Biology 103 course

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This week we're beginning a set of labs on humans as biological entities ... and a set of labs in which you should use the skills and insights you've developed as a researcher in past labs to develop and carry out your own lines of investigation. We will introduce you to some techniques for observing the pulse, and make a few observations on it together. It is then your task, in groups of three, to develop an interesting inquiry using those techniques to explore the regulation of the pulse ("who's in control?" - "the difference between animate and conscious"?), carry it out, and report your study (motivation, observations, interpretations) here in the lab forum area.

 

Glad you're here, to share explorations of life. If you're registered in Biology 103, remember to log in before posting here. Others are welcome to contribute without logging in. Such comments though will be checked to avoid spam postings and so be delayed in appearing.

Glad you're here, to share explorations of life. If you're registered in Biology 103, remember to log in before posting here. Others are welcome to contribute without logging in. Such comments though will be checked to avoid spam postings and so be delayed in appearing.

Our broad objective today is to make sense and explore the implications of a remark about small scales by the physicist Erwin Schrodinger in a classic book called What Is Life? published in 1944.   Schrodinger asserted that underlying all order is random motion.  Is that so, and, if so, how does order emerge?

Glad you're here, to share explorations of life. If you're registered in Biology 103, remember to log in before posting here. Others are welcome to contribute without logging in. Such comments though will be checked to avoid spam postings and so be delayed in appearing.

As you've discovered, scientific research can be done (and often is done) just by trying to make sense of the world around one, with that motiving observations that in turn lead to more specific understandings and new questions and hypotheses. Scientific research can also be done by using general questions and existing observations to shape a particular hypothesis that itself motivates new observations. Today's lab is aimed at giving you some experience with the latter kind of scientific research.

The funding agencies were impressed by the results of the initial surveys of plant life on Nearer and Farther. The findings clearly indicate that there is a diversity of plant life on both planets, while highlighting difficulties in categorizing such life (problems that are familiar from previous experience on Earth). In general, more effective categorizing schemes seem to involve

• acknowledgement of the possibility that the appearance of individual organisms may change over time
• descriptions in terms that can be conveyed as unequivocably as possible to other observers, including quantification where possible
• the use, where possible, of qualitative (logically exclusive) instead of quantitative characteristics

Glad you're here, to share explorations of life. If you're registered in Biology 103, remember to log in before posting here. Others are welcome to contribute without logging in. Such comments though will be checked to avoid spam postings and so be delayed in appearing.