“Errors in WA TEE human biology exam paper - News.com.au” plus 4 more

Errors in WA TEE human biology exam paper - News.com.au
Campus construction impedes class transit - Appalachian Online
Industry support of academic life science research may be dropping - Genetic Engineering News
Turtle expert to speak at Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek - MLive.com
So. Calif. to Hear How Darwin Was Wrong - ChristianNewsWire

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Errors in WA TEE human biology exam paper - News.com.au

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 01:57 AM PST

READ IT FIRST: ERRORS have been found on WA's tertiary entrance exams - just two days after the crucial tests started.

As students this week sit the exams that could decide their future, Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood today confirmed that human biology exams - given on Monday - contained a graph that was incorrect.

But he said none of the 4300 students who sat the exam would be disadvantaged by the mistake.

"In many exams, a lift-out of longer, essay-style questions is produced so that students do not have to continually refer back to the question as they write their answers in the question-answer booklet," Mr Wood said.

"In producing the lift-out for Human Biology, an error was made in copying a question containing a graph.

"Students could answer using the information in either of the graphs.

"The answer key will be adjusted so that answers from students who used data from either graph will be acceptable."

Mr Wood said on occasions where errors appeared in papers, the normal practice was to adjust the marking key to "accommodate the range of answers" that students would provide.

"In the worst case scenario, questions are removed and the paper is marked, for example, out of 95 and scaled to 100," Mr Wood said.

"No student will be disadvantaged (by the latest incident)."

Subscribe to our Email Newsletter

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Campus construction impedes class transit - Appalachian Online

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 07:55 AM PST

by KATHERINE PATTERSON
Intern News Reporter

Students going to class may find it difficult to reach their destination due to construction projects on campus.

"We get a lot of feedback from students [regarding construction]," Director of Design and Construction Clyde D. Robbins said. "Most are concerned with the problems they may have with getting to and from class, and we try to do what we can."

Robbins said the various campus construction projects are 4 to 40 percent finished.

The major projects on campus involve steam distribution system replacement, which is expected to cut costs on escaped steam, and additions to the Central Dining Facility.

For many students, the construction has caused inconveniences in terms of moving around campus and avoiding areas blocked for work.

"The construction outside of the Rankin Science Building has definitely been an inconvenience," senior biology major Emily C. Price said. "It's been taking forever to get to class with parts of the sidewalk blocked off."

As individual construction projects move further along in terms of completion, more areas can be opened for student use.

The north entrance and the sidewalk leading to Rankin were recently opened for access on campus, as the construction was completed in that area.

"As a biology major, pretty much all of my classes were in Rankin, so I was dealing with the construction every day," Price said. "I'm really happy to see the sidewalk in front of the building open again."

Most students understand the necessity behind the inconvenience of construction, but there is a level of confusion over the purpose of construction in some areas.

"I really wish that there were more explanations behind the construction projects," freshman English major Liz P. Watts said. "I know what the construction at Central [Dining Hall] is for, but I wish that there was an easier way to know what exactly is being done and what the end goal will be."

Photo by Jordan Paris | The Appalachian

Industry support of academic life science research may be dropping - Genetic Engineering News

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 06:36 AM PST

Nov 3 2009, 9:40 AM EST

Industry support of academic life science research may be dropping

EUREKALERT

Contact: Sue McGreevey
smcgreevey@partners.org
617-724-2764
Massachusetts General Hospital

Fewer investigators report industry connections, but commercial interests keep growing

While more than half the academic life science researchers responding to a 2007 survey indicated having some relationship with industrial entities, the prevalence of such relationships particularly direct funding for research studies appears to be dropping. Results of the survey, appearing in the November/December 2009 issue of Health Affairs, also suggest that interest in commercial applications of research appears to be growing, even among investigators without industry funding. The new study is a follow-up to 1985 and 1995 surveys by members of the same team.

"It had been ten years since our last survey, and attitudes about academic-industry relationships have changed, leading many hospitals, universities and other research organizations to institute new conflict-of-interest policies," explains Darren Zinner, PhD, who led the study as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Institute for Health Policy. "Additionally, the economics of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries have shifted, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget doubled in that time. All of these factors may have made faculty less dependent on industry funding. Because many of these conflict-of-interest policies are now being re-examined, it was time to repeat the study, establish new data points and analyze any trends that appeared." Zinner is now at the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

In late 2006 and early 2007, the researchers mailed surveys to a randomly selected group of life science faculty members at the 50 U.S. universities receiving the most NIH support in 2004. The survey asked a range of questions about respondents' relationships and activities in the preceding three years. Of more than 2,900 eligible faculty members to whom surveys were sent, almost 2,100 replied, for a response rate of 74 percent. Almost 53 percent of respondents reported some sort of industry relationship in the preceding three years most frequently consulting, paid speaking, research grants and contracts, and scientific advisory board membership.

Overall, 20 percent of research faculty received industry funding in 2006, a significant decrease from the 28 percent of faculty in 1995. For those with industry support, the magnitude of per-investigator funding remained essentially unchanged, indicating a decrease in overall corporate spending in academic life-science research. As in the previous studies, industry relationships were more common among senior faculty members, with full professors being up to twice as likely as junior faculty to be involved with industry.

In addition, faculty members with industry relationships were more productive, as measured by the number of publications and the impact of the journals in which their studies appeared. "While it's possible that industry funding and connections increased their academic output," Zinner explains, "it's more likely that companies are seeking out highly productive investigators who are opinion leaders in their fields."

