Information Literacy in the Sciences UNL 206x

For this assignment you will need to read the article " Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" by Robert M. Hazen; this article can be found at http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/hazen.html. The author, a scientist and researcher in Earth sciences, is a big proponent of the idea of scientific literacy.

Read the article and write a paragraph discussing science literacy with the author. Make sure to cover the following questions:

1. Is science literacy as important as Robert Hazen implies? Explain.

2. What difference does it make whether the ordinary person understands the change of the seasons or the difference between DNA and RNA or, for that matter, any major scientific idea behind the ordinary day-to-day phenomena of our lives?

3. Do you personally believe that the future of our country and, to a larger extent, our planet depends on scientifically literate citizens? Explain.

Read this New York Times article written by Michael Chrichton under the title "Patenting life" Download file.

Write a paragraph that expresses your own opinion about this issue. Make sure to cover the following questions:

1. What are the implications of gene patenting on the health of certain individuals according to this article?

2. Do you think it is wrong to patent a newly-discovered gene? What if you are the one who discovered it? You can get a lot of money in royalties if somebody ran the analysis on this gene.

3. Should gene patenting be prevented or allowed and why?

Your answer should be written in a form of a paragraph and should contain 6-8 complex sentences ("Yeah, it should" would not do it).

For this homework assignment you need to do the following:

1. Write 4-5 keywords that you might find useful in research on the topic chosen by your team.
2. Plan a strategy for narrowing down your topic. You can write a short paragraph or 3-4 questions that might help you to do so.
3. Write a preliminary thesis statement to be discussed with your team in class.

You should post it as a comment to this blog entry. You will not see your post but I will get back to you via e-mail or in class with my comments.

Use the handout given to you in class for useful tips on narrowing down the topic and writing a strong thesis statement. Also read Taking Charge (Chapter 1 of Research Strategies) - it has a good model for research and explains well the role of the thesis statement.

This assignment is worth 20 points if completed on time.

Hello class!

I'm happy to welcome you in a second quarter of the Spring 2013 semester. I'm looking forward to working with all of you.