Summer Assignment 8.29

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, tell me 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.

That's it. See you all next week.

Summer Assignment 8.22

Special all audio edition!

No reading this week, just a podcast to listen to. What happens when scientific research leads to more harm than good? What if the self-correcting nature of science is blocked by celebrity and charisma? This is called Pandora's Lab. Examples of this discussed in the episode are opiod-based painkillers and frontal lobotomies.



If you are at all interested in self-delusion, or psychology in general, I highly recommend going through the back catalog of the You Are Not So Smart podcast. The host also has published a few books that are worth checking out if you are interested in finding out why your brain is doing weird things to you.

Summer Assignment 8.15

• Binge-watching leads to poor sleep. Not terribly surprising, but this is one of the first studies that I have seen that investigates what is on your screen while you are in bed rather than just do you have a screen on. 
• To anyone considering a career in the research science: Learn how to fix stuff. Although the story is about working in a physics lab, I feel as though I had very similar experiences. the techniques and equipment that I understood the best were those that I had to constantly tweak in order to get them to work as I needed. 
• Hey, anybody remember Zika virus? That thing that was going to kill us all two summers ago? Turns out, people are still doing research on it, which makes sense, since scientific research does not function on the 24 hour news cycle.

Summer Assignment 8.8

Lots of CRISPR in the news recently, but before that, I just have to say €222,000,000 ($263,000,000) is way too much to pay for one player. There are three companies that were acquired for less. Entire companies. For less than one player.

Anyway, CRISPR...

If you're not sure exactly what CRISPR is, here is a short video to explain the basics.

• CRISPR Fixes Disease Gene in Viable Human Embryos
• CRISPR Screen Identifies Top 100 Essential Genes for Cancer Immunotherapy
• Researchers Used CRISPR to Successfully Increase HIV Resistance in Animals

Let me know what you think is the comments. Is CRISPR the future of health care, or a dangerous first step to designer babies?

Summer Assignment 8.1

• Two things that I got from the first link:
• This could be a major change in thinking about how some antibiotics are prescribed
• Headline writers are really bad at overstating the findings of studies
• Planarians (flatworms) are very cool. So very cool, that they can sense and respond to light without a head. 
• Valid concerns, or  “creating noise & sounding alarms [not] helpful to saving lives"?

Summer Assignment 7.25

• Another study looking at brain injury and sports; this time in professional fighters.
• Short audio link this week. Antibiotic resistance is cropping up much sooner than we first thought.
• Bad news for everyone who hates the Star Wars prequels: Midichlorians are now published fact. Sort of. These "predatory" journals are a real problem in scientific publishing. Hopefully this helps to shine some light on the problem.

Summer Assignment 7.18

Before we get to the links for the week, one quick administrative item. When you post a comment, it goes into my moderation queue. This makes it easier for me to make sure that I have read and given credit for all the comments. This also means that you will not see your comment appear on the site immediately. I try to get the comments posted once a day, but sometimes it takes a bit longer. If you have submitted a comment and don't see it for a few days, it may mean that I have not been able to get to them yet. If I know there are few days that I will be away from the computer, I will try to let everyone know via Twitter.

On to the links.

Instead of a few unrelated links this week, I found two that I think illustrate a very important aspect of science and science communication. First, there was this article in the New York Times about a survey done looking at a class of chemicals called phthalates in foods. The Times reports that the study found high concentrations of the phthalates in powdered macaroni and cheese mixes.

However, this article at Slate brings up some very important points about the study itself, and the Times reporting of the data.

So who should you believe? My advice: look at the data and decide for yourself. In this case, the data can be found here. I have thoughts on the data, but I am not going to share them now, since the point of this post is to get you to think for yourselves. I will post my thoughts later this week, or early next, after you all have had a chance to share yours.

Summer Assignment 7.11

First official post of the 2017 Summer Assignment. Rules are simple:

1. Look at the list of links I provide.
2. Pick a few (or all) to read.
3. Make an intelligent comment here that shows you read and thought about at least one.
4. Gain points. Comments that are made within the week receive maximum points. 

The links:

• Turns out most eggs are not shaped like eggs. 
• An extinct virus was re-created in a lab. Good idea that will pave the way to bringing back other extinct organisms, or bad idea that will lead to engineered bioweapons?
• As some one who is always being bitten, I am very interested to see the results of this study looking for a genetic component to mosquito attraction.

Please remember to fill out the summer vacation form to let us know when you will be away. 

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.