The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology
Some
Resources and Websites
General
Biology
Access
Excellence: OK, it’s for teachers, but you’re obviously an autodidact, or you
wouldn’t be reading this book. Be sure to check out The Living Skeleton link: http://www.accessexcellence.org/
The
Biology Project, the
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/cell_bio/cell_bio.html
Teachers
Domain offers activities for grades K-12, broken down by topic within biology
and labeled with the appropriate grade level. Many of these are interactive or
videos:
http://www.teachersdomain.org/collection/k12/sci.life/
Continuing
in the self-teaching theme, you can also find educational resources at BioEd
Online, produced by the Baylor College of Medicine:
Find
anything and everything biology at Kimball’s biology pages, the brainchild of
John Kimball at Harvard:
The
http://www.ucsd.tv/sciencematters/
The
Howard Hughes Medical Institute brings you BioInteractive, with video,
animation, virtual labs, and other tools that “teach ahead of the textbook”:
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/
Cells
Cells
Alive! All things cell, including animations and videos:
What
is a cell? The
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/primer/genetics_cell.html
The
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/cell_bio/cell_bio.html
Wiley
offers these interactive animations of cells in the context of one of its
biochemistry texts; you can even build your own cell:
http://www.wiley.com/college/boyer/0470003790/animations/cell_structure/cell_structure.htm
A color-rich
tour of the cell, courtesy of the US National Science Foundation:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/overviews/biology/interactive.jsp
An
8-minute animation of the inner life of a cell. This is just flat-out cool, and
I show it to my students frequently:
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html
Genetics
PBS
has an online DNA workshop with interactives and information about the
molecules and the people involved with it:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/dna/index.html
The
Teacher’s Domain, which may require free registration, has an abundance of
videos and other useful information. Here are a couple of links to interactive
genetics activities, one on Gregor Mendel:
http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/hew06_int_dominantgene/
http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/hew06_int_mendelinherit/
Learn
what we’ve learned about the human genome at the Human Genome Project Website:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml
The
Website of the
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/
A
nice breakdown of a great two-hour NOVA episode on genetics into digestible
video segments. Just pick your topic:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/program.html
Evolution
Access
the original works of the man himself, Charles Darwin, at The Darwin Digital
Library Website, based at the
http://darwinlibrary.amnh.org/
This
site from the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center
for Science Education bills itself as a “one-stop source for evolution,” so I
guess I could stop here with providing evolution links (but I won’t):
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php
The
University of California Museum of Paleontology also has an amazing Website
that covers aspects of evolution, taxonomy/systematics/diversity, the history
of science, and, of course, fossils. Absolutely worth checking out:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/topic.html
Macroevolution.net
offers evolution information, including specifics on human evolution, and lots
of links to more:
http://www.macroevolution.net/biology-websites.html
Explore
the creation/evolution controversy over at Talk Origins, the Web’s most
comprehensive and scientific treatment of the topic:
Diversity
The
best place to go for an understanding of the diversity of life on Earth and the
relatedness of species, the Tree of Life Web project:
Oh,
yes. Check out the
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html
Absolutely
relevant to issues of diversity are endangered species. Find out all about it
here:
I
think “Diversity” is a good place to put the link to Action Bioscience, which
addresses current knotty issues in biology:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/
The
Encyclopedia of Life, the brainchild of E.O. Wilson, seeks to document in a
free, online resource, each of the 1.8 million species we’ve currently
identified. Pretty pictures and good information, so check it out:
Because
fossils are part of the Earth’s diversity, I also bring you the Paleobiology
Database:
http://paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl
Plants
A
comprehensive site from the Botanical Society of America, including an
ever-popular “Botany in the News” department:
An
online hyperlinked botany textbook for people like you, and if you’re
interested, a good chance to practice your German:
http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e00/default.htm
For
enthusiasts, I bring you Botany.com, an online encyclopedia of plants and
flowers:
For
real enthusiasts, I recommend the Smithsonian Institution’s Index Nominum
Genericorum:
Learning
about plants can be confusing. These two articles by David Hershey from Action
Bioscience lay out and clear up a few confusions and misconceptions about
plants. I like these because there’s a lot of good information that I simply
couldn’t fit into the confines of this book:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/hershey.html
http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/hershey3.html
An
online virtual library of plants and botany, courtesy of the
http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/www-vl/
Body
Systems
Gray’s
Anatomy, the real book, not the TV show:
A
virtual anatomy textbook! Learn your systems visually:
http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigbio/project/index.html
The
Visible Human Project--get a peek into the human body, slice by slice:
http://www.madsci.org/~lynn/VH/
Get
Body Smart. Really, that’s the Website. It offers interactive flash animations
about body systems, a great resource if you need or want more detail:
More
on the senses from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute:
Developmental
Biology
A
Website associated with Scott F. Gilbert’s excellent developmental biology
text, essentially a dev bio textbook online:
The
Virtual Embryo offers another comprehensive at developmental biology, including
in-depth information on different animal models:
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~browder/virtualembryo/db_tutorial.html
The
Visible Embryo, pretty much self explanatory--a tour of human development:
http://www.visembryo.com/baby/
Developmental
biology studies rely heavily on a specific set of animal models. Learn more
about those models here:
No
learning experience in developmental biology is complete without real movies of
real development. Find some here at Dynamics of Development 2.0, courtesy of
Jeff Hardin at the
http://worms.zoology.wisc.edu/dd2/
Ecology
The
Ecological Society of America offers up a comprehensive Website of facts,
publications, and information about actual ecologists:
http://www.esa.org/education_diversity/
Learn
more about invasive species and what’s being done about them at the Global
Invasive Species Program Website:
Not
sure about which biome you occupy? Check out the Biomes of the World Website,
courtesy of the
Ecosystems
present and future, brought to you by PBS and Bill Moyers in association with
the Earth on the Edge series:
http://www.pbs.org/earthonedge/ecosystems/index.html
Get
the global skinny on ecosystem health and prognosis from the United Nations and
partners in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:
http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx