How Thin Is Foil? Applying Density to Find the Thickness of Aluminum Foil

In this activity, I show how high school students apply their knowledge of density to solve an unknown variable, such as thickness. Students leave this activity with a better understanding of density, the knowledge that density is a characteristic property of a given substance, and the ways density can be measured.     

Computer News

In this activity students examine burrow casts to learn about burrowing animals and practice their math skills. Students compute the volume and average circumference of a burrow. They also determine whether a relationship exists between burrow volume and the size of the organism that created it. Students use science as inquiry as they analyze and interpret data generated by themselves and their classmates.     

The effects of environmental control on cognition in rats (Rattus norvegicus)

The aim of this study was to allow nonhuman animals to control their environment using operant conditioning procedures and to assess the effect of control on cognitive tasks. The study tested 4 predictions: (a) rats (Rattus norvegicus) will control a light stimulus; (b) animals will exhibit preferences for particular stimulus strengths; (c) animals who exert control over environmental stimuli will show improved performance on cognitive tasks compared with animals who lack control; and (d) at the end of the operant phase, experimental subjects will have lower corticosterone levels than animals who lack control. Experimental subjects did show control over a light stimulus and performed significantly better over time in a discrimination task compared with subjects who could not control their environment. There was no difference in corticosterone levels between control and experimental subjects. The results will both contribute to our understanding of how control of environmental stimuli affects the welfare of animals in captive environments and aid in designing experimental conditions that will increase validity and reliability in research.     

The Effects of Environmental Control on Cognition in Rats (Rattus norvegicus)

The aim of this study was to allow nonhuman animals to control their environment using operant conditioning procedures and to assess the effect of control on cognitive tasks. The study tested 4 predictions: (a) rats (Rattus norvegicus) will control a light stimulus; (b) animals will exhibit preferences for particular stimulus strengths; (c) animals who exert control over environmental stimuli will show improved performance on cognitive tasks compared with animals who lack control; and (d) at the end of the operant phase, experimental subjects will have lower corticosterone levels than animals who lack control. Experimental subjects did show control over a light stimulus and performed significantly better over time in a discrimination task compared with subjects who could not control their environment. There was no difference in corticosterone levels between control and experimental subjects. The results will both contribute to our understanding of how control of environmental stimuli affects the welfare of animals in captive environments and aid in designing experimental conditions that will increase validity and reliability in research.     

Improving Upper Elementary Students’ Humane Attitudes and Prosocial Behaviors through an In-class Humane Education Program

Humane education is a long-standing field of education that endeavors to nurture kindness, compassion, and concern for nonhuman animals, people, and the environment. Despite its long history, however, few randomized control studies have evaluated its effectiveness to promote the development of relevant outcomes. The current study sought to address this dearth by investigating the effects of a humane education program on not only participating students’ attitudes, but also their behaviors. Classes of under-served, fourth-grade students in two major US cities were randomly assigned to participate in either a school-based humane education program or a chess club (the control group); all students participated in their respective activity during the same period once a week for 11 weeks. Data were collected on the attitudes (n = 236) and behaviors (n = 167) of participating students exactly one week before and exactly one week after these programs were conducted. Students self-reported their attitudes about the treatment of animals and the environment via the Intermediate Attitude Scale. Teachers rated each students’ prosocial and disruptive behaviors through sub-scales of the Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation– Checklist. Nested multilevel models of change found that the development of prosocial behaviors and self-reported attitudes significantly interacted with group assignment: Students who participated in the humane education program showed stronger growth in both of these outcomes compared with students in the control group. Changes in disruptive behaviors, how-ever, were not found to differ between groups. The results support the effectiveness of a humane education program to teach a relatively large and diverse group of upper elementary students to learn about animal welfare issues and to improve their prosocial behaviors. Effects appeared strongest on attitudes; behavioral effects were found to be largely limited to behaviors directly addressed by the humane education program.     

Review: From human–animal relation practice research to the development of the livestock farmer's activity: an ergonomics–applied ethology interaction

Animal husbandry and working conditions for livestock farmers have changed significantly in recent years as agriculture has been exposed to economic as well as health, environmental and ethical challenges. The idea of interdependent welfare between humans and animals is more relevant now than ever. Here, we innovatively bridge two disciplines—ergonomics and applied ethology—to achieve an in-depth observational understanding of real husbandry practice (by farmers, inseminators, vets) at work. Ergonomics aims to gain a detailed understanding of human activity in its physical, sensitive and cognitive dimensions in relation to a task. It also aims to transform work situations through a systemic approach drawing on multiple levers for change. Here, we examine how this analysis holds up to the inclusion of animals as an integral component of the livestock farmer’s work situation. Applied ethology studies behaviours in animals managed by humans. It aims to understand how these animals perceive their environment, including how they construct their relationship with the livestock farmer. This paper proposes an original conception of the human–animal relationship in animal husbandry that employs core structural concepts from both disciplines. From an ergonomic point of view, we address the human–animal relations by examining the relationship between ‘prescribed’ and real work practices, between work and personal life situation, between professional task and human activity. On the applied ethology side of the equation, the human–animal relationship is a process built through communication and regular interactions between two ‘partners’ who know each other. The goal is to understand how each partner perceives the other according to their multimodal sensory world and their cognitive and emotional capacities, and to predict the outcome of future interactions. We cross-analyse these scientific views to show, based on examples, how and in what way they can intersect to bring better analysis of these human–animal relationships. We reflect on common working hypotheses and situated observational approaches based on indicators (behaviour and animal and human welfare/health). This analysis prompts us to clarify what human–animal relational practice means in animal husbandry work, i.e. a strategy employed by the livestock farmer to work safely and efficiently in a healthy environment, where the animal is treated as a partner in the relationship. In this perspective, the challenge is for the livestock farmer’s activity to co-build a positive relationship and avoid being subject to this one.     

Gone Fishing

In this activity, students create a hands-on model of an ocean ecosystem to gain an understanding of how humans can alter biodiversity through their actions. Students use differing levels of fishing technology to explore the concepts of sustainability and overfishing.     

Resolving spatial and temporal patterns of coral bleaching risk using image analysis: an active learning experience to improve climate change literacy in college students

Recent studies indicate poor understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change among college students. In an effort to improve climate change literacy, we have developed an authentic research experience for upper level undergraduate students focused on resolving spatial and temporal patterns of coral reef bleaching, an ecologically and economically important consequence of climate warming. In the research, students use a public archive of maps generated by the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) that use coloration to depict ocean areas experiencing above-average surface temperatures and where corals are at an increased risk of bleaching. Students are required to quantify the total area of coloration on individual maps using open-source image analysis software called Image J. By quantifying coloration (ie bleaching risk) over a large number of maps in a chronological sequence, students can test hypotheses regarding the relationship between ongoing climate warming and coral bleaching risk. Students are required to summarise their findings in a scientific journal-style report that incorporates graphical representations and statistical tests of their coral bleaching risk data. The research activity is cost-effective, repeatable, requires little specialised knowledge and addresses common programmatic learning outcomes that target scientific communication, quantitative reasoning and sustainability.     

Practising Conservation Biology in a Virtual Rainforest World

The interdisciplinary science of conservation biology provides undergraduate biology students with the opportunity to connect the biological sciences with disciplines including economics, social science and philosophy to address challenging conservation issues. Because of its complexity, students do not often have the opportunity to practise conservation biology. To increase exposure to this science, this paper describes a virtual rainforest island on which students collect data related to forest carbon storage, while also confronting ethical issues. Students are asked to independently make decisions, collect data and explore the island before writing a research report with recommendations for the future management of the island’s forests. The ethics of decision-making are addressed in the students’ research reports and are reinforced through guided class discussion. Students will complete this activity with increased ethical awareness, as well as a better understanding of the challenges associated with the practise of conservation biology.     

Enriched environment, nitric oxide production and synaptic plasticity prevent the aging-dependent impairment of spatial cognition

In rodents, neuronal plasticity decreases and spatial learning and working memory deficits increase upon aging. Several authors have shown that rats reared in enriched environments have better cognitive performance in association with increased neuronal plasticity than animals reared in standard environments. We hypothesized that enriched environment could preserve animals from the age-associated neurological impairments, mainly through NO-dependent mechanisms of induction of neuronal plasticity. We present evidence that 27 months old rats from an enriched environment show a better performance in spatial working memory than standard reared rats of the same age. Both mtNOS and cytosolic nNOS activities were found significantly increased (73% and 155%, respectively) in female rats from enriched environment as compared with control animals kept in a standard environment. The enzymatic activity of complex I was 80% increased in rats from enriched environment as compared with control rats. We conclude that an extensively enriched environment prevents old rats from the aging-associated impairment of spatial cognition, synaptic plasticity and nitric oxide production.     

