Highlights the demand for medicinal plants as pharmaceuticals and the demand for health care treatments worldwide and the issues that arise from this. Discusses new drugs from plants, anticancer drugs, antiviral drugs, antimalarial drugs, herbal remedies, quality, safety, efficacy, and conservation of plants. Contains 30 references. (JRH)

Students love outdoor activities and will love them even more when they build confidence in their tree identification and measurement skills. Through these activities, students will learn to identify the major characteristics of trees and discover how the pace--a nonstandard measuring unit--can be used to estimate not only distances but also the…

Water is very important to plants. Plants need water to produce food and grow. Plants make their own food through a complex, sunlight-powered process called photosynthesis. Simply put, in photosynthesis, water absorbed by a plant's roots and carbon dioxide taken from the air by a plant's leaves combine to make the plant's food. This article…

Secondary vocational-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…

When using mobile devices in support of learning activities, students gain mobility, but problems arise when group members share information. The small size of the mobile device screen becomes problematic when it is being used by two or more students to share and exchange information. This problem affects interactions among group members. To…

There is growing evidence to support the notion that contact with nature is helpful for emotional states, attention, mental fatigue, behavior, and personal health. This study adopts a quasi-experimental approach to investigate the effects of limitedly visible indoor plants on students' psychology, physiology, and behavior and uses a control-series…

This study examined how 2 kinds of help when learning from text and pictures (mapping support and instructional guidance through prompts) influence the coherence formation process of integrating information into a mental model. It also explored spatial abilities and working memory span as potential moderators. In a computer-based setting, 84…

The following experiment describes an easy experiment for children 11-12 years old, performed during spring in a compulsory school near Karlstad, Sweden. Four different ripe fruits were placed under flowering plants of Impatiens New Guinea (Impatiens hawkeri) for four days on a table and with plastic bags around both plants and fruits. For one of…

Plant growth, development and reproduction are fundamental concepts in biology; yet there is a recorded lack of motivation for young people to grapple with these concepts. Here we present the "DigitalSeed" toy for making investigations around these concepts more accessible to children through hands-on digital interaction. This is part of an…

The Oregon 4-H Wildlife Stewards program has been training teachers and volunteers to convert school grounds to education sites by constructing schoolyard wildlife habitats since 1997. The publication "What Can We Learn at the Pond? 4-H Wildlife Stewards Master Leader Guide" (Bourdeau 2004a) was written to support the program's focus on developing…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the challenges of volunteer-driven college campus sustainability projects through a case study of the development of an urban native plant species garden on the College of Charleston campus in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Design/methodology/approach: The research used participant observation as the primary…

An activity that can be used to teach plant nutrition and the use of hydroponics is presented. Materials and procedures are discussed. Possible topics for science projects are suggested. (CW)

Described is an experiment designed to illustrate photosynthesis. The experiment is based on a classic experiment performed by vanHelmont in the sixteenth century. A list of materials, procedures, and concepts are discussed. Variations are suggested. (CW)

Presents several activities designed to teach students about the characteristics, classification, life cycle, and uses of the luffa (gourd). (WRM)

Describes the operation of the Minolta SPAD-502 Leaf Chlorophyll meter. Presents five sample activities for using this technology in high school or college science classes. (WRM)