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How much do students really know about chromosomes? This article describes a partner activity and then a whole-class activity that use modeling to teach DNA replication, connect it to the shape of chromosomes during mitosis, and help students understand how daughter cells have the same DNA. Modeling is integral to science, helping students understand phenomena that may not be seen.

Though a culture which produced such literary genius as Sidney, Shakespeare, and Milton should alone command closer examination, little attention has been given to how English Renaissance readers actually responded to and engaged with the pages of the Classics, their ancient Greek and Roman texts. As the scholarship work of Anthony Grafton suggests, few were passive readers, rather, as taught by men such as Erasmus, they approached the Classics with goal-oriented determination. While some sought political strategy and others sought literary stylistic techniques, mostly, and often simultaneously, they sought moral philosophy—the moral lesson or the mentor to follow—that which they judged could improve their lives. With a passion comparable to one searching and sifting for gold, these readers—the scholars, the translators, and the commonplacers (readers who kept their own personal notebooks) —searched and sifted through the riverbed of their ancient texts, interpreting and reinterpreting and, at times, reinventing these texts in order to extract a central core of moral philosophy—the gold! Citing specific examples of reading in the translators’ prefaces and commentaries, a scholar’s marginalia, and the commonplacers’ personal notebooks, I demonstrate how this practice of reading to extract moral philosphy connects to Sir Philip Sidney’s model of "how one should read" as revealed in his treatise,The Defense of Poetry.Since there is evidence of a wide-spread cultural practice of such active reading, I also explore how these reading practices may have affected the English Renaissance literary culture.

Learning about chromosomes is standard fare in biology classrooms today. However, students may find it difficult to understand the relationships among the "genome", "chromosomes", "genes", a "gene locus", and "alleles". In the simple activity described in this article, which follows the 5E approach (Bybee et al. 2006), students create paper models of chromosomes to learn how these terms are related and also to learn about the science and engineering practice of modeling. This activity should come after students have been taught DNA structure, including complementary base pairs (Adenine-Thymine; Guanine-Cytosine).

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is life's most amazing molecule. It carries the genetic instructions that almost every organism needs to develop and reproduce. In the human genome alone, there are some three billion DNA base pairs. The most difficult part of teaching DNA structure, however, may be getting students to visualize something as small as a DNA molecule, which is only 2 billionths of a meter in diameter (much smaller than the human hair's 100,000 billionths of a meter diameter). This article describes activities and models that introduce students to the components of DNA, including complementary base pairs and nucleotides, as well as the directionality of DNA--the fact that the two strands of DNA run in opposite directions to each other. In a kinesthetic activity, students position their bodies to create a DNA model and, in another activity, bend chenille stems (pipe cleaners) by hand to illustrate DNA structure and function. This helps students better understand growth and development of organisms, including inheritance and variation of traits. Students highly rate such simple classroom activities. The article includes a section that demonstrates how the activities connect to the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013).

There is a raised total serum amylase but no rise in pancreatic amylase in a large proportion of hyperemetic patients, according to research undertaken among pregnant women with hyperemesis gravidarum, nonvomiting pregnant women and female bulimic patients. This finding suggests that the source of the increased amylase is the salivary glands. It appears that the raised amylase in bulimia nervosa and hyperemsis is caused by vomiting. In bulimia nervosa, vomiting repeatedly stimulates the salivary glands, and this may lead to increased amylase production and enlargement of salivary glands.

This paper explores the role of landscape aesthetics and sustainability in the development of new rural housing prototypes. Historically, rural building forms were largely influenced by immediately available materials, climate and specific use, resulting in regionally identifiable typologies. Changes in the way we live, proximity to place of work, and the relationship between home, community and land-use have resulted in rural domestic buildings losing specific regional distinctions. The aim of this research is to generate new spatial models of autarkic housing and alternative massing arrangements that respond to local landscape qualities, hybrid land-use, urban densities and local renewable energy production. The outcomes provide semi-quantifiable spatial development prototypes that integrate these requirements within holistic conceptual frameworks for rural sustainable living providing alternative approaches to addressing Scottish policy legislation and a primer for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes a student activity that uses modeling to teach DNA replication and relates it to the shape of chromosomes during mitosis, and helps the students to understand how daughter cells have the same DNA. DNA replication can be taught in detail at various levels, and one needs to differentiate instruction on the basis of the level of students or class.