Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Hi folks! Here's what's coming up in the next few days:

1. What's due today? Today's assignment is your Chapter 10 Digging Deeper which asks you to evaluate some of the arguments being made by those few scientists who don't believe HIV causes AIDS. Please note that the purpose of this assignment is not to lend credibility to that point of view; it is to get you to critically evaluate their arguments and to understand why the scientific community generally accepts the link between HIV and AIDS. If you have questions about the assignment, please let me know.

2. Did you know.....that in some regions of Africa almost 40% (yes, that's right: 40!!) of the population is HIV positive (data taken from Murphy et al. 2007*)??? Just a little food for thought.

3. What's coming up? Your Chapter 10 Freelance Writer assignment is due tomorrow by 8 with responses by 11. That assignment is about artificial selection, also known as selective breeding. Artificial selection has been going on since the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, as people selectively bred the domesticated organisms (both animals and crop plants) that had traits they valued. Nowadays, people often confuse artificial selection with genetic engineering, but they are not the same thing. Genetic engineering, as you learned a couple of chapters ago, means moving a gene from one species to another. Artificial selection acts on the variation that already exists in a species; it doesn't introduce new genetic material.

4. Grading? I posted your Adopt-a-Species grades last night around 10:00. Take a look at my comments and get back to me with questions. I'll have your Freelance Writer grades posted today.

That's it for now! Email me with any questions or concerns you have!

Heather

*Murphy, A., K. Armstrong, M.D. Firestone, M. Fitzpatrick, M. Grosberg, N. Luckham, A. Rebold. 2007. Southern Africa. Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd, Oakland, California, 812 pp.