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This activity guides the analysis of a published scientific figure from a study that modeled the impact of an infectious fungal disease on a bat population. In 2006, a disease called white-nose syndrome (WNS) began wiping out bat populations in North America. Because many of these bats eat insect pests, the spread of WNS may devastate ecosystems and increase pest control costs. In this study, scientists mathematically modeled the effects of WNS to estimate extinction probabilities for the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) population in the northeastern United States. This figure shows these probabilities projected for five annual rates of population decline. Each projection is simulated up to 100 years after WNS emerged in the population. The "Educator Materials" document includes a captioned figure, background information, graph interpretation, and discussion questions. The "Student Handout" includes a captioned figure and background information.

When I speak with educators about the power of hashtags in social media, I get four questions.   1. How do I figure out which hashtag to use and set it up? 2. How do I know what people are saying? 3. How do I know what hashtag people are using if I want to find conversations about an area of interest? 4. How do I know who is using the hashtag? There's a few great sites to help you answer these questions. They are Tagboard, Hashtagify.me, TOPSY, and Twitter.  Let's take a look and how to use these platforms to most effectively answer these questions. How to figure out and set up a hashtag

8:13 One of the greatest mysteries is not whether ghosts are real or if there's alien life. The mystery is us. Here are some simple things our body does that science still can't figure out.

Taylor must write a report about a natural toxin while she is home from college on break. After a family dinner conversation about the latest attempt to poison a politician via a letter, Taylor decides to explore how ricin acts as a poison. Students work in small groups to help Taylor by working through figures from primary literature papers and exploring the use of an in vitro translation system, sucrose gradient fractionation and the effect of inhibiting various steps of translation.  A shorter, second day activity involves students looking further at the effect of ricin upon ribosome function and at the ricin protein itself.  Students individually complete a cumulative assignment of writing a letter back to Mom and Dad about how ricin has its effects. This case was designed for use in a second semester biochemistry course or a molecular biology course that incorporates the mechanism of transcription. Prerequisite knowledge includes a general understanding of the steps of translation and the ability to interpret data from agarose gels.

To understand the importance of elements to nutrition. Of the approximately 115 elements known, only the 19 highlighted in purple in Figure 1.26 are absolutely required in the human diet. These elements-called essential elements-are restricted to the first four rows of the periodic table (see Chapter 32 "Appendix H: Periodic Table of Elements"), with only two or three exceptions (molybdenum, iodine, and possibly tin in the fifth row). Some other elements are essential for specific organisms. For example, boron is required for the growth of certain plants, bromine is widely distributed in marine organisms, and tungsten is necessary for some microorganisms.

Researchers have long known that women whose families include fraternal twins are more likely to give birth to twins themselves, and they're finally starting to figure out why. After scanning data from nearly 2000 mothers of fraternal twins, scientists from eight countries found two genes that increase a woman's chance of having twins-one that affects hormone levels and another that may alter how ovaries respond to them. The second of these may also have implications for why some women respond better than others to in vitro fertilization.

In this case study students are provided with information for piecing together the story of how forest fragmentation and biodiversity loss can affect the risk of Lyme disease transmission to humans. The case introduces the dilution effect, a widely accepted theory-and one of the most important ideas in disease ecology-which suggests that disease risk for humans decreases as the diversity of species in an area increases. It also explains how landscape fragmentation, one of the most common threats to biodiversity, can influence the risk of Lyme disease for humans. Students interpret and discuss various figures to develop a concept map that connects all the individual results of the story. Students gain an appreciation for the complexity of species interactions in an ecosystem, the effects of forest fragmentation on these interactions and the possible consequences for human health. This activity was developed for an undergraduate introduction to environmental sciences course under the topic of biodiversity and conservation, but would also be suitable for interdisciplinary studies interested in examining the connections between conservation and public health.

Sulston worked alone, in silence, hunched over a microscope for eight hours a day. By studying and drawing worms of various ages, he figured out the ancestor and descendants of each of their cells. It was a monumental piece of science. Sulston mapped the complete history of an individual, the comprehensive family tree of a single body. "We had the entire story of the worm's cells from fertilized egg to adult," he later said, upon accepting the Nobel Prize for his work.

The online textbook provides a background to understand and discuss the natural functioning of the different Earth systems; it introduces humans as part of the overall ecosystem and explores what is needed to sustain human life; and it looks at the effects that human actions have on different natural systems. The online textbook also includes full-color images of related figures, glossary terms, and a bibliography for further reading.

Book Chapter of gene therapy, nice figure on different approaches.

Millions of people suffer from asthma, a frightening disease that makes you feel like you're drowning. Using both mouse and human cells - and a humanized mouse to show how human type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) work in the body, researchers at Janssen Research and Development, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School are figuring out ILC2's role in asthma. Their findings have important implications in the quest for effective asthma therapies!

The first activity will have you investigate some of the animals in the Mexican ecosystem.  Figure out who are the predators and who are their prey and build your own food web.

From the following article: The velocity of climate change Scott R. Loarie, Philip B. Duffy, Healy Hamilton, Gregory P. Asner, Christopher B. Field & David D. Ackerly Nature 462, 1052-1055(24 December 2009) doi:10.1038/nature08649

Biologists estimate that there are about 5 to 100 million species of organisms living on Earth today. Evidence from morphological, biochemical, and gene sequence data suggests that all organisms on Earth are genetically related, and the genealogical relationships of living things can be represented by a vast evolutionary tree, the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life then represents the phylogeny of organisms, i. e., the history of organismal lineages as they change through time. It implies that different species arise from previous forms via descent, and that all organisms, from the smallest microbe to the largest plants and vertebrates, are connected by the passage of genes along the branches of the phylogenetic tree that links all of Life (Figure 1).

Concept maps are tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts or propositions, (indicated by a connecting line and linking word) between two concepts. Linking words on the line specify the relationship between the two concepts. Joe Novak defines "concept" as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label. Think of the concept "Dog" in your mind, what do you see? You might see a prototype shape (head, four legs etc) and typical examples (terrier, collie, sheepdog) and even be able to explain it (give a definition) in words. The label for most concepts is a word, although sometimes we use symbols such as + or %. Propositions are statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected with other words to form a meaningful statement. Sometimes these are called semantic units,or units of meaning. Figure 1 shows an example of a concept map that describes the structure of concept maps and illustrates the above characteristics.

This case study explores the topics of diffusion, osmosis, membrane transport, and the physiological significance of glucose and insulin in the human body. The story begins with a high school athlete, Timmy, who is incredibly efficient at metabolizing carbohydrates for energy; this is where the reader is introduced to normal carbohydrate digestion and metabolism for energy within skeletal muscle cells. As Timmy enters college, he withdraws from sports and physical activity but continues to consume massive amounts of highly soluble carbohydrates, resulting in insulin resistance and ultimately type II diabetes. Throughout the case students are prompted with conceptual questions and interactive figures that require the application and transfer of information they have been introduced to. Originally written for intermediate and advanced physiology courses that cover foundational and complex concepts in science, the case is also appropriate for courses in intermediate biology, nutritional sciences, animal sciences, and exercise sciences.

The discovery of the structure of DNA was one of the most important scientific achievements in human history. The now-famous double helix is almost synonymous with Watson and Crick, two of the scientists who won the Nobel prize for figuring it out. But there's another name you may not know: Rosalind Franklin. Cláudio L. Guerra shares the true story of the woman behind the helix.

This "clicker case" tells the story of "Hannah," a baby girl adopted by two loving parents who grows up with an uncontrolled appetite and develops severe early-onset obesity. Students follow Hannah's story as she develops excessive eating early in life, which her health care team is unable to explain. A visit to obesity specialists finally reveals the underlying cause of Hannah's obsession with food: extremely low levels of circulating leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and body weight. It is further discovered that Hannah's leptin deficiency is due to a mutation in the LEP gene. As the story unfolds, students first work on unit conversions and BMI calculations to practice quantitative skills as well as graph and data interpretation skills. Students then apply their knowledge of DNA transcription, translation, and protein structure to answer questions based on figures from a 2019 study on LEP mutations. The case is best suited for high school and lower-level undergraduate biology courses.

In this activity, students analyze scientific figures to understand principles of island biogeography theory that determine the number of species in an isolated habitat. This activity uses a jigsaw approach to explore the processes that determine the equilibrium number of species in a habitat and how they are affected by both area and isolation. Two "Student Handouts" are provided as options for the activity. The "Analyzing Graphical Data" handout engages students in graph interpretation and sensemaking from data. The "Building the Equilibrium Model" handout facilitates a scaffolded investigation of the dynamic equilibrium model of island biogeography; students construct immigration and extinction curves to demonstrate the effects of area and isolation on the equilibrium number of species.