apa and mla

one similarity between apa and mla is the fact that they both are required to be double spaces papers. Along with both papers have either a reference page or a works cited page which need to be in alphabetical order. Another similarity would be that they bot use parentheses to cite source's within the paper.

Differences between the two would regard the in text citations, and with mla you have to use the authors name after a qoute but with apa you are required to use the date it was published. In mla you title your last page with your sources work cited, but in apa you title your last page with references. MLA also uses page numbers and only uses qouted up to four lines compared to apa that uses up to forty lines.

beging research topic

For my research paper I think im going to try to focus on stem cell research. As most know there is a great deal of controversy related to this topic. At this moment in time im not sure the stance I take, I guess I could go both ways. In my eyes stem cells hold an endless amount of opportunity in the medical field, along with just improving people lives. Stem cells could almost be considered magic, the have the ability to cure and heal so many people who struggle with sicknesses everyday. Stem cells are simply full of endless happiness for individuals and even family members. But then if you look at the ethical side of things some may say that your killing unborn babies. Anyone would say that killing babies is wrong, but even through these cells are

reflection

             From this assignment I gained the knowledge that there is  a fine line between the way you write a report and the way you write a research paper. I started out with a report, but realized that im doing research. So instead of saying what you did, you have to say what you found. use the statement what I found, not what I did. Another thing that I learned from this paper is when you interview someone you don't want to try to incorporate all of the questions you used in your interview, but instead simply try to incorporate the main points. Trying to put your entire interview in simply takes to many words and is not necessary in any way.What I found did in fact did support what I assumed about my field. Biology includes both academic and non academic forms of writing, through emails and essays  and lab reports. I assumed that just because im dealing with writing in college and biology doesn't mean that all the writing is going to be academic. the challenges of this assignment would be the organization of the paper itself. That is the main problem I had and im currently still trying to over come it. For some reason it is confusing me more now then it was before. As  a writer though when I look at this past assignment I learned that my go to is to simply report what I did, and elaborate and explain that. But also I learned that I start to kind of go off track and make things a little confusing. What helped me improve my weaknesses were the group conferences, which I found helpful. The conferences put me back on track and put me in the right direction. It  showed me that my paper was organized wrong and gave me some ideas on how to do so. To me it really doesn't matter if  a peer is there or not, but to some Im sure it makes a difference. Like I heard in class, a few peers said that they thought that they did not get enough time to discuss their papers with a peer. It was not a problem for me this time but I could see where it could become a problem in the future. But in general having a peer there could be a good thing, because it gives you a second pair of eyes to catch something that maybe the teacher missed or just another opinion in general is never a bad thing

first paper

Alexei Afanasyev

February 3, 2015

Eng 102: 59

Paudel 

Writing in Biology

In todays society there are many different things you can choose to do with your life. Except in todays society in order to have a better chance at achieving success you have to be able to make it through college. I made the decision of becoming a biology major, which entails a lot more then I expected. So I'm here to let you in on a little bit of information you might want to be aware of. While pursuing your biology major your going to come into contact with many different forms of writing. These writings will also change throughout your biology major, and it might begin to give you second thoughts about your future. I gathered information from interviews from teachers aids and biology professors to try to give you a better insight on your future.  

For my first interview I interviewed my TA Lauren Curtis for my bio 240 class, I asked them basic questions regarding the types of writings in their field of biology. she said that while she is writing it all depends on what she is writing about, then she can really decide on what to keep in the back of her head. When she writes research or analysis papers, she keeps the thesis in mind at all times. this is so she can stay on the right track and stay focused on her writing (which contain lab reports, essays, and research papers). when writing she tries to reach certain audience, so she tries to incorporate information  her audience or professors would like to see. In this same sense when she writes her research papers she uses scientific language, rather then just writing normally, like a letter. Next she said that while preforming research she tries to use sources that contain .edu, .gov, .org because these are usually the most credible and .com sources are “sketchy”. But this is not always possible, so she makes sure that her information accurately support’s her claim. If she does use a .com source then she will check multiple other sources to  make sure the info is credible, but always tries to avoid wikipedia. Scientific journals are usually the most credible. Her writing consists mostly of formal writing, which are things she turns into professors like field studies or short answer questions. her main purpose of writing is so that she can prove that she is knowledgeable about a purpose or certain topic in biology. In her undergraduate degree as a biology major she writes many essays to simply explain topics in her own words. In order to do this it requires research, but she said "I think being careful and selective with your sources you use can add to your credibility" because when you write and your just finding the first website and throwing that information down, how credible do you think all your info actually is? It could be completely wrong, thats why her formal writing required for bio needs extensive research. ultimatley her writing deals with a lot of recording, researching, and observing which is a lot different then just taking notes for her test. she can't write a research paper without using scientific language. But not all of her writing is academic per say. yes it deals with biology but some things she is simply reporting information, or she's possibly trying to persuade an audience.

In other words the teachers aid that Interviewed can become involved in a few different types of writing, weather its academic or non-academic. For example when she writes a lab report it would most definitely an academic form of writing. I pulled some examples from a lab report titled Evidence for GC-biased gene conversion as a driver of between-lineage differences in avian base composition, which shows some  major basics that make this a academic sources regarding biology. First we can point out that the author (Hans Ellegren) uses scientific language such as “Our results provide evidence that gBGC may drive patterns of nucleotide composition in avian genomes and are consistent with more effective gBGC in large populations and a greater number of meioses per unit time; that is, a shorter generation time.”(Ellegren)  just by looking at this quote and the title of the report, it screams academic writing. Mostly because it clearly uses scientific language that the general public really doesn't  understand, its aimed to an academic audience or someone who is pursuing a future in biology. Also through out the report the information is supported with findings or results, creating cold hard facts rathers then a biased opinion. But then throughout biology you will also have to take part in non-academic sources of writing that entail more biased opinion, or are not supported by cold hard facts. An example of this would be articles written for the general public, there more explanatory and easier to understand or essays written by the TA. On the discover magazine website I analyzed an article titled Plants Have Slow Sex in Space by Perrin Ireland which says “Plants have the ability to sense gravity. There are specialized parts of some cells called statoliths, which occur, for instance, in plant root cells, which need to know which direction to travel—in this case, down into the ground. The cell senses gravity, and changes its behavior accordingly.”  This small portion shows you how a non academic sources is easier to understand, and simply breaks basic info down for you. This is intended for anyone to read, not biased for just biology students. Also it is more of an opinion in ways, because it is not supported by sources like the lab report and doesn't really provide any hard facts. It seems to almost summarize information presented by someone else. Now that you have two different examples regarding the TA, let me breakdown how my professor Shira Rabin deals with writing(based on the same questions).

Professor Rabin says that she has a few audiences that she she can write to, weather it be a technical document for colleagues or graduate students or more general for undergraduate and high school students. If she doesn't write to a specific audience though her writing is either over simplistic(for colleagues) or totally over your head (for undergrads). When she is writing she almost never uses sources from the internet, instead she uses a database called Pubmed (an online science database). sources from here are credible because they have been reviewed by other scientists. When she is writing the fact that she is a professional in her field gives her credibility along side with the ability to use the proper scientific language. She also believes that she takes part in both formal and informal writing, formal being publications informal being emails. But most of her writing is informal in the fact that she writes 15-30 emails a day. I would have to say that she has a good majority of non academic sources, main example would be the emails. But another example I found regarding a form of nonacademic writing that could be preformed by her was An article titled The Botany Of Desire by Robert LLoyd. This article is for the general public, and it states “the ways in which plants have advanced their agenda, metaphorically speaking, by making themselves attractive to humans” (Lloyd) which is very basic and understandable. Through out the article  it breaks down how the different plants have used attractiveness in order to become more dominant. It doesn't have many different sources, but instead it has more of general knowledge and seems a little biased along side with the fact anyone could pick it up and understand it. It is not written to the scientific community, there fore making this a nonacademic source of writing.  Then a academic form of writing that the professor could take part in/ or that you would be given to students could be pretty much anything found in university library. An example of this would be a study published  by Zhao Y and Chen X called Noncoding RNAs and DNA Methylation in Plants, which was published in Pubmed, containing many sources. This is academic source because it is published in a well known medical journal, and its not for the general public for example the study states “Cytosine DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification in eukaryotes that maintains genome integrity and regulates gene expression” (Zhao Y, Chen X) which clearly shows the gap between the fact that its written for a science community rather then a high school student. This is a unbiased opinion because it is based on true facts of the scientific world. My professor would most likely publish something related to this, along with the students studying it. therefore you can see how both academic and nonacademic sources are tied into a biology  professors job.

  Hopefully now you have a little bit more of an idea on what types of writing the field of biology will pertain to. Not everything is going to be easy and just putting things in your own words. Biology requires a lot of research, but with research you gain more understanding. In order to succeed in biology, you need to understand the language that it is interrelated with.  

Work cited

Ellegren, Hans. “Evidence for GC-biased gene conversion as a driver of between-lineage differences in                   avian base composition.” Genome Biology 15:549 (2014): n. pag. Web. 11 Dec. 2014.

Zhao Y, and Chen X. “Noncoding RNAs and DNA Methylation in Plants.” National Science Review 1 Jun. 2014: 219-229. Pubmed . Web. n.d.

Ireland, Perrin. “ Plants Have Slow Sex in Space.” Discover: science for the curios. Kalmbach Publishing., 25 March 2013. Web. n.d.

Lloyd, Robert. “The Botany of Desire.” Los Angeles Times. n.p. 28 oct. 2009. Web. n.d.

Afanasyev, Alexei. “Re: Writing in Biology.” Message to Shira Rabin. 29 Jan. 2015. E-mail.

Afanasyev, Alexei. “Re: Writing in Biology.” Message to Lauren curtis. 26 Jan. 2015. E-mail.