Cry wolf

A slow, sad drama is unfolding on a remote island, in the process providing a tailor-made teaching window into population genetics and bioethics.

Isle Royale, a large, forested island on the northwest end of Lake Superior, is separated from the closest mainland by 15 miles of cold, deep water. This isolation has produced a unique and relatively simple wilderness ecosystem, which includes a pair of species – wolves and moose – tied together by a two-link food chain.

Moose arrived on Isle Royale sometime around 1900, after a long and dangerous swim from Canada or perhaps Minnesota. Wolves followed 40-50 years later, walking across on the ice of a particularly cold winter. Since then, the wolves have been the moose’s only predator, and the moose the wolves’ primary source of food. During the last 50 years, this relationship has been observed and recorded continuously by biologists with the National Park Service and Michigan Technological University. It is the longest running study of large mammal predator-prey relationships ever made, and it has provided many insights into how ecosystems develop and operate, and how they respond to environmental change. Recent work has revealed that this small but important community may be doomed.

Genetic testing has shown that the wolf packs on the island are all descended from a single female. After generations of inbreeding, the genetic diversity of the population has fallen by half, and most of the wolves are suffering from a congenital, inherited bone defect. This condition is marked by malformations and growths of the vertebrae, which interfere with spinal nerves and cause pain, muscle weakness, and paralysis. Many wolves also have extra vertebrae and early onset arthritis, which may be genetic as well. This discovery may explain recent declines in the island’s wolf population and suggests its future is likely to be both short and bleak.


Biologists and policy makers are now grappling with the difficult question of how to respond to the wolves’ predicament. Do they let nature take its course, and use the opportunity to learn more about the progress and consequences of local extinction events? Or do they attempt a “genetic intervention” and bring in one or more healthy, unrelated wolves to deepen the gene pool, which might both save the Isle Royale population and also provide valuable experience and knowledge on restoring the health of threatened species?

The story of wolves and moose on Isle Royale provides a wealth of opportunities for biology teachers. The ethical questions surrounding the wolves’ future are ripe for classroom discussions on conservation, wilderness, and the interplay between science and public policy. The data provided by 50 years of moose and wolf studies can easily be used to illustrate population dynamics, the founder effect, genetic drift, and interspecific competition. Students can be asked to use their knowledge of ecological processes to predict the environmental impact of wolf extinction on the island’s ecosystem as a whole, or to describe how even such a remote setting is influenced by regional and historical trends such as climate change and agricultural and wildlife management practices.

Photos courtesy of www.isleroyalewolf.org.

Bacteria can run but they can't hide

I just stumbled across a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_xh-bkiv_c&feature=kp) of a neutrophil chasing down and engulfing a bacterium. Although it’s one of those old, slightly grainy science films from the 1950s, there is something really compelling about the frantic vibrations of the bacterium, the remorseless pursuit by the neutrophil, and their eerily silent battle among the red blood cells. It’s a little Hitchcockian, don't you think? I leaned forward while I watched it, and now I can’t help anthropomorphizing the heck out of it while I discuss it. Although that isn’t completely out of line, since this very scene is being repeated a million times over right now inside me and you and every human. At any rate, it was interesting enough to get me to Google around a bit to refresh my memory on just what a neutrophil is and does. So you go, 1950s filmstrip.

As is so often the case in biology, what looks like a simple process – see bacteria, catch bacteria, kill bacteria – is actually quite complex. Neutrophils are one variety of a kind of white blood cells called granular leucocytes, which form a major part of the immune system. The cell membrane of each neutrophil is studded with chemical receptors. These receptors are specialized to detect the proteins that immune cells release when they encounter an infection or inflammation. When neutrophils receive such calls for help, they follow their chemical gradient back to the source with great speed. Upon arrival, foreign bacteria are destroyed through phagocytosis – the neutrophils engulf and then digest the invaders. The bacteria do get revenge of a sort. Eventually the neutrophils die, and are themselves phagocytosed and subsequently turned into pus, which isn’t a particularly glorious end for such staunch defenders.

Neutrophil (yellow) engulfing anthrax bacteria (orange). Scale bar is 5um. From PLoS Pathogens Vol. 1(3) November 2005.

Those who can, doodle

JFK's White House Doodles
I’ve been seeing lots of news stories lately about a research study that suggests that doodling improves memory. A group of test subjects who were directed to doodle while listening to a series of long, dull conversations remembered the details much better than the group who simply sat and listened. It seems that the brain is adapted to be active, and if the world doesn’t supply enough stimulation to keep it going, it’ll make it’s own through daydreaming. Doodling keeps the brain just busy enough that it continues to pay attention to the outside world. Daydreaming takes more mental effort, and distracts the mind from its surroundings.

There are obvious implications for teaching in this. As a biology student, I doodled a lot – the citric acid cycle, that would do it. The electron transport chain, every time. But I mainly did it when I thought I could do it on the down low, sitting in the back of the room or in a large lecture hall. In a smaller class, I became the master of the glassy stare and the falsely inquisitive head tilt instead.

As a teacher, I’m sure I’ve given more than one doodler the skunk eye. Now I wonder if I should encourage it. Every lecture has its boring bits – anything that keeps a student learning through the dull spots is worth using. Maybe I need to add doodles to the hands-on demo, the small-group discussion pause, the five-minute stretch and soda break, and all the other straighten up and pay attention tricks. At the least, I'll try and see doodling as a genuine attempt to learn rather than as a surefire sign of slacking.

