Sunday, May 31, 2009

First NABT Biology Club Book Scholarship



We at East Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina are delighted to announce that Alexandru (Alex) Bacanu won the NABT Book Scholarship. Last Wednesday, May 27, George Ros from Carolina Biological came out and presented the beautiful plaque to Alex at a big senior awards ceremony. Alex was very grateful! He can definitely use the money for his texts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he will be studying biology and chemistry in the fall. Alex has been integral to our Science Club. He has won numerous awards in the Science Olympiad Competition, starting in his freshman year when he was our "Don't Bug Me" expert and went to the National Science Olympiad Competition as one of only 2 freshmen on the team. He has always been a great supporter of the younger members and has done a great job tutoring and advising within our Club. He has been the leader of the Biology Club within our larger Science Club. We thank George Sellers for starting this wonderful NABT Biology Club project and we thank Carolina Biological and NABT for their generous support. - Judy Jones, advisor

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Laramie, WY end of the year

The Whiting High School, Laramie, WY Bioclub has had it's final meeting of the year. We recently toured the new, state of the art veterinary clinic in town. We have also been recycling throughout the year, and hope to expand that project next year. Many of our members will go on the year-end trip, which combines Science and Social Studies activities. We will be traveling to the Black Hills this year, and will explore Reptile Gardens, Bear Country, Cosmos, a gold mine, and go spelunking. (This is just on the science side!) Wow! The school year really flew by. Before we know it, we will be back at it again! I hope everyone has a great summer.

Jennie Lawrence
Science Teacher

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Dukes Bio Club is winding down

We had a great year in Bio Club our first time around. We successfully raised zebra fish from fertilized eggs, our bullfrog larva became an actual frog last week (it hasn't started croaking yet...), and we created a mutant C. elegans with RNAi. We are ending the year doing a Y chromosome project. We are asking males here at school to volunteer their DNA and then we will analyze Y chromosome markers to determine where their deep ancestors migrated from. We are now trying to determine what we will follow up with next year. Ideas we have are stream monitoring, maintaining the school prairie plot, and planting some perennials on the school grounds.

Hope all of you enjoyed the club as much as we have.... enjoy your summer!

Kathy Van Hoeck
for York HS Biology Club

EcoAction in the News

Hi, All!

Saltsburg EcoAction has been so busy lately that I've been neglectful of keeping you all up to date on the great activities we have going on here. First of all, we had a lovely write up in the local paper that comprised three pages. You can see it online at http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/blairsvilledispatch/s_620952.html.

Earth Week was great for us. We cleaned up our campus, had a speaker bring in a reptile show, learned about the ecomony of homegrown veggies (and grew some of our own) and had a wonderful bash at the end.

Our Envirothon teams recently participated in the county Envirothon and ranked sixth and tenth overall. We're especially proud that our JV team came in second in the Wildlife category. Congrats to Marion Center for their first place victory!

This weekend, we're taking a canoeing and camping trip. It should be nice weather, so we're very excited.

The big news, though, is our joining PFC (Principals for Change) Greenspaces. It's a great way to network with other ecology based organizations in our area and we're very excited to have been asked to take part. If you're in our area (PA) and you're interested in an invitation to join this great group, please email me!

Friday, May 8, 2009

End of Year Updating

Thanks to the framework of BioClub! It gave me - and my students an excuse to prepare better for science fairs (2) our Science Bowl, and the Science Olympiad. Having a regular meeting that the students were in charge of and responsible for holding gave them the ownership in the process. I surveyed them about their year and their unanimous suggestion was for continuous meetings from September through March. (we had success meeting from Jan. onward) We'll see how it goes in the future.
For me and my students - knowing that other science-interested students are "out there" and actively treating science as an extra-curricular activity is compelling for us.

Greg Diersen Great Plains Lutheran HS

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The Science Behind the News: An Online Flu Virus Lecture Hosted by the Darwin Facebook Group

Friday May 8 at 1pm Eastern time zone

Pre-register *now* to reserve your spot for this important, complimentary webinar with special guest scientists like:

- Professor Derek Smith, Professor of Infections Disease, Cambridge
University, advisor to the World Health Organization, and a leading
specialist on the flu virus. Copy and Paste these links for more information:
http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/smithd.html
http://www.antigenic-cartography.org/cam/

- Jonathan Yewdell, MD PhD, Laboratory Head, Laboratory of Viral
Disease, National Institutes of Health, and an international expert
on the flu virus and a well respected leader in science education.

- Dr. Tallman, Cleveland Clinic. Featured in the media this week,
Dr. Tallman will be able to answer questions from attendees about
the medical and clinical aspects of this swine flu outbreak.

Several others may join us including from Mexico.

This event is being hosted by the 250,000+ members of the Darwin
Facebook group and the Reading Odyssey, an informal community
dedicated to public reading, learning and discussion of science,
literature, philosophy - i.e. the big ideas of humanity.

Special thanks to the sponsors of this webinar: Citrix Online, The Cleveland Clinic, Constant Contact, Life Technologies, Scientific American.

For future events, register for our Darwin group newsletter here:
http://tinyurl.com/DarwinNewsletter