First Day of Class TOMORROW

Believe it or not, class is starting tomorrow. You all should be able to access the course Schoology pages. In case there are issues with Schoology tomorrow, I wanted to share the live meeting links here so that we have a backup in place. Please note that there are scheduled meetings, so they will not go live until the stated start time.

Block 1 (Dr H): meet.google.com/hey-qysk-bmb (Starting at 7.27am)

Block 2 (Dr. H): meet.google.com/gpx-mtor-bym (Starting at 8.32am)

Block 3 (Mr. Parker): https://zoom.us/j/97220891348?pwd=UDhFZUNxbFh4WndRUlNLak5CMmFkQT09 (Starting at 9.32am)

Password: APB3!fal%

Please do not hesitate to email if you have any problems accessing the meetings above. We are looking forward to seeing you all (virtually) tomorrow morning.

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, 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 PBWorks before, you can use your previous account information and will not have to confirm your email. If you are new to PBWorks, 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 Mr Parker's class (Block 3) , he 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 8.17

Back to our usual articles list this week. 

• 200,000 year old bedding includes evidence of bug-repellent measures
• High speed footage of a non-Newtonian fluid under stress. This is very easy to make at home, just mix cornstarch and water together to get the right consistency. There are tons of videos on YouTube about this stuff, here is one of my recent favorites.
• I usually stay away from health/diet articles here, since there are so many conflicting articles and viewpoints. This article I think does a good job at not just looking at the specific diet issue, amount and source of protein, but also hits on some of the other issues surrounding food supply in this country.

Summer Assignment 8.3/8.10

I am trying something different this week. The first week of our Summer Assignment, I shared an article by Carl Zimmer about how to read scientific articles. This week, I am going to attempt to guide you through reading a primary research article, section by section. Since this is a bit more work than usual, I am giving you two weeks to complete this assignment. 

Once you submit your responses, you should see the correct answers. I will be awarding points based mainly on completion, so don't worry if you don't get every single answer. Some of the questions may require you to do some quick searches outside the article itself to find some background information.

I have two versions of the paper for you to download and read. The EPub version will work in iBooks on the iPad, the PDF version will work with any PDF viewer.

EPub version (open in iBooks)

PDF version

To help guide you through the paper, I have broken it down by section and have reading questions linked below. As you read through each section, answer the questions to help you pick out the important information.

Questions Part 1: Author List and Abstract

The order the authors are listed on an article is not random. The first author is generally who performed the majority of the work, and the last author is the head of the lab where the work was performed. Also of interest in this section is the author affiliations, which reinforces the international nature of scientific research.

The abstract is a single-paragraph summary of the findings. This can often be very difficult to understand for first-time readers, since it tends to be very dense.

Questions Part 2: Introduction

The introduction section provides a brief overview of the current state of knowledge about the topic. This is a great place to learn what is known about SARS-Cov2 and what is still to be determined. At the end of the introduction, the authors will generally state how their findings fit into the current knowledge base.

Questions Part 3: Results

This section is fairly self-explanatory; it is all the data the authors need to support their conclusions. I have broken the questions down by figure to help pick out the important details. I do not have questions about every figure since I only wanted to highlight some of the results. 

Questions Part 4: Discussion

In this section, the authors state their conclusions and the importance of their work. Each of the pieces of data presented in the paper should be referenced to tell the story of their work. At the end of the discussion, there is usually a few lines added to highlight what the next steps should be on the topic.

Part 5: Materials and Methods/References (No questions)

These sections are not important for us, since you are just learning how to read scientific articles. However, these are very important for the field of science. The materials and methods section is important, because a very basic aspect of science is that it must be repeatable. Other researchers must be able to reproduce the authors results. In order to make this possible, enough experimental detail must be provided to repeat all the experiments. 

The references section should give you an idea that science does not occur in a vacuum, and all research is based on previous work. 

Summer Assignment 7.27

Taking a break from SARS-CoV2 news this week to highlight some other interesting/weird science things I came across.

• How the zebrafish got its stripes.
• Do we dream to keep our visual cortex from atrophying while we sleep?
• Once I saw this headline, I knew I had to include it. 

Summer Assignment 7.20

This week I have something a bit different for you. Instead of reading a few articles, I have a podcast interview for you to listen to. The podcast is This Week in Virology (TWiV), hosted by Vincent Racaniello, a virology professor and researcher at Columbia University. The interview is with Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). Dr Fauci began his scientific career investigating HIV and continues to be on the forefront of infectious disease outbreaks. The link below has both the audio only version and the video of the interview.

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-641/

I highly recommend this podcast as a great source of information about SARS-CoV2/COVID-19. They are releasing 2-3 episodes per week right now, going over the latest research and clinical aspects of the current pandemic. As I mentioned in the first post 2 weeks ago, it is very important to find reliable sources among all the misinformation spreading currently.

Summer Assignment 7.13

There are a few comments from last week sitting in my moderation queue with no name associated with them. Please take a minute to scan the comments and check that yours was posted. If it was not, the most likely cause is that your name is not showing up. You will need to go into your Google settings and allow your name to be displayed on the site. Comments with no name associated will not be posted and no credit will be given.

This week I wanted to take a break from all the SARS-CoV2 research and look at a few other interesting new studies.

• Scientists Make Precise Edits to Mitochondrial DNA for the First Time
• Researchers Uncover a Critical Early Step of the Visual Process

Summer Assignment 7.6

Sorry to pull you all away from your Hamilton marathons (you are watching, right???), but it is time for the first official post of the 2020 Summer Assignment. The rules are simple:

1. Look at the list of links provided.
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. 

Comments are moderated, so they will not show up immediately. If it has been a few days and you don't see yours, there is probably an issue. The most common issue is your username not displaying. Please check your Google settings so that your username shows up in the comment section. If your post comes up as "unknown" or "anonymous" it will not be posted and you will not receive credit. 

I highly recommend you keep a record of your comments, in case any get lost. 

Please remember to complete the form to let us know about any extended vacation plans.

The links:

I promise I will do my best to not have every week filled with SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 news, but that is the most important scientific/social topic right now. Besides The Hamilton Movie. Seriously, if you haven't watched yet, go watch now, then come back and read science stuff. Even if you have watched 10 times already, go watch again then come back.

I am starting off this week with a couple of general articles about SARS2-CoV2/COVID-19. In the coming weeks, I will highlight some of the new research on this, and also try to remind everyone that other areas of scientific research has continued.

• How You Should Read Coronavirus Studies, Or Any Science Paper by Carl Zimmer (Published June 1 2020)
• Why the Coronavirus is So Confusing by Ed Yong (Published April 29, 2020)
• One of the most important things you can do during the pandemic is stay informed. There is an overwhelming amount of misinformation about SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 being put forth as fact. Remember to always check your sources and apply a bit of critical thinking about what you are reading. Of course that applies to anything you read during this assignment. Don't blindly trust anything you read. Above I have linked two articles from authors I trust, Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong. I have been reading these two authors for years now, and I feel that they do a great job presenting accurate scientific information in an accessible, entertaining manner. I included the publication dates on these since information is accumulating and changing so fast, information can be out of date very quickly.

AP Bio Summer Assignment 2020

Welcome to the AP Biology summer assignment for 2020. 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

• Make sure your Google account setting allow your username to be visible on the blog. If your username does not show up, your comment will not be posted and you will not receive credit for that week's assignment.

I hope to get the first official post (that you will have to comment on) up on the week of July 6; the final post will be the week of August 24. 

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. 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.