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The purpose of this seminar is to make you
better biology students and therefore more literate and better
citizens. To achieve this goal you will
(1) read Science
magazine on a weekly basis, and (2) discuss and present (explain) articles from
Science.
Each week you will read two articles
and bring two short typed reports,
one on the presentation from the schedule above and another from the
latest issue of Science. One week you will make the
presentation.
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Grading:
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Attendance is mandatory at all class
sessions. Failure to be in class unless the circumstances are beyond
your control will result in the deduction of one-half a letter grade
from your final grade for each absence. Each tardiness will result
in a deduction of one-fourth of a letter grade. Attendance
problems will affect the participation part of your grade
also. Presenters, of course, may never be late or absent when
it's their turn.
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Late papers (weekly reports) will not be
accepted; however, only the best 22 will count toward your final
grade. The reason is that a good seminar needs everybody
to be prepared for participation.
DETAILS. Every week you
must
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Read the table of contents of the most recent issue of Science
and scan several
short articles (like research news items or perspectives or book
reviews) or summaries to be aware of the topics we might
discuss.
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type a short news
report on one article from the most recent issue of Science every week,
starting with the August 29th issue for the second class on
September 3rd.
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type an experiment
summary for one experiment in the paper on the schedule
above, and be prepared to discuss the paper's methodology and
implications.
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Papers may be submitted at the
end of each class or as email attachments to jannR@queens.edu
before 4 pm each Wednesday. Limited time
offer: free, no-penalty "pre-grading" when
submitted by 8 am Tuesdays.
Each week we will discuss the science
news and we will discuss one research report
(hereafter called the "paper") in depth. The paper
assigned is on the schedule above, and everybody will prepare an experiment
summary before class. One person will be the "presenter,"
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The presenter
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translates the title into common,
non-technical English
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summarizes what is most important about the
paper,
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explains in detail at least one part of the
paper (like a graph or two), and
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leads a question-and-answer session about the
paper.
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The presenters for
the week must meet with the instructor NO LATER THAN NOON MONDAY
BEFORE YOUR PRESENTATION. (Make an appointment!) At that meeting
you must
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1) have read the paper,
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2) submit an outline of your talk,
preferably on power-point
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3) submit any figures etc. that you plan to discuss
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4) have a list of any questions you have about the
paper and
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5) discuss the paper with
the instructor.
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Your level of preparedness
for this meeting will count as 33% of your presentation grade,
i.e.
10% of your final grade.
Dr. Jann will be the
presenter the first week; students will be the
presenters thereafter. Copies of the
paper can be downloaded in the library
or read in the botany lab.
Experiment Summaries: Each
week before class fill in the form experiment
summary (including the bibliographic citation)
for one experiment in the paper to be presented on Wednesday
(see schedule above).
Weekly
News Reports: Each week from the most recent issue of Science
(dated the Friday the week before each seminar) select
any article which is longer
than one paragraph and
Bibliographic
Citations: a proper CBE
(Council of Biological Editors) citation is exemplified by "Instructions to
Authors" or journal examples from one of these:
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www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite8.html.
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http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/art5/
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http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AN/journal/issues/v161n2/020288/020288.html
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http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss1/art3/#LiteratureCited.
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http://www.botany.org/bsa/ajb/ajb-inst.html#literature
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or most other journals, but not Science,
because it omits article titles
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These are four examples of acceptable formatting;
the first is recommended; articles accessed electronically must
include the URL :
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Bonifati, V., et al., 2003. Mutations in the DJ-1
gene associated with autosomal recessive early-onset Parkinsonism.
Science 299:254-259. [Online] URL: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/299/5604/256
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Bonifati, V., et al. 2003. Mutations in the DJ-1
gene associated with autosomal recessive early-onset Parkinsonism.
Science 299:254-259. [Published online 21 November 2002;
10.1126/science.1077209]
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Bonifati, V., et al. 2003. Mutations in the DJ-1
gene associated with autosomal recessive early-onset Parkinsonism.
Science 299:254-259.
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Bonifati, Vincenzo, et al. 2003. Mutations in the
DJ-1 gene associated with autosomal recessive early-onset
Parkinsonism. Science 299:254-259.
Some journals would require you to write out all the
authors' names; others require you to list the first five or so and
then cover with rest with et al.. For this course let's agree
that you can use the first author plus "et al." for
more than three authors. Almost all journals instruct you to follow the
examples in recent articles, and that is what you should do for
these assignments.
Science
Magazine is published every Friday, with the on-line version
usually available by the preceding Thursday evening; but the print
copy arrives by mail usually about a week later. Each Wednesday, we
will discuss the news (etc.) from the latest electronic issue, dated
five days earlier. Science is available on-line in the
library.
You can access the web site at http://www.sciencemag.org,
using any internet connection, but you may not be able to see a full
text of what you want without an online subscription. If you
register (free), you get access to abstracts and more other details
than without registering. In the botany
lab the computer on the brown cart is sometimes "logged
on" so that you can read this week's issue, but there is no
printer there.
Science
magazine is available on workstations LIBPublic 1,2,3, 4 in the
library. The machines are labelled with those numbers plus on
the desktop is an icon that says Science Mag and will link
directly to the site.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Quote of the week: "Although nonhuman primates
recognize other individuals' dominance ranks and kin
relations (1–8),
it is not known whether they classify others
according to both criteria simultaneously. Humans
make such higher order classifications routinely, and
as a result easily recognize that not all superficially similar
interactions have equal importance. For example, in
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, we discount
Mercutio's teasing of Romeo as trivial because both
Mercutio and Romeo are allied with the house of
Montague. When Mercutio aims his taunts at Tybalt,
however, we regard his behavior as more ominous because Tybalt
is a Capulet. Our responses are guided in part by our
tendency to organize social relations into a
hierarchical structure, such as familial affiliation,
that is governed by a functional set of rules:...."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5648/1234
- here's an example for the
quorum chemotaxis report
- It's not too soon to be looking for
internships & jobs & graduate programs.
Info
updated 15 Nov 2003
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