ERP Peak Detective: Introduction to Event-Related Potential Analysis with MATLAB part of Teaching Computation with MATLAB:MATLAB Workshop 2025:Activities
This scaffolded laboratory activity introduces students with minimal programming experience to Event-Related Potential (ERP) analysis using MATLAB. Students progress from interactive visual exploration of neural ...

An Arabidopsis Mutant Screen CURE for a Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory Course part of CUREnet:CURE Collection
This CURE is designed from a crucial component of a chloroplast lipid signaling research project and has been implemented for a cell and molecular biology laboratory course at Michigan State University. The research laboratory generated an engineered plant line producing a lipid-derived plant hormone and mutagenized this line. The research question is "what transporters or receptors are involved in the hormone signaling transduction or perception processes?". Students form research hypotheses based on the research model, design experiments, perform experiments, collect and analyze data, make scientific arguments, and share their findings with the learning community. Specifically, the students culture the mutagenized plant population and select the desired mutant phenotypes, followed by genotyping the mutants and characterizing the mutants by basic biochemical approaches. Mathematics is also integrated into the course design. As the students studied the relevant genetic, molecular and biochemical concepts during this CURE, they use the core idea of information flow and data they generate in the lab to make claims about their mutant plants and support these claims with evidence and reasoning.

Using Ecological Forecasts to Guide Decision Making part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Because of increased variability in populations, communities, and ecosystems due to land use and climate change, there is a pressing need to know the future state of ecological systems across space and time. ...

Characterizing the Aging Process Using Caenorhabditis elegans and Reverse Genetics part of CUREnet:Institutes:Community College of Rhode island:Examples
Using gene silencing (RNAi) in the nemotode C. elegans, students will identify genetic modifiers of proteins with roles in aging by reverse genetics. Specifically, students will analyze the effect of knocking down genes on the level of aging-related proteins tagged with fluorophores (GFP, RFP, etc.). Each group of students will use function-specific RNAi libraries (transcription factors, kinases, etc) already established in our lab. Furthermore, students will evaluate the effect of genetic modifiers on proteostasis and lifespan. In addition to becoming familiar with C. elegans work and appreciating the use of model organisms, the students will master microscopy, genetic crosses, gene silencing, and molecular and biochemical readout assays such as qPCR and immunoblotting.

Wind and Ocean Ecosystems part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Wind has a fundamental impact on ocean ecosystems. Wind drives physical processes, including current development and upwelling through Ekman transport. These physical processes, in turn, have cascading impacts on ...

Nutrient Monitoring in the Chesapeake Bay part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
The Chesapeake Bay waters receive input from rivers and streams from areas of Washington D.C, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, and some parts of New York and Pennsylvania. Historically, humongous ...

Module 4 Polar Ecosystems part of Oceans in the News:Oceans in the News – Polar Ocean Science, Data, and the Media
This module follows logically from the previous and gives a biological context to sea ice. Students will review knowledge about seasonal trends in sea ice and learn how this impacts organisms that live in polar ...

Paleoclimate and Ocean Biogeochemistry part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
This module guides students through an examination of how surface ocean productivity relates to global climate on glacial-interglacial timescales and how the availability of ocean nutrients can be correlated with ...

Water Quality Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Water quality is a critical concept for undergraduate students studying Earth Sciences, Biology, and Environmental Sciences. Many of these students will be asked to assess the impacts of a proposed anthropogenic ...

Lake Mixing Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Stratified lakes exhibit vertical gradients in organisms, nutrients, and oxygen, which have important implications for ecosystem structure and functioning. Mixing disrupts these gradients by redistributing these ...

Nutrient Loading Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Estimating nutrient loads is a critical concept for students studying water quality in a variety of environmental settings. Many STEM/Environmental science students will be asked to assess the impacts of a proposed anthropogenic activities on human water resources and/or ecosystems as part of their future careers. This module engages students in exploring factors contributing to the actual loads of nitrogen that are transmitted down streams. Nitrogen is a key water quality contaminant contributing to surface water quality issues in fresh, salt, and estuarine environments. Students will utilize real-time nitrate data from the US Geological Survey to calculate nitrate loads for several locations and investigate the interplay of concentration and discharge that contributes to calculated loads.

Assessing the Risk of Invasive Species Using Community Science Data part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
This module introduces students who are already familiar with GIS to doing comparative analyses with large-scale community science (often called citizen science) data sets. Students will explore how we can use ...

Climate Change Mind Map part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities

Plankton Lab part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Plankton Lab online (developed for remote learning during COVID-19 pandemic); students will explore plankton samples from three different locations in San Francisco Bay, identify organisms, and characterize the ...

Procrustes Skull Analysis part of Teaching Computation with MATLAB:Past Workshops:MATLAB Workshop October 2022:Activities
Procrustes analysis is a form of statistical shape analysis used to analyze the distribution of a set of shapes. The goal of this assignment is to compare different skull types to a reference skull to determine ...

Biodiversity part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
In this module, students will analyze data from the Florida Keys Reef Visual Census (FKRVS), a long-term monitoring effort of key reef fish populations in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Students will calculate the species richness as well as the Shannon index and Pielou's evenness index across different years of data and between different reef types. Furthermore, students will explore how years with high frequencies of hurricanes impact these measures. The module culminates with students writing a summary finding of how reef types and hurricane frequency will impact the FKRVS in the future.

Lake Metabolism Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Different lakes exhibit a range of catchment sizes, morphometry, and land use that contribute to differences in lake function. These functional differences mean that lakes vary in ecosystem services such as habitat ...

Environmental Pollution & Public Health part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Environmental health is a field of study within public health that is concerned with human-environment interactions, and specifically, how the environment influences public well-being. In this module, students will explore how environmental pollution impacts public health through comparing cancer rates of areas with known environmental pollutants to the national average through a t-test. Students can further their knowledge by comparing the concentrations of atmospheric pollutants in areas with known sources to control sites without such sources. Project EDDIE modules are designed with an A-B-C structure to make them flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

Isolation and characterization of antibiotic-producing soil bacteria part of CUREnet:Institutes:NC Central University:Examples
One of the biggest threat in hospitals is the rising cases of people who harbor antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. Therefore, it is critical to find and characterize novel antibiotics to combat the resistant strains. Most of the antibiotics used in healthcare settings come from anti-biotic producing bacteria and fungi found in the soil. The goal of this CURE will be to isolate antibiotic-producing bacteria and fungi from the soil in the local area, and to determine the chemistry of the antibiotics. An extension of the project will be to determine how the presence of antibiotic-producing microbes affect other organisms resident in the soil, as it is unclear as to why microbes use energy to produce antibiotic factors.

Biomes, Vegetation Structure, and Canopy Height part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Students will develop a concept of vegetation structure and biomes through an exploration of field site data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) project. Students will compare characteristics of major groups of plants with respect to heat and drought tolerance, develop hypotheses for how canopy height may vary by several abiotic factors, and evaluate their hypotheses using graphed data, trendlines and r-squared values.