Biology 1110 - Assignment 1

Assignment 1 - due in "Drop Box" by midnight, October 9

There are many scientific societies. Most of these societies are devoted to specialized areas of science. There is two prominent (in the U.S) general purpose societies. The world's largest (representing some 10 million scientists) is named The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS pronounced "TripleA S" - www.aaas.org). They publish the journal Science which, along with the British journal Nature, are the most prestigious science journals. The other is the National Academy of Sciences ( www.nasonline.org). This organization was chartered by President Lincoln with the purpose of having our best scientists giving policy advice on scientific issues. Many nations have a national academy, the first one being Britain's The Royal Society ( www.royalsociety.org). The policy publication arm is called the National Research Council ( sites.nationalacademies.org/NRC/).

In this assignment you can pick an issue on which one of these two organizations has put out position statements or in depth publications on scientific issues. Here are direct links to those pages.

AAAS Issues - www.aaas.org/news/press_room/issues/

AAAS Policy Statements - www.aaas.org/policy_pos.shtml

NRC Life Science Reports - dels.nas.edu/Life/Reports-Academies-Findings

Just pick something that interests you from one of these three pages. Your report needs to be uploaded to the D2L website's drop box using ".doc", ".docx" or "rtf" file extension. Use the following format:

Your Name

URL (web address, Link)

Title

Author(s)

Journal reference (or date posted on the web if not an actual journal)

Description: This should be a description of the article and it's findings. It needs to be 200 - 350 words long and grammatically correct (the example below contains 242 words). Is the article an original research article, a review of some field, or perhaps an opinion on some scientific issue? What do you think of the article? If you take some of the article and use it verbatim (exactly as the author(s) wrote it), then you need to put it in quotes. Things not in quotes should be your own words.

Here's an example I wrote:

Name: Douglas Dodd

URL: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(10)00564-6#

Title: Lions

Author: Craig Packer

Journal: Current Biology, Volume 20, Issue 14, R590-R591, 27 July 2010

This is a short review of some of the hypotheses of why lions live in groups and why male lions have manes. Lions originated in Africa and are the largest cats on that continent. They are unique among the large cats in that female lions form groups, called prides, that can contain up to 22 members. This appears to be due to defending their hunting territory from other prides. This hypothesis is supported by some interesting experiments done with loud speakers. Roars are territorial displays, and a loud speaker can simulate one or more invading females (those from another pride). If a group of three females hears a single roar from the speaker, they will rush to it, presumably to chase the invader out. If they hear roars from three different females, they will go recruit more females. If they are a group of five females, they will again rapidly approach. Because lions live at a higher density than other large cats, the formation of groups to protect resources makes evolutionary sense.

Another issue addressed was the purpose of the male's mane. The main purpose seems to be to show the females how healthy they are. Males with darker manes are much preferred by females. Darker manes are produced by higher levels of testosterone which is indicative of a male's health. There are physical costs to high testosterone levels "that only superior males can bear." Blonde males don't have more fun.