Similar to previous studies, industry-funded scientists were more likely to report that their work resulted in trade secrets information kept secret to protect its potential commercial value or that publication had been delayed for longer than six months. However, rates of patenting and trade secrecy also more than doubled since 1985 among researchers without corporate sponsorship, suggesting activities previously associated with industry funding are more widespread among all academic scientists.

"Industry relationships may be declining because of increased regulation by universities as well as a general attitude among the public that working with industry is in some way bad," explains Eric Campbell, PhD, director of Research at the MGH Institute for Health Policy (MGH-IHP), the study's senior author. "But the drop in these relationships doesn't mean that institutions can stop paying attention to them. Finding that half of all university scientists both clinical and nonclinical researchers have some form of industry relationships emphasizes the importance of continued and perhaps more intense reporting and scrutiny."

However, Campbell notes, the fact that less than 65 percent of full professors report industry relationships refutes the common assertion that there are no senior academic scientists without industry connections who could serve on advisory panels for the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration. "Those organizations just need to look a little harder for such folks," he says. Campbell is an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Zinner is a senior lecturer at Brandeis University.

Co-authors of the Health Affairs report are Dragana Bjankovic, MA, and Brian Clarridge, PhD, Center for Survey Research, University of Massachusetts, Boston; and David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, formerly director of the MGH-IHP and now national coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The study was supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $600 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Turtle expert to speak at Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek - MLive.com

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 06:29 AM PST

By Andrea Tamboer | The Grand Rapids Press

November 03, 2009, 9:02AM

Turtle guy Courtesy photoHerpetologist David Mifsud will talk about turtles in Michigan at Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek.

BATTLE CREEK -- Those hard-shell creatures won't be a hard sell when Herpetologist David Mifsud presents "Conservation of Turtles in Michigan" at 7 p.m. Nov. 11 at Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek.

This is the second lecture of the zoo, home to many turtle species in its natural wetlands, and the Brigham Audubon Society Chapter of Michigan Audubon Society Fall Lecture Series.

Mifsud, owner and founder of Herpetological Resource and Management, is a certified professional wetland scientist and professional ecologist. He has worked for more than 10 years in wildlife biology, wetland ecology and habitat conservation and management.

Mifsud developed Michigan's first salamander monitoring program and has overseen large-scale ecosystem mapping and amphibian and reptile rescue programs. He holds a master's degree in Environmental Science from the University of Michigan as well as degrees in Biology, Geography, and Environmental Studies from Aquinas College.

The free, public lecture is in the Cross Administration Building. For more information, call (269) 979-1351, or go to binderparkzoo.org.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

So. Calif. to Hear How Darwin Was Wrong - ChristianNewsWire

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 08:02 AM PST

Contact: Dick McDonald, 909-636-9495

SANTA ANA, Calif., Nov. 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- While many people continue to believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, a group of scientists will present overwhelming scientific evidence against Darwin's speculations.

"If Charles Darwin knew 150 years ago what we know today, he likely would not have published Origin of the Species," said John Baumgardner, Ph.D., whose organization, Logos Research Associates, will lead the two-day "Darwin Was Wrong" conference Nov. 13-14 at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.

"We can perhaps excuse Darwin, given his ignorance about the true complexity of living organisms and about genetics," said Dr. Baumgardner, a geophysicist whose career was as research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M. "Today's knowledge of molecular biology, however, has made Darwin's imagined single-cell-organism-to-man evolution indefensible."

Seven Ph.D scientists will highlight Darwin's mistakes from genetics, geology, molecular biology, paleontology and other science areas.

Geneticist John Sanford, Ph.D., will show where Darwin went wrong with natural selection. "It is amazing to me that in this 'year of Darwin,' the whole world is bowing down to this man even while modern science is proving him wrong on all fronts," said Dr. Sanford, vice president of Logos and inventor of the world-famous "gene gun" while a Cornell professor in the 1980s. "Natural selection happens but it does not do what Darwin needed it to do. Darwin built a worldview that has come to be the governing paradigm of the intellectual community; that worldview is now collapsing in the face of new advances in science."

Another Logos founding scientist, geologist Steven A. Austin, Ph.D., has traveled to southern Argentina to document Darwin's geological mistakes. "Let nobody confuse you -- Darwin was a geologist, but he was wrong about geology," said Dr. Austin, who just returned from leading a Geological Society of America field trip to Mount St. Helens, Wash., where volcanic eruptions in 1980 and 1982 formed in just hours what many geologists had thought took much longer to form. "Mount St. Helens proved these changes can occur in days - not millions or billions of years."

Other conference speakers include:

Dr. Charles Ware, president of Crossroads Bible College, Indianapolis, Ind., and a chaplain for the Indiana Pacers basketball and Indianapolis Colts football teams, who will show Darwin's errors regarding race and the legacy of racial conflict;

Pastor Chuck Smith, senior pastor and teacher at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, who will address how Darwin was wrong about God.

Robert Carter, Ph.D., a marine biologist, who will discuss Darwin's mistakes regarding the complexity of life and the origin of man;

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., a biologist who has recently written a book called The Slaughter of the Dissidents that details the automatic expulsion from academic circles of those who criticize or question evolution. He will show how Darwin was wrong about the so-called tree of life, one of evolution's major icons;

Marcus Ross, Ph.D., a paleontologist who will address Darwin's errors regarding the fossil record;

Thomas McMullen, Ph.D., who will demonstrate how Darwin was wrong about science.

For further information, call Jim Pamplin, Logos founder and administrator, at (714) 425-9474; or Dick McDonald, (909) 636-9495.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Biology

Tuesday, November 3, 2009