Essay Assignment
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Goal: 

The purpose of this assignment is to examine the structure of a scientific paper, to determine some of the kinds of procedures used in doing research, and to see what kinds of persons do science.  The paper you are to read is:

Mueller, Ulrich, Stephen A. Rehner, and Ted R. Schultz.  1998.  The evolution of agriculture in ants. Science 281:  2034-2038.

Directions: 

Your paper should be "word-processed" and double spaced.  You should be able to answer all questions in about two to four pages.  Divide your paper into three sections.  In section one answer the following questions:  What is the major finding of the paper?  How do the authors marshall their evidence to support that finding.  How have the authors structured the paper?  How does this style of writing differ from that of a novel? an article in a magazine? an article in a newspaper? What vocabulary words seemed to be unique to the article.  List and define a few of the words you didn't understand at first reading. In the section section list and briefly describe some of the tools the scientists used to perform their research.   These tools may be programmatic in nature (i.e, software) or laboratory instruments.  Did the author provide enough narative so you could replicate their efforts.  If so, how was this information provided.  What kinds of diagrams were provided?  How did they contribute towards your understanding of the paper? For section three you will need to do some biographical research on the authors of the paper.   This kind of information may be obtained from American Men and Women of Science.   How old are the authors?  Do they all work at the same institution?  If not, how many institutions are they associated with?  What kinds of degrees do they have?  Where did they get the financial support to carry out the research?  Do they give any idea of how long the work took?  How long did it take for the paper to get into print? 

You can probably expand each of the above questions into a coherent paragraph.   Please do use paragraphs and section headings.  Please also number the pages.   This can be done by using the "View, Header and Footer" menu.  This will bring up a dialogue box that allows you to insert page numbers and header information.  In the settings box check the "First page different" setting.   Please do not attached a cover page.  Your title is "The Evolution of Agriculture in Ants:  A critical review".  On the next line simply type your name and date submitted.

Due Date:

This paper is due the 7th of November.  If you have any questions simply ask me either in person or via e-mail.  The librarians can help in the search for biographical details.