Assignments

Written Assignment (due Week #8)

Students will be given the abstract of a published paper not discussed during the course on Week #6. Students will be asked to describe, in two pages (double-spaced) or less, the experiments (including controls) that might have been done to justify the abstract.

Oral Assignment (due Week #14)

Students will be provided with a research paper on Week #11. Each student or group will use Powerpoint to present the paper, including a brief introduction, key figures or tables, and a summary. A critical analysis of the paper will be presented by the students. For each figure, students will answer the following questions:

1. What is the question that the authors are addressing?
2. What are the experiments and techniques used to address the question?
3. What are the controls for the experiments?
4. What is the conclusion stated by the authors?
5. Is this conclusion substantiated?

Most importantly, students will identify the key figure(s)/table(s) of the paper and the key control experiment(s) for that figure or table. Presentations will be 15 min followed by 5 min of discussion with the class.