On October 30th, Dr. Abe Miller from UT’s Health Sciences and Human Performance department, took a group of Honors students to collect scorpions. Dr. Miller is an expert on scorpions. He provided a good background on scorpions, illustrated how they luminesce under a black light, and provided instruction on how and where to spot them. We were a little worried that we might not see any after our first foray netted us only a wolf spider. But the next trail we tried was bountiful. Within 45 minutes we caught 15 and let another 5 or so get away.
Tag: biology
Making News – Jessica Elson
Honors Symposia – Jeffry Fasick
Dr. Jeffry Fasick, from UT’s Biology Department, presented an engaging symposium on Right Whales to Honors students on October 2nd. Dr. Fasick’s research on North Atlantic Right Whales focuses on determining their visual spectrum and has been used to help diminish the number of entangling events from lobster traps that threaten right whales.
Coffee Conversations – Bridgette Froeschke
On April 4th, Dr. Bridgette Froeschke, Assistant Professor of Biology, led a Coffee Conversation on the questions “Who does water belong to? Should water be privatized?” The conversation covered a lot of topics relating to water, from the quality of bottled water versus tap water to who should own water rights and how water consumption and regulation (or lack thereof) affect environmental quality.
Conferences – Laura Hearst & Dr. Abraham Miller
Working with Dr. Abraham Miller, Honors student Laura Hearst recently combined a trip to California to attend the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Conference with a visit to the California Academy of Sciences to examine some scorpion specimens. The pictures above show Laura and Dr. Miller examining the scorpions. The research is part of her Honors Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
Honors Courses – BIOH124
BIOH124 is a non-majors Honors Biology course that is being taught as an intro to human genetics. The professor, Dr. Sarah Cuccinello, developed a karyotyping activity that is unique to the Honors version of the course. The photos above show the students engaged in this activity. There are also some pictures of them using micropipettes for the first time. The micropipette practice is preparation for some genetics experiments they will be conducting in a couple of weeks.
Making News – Ally Marter
UT Honors student and Marine Science major, Ally Marter, was recently highlighted on the UT home page for her work this summer with SeaTrek. Marter was the lead biologist for a group of 150 high school students who lived on boats and spent their time scuba diving, sailing, hiking, and studying marine science.
