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In this video Paul Andersen explains the basic anatomy of a neuron; including the dendrites, cell body, axon hillock, axon, and axon terminal. He also describes how neurons are classified both structurally and functionally.

23min video Cells are everywhere. They are the basic structural, functional and biological units of all known living organisms. Cells are the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and are often called the "building blocks of life". But, there's more...

Look no further! This page is a gold mine for teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The grade level science and math buttons will take you to the best of lessons done by area teachers in ScienceWise courses as their requirement for graduate credit. The "Other Resources" button leads to links for national websites, each with numerous, vetted lesson plans, classified by topic and grade level.

4:17 video Think of the ozone layer as Earth's sunglasses, protecting life on the surface from the harmful glare of the sun's strongest ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer and other maladies. Ozone stinks. People who breathe it gag as their lungs burn. The EPA classifies ground-level ozone as air pollution. Yet without it, life on Earth would be impossible. A fragile layer of ozone 25 km above Earth's surface is all that stands between us and some of the harshest UV rays from the sun. The ozone molecule O3 blocks radiation which would otherwise burn skin and cause cancer. On Mars, which has no ozone layer to protect it, solar UV rays strafe the surface with deadly effect, leaving the apparently lifeless planet without the simplest of organic molecules in the upper millimeters of exposed Martian soil.

You're probably aware of eight basic blood types: A, AB, B and O, each of which can be "positive" or "negative." They're the most important, because a patient who receives ABO +/- incompatible blood very often experiences a dangerous immune reaction. For the sake of simplicity, these are the types that organizations like the Red Cross usually talk about. But this system turns out to be a big oversimplification. Each of these eight types of blood can be subdivided into many distinct varieties. There are millions in all, each classified according to the little markers called antigens that coat the surface of red blood cells.

Deep-sea mystery solved: astonishing larval transformation and extreme sexual dimorphism unite three fish families by Johnson, et al. (2009)* published in Biology Letters, Royal Society. The deep sea fishes at the heart of the investigation and this activity were historically classified into three families or clades based on the obvious morphological differences between the members of each group. 

In 2012, the World Health Organisation classified colistin, the most widely used polymyxin, as being critically important for human health. But that didn't stop farmers around the world, especially in China, from using large quantities of colistin to fatten up pigs and chickens. Now Yi-Yun Liu at the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou and colleagues have discovered the first known resistance gene for colistin that is able to move freely from one bacterium to another.

Taxonomy, the practice of classifying biodiversity, has a venerable history. Although early natural historians did not recognize that the similarities and differences among organisms were consequences of evolutionary mechanisms, they still sought a means to organize biological diversity.

This case study challenges students to differentiate between anecdotal evidence and science-based evidence related to human health. The case uses a "flipped" approach in which students watch two preparatory videos prior to attending class. The first video defines anecdotal evidence while the second characterizes the different categories of scientific studies that generate evidence that is not anecdotal. Students watch the videos, analyze scenarios for anecdotal evidence, and think about what types of evidence they use to make health-related decisions. When students meet in class, they work in groups to compare and contrast these different categories of scientific studies and classify actual research studies aided by a dichotomous key for distinguishing between different types of studies related to human health. Primarily designed for students in introductory general biology courses, the activity could also be useful for lower division nutrition, physiology, or non-major biology courses or any course where students need to differentiate between science and pseudoscience.

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Early classification systems probably grouped organisms as to whether they were beneficial or harmful. Another ancient classification system recognized 5 animal groups - domestic animals, wild animals, creeping animals, flying animals, and sea animals.