Two lessons and their associated activities explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. Yeast cells are readily obtained and behave predictably, so they are very appropriate to use in middle school classrooms. In the first lesson, students are introduced to yeast respiration through its role in the production of bread and alcoholic beverages. A discussion of the effects of alcohol on the human body is used both as an attention-getting device, and as a means to convey important information at an impressionable age. In the associated activity, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in yeast-molasses cultures. Based on questions that arise from this activity, in the second lesson students work in small groups as they design and execute their own experiments to determine how environmental factors affect yeast population growth.

This class surveys developmental entrepreneurship via case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapples with deploying and diffusing products and services through entrepreneurial action. By drawing on live and historical cases, especially from South Asia, Africa, Latin America as well as Eastern Europe, China, and other developing regions, we seek to cover the broad spectrum of challenges and opportunities facing developmental entrepreneurs. Finally, we explore a range of established and emerging business models as well as new business opportunities enabled by developmental technologies developed in MIT labs and beyond.

Ecology: Population Growth is a Canadian adaptation of Connecting Concepts: Interactive Lessons in Biology by Robert Jeanne and Jan Cheetham (University of Wisconsin). It includes interactive lessons on exponential growth focusing on the zebra mussel population, logistic growth using fish as an example, and elephant population growth. / Croissance des populations est une adaptation canadienne de Connecting Concepts: Interactive Lessons in Biology de Robert Jeanne et Jan Cheetham (University of Wisconsin). Ces leçons interactives portent sur la croissance exponentielle à l’aide d’une population de moules zébrées, la croissance logistique selon l’exemple des poissons et la croissance d’une population d’éléphants.

This activity is structured as a letter from a company seeking assistance with a mathematical problem. The students will act as professional mathematical consultants and write a report analyzing the client's problem. The client company is a fictional organization which advocates for the use of trap-neuter-return (TNR) as a control method for feral cat colonies. The students will utilize modified exponential growth models to analyze the efficacy of TNR compared to a euthanasia program.

The Future of Food is an introductory-level science course that emphasizes the challenges facing food systems in the 21st century, and issues of sustainability for agriculture and other food production activities, as well as the challenges posed by food insecurity and modern diets to human health and well-being. Topics covered include introduction to the coupled-system perspective, historical development of food systems, socioeconomic aspects of the food system, interaction of the food system with the Earth's environment including soil, water, biota and climate, and the future of the food system considering potential changes such as in climate, urbanization, and demography.

Dr. Joseph Bookstein argues that the real cause of global warming is not the burning of fossil fuels but rather the needs and wants of the global human population, now over 6.6 billion. He discusses methods, feasibility, and implementation strategies for voluntary population reduction. (52 minutes)

Students set up and run the experiments they designed in the Population Growth in Yeasts associated lesson, using simple yeast-molasses cultures in test tubes. Population growth is indicated by the amount of respiration occurring in the cultures, which in turn is indicated by the growth of carbon dioxide bubbles trapped within the culture tubes. Using this method, students test for a variety of environmental influences, such as temperature, food supply and pH.

To achieve food security in a changing climate, the global community must operate within three limits: the quantity of food that can be produced under a given climate; the quantity needed by a growing and changing population; and the effect of food production on the climate. At present the planet operates outside that safe space, as witnessed by the enormous number of people who are undernourished. If current trends in population growth, diets, crop yields and climate change continue, the world will still be outside this ̢ĺŰĺ÷safe operating space̢ĺŰĺŞ in 2050. Humanity must urgently work to enlarge the safe space and also move the planet into the safe space (film credit: Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, an initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, in collaboration with University of Minnesota Global Landscapes Initiative).

In this activity, students will simulate the equal and unequal distribution of our renewable resources. Also, they will consider the impact of our increasing population upon these resources and how engineers develop technologies to create resources.

