Bi 1 Policies
Grading
| Contributions to your grade | ||
|---|---|---|
| Component | Weight | Comments |
| Problem Sets | 28% | There are 8 problem sets @ 3 to 4%. Collaboration is allowed (see collaboration rules below). Problem sets are generally posted on Tuesday and due at 4 PM the following Tuesday in the Bi 1 closet*. The only reasons acceptable for full credit on late problem sets are formal medical or Dean's excuses. |
| Recitation Sections | 12% | You are evaluated by attendance and by contributions to the discussions. |
| Midterm (covers problem sets 1-4) | 28% | The only reasons acceptable for full credit on late exam are formal medical or Dean's excuses. |
| Final (covers problem sets 1-8) | 32% | The only reasons acceptable for full credit on late exam are formal medical or Dean's excuses. |
* The Bi 1 closet is 4 m South of the East entrance to the lecture hall (119 Kerckhoff).
Without a formal excuse from the Dean or Health Center, homework will have 10% credit deducted for each day that it is late (in other words, up to 90% credit if one day late, up to 50% if five days late, and so on). Make sure to write the date and time of submission at the top of each problem set.
Pass/Fail Grading
Students may opt to take Bi1 pass/fail instead of on letter grades. The last day for exercising the pass/fail option is drop day: May 20th, 2009. Students who take Bi1 on pass/fail must earn a 60% or higher course grade *and* at least 60% on each assignment in order to pass.
Course Conflicts & Conflict Cards
We strongly urge you to take Bi1 only when your schedule allows you to devote your full attention to the class. However, we understand this is not possible for some students and will, in certain cases, sign conflict cards.
- Students who have a conflict with one lecture per week will be dealt with on a case by case basis.
- Students who have a conflict with two lectures per week will be allowed to take Bi1 on the following conditions:
- They must attend all (100%) of their section meetings. Passing Bi1 will be contingent on perfect section attendance. Sections can be missed only with a signed medical excuse from a medical doctor.
- Each week, they must submit a 200 word summary of the material presented during the missed lectures to their TAs.
- Students who have a conflict with all three weekly lectures are not permitted to take Bi1. Conflict cards will not be signed in this case.
Collaboration
| Problem Sets | Exams | |
|---|---|---|
| While working, you may consult: | ||
| Required texts | ✔ | ✔ |
| Recommended reading on the syllabus and in sets | ✔ | ✔ |
| Textbooks from prerequisite classes (i.e. Chem1) | ✔ | |
| English language dictionary (electronic, hard copy) | ✔ | ✔ |
| The Bi 1 Glossary | ✔ | ✔ |
| Reference books (CRC, Merck Index, etc.) | ✔ | |
| Any other texts or journal articles: (cite appropriately) | ✔ | |
| You may use a computer as a word processor | ✔ | ✔ |
| The Internet: (give URL for site) | ✔ | exam website only |
| Notes. You may use: | ||
| Your class notes (taken in lecture) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Hand copies of the class notes of others | ✔ | ✔ |
| The class notes of others (original or Xeroxed) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Anything written in your own hand | ✔ | ✔ |
| Class handouts | ✔ | ✔ |
| TA/section handouts | ✔ | ✔ |
| Homework/exams of past years | ||
| Homework/exams of this year | ✔ | ✔ |
| Solutions to homework/exams of past years | ||
| Solutions to homework/exams of current year | ✔ | ✔ |
| For computational aids, you may use: | ||
| Calculators, computer as calculator, and slide rules | ✔ | ✔ |
| Mathematical reference tables (integrals, Laplace transforms, etc) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Collaboration: | ||
| Tell another student that the question exists | ✔ | |
| Basic discussion of the problems | ✔ | |
| Look at communal materials while writing up solutions | ✔ | |
| Look at other's individual work (i.e. writeups) | ||
| Sharing a session on PyMOL or other computer-based exercise | ||
| Discussing how to use PyMOL or other computer-based exercise | ✔ | |
| Turn in a set with more than one name on it | ||
| Sharing communications to or from TAs | ✔ | |
| Comparing answers to completed problems | ✔ |
Please also consult the specific guidelines on an exam, if they are provided.
- You must answer in your own words.
- In addition to these guidelines and rules, obvious copying (even a single sentence) is not allowed.
- You must feel that you can personally reconstruct the entire response.
The Honor Code
Students should understand that Caltech's Honor Code is good preparation for the equally stringent ethical requirements which are imposed by employers, publishers, and granting agencies. Your instructors abide by the Caltech Honor code and will not tolerate any behaviors that take unfair advantage of others.
Homework
Copying of other people's work is not permitted. You may consult with others on the problem sets, but the written work must be done independently by each student.
Plