The Scientific Toolbox

I would like to start collecting links for useful biological animations. In teaching at the college-level, I have found it extremely useful to show students animations of various biological processes. Textbooks often come with CD-ROMs or web site access codes that give students access to various animations. However, there are a lot of great animations that are freely available on the web.

For example:

• The mechanism of sliding filaments during muscle contraction
• Long bone growth (at the epiphyseal plate)

Please send me examples of any useful sites that you know of…and I will continue to post those that I find.

Among the many cool learning tools that you will find at WebAnatomy, a site created by Murray Jensen at the University of Minnesota, is a game, where you
can quiz yourself on different aspects of human anatomy.

The Web site also has an Anatomy Image Database that includes: “images are from The Sourcebook of Medical Illustration, P. Cull, ed., The Parthenon Publishing Group, 1989 and are copyright-free as long as they are used for educational purposes.”

Yes. It’s me. I’m still here. My semester has been extremely busy (since I am prepping 4 lectures and 3 labs per week). I can’t believe that it is almost November…and the last day of the semester is December 10^th.

Anyway, back to talking about science in the classroom. We dissect fetal pigs in my Biology for Majors lab. I found a couple of virtual fetal pig dissection sites this past summer:

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers tremendous resources for identifying birds. Their website “All About Birds” has information about:

some great locations for birding in the United States

how to identify birds that you find AND

how to report your observations as part of the “world’s largest bird studies research team”.

They also have an Online Bird Guide where you can find descriptions, pictures, sounds, conservation status, other names, cool facts and a full detailed species account for an ever-increasing list of bird species.

Check it out!

Here is a simple protocol that describes “How to Extract DNA from Anything Living” (from The Genetic Science Learning Center at the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Utah). This procedure uses ingredients and supplies that you may already have at home. I have tried this myself and it works really well!

Are you looking for something to do this weekend? Well then, how about participating in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Great Backyard Bird Count, which is currently underway (February 13^th through 16^th). Check out http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/ for more details (including a printable bird tally list for your area):

February 2004 — Scientists and bird enthusiasts can learn a lot by knowing where the birds are. Now that winter has gripped much of the continent, what are our birds doing? Bird populations are dynamic, they are constantly in flux. We want to take a snapshot of North American bird populations and YOU can help us. Everyone’s contribution is important. It doesn’t matter whether you identify, count, and report the 5 species coming to your backyard feeder or the 75 species you see during a day’s outing to a wildlife refuge. Your data can help us answer many questions:
- How will this winter’s snow and cold temperatures influence bird populations?
- Where are the WINTER finches and other irruptive species?
- Will late winter movements of many SONGBIRD and waterfowl species be as far north as they were last year?

As of 2004-02-14 23:29:52.0 the total tally is as follows:
Total Checklists Submitted: 8,325
Total Species Observed: 436
Total Individual Birds Counted: 865,385

Today is Charles Darwin’s 195^th birthday. Pharyngula has posted a tribute to Charles Darwin on his site. You can also visit Literature.org to read Darwin’s famous work, The Origin of Species, in its entirety.

When dissolved in boiling water, Jell-O™ “gels” into a semi-solid state due to interactions that form between the gelatin proteins. Fresh pineapple, in addition to some other fresh fruits, contains an enzyme, called bromelein, that breaks down the proteins in the Jell-O causing it to liquify. Check out the following Web sites to get some ideas for experiments involving Jell-O™ and fresh fruit:

1. Learn about the Human Senses at the BBC Science Web site.
   • Explore the human brain through an interactive brain map
   • Take the Senses Challenge to find out how much you know about how you perceive the world around you.
2. Check out the following article at the Education World Web site with ideas for activities you can use to teach about the five senses (includes links to other internet “senses” resources.
3. The New York Times’ Daily Lesson Plan offers a lesson plan entitled “Sense-itive Issues: Exploring the Relationships Among the Five Senses”:
   

   “In this lesson, students consider the difficulties of adapting to the loss of different senses. They then work in small groups, each developing a fictional superhero who experiences a loss of one of sense and must learn to compensate for it with his or her other senses.”

4. CyberSleuth Kids has a list of internet resources for teaching about the senses.

Check out Education World’s “The Human Body: An Online Tour”, a lesson planning article with information and follow-up activities related to the human skeletal, respiratory, circulatory, and digestive systems.

Visit “Tissues of Life” and “Habits of the Heart” at the Science Museum of Minnesota Web site. These on-line exhibits have videos, animations, lesson ideas and diagrams.

Westchester Elementary Media Center has classroom resources and research tools for learning about “The Systems of the Human Body.”

The National Library of Medicine’s The Visible Human Project is “a digital image dataset of complete human male and female cadavers in MRI, CT and anatomical modes. “