The Chronicle of Higher Education “What’s So Funny?” I appreciate the different theories of laughter presented here and the way that they are connected to adaptive behavior and ultimately to evolution. Like a lot of other behaviors that I am interested in — most prominently music production and play — laughter is one of those Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Communication, Emotion, Human Uniqueness, Play, WebAs I chronicled in a previous post, I have been looking to switch my web hosting services to a company that has a sustainability policy. Well, I have made my choice. This site is now hosted by A Small Orange, which assures that 150% of their power needs are compensated by wind power credits. As this Read More
A Minor Post, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Web DesignPLoS One “Prisoner’s Dilemma in Cancer Metabolism” What is interesting here is that cancer cells must cooperate with each other in order to out-compete somatic cells against a staggering cost-to-benefit ratio. Generated by the extreme inefficiency of anaerobic metabolism, this ratio presents a supreme challenge to a developing tumor, which might be one factor explaining Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Game Theory, Health & Medicine, Quantifying Costs and BenefitsI am finally getting chopping on The WmD Project, a new educational media series that I am going to start producing in the coming months. I like to have a logo for each of my projects; above is the logo that I constructed for this project. The images of Wallace and Darwin are from Wikimedia Commons. Read More
A Minor Post, The WmD ProjectBulletin of the Ecological Society of America “Keys to a Successful Student-Centered Classroom: Three Recommendations“ This is a really nice guide for anyone who wants to do a large-scale course conversion to a student-centered learning approach. These recommendations are sound and valuable, although they may seem overly-obvious to anyone who has been practicing this kind Read More
A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Teaching ToolsNESCent director Allen Rodrigo suggested that if synthesis centers want to serve as research incubators, they need to allow researchers to pursue risky research questions without having to pay the risk of failure. In some sense he is arguing for society — rather than scientists themselves — to bear the risk of potentially-innovative research.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Grants & Funding, Public Outreach, Science as a career, Society for the Study of EvolutionPatricia Hawley points out a great way that you can “teach both sides of the controversy” between evolution and intelligent design. In her Evolutionary Psychology course she has students deconstruct intelligent design propaganda, explaining where it makes erroneous arguments or misrepresents facts.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Creationism, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Lesson Ideas, Society for the Study of EvolutionRoss Nehm talked about the EvoGrader resource, which uses machine learning to automatically score student assessments designed to look at student understanding of the evolutionary process.
A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Conferences, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching ToolsRebecca Price and Tessa Andrews have a clever way of assessing the understanding of students who harbor creationist beliefs in evolutionary biology courses. Rather than force them to state answers to questions that assert a factual claim about the way the actual world work, ask them to take the perspective of an evolutionary biologist. Questions can start Read More
A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Conferences, Creationism, Evolution Education, Society for the Study of Evolution, TeachingThe Evolution Film Festival was amazing! So many great films and such a wonderful, fun social atmosphere in which to enjoy them. The Evolution 2014 meeting would not be the same without these kinds of events.
A Minor Post, Art & Design, Conferences, Evolution Education, Film & Video, Public Outreach, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching Tools