News Summaries
BIOL 104
The Environment, Society, and Conservation
_______________________________________
Every Friday (except for Thursday, June 24) during the
term, you will be required to hand in summaries of ten
recent (within past two weeks) news items concerning the environment.
These items can be taken from the internet, newspapers, magazines,
television, or radio. For each item,
include:
• the source (where you found it),
• the date of the source,
• the title of the article, and
• a brief, one or two sentence summary
Please number each summary 1, 2, 3, and
so on. The summaries MUST BE HAND-WRITTEN, but if I can't
read your handwriting, you won't get credit for your work (so
be neat). The purpose of this assignment is to make you aware
of the many things that are affecting our environment every day.
We will spend some time at the beginning of each Thursday class
discussing these environmental current events. Questions
concerning news events discussed in class will appear on exams.
Examples of news stories that you may find include:
- dolphins dying mysteriously along Atlantic coast
- chemical spill causes evacuation of residential areas
- industry fined for not meeting air pollution standards
- human population growth rate declining
- new cause of acid rain being investigated
- ozone hole growing larger
- new oil deposits discovered beneath metropolitan area
- local environmental group purchases land for nature preserve
- new law will reduce air pollution from outboard motors
- record corn harvest in Iowa
You will not receive credit
for summarizing:
- the weather report
- reports of severe weather damage
- automobile crashes
- space shuttle or rocket launches
- reports of research on other planets, stars, asteroids, etc.
- local fishing derby results
- floods
unless the above have some profound, virtually unbelievable
effect on the environment.
Here is an interesting example of a news item from the Boston Globe, Reuters News Service, on 8 October 1993:
The Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama,
Japan, announced that it had manufactured an experimental sausage out of
recycled Tokyo sewage by adding soybean protein and steak flavoring to "sewage
solids". A company spokesman said, "Sewage isn't really such a dangerous and dirty
thing." However, he did not foresee
commercially marketing the sausage. "Sewage does have a slight image problem.
I don't think people will be content eating something they know
has been excreted by humans."
SUBMITTING THESE ASSIGNMENTS
• I REQUIRE that you use the back
sides of waste paper (printed on one side, blank on the other; found in wastebaskets next to photocopy
machines, printers, etc.) for these assignments, so that this class requirement does not lead to the unnecessary
deaths of more trees.
• DO NOT EVEN THINK OF SUBMITTING THESE ASSIGNMENTS VIA E-MAIL! THEY WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED IN THAT FORMAT.
REALLY IMPORTANT! If you know
you will not be attending class on some Friday, you must
turn in your summaries early. Summaries turned in late (after
I call for them in class) will be credited to the following week's
assignment. Summaries delivered to my office or mailbox after
class on Thursdays will not be accepted for that week's
assignment.
These assignments will comprise 100 points (22.2%
of your total course grade). Each week's summaries will be worth
25 points (5.6% of your total course grade).
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