photo by bensonkua

by Jeremy

If you have heard of dogs doing tricks, now there are fish doing tricks at fish school. At fish school, operant conditioning and shapes are used to teach fish how to do tricks. Some of the tricks (which you can see in this video) consist of putting a soccer ball in a goal, going through tubes and rings, and learning limbo.

Fish school was created by a father and his son who though that their fish were too boring. Later they set up different tricks for the fish and trained their fish to perform them.

One way the fish perform tricks is because they respond to shapes. Goldfish actually have a three month memory span rather than a small amount of seconds which they were believed to have had. The other way that the fish learn tricks is by operant conditioning with a reward of food. Once the fish is led trough the trick course with the food on the stick, then it is fed. This process is repeated until the fish can perform the trick without having to follow the food on the stick.

The experts at the Universities of Edinburgh, St. Andrews have performed tests to find more about fish intelligence. They concluded that fish are very intelligent creatures. One of the hypothesis about how the fish got their intelligence is that because fish are the most ancient of the vertebrate groups on earth and they evolved and became smarter over time. Fish are now known to have social intelligence. Fish have stable cultural traditions and they work together to inspect predators and catch food.

How do goldfish respond to color or light? Is there another way for goldfish to learn? How else could goldfish have gotten their intelligence?

I was on NPR’s Science Friday this week discussing science education.  My segment was aired live between 2:20-3pm.  You can listen to a podcast of the segment by going to their website.

If you’ve discovered this website because of the radio show, please leave a comment for my students.  We’d love to hear from you!

9th Grade Biology Students Investigate Cockroach Behavior

Students who were not able to complete the cockroach lab had a great time with the alternative Thumb War lab.

You can view more pictures & videos of both labs by clicking here.  Anyone interested in kissing one of the cockroaches for a bonus point? 

by Jennifer

Lyrics:
People get malaria when they’re bit by a mosquito
It’s taking lives like a torpedo
Every year one million die worldwide
But you can prevent it with insecticide

Maybe a breakthrough cure for malaria
To starve the parasite was their idea

Every thirty seconds a child dies
Without treatment, it’s no surprise
A family in Africa could be saved by a bug net
Too bad they can’t afford one yet

This treatment fights the drug-resistant kind
Hopefully we can put malaria out of mind

I wish this cure will help people everywhere
I want it to end their nightmare

Photo by Kozzman

Malaria is a parasitical disease caused by being bitten by a mosquito. Every year 300-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, with over one million dying from it, mostly in Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Every thirty seconds, a child dies from the disease. It can be prevented, with the use of bednets, insecticides, and antimalarial drugs. People with malaria often have flu-like symptoms, fever, and chills. If it goes untreated, you can develop severe complications and die.

The parasite that causes malaria is called Plasmodium. When inside the body, the parasite multiplies in the liver and then infects red blood cells. The symptoms usually appear ten to fifteen days after being bitten by the mosquito. If it is not treated, malaria can soon become life-threatening by disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. Malaria has become drug-resistant to lots of medicines in many parts of the world, similar to the drug-resistant tuberculosis that we discussed in class.

Recently, a team of researchers at Monash University made a major breakthrough in the international fight against malaria. They tackled the issue of drug-resistant malaria, a growing problem. “We had an idea as to how malaria could be starved and we have shown this, chemically, can be done,” Dr McGowan, lead author of the research paper, said. “A single bite from an infected mosquito can transfer the malaria parasite into a human’s blood stream. The malaria parasite must then break down blood proteins in order to obtain nutrients. Malaria carries out the first stages of digestion inside a specialized compartment called the digestive vacuole – this can be considered to be like a stomach. However, the enzyme we have studied (known as PfA-M1), which is essential for parasite viability, is located outside the digestive vacuole meaning that it is easier to target from a drug perspective.” A drug candidate which hopes to provide a single-dose cure is now being developed.

Here is a video from Unicef about malaria in Africa and how it can be prevented.

Do you think that this new drug will cure malaria? What else can you find out about malaria?

Your homework assignment is to write a comment to this post with one observation you made about the biology classroom.  Include an inference you made about that observation.

To leave a comment, scroll down to where it says Leave a Reply underneath this post.  Fill in the required boxes.  Leave the website box blank.  Only use your FIRST NAME!

After you click submit, you should see your comment with the words your comment is awaiting moderation.  If you see that, you’re all done!  If you don’t, go back and try again.

After you’re all done, explore the blog or the rest of the class website.  I encourage you to click on the pictures link and check out some pictures from past years.

by Erik

Check out the animation I created about my post.  Enjoy!

Darwin’s Mockingbirds! by spudinski01, made at DoInk.com 

On two small islands somewhere in the midst of the Galapagos Archipelago live some 100-200 mockingbirds. These specific mockingbirds however are some of the rarest bird species in the world, and the story that comes with them is so grand that while I type right now, I still don’t have a title. Let’s take a trip back in time.

In September of 1835, the ship HMS Beagle arrived in the Galapagos Islands. Aboard this ship was a naturalist named Charles Darwin, and little did he know that while investigating this wondrous miniature world, he would start to form some of the most fundamental ideas in the history of science. It all starts with the Mockingbird. Darwin had encountered other mockingbirds on his travels through South America, but being the brilliant observer he was, something stood out to him while he visited the different islands. While on his travels through all of South America, the mockingbirds he found were mostly similar, but among the islands, the mockingbirds had very definite differences in size, beak, plumage, etc. He realized he was seeing more variation between Mockingbird species just miles apart than he had across the span of a whole continent. This got Darwin thinking.

photo by ...Point&Click

“I have specimens from 4 of the major islands, in each island each kind is exclusively found, the habits of all are indistinguishable, when I see these islands in sight of each other and possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds but slightly differing in structure and filling the same place in nature I must suspect they are only varieties … if there is the slightest foundation for these remarks, the zoology of these archipelagos will be well worth examining, for such facts would undermine the stability of species”- C. Darwin

Basically, this is when his light-bulb flipped on, but it gets better. Today these very same birds are extremely endangered, and have vanished from from the island they used to inhabit, surviving on two small neighboring islets. The specific reason is somewhat hazy, but unfortunately, humans probably had something to do with it. At any rate, a conservation effort has been launched to re-introduce the mockingbirds to the island, and this is where it gets really cool. While among the islands Darwin collected four of these birds, each one different, and from a different island. Those very birds Darwin himself brought back over 150 years ago have had DNA samples taken from them to compare to the current surviving birds. By doing this scientists can see which birds today have DNA most similar to the mockingbirds back then, and use those birds for re-introducing as they would be best suited for the islands. The other awesome thing is that by looking at bird candidates, birds can be chosen who have the large gene variation as well. The idea behind this is to give them a jump start on adapting to their environment, since the individual with the best traits will survive, having more variation among individuals, helpful traits are more likely to turn up and help the species survive.

Dr. Karen James of the Natural History Museum sums it up saying “We’re hoping to use the genetic profiles from the old specimens to help us select birds from the surviving populations to introduce to the old island.” Quite frankly, thank you Darwin, yet again.

You can view a video about this here.

photo by Sparky the Neon Cat

After finishing my initial post, I contacted Dr. Karen James herself to see if she could answer some questions.

Q: Do you know if scientists used this method of “selecting the best” individuals in other conservation efforts?

A: Most of the time they use these methods to monitor populations that have already been reintroduced; our project is one of the very few that proposes to use the method before the reintroduction, to select which birds should be reintroduced in the first place.

Q: it seems like it would be a more effective way to “re-grow” a species, or more successful anyway.

A: That’s the idea!

-Happy Darwin Day to you and your class
Karen

The natural History Museum at London is a highly regarded institution with a vast collection of specimens, and one of the biggest collections of historical scientific artwork in the world. It is definitely a good source to anyone who is interested.

Are there any other species this method could be used for? How was the role Darwin’s Finches played in his thoughts on evolution different?

by Rose

Hi everybody! Wow… It’s been a while since my last blog post – I can’t believe it’s already been almost two years since I took AP Bio! It feels quite surreal writing this post as a college student.

First, to introduce myself: Hi, my name is Rose Kim. Currently, I am a freshman at Johns Hopkins University and I plan on majoring in behavioral biology, a subject which I first encountered in Ms. Baker’s AP Biology class during my junior year in high school. The subject had piqued my interest so much that I decided to spend four years learning more about it! Haha, anyways, I was asked by Ms. Baker to talk about my college experience so far and I am more than happy to do so.

Last September was the freshman move-in/orientation at Johns Hopkins University. The experience was exactly the way everyone described it to be – chaotic, nerve-wrecking, exciting, fun, and extremely exhausting. Hundreds of faces and names go by super fast and all the events they plan for you go by in a blur. As exciting as the first few weeks of school were, once you settle down and have things mellowed out is when the fun really starts. You don’t have to spend so much time trying to remember names and worrying about whether you’ll get lost and etc.

For my first semester at Hopkins, I decided to take Chemistry, Calculus, Psychology, Biology Workshop, and a writing intensive course. Luckily, Hopkins doesn’t have a core curriculum so I could take whichever courses I wanted to. As I am not a big ‘math person,’ to be honest I have to say that I did not enjoy chemistry and calculus as much as I would have liked.

In college, one lecture class has about 250 students in it and the information goes by really fast. We would cover about 3 chapters in an hour, about three days a week. At first it took me a while to get used to the speed and the way the professors taught. In high school, the teachers are very careful about making sure the students understand and take in the subject but in college, the professors don’t really care whether you’re in class or not. This realization hit me like a ton of bricks because finally, after years of supervision from teachers and parents, it was all up to me (and only me) to make sure I do well.

The freedom to do whatever I wanted was quite overwhelming. I had to learn to discipline myself to keep up with the readings and to make sure that I knew the information and to not spend too much time playing. However, if you go to lecture and take good notes, it’s not that hard (Duh). At first the fact that the responsibility is ALL yours scares the heck out of you, but eventually you’ll learn to deal with it and have fun in the process.

Out of all the courses I took in first semester, I would have to say that Psychology and Bio Workshop were my favorites. Because I had such an awesome AP Bio teacher, I was able to use my AP credits to exempt out of the boring introductory biology courses and labs. This allowed me to delve deeper into all the other interesting bio courses that JHU had to offer. Bio Workshop was a course that covered the current trends in biology by inviting different guest speakers to come and talk about their studies. It was truly inspiring to see just how passionate each speaker was in the subject they talked about.

Those of you who have taken a course with Ms. Baker would know that she loves birds. There are many bird paraphernalia decorating her room and she gets excited when someone brings up a particularly interesting question or comment about them. Coincidentally, the first guest speaker for my Bio workshop class was Professor Gregory Ball and the funny thing was that he studies animal behavior, specializing in the study of birds. I think his love for birds almost surpasses that of Ms. Baker’s. His lecture was both fascinating and funny – he was extremely charismatic and shared these hilarious stories about misunderstandings that occurred while he studied and discussed his research on the ‘Blue-Footed Boobies’ and the ‘Great Tits’ (Both of which are actual bird names).

photo by Max xx

We also learned about the behavior of different birds during mating season and about different types of birdsongs. It was interesting how experiences in college could relate to those in high school in such an unexpected way. It was really cool to see how he used the same clips that I saw during my AP Bio class (If Ms. Baker hasn’t shown you the clips of the different birds of paradise, you should ask her to because they’re absolutely amazing. Also, the clip of the lyre bird is pretty awesome too). It felt nice to know most of the answers to the questions he asked, such as “Why do birds sing?” “Are there local dialects of birdsongs? Why or why not?” and other thought-provoking subjects such as brood parasitism and what it shows us about the process of learning amongst certain birds (I’m sure you guys would have no problem answering these too, right?). After that lecture, the professor’s enthusiasm for birds was almost contagious.

Overall, I think I really enjoyed that course. We covered a variety of different areas related to “today’s” biology – from bird songs and animal behavior, to last year’s controversy about the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, to the genetics of breast cancer and the current research going on to help prevent and cure it.

Psychology was also another course that I really loved. Through this course, I was able to participate in a variety of different psychology experiments. For one, I had to stare at a blank computer screen for about 80 minutes straight in a small dark room by myself. Periodically, a jumble of letters and numbers (about 40 of them) would flash for a second and the objective was to spot which number was the biggest amongst the jumble. I thought I was going to go blind by the end of that exercise. My eyes kept twitching for a bit afterwards. I don’t exactly remember what that experiment was trying to determine, but it was still fun participating – the twitchiness and all.

Something that surprised me about college was how many midterms one had to go through in a semester. After the first month, it seems like there was midterm after midterm after midterm; about one each week for different classes. And when you finally think that you’re all done, finals hit you in the back of the head. Also, the weight of each midterm hangs over your shoulder like a heavy weight. In each class, there’re about 3 or 4 midterms and a final. And that’s it. No quizzes or homework grades to balance things out. Therefore, even failing one midterm can be the end of that course.

With this much pressure, it was hard getting used to the fact that I had to count on myself to keep up with the readings and lectures in order to be ready for a midterm. It’s so much easier to just forget about reviewing the book because the professor doesn’t care, but this mind-set gave me a lot of stress afterwards during finals week. I’m still trying to get used to it for second semester and I hope that this year, it’ll be much easier to prepare myself.

Another thing that I would like to say to all the AP students is that although AP may be tough,  trust me when I say that it’s much easier than taking a biology course in college. The information is pretty much the same, but the intensity and pace is a whole different level. It’s usually also less interesting because the information goes by so fast (and it’s a repeat of what you’ve already heard). So please take my advice when I say to try your hardest on that AP exam! It’s so much better to use your AP credits to exempt from wasting a year of precious college time to retake and re-learn a course that you should already be familiar with when you can broaden your options and take more interesting courses to help make your freshman year more intriguing (and worth-it, money-wise!).

Therefore, Good luck on your exams! I hope you will all give a 110%!

In May, I appeared on a panel at the New York Academy of Sciences’ event, The Two Cultures in the 21st Century.  The all-day event, created by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, was inspired by the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s lecture of the same name.  In his lecture, Snow lamented the great divide between science and the humanities.  The NYAS event included such notable scientists as E.O. Wilson (keynote speaker), Carl Zimmer, Kenneth Miller, and Stuart Pimm.

I presented on a panel in the afternoon on the topic of education and how it can be used to help bridge the Two Cultures divide.  As part of my presentation, I showed a video of several of my students to the great delight of the entire audience.  A video of the education panel discussion can be viewed here.  If you only want to watch the part where the students’ video is played, fast forward to time 6:30.

You can read a summary of the education discussion as well as the other event discussions by going here and clicking on the “Meeting Report tab”.

Science Education and Citizenship Panel

You can find all the pictures from the lab by clicking here (warning: some pictures are graphic).

One Response to “Dogfish Shark Dissection (Includes Video)”

1. Britt Gow Says:

   April 29th, 2009 at 7:30 am

   Hi Miss Baker,
   Thanks for the great video of a shark dissection. My students were very interested to see the egg case and baby shark. I hope we can do some work together soon, depending on your topics of study over the next few months. We are doing Functioning Organisms, after completing a unit on cells in first term. We have just completed a dissection of the rat, looking at the digestive system. I have had trouble uploading it to TeacherTube, but I will let you know when we have the link available.
   Look forward to more of your posts!

   Best Regards, Britt Gow