When was the poem i hear america singing written

WRITING SCIENTIFIC REPORTSIn a nutshell, scientific communication is one of the most important skills that you can learn at University. Yet effective writing is also a difficult skill to master, and it takes years of practice. One of the problems for Biology students in particular is that there is often ‘much writing to be done, but little time to focus on doing it well’ (Pechenik, 2001). The aim of this appendix is to provide you with some advice on the mechanics and pitfalls of scientific writing. Mysources for this advice come from Pechenik (2001; this superb book is available upon request), a handout written by Gail Michener for her class in Animal Physiology, and from notes taken from a graduate course I taught at U of Alberta on Scientific Communication. For students in 3rdor 4thyr University, poor reports usually stem from one (or a combination) of 4 problems. The first is that many of you have some training in writing ‘essays’ or ‘opinion papers’, and have difficulty in changing to the ‘science’ style. The aim of Scientific Writing is to be concise and clear, not verbose and flowery. Second, many students simply have poor writing skills. The simplest rules involving nouns, adverbs and clauses can go a long way to making your paper clearand easy-to-follow. Third, unclear writing usually stems from unclear thinking. Usually, if you are struggling with ‘Writers Block’, it means that you are not exactly clear in what you want to write about. Thus, one excellent way to truly ‘learn’ Biology, is to write about it. Lastly, it is my experience that many students do not take the task of writing seriously. Your lab reports are to be written in a style typical of that required by scientific journals that report original research. The purposeof scientific writing is to convey information and ideas exactly, explicitly, and economically. If this is your first attempt at writing a formal report, you should pay particular attention to the instructions provided here. Title In a nutshell, the title should summarize what lies in the Introduction and Results sections. The aim is to grab the interest of potential readers, right from the start. Avoid non-informative titles such as ‘Zooplankton of Tyrrell Lake’, or ‘Feeding preferences of fathead minnows’. Replace with something like ‘Species composition of fall-collected zooplankton in a prairie lake’ and ‘Do fathead minnows, Pimephales promelas, select particular prey?’ The title should be on a separate page, with your name (do not include your student ID), email, affiliation and date at the bottom. AbstractThe aim here is to summarize in a few (5-8) sentences the major points of the study. You should write it last. As a first step, start with a sentence that covers the general problem/phenomenon being considered (e.g. Disturbance events are well known to affect arthropod community structure). Next, shift to a mention of the system being studied (e.g. The effects of disturbance on prairie arthropods were studied ....), then a brief mention of the techniques used, then the most important findings. Always conclude with a general statement that covers the principal conclusions reached (e.g. These results show that spatial and temporal variability in parasitoid infection of gall formers is due to
variation in host density). The abstract is always written in the passive voice. Also, be sure to make your abstract informative. For example, the sentence ‘Grazing affected arthropod biodiversity’ is probably true, but it is not very informative. Try something like ‘Grazed sites contained 34% fewer species and 42% fewer individuals than control sites’. The abstract is important, but it is notoriously difficult to write. Often, it is the only part of your paper that your intended audience will read. Don’t leave it to the 5 minutes before your paper is due. The abstract, together with the rest of your paper, should be double-spaced and written on one side of the page. Number all pages. IntroductionThe aim is to orient the reader to the general nature of the problem under consideration. Because the experiments are designed to answer questions, the Introduction should inform the reader about what questions are being investigated and why those questions are of biological interest and importance. The Introduction is often the most difficult component of a paper to write properly. The problem is that to encourage a reader to keep going, you have to convince him/her early-on, that you are an authority on the question of concern. This is not easy foryoung researchers, because it requires extensive background reading and clear understanding of the topic. As one suggestion, aim to think in terms of paragraphs. For this exercise, you will not need more than 3-4 paragraphs to get your message across.Try to think linearly; start with a general paragraph and work towards more and more specificity. For example, start with a general paragraph (e.g. general questions regarding galls, effects on hosts, biology of enemy/victim interactions), followed by a second one that introduces your specific system (Solidagoand Eurostaand its enemies). Consider starting the 3rdparagraph with ... “The purpose of this experiment is to .....”. Each of these paragraphs mustcontain authoritative references. Materials and Methods The purpose of the methods is to inform the reader of important aspects of techniques, animals, equipment, and conditions such that the reader could repeat the experiment. You can skip trivial details, but you must include relevant aspects ofmethodology. In those cases where the experiment was set up for you, you will have to refer back to your notes or use Goater (personal communication). You can use subheadings if they make the section clearer (e.g. study site, collection methods, experimental design, analyses). The last paragraph should contain a section that describes the types of ‘analyses’ you used (correlations, ANOVA etc.). ResultsThe results section should describe to the reader what was discovered in the experiment and what you believe are the most important points. There should be two components: