Migrations /* */ #mainpic { background: url(http://migration.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/earthview.jpg) no-repeat;}/**/ Migrations “The world moves and, deep inside, we long to move with it” About me Why “Migrations”BookshelfNewsPhotosQuotes Posted by: Dan | January 8, 2009 Inquiry-based Learning I’m certainly not trained in any established pedagogical strategies, and thus am not a qualified teacher. I’m a biologist, which makes me an expert of sorts on one area of science but inept at teaching it! Nevertheless, I was impressed by one teaching strategy: Inquiry-Based Learning:Inquiry-based learning is an instructional method developed during the discovery learning movement of the 1960s. It was developed in response to a perceived failure of more traditional forms of instruction, where students were required simply to memorize fact laden instructional materials. Inquiry learning is a form of active learning, where progress is assessed by how well students develop experimental and analytical skills rather than how much knowledge they possess. [Links and citations in original.]In this strategy, teachers become facilitators, and independent thinking and problem-solving become central. Of course that is the core principle of science that must be conveyed to students. But there’s another aspect of science education — surveying the vast body of knowledge of a field of science, including the history of the field and dominant conceptual frameworks, that you can’t teach by student-driven investigation. A blend of the two, hands-on investigation and critical review of theory, are how scientists pursue discoveries, and how students should be taught science as well.Okay, that’s my outsider’s view of science education — for more, check out this Downloadable book [.doc] about the teaching of science inquiry. Read More… No Comments yet... Posted in Education | Tags: Education Posted by: Dan | January 5, 2009 Counterfactual Beliefs and Religion Scott Atran, in his book In Gods We Trust, brushed over something that came back to me in a discussion recently - how some religious beliefs are “nuts”, or more precisely, counterfactual (e.g., broad concepts such as Flood Geology, Creationism and especially the Young Earth variety, etc.; and also more specific instances such as talking animals, objects defying gravity, and so on). From the intro to Chapter 4 (page 83), “The Mostly Mundane Nature of Religious Belief” Atran states:Religous traditions do not consist of cultural “worldviews,” “theories,” “systems,” “codes,” “grammars,” or any such determinant structures. The beliefs current in religious doctrine and liturgy consist of logically unintegrated counterintuitions and anecdotal episodes that evoke a much richer substrate of everyday, commonsense beliefs. These commonsense beliefs, which are usually readily available to everyone, remain implicit and are rarely articulated. Transmission and survival of religious creed and ritual depends, for the most part, on the facility with which explicit religious beliefs and practices are able to elicit, and render relevant, underlying commonsense beliefs.Fully developed cognitions of folkpsychology and agency involve metarepresentation, which makes deception possible. This threatens social order. But these same metacognitive capacities provide the hope and promise of open-ended solutions through representations of counterintuitive supernatural worlds that cannot be logically or empirically verified or falsified.Core religious beliefs minimally violate ordinary intuititions about how the world is, with all of its inescapable problems, thus enabling people to imagine minimally impossible worlds that appear to solve existential problems, including death and deception. The dual aspect of supernatural beliefs—commonsensical and counterfactual—renders them intuitively compelling yet fantastic, eminently recognizable but surprising. Such beliefs grab attention, activate intuition, and mobilize inference in ways that greatly facilitate their mnemonic retention, social transmission, cultural selection, and historic survival. Read More… No Comments yet... Posted in Religion | Tags: In Gods We Trust, psychology, Religion Posted by: Dan | January 2, 2009 Small Changes Please note three small changes for how this blog is run:I’ve created a long-overdue list of Rules of Discussion (aka, a “Comment Policy”).I’ve created a separate page for News Articles, to both encourage links to interesting articles in the news in a way that is accessible to the comment feed, and to keep the post threads clean of off-topic links.I’ve changed one setting for comment handling by WordPress: “Comment author must have a previously approved comment.” That is, first-time commenters will have their comment held for moderation. Comments Off Posted in Uncategorized Posted by: Dan | December 31, 2008 White-Headed Duck  Last week, on Boxing Day, I went along with for an outing to Larnaca to see a bird that had been reported there - White-headed Duck (Oxyura leucocephala). Why is this duck interesting, you might ask. For its rarity, mostly. This species’ population was probably over 100,000 in the early 20th century, falling to an estimated 19,000 birds in 1991, since when numbers have probably declined to less than 10,000 individuals. Concurrently, breeding populations have become extinct in Italy, France, Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Israel and Egypt, and probably also in the Ukraine and Armenia. [Supporting data is cited on the linked Birdlife Species Factsheet.]There had been reports of one of these ducks from a few days before our trek, but none that day. We did however see a number of other neat birds that I’d either not yet seen or seen only once before: Black-necked Grebe, Tufted Duck, Mediterranean Gull, Armenian Gull, Northern Lapwing, Water Rail, Mustached Warbler, Common Snipe, Spur-winged Plover, Long-legged Buzzard, and Little Owl. Read More… No Comments yet... Posted in Birding | Tags: birds Posted by: Dan | December 30, 2008 After a Year in Cyprus Today marks one year since I expatriated to Cyprus, and it is also the end of the calendar year - making this an ideal time for me to pause for a moment to reflect on life here. The main obstacles to the year for me have been things that I would have had to face back in the States as well: frustrations associated with (a) buying and moving into a new flat; (b) pulling off a wedding and playing tour guide in a country that I was still lost in; (c) finding a job and then looking for a better one; and (d) getting familiar with new friends and finding my way around in a new city. The only major obstacle that I would not have faced in the States is learning a new language (Greek). Getting to know an entirely new culture has been fun. Most of the people I’ve gotten to know in Cyprus are friends and relatives of my wife, and they’re all good people: friendly, intelligent, and well-respected. Mostly though, the culture I’ve experienced has centered around food, and lots of it, yet somehow I seem to have lost about 5Kg. Anyway, Χρόνια Πολλά (Happy New Year), with wishes for peace on Earth, and good will to all. Read More… 3 Comments Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Cyprus Posted by: Dan | December 21, 2008 Obama and his Science Team Obama pledges to embrace scientific advice, no matter how inconvenient. It’s just common sense - listen to the scientific experts for advice on science-related issues, no matter how inconvenient. But after 8 years of the Bush administration and the Republican war on science, common sense seems like a revolutionary idea. No Comments yet... Posted in Politics | Tags: Obama, Politics, Science Posted by: Dan | December 20, 2008 In Memoriam  Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was a Cornell astronomy professor and author. Most significantly, in my mind, is his use of the image of Earth from the edge of the solar system, which is partially attributed to starting the modern environmental movement. Simply put, he helped us as humans rethink our place in the Universe. He also wrote and narrated the highly acclaimed science documentary Cosmos, and tried more than anyone before him to make science accessible to the non-scientist. Ten of my favorite Sagan quotes are below the fold: Read More… No Comments yet... Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Carl Sagan Posted by: Dan | December 16, 2008 Evolution as a Lens Through Which to View the World  Why does giving mineral supplements to undernourished, anemic individuals cause many of them to die of bacterial infections? Why did Dr. Heimlich need to develop a maneuver to dislodge food from peoples’ windpipes? Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and a significant tendency for retinal detachment, but a squid’s eyes, which provide equally sharp vision, do not have either problem? Why are depression and obesity at epidemic levels in the U.S.? When Europeans came to the Americas, why did 90% of the Native Americans die of European diseases, but few Europeans died of American diseases? Why do pregnant women get “morning sickness?” Why do people in industrialized countries have higher incidence of Crohn’s disease (related to irritable bowel syndrome) and asthma than people in undeveloped countries? Why does malaria still kill over one million people each year? Why is so much of the product, Depend® or Poise® (for incontinence), sold each year? Why do people given anti-diarrheal medication take twice as long to recover from dysentery as untreated ones? Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele, which, in the homozygous condition, confers resistance to HIV infection? Why do older men often develop urinary problems? Why do so many people in Austin suffer from “cedar fever?” Read More… 4 Comments Posted in Evolution | Tags: Evolution, medicine Posted by: Dan | December 14, 2008 Birdwatching in Kidasi Yesterday, my wife and I made it out for a birdwatching trip with Birdlife Cyprus. That meant an almost 2-hr drive from Nicosia past Petrou Tou Romiou to the Asprokremmos Dam to meet up with the group, before caravanning up the valley some 10km.Some notes on the birds we saw below the fold: Read More… No Comments yet... Posted in Birding | Tags: birds, Cyprus Posted by: Dan | December 9, 2008 What Are Ecosystem Services Via Action Bioscience, a very educational primer on Ecosystem services reprinted from a factsheet from the Ecological Society of America:Natural ecosystems and the plants and animals within them provide humans with services that would be very difficult to duplicate. While it is often impossible to place an accurate monetary amount on ecosystem services, we can calculate some of the financial values. Many of these services are performed seemingly for “free,” yet are worth many trillions of dollars, for example:Much of the Mississippi River Valley’s natural flood protection services were destroyed when adjacent wetlands were drained and channels altered. As a result, the 1993 floods resulted in property damages estimated at twelve billion dollars partially from the inability of the Valley to lessen the impacts of the high volumes of water.80% of the world’s population relies upon natural medicinal products. Of the top 150 prescription drugs used in the U.S., 118 originate from natural sources: 74% from plants, 18% from fungi, 5% from bacteria, and 3% from one vertebrate (snake species). Nine of the top 10 drugs originate from natural plant products.Over 100,000 different animal species — including bats, bees, flies, moths, beetles, birds, and butterflies — provide free pollination services. One third of human food comes from plants pollinated by wild pollinators. The value of pollination services from wild pollinators in the U.S. alone is estimated at four to six billion dollars per year. No Comments yet... Posted in Conservation | Tags: ecosystems, environment Older Posts » Categories Anthropology Biophilia Birding Books Cell Biology Basic Concepts Cells Weekly Stem Cells Climate Change Conservation Creationism Education Evolution Humanism Humor Icons of Migration Marine Science Metablogging Philosophy Politics Racism Religion Science Uncategorized Profile 
Dan is a postdoc at the University of Cyprus, and a member of BirdLife Cyprus. This blog is a chronicle of the things that capture Dan's attention. Dan also blogs at Bitesize Bio.
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