Kiwi Fruit DNA

I haven't really talked much on here about the actual subjects I teach, so it's time to remedy this. Tuesday afternoons are good times for me to do practicals with my AS Biology students (their penultimate year of high school study), and I thought it would be good fun to do a DNA extraction.

The students used kiwi fruit, but it can be done with pretty much anything living (I did caution the students against blending up their little brothers and sisters). The main hazard was giving a bunch of teenagers kitchen knives, not least because the poor darlings are so inept at food preparation that it took them ages to cut the sodding kiwis. I had a student teacher with me and remarked to him that they were all going to starve at university if this was how they cut up food. He said "No, they'll survive okay on Pot Noodles"...


We largely followed the protocol from Practical Biology, and got some pretty cool results. The bubbles in the image above are trapped in the strands of DNA, and the rather margarita-coloured substance underneath is the pulverised salty-kiwi-and-washing-up-liquid goo.

Isn't science brilliant? That's DNA, that is! In front of our very eyes.

How To Medicate A Gecko

Jabba has pinworms. It's a hazard of feeding him crickets, as not all livefood suppliers ensure their crickets are parasite-free. He had a visit to the vet last week, and didn't disgrace himself as Dooya was wont to do, and is in rude health other than the worms and a little bit of junk in the trunk to shift.


The favoured treatment for pinworms is 0.2ml of Panacur once a day for three days. So this is how to go about giving meds to a 120g bruiser such as Jabba.

1. Assemble syringe and medicine.
   
2. Open vivarium and place hand in for gecko to crawl onto.
   
3. Remove escaping locust from arm.
   
4. Try to grab gecko as he sprints past hand to the warm hide.
   
5. Lift up warm hide to extract gecko.
   
6. Retrieve gecko from behind the cold hide.
   
7. Sit down on sofa with gecko on lap.
   
8. Take up medicine in syringe.
   
9. Retrieve gecko from between your shoulder blades.
   
10. Hold gecko gently but firmly in right hand.
    
11. Mop up urine from t-shirt.
    
12. Gently stroke gecko's mouth to encourage him to open it.
    
13. Gently stroke gecko's mouth to encourage him to let go of your finger.
    
14. Gently stroke gecko's mouth again.
    
15. Slide syringe with catheter into mouth.
    
16. Retrieve syringe from the other side of the living room and gecko from down the side of the sofa.
    
17. Hold gecko gently but firmly in right hand.
    
18. Mop up further urine all over jeans.
    
19. Gently stroke gecko's mouth to encourage him to open it.
    
20. Persuade spouse to slide syringe in.
    
21. Inject medication.
    
22. Gently stroke gecko's mouth to encourage him to let go of the catheter.
    
23. Retrieve gecko from underneath cushion.
    
24. Return gecko to vivarium.
    
25. Chase escapee locusts around living room.
    
26. Nurse wounds.

He's ace though. And currently sulking spectacularly, with the look of annoyance that only a medicated pet can give.

Things I Learned From My Students #9: Snow

The UK is currently the laughing stock of the best part of Europe and North America, as we've had some snow and ground to a halt. In fairness to us, snow like this is the sort of thing for which we're about as prepared as Toronto is for a plague of frogs, due to its rarity. On the other hand, you'd think if you got a plague of frogs three years running around about the time that plagues of frogs were most likely, that you might start planning for the increased chances of being plagued by frogs.

Anyway, London only just got the snow today, and it's not bad enough to close the college. So it was on with the hiking boots to brave the treacherous two-minute walk along the ungritted road to work. And on with a few more revelations.

1. It takes a special sort of teacher to leave the windows open in the biology lab over the weekend, rendering the internal climate positively Siberian (this was NOT me).
   
2. No matter how cold the students are, they are never cold enough to take you up on the offer to put a lab coat on as another layer.
   
3. Edexcel doesn't think it's worth teaching students about competitive and non-competitive inhibition anymore.
   
4. Despite nearly 30 years of public outreach and education on this matter, students still think that HIV came from people having sex with monkeys.
   
5. None of them had ever heard of a dental dam.
   
6. Yet one of them has a fleshlight called Mirabel.
   
7. They think that Coxsackieviruses are the best thing ever.
   
8. Until they hear about Cummingtonite, that is.
   
9. People who named towns in New England were well kinky.
   
10. You never want to spot a student googling for "reason for late period".
    
11. The fake foam rock stress toy I got from Blackwell Scientific a few years ago as a promo gift is more realistic than I had ever realised...
    
12. The little bugger who threw the snowball through the staffroom window (open 3") to hit my desk this morning should be automatically presented with an A* in mechanics as they have an absolute mastery of projectiles.

There's a very definite "inappropriate" theme to this one. I put it down to covering disease transmission in A2 biology, physiology of the endocrine system in BTEC and the presence of a large student union-run awareness campaign around World AIDS Day. It's just been condoms a-go-go all week.

Lecturerballs

Teachers and lecturers are by no means immune to the odd gaffe here and there, so here's a gem for you (the title of this post being reference to Colemanballs). I teach a BTEC Level 2 Applied Science class on "Biology and Our Environment", and was covering some basic heredity and genetics. I did the good old blue eyes-brown eyes Punnett square, writing in the genotypes before asking the students what the phenotypes would be. To make things extra visual for them, I drew the eyes...


See what the problem is? No? My students, being 50% teenage boys and 50% teenage girls, noticed immediately...


Yeah...

Changing The Guard

Friends on Twitter and Facebook will know that just over a month ago our leopard gecko Dooya suddenly died. I don't really want to go into details, suffice to say that the vets were as shocked as we were, and that they have absolutely no problems with our husbandry of geckos whatsoever.


I have to put that caveat in as it was implied by someone who should know better that we were in some way incompetent lizard owners. I also didn't bother writing about Dooya on here as some of the reactions I had on Facebook were of the "That sucks" variety (as though I was bemoaning a flat tyre on my car), and one particularly insensitive acquaintance used Dooya's death as a springboard for openly contemplating whether the carcasses of his own geckos were ready to be disinterred and mounted.

All of this was very painful. I know the vast majority of people in the world think that only dogs and cats are worthy of love, and the ensuing grief when they die, but Dooya was a very special gecko. She was our Beautiful Monster, and we were heartbroken. Irving Townsend put it well:

"We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle; easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we would still live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan."

So with that in mind we are setting off around the fragile circle again. Exactly 50 days after Dooya's death (and it seems already like a lifetime without her), we are adopting a new gecko. He is fully healthy, in possession of all his eyeballs, and (impossible though it sounds) even bigger than Dooya was.


"Koona t'chuta Waxworm?"
Meet Jabba. He is over 90g and possibly a giant breed. His owner is moving abroad. We are travelling to the Grim Industrialised North next weekend to collect him, via my parents' house. I will for the first time be outnumbered by the boys in the house, and I half expect to come home and see him sitting on the couch with my husband watching daytime television and scratching his cloacal pores.

The ironing will never get done now.

Things I Learned From My Students #8: Teaching Evolution And Speciation

I feel quite fortunate. Out of my class of A2 Biology students about half believe in one or more deities, but there is only one student who has a real problem with evolution, and their beef is with macroevolution rather than microevolution (a classic issue, if one that I'm going to need to think about to combat). Although I love teaching evolution, it is a little awkward when said student (only semi-jokingly) accuses me of trying to convert him! I see them again on Wednesday to discuss "Evidence for evolution", and I have already taken the liberty of furnishing them with a copy of "15 Evolutionary Gems". I will always take some hints and tips though!

Still, it would appear that as always I have some things to learn from my students:

1. The only reason they remember the Evolutionary Species Concept is because George Gaylord Simpson came up with it.
   
2. As a result they would like all the scientists they encounter to have similarly "memorable" names (although they think Melvin Calvin's parents should be given a sound talking to).
   
3. They want to petition the ICZN to change the genus of humans from Homo, as "well, the English language has changed, Miss". I cannot wait to read their submission.
   
4. Thanks to Linnaean taxonomy, they cannot conceive of an instance when a paraphyletic taxon like "Reptilia" might be a problem.
   
