Bioinformatics and the Undergraduate Curriculum Essay

Recent advances involving high-throughput techniques for data generation and analysis have made familiarity with basic bioinformatics concepts and programs a necessity in the biological sciences. Undergraduate students increasingly need training in methods related to finding and retrieving information stored in vast databases. The rapid rise of bioinformatics as a new discipline has challenged many colleges and universities to keep current with their curricula, often in the face of static or dwindling resources. On the plus side, many bioinformatics modules and related databases and software programs are free and accessible online, and interdisciplinary partnerships between existing faculty members and their support staff have proved advantageous in such efforts. We present examples of strategies and methods that have been successfully used to incorporate bioinformatics content into undergraduate curricula.     

Teaching to the Test…or Testing to Teach: Exams Requiring Higher Order Thinking Skills Encourage Greater Conceptual Understanding

In order to test the effect of exam-question level on fostering student conceptual understanding, low-level and high-level quizzes and exams were administered in two sections of an introductory biology course. Each section was taught in a high-level inquiry based style but was assigned either low-level questions (memory oriented) on the quizzes and exams, or high-level questions (application, evaluation, and analysis) on the quizzes and exams for the entirety of the semester. A final exam consisting of 20 low-level and 21 high-level questions was given to both sections. We considered several theoretical perspectives based on testing effect, test expectancy, and transfer-appropriate processing literature as well as the theoretical underpinnings of Bloom’s taxonomy. Reasoning from these theoretical perspectives, we predicted that high-level exams would encourage not only deeper processing of the information by students in preparation for the exam but also better memory for the core information (learned in the service of preparing for high-level questions). Results confirmed this prediction, with students in the high-level exam condition demonstrating higher performance on both the low-level final-exam items and the high-level final exam items. This pattern suggests that students who are tested throughout the semester with high-level questions acquire deep conceptual understanding of the material and better memory for the course information, and lends support to the proposed hierarchical nature of Bloom’s taxonomy.     

Simultaneous contrast in the goldfish

In this, as in two prior experiments, goldfish trained with small reward for response to one color and large reward for response to another color performed less well for the small reward than control animals trained with small reward for response to both colors. The results obtained in the present experiment (with liquid food as reward) cannot be explained in terms of postingestive inhibition (evidence from the prior experiments withTubifex worms as reward being inconsistent on this point) or in terms of within-sessions decrement in drive. The results bear on the phyletic generality of simultaneous contrast and on the relation of simultaneous to successive contrast, a phenomenon that has thus far failed to appear in goldfish.     

Effects of prior social experience on agonistic responding by Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens)

The role of prior social experience in maleBetta agonistic behavior was investigated in two experiments. Fish were either paired with an opponent until dominance was established naturally (Experiment 1) or given prior combat experience with a known aggressive or nonaggressive opponent (Experiment 2). The effects of prior social experience were then observed both in additional paired encounters and in some noncombat agonistic situations. The paired-encounter data indicate thatBetta attack aggressive opponents more than nonaggressive ones and rarely attack opponents once they have submitted. In contrast to attacking, these fish do not show a significant decrease in displays once their opponent has submitted, nor do they display differentially to aggressive and nonaggressive opponents. The noncombat agonistic-situation data indicate that prior social experience affects both the preference of fish for viewing other conspecifics and the waning of display behaviors. These results suggest that submissive and nonaggressive behaviors can inhibit attacks but not displays byBetta, and they emphasize the necessity of controlling for prior social experience when studying aggressive behavior.     

Sponsored Research Versus Graduating Students? Intervening Variables and Unanticipated Findings in Public Research Universities

This article examines the relationship between sponsored research monies and the graduation of undergraduate students at 22 public research universities. Using institutional and student characteristics for 59,982 students at these universities, we conducted chi-square, cross-tabulation, correlation, and hierarchical nonlinear modeling (HNLM) analyses to determine the relationship between our principal independent and dependent variables, and among them and other individual and institutional variables, including SAT (individual and institutional mean), gender (individual and percentage), underrepresented minority (individual and percentage), and graduate academic program rating. In contrast to a basic premise of most policymakers and academic managers, our findings suggest that an institution's sponsored research expenditures are positively related to undergraduates' graduation. We also find that mean SAT has a powerful impact on student graduation, although at the individual level gender is a more powerful correlate of graduation than is SAT score.     

Further experiments on probability learning in goldfish

The performance of goldfish in 70:30 and 50:50 visual and spatial problems was studied again under conditions like those employed in recent reversal experiments which provided the first unambiguous evidence of progressive improvement in goldfish. Random matching was found in the visual problems but not in the spatial problems, spatial choices proving rather insensitive to reinforcement ratio. The relation of random matching to the various other outcomes of such experiments is considered.     

Innovation as a social bubble: The example of the Human Genome Project

In this paper we present a detailed synthesis of the development of the Human Genome Project (HGP) from the mid 1980s through 2000, in order to test our hypothesis of “social bubbles”, which claims that strong social interactions between enthusiastic supporters weave a network of reinforcing feedbacks that lead to widespread endorsement and extraordinary commitment by those involved, beyond what would be rationalized by a standard cost-benefit analysis in the presence of extraordinary uncertainties and risks. The HGP was initiated as a public project funded by government agencies, starting at a moderate pace. The progressive introduction of different actors and the development of various interests catalyzed the project, which eventually became eminent both in the public and private sectors. The competition between the public and the private sector played greatly in favor of both: the financial burden as well as the horizon of the public project were significantly reduced, the private project(s) gained from the hype of the public project, yet had to play an active and collaborative role in order to remain in the game. This is at the core of the social bubble hypothesis. To further our argument, we present quantitative analysis of the development of the biotech sector within the financial stock market. Lastly, we point to the fact that the hypes fueling the bubble during its growth have not been followed by real tangible outcomes over the short expected time horizons. Indeed, at the time of writing (May, 2011), the consensus of the scientific community is that it will take decades to exploit the fruits of the HGP.     

Social responsiveness and physical space as determinants of agonistic behavior inBetta splendens

Two experiments examined the conditions under whichBetta agonistic responding occurs by manipulating physical space and the species and social responsiveness of an opponent. In Experiment 1, both the species (conspecific or nonconspecific) and the aggressiveness (aggressive or nonaggressive) of the opponent were manipulated. The results indicated that agonistic behavior was greater with both conspecifics and aggressive opponents. Experiment 2 examined the effects of physical space and social responsiveness of the opponent on intraspecific aggressive behavior. An inverse relationship was found between physical space and the number of attacks directed toward the opponent. The results of both experiments also indicated thatBetta tend to attack aggressive opponents more than nonaggressive ones. It is suggested thatBetta aggress either when the individual animal is threatened or when physical space is limited.     

Habituation to illness: Effects of prior experience with the US on the formation of learned taste aversions in rats

Experiment 1 investigated the effects of US habituation on the acquisition and extinction of learned taste aversions in rats. Subjects receiving five noncontingent LiCl intubations prior to conditioning failed to develop a conditioned taste aversion, while control subjects experiencing a single saccharin/LiCl pairing displayed a pronounced taste aversion which weakened during subsequent poisonings. Experiment 2 examined whether habituation, defined as a waning of responses to repeated presentation of an illness stimulus, was a possible mechanism for explaining the results of Experiment 1. Subjects showed a decrease in motor activity following an initial LiCl intubation, but less attenuation of activity with successive intubations.