Opening the Black Box of Developmental Experiments: Behavioural Mechanisms Underlying Long‐Term Effects of Early Social Experience

Typically, animals spend a considerable portion of their time with social interactions involving mates, offspring, competitors and group members. The social performance during these interactions can strongly depend on the social environment individuals have experienced early in life. Despite a considerable number of experiments investigating long‐term effects of the early social environment, our understanding of the behavioural mechanisms mediating these effects is still limited, mainly for two reasons. (1) Only in few experimental studies have researchers actually observed and quantified the behaviour of their study animals during the social treatment. (2) Even if differences in social interactions between social rearing treatments are reported, these differences might not be causally linked to any observed long‐term effects later in life. The aim of this review was to investigate whether behavioural records of animals during the experimental manipulation of their social environment can help (1) identifying behavioural mechanisms involved in a long‐term effect and (2) obtaining a better understanding of the long‐term consequences of early manipulations. First, I review studies that manipulated the social environment at an early stage of the ontogeny, observed the social interactions and behaviour during the social experience phase and subsequently tested the performance in social and non‐social behavioural tasks at a later life stage. In all reviewed studies, treatment differences were reported both in social interactions during the social experience phase and in social and/or non‐social behaviours later in life. Second, I discuss four classes of behavioural mechanisms that can cause the reported long‐term effects of social experience, namely learning by experience, social learning, sensory stimulation and social cueing. I conclude that social interactions during the social experience phase should always be recorded for at least two reasons. Knowledge about how the social interactions differ between rearing treatments (1) permits researchers to formulate hypotheses about candidate mechanisms causing long‐term effects on behaviour and (2) can help to interpret unexpected outcomes of developmental experiments. Finally, I propose that as a crucial ultimate step towards understanding effects of the early social environment, we should develop targeted experiments testing for the causality of identified candidate mechanism.     

The response to the social environment reveals sex-dependent behavioural syndromes in the Bosca’s newt (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Lissotriton boscai</Emphasis>)

There is growing evidence of correlated behaviours across time, situations and/or contexts (behavioural syndromes) in animals, and their link with fitness makes these studies mandatory to understanding the species’ behavioural and evolutionary ecology. Whereas the role of the social environment on behavioural syndromes is receiving increasing attention, experimental studies testing whether environmental fluctuations govern sex-dependent behavioural syndromes are scarce. I performed an experiment to test for the existence of sex differences in activity syndromes through a changing social environment. Males and females of Bosca’s newt (Lissotriton boscai) were faced with three social situations perceived through chemical cues (own odour, no odour and same-sex conspecific odours) to measure their activity levels. Comparisons of the activity levels showed that both males and females discriminated the odourless stimuli from newt odour (either their own or the conspecific stimuli). Whereas activity levels were positively correlated between their own and the odourless stimuli in both sexes, the association between the odourless and conspecific stimuli was positive in males but decoupled in females. This is the first experimental evidence of sex differences in activity syndromes of wild-caught animals in response to social changes.     

Graduate education and the role of the physical anthropologist in biomedical teaching and research

There is a place for the physical anthropologist in biomedical teaching and research because of the special and unique skills possessed by this individual. However, eventual success in the health sciences environment requires the student to obtain the knowledge and background for functionally oriented teaching and research. Students interested in a biomedical teaching and research career must prepare themselves methodologically and theoretically. This requires: (1) teaching qualifications, (2) an increased emphasis on methodology and technology, (3) an increased emphasis on research and experimental design, (4) appropriate interdisciplinary courses which provide the background for both teaching and research, (5) increased interaction with graduate faculty active in research, and (6) the latitude to adapt the graduate program to meet these specific needs. Students who finish their graduate training with a marketable skill, and who can apply their unique talents to a specialized area, will have broad appeal in the job market and will considerably strengthen their career opportunities.     

Rainsticks: Integrating Culture,Folklore, and the Physics of Sound

The purpose of this activity is for students to build a rainstick out of materials in their own environment and imitate the sound of rain while investigating the physical principles of sound. Students will be able to relate the sound produced by an instrument to the type and quantity of materials used in its construction.     

Redefining classroom instruction

In this study, the role of the classroom instructor was redefined from a "lecturer" responsible for delivering the core curriculum to a "facilitator" at the center of an active learning environment. Web-based lectures were used to provide foundation content to students outside of the classroom, which made it possible to improve the quality of student-faculty contact time in the classroom. Students reported that this hybrid format of instruction afforded them a better understanding of the content, a higher probability of retaining the content, and the opportunity to spend more time thinking about the application of the content compared with more traditional lecture-based methods of instruction.     

New lights in early steps of in vitro fertilization in plants

Studies using in vitro fertilization systems in animals and lower plants have led to a better understanding of the initial steps of fertilization and their underlying mechanisms. These mechanisms remain to be elucidated in flowering plants. Recent progress related to the development of in vitro fertilization systems using maize as a plant model is presented in this review. Their potential for leading to a better understanding of the process of gametic recognition and fusion and of the early events triggering egg activation and zygote formation are also discussed.     

Untangling the contribution of characters to evolutionary relationships: a case study using fossils,morphology, and Genes

Given the importance of phylogenetic trees to understanding common ancestry and evolution, they are a necessary part of the undergraduate biology curriculum. However, a number of common misconceptions, such as reading across branch tips and understanding homoplasy, can pose difficulties in student understanding. Students also may take phylogenetic trees to be fact, instead of hypotheses. Below we outline a case study that we have used in upper-level undergraduate evolution and ichthyology courses that utilizes shark teeth (representing fossils), body characters, and mitochondrial genes. Students construct their own trees using freely available software, and are prompted to compare their trees with a series of questions. Finally, students explore homoplasy, polytomies, and trees as hypotheses during a class discussion period. This case study gives students practice with tree-thinking, as well as demonstrating that tree topology is reliant on which characters and tree-building algorithms are used.     

Size of environmental grain and resource matching

For most animals their foraging environment consists of a patch network. In random environments there are no spatial autocorrelation at all, while in fine-grained systems positive autocorrelations flip to negative ones and back again against distance. With increasing grain size the turnover rate of spatial autocorrelation slows down. Using a cellular automaton with foragers having limited information about their feeding environment we examined how well consumer numbers matched resource availability, also known as the ideal free distribution. The match is the better the smaller the size of the environmental grain. This is somewhat contrary to the observation that in large-grained environments the spatial autocorrelation is high and positive over long distances. In such an environment foragers, by knowing a limited surrounding, should in fact know a much larger area because of the spatially autocorrelated resource pattern. Yet, when foragers have limited knowledge, we observed that the degree of undermatching (i.e., more individuals in less productive patches than expected) increases with increasing grain size.     

Student Perceptions of Attitudes to the Human-Animal Bond

Abstract

Students (67 per year) in years 1, 2, and 5 (final year) of the veterinary course at The University of Queensland, Australia, were surveyed with six questions asking them to score their perceptions of pet owners, themselves, and veterinarians of the human-animal bond. All students perceived owners, themselves, and veterinarians as usually attached to their pets, although the owners were scored higher, especially by the final-year (year 5) students. The students rated themselves, owners, and veterinarians as usually upset by reports of cruelty to pets, although by year 5 the students realized that veterinarians would be familiar with cruelty to pets.

The use of dogs and cats as experimental animals was perceived to upset owners, but only sometimes to upset veterinarians and students. Students and veterinarians were perceived as less likely to buy cards with pets on them, or Christmas presents for their pets, than were pet owners.

The results indicate that by final year (year 5) these veterinary students have developed some sensitivity in the area of the human-animal bond, which may have been aided by the courses the students received in animal behavior and welfare.     

Acoustic accelerometry reveals diel activity patterns in premigratory Port Jackson sharks

Distinguishing the factors that influence activity within a species advances understanding of their behavior and ecology. Continuous observation in the marine environment is not feasible but biotelemetry devices provide an opportunity for detailed analysis of movements and activity patterns. This study investigated the detail that calibration of accelerometers measuring root mean square (RMS) acceleration with video footage can add to understanding the activity patterns of male and female Port Jackson sharks (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) in a captive environment. Linear regression was used to relate RMS acceleration output to time‐matched behavior captured on video to quantify diel activity patterns. To validate captive data, diel patterns from captive sharks were compared with diel movement data from free‐ranging sharks using passive acoustic tracking. The RMS acceleration data showed captive sharks exhibited nocturnal diel patterns peaking during the late evening before midnight and decreasing before sunrise. Correlation analysis revealed that captive animals displayed similar activity patterns to free‐ranging sharks. The timing of wild shark departures for migration in the late breeding season corresponded with elevated diel activity at night within the captive individuals, suggesting a form of migratory restlessness in captivity. By directly relating RMS acceleration output to activity level, we show that sex, time of day, and sex‐specific seasonal behavior all influenced activity levels. This study contributes to a growing body of evidence that RMS acceleration data are a promising method to determine activity patterns of cryptic marine animals and can provide more detailed information when validated in captivity.