ASD Libraries: AP Biology: Final Project

Assignment Information

AP Biology Final Project

What if we live beyond 130?

What If We All Lived Beyond 130 Years?
From The Medical Futurist

Sexuality becoming technological

The Technological Future Of Sexuality And Sexual Health
From The Medical Futurist

Bioterrorism

Disruptive Technologies Push Bioterrorism To A Whole New Level
From The Medical Futurist in 2016

Biosensors

What biomarkers would you want to track and why
Nano Biosensors
- Measure through skin
- Will be able to detect proteins, antibodies
- Will put them under skin at some point and are chargeable
Uploaded to a cloud somewhere and companies that are developing them are amazon, google etc.
Releasing genetic data - it affects everyone in the family

Should parents save their baby's blood?

What is cord blood?
How is cord blood collected and stored?
Why isn’t cord blood collected in more places?
What are the benefits of saving baby’s cord blood?
What are the pros and cons of using private vs. public storage options?
List some companies that provide cord blood collection services (at least in three different parts of the world).

Why parents should save their baby's cord blood — and give it away
From Harvard Health Publishing

Smart Cells
The first private stem cell storage company in the UK
Cord Blood Association
Baby Cord Blood Banking

Cord Blood Banking Information for Consumers
From the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Should You Bank Your Baby’s Cord Blood?
From WebMD

Should germlines be genetically engineered?

Chinese scientist who produced genetically altered babies sentenced to 3 years in jail
Fron Science, December 2019
Chinese Scientist Who Genetically Edited Babies Gets 3 Years in Prison
From the New York Times
China jails 'gene-edited babies' scientist for three years
From the BBC
2 Chinese Babies With Edited Genes May Face Higher Risk Of Premature Death
From NPR
Crispr goes global: A snapshot of rules, policies, and attitudes
From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
China’s CRISPR babies: Read exclusive excerpts from the unseen original research
From MIT Technology Review

Bioethics

The Case of Caster Semenya

Testosterone Levels in Elite Athletes
From BioInteractive
Olympian Caster Semenya can compete with men 'without restriction,' IAAF states
From NBC News, 2019
How much testosterone is really too much for a female athlete?
From Quartz
Caster Semenya’s Case Could Keep Getting Uglier
From Slate
What No One Is Telling You About Caster Semenya: She Has XY Chromosomes
From LetsRun.com
We celebrated Michael Phelps’s genetic differences. Why punish Caster Semenya for hers?
From the Washington Post
Caster Semenya Is Barred From Her Best Race. But She Won’t Give Up On Tokyo
From Time
Why do endocrine profiles in elite athletes differ between sports?
From the journal Clinical Diabetes and Endocrinology
Sex Verification Testing of Athletes
From BioInteractive

Topics: Biotechnology

Cancer Detection and Treatment

Cancer Information for Teens, 5th Ed by Kevin Hayes (Managing editor)
Call Number: 616.99 CAN
ISBN: 9780780819276
Publication Date: 2021
Cancer Information For Teens, Fifth Edition presents updated facts about cancer causes, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
The Cheating Cell by Athena Aktipis
Call Number: 616.99 AKT
Publication Date: 2020
"A fundamental and . . . reassessment of how we view and manage cancer When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don't necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked, for the historical processes that created life also created cancer. [This book] . . . delves into this extraordinary relationship, and shows that by understanding cancer's evolutionary origins, researchers can come up with more effective, revolutionary treatments"

CT researchers: Vaccine to fight cancer shows promise using mRNA technology

Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Postbiotics

Delaying death with technology

Can we delay death with tech? These advances hold promise.

Biohacking

Wits Guts Grit by Jena Pincott
Call Number: 649.1 PIN
ISBN: 9781613736883
Publication Date: 2018
What if we identify the microbes that support stress resilience and find ways to expose our kids to them? What if we reintroduce the mineral magnesium, deficient in almost every child's diet? Would it reduce anxiety and increase bounce back, as the science now suggests? What if memory and learning could improve measurably after eating certain foods-such as blueberries-high in plant chemicals called flavonols, or after certain forms of exercise? These and many more questions led Pincott to simple, all-natural "biohacks"-experiments inspired by current research and theory-complete with instructions on how to undertake them to help your own children strengthen their wits, guts, and grit.

What to know about biohacking

Biosensors

What are Biosensors? Principle, Working, Types and Applications

Topics: Evolution/Extinction

Mass Extinction

Global loss of wildlife is ‘significantly more alarming’ than previously thought, according to a new study
From CNN, May 2023

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Call Number: 576.8 KOL
ISBN: 9780805092998
Publication Date: 2014-02-11
A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

What is the sixth mass extinction and what can we do about it?

Permafrost

Climate Change and Biodiversity by Lisa Idzikowski (Compiled by)
Call Number: 363.7 CLI
ISBN: 9781534508958
Publication Date: 2022
With significantly hotter average temperatures, an increase in natural disasters, and rising oceans, the reality of climate change is hard to miss.

Climate Change Indicators: Permafrost
From the EPA.
Scientists have revived a ‘zombie’ virus that spent 48,500 years frozen in permafrost
Permafrost
From the MIT Climate Change Portal
If you’re not thinking about the climate impacts of thawing permafrost, (here’s why) you should be
From UN News
How Much Worse Will Thawing Arctic Permafrost Make Climate Change?
From Scientific American, 2021

Gut microbiome

The Human Microbiome by Rebecca E. Hirsch
Call Number: 612 HIR
ISBN: 9781467785686
Publication Date: 2016
Microbes help digest your food, protect you from dangerous germs, and help your body fight disease.