The TEACH Act: Copyright in the Classroom, part 3

You thought copyright was confusing before, but no, this is where it gets tricky – copyright law in online education. When you post something copyrighted on a web page or send it across the internet, you are in a sense publishing that material, and that’s quite different than showing a slide for a few minutes in a classroom or handing around a photocopied article to a few students. That’s giving everyone, everywhere the ability to take or use someone else’s work without compensation.

In order to address the unique aspects of online education and copyright law, Congress passed the TEACH Act in 2002. The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act made it legal for teachers employed by accredited schools to use copyrighted materials in online education in pretty much the same ways they could be used in face-to-face classroom settings. Sounds great, eh? Oh, but there’s a catch – there are a set of conditions that must be met for the TEACH Act to apply:

An institution must have an established copyright policy and educational information on copyright law available.

The copyrighted material must be used in a lesson or instructional activity – supplemental material used for additional information or extra reading is not allowed.

Access must be limited only to enrolled students, and only for the duration of a class or course.

Technological controls must be in place to prevent students from downloading or copying material or transmitting it on to someone else.

Commercial materials created explicitly for distance education cannot be used. Required textbooks and workbooks cannot be posted instead of purchased. Illegally acquired material cannot be used.

All material available to students must come with a notice about copyright law.

Those conditions are tough to meet, especially the ones about controlling downloads and access. Luckily, all is not lost if you cannot do it.

Links - Instead of giving your students copies of copyrighted material, give them the links to go the original sources online. It’s more efficient anyway. All you have to do is check frequently to make sure the links are still good.

Permissions - Copyright holders will often grant permission to use their work for a fee or for educational purposes. Sometimes an email is all it takes, but more often it’s a lengthy process.

Fair use - The fair use exemption to copyright law can still be used in online education, but you need to be very careful. As a practical matter, your treatment of someone else’s intellectual property in the classroom is just between you and your conscience. It might make it hard to insist that your students do not plagiarize when you make someone else work free, and all but impossible to show them that science is all about honest and ethical inquiry. But the chances of being caught or prosecuted for copyright infringement are vanishingly small.

With distance education, though, it’s a different story. Once you put something online it’s there for anyone with a search engine and a professional or financial stake in protecting their rights to find. So I suggest you post as little copyrighted material as possible (use links instead), and show good faith by always crediting the author when you do. Once a class is over, take the material down.

For more detailed information on the TEACH Act and distance education, visit these sites -

TEACH Act Toolkit
Stanford Library's Fair Use website

Well, it seems fair to me: Copyright in the Classroom, part 2

Anyone who teaches biology needs to use copyrighted material. You can’t convey the scope of life on Earth or the complexity of biological processes or the secret inner life of cells without using pictures, videos, and diagrams. Only a small amount of the good stuff is in the public domain, so there’s really no way to avoid copyright issues. Here are some options --

Creative Commons – Look for material with a Creative Commons license. Many authors are willing to share their work with some strings attached. Various CC licenses give the public permission to copy, distribute, and display material as long as the copyright holder is credited or the work is not altered or used for profit. Frequently the graphics and photos on Wikipedia and flickr and articles in online science journals have attribution/non-commercial licenses – just follow the simple rules and they are free for the using.

Fair Use – U.S. copyright law allows educators to use copyrighted materials legally under the principle of fair use. A set of 4 kind of squishy conditions are weighed to determine if a use is fair. Here they are, as described by the Association of Research Libraries (I can copy their discussion here, because it’s published under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 2.5 License):

This “fair use” provision of copyright law doesn’t provide hard and fast rules to tell you whether a use qualifies as fair. Instead, the unique facts regarding a use lead you to a reasoned conclusion. Your evaluation should weigh four factors:

1. Purpose and character: If your use is for teaching at a nonprofit educational institution, this is a factor favoring fair use. The scale tips further in favor of fair use if access is restricted to your students.

2. Nature of copyrighted work: Is the work fact-based, published, or out-of-print? These factors weigh in favor of fair use.

3. Amount used: Using a small portion of a whole work would weigh toward fairness. But sometimes it may be fair to use an entire work (such as an image) if it is needed for your instructional purpose.

4. Market effect: A use is more likely to be fair if it does not harm the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. But if it does, this could weigh more heavily against fair use than the other factors.

Consider each of these factors, but all of them do not have to be favorable to make your use a fair one. When the factors in the aggregate weigh toward fairness, your use is better justified. When the factors tip the scales in the other direction, your need to obtain permission from the copyright holder increases. Don’t worry that the answer isn’t crystal clear. Just decide whether the factors weigh enough toward fairness so that you are comfortable not seeking permission. Some suggest reliance on the “golden rule” — if you were the copyright holder, would you see the use as fair and not expect to be asked for permission?

Fair use allows teachers to use, reproduce, and distribute copyrighted material in the classroom. But in return, teachers are required to exercise restraint. You cannot copy all or most of a textbook or workbook so that students do not have to buy them. You can’t copy a nature program off the tv and show it every semester if it is available for sale or rent. You are not allowed to put together a thick packet of articles for your students to buy from you or the local copy shop. Be reasonable - the people who write textbooks and make films need to make a living.

Copyright Clearance – If you really need to use copyrighted material in a way that doesn’t fall under fair use, you can and must get permission. Most textbook publishers will sell clearances that allow making lots of copies for educational uses. You can seek permission yourself, or use a clearance services. Many scientists and other copyright holders will also grant permission for you to use a photo or illustration or other material if you ask nicely and want to use it in a way they find reasonable.

For more information on copyright and classroom teaching, check out Stanford University’s website on Copyright and Fair Use. It’s fabulous.

Next time, the TEACH Act and copyright law in distance education.