This book is organized into 9 parts, each based on a larger topic that students have chosen to study and write research papers on. Each part contains several short student papers, around 2,000 words each, exploring a different aspect of COVID-19 that relates to science, technology and society. Students were asked to examine their topics through research, gathering primary and secondary sources, both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed to support their arguments. They were also encouraged to apply several theories often used in studies of Science, Technology and Society, including Actor-Network Theory, Path Dependence, Social Construction and Tragedy of the Commons to their topics. Students were given an introduction to these theories in the course, and they were asked to discuss how one or more of the theories applies and helps to better understand their paper topics. Some students also engaged in additional research on these theories to explore their applicability. Taking advantage of the e-book format, student also used Creative Commons and public domain images, which are not restricted by copyright limitations to help illustrate their points. In addition to their individual chapters, students also worked together to write introductions for different parts of the book. These part introductions contain a brief summary by the students on why they chose to write on a specific larger topic and how their individual chapters relate to the topic. They also give students an opportunity to reflect on how COVID-19 and its impact on the larger topic they are writing about has affected their personal lives.

Despite the importance of patent landscape analyses in the commercialization process for life science and healthcare technologies, the quality of reporting for patent landscapes published in academic journals is inadequate. Patents in the life sciences are a critical metric of innovation and a cornerstone for the commercialization of new life-science- and healthcare-related technologies. Patent landscaping has emerged as a methodology for analyzing multiple patent documents to uncover technological trends, geographic distributions of patents, patenting trends and scope, highly cited patents and a number of other uses. Many such analyses are published in high-impact journals, potentially allowing them to gain high visibility among academic, industry and government stakeholders. Such analyses may be used to inform decision-making processes, such as prioritization of funding areas, identification of commercial competition (and therefore strategy development), or implementation of policy to encourage innovation or to ensure responsible licensing of technologies. Patent landscaping may also provide a means for answering fundamental questions regarding the benefits and drawbacks of patenting in the life sciences, a subject on which there remains considerable debate but limited empirical evidence.

Library Carpentry lesson to learn how to use the Shell. This Library Carpentry lesson introduces librarians to the Unix Shell. At the conclusion of the lesson you will: understand the basics of the Unix shell; understand why and how to use the command line; use shell commands to work with directories and files; use shell commands to find and manipulate data.

In the fall of 2021, students in Pseudoscience courses started creating this open educational resource (OER), which has been built upon by subsequent classes. Our intention is to create a free textbook for this course that might also be used by students of critical thinking elsewhere and of all ages, whether in a classroom or not. Our growing, interactive textbook employs the Paul-Elder Model and other critical-thinking resources, and is freely available to all, learners and educators alike.

The topic of pseudoscience offers a rewarding way for students to learn the value of thinking critically, even as they get to argue things, like Flat Earth Theory and astrology, that may seem trivial at first. At a time when truth is understood as largely subjective, we have, not surprisingly, seen a resurgence in the popularity of pseudosciences and conspiracy theories, which many consider to hold significant truth value, just as valid as physical evidence. It is our aim here to demonstrate the reasoned analysis process — weighing truth, belief, opinion, and fact — so that others may be able to replicate this process and reason through their own questions about vaccines, extra-terrestrials, genetic modification, or the first people to arrive in the Americas.

Software Carpentry lesson on how to use the shell to navigate the filesystem and write simple loops and scripts. The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.