From the CHE article (with local links added):
One in eight teachers said they taught creationism as a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," reports a team led by Michael B. Berkman, a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University at University Park.
The Penn State researchers surveyed 939 high-school biology teachers who were randomly selected from a list that includes most of the biology teachers in the country. They found that treatment of evolution varies widely: Some 38 percent of teachers devote more than 11 hours to the subject, while 11 percent provide less than 2 hours for the topic, if they cover it at all.
A quarter of teachers said they discussed creationism or intelligent design for at least an hour, but nearly half apparently bring it up to criticize it, say the survey authors. Some 40 percent of the teachers who raise the topic of creationism say that when they talk about it, they describe it as a valid religious perspective that is inappropriate for a science class.
The survey suggests that the personal beliefs of teachers and their training both make a big difference in how much time they devote to discussing evolution. Teachers were most likely to devote few hours to the topic if they held beliefs consistent with creationism. Those who spent the most class time on evolution had taken the most college-level credits in biology and had taken at least one class in evolutionary biology, according to the Penn State researchers.
Randy Moore, a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, has conducted his own surveys of high-school biology teachers and also of college students, to see what they learned in high-school biology classes. His findings and those of other researchers suggest that 15 percent to 30 percent of biology teachers are teaching creationism, which federal courts have deemed a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In a study, "Creationism in the Biology Classroom: What Do Teachers Teach & How Do They Teach It?" [U of I access] published in The American Biology Teacher [U of I access] in February, Mr. Moore found that 27 percent of the 1,465 college freshmen he surveyed had encountered creationism in a high-school biology class. A previous study found that 15 percent of biology teachers do not accept evolution as scientifically valid. The new survey, he said, is valuable because "it documents what many biologists would find astounding: that biology teachers are teaching creationism." Despite considerable evidence showing the persistence of creationism in American classrooms, he said, "college faculty don't believe this."]]>
Scopus, a multidisciplinary database for the sciences, has just added a DOWNLOAD button that allows you to download up to 50 pdfs at a time to your hard drive.
Steps:
If you use EndNote, you'll still need to pull the citations into EndNote in a separate step. Then can "link" from EndNote to the downloaded articles on your harddrive, if you like.
If you'd like to learn more about Scopus, here's a piece I wrote about it, when it was just in Trial mode at the University (we have since decided to subscribe to it):
The technology that Scopus is using to perform this minor miracle of pulling in the pdfs comes from Quosa.
We've created the NIH Public Access Mandate website that offers step-by-step help through the process and will help you decide if you have the RIGHT to deposit your manuscripts into the PubMed Central system.
Here you will find:
Please let us know if we can be of assistance!
Katie Newman
Biotechnology Librarian and Scholarly Communication Officer
florador@uiuc.edu
217-265-5386
Sarah Shreeves
IDEALS Coordinator
sshreeve@uiuc.edu
217-244-3877
The University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana is now a Supporting Member of the open access publisher, BioMed Central.
What this means is that when you submit a journal article for publication in one of nearly 200 BMC titles, you will receive a 15% discount off the article processing charge!
Here's a list of the BMC titles:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/browse/journals/.
This discount also applies to articles submitted to Chemistry Central
http://www.chemistrycentral.com/ and to PhysMath Central http://www.physmathcentral.com/.
Here's a list of the article processing charges for the various BMC journals (before discount):
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq
For most of the journals, the fee is $1690, but may be as high as $2685 or as low as $500. A few are even free.
Many of the BMC journals have already earned quite respectable Impact Factors. See:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/faq?name=impactfactor
e.g., Genome Biology (7.17); BMC Bioinformatics (3.62); BMC Biology (4.43); BMC Evolutionary Biology (4.46)
Why should you consider publishing in a BMC journal?
First of all, know that all research submitted will receive rigorous and rapid peer review. If the article is accepted:
Papers published by our colleagues:
The University of Illinois' "homepage" lists papers that were published in BMC jouranls by U of I authors in the last year -- at this point 30 research articles, software, protocols, etc:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/11700
For your interest, here's the U of I-Chicago's home page:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/48900
Submitting a paper:
If you are on campus within our recognized IP range when submitting a manuscript you will be identified as belonging to a member institution and automatically granted a 15% discount on article processing charges If you are at home or at an external terminal when submitting your paper, you can still claim this discount by stating that you are a affiliated with the U of I. Papers may be submitted either via a journal home page or via http://www.biomedcentral.com/manuscript/.
