Published on May 23, 2008
in Food.
Read through the first unit (Industrial: Corn) of Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, for next Thursday, 29 May. Write a minimum one page response on one of the following topics or, alternatively, create your own topic related to the reading and respond to it.
- What is the evidence that we are “corn walking”?
- Discuss three reasons for the excess of corn grown in the US today.
- Describe the concept of hybrid corn and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.
- What is the natural diet of a cow? Discuss 3 effects of feeding corn to a cow.
For some of you, this will be the first scientific poster you have written. As you can imagine (and observe as you walk around the Science Center), this is a specialized form of scientific communication that requires a different approach than a formal lab report or Powerpoint presentation. For background, I suggest reading “Advice on designing posters”, written by a faculty member in Biology at Swarthmore. Another option, if you need still more background, “Creating effective poster presentations” is another good background site. Both of these assume you will be printing a large-format poster, but you aren’t expected to for the session next Tuesday. Nonetheless, both sites give you a good idea of the kinds of things you should and shouldn’t do to present your work in this format. There are some, um, “interesting” photos of posters and their presenters if you dare to look.
I’ve uploaded a PDF of the Calvin cycle diagram I used in class, complete with enzyme names. The only thing I didn’t include (but you can infer, I’m sure) is the number of carbons in each compound.
Published on March 21, 2008
in Intro.
You can download the pea experiment data here: pea2008.xls Be sure to right-click and ‘Save As’ on the computer you’re working on, then open it from your local copy in Excel. The instructions for data analysis are on pp. 40 - 45 of your lab manual.
Published on February 27, 2008
in Intro.
Here’s a great intro to the mosses, written for a course at the University of British Columbia: Introduction to Moss Morphology. Hopefully you’ll find many familiar terms in the description, as well as some outstanding photos of structures.
Published on January 26, 2008
in Intro.
I came across this National Geographic article about tree ring analysis that I thought some of you might find interesting, given our class topic and the interest in it on Friday. Also, just as a reminder, you’ll find all kinds of topic outlines along the right side of this page, in case you want to double-check your class notes.
Don’t forget, the first Plantspotting assignment is due by the end of January. As long as it’s about plants, pretty much anything goes.
I think the experiment in using social bookmarking to identify potential topic ideas and find other students who share your interests has gone quite well. Have a look at all the articles tagged for this class at http://del.icio.us/tag/bomi326. As you continue to research and refine your topic ideas, I strongly suggest continuing to use this tool. For example, in addition to using the ‘bomi326′ tag, why not add another tag related to your topic, the topic of the article or web resource you’re saving, or a unique tag you create for your group (or all of these). Please do keep using the bomi326 tag too, so we effectively share across the whole class.
Published on December 7, 2007
in Intro.
The four major biomes we covered include forest, grassland, desert, and tundra (we’ll actually finish this one up on Monday). For forests and grasslands, we teased apart several biomes within these larger groupings. The biome distribution map I used in class was from Blue Planet Biomes, and much of the background reading is available both in your textbook and at the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology biomes site. Most of the images I used to represent the individual biomes were shared under a Creative Commons license and posted on Flickr. For example, here is a search for CC-licensed photos of alpine + tundra.
Published on December 5, 2007
in Intro.
Today we covered an introduction to the global carbon budget and discussed global primary productivity. I showed some time-lapse movies of remote sensing data from the NASA Earth Observatory data set on primary productivity. Check it out when you have a moment, it includes data up to 2005. There is also a description of how the data is acquired, which is useful. Much of my background for this lecture was from the Global Change Project at the Univ. of Michigan.
Published on December 5, 2007
in Intro.
Plant communities are always changing as minor and major disturbances occur. This process of change in community composition is called succession. One of the most striking forms of disturbance in an ecosystem is fire. While we tend to think of fire as a destructive force of nature, it is in fact quite necessary for many ecosystems to experience frequent burns in order to maintain species diversity.
One aspect of succession and change in community composition is plant competition. Some plants seem to be particularly good competitors, and these often become invasive species. One such species in and around the midwest is Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata). In a recent report that we discussed in class, it appears that garlic mustard is engaging in a kind of chemical battle with native plants by disrupting the mycorrhizal associations formed with soil fungi.
