answer. If you ever have ideas, questions, or thoughts about fish, don't ever hesitate to write us at TheFisheriesBlog@gmail.com, and we will do our best to help you discover the answer!

Patrick Cooney
Fisheries Scientist 

So there you go, its not only me that says you are doing a great job with your comments and insights. Hope you have something fun planned for the last week of vacation. I am looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks.

Summer Assignment 8.20

• Ants may help predict the future of Facebook. I wouldn't hold my breath that Facebook will take the advice and get smaller in order to survive. I would say in 5 years it will be gone the way of Friendster and MySpace.
• Coffee and the brain. I disagree that there is such a thing as too much coffee. Maybe just not enough time to drink it all.
• The "scientifically accurate' version of Finding Nemo sounds so much better than the original.

Summer Assignment 8.13

• Pro: Generating your own food supply. Con: Wearing this thing on your face.
• Newly discovered protein may be key in memory formation. How much would you pay for a few shots right before AP week?
• So they lied to me about carrots helping with night vision. But they did it in order to win WWII, so I guess that is ok.

Summer Assignment 8.6

Really easy assignment this week. Of the below proposed scientific "breakthroughs", which one do you
      a) think is most likely to occur in your lifetime.
      b) most want to see occur in your lifetime.

Via Doghouse Diaries

Summer Assignment 7.30

• Brain control is here, and it sounds really cool and somewhat complicated.
• Spiders have personalities? 
• What is the evolutionary advantage of laughter?

Summer Assignment 7.23

Great comments on the first post last week. Remember that sometimes there may be a short period of time between when you post your comment and when it shows up on the blog. The only time you should worry about your comment getting lost is if posts show up that were not there when you submitted yours. Then, just re-post and it should be fine.

Links for the week:

• If you require iv morphine in order to move your hair, I would say yes, that is a Special Brand of Horror. 

• Turns out women knew how to cure Down's Syndrome all along.

• There is GMO wheat popping up in Oregon fields, and no one seems to know how it got there.

I will be out of town this weekend (Thurs - Tues) so comments will likely not be posted during that time frame. If your comment does not show up by Tuesday night/Wednesday morning then you should repost it.

Summer Assignment 7.16

Welcome to the first official post of the 2013 AP Biology Summer Blog. The rules are simple:

1. Check out the links I include in the post.
2. Make an intelligent comment on them.
3. Or respond in an intelligent way to someone else's comment.
4. Earn points!

Just a note, you don't need to read all of the links I post when there are multiple stories linked. You can always pick the ones that seem most interesting to you.

On to the links:

What You Thought About T. rex Was Wrong, But May Be Right Again

Most people probably envision Tyrannosaurus rex behaving something like this. Basically being a top predator and chasing down its prey. However, a few years ago some researchers postulated that T. rex may have acted more as a scavenger. This was based on the postulated population size of T. rex, and the fact that ecosystems cannot support large populations of top predators. Since behaviors don't fossilize, paleontologists have to look for other clues about how dinosaurs lived their lives. The article describes a T. rex tooth found embedded in a bone from another species. The bone shows signs of healing around the tooth, indicating that the dinosaur survived the T. rex bite. It seems to me to be a bit of a stretch to extrapolate an entire species behavior from one example. Imagine if some future or alien society got one piece of data from one current human, and decided "All humans did this." Scarey idea, depending on who the data came from.

Using Manure on Crops is a Really, Really Old Idea

Interesting point in there about how agriculture may have lead to social stratification and social classes. I always suspected that was all based on poop, now I guess there is evidence.

MIT Researchers Printing New Heart Muscle

If there was any doubt that we are officially in the future, this pretty much erases it.

Welcome to the Summer Assignment

Welcome to the AP Biology summer blog for 2013. I hope to get the first official post (that you will have to comment on) up the week of July 15. In the meantime, some things you can do:

1. Become a follower of the blog. There are two ways to do this on the right hand side. If you follow via email, Blogger to send you notifications of new posts. There is also the option to subscribe to an RSS feed if you use them.

2. Follow me on Twitter (@DrHMTHS). There is a button to the right to do this quickly. I will be posting on Twitter when new posts are up. If you do not have a Twitter account, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and get one; we will be using it in my class next year.

3. Check out the Podcast list to the right. All of these are excellent, and are a great way to keep up with current science topics, and they are very entertaining as well.

4. If you know of a time frame which you will be unable to comment due to vacation, follow this link to complete the form to let us know before you leave for vacation. We will make arrangements with you as far as making the missed weeks up. If you do not let us know ahead of time, the missed weeks will count as zeros.

Summer Assignment 8.24

This will be the final week of the summer assignment this year. Great job with all the comments, I hope you found some of the articles I linked to interesting. There are a few things I have for you to do this week.

• To get credit for this week's entry, comment about what your favorite post was over the summer, and what you are most looking forward to learning more about this year.
• If you are registered for Dr. H's class (Block 2 A/B), please visit this website and request access. If you have used PB Works before, you will not have to confirm your email. If you are new to PB Works, you DO NOT need to use your school email account to request access. After I accept you, you will receive a confirmation email.
• Once you have access to the wiki, feel free to have a look around. It is still a work in progress, so there is not too much there yet. There are some things on the front page for you to do.
• There are a few commenter names that I do not have "real" names for. If you made these comments, please let me know your name so that I can get your grade entered correctly.
• harmOnyx3
• ThatStupidKid
• a (Only commented on 7.27 post)
• Two long AOL-gibberish names, one posted on 7.13 and 7.20, the other posted on 7.13 only.

