I’m an elementary teacher, but always enjoy learning more about science whenever I can. The past couple years I’ve been learning more about modern biology, and one concept I really had trouble with was that viruses are not alive.
My question was that if a virus injects inself into a cell, replicates itself and bursts out of the cell, that sounds a lot like reproduction. Why would it need to reproduce, or need to attack cells and produce sickness, if it is not alive?
Viruses can even infect bacteria. Those viruses that attack bacteria are called bacteriophages.
Professors and textbooks had stated categorically that a virus is not alive, but I’ve just had trouble understanding conceptually HOW this could be. I believe that many students are confronted with a similar lack of comprehension when studying viruses in biology class.
I came across this same statement, that viruses are not alive, in my daughter’s high school biology book. She is using Prentice-Hall Biology by Miller and Levine. Yet, the description of the viruses replicating and bursting out of cells was there again.
I decided to call a biologist friend of mine whose specialty is cell biology to discuss this important and confusing question. I now feel that I understand it and have a simple way to explain it to my daughter.
Just as DNA itself is not alive, and has to be inside a cell to replicate, viruses are smaller “building blocks” that work in a similar manner, also needing to be inside a cell in order to replicate. Viruses can be thought of as a type of building block of life which is designed to self-replicate (kind of like DNA is made of building blocks that self-replicate). Viruses are designed to self-replicate the way that minerals are designed to grow into crystals under the right conditions.
Furthermore, just because viruses can cause disease, this doesn’t necessarily mean that viruses are inherently bad, in and of them selves.
Here is one example of how viruses can be used in a positive manner. Suppose there is a need for wheat which grows well in conditions of near-drought. The old-fashioned way of dealing with this problem would be for plant breeders to breed the plants for many generations in order to find this trait and produce a drought-resistant strain of wheat. The modern, quicker way, is to use a benign virus to introduce the drought-resistant gene into the wheat.
Uwe Romeike, his wife and five children fled to Tennessee so they could homeschool their children and have now been granted political asylum by a U.S. immigration judge. (Wade Payne/AP Photo)
I think one of two things could be happening here (not ever having lived in Germany myself).
First, the homeschooling movement in Germany might be in it’s infancy. One of the early concerns in America was whether home schooling was up to the public school standard. In many U.S. states (such as Colorado), homeschooled children must take yearly achievement exams. When I investigated this, I was told that the results of these exams showed that most homeschoolers were actually far exceeding the scores of public school children. But Germany may not be set up to monitor the situation of homeschooled families.
Secondly, the society as a whole may be opposed to homeschooling. I was quite surprised to read this article because a few years ago I read an article saying that they were encouraging soldiers in the German army to question the orders of their superiors if the orders didn’t seem correct. Yet people who question what is being taught in the public schools are heavily fined ($10,000 for keeping your children at home according to the article linked to above). My thoughts are that America must be a much more individualistic society, whereas Germans must put the good of the society way in front of individual rights.
I was recently tutoring some elementary students in science units on work and simple machines. The unit was describing how simple machines like a doorknob work.
I just received THIS VIDEO in an email, and immediately thought about how much my students would enjoy seeing it, as they found this unit on simple machines fascinating. (Sorry, I couldn’t get it inserted into this post, so click on either link.) If anyone else is teaching a unit on work and simple machines, this will grab the attention of your students quickly and easily! (I plan to show it to all of my students, whether they were studying that unit, or not.)
This video is only about two minutes long, and reminds me of the great opening scenes of “Honey I Shunk the Kids” where the inventor-father has created simple machines around the house, and in the kitchen. But this short video is about TEN TIMES better than the movie!
I did not write this myself, but received it in an email:
1.Is it good if a vacuum really sucks? 2. Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?
3. If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?
4. If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?
5. Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?
6. Why does “slow down” and “slow up” mean the same thing?
7. Why does “fat chance” and “slim chance” mean the same thing?
8. Why do “tug” boats push their barges? 9. Why do we sing “Take me out to the ball game” when we are already there?
10. Why are they called “stands” when they are made for sitting? 11. Why is it called “after dark” when it really is “after light”? 12.Doesn’t “expecting the unexpected” make the unexpected expected?
13. Why are a “wise man” and a “wise guy” opposites? 14. Why do “overlook” and “oversee” mean opposite things?
15. Why is “phonics” not spelled the way it sounds?
16. If work is so terrific, why do they have to pay you to do it?
17. If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
18. Iflove is blind, why is lingerie so popular? 19.If you are cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you read all right?