Unfortunately, that tremendous training opportunity will NOT occur. Yesterday NCBI Field Guide coordinator, Peter Cooper, sent the following email:
Because of budgetary constraints, NCBI has made reductions in some of its programs, and the education programs are affected. In fact, all outreach education programs (Field Guide, Mini-courses, Structures, PubChem) are terminated effective immediately. At this point we cannot reschedule this course or accept requests for future courses of any kind. This was as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.
The Field Course, as well as the Mini-Courses and the Structure course, has been tremendously popular and useful (see list of sites where the Field Course has been offered recently), but the NCBI budget situation will not allow NCBI to continue to travel and offer these courses for the foreseeable future.
If we would have been able to host the Field Course, registratants would have been asked to print out the PowerPoint slides for the 3-hour lecture presentation, and the Workshop exercises ahead of time. Here they are...
Additionally, you may find the following materials of interest, from the Mini-courses and the Structure Course:
Recently the Web of Knowledge search platform was revamped, so that now, when you search "all databases", the records are automatically de-duplicated. If the record of interest is in multiple databases (as they frequently are), the default will be to show the Web of Science record for it if it is in Web of Science. In the case of a record that is present in multiple databases, there will be links to other versions of the record from the Web of Science record, in case you prefer to see the record as presented in another database.
Searching Web of Knowledge in the "all databases" searches the following resources, simultaneously:
Take a look at the results of several searches run in each database individually, vs run in the Web of Knowledge All Databases mode. From the results, you can see that you will get more search retrievals from searching the whole Web of Knowledge database, than from searching any of the individual databases.
Recommendation: Search Web of Knowledge in the "All Databases" mode UNLESS you need to:
Note: Many ag / bio / medical resources are NOT included in the Web of Knowledge platform, and, for now, you will need to continue to search them individually. For example:
]]>NIH Panel Unveils Big Ideas for Revamping Peer Review and Grant Making
A committee studying ways to improve peer review and grant making at the National Institutes of Health called for major changes on Friday. They include slashing the length of grant applications and placing more weight in grant reviews on the scientific effects of the proposed research.
The working group, created by the advisory committee to NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni, also suggested providing more grants for young scientists who have never before received one. The agency should review grant proposals from such applicants separately from those of established, older investigators. The younger scientists make up a diminishing proportion of the agency's grantees, raising concerns about the future vigor of the biomedical-research work force.
In addition the working group proposed ways to improve the quality and efficiency of the NIH's peer review. One way was to require senior, established researchers to serve on the agency's review panels, which are made up largely of outside academics, as a condition of receiving certain grants. Those veterans are increasingly unwilling to volunteer because of the time commitment involved, but they possess the expertise and experience needed for quality reviews, the panel found....
One of the big changes would transform the peer-review committees of outside scientists who now review and rate applications for NIH grants, making them operate more like the editorial boards of scholarly journals. The committees, called study sections, would "outsource" grant applications to specialists in the discipline to review technical aspects. The study sections would be made up of generalists who would discuss the applications' scientific significance, broadly construed.
Further Reading:
Updated:
Read comments left at the Scientist (magazine) website about the NIH proposal.
The course will consist of a 3-hour lecture on Thursday morning, April 17th and an optional 2-hour, hands-on computer workshop that will be held Thursday afternoon, Friday morning, and Friday afternoon (typically the workshop is offered 5-6 times).
The course is open to grad students, post docs, faculty, and other researchers. There is no fee to attend, but pre-registration will be required. Non-U of I researchers are also welcome to attend.
Registration for the course will open in February. In the mean time, please keep the dates open. If you are the instructor of a graduate-level course, please feel free to announce the course to your students.
Topics covered in the Field Course:
* GenBank Database: description and scope
* The NCBI Derivative Databases: RefSeqs
* Database Searching using Entrez
o Neighboring and Links
o Entrez searching
* The NCBI Structures Database
o The Molecular Modeling Database (MMDB)
o Structural Alignments
o Viewing Structures and Structural Alignments with Cn3D
* Similarity Searching using NCBI BLAST
o Local Alignment Statistics
o Scoring Systems
o Using BLAST web services
o PSI-BLAST
o RPS-BLAST (CDD Search)
o Specialized BLAST pages
* Genomic Resources at NCBI
o Complete Microbial Genomes in Entrez
o Higher Genome Resources
+ RefSeq and Genes
+ UniGene
+ Variation Data (SNPs)
+ The Human, Mouse and Rat genomes
+ The Map Viewer
+ Other Genomes
Leslie McNeil, the NCSA researcher who manages the National Microbial Pathogen Data Resource (NMPDR), has created a Firefox plugin for U of I researchers who frequently search PubMed!
About Firefox Plugins:
Are you used to searching Google by typing in queries in the top right-hand side of the Firefox toolbar? Did you know that you can add additional search options so you can choose to search Wikipedia, Google Scholar, the U of I domain, or many other search sites, instead? All you need to do is add additional FireFox plugins.
You'll find many additional Firefox plugins from the following sources:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:4
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/
http://www.searchplugins.net/pluginlist.aspx
To load them into Firefox, all you have to do is click on the plugin's name.
Among my favorite plugins (available from the Mycroft site) are:
Wikipedia / Univ. of Illinois / Google Scholar / Google Books / Google News / Google Images / Amazon / Ebay / Flickr / Yahoo / Epicurious / IMDB / YouTube / ...
About the Firefox PubMed plugin for U of I Researchers:
Leslie McNeil has created a customized a PubMed FireFox plugin for the U of Illinois researchers. Install it from this site:
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html?name=PubMed+U+of+I+full+text&sherlock=yes&opensearch=yes&submitform=Search
To install the plugin, just click on the link for the name of the plugin.
To use it, just click on the Firefox drop down indicator next to the box where you normally would type in a Google search. Choose to search PubMed instead of Google and type in your PubMed search. You'll be brought to the PubMed site with all the usual University of Illinois subscriptions and options** intact -- that is, you'll see which articles we have direct e-access to, and you'll see the UI Discover button that lets you discover other options for obtaining the articles.
Give it a try! I think you'll agree it's handy!
**That is, you'll go to the same PubMed search as if you started with this URL:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=406312
...scientists must learn to focus on presenting, or "framing," their messages in ways that connect with diverse audiences. This means remaining true to the underlying science, but drawing on research to tailor messages in ways that make them personally relevant and meaningful to different publics. For example, when scientists are speaking to a group of people who think about the world primarily in economic terms, they should emphasize the economic relevance of science - such as, in the case of embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that expanded government funding would make the United States, or a particular state, more economically competitive.
How framing works..
Frames simplify complex issues by lending greater importance to certain considerations and arguments over others. In the process, framing helps communicate why an issue might be a problem, who or what might be responsible, and what should be done. A typology of frames specific to science-related issues summarizes a common set of frames specific to science.
The article gives examples from research in successes in communicating stem cell research, plant biotechnology, and nanotechnology.
Some scientists already frame their communications. Consider, for example, E.O. Wilson's Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. In his book, by recasting environmental stewardship as not only a scientific matter, but also one of personal and moral duty, Wilson has generated discussion among a religious audience that might not otherwise pay attention to popular science books.
Perhaps because I just read a similar idea in Alan Alda's book "Things I Overheard While Listening to Myself", this Scientist article resonated for me. In his book, Alda suggests that, along with all the science classes students take, perhaps they should also be taking communication classes!
We can't leave the popularization of science just to the science news writers. Their articles certainly help. But citizens need to hear about research from the scientists themselves. Last night I watched a wonderful program on Nature about colony collapse in honeybees, "Silence of the Bees". Two of our scientists from the U of I entomology department, May Berenbaum and Gene Robinson (together with other scientists) spoke eloquently of the catastrophe that will occur if honeybees continue to decline. One couldn't help but be drawn into the story and into the CSI-like research effort that's going on to solve this problem.
