Week 9, Chapter 6 -- Starting Assumptions Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Instructions:

Part 1:

Read through the questions below. Write a paragraph, 150 words minimum, in response to one or more of the questions below that interest you. Use D2L's spell checker or your word processor software to spell check your paragraph. (The latter will give you a word count as well.) Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed paragraph in the Starting Assumptions forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

Part 2:

Respond to the Starting Assumptions posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Jessica" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names posted on D2L).
• What constitutes a substantive response? This means that you have read and thought about the original post, and that after some reflection, you are extending one or more of the thoughts in the original post or offering an additional perspective as you might in a good conversation. It is not enough to say simply "nice job," "I liked that," "I think you're right about XXXX," "I disagree," etc. It is OK to disagree or agree, but the goal is to thoughtfully add something else interesting and new related to the content of the original post. At a minimum this should be at least 50 words, and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your paragraph and responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Starting Assumptions assignment. (Do not declare that you have completed these assignments until AFTER you have made your posts. Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Here are the questions to get you started:

• In what ways, if any, has cancer affected your life?
• Have you ever done a risk analysis to determine your personal risk for cancer? (You can do one at www.yourdiseaserisk.wustl.edu; it’s very enlightening, and it doesn’t take very long!).
• Do you continue any risky behaviors (e.g. heavy drinking, smoking, poor diet) even though you know they increase your cancer risk? Why or why not?
• Under what circumstances would you agree to a genetic test that would tell you with certainty whether you will get cancer?
• Some women with a strong genetic predisposition for breast cancer have one or both breasts removed before ever developing cancer. For example, Angelina Jolie in April 2013. Would you take such a drastic step, or, if you are male, how would you feel if a woman who is close to you made that decision?
• Many products on the open market claim to cure or at least treat cancer. Why do you think those aren’t listed as conventional treatments or covered by insurance? Do you think they should be covered by insurance?
• Have you heard of personlized (or individualized) cancer treatment? Do you think it will grow? (See this article for more information.)
• If you like Ted talks, have a look at the one called Animations of Unseen Biology. It contains very sophisticated animations of DNA replication and the process by which cells divide. When you look at it (the animation starts around 2:56, then another one at 4:45), has the speaker given you enough context to be able to understand what you are seeing? Animations like this are extremely expensive to produce. Why is being able to visualize molecular processes so important to biologists? Is it equally important for non-biologists?

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM