Modern cell and developmental biology has a lot to contribute to our understanding of the deep history of animal origins, which until recently has been largely the province of paleontology. In this set of lectures, I hope to show how recent studies by a very small group of scientists on a virtually unknown phylum of marine organisms, the hemichordates, has helped explain some of the major mysteries of the origin of vertebrates. This is a tour of not only vertebrate origins but the...

By looking at the light from distant galaxies and having well-established calibration methods, astrophysics can make hypotheses about the history of our universe. Do we have similar "rulers" in biology that could allow us to reconstruct the remote past and the evolution of species on this planet? The answer is likely "yes" and the clues are undoubtedly contained in the many whole genome sequences that are now available for inspection. However, it is critical to evaluate the assumptions that...

This video shows the life cycle of the sea biscuit Clypeaster subdepressus and is part of my master's thesis project at the Biosciences Institute of University of São Paulo. We collected adults from sand beds of São Sebastião Channel (São Sebastião, SP, Brazil) and induced gamete release (eggs and sperm). We did the fertilization in vitro and followed the embryonic development in the laboratory, under light microscopy. Embryos become swimming larvae, approximately 0.2 mm wide,...

The conclusion video project from the 2008 SYHS Inter-Session Institute.

Bioacoustics intro video project from 2008 SYHS Inter-Session Institute.

Students created video of footage shot during the Inter-session Institute of the creation of their hydrophones.

A series of speakers sharing their ground breaking science and their journeys as women in a predominantly male subject area. Do You Think You Want to Be a Scientist? Comments from Women in Bioinformatics for High School Students

A series of speakers sharing their ground breaking science and their journeys as women in a predominantly male subject area.

"Discussion and Closing Comments" by John Wooley

Presentation by Red Team about "Critical Mass : A Multifaceted Problem"