]]>At the IBO website one will find gathered together University links of significance to biotechnology as well as a page of links that point to information about biotechnology.
The IBO is planning its first event, a social hour, for Monday, October 29th from 7-9 PM. It will be held in Room 210 of the Illini Union. All are welcome to attend, but it is requested that you register by October 22nd by sending an email to:uiuc.ibo@gmail.com.
The IBO social hour is being held in conjunction with the 2007 Biotechnology Job Fair, which is being held on Tuesday, October 30th, from 9-12 and 1-3:30, in the Illini Union. Deadline for registration for the Job Fair is October 1st.
]]>A multidisciplinary survey course in which several theme-based topics in bioscience and their social/ethical considerations will be explored. ...
A major goal of the course will be to communicate the importance of a systems-driven, multidisciplinary approach in bioscience. Several contemporary issues (e.g., obesity, infectious diseases, cancer, stem cell biology, advances in cell biology and medicine, genome-based medicine, neurophysiology-related topics, bioinformatics, interfaces between organic chemistry and biology, advances in engineered biomedical systems, advances in bioimaging, social/ethical considerations) will be discussed.
Lectures will be presented by faculty from different disciplines in order to highlight cross-disciplinary perspectives on fundamental problems and potential solutions in bioscience. This course is envisioned as the initial tool for shaping an intellectual approach to bioscience that routinely values interconnections among disciplines and reduces/eliminates the tendency to compartmentalize learning “by subject.”
A second goal of the course is to provide scientific literacy for non-majors and the public. Students who are not formally registered for the course are encouraged to attend lectures based on their interests. Course materials including the syllabus, course materials, and all lectures are available on the web with full access for the entire Lehigh community and interested members of the public.
Lecturers will include Lehigh University professors from a variety of departments, as well as special guests. Check for weekly postings of lectures, and class resources.
This virtual classroom opportunity is funded through a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The grant recognizes Lehigh’s innovative approach to preparing students to address emerging issues in modern biology and biomedical research.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is making 150 years of American scientific history available by publishing its entire collection of Biographical Memoirs on the Internet. Biographical Memoirs are brief biographies of deceased NAS members written by those who knew them or their work.
Since 1877, NAS has published over 1,400 memoirs. Although the memoirs published since 1995 have been freely available on the Academy's Web site, over 900 memoirs were available previously only in print through archives and libraries.
Among the additional 500 memoirs published online are those of famed naturalist Louis Agassiz; Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Thomas Edison; Alexander Graham Bell; noted anthropologist Margaret Mead; and psychologist and philosopher John Dewey. More memoirs will be published regularly until the entire collection is available online.
How can you access SciFinder Scholar?
Unfortunately, this resource is not web-based; it is only available for those who have loaded the SciFinder Scholar program onto their computers. (Or, you can use it at any public computer in any U of Illinois Library by clicking on this URL).
For instructions for downloading SciFinder Scholar (for PC and Mac) to your office computer, please contact the Chemistry Librarian, Tina Chrzastowski (chrz@uiuc.edu, 217-333-3737) or the Biotechnology Librarian, Katie Newman (florador@uiuc.edu, 217-265-5386). We'll send you the web address of a secure web page from which you can download the two program files. There you will also find instructions for what you must do to access SFS from off-campus.
If you have a previous version of SciFinder Scholar on your computer, you will need to upgrade to the new version, SFS2007, in order to maintain your access to SciFinder Scholar. With this release, previous versions are no longer supported.
"SciVee, created for scientists, by scientists, moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice."
The site is in alpha and has only a handful of community submissions, but it's enough to give a sense of how useful it could become. Video entries can be navigated internally by topic segments, and are accompanied by a link to the full paper, jpegs of figures, tags, a reader rating system and a comment area.
Peer networking functions are supposedly also in the works, although this seems geared solely as a dissemination and access tool for already vetted papers, not a peer-to-peer review forum. It has the potential to grow into a resource not just for research but for teaching and open access curriculum building.
Hop on over to take a look at the pubcast and paper on the structural evolution of the protein kinase.
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