Focuses on the way learning about genetics and evolution raises ideas that pupils and adults should relate to themselves whether what is learned helps reveal what science can and cannot say about human nature. Reviews the impact of informal learning after exploring the role and influence of informal learning channels. (Contains 79 references.)…

Discusses the place of the topic of evolution in high school biology curricula in history, new challenges and misconceptions about science, and the need for biology education. (Contains 20 references.) (YDS)

This article is geared toward high school biology teachers. The author discusses his own personal experiences of being a biology teacher. The author discusses Intelligent Design (ID) and how it adds interesting facet to discussions of the cultural context in which the science of evolution continues to develop.

When science teachers in a small Pennsylvania town were asked to read a statement to their classes that introduced students to the concept of "intelligent design," they refused, citing legal and professional obligations. This article discusses teacher's views on religion and evolution and how their opinions influenced religion's place in…

Science and religion are two contradicting aspects when it comes to tracing evolution and creationism. Considering that these are two important things, revising statewide science or eliminating evolution and changing it to Intelligent Design (ID) may be the best thing to be done to create a curriculum that has a better science teaching. In this…

An international team that includes researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has discovered that mammalian chromosomes have evolved by breaking at specific sites rather than randomly as long thought--and that many of the breakage hot spots are also involved in human…

Drawing on the theoretical and empirical foundations of two evolutionary models, we argue that, among humans and other mammals, a twofold selection process would parsimoniously account for sex-linked advantages in spatial contexts. In males, a superiority for both solving navigation-related spatial problems and understanding physical principles…

The development of concepts of individual death and species extinction were examined in two studies. Sixty-eight, 4- to 9-year-old children and their parents participated in Study 1. Although preschoolers had some understanding of the concept of death, the ability to explain death and extinction improved over the school-age years. However, all age…

Massive extinctions of animals and the arrival of the first humans in ancient Australia--which occurred 45,000 to 55,000 years ago--may be linked. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution, University of Colorado, Australian National University, and Bates College believe that massive fires set by the first humans may have altered the ecosystem of…

Evolution by natural selection may be characterized as a system in which a large store of genetic information will persist indefinitely while it remains coordinated with its environment but will continuously produce small random variations that are tested for environmental effectiveness. In any environment, effective variations will persist while…

Perhaps more than any other figure in American history, William Jennings Bryan is remembered for specific and identifiable moments of rhetorical action: the much-revered 1896 "Cross of gold" speech and the much-maligned Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925. The dissonance between these two events, at least with respect to the ways in…

Gottlieb's (1991/2007) target article represents a milestone in our understanding of the impact of social experience on developmental malleability. Interactions across the species-typical and operant behavior categories are increasingly understood to exist. The social contingencies present in the normal species-typical developmental manifold are…

Mice from replicate lines, selectively bred based on high daily wheel-running rates, run more total revolutions and at higher average speeds than do mice from nonselected control lines. Based on this difference it was assumed that selected mice would find the opportunity to run in a wheel a more efficacious consequence. To assess this assumption…

This study observes the evolution of persons with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) and profound intellectual disabilities living in residences with a Program for Residents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) characterised by a different educator's presence ratio and different logistic accommodations. This population is characterised by the…

In the ever-expanding realm of science, educators struggle to share new discoveries and techniques with their students. Keeping abreast of recent advances can be daunting, even for the most motivated teacher. Fortunately, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program helps educators keep up with the…