Once again, great job this summer, hope you have something fun planned for the last week of vacation. I am looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks.

Summer Assignment 8.17

• Using science to dispel an internet myth.Not that McDonald's burgers are any good, but they don't defy any laws of biology. What is the next internet/urban myth you would like to see overturned by science?
• A blogger posts her experiences before, during and immediately after open heart surgery. WARNING: if you don't want to see pictures of an actual human heart during surgery  DO NOT click the link.
• No more Olympics, so you get three science links this week. Will viruses some day power our cell phones (or other electronic devices)?

Summer Assignment 8.10

• Glow in the dark soldiers, circa Civil War era. Discovered by a high school student. I love this story. It really shows the importance of asking questions.
• So 3-D printers might be making houses soon. I can see this being very useful for martian or lunar colonies since it could potentially be automated.
• And of course, one more Olympics link.

Summer Assignment 8.3

• Continuing last weeks item about artificial life, scientists have created a synthetic jellyfish-like organism using rat cardiac cells. Video below.

• Even Usain Bolt wouldn't stand a chance if the Olympics weren't so species-centric.
• I am not really surprised that more effort and money is spent developing new weight-loss drugs rather than on efforts to simply get people to eat better and exercise more. Not sure I agree that a "junk-food tax" is the way to fix it, though if that is working in other countries, it may work here as well.
• So apparently this is real. Weird. Just remember, unexplained is not the same as inexplicable.

Summer Assignment 7.27

Early post this week. I am leaving tomorrow morning for a camping weekend, so I probably will not have internet access again until Monday. That means that comments may take a while to show up on the site. If you post a comment over the weekend and don't see it by Tuesday morning, shoot me an email, or just try reposting.

And now, the links:

• Parkour and orangutans. Not orangutans doing parkour, which would be awesome. If you are unfamiliar with parkour, you can watch the short video below.
  
  
  
Researchers were interested in finding out more about the energetics of orangutan movements in the jungle. The use of parkour athletes to simulate the movements allowed direct measurements of oxygen consumption, rather than using mathematical models. You can hear the guys from one of my favorite podcasts, Science...Sort Of, talk about this research at the 47 minute mark of their latest episode.
• When I was in grad school, a fellow student in my lab and I had a few discussions about whether we would ever be able to recreate a living cell via computer simulation. I was on the side of it being impossible, since there was no way to know how all of the proteins interact with each other. The other student felt that it was just a matter of time before computers became powerful enough to process all the data, and since there are a finite number of proteins in a cell, there must be a finite number of interactions. Looks like I was wrong. Though to be fair (to me), this is a very simple cell; one of the simplest known in fact, with only 525 genes (humans have around 30,000 protein-encoding genes).
• So this exists. Biology is weird. Not sometimes.  All. The. Times.

Summer Assignment 7.20

Thanks for all the great comments last week. Remember, if you are going on vacation and don't think you will be able to access the site to comment, please drop me an email with the dates.

• With the Olympics around the corner, this article looks at the bio-mechanics of sprinting, and if the 9-second mark will ever be broken in the 100 m sprint. Interesting that swing time (the time between steps) is equivalent for all runners at top speed. The men's 100m final is August 5th; the women's is the day before.

• What are the most important science questions the presidential should answer? Here is a list of 14 good ones. Four years ago, the McCain and Obama campaigns posted responses to science questions. I wouldn't hold my breath for a science-themed debate, but if you go here you can vote for your choice for moderator. This guy is winning, and would be awesome.

Summer Assignment 7.13

Welcome to the first official post of the 2012 AP Biology Summer Blog. The rules are simple:

1. Check out the links I include in the post.
2. Make an intelligent comment on them.
3. Or respond in an intelligent way to someone else's comment.
4. Earn points!

Just a note, you don't need to read all of the links I post when there are multiple stories linked. You can always pick the ones that seem most interesting to you.

On to the links:

• What do Mothers Against Drunk Driving, America's Most Wanted, and Batman have in common?  Post-traumatic growth of course.
• Newsweek says the web is "driving us mad." This guy (and most of the Twitterverse and Blogosphere) say Newsweek has no idea what science is.
• Someday I hope to make it up to Manhattan for "Manhattanhenge," if only because the odds of bumping into Neil deGrasse Tyson would be pretty good.

Summer Assignment: 8.30

Final post for the summer assignment 2011! No articles to read this week, just some information I want to get from you. First, a couple of questions I would like you all to answer in the comments:

1. What was your favorite post/article from this summer?
2. What topics are you most looking forward to learning about in class this year?

Also, there are a few commenters for which I do not have full names matched up with their user names. If you are on the list below, please post a separate comment with your full name so that I can get your grades in the gradebook properly.

jon8than
ManasaD
Noel T
ThizzleBlog
trolby

Thank you very much for some great comments this summer, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I have.

Enjoy your last week of summer, and I will see you when school starts.