Category Archives: IBDP Biology
Science Stunts for Parties
Richard Wiseman is a psychologist and author of Quirkology, the Curious Science of Everyday Lives. He also has a YouTube channel loaded with illusions and tricks. As dinner-party season approaches, here are some collections of little science tricks to impress your granny. Be careful with flames.
Movember 2011 – sponsorship links
It’s Mo-vember again and the facial foliage is taking shape. It also just happens to be mid-way through right after the November 2011 session Biology exams. A perfect time to launch an appeal for sponsorship from teachers and students who have used this site in their studies.
My MoVember page
Movember is simple – grow a mo’ for the month of Movember to raise money and awareness of oft-ignored men’s health issues, such as testicular cancer, prostate cancer and depression.
November sessioners (and others), here is a chance to pay it forwards by giving to something seasonal and topical: please make a donation at my MoSpace page! Please get on board or show your support for all the free resources posted here by making a small donation.
In other appeals so far, i-Biology has raised around GBP300 for various charities through my Biology4Good donations page.
Here’s a curriculum link for good measure: 2.5 Cell Division (tumours and cancer).
Mo yeah.
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Movember videos:
First up – some of the real impacts made by Movember fundraising – with real science.
And here are the rules of Movember:
Command Terms and Drawing Skills
My class need to review the definitions and the way we approach some of these command terms, so here is the Command Terms presentation as a reminder. November sessioners – your exam is in one week! Maybe these resources will help.
Get practicing with those calculators, too.
Using your IB Bio GoogleSite
This is for my IB Bio SL class: keep the site updated using these tips:
(Go fullscreen and HD)
Hans Rosling’s Joy of Stats
Now available in full, this one-hour documentary is on Hans Rosling’s GapMinder website.
A brilliant, visual and entertaining view of 1.1 Statistical Analysis, using real datasets and graphics to highlight statistics, means, distributions, graphical representation, correlation and cause. It is most relevant to us from the start up to 37:30.
Here is a neat clip from the show when it aired on the BBC.
Jae Rhim Lee’s Mushroom Burial Suit
It’s Halloween!
In topic 5.1 we learn that energy flows… but nutrients recycle. We are made of organic molecules – nutrients. So why not truly go green?
Watch the TED talk below and think about how many connections across the course we can make so far.
I want one!
For more on how saprotrophs such as fungi can be harnessed to solve pollutant problems, check out Paul Stamet’s talk: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world.
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In other grisly news, a UK taxi-driver has donated his body to science – to become a mummy (in the ancient Egyptian sense).
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Mummy image courtesy of halloweenclipart.com.
The Language Gap – TOK, Language & Sciences
The Language Gap - Word with different meanings to scientists and the public. Click to open.
This GoogleDoc has been doing the rounds this week, based on an AGU article by Callan Bentley. It links well to the “Just a Theory?” Evolution lesson we had a few weeks back, where the basis of much confusion can be rooted in the different uses of a word within and without the scientific context.
Although not an exhaustive or authoritative list of terms, it could be a good discussion starter. It would be good to pick out some of the words we use in our class and compare what we think we know with the ‘public’ and ‘scientific’ definitions.
New posts now should appear on the facebook page and on twitter (@IBiologyStephen, #ibbio).
Imagine Science Film Festival
This visualisation of the role of breast stem cells was the winner of the award for Visual Science at this year’s Imagine Science Film Festival. Carl Zimmer was one of the judges and has posted more of the winning videos to his Discover blog.
For lots more quality visualisations, visit the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s YouTube channel.
The Imagine festival includes a $500 Budding Scientist award, open to High School students. Get working!
Here is a cute video called Do You Know What a Nano Is?
RSA Animate – The Divided Brain
I love these video clips. Here they animate Iain McGilchrist‘s RSA lecture on the nature of the divided brain.
The full talk is here:
Embryonic Stem Cell Patents Banned in EU
Yesterday, the European Court of Justice banned the issuing of patents for embyronic stem cell research, stating:
“A process which involves removal of a stem cell from a human embryo at the blastocyst stage, entailing the destruction of that embryo, cannot be patented.“
The decision has caused widespread concern amongst European stem cell researchers, yet has been welcomed by other groups on moral, ethical or religious grounds.
So why is it such a hot topic?
Human Embryonic Stem Cells (Nissim Benvenisty, via Wikimedia Commons)
Use the resources here, and others that you can find, to discuss the following questions in your group. Be prepared to feed back to the class with a summary of no more than 5 minutes.
- What are (embryonic) stem cells and how do their properties facilitate research?
- Where are stem cells found? Are they all the same?
- How do stem cells eventually become differentiated and specialised?
- Outline at least one recent successful therapeutic use of stem cells.
- Identify a range of stakeholders in the debate. What are their views and reasons for them?
- Can you propose potential solutions or workable compromises that could reduce the impact of the ban on scientific research?
Resources:
Some write-ups on this news story here:
About Stem Cells:
- Cell Theory, topic 2.1 resources by MrT
- Loads of interactive resources from Learn.Genetics
- SEED Magazine’s Stem Cells Cribsheet
- Stem Cell Differentiation (animation) from MCB Harvard
- Stem Cell Basics, from the National Institutes of Health
- StemCells: Seeds of Hope? video from Teachers Domain
- NewScientist special reports on Stem Cells
- Stem Cells transplants in lymphoma (animation)
Theory of Knowledge
The embryonic stem cell debate generates strong and emotive knowledge issues, which is evidenced by the fact that the case was passed all the way up to the European Court of Justice. There are many stakeholders in embryonic stem cell research, each with their own knowledge claims and beliefs.
With this recent ban on patenting methods based on the destruction of embryonic stem cells, we add the elements of patenting and intellectual ownership (and of course the knock-on effects to funding, progress and public perception).
To what extent does the embryonic stem cell debate highlight potential conflicts between the areas of knowledge of the natural sciences and ethics and between the ways of knowing of emotion and reason?
After reading through, understanding and discussing the resources, what knowledge issues can you identify?
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Connections:
This follows on from a related story in the USA last year:
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