Don’t worry, this isn’t an announcement about advertisers. This is a few short announcements I wanted to make sure people knew about. I mentioned them on the Facebook page, but wanted them in a more permanent location.

The Arizona Center for Evolution and Medicine has been doing a fair bit lately, holding meetings and seminars, getting research going, and such. They have now also started a new blog that is worth people’s time to read called simply the EvMedBlog. Here is what they have to say about it.

The EvMedBlog, hosted by the Center for Evolution and Medicine at ASU, brings together essays by Core CEM Faculty, Guest Experts, and Affiliated Scientists to elucidate human health and disease through an evolutionary lens. Here we will explore mutations in the human genome, host-pathogen coevolution, human physiology across diverse ecological contexts, early life nutrition, and dozens of other topics at the intersections of evolutionary biology, medicine, and global health.

As seen on the EvMedBlog page. Studies of the Arm showing the Movements made by Biceps by Leonardo da Vinci, c 1510 source:wikimedia

I’ve included the new blog on the link page under the science blogs for easy retrieval.

The textbook Functional Anatomy of the Vertebrates, by Liem, Bemis, Walker, and Grande, usually ranks among the top of most anatomists lists of best comparative anatomy texts available. Ok, admittedly, there aren’t that many textbooks out there for comparison, but this one really is well received. What makes it particularly great for educators right now is that all the images in the 2001 book are available as images in Powerpoint slides for free online. They are organized and downloadable by chapter. They files are small and manageable and there is no login or information required. All they ask is that you do please cite the text when you use them, which is a perfectly reasonable request.

Sharks are on the educational menu this summer (surely not on your plate, right?!) at Cornell University and Queensland University in Australia, who are jointly offering a free online course (yes, one of those MOOCs) called “Sharks! Global Biodiversity, Biology, and Conservation“. It starts June 28th and only last four weeks, so it will be over before school starts back in August. It is only scheduled to take 4-6 hours a week, so it is not too time intensive, but it should provide a lot of cool information and resources for educators who want to bring cool current shark stuff into their classroom.

If you haven’t seen the videos on evolution on pbs.org, you should really check them out, along with their other great resources at NOVA Labs, which is one of the best spots on the Net for evolution resources for educators. Finally, there is of course TIES, the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, associated with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Their primary goal is to assist secondary school teachers in teaching evolution in their classrooms and they have a fantastic collection of resources. They also sponsor teacher development workshops, one of which I hope to be running myself soon, which I am excited about, so stay tuned for more about that. All three of these can be found on the Links page any time.

That’s all for now, but there is always much more to come.