5. Teenagers appreciate being given a wadge of papers about speciation in cichlid fishes about as much as college seniors and grad students.

I've been getting a great deal of use out of the Understanding Evolution website, and especially their cute cartoons on fruit flies and reproductive barriers. Since I was telling a story, the students demanded that I put on a sing-song primary school teacher voice. I told them I would only do this if they came and sat cross-legged on the floor. Which the little buggers did. Damnit.

DeskLab-Crops

It's time for this month's Accretionary Wedge, hosted by Matt at Research At A Snail's Pace. The theme is "Desk-crops" - not only are we encouraged to submit the spookiest images we can find, but there's a nice broad definition of "geological" to give me some lee-way.

What spookier way to celebrate Hallowe'en than to take you into the little shop of horrors that is my biology teaching lab? First up is my comparative anatomy collection:


Paul and I painted them up using acrylics over the summer, having been inspired by the fantastic comparative anatomy collection at the Mammoth Site. Just the right half is painted, allowing students to examine the original bones.

Also of note is the wet collection. We have amazing stuff, representative of all the animal phyla and plant divisions. I've been able to use the samples for teaching classification:


Please don't shout at me for using the word "starfish" - this was a distinctly basic science class full of students who think that nothing without a backbone is a "real" animal... Gruesome specimens also include the medicinal leech, the skate (used to investigate whether the cloaca of a manta ray really was likely to be similar in dimensions to the human vagina - a classic A2 biology moment!) and the pregnant rat complete with a dozen foetuses! The jar of lizards has also been used to rescue short-notice cover lessons and as a threat against non-science students messing around outside the lab.

It's not a bad lab - nice and big and plenty of space. Unfortunately it won't last - we are moving to a new building next year and the biology lab space will be halved. I'm going to make sure the specimens come with us, and the lab technicians are in agreement.


The most chilling specimen of all, however, is lying on top of the cabinets. The staff are divided over its usefulness and the appropriateness of keeping it. It's a real human skeleton. The older students are fascinated, but thinking it's a little undignified for the former owner of the skeleton. To this I say it's a bit more dignified than being shoved in a box and stored under the lab sink, which is where the other two bodies are.

And then the discussion starts up about whether using a skeletal human hand as a masturbatory aid counts as necrophilia, and it's clear the biology lesson is over... Happy Hallowe'en everyone - don't have nightmares.

Things I Learned From My Students #7: Ecology Fieldwork

Although I wouldn't dare suggest that school teachers have an easy ride by any means, in FE the first half term is always particularly heinous. For a month before classes start, lecturers are on enrolment duty, interviewing and testing applicants for A-levels and BTEC courses. It should be a relief when we get on to teaching, but in reality we've already hit the wall.

A tonic for this utter exhaustion appears to be arranging the A2 biology fieldwork. I alluded to this in the previous post. It was three days of pure fun, and absolutely the best environment in which to learn. So without further ado, here's what I've learnt from the little buggers this time:

1. Having a bumper sticker saying "Honk if you understand punctuated equilibrium" is a much more effective way of getting students interested in discussing evolution than sitting them down in a classroom.
   
2. Despite being fairly internet-savvy, lolcats are not nearly as funny to them as they are to me and my science buddies.
   
3. They have a morbid curiosity about which plants are edible and which ones will kill humans.
   
4. Most of them have no idea what a stinging nettle looks like or why it is a bad idea to touch one.
   
5. Conversely, they all know about poison ivy and think (erroneously) that it's found in the UK.
   
6. It is hilarious, when travelling in convoy, to draw a CDC and hold it up in the rear window for the car behind.
   
7. It is not so funny when the car behind turns out not to be the other car from the fieldwork group but a hearse.
   
8. My A2 students are pro-evolution, pro-choice, fiery socialists, and I love that about them.

There was a particular highlight, which came after we had left the field. I suggested a late lunch at Nando's, an extremely popular chicken restaurant, especially in the west of London. We went in, I asked for the table, we ordered our food, we ate, and we sat and chatted about life, college and the future. One of the students excused himself, I assumed to go to the toilet. When he came back, all of a sudden he and the other students burst into an enthusiastic rendition of "Happy Birthday", and a cake with a candle was brought to the table by one of the waitresses.

It was only when the cake was placed in front of me as my class chorused "Happy birthday dear Mum" that I realised it was for me. My birthday is 13th February, not 20th October. The little darlings had said to the waitress earlier that I was their adoptive mum, I had taken them all in and looked after them, and they just wanted to say thank you to me on my birthday for all my hard work.

About 10% of me is thoroughly embarrassed, maybe 2% is furious that I can probably never go back to that Nando's restaurant again (at least not without taking at least six students with me). But a good 88% of me is extremely touched that they thought enough of me to play what was a very endearing trick on me. When I am feeling undermined by management, when I am bogged down by admin jobs, and when my husband is having to drag me out of bed at 7am so I can be at my desk at 8am preparing lessons, I will treasure that moment.

This, of course, will be easier to do once the little sods who filmed the whole thing put it up on YouTube for all to see...

Money For Education

I have just had the good fortune to spend three days on fieldwork with my A2 biologists. I am not ashamed to say that of all the classes I have, I love teaching the A2s the most. They are intelligent, curious and devilishly witty. And I listen to them. More than a lecturer, for them I am a careers adviser, substitute nurse, psychologist, relationship counsellor, and the keeper of the primary literature.


At the moment, they are really worried about money. They're facing a doubling of their tuition fees. The student loans they are currently entitled to will still be available, but I don't know enough about student funding to be able to assuage their fears of not being able to afford to join the university of their choice, let alone afford to live and study there.

I was the first year to pay tuition fees. This was tough. Everyone of our parents' generation had been fortunate enough not only to pay fees but to receive full maintenance grants. Needless to say, fees were brought in by Labour, who are now bitching like anything at pretty much every Conservative spending cut, so my support for any political party is fairly restricted at the moment. As I was liable for full fees due to my father's income, he undertook to pay my tuition fees. £4000 for my degree was a fair bit for him to fork out.

(A note to Americans who might think we have this easy - bear in mind that these were brought in with less than a year's warning, as will the increases, leaving very little time to save up in college funds.)

Now it has been announced that the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) is to be cut, courtesy of the coalition government. The Chancellor's speech went thus:

We will fund an increase in places for 16 to 19 year olds, and raise the participation age to 18 by the end of the Parliament - and that enables us to replace education maintenance allowances with more targeted support.

I don't know what "targeted support" will entail, but the EMA seemed pretty targeted to me - means tested on the basis of income. For some students it's the difference between being able to eat during the day and going hungry. Or it's the difference between a three-hour bus journey across London to college or an hour-long train ride. Or it's the difference between being able to go to sixth-form or being pressurised to work full-time.

I'm not an idiot - I know cuts need to come in somewhere. But in the same speech Osborne talks about showering the early years education sector with extra funds. I can't help but think that all that money on ensuring children get the best start is going to be an absolute waste if they then face a massive funding-shaped barrier the moment they hit 16.

Leigh Van Valen 1935-2010

I read this morning (via John Hawks) that Leigh Van Valen, who came up with the Red Queen's Hypothesis (a concept I have just taught my Level 2 Applied Science students) among many other valuable contributions to evolutionary biology, has died.

Leigh was a long-time reader of the old blog The Ethical Palaeontologist, and he subscribed by e-mail. Often I would receive an e-mail from him with his thoughts. He defended me on Paleonet without ever having met me (although to this day I do not know who the original poster was). When I was skeletonising the pigeons he sent me his co-authored paper on "Terrestrial Isopods for Preparing Delicate Vertebrate Skeletons". He even sent me the lyrics to his song "Sauropod Lek", where the chorus goes:

Sperm are cheap and so the males act sexy;
They twirl their tails till they get apoplexy,
And we can choose the one whose tail’s most flexi.

I have the female version - if anyone has his male version I'll swap you!

He made a tremendous contribution to the field of palaeontology and evolutionary biology, and my students will hear all about his legacy as and when we cover speciation. He also made a difference in my life personally, and while I did thank him many times for his support, I don't think my e-mails can do justice to the gratitude I feel towards him.

I will miss him.