An adaptation of the Luria- Delbrück fluctuation analysis reveals plasmid-host co-evolution increases plasmid transfer rate
By: Olivia Kosterlitz (Kerr Lab)

The bone histology of multituberculates could change our understanding of mammalian life history evolution
By: Lucas Weaver (Wilson Lab)

Moving in tight spaces: how migrating skin cells respond to confinement
By: Ellie Labuz (Theriot Lab)

Exploring the (over- and under-) story of montane plants communities in the Pacific Northwest over the last 4 decades
By: Kavya Pradhan (Hille Ris Lambers Lab)

Natural disaster accelerates age-associated immune dysregulation
By: Marina Watowich (Snyder-Mackler Lab)

Body size and paleolatitude in Lystrosaurus: Did Bergmann’s Rule apply during the Early Triassic?
By: Zoe Kulik (Sidor Lab)

What exactly is your machine learning? How to evaluate tree growth models
By: Stuart Graham (Hille Ris Lambers Lab)

Maize yield under a changing climate: impacts, mechanisms, and adaptation
By: Jennifer Hsiao (Swann Lab)

The analysis of quantitative data and its display in visual formats to explore patterns and communicate the findings of experiments and observational studies are essential practices in biology. However, creating effective and appropriate displays of data is a multi-faceted and reflective task. It requires knowledge of and reasoning with relevant concepts of the biological system under study, methodologies and measurements, mathematics/statistics, and visualizations.

Classroom practices affect student behavior, and by extension, their learning. Through studying how students discuss clicker questions in active learning classrooms, we have found that students rarely use reasoning when answering in-class questions. However, their use of reasoning increases when they are cued to use reasoning by instructors or peers, or when under pressure of accountability. Can students transfer in-class group practices to individual assessment opportunities that require reasoning and logic?

There is growing body of work from the learning sciences providing us with insights into how people learn; and from Discipline Based Education Research (DBER) we know what discipline-specific difficulties students face. However, it is quite surprising that relatively little of this understanding has made its way into the design of science and engineering curricula offered at most colleges and universities.