Exam 1: An Introduction to the Science of Life

Use the following information to answer the following question(s): You wake up one morning feeling slightly under the weather.A close family member enthusiastically suggests that you take some Echinacea, an herb commonly used as a cold remedy.You then decide to design an experiment to test Echinacea and see if this claim is true.You think, "If taken at the beginning of a cold, Echinacea will reduce cold symptoms." -You decide to test the effects of Echinacea on 100 people who are experiencing similar cold symptoms.Which of the following groups would represent an appropriate control in your experiment?

Which of the following represents a blind study?

What is the main difference between an ecosystem and a community?

Which of the following statements is correct regarding the process of science?

Skin is sometimes referred to as the largest organ of the body.Why is skin considered to be an organ and not a tissue or some other structure?

Use the following commercial to answer the question(s) below: A recent commercial advertised for a wristband that claimed to restore health and balance by taking advantage of natural frequencies of your biofield.It supports its claim by showing several people first struggling to balance without the wristband and then balancing fine with the wristband. -Why should you be skeptical of the claims made in this commercial?

Is a virus considered alive?

The scientific method ________.

You conduct the experiment and gather the data presented in the figure below.Given the results, you can say that ________.

Use the following table to answer the following question(s). Table 1: Cookie parameters with varying fat levels Data from Pareyt, Bram, Faisal Talhaoui, Greet Kerckhofs, Kristof Brijs, Hans Goesaert, Martine Wevers, and Jan A.Delcour, "The Role of Sugar and Fat in Sugar-Snap Cookies: Structural and Textural Properties." Journal of Food Engineering 90, 3 (Feb.1, 2009): 400-408. -Based on the table above, which type of cookie was the heaviest?

If you were to combine all of the ecosystems on the planet, you would obtain the ________.

What is the smallest unit of life?

Use the following study to answer the following question(s): A current trend among professional baseball players is to wear braided titanium necklaces.The titanium reportedly regulates the flow of energy through the body.The player wearing the necklace then shows improved strength, tires less, and recovers more quickly. -Which of the following would be the strongest evidence for or against the necklace's effectiveness?

If you give 100 sick people tablets similar to Echinacea but with no herb (called a placebo), and do not tell them whether they are receiving the placebo or the Echinacea tablet, what kind of control would this be?

Use the following study to answer the following question(s): A researcher applies varying amounts of fertilizer (0, 2, 4, 8, 10 units) to 50 potted tomato plants.All other variables that may affect the outcome (watering, temperature, sunlight, plant size, etc.) are kept the same from pot to pot.At the end of the growing season, the tomatoes grown on each plant are weighed to determine which fertilizer level produced the largest tomato yield. -Which variable is the dependent variable?

In science, experiments are widely used.Are experiments better than observational studies? Discuss the merits and shortcomings of both types of studies.

Use the following table to answer the following question(s). Table 1: Cookie parameters with varying fat levels Data from Pareyt, Bram, Faisal Talhaoui, Greet Kerckhofs, Kristof Brijs, Hans Goesaert, Martine Wevers, and Jan A.Delcour, "The Role of Sugar and Fat in Sugar-Snap Cookies: Structural and Textural Properties." Journal of Food Engineering 90, 3 (Feb.1, 2009): 400-408. -Based on the table above, which cookies were the moistest?

Use the following study to answer the following question(s): A current trend among professional baseball players is to wear braided titanium necklaces.The titanium reportedly regulates the flow of energy through the body.The player wearing the necklace then shows improved strength, tires less, and recovers more quickly. -If you were to evaluate these claims using the scientific method, what would be the first step?

What does it mean when we say, "This scientific study was published in a peer-reviewed journal"?

Evaluate the following statements; which statement is accurate?