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QUBES: a community focused on supporting teaching and learning in quantitative biology
30 Jul 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Sam S Donovan, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Tom Gower, Kristin Jenkins, Drew LaMar, DorothyBelle Poli, Bob Sheehy, Jeremy M Wojdak
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/226This letter provides an overview of the Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) Project funded through the National Science Foundation. The project has five...
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Revolutionizing the Use of Natural History Collections in Education
11 Mar 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Karen E. Powers, L. Alan Prather, Joesph A. Cook, James Woolley, Henry L. Bart Jr., Anna K. Monfils, Petra Sierwald
Using natural history collections, both physical specimens and archive data, promises to connect classroom learning with the real world of science. From the article: "Natural history collections are an irreplaceable and extensive record of life, and form the basis of our...
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Sealing the Deal The Grey Seal Problem in the U.S. Northeast
18 Jan 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Matthew S. Kaufman
"This case study uses a PowerPoint-driven approach combined with role-playing to explore issues surrounding the grey seal population off the coast of New England, specifically Chatham, Massachusetts. After gathering information, the students take the part of Chatham City council members and...
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SIMIODE - Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations
20 Oct 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Brian Winkel
SIMIODE - Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations is about teaching differential equations using modeling and technology upfront and throughout the learning process. You can learn more at our dynamic website, www.simiode.org, where we...
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Small-world models
02 Jun 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Winfried Just, Hannah Lea Callender
Small-world networks are classes of networks that have both the small-world property and exhibit strong clustering. Two constructions of such networks are implemented in IONTW. Here we study, both theoretically and with simulation experiments, the structure of these networks and how it influences...
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Statistical Exploration of Climate Data
11 Mar 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Tamra Carpenter, Robert Vanderbei, Jon Kettenring
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/qubesresources/publications/900Teacher version Student versionThis module is appropriate for introductory statistics classes.Supporting files: Module figures for...
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statsTeachR
23 Jan 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Nicholas Reich, Andrea Foulkes, Harrel Blatt, Eric Cohen, Gregory Matthews
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/qubesresources/publications/781From the project website:What is statsTeachR?statsTeachR is an open-access, online repository of modular lesson plans, a.k.a. "modules", for teaching...
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Staying Alive: Extinction Risk: Introduction to Extinction and Extinction Bias
08 Jul 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Samantha Price, Peggy Schaeffer, Anna Thanukos, Samantha Swauger
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/275Data used in this activity are derived from: Price, S.A., and Gittleman J.L. 2007. Hunting to extinction: biology and regional economy influence extinction risk and the impact of hunting in...
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Survivorship in the Natural World
09 Jul 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Anne M. Bronikowski, Jeanne Altmann, Diane K. Brockman, Marina Cords, Linda M. Fedigan, Anne Pusey, Tara Stoinski, William F. Morris, Karen B. Strier, Susan C. Alberts, Samantha Swauger
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/273Data used in this activity are derived from: Bronikowski A.M., Altmann J., Brockman D.K., Cords, M., Fedigan, L.M., Pusey, A., Stoinski, T., Morris, W.F., Strier, K.B., Alberts, S.C. (2011)...
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Teaching Exponential and Logistic Growth in a Variety of Classroom and Laboratory Settings
03 Aug 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Barry Aronhime, Bret D. Elderd, Carol Wicks, Margaret McMichael, Elizabeth Eich
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/268Ecology and conservation biology contain numerous examples of populations growing without bounds or shrinking towards extinction. For these populations, the change in the number of...
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The Evolution (and Coevolution) of Flowering Plants
02 Dec 2016 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Anna Monfils, Debra Linton, Libby Ellwood, Molly Phillips
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/277In this laboratory exercise, students will explore the diversity of flower and fruit adaptations that have evolved to accomplish pollination and seed dispersal and investigate the...
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The Evolution of Color Vision in Monkeys: From Nucleotides to Ecology
16 Jun 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Merle Heidemann, Peter J.T. White, Jim Smith
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/qubesresources/publications/843This case study examines the evolution color vision in Old World and New World monkeys from multiple biological perspectives. This integrative approach employs both...
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The friendship paradox
10 May 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Winfried Just, Hannah Lea Callender, Drew LaMar
In this module we introduce the so-called friendship paradox and illustrate how it affects disease transmission on networks that exhibit this phenomenon.You also need to download the input file degreesFP.txt that will be used in this module.Level: Advanced undergraduate and graduate...
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The preferential attachment model
10 May 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Winfried Just, Hannah Lea Callender, Drew LaMar, Ying Xin
Many empirically studied networks have approximately so-called power-law or scale-free degree distributions. In Section 1 we formally define such distributions and explore some of their properties. We also introduce and briefly compare two methods for constructing random...
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The replacement number
10 May 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Winfried Just, Hannah Lea Callender, Drew LaMar, Ying Xin
In this module we introduce the important notion of the replacement number, which generalizes the basic reproductive number R0. We investigate how this number behaves near the start of an outbreak in models based on the uniform mixing assumption and in models that assume a contact network that is...
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The Tree of Life
19 Jun 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Arietta Fleming-Davies, Julie Morris, Sarah Orlofske, Ellen Wisner
Transforming the "parade of phyla" into an integrated curriculum emphasizing evolutionary concepts, tree-thinking, and quantitative reasoning skills Our goal is to create an integrated curriculum that emphasizes evolutionary concepts, tree-thinking,...
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Understanding the Quantitative and Computational Skills of Incoming Biology Students
27 Oct 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Charles Umbanhowar Jr, Jason M Belitsky, P. Brodfuehrer, Gregory Davis, T. Haque, L. Lee, C. McFadden, Paul Overvoorde, M. Preest, Liz Stanhope, M. Vinces, Andrew Zieffler, Laura Ziegler
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/244Insufficient mathematical preparation has been linked to the failure of incoming students to persist in STEM-related majors. In addition, recent advances in computation allow biologists...
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Using Online Materials/Videos to Enrich Linear Algebra for Scientists
21 Oct 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Sarah Hews
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/publications/250Linear algebra is an important course for biology majors but it is usually designed for math majors (emphasizing proofs) or engineers (focusing more on matrix algebra and algorithms)....
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Wellesley College Study Packet for the Quantitative Reasoning Assessment
27 Mar 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/qubesresources/publications/782This packet contains a set of 24 practice questions and 2 full-length practice assessments for the Quantitative Reasoning Assessment for Wellesley College.
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Yeast Cell Growth
19 Nov 2015 | Teaching & Reference Material | Contributor(s): Claudia Neuhauser
This resource has been updated - find the current version here: https://qubeshub.org/qubesresources/publications/755Excel Workbook on lab data for yeast growth experiments provides a series of stepwise tasks for data analysis.