19 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Wonder and Awe as a Habit of Mind
When students approach me with amazement in their new knowledge, I can hear the awe in their voices for all there is to learn about the world and I ask myself, “How can we inspire such excitement every day? How can we identify the best vehicles to facilitate student learning by fostering wonder and awe in our classrooms?
Some of the true experts in fostering a habit of responding with wonderment and awe are early childhood and primary grade teachers. Teachers of our youngest learners fill th... 1 
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notes19 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Protocells
In 2007 two researchers, chemist Martin Hanczyc and artificial life scientist Takashi Ikegami, who were collaborating across disciplines agreed to test a hypothesis about the earliest forms of life (Hanczyc et al. 2007). They hypothesized that life’s precursors would need to move around their environment to take advantage of a resource-rich situation on early Earth. Hanczyc made a model system to test this hypothesis using an oil droplet that he bestowed with an internal chemical reaction, or...Folksonomies: biology origin of life
Folksonomies: biology origin of life
1 notes
notesFrom Rachel Armstrong's "Alternative Biologies"
24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Computer Metaphors for Biochemistry
The metaphor of the computer represents in some crude fashion the chemistry of life. Nowadays one may assume that the average citizen of an industrialized country is at least as familiar with computers as with rain forests. The idea of using the computer as a metaphor is a natural one. A computer is a device for handling information according to a program which it is able to remember and execute. A living cell, to remain in control of its vital functions in a variable environment, must also p...Folksonomies: metaphors
Folksonomies: metaphors
1 notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Science Communication: Definitions VS Metaphors
A hundred years ago, Charles Darwin could write books discussing the central problems of biology in language which was scientifically precise and still accessible to the general public. In those days the subject matter of biology was plants and animals. The language of Darwin was intelligible to experts and non-experts alike. One did not need a degree in {55} botany to understand the difference between a fern and a flower. Darwin could assume that his readers were familiar with the world of...Folksonomies: science communicatoin
Folksonomies: science communicatoin
1 notes
notes10 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Vitamins Come from Living Things
Every vitamin is made by living cells — either our own, or in other species. Vitamin D is produced in our skin, for example, when sunlight strikes a precursor of cholesterol. A lemon tree makes vitamin C out of glucose. Making a vitamin is often an enormously baroque process. In some species, it takes 22 different proteins to craft a vitamin B12 molecule.
While a protein may be made up of thousands of atoms, a vitamin may be made up of just a few dozen. And yet, despite their small size, vit...
1 They are part of our universal chemistry from our common origins.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Deducing the Original Arrangement of Chemicals
The chemists who uphold dualism are far from being agreed among themselves; nevertheless, all of them in maintaining their opinion, rely upon the phenomena of chemical reactions. For a long time the uncertainty of this method has been pointed out: it has been shown repeatedly, that the atoms put into movement during a reaction take at that time a new arrangement, and that it is impossible to deduce the old arrangement from the new one. It is as if, in the middle of a game of chess, after the ... 1 notes
notesFrom a compound is like trying to figure out the history of a chess game from the positions of the pieces on the board at present.
09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Biology and Civilization are Analogous
Every breath you draw, every accelerated beat of your heart in the emotional periods of your oratory depend upon highly elaborated physical and chemical reactions and mechanisms which nature has been building up through a million centuries. If one of these mechanisms, which you owe entirely to your animal ancestry, were to be stopped for a single instant, you would fall lifeless on the stage. Not only this, but some of your highest ideals of human fellowship and comradeship were not created i...Folksonomies: evolution civilization
Folksonomies: evolution civilization
1 notes
notesIn that our respiration depends on many biological features and our civilization is built on similar foundations.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Importance of Surfaces
I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reacti... 1 notes
notesSurfaces are where are the interesting scientific stuff is taking place.
04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Genetics Grew Up an Orphan
In a sense, genetics grew up as an orphan. In the beginning botanists and zoologists were often indifferent and sometimes hostile toward it. 'Genetics deals only with superficial characters', it was often said. Biochemists likewise paid it little heed in its early days. They, especially medical biochemists, knew of Garrod's inborn errors of metabolism and no doubt appreciated them in the biochemical sense and as diseases; but the biological world was inadequately prepared to appreciate fully ... 1 notes
notesGeorge Beadle in 'Genes and chemical reactions In Neurospora' describes out botanists, zoologists, and biochemists were uninterested in genetics as it dealt simply with the transmission of characteristics between individuals while there were greater things to study in the field.
12 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Human Behavior is Dictated by Laws of Nature, but Too Com...
While conceding that human behavior is indeed determined by the laws of nature, it also seems reasonable to conclude that the outcome is determined in such a complicated way and with so many variables as to make it impossible in practice to predict. For that one would need a knowledge of the initial state of each of the thousand trillion trillion molecules in the human body and to solve something like that number of equations. That would take a few billion years, which would be a bit late to ... 1 notes
notesSo the hypothesis that we have freewill is convenient, and the Economic model that we act in our best interests helpful, but not always correct.
