Student editors and Nobel Prizes
On Monday morning, news broke that the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had been awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young. Scientists are rarely well known by the public, and they had not been among the favorites to win the Nobel. Had you rushed to Wikipedia to find out who they were, … Continued
Plant species articles ripe for student contributions
For some classes, selecting the right article to work on can be a challenging task. For a plant taxonomy class interested in creating species articles, you’re more likely to be faced by an embarrassment of riches. Verbesina is a genus of plants in the aster family. Of the 300 species in the genus, only 19 … Continued
Sex in the Tree of Life
The demarcations of human sexuality have become a major issue in the culture wars, but for plants, sexual diversity is the norm. There are plants with “perfect” flowers that are completely hermaphroditic, with fully functional pollen and eggs produced in the same flower. There are monoecious plants, which produce both male and female flowers. There … Continued
Students expand coverage of country-specific environmental issues
If you’re interested to read a broad overview of an environmental topic, there’s a very good chance you’ll find an article about it on Wikipedia. If you want in-depth information about the topic as it pertains to a specific country, however, you’ll probably only be able to find information about a small number of developed … Continued
Roundup: Disulfide Bonds for Dessert
If I asked you what angel food cake is like, you’d probably talk about it more in terms of texture than taste: light, delicate, airy. Maybe you’ve made one before, and know that texture is created by whipping eggs and sugar together. However, odds are you don’t think about it in terms of hydrogen bonding, … Continued
Students, Sources, and Sentinels at AAAS
In February, Boston played host to thousands of scientists, policy makers and journalists who attended the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The conference took place against a background of mounting concern in the scientific community about the future of science during the new presidential administration. While the conference … Continued
The Roundup: Tiny machines
Modern technology requires tiny, precisely manufactured parts. If you want to know how those parts are made, you can thank students in Dr. Ashis Banerjee’s Introduction to Manufacturing Processes class (first section; second section) at the University of Washington for the work they did across articles related to manufacturing processes. Take a look at the … Continued
The Roundup: Evolution and Wikipedia
Ever wonder why some plants will flower, set seed, and die in a single year while others keep going, sometimes for centuries? A student in Kasey Fowler-Finn’s Advanced Evolution class created a new article which looks at this big question: annual vs. perennial plant evolution. We generally think of fermentation as something that happens when … Continued
Wikipedia: Putting plants under the microscope
If you want to understand how a plant works, it helps to be able to see cells and tissues. That’s easy in a biology lab with microscopes and prepared slides. Once you leave that world, though, it becomes more difficult to see the structures beneath things. Wikipedia articles tend to be well-illustrated, with pictures of … Continued
New online orientation helps instructors find articles for assignments
Picking the right Wikipedia article for student editors is an exciting, but challenging, task. Topics for term papers can be re-used every year, because only the instructor reads them. The social and instructional benefit of a Wikipedia project come from the thousands of people can read— and benefit from—what students have written. This means finding … Continued