20. Why is bra singular and panties plural?
21. Why do you press harder on the buttons of a remote control when you know the batteries are dead?
22. Why do we put suits in garment bags and garments in a suitcase?
23. How come abbreviated is such a long word? 24. Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them?
25. Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
26.Why do they call it a TV set when you only have one?
27. Christmas – What other time of the year do you sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of your socks?
28. Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
I did not write the following, but received it as an email:
1) The bandage was woundaround the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck doesfunny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow tosow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
PS. Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’?
You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is ‘UP.’
It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ?
Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to Write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends.
And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning.
People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.
It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP .
When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP… When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dryUP.
One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap itUP, for now my time is UP, so……..it is time to shut UP!
When I ran across this quote today, I realized it summed up exactly my philosophy of teaching.
This is half of being a teacher–the ability to take complicated subjects and explain them very simply so that even a young elementary child can understand them. I prided myself on being able to explain facets of chemistry, physics, and astronomy to my third-graders.
The other half for me always consisted of doing whatever it took to bring out the best in each and every student.
I’d like to know if any of my readers remember the British punctuation changes of 1965. If they do, I’d like to know if anyone out there knows WHY these changes took place.
Many British citizens don’t realize that many of our usages in America are simply older forms of English which were brought over to America, and persisted in American usuage, while British usage changed.
Two of the changes I’ve become aware of are the recent (1965) British changes from double to single quotation marks, and the dropping of periods (also known as “full stops” in Britain) after abbreviations. Here are some examples:
American (and pre-1965) British usage of quotation marks: He said, “Come with me.”
Current British Usage of Quotation marks: He said, ‘Come with me.’
American (and pre-1965) British usage of periods after abbreviations: Mr. and Mrs. Jones are here.
Current British usage of dropping the periods after abbreviations: Mr and Mrs Jones are here.
I’ve found that among my British friends, those who went through school before 1965 were taught the older usages, whereas those who went through school in the 1970’s were taught the current usages.
This question has come up in my teaching because in American schools we always teach the double quotation marks and the periods after abbreviations. Moroccan schools are now tending to use English textbooks and readers published in Britain and France, which use single quotation marks and no periods. So of course students are asking which usage is correct. I see now that the British style has changed, so one is correct in America, while the other is correct in Britain.
Could readers weigh in from around the world, and let me know which styles are correct in other English-speaking countries around the world? My guess is it will depend upon whether they are learning primarily British or American English in their country. I would expect to find British usages in former Commonwealth countries (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nepal, India, Hong Kong) and American usages in Japan, The Philippines, Latin America). I’d like to know what Canada is doing, both being right next to America, and yet having closer ties to Britain.
Does anyone remember these changes, or know WHY they took place? (As an American reader, when I pick up a British book, it appears to be full of typos–periods missing and quotations looking like apostrophes! Do British readers feel the same when reading American books?)
Here is how I pinpointed the changes to 1965, using my own personal library here in Morocco:
1886, London. These Little Ones, has double quotation marks, and periods after abbreviations.
1912, London. Rattlesnake Ranch, has double marks and periods.
(1950?), London. Son of the Turk, has double marks and periods.
(mid-50’s?), London A Terrace in the Sun, has double marks and periods
1962, London. The Distant Hills, has double marks and periods.
1964, London. The Man from Outback, (by Lucy Walker) has DOUBLE quotation marks, and STILL has periods.
1966, London. The River is Down, (also by same author Lucy Walker) has SINGLE quotation marks, and is MISSING the periods after abbreviations.
1979, London. The Dividing Line, has single marks and missing periods
1981, London. Tanamera, has single marks and missing perods
I’m GUESSING that maybe the publishers of that time got together and decided to make several changes (such as changing quotation marks and dropping out of periods, and perhaps there are other things which I have not yet noticed). Now, no doubt, with those things becoming standard usage in Britain for over a generation, most people have forgotten that they were any different before.
Looking at the list above it now looks VERY CLEAR to me that this change happened EXACTLY in 1965. I would just like to know WHY the publishers decided to make these changes. Was it was a small group of powerful individuals who decided upon the changes, or if was as a whole group or panel of publishers?
Do some of my readers know anything about these changes?
A
Mary Mimouna
