‘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.’

An effort to experiment on the novel Usutu virus in pure in silico methods was made to determine conformational changes with non polar point mutations in the amino acid sequence. The first method consisted of creating a Python program to exhaustively identify codons, amino acids, and dinucleotide bridges & nonbridges, including viral characteristics defined by Mollentze in 2021. The second method consisted of creating point mutations to non polar amino acids in deemed key sites of the Usutu virus envelope protein and finding the RMSD from the original structure. This resulted in one of two outcomes - either the experiment showed that the Usutu virus envelope protein is highly resistant to point mutations or in silico methods are inconsistent and biased, leading to inaccuracy.

This item includes:

1) The official bracket files for the 2022 MMM tournament

2) A screen-reader enabled bracket file

3) 2022 March Mammal Madness Educational Materials Packet – in English

4) 2022 March Mammal Madness Educational Materials Packet – in Spanish

5) March Mammal Madness, Middle School Lesson Plan : Ecosystems & National Parks

6) March Mammal Madness, High School Lesson Plan : Ecosystems & National Parks 

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 thesis presents a systematic review of viruses found in the Peromyscus leucopus rodent species in North America. Various viruses cause serious illness in humans through contact with infected rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, or inhalation of dust contaminated with the virus, with Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) being the most severe manifestation. Therefore, studying their distribution in rodent populations can inform public health interventions to reduce the risk of transmission. Through a literature review and data analysis, this study found that studying the distribution of viruses in rodents can help identify areas where humans may be at higher risk of contracting the virus, inform public health interventions to reduce the risk of HPS transmissions, and better understand the ecology of the virus and its host species, which can, in turn, inform conservation efforts. Furthermore, monitoring the spread of viruses over time and across regions can help us better understand their epidemiology and potential for future outbreaks, which can inform surveillance and response efforts to mitigate the impact of the virus on human and animal health. Overall, this study highlights the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in addressing complex public health and conservation issues and underscores the need for continued research in this area.