This unit includes 5 lessons that culminate in students using scientific inquiry to create a group presentation discussing childhood vaccination. Using inquiry-focused reading, a video, and activities, students will learn how to formulate a conclusion based on scientific evidence. Students will research and choose additional texts to support their conclusions. When choosing additional sources, students are required to consider the questions: Is the information I am using good science? Is it a reliable source? The unit includes discussing the Wakefield Study as an example of poor scientific research and how poor research can spread inaccurate information. Students will need to include quoted information to support their conclusions and a MLA Works cited page

Students will watch a documentary, NOVA: Vaccines-Calling the Shots. Before viewing each section , students will read a supplementary essay. Students will answer and discuss the questions that accompany each video segment and essay. Using their discussions and answers, each group will devise their own set of two questions for each segment. They will answer and defend their conclusions using fact based research.

Students will learn that microorganisms can get inside one's body and they may keep it from working properly. Students will learn that vaccinations help to prevent some diseases but not others.

Students learn how to take blood pressure by observing a teacher demonstration and then practicing on fellow classmates in small groups. Once the hands-on component of this activity is completed, the class brainstorms and discusses how blood pressure might affect a person's health. This activity acts as hook for the second lesson in this unit, in which blood pressure is presented in detail, as well as how variances in blood pressure can affect a person's cardiovascular system.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is the transfer of fecal microbes from a healthy donor to a recipient with disease, the goal being to restore the composition and functionality of therecipient’s intestinal microbial community. One possible drawback of FMT is that feces largely contain microbes from the large intestine but not from the small intestine. A new study shows that this imbalance could limit the potential health benefits of FMT. The reason is that microbe colonization in the gut tends to be highly compartmentalized. Experiments showed that microbes transferred from donor pigs tended to colonize the same regions of the gut in recipient mice. Large-intestine microbes colonized the large intestine, and small-intestine microbes colonized the small intestine. Compared with FMT, this “whole-intestine” microbiota transplantation (WIMT) introduced more microbes derived from the small intestine, as predicted..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Heritable traits such as height or disease vary from person to person. One way to explain these variations is by looking at the genomes of large populations. That’s the aim of genome-wide association studies, or GWASs. Unfortunately, GWASs often come up short – explaining only a small fraction of trait heritability. That has many researchers looking to the human microbiome for this “missing heritability”. But according to a new a perspective piece, there could be a few problems with that approach. While individuals have only one genomic sequence, they’re host to numerous microbiomes that evolve over time. That means that it would likely be incorrect to consider the microbiome as an extension of the human genome. Additionally, microbiomes may be strongly shaped by environmental factors, making them irrelevant to the genetic component of human heritability. Microbiome sequencing data could still have a place in heritability studies..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"For ages, disease detectives have been guided by the principle that any illness can be traced back to a single pathogen, Origin Koch’s postulates (a pathogen, a disease). But scientific evidence is revealing many exceptions to that rule. Many complex diseases in human and animals, in fact, could have multifactorial aetiology. including disruptions to the microbial communities that make up the intestinal microbiota. Researchers recently investigated this link in shrimp to determine the origins of a disease known as white feces syndrome, or WFS. the most lethal disorder affecting shrimp production today. Comprehensive multi-omics analyses revealed dramatic differences between the microbiota of healthy shrimp and shrimp with WFS. Diseased shrimp showed both lower microbial richness and lower microbial diversity. These changes compromised the shrimp’s ability to breakdown and absorb nutrients. The findings could help farmers find ways to preserve shrimp numbers ..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Heart attacks, or myocardial infarctions, are a major cause of death globally and can leave survivors with severe, lingering symptoms. Exercise is a key rehabilitation tool, but exactly how it helps patients recover is not yet known. The microbes in our gut directly impact our health in other ways, but could they play a role in exercise-related recovery after heart attacks? To test this possibility, a team of researchers used a mouse model of myocardial infarction (MI). First, they demonstrated that exercise training reduced cardiac dysfunction after MI and that exercise after MI altered the gut microbial richness and community structure. Depleting the microbiota prior to MI blocked the protective effects of exercise, suggesting that the benefits were dependent upon the microbiota. Further, transplanting the gut microbiota from exercised post-MI mice conferred cardiac benefits to recipient mice..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.