What's new in science?

How will I know without the Weekly World News?

In my last blog, I described a couple of ideas for helping students notice how often biology pops up in the news. I think it’s useful because it helps them to see science not as a collection of random facts they have to memorize but as a natural part of their lives. It's just as important for me to keep aware of what is new in science, if I’m going to communicate to my students that the field is full of excitement and promise and is worth pursuing. If I’m not interested in what I’m teaching, they won’t be, either.

I admit it’s not easy. I spend a lot of time in paperwork these days and hardly any in the field or at conferences. I try to keep up with my specialty, but I don’t have a bunch of colleagues to argue with all night over pizza anymore. I don’t have easy access to a great library with the latest journals and books anymore. It can be really tempting to keep using the same course notes, the same examples and illustrations, the same labs as I did last semester or the one before that. But I know I’d be bored, and it would show, if I did. Besides – I love science. I love finding things out. I love reading about discoveries and unexpected connections and even finding out that something I thought I knew is completely wrong. Why else would I be here?

So I keep up with science, as much as I can. Luckily the internet does all the heavy lifting. It’s full of sites that gather and summarize the latest research. My list of bookmarks gets longer all the time, but these are some of my favorites:

Science Daily – the most complete source. It updates several times a day, has separate sections for videos and pictures, and includes reference articles along with the news.

Science News – doesn’t update as often as some of the others, but includes articles aimed specifically at kids

LiveScience – navigation is a little clunky and finding the news takes a little digging, but the columnists are quirky and interesting

These sites are also good places to send students who are looking for research or paper topics, and also those who have shown more than a passing interest in biology. It’ll be hard for many of them to stop at just one click.

Do any of you have other good websites to recommend? If you don’t do it online, how do you keep up with the new ideas and research results in biology?

Breaking Biology: Butter Not

Farewell, sweet peanut.

The widening outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter products is an inconvenience for many and a tragedy for some, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity for teachers to bring biology home. From the details of the investigation to more general explorations, there’s something for everyone in food and food safety. A few obvious starting places for discussion and research include:

Bacterial infections

Immune response

Food safety

Food borne illness

The National Peanut Research Lab (who knew?)

Mostly I teach non-majors, students who need some science credits and take biology or geology simply because they sound less awful than chemistry and physics. They learn it, and they even like it, but it’s a challenge to get them to see that they live it. Events like this outbreak can make the difference.

Even less dramatic news is worth working into the classroom. One of my first college professors brought a newspaper into class every few days and handed out random sections to everyone. The first person who found a story or ad and could make an argument for how it related to material covered in the last lecture got extra credit points. Another gave over a lecture or lab entirely once a month to research and discuss the latest natural disaster (it was California, so there was also something). I often assign students to put together a Breaking Subject Matter News journal over the course of a semester.

Anyone else have ideas on incorporating current events into teaching biology? Do you plan for surprise events in your syllabus or lesson plan, or work them in somehow if they happen?

Picture this - photography and biology

Biology is everywhere - you just have to look

An effective biology course can give students a new way to look at the world around them. Photography is a very useful tool in pushing them to literally see their surroundings through a different perspective. Digital cameras, disposable point-and-shoots, and camera phones make it easy for students to take and transmit images. Sending them out to ponder and photograph animals and plants adds a do-it-yourself but still directed field trip experience to an online course.

There are several different approaches that work well. One is to give the students a topic and send them out to find images that illuminate it. You might give them broad themes like photosynthesis or competition or plant succession. Or have them choose an environmental challenge like attracting mates or coping with drought and then document the strategies used by a few different species to solve the problem. Each photo or set of photos should be accompanied by a write up that explains the biology involved. Chose the assignments carefully, so that students have to really look at their surroundings and think through what they’ve learned in the course. Otherwise it just becomes a digital version of the dreaded 6th grade leaf collection.

On the other hand, a photographic show and tell can be a good way to get students talking to one another, and about biologic topics. Have a class upload photos of their pets to start a group discussion on artificial versus natural selection or the adaptive value of cuteness. Get them to post pictures of their lunch as a starting point to describe energy flow through ecosystems or debate the production and labeling of genetically modified organisms. Ask them to photograph their favorite outdoor spaces as a springboard to evaluating the value of wilderness and open space, or their sense of place in the natural world.

Census of Marine Life

The Census of Marine Life is one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken – to discover and count every species of marine creature on Earth. Starting today and continuing for the rest of the week, Census scientists are releasing updates on their progress as part of the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, which begins in Valencia, Spain, on Tuesday. As always with these periodic reports, the results include some of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.


I’m not alone in being delighted – news reports about underwater singles bars for great white sharks, sea star cities, and octopus expressways are popping up all over the internet.

The Census provides almost as many teaching opportunities as it does species. There are gorgeous photos and videos on the various websites of the institutions involved in the project, and detailed explanations of the findings and implications of the work. Any curriculum that includes basic biologic topics like the importance of diversity, the impacts of overfishing and ocean pollution, and the ongoing effects of climate change will benefit from the data gathered by the Census.

Along with all of that, there is a sense of wonder and excitement that runs through every expedition log and scientific report – there is still so much to see and to discover and to understand. That is as much a gift as the results of the research. I doubt I’d be a biologist if it wasn’t for the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Sitting in my Wisconsin living room, I felt connected to the distant sea and sensed the tug of kinship with its inhabitants. I wonder if the Census of Marine Life could provide the same spark of interest and recognition and that same fierce urge to protect the oceans to a new generation?

Some of my best friends are fruit flies

Fruit flies went mainstream this week, when a vice-presidential candidate scorned their study as taking research dollars away from work that helps people. That was a foolish claim, almost instantly debunked – fruit flies have improved the human condition enormously in the last century.

So fruit flies are indisputably cool. But this wasn’t the first time politicians have called out supposedly goofy research conducted by obviously egg-headed scientists as a grievous waste of taxpayers’s money, and it assuredly won’t be the last. I think we need to do a better job teaching students to look beyond the obvious. Most biology classes describe how science is done (observation, hypothesis, testing) and they trumpet a handful of scientific breakthroughs (say the discovery of penicillin, or the description of the DNA double helix). But do we talk enough about the long and winding road from the one to the other?

I think it would be useful to have students research research. Get them to poke at work that seems frivolous and see if they can imagine what bigger things it might lead to, or if it’s really as dumb as it sounds. And have them track award-winning research back to its humble beginnings, and wonder if it would have seemed as worthwhile then as it does now. I can suggest two good places to start, far apart in prestige but perhaps not so distant in teaching value.

The Nobel Prizes are awarded for outstanding achievement, to people who “have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The scientific awards are generally given only after the passage of time has shown the importance and rigor of the original research. The 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to scientists who discovered the viruses that cause cervical cancer and AIDS. The Nobel website has all there is to know about the awards – descriptions of winning research and interviews with the laureates, videos, educational games, news articles, and links.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Ig Noble Prizes, which “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.” This year’s winners include researchers who determined that the fleas on dogs jump higher than the fleas on cats, and an award split between scientists who proved that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide and others who showed that it is not. The Ig Nobel Awards fall under the umbrella of the Annals of Improbable Research. Their website too contains descriptions of the winning research, videos, games, and other commentary.