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- All Subjects: Biology
- All Subjects: Science--Study and teaching
- Creators: Kuang, Yang
‘Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, their several Names, Conditions, Kinds, Virtues (both Natural and Fanciful), Countries of their Species, their Love and Hatred to Humankind, and the wonderful work of Natural Selection in their Evolution, Preservation, and Destruction.
Interwoven with curious variety of Creative Narrations out of Academic Literatures, Scholars, Artists, Scientists, and Poets. Illustrated with diverse Graphics and Emblems both pleasant and profitable for Students of all Faculties and Professions.’
‘Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, their several Names, Conditions, Kinds, Virtues (both Natural and Fanciful), Countries of their Species, their Love and Hatred to Humankind, and the wonderful work of Natural Selection in their Evolution, Preservation, and Destruction.
Interwoven with curious variety of Creative Narrations out of Academic Literatures, Scholars, Artists, Scientists, and Poets. Illustrated with diverse Graphics and Emblems both pleasant and profitable for Students of all Faculties and Professions.’
March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.
This packet includes:
2021 Bracket Common Name
2021 Bracket Latin Binomial
Bracket FAQ (English)
Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (English)
Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (English)
Visual Arts Lesson Plan (English)
Language Arts Lesson Plan (English)
Guide for Youngest Players (English)
JUMBO Bracket for Youngest Players (English)
2021 Bracket Common Name (Spanish)
Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (Spanish)
Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (Spanish)
Visual Arts Lesson Plan (Spanish)
Language Arts Lesson Plan (Spanish)
JUMBO Bracket for Youngest Players (Spanish)
This packet includes:
2020 Bracket Common Name
2020 Bracket Latin Binomial
Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (English)
Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (English)
Visual Arts Lesson Plan (English)
Language Arts Lesson Plan (English)
2020 Bracket Common Name (Spanish)
Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (Spanish)
Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (Spanish)
The success of social insects is dependent upon cooperative behavior and adaptive strategies shaped by natural selection that respond to internal or external conditions. The objective of my research was to investigate specific mechanisms that have helped shaped the structure of division of labor observed in social insect colonies, including age polyethism and nutrition, and phenomena known to increase colony survival such as egg cannibalism. I developed various Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) models in which I applied dynamical, bifurcation, and sensitivity analysis to carefully study and visualize biological outcomes in social organisms to answer questions regarding the conditions under which a colony can survive. First, I investigated how the population and evolutionary dynamics of egg cannibalism and division of labor can promote colony survival. I then introduced a model of social conflict behavior to study the inclusion of different response functions that explore the benefits of cannibalistic behavior and how it contributes to age polyethism, the change in behavior of workers as they age, and its biological relevance. Finally, I introduced a model to investigate the importance of pollen nutritional status in a honeybee colony, how it affects population growth and influences division of labor within the worker caste. My results first reveal that both cannibalism and division of labor are adaptive strategies that increase the size of the worker population, and therefore, the persistence of the colony. I show the importance of food collection, consumption, and processing rates to promote good colony nutrition leading to the coexistence of brood and adult workers. Lastly, I show how taking into account seasonality for pollen collection improves the prediction of long term consequences.
First, a data-driven model is derived for neutral lipid synthesis in green microalgae with respect to nitrogen limitation. This model synthesizes several established frameworks in phycology and ecological stoichiometry. The model demonstrates how the cell quota is a useful abstraction for understanding the metabolic shift to neutral lipid production that is observed in certain oleaginous species.
Next a producer-grazer model is developed based on the cell quota model and nutrient recycling. The model incorporates a novel feedback loop to account for animal toxicity due to accumulation of nitrogen waste. The model exhibits rich, complex dynamics which leave several open mathematical questions.
Lastly, disease dynamics in vivo are in many ways analogous to those of an ecosystem, giving natural extensions of the cell quota concept to disease modeling. Prostate cancer can be modeled within this framework, with androgen the limiting nutrient and the prostate and cancer cells as competing species. Here the cell quota model provides a useful abstraction for the dependence of cellular proliferation and apoptosis on androgen and the androgen receptor. Androgen ablation therapy is often used for patients in biochemical recurrence or late-stage disease progression and is in general initially effective. However, for many patients the cancer eventually develops resistance months to years after treatment begins. Understanding how and predicting when hormone therapy facilitates evolution of resistant phenotypes has immediate implications for treatment. Cell quota models for prostate cancer can be useful tools for this purpose and motivate applications to other diseases.