ARTICLE REVIEW (Quarters 1 & 3)

When announced, you may turn in one additional extra credit review. An extra credit report is worth five points.

The articles must deal with some biological topic. An article review on a non-biological topic will be returned with no score. Most weeks, you will be assigned the topic. The article must be less than five years old. You may use articles from the newspaper (the Quest section in the SD Union-Tribune on Wednesdays is a good source). You may also use scientific magazines and journals like Science, Scientific American, Discover etc. News articles from the Internet are acceptable. One of the best internet data banks, for science articles, Galenet, is on the Parker server. Go to http://fc.francisparker.org/~cbrown/Library/, on the left hand margin locate Gale Databases, (our ID is: parker ) Science Resource Center (bookmark this!) and enter your search request.

If the school server is down you can still go to http://www.galenet.com your user name is: SAN66643 (case sensitive) and your password is: parker (case sensitive).

When using Galenet you may use any or all of the Magazines, Academic Journals and/or Newspapers tabs,

BUT DO NOT use the Reference, Multimedia or Websites tabs.

You will need to print and staple the actual article or a photocopy to the back of your review. Most weeks I will ask for an article review on a specific topic related to what we are studying. The extra credit article usually will not have an assigned topic, just be sure it is about biology. Saving past Quest sections from the Union Tribune and/or learning how to do topical searches on the Internet will be helpful.

Your article review should be typed and proofed. Use spell check. If there are an unacceptable number of spelling or grammatical errors, points will be deducted. Please write the reviews in the following format:

Full name

Date

Section

Title of article

Type the following six headings and then give the requested information

1. Source of article: Where it was originally published (this is not Gale!)

2. Publication date: Original publication date

3. Scientists or scientific organizations involved:

4. Summary (in paragraph form): (Complete sentences please!) 1-2 paragraphs typed, 12 font, double-spaced, with approximately one-inch margins.

5. Implications: Write at least two implications from the information presented in the article. (Implications mean how this information will impact your or someone else's life or science in general.) This is not the same thing as an inference!!!

6. Questions: You must include at least two questions you have about the article. These must not be questions that were already answered in the article or your implications re-worded to be questions.

Here are some tips for writing on scientific topics:

1. Papers must be typed, double-spaced, with approximately one-inch margins. The pages should be numbered.

2. Use active or passive voice; use 1st or 3rd person, but be consistent.

3. Decimal fractions of numbers less than one should always have a zero to the left of the decimal (e.g., 0.94 not .94).

4. Never begin any sentence with a symbol or a numeral. Any number that begins a sentence should be spelled out.

5. Except for the rule above, data (especially in results) should be given as Arabic numbers (e.g., 1,2,3…). In a written section numbers one through ten should be spelled out; numbers exceeding ten should be in Arabic form. Examples: “Five drops were added.” “We used 15 plants.”

6. Abbreviations for units (g, ml, m) are not followed by a period unless they end a sentence.

7. “Species” is both the singular and plural form of the word. The word “specie” does not exist.

8. Scientific names include a genus a specific epithet. The former should be capitalized, but not the latter. Both words should be underlined or italicized (e.g., Cucumis sativus).