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    The Power of Place: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience Studying Urban Ecology, Local Apple Trees and Disease Susceptibility
    Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) offered early in an undergraduate student’s career have the potential to include a greater number and diversity of students than...

    Keywords: Disease ecologyurban ecologyUrban food forestsUrban heat islandsGenetic resistance

    1984

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    The Three Sisters of Agriculture: An Active Learning Activity on Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation
    This active learning exercise introduces students to the plant microbiome and the contributions that bacteria make to plant growth and food production. The Three Sisters are an ancient indigenous...

    Keywords: SymbiosisPlant microbiomeNitrogen fixationNutritional content of foodElectron flowSociety impact of microorganisms

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    An Active Textbook Converts "Vision and Tweak" to Vision and Change
    Multiple reports over more than a century have documented the problems with the way introductory biology has been taught in most colleges and universities. An influential recent report, Vision and...

    Keywords: Vision and Changeactive learningintroductory biologyFlipped classroomUndergraduatecore competenciescore conceptsactive textbookcurriculum reform

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    Infectious Chocolate Joy with a Side of Poissonian Statistics: An activity connecting life science students with subtle physics concepts
    Introductory physics courses are required for many programs in the life sciences, yet traditional curricula fail to help students meaningfully connect physical concepts with biological...

    Keywords: quantitative biologyHIVmultiplicity of infectionPoisson DistributionPhysics for biologists

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    How to Find a Gene: Retrieving Information From Gene Databases
    A strong understanding of distinct gene components and the ability to retrieve relevant information from gene databases are necessary to answer a diverse set of biological questions. However, often...

    Keywords: NCBItranscriptiontranslationGene StructureGene databasesEnsembl

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    Teaching the Biological Relevance of Chemical Kinetics Using Cold-Blooded Animal Biology
    This lesson plan was created to support non-chemistry major students in making connections between chemical kinetics and biological systems. Chemical kinetics is often viewed by students as an...

    Keywords: kineticsMetabolismEctothermPoikilotherm

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    Gratitude Interventions in a Biology Course to Foster Student Persistence and Success
    College students are experiencing a mental health crisis, which has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is problematic because stress and anxiety impede learning. One way to...

    Keywords: mental healthgratitudepositive psychologydegree commitment

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    In-class peer grading of daily quizzes increases feedback opportunities
    Educators are familiar with evidence of the benefit that frequent and immediate feedback provides to our students, regardless of class size. We also often find ourselves in a situation where we do...

    Keywords: foundational knowledgegraphical interpretationtechnical terms

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    Science “Fails”: A Bank of Historical Examples for Learning From Failure in Science
    Learning from failure is critically important to the processes of scientific inquiry, discovery, and invention. However, students are not routinely taught how to reflect on, learn from, and...

    Keywords: metacognitionScience process skillsLearning from failurepower and privilegestudent wellbeing

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    Unwrapping Enzyme Kinetics
    Enzyme rates and kinetics are key components used by biochemists to understand how enzymes function. However, students often find it difficult to understand how these experiments are performed and...

    Keywords: kineticsstructure-functionenzymescatalysis

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    Necessary and Sufficient? Solving the Mystery of the Mitochondrial Pyruvate Transporter
    While there are several available lessons for teaching introductory biology students about diffusion, facilitated diffusion, and active transport, fewer materials exist to support upper-division...

    Keywords: DiffusionActive transportfacilitated diffusionNecessary and sufficientTransport proteins

    1990

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    473

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    Bad Science: Exploring the unethical research behind a putative memory supplement
    As members of society, students must be able to evaluate scientific claims across a wide variety of media to make sound decisions about health and wellness. However, students - and most members of...

    Keywords: bioethicsevaluationPseudoscienceRecognizing bad scienceScience process skills

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    Discovering Cellular Respiration with Computational Modeling and Simulations
    Cellular respiration, a common topic among introductory and cellular biology curricula, is a complex biological process that exemplifies core biological concepts, including systems, pathways and...

    Keywords: Cellular MechanismsCellular RespirationFermentation

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    The Lecture-Free Classroom: Teaching students backward design and Bloom's Taxonomy to create their own learning environment
    We describe Presentation Enhanced Learning (PEL), a flexible, lecture-free, field-tested teaching format to promote problem-based, active learning in upper-division or graduate biological sciences...

    Keywords: active learningbackward designProblem based learningBloom's Taxonomy

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    Using Undergraduate Molecular Biology Labs to Discover Targets of miRNAs in Humans
    Incorporating authentic research experiences into undergraduate labs, while shown to be particularly effective at engaging and retaining students in STEM majors, can be difficult to accomplish...

    Keywords: gene regulationmicroRNAsgene expression

    1934

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    558

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    A Journal Club Project to Promote Interpreting and Presenting Information From the Primary Scientific Literature
    Many undergraduate students receive little guidance on how to critically read, interpret data within, or present information from the primary scientific literature before they begin senior...

    Keywords: primary literaturejournal clubScience CommunicationfeedbackPeer reviewgroup workOral presentationProcess skillsPeer evaluationDevelopmental neurobiology

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    The Great Petunia Carnage of 2017: A Clicker Case Study Using Petunias to Describe the Effect of Genetic Modification on the Biochemistry of Flower Color and Phenotype in Plants
    In this single class period case study, students examine the difference between genotype and phenotype by studying the mechanisms by which commercially available petunias have been bred to have...

    Keywords: case studyGenetic ModificationsBiochemistry of Flower ColorGMO regulationsGenotype-Phenotype Connections

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    Exploring the City of Biofilms: An Engaging Analogy-Based Activity for Students to Learn Biofilms
    Multicellular biofilms constructed by microbes are key aspects of microbiology with significant implications in various fields, including medicine, environmental science, and biotechnology. While...

    Keywords: bacteriaBiofilmsquorum sensing

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    Science Behind the Lesson: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Biomechanics!
    Active flight is a specialized mode of movement found in insects, birds, and mammals. The anatomy, morphology, physiology, and ecology of flying taxa has changed over evolutionary time. Researchers...

    Keywords: EvolutionecologybatphysiologyAnatomybiomechanicsbirdFlightinsect

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    Make It Stick: Teaching Gene Targeting with Ribbons and Fasteners
    Manipulating gene expression is a commonly used tool to study the effect of a single gene or the hierarchy of gene networks in many different biological disciplines. When working with mice, the...

    Keywords: mathematical modelhomologous recombinationCre/loxgene targeting

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