Pedigree Pets

The challenges of pedigree dog health: approaches to combating inherited disease

Microplastics

You Are Eating Plastic Every Day by Danielle Smith-Llera
Call Number: 363.738 SMI
ISBN: 9780756561741
Publication Date: 2019
Scientists have recently started studying plastic pollution and our food supply. And, make no mistake, you are eating microscopic pieces of plastic everyday.
Your Plastic Footprint by Rachel Salt
Call Number: 363.72 SAL
ISBN: 9780228102489
Publication Date: 2020
Your Plastic Footprint educates readers about the origins and scope of the plastic problem, helps them measure the scale of the problem on an individual level and then offers solutions on how to rethink and reduce plastic use.

What are microplastics?

Infectious Diseases

Book Studies/ Movies

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
ISBN: 9780385547345
Publication Date: 2022
Meet Elizabeth Zott: "a gifted research chemist, absurdly self-assured and immune to social convention" (The Washington Post) in 1960s California. Her career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a TV cooking show.

Both the ebook and audiobook are available on Sora.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Call Number: 616.85 VAN
ISBN: 9780143127741
Publication Date: 2015
An expert on traumatic stress outlines an approach to healing, explaining how traumatic stress affects brain processes and how to use innovative treatments to reactivate the mind's abilities to trust, engage others, and experience pleasure.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Call Number: 616.821 WAL
ISBN: 9781501144318
Publication Date: 2017
The first sleep book by a leading scientific expert--Professor Matthew Walker, Director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab--reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better.
Hacking Darwin by Jamie Metzl
Call Number: 576.5 MET
ISBN: 9781492670094
Publication Date: 2019
Discusses the changes happening surrounding genetic engineering, including the history, evolution, and more.

Noodletools

Noodletools This link opens in a new window
NoodleTools is an online research management platform that helps you evaluate information, build accurate citations, archive source material, take notes, outline topics, and prepare to write. Sign in with Google.

Noodletools Help
This guide will answer all of your questions about how to use Noodletools.

Recommended Databases

Proquest This link opens in a new window
A large, multi-subject database. Citations export directly into Noodletools.

A to Z Databases
This link will take you to all of the databases that the ASD libraries subscribe to. For login information, see the secure document below.
ASD Databases Login Information
You must be signed in to your ASD account to view these passwords.

New York Times - School Pass This link opens in a new window
Use this link to set up your access to ASD's New York Times subscription.

Resources for your final product

Virtual Simulations

Computational models for biology and ecology
These virtual simulations can be used for SP.3, SP.4, or SP.5.

Potential Standards: Big Idea

Potential Standards: Science Practice

Exemplars

Gut Microbiome
Google Site created in 2024

Useful Open-Access Databases for This Assignment

NCBI: National Center for Biotechnology Information
"The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information."
PubMed Central
"PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM)."
Science Direct
Many of the articles on this site are behind a paywall. If you find something you think will be helpful, contact Ms. Hoiseth to see if she has access.
USDA Food Data Central
"FoodData Central is an integrated data system that provides expanded nutrient profile data and links to related agricultural and experimental research."
MedRxiv
"Medrxiv is an Internet site distributing unpublished manuscripts about health sciences. It distributes complete, but unpublished manuscripts in the areas of medicine, clinical research, and related health sciences without charge to the reader." (Wikipedia)
BioRxiv
The preprint server for biology.
PLOS
PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
USDA Food Composition Databases
"You can search the database by food item, food group, or manufacturer's name to find the nutrient information for your food items. You can also generate lists of foods sorted by nutrient content."
Wiley Open Access Journals
"Wiley Open Access publishes authoritative peer reviewed open access journals across many research disciplines."

General Open-Access Databases

Google Scholar
"Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines."
ResearchGate
"ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators." Many studies are available free by contacting the authors through ResearchGate.
Core
"The world’s largest collection of open access research papers."
Semantic Scholar
"A free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature."
Academia.Edu
"Academia is a platform for sharing academic research." Create a free account with Google.
Directory of Open Access Journals
This "database contains over 16 500 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities."
Science Open
"ScienceOpen is a freely accessible search and discovery platform that puts research in context."
Scientific Research Publishing
"Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) is one of the largest Open Access journal publishers."
Digital Commons Network
"The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide."
Intech Open
"The world's leading publisher of Open Access books."

Search for Books

Destiny Library Catalog
Look for library books related to your topic. When you get to the catalog, don't forget to sign in!
Sora
Follow this link or download the SoraApp to access the library's ebook collection. Sign in with Google.

Digital Magazines

These magazines are available through the Sora app. Look for back issues as well.

Sora Magazines
Follow this link or download the SoraApp to access the library's digital magazine collection. Sign in with Google.
Science magazines in Sora

Creative Commons License

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Libguide Creator

Contact me if you have suggestions for or questions about this guide!

Linda Hoiseth

High School Librarian

lhoiseth@asdubai.org

Twitter: @lhoiseth

Explain That Stuff

Explain That Stuff
Explain that Stuff is an online book written by science writer Chris Woodford. It includes over 400 easy-to-understand articles, richly illustrated with over 4000 photos, artworks, and animations, covering how things work, cutting-edge science, cool gadgets, and computers.