You must know the basic facts about the world population in order to grasp global health. You
need to know where people live in this world, how the world population is changing based on
the number of babies born per woman, on average, in the world as a whole and in the
different regions. And finally, you must learn how, why, and when the fast population growth in the world will
come to an end during this century. Please look at this video with five video clips where this is explained. And if something is surprising to you, please look twice.
Get transcript for video here: https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/module/58789/overview

The MIT Biology Department core courses, 7.012, 7.013, and 7.014, all cover the same core material, which includes the fundamental principles of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and cell biology. Biological function at the molecular level is particularly emphasized and covers the structure and regulation of genes, as well as, the structure and synthesis of proteins, how these molecules are integrated into cells, and how these cells are integrated into multicellular systems and organisms. In addition, each version of the subject has its own distinctive material.
7.014 focuses on the application of these fundamental principles, toward an understanding of microorganisms as geochemical agents responsible for the evolution and renewal of the biosphere and of their role in human health and disease.
Acknowledgements
The study materials, problem sets, and quiz materials used during Spring 2005 for 7.014 include contributions from past instructors, teaching assistants, and other members of the MIT Biology Department affiliated with course 7.014. Since the following works have evolved over a period of many years, no single source can be attributed.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"One key to good fish breeding is providing fish with the right food. That means getting the right-sized food. As fish larvae grow, so does the optimum size of their food. That’s a problem for certain species bred in fisheries. Fish raised on live feed face a gap in their feed size as larvae: at a certain stage, the plankton they eat become too small for maximum growth. This “food size gap” can affect the quality and value of fish raised for consumption. But researchers from Japan appear to have one solution: “supersizing” plankton with beams of heavy ions. Researchers from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science generated high-powered beams of carbon and argon ions in the hopes of producing size-boosting mutations in rotifers, a phylum of plankton commonly fed to fish larvae. The tremendous amounts of energy carried by these beams, a couple hundred thousand times the amount a human might receive during a routine CT scan, was enough to alter the DNA in rotifer cells..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This lesson explores if it is normal that world temperatures are rising at the currently observed fast pace.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"For thousands of years, the Nile has provided bountiful gifts to the people who make their home around its banks, offering food, a means of transport, irrigation, and fertile soil. But there is a limit to how much the Nile can give. Already in the 1970s, Egypt began fully utilizing the available resources of the Nile. Any additional demand has been met virtually, through imports of food. Now, research suggests that within the next decade, Egypt is poised to import as much “virtual water” as it receives from the Nile. In a new study from MIT, researchers compiled water and crop data for Egypt spanning the past 60 years. That gave them one of the most detailed looks at modern water use ever produced for the country, and helped them understand Egypt’s trade in “virtual water”. Virtual water refers to the hidden flow of water in food and commodities. For example, it takes about 1100 tons of water to produce one ton of maize in Egypt..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

When the Bald Eagle population started to decline in the mid-20th century, scientists began to ask why. Population ecology, the study of organisms of the same species, played a big role in answering that question. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll take a look at the methods population ecologists use to study a population and the types of data they collect. We’ll also find out how scientists helped bring the Bald Eagle back from the brink.

Chapters:
Introduction to Population Ecology
Density
Dispersion
Demographics
Population Growth
Review & Credits
Credits

Population ecology is the study of groups within a species that interact mostly with each other, and it examines how they live together in one geographic area to understand why these populations are different in one time and place than they are in another. How is that in any way useful to anyone ever? Hank uses the example of the West Nile virus outbreak in Texas to show you in this episode of Crash Course: Ecology.

Chapters:
1) Density & Dispersion
2) Population Growth
3) Limiting Factors
a) Density Dependent
b) Density Independent
4) Exponential & Logistical Growth
5) How to Calculate Growth Rate

Many factors influence the success and survival rate of a population of living things. Explore several factors that can determine the survival of a population of sheep in this NetLogo model. Start with a model of unlimited grass available to the sheep and watch what happens to the sheep population! Next try to keep the population under control by removing sheep periodically. Change the birthrate, grass regrowth rate, and the amount of energy rabbits get from the grass to keep a stable population.

This lesson is the second of two that explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. In the first lesson, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in yeast-molasses cultures. Based on questions that arose during the first lesson and its associated activity, in this lesson students work in small groups to design experiments that will determine how environmental factors affect yeast population growth.

This course presents the principles of evolution, ecology, and behavior for students beginning their study of biology and of the environment. It discusses major ideas and results in a manner accessible to all Yale College undergraduates. Recent advances have energized these fields with results that have implications well beyond their boundaries: ideas, mechanisms, and processes that should form part of the toolkit of all biologists and educated citizens.

This unit includes 5 lessons that culminates in a persuasive argument in the form of letter to congressional member or grant proposal to Duke Energy.

Using inquiry-based reading, students will explore an anchor text and then develop their own supporting questions to guide their research.