My significant other is forever telling me that Facebook is a total time-waster. Sometimes I do tend to agree – but also, one can Find Out Stuff! Like the study I’ve just heard about via Science Alert, on how children get information about genetics and DNA – things we might regard as being in the […]
Continue readingTag: genetics
immortal cells
Last year one of the books on my reading list was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. I found it a fascinating and moving story. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer, but even before her death doctors had begun to culture cells removed from her cervix (something that was done without her […]
Continue readingscience – it’s not magic!
One of the things I like about my job is that there’s always the opportunity to learn new things. Today I learned about episomes. Not being an actual geneticist & all, it was a novel term to me. An episome is defined as: a portion of genetic material that can exist independent of the main […]
Continue readingreflections on the WEB days
We’ve just held the second day of the annual "Waikato Experience of Biology" (WEB) days – around 700 year 13 biology students, & their teachers, have come on campus over those 2 days for a program of seminars + some lab experience that supports their learning in several areas of their Biology curriculum. (There are […]
Continue readingif evolution is true, why are there still apes
We’ve just come back from a few glorious days in New Plymouth (arriving home before the change in weather). Had a great time tramping, walking the coastal walkway, eating yummy food – all those nice things you do, holidaying with friends. And as some of the party were driving from Paritutu to meet the rest […]
Continue readingcancer – an example of evolution at the cellular level
It’s more than 3 years now since a very close friend died of cancer. At the time, I wrote briefly of how cancer cell lines can evolve resistance to chemotherapy. Now Orac has written a much longer essay discussing the same thing. It’s well worth reading & would probably make an excellent resource for working […]
Continue readingthese legs were made for walking…
… but not in the middle of the night. As I’ve got older, I’ve found that little bouts of nocturnal restlessness in the legs department have become more common. Apparently it’s called "restless legs" syndrome (RLS), which for me presesnts as a rather unpleasant, hard-to-resist feeling that you just have to move your legs, sometimes […]
Continue readingwhat about genetic evidence linking us to chimpanzees
As Grant said earlier, there is a rich mine of potential posts in this particular website… This time, let’s review its author’s take on the phylogenetic relationship between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes. We are indeed linked to chimpanzees – by a common Designer.
Continue readingpicking & choosing what to believe in…
In my last post on a ‘creationist biology curriculum’ I asked the question: what, exactly, do they teach? Over on the Sciblogs site (where this blog is syndicated), a commenter answered by pointing me at another school’s curriculum. As I read through it, I could feel the area beneath my collar getting distinctly heated. This […]
Continue readingthe origin of modern humans – free webinar
This comes at an opportune time for those of you teaching the Human Evolution content – and for those looking around for some follow-up reading 🙂 The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has a whole lot of free biology education resources available on line, and this upcoming webcast looks to be wonderful stuff: Bones, Stones, & Genes: the […]
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