ABOUT THIS ISSUE
- about KSN
- about the author

IN THIS ISSUE
- introduction
- workshops
- field trips
- general sessions
- instant updates
- symposium
- paper sessions
- AIDS in American society
- sponsored events
- exhibitors
- banquet
- summary
- KABT takes a look back at 50 years of biology education
- participants

This page was last modified:
September 1, 2003

Originally posted:
March 17, 2003

Get Involved - Stay Informed
edited by Bob Rose

FIELD TRIPS

This convention offered 26 field trips, including nine full-day trips, 13 half-day trips, 3 night trips, and one special tour/workshop of the Sargent-Welch Scientific Company's manufacturing, engineering, and distribution facility in Skokie, Illinois.  Field trips are generally fee supported.  This year's daytime trips ranged from $5 to $20.  Following are some reports of trips KABTers attended.

Argonne National Laboratory

Because of the restricted nature of this facility, participants had to sign up ahead of time and show identification before entry was allowed into this full-day field trip. Teachers were invited to visit individual laboratories within the Argonne National Laboratory's Division of Biological, Environmental and Medical Research facilities.  Scientists discussed their research activities and time was allowed for interaction between the teachers and staff scientists.  General topics for the trip included: radiation toxicity, carcinogenesis, biophysics, and environmental sciences.

Shedd Aquarium

This half-day field trip was billed as a tour/workshop to introduce teachers to the intricacies of the largest aquarium in the world.  The trip itself was divided into three parts: (1) The education curator of the aquarium discussed the role of aquariums and zoos as one of the last resorts for many endangered gene pools.  She provided handouts, guidelines, and even a book to help teachers set up their own classroom aquaria and to make best use of them in their curricula.  She spoke of lessons to teach tank chemistry, tank physics, tank ecology, and evolution.  (2) An Aquarium staff member shared his expertise on how to set up and maintain an aquarium.  He answered numerous questions from the teachers, who seemed to have a plethora of individual aquarium problems.  (3) Teachers were led on a behind-the-scenes tour of the operation of the aquarium.  With any time left over teachers toured the aquarium along with other visitors that day and perused the bookshop.

GENERAL SESSIONS

Several general sessions were designed for large audiences to listen to experts.  Following a lecture there was generally time allowed for some questions from teachers.

Bacteria as Living Organisms: Multicellularity and Responsiveness

James Shapiro, a researcher and author with laudable credentials, asked his audience to consider that bacteria, prokaryotic unicellular organisms, "spend most of their time as multicellular organisms."  After assuring us that bacteria are essential for us [humans] to continue living, he presented evidence that colonies of bacteria exhibit division of labor, cellular differentiation within the colony, group activities, self-defense behaviors, and morphogenesis.

Using a combination of film clippings, slides, and VHS tape segments, he exhibited how individual bacteria and bacteria in groups respond differently to the same stimuli.  Dr. Shapiro mentioned a variety of mechanisms that function in the eukaryotic cell that also operate in prokaryotes to make the genome responsive to environmental change, e.g., transposable elements, gene splicing, overlapping sequences of coding, and regulatory sequences.

Perhaps the most challenging proposal from Dr. Shapiro was to our ideas of evolution.  He maintained that, in some bacteria, "DNA changes do not occur by accident."  [In other words, they are not Darwinian.]  While talking about bacteria evolving [developing] resistance to antibiotic chemicals he pointed out that antibiotic resistance is a multicellular phenomenon, where resistance plasmids can be moved around within a colony.  These plasmids are capable of directing a wide variety of chemical activities, including "site-specific recombination" of DNA molecules.  This apparent manipulation of DNA is important.  If Dr. Shapiro is interpreting what he describes accurately, then, as he says, "we're going to have to have a very dramatic change in our thinking about genetics and evolution in general."

INSTANT UPDATES

Instant update sessions allow teachers to listen to practicing scientists share their latest findings.  Not only does this "update" the teacher, but it often stimulates after-session debates and gives teachers ideas to share with their students.

The Mechanisms of Memory was presented by Dr. John Disterhoft, Northwestern University Medical School.

Dr. Disterhoft presented evidence that a specific layer of neurons within the hippocampus function as a storage area for the transfer of short term memory into long term memory.  The hippocampus receives projections from the parietal cortex.  The changes in the neurons of the CA 1 region of the hippocampus are post-synaptic.  Conditioning experiments with rabbits demonstrate that the action potential hyperpolarization is reduced in CA 1 neurons from conditioned animals as compared to controls.  Evidence suggests [but does not prove] that this effect is caused by a decreased calcium ion-mediated potassium ion current flow.  What is actually changing during learning seems to be potassium ion flow.  The region of the hippocampus that receives the projections from the parietal lobe does not demonstrate a reduction in hyperpolarization indicating that the CA 1 region is the transition zone in the storage of short term memory