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rebeccmeisterEvery spring, I teach a freshman seminar course where the main goal of the course is to learn how to navigate the primary research literature. For the nuts and bolts of the course, I pick a theme, and then we read four primary research articles related to the theme.
Some themes are easier than others. Last year's theme was challenging: thermal biology. This might not sound like a challenging theme, but it was. I wanted to include papers on both vertebrates and invertebrates, ectotherms and homeotherms. There are a lot of papers with oodles of gene expression data in them, but those are can only be so interesting.
In any case, mulling over potential themes for this year, I decided it might be interesting to do The Biology of Sleep. Off the top of my head I recalled hearing about a study demonstrating that jumping spiders engage in REM sleep. How cool is that?
...several minutes later, I've found three other awesome papers as well. One on frigatebirds, who sleep while flying, one on strategic sleeping in honey bees, and one in fruit flies that explored flies who sleep a ton vs. flies who only sleep a little.
I think the students are going to really get into this topic. We shall see.
Some themes are easier than others. Last year's theme was challenging: thermal biology. This might not sound like a challenging theme, but it was. I wanted to include papers on both vertebrates and invertebrates, ectotherms and homeotherms. There are a lot of papers with oodles of gene expression data in them, but those are can only be so interesting.
In any case, mulling over potential themes for this year, I decided it might be interesting to do The Biology of Sleep. Off the top of my head I recalled hearing about a study demonstrating that jumping spiders engage in REM sleep. How cool is that?
...several minutes later, I've found three other awesome papers as well. One on frigatebirds, who sleep while flying, one on strategic sleeping in honey bees, and one in fruit flies that explored flies who sleep a ton vs. flies who only sleep a little.
I think the students are going to really get into this topic. We shall see.
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Date: 2023-01-16 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-17 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-16 11:46 pm (UTC)"New strategy: we sleep at night!" :)
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Date: 2023-01-17 10:45 am (UTC)Wow! Does that mean jumping spiders dream?
That is like wild!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2023-01-17 03:06 pm (UTC)