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Fun Monday science video

Biomarker for traumatic brain injury

Banyan Biomarkers is a UF Biotechnology Incubator success story. The small start up company has grown into a well-known and established company located in the Progress Park in Alachua. Researchers from their company spoke to our teachers regarding their work to identify biomarkers to indicate traumatic brain injury, allowing faster, more accurate diagnosis and therefore improved treatment and care. Their work has been in the news recently. There is a nice piece here that has many references and original source information.

Should students be paid for passing AP exams?

Massachusetts is among six states participating in a program through the National Math and Science Initiative that pays students $100 for each Advanced Placement exam they pass. In Massachusetts, 46 schools are participating this year. However, there is debate over whether such reward-based programs are effective. Boston Herald
Wow. A bit speechless. What do you all think? Comments welcome.

Open access journal collection

Love the concept of open access journals. Often on a University campus, with free access to so many journals, we forget that it is difficult for others not affiliated with a university to access the latest research. PLoS aims to assist. They recently added a Biology Education post to their offerings. Only one post so far.

The Education Series combines open education—which freely shares teaching methods, initiatives, and materials—with open access publishing to present innovative approaches to teaching critical concepts, developments, and methods in biology. It covers fundamental areas of biology, from evolution and ecology to cell biology and biochemistry, and takes full advantage of Web-based open-access research and multimedia tools to create an interactive, dynamic resource to further understanding of fundamental questions in biology and of current methods to investigate them.

Articles feature initiatives that incorporate current life sciences research and allow students to use authentic research tools to investigate real-world problems and generate solid data—crucial elements for nurturing students’ interest in science. Toward this end, approaches that use genomics databases and bioinformatics tools, with their easy online access and mathematical expression of biological concepts, are particularly effective in the classroom. Alternately, taking students out in the field to test questions about relationships between species abundance and the presence of contaminants can provide a memorable lesson in environmental science.

In the first article, Louise Charkoudian , Jay Fitzgerald, Andrea Champlin, and Chaitan Khosla show that Streptomyces-derived natural products provide an untapped source of pigments, showing others how to explore the potential of biopigments in the classroom as well as in art and industry. The authors share their experiences in harnessing these biopigments to create paint and paintings and provide educators with the tools to replicate their experiments in the classroom.

By mining the promise of open education and harnessing the collective imagination and talent of PLoS Biology readers and contributors, the Education Series creates a virtual biology education library that is available through PLoS Biology Collections.

Where did all the CPET stuff go?

What an incredibly busy summer we had at CPET! I'm afraid the hectic pace we kept then is still with us. As we wrap up summer goodies and start our school visits, Mini Medical School, conferences, JSEHS prep, etc there isn't much time to blog! So, to help with the effort of communicating the great things going on in science research and science education, we have started a Facebook page. Join us there and let us know what is going on in your world!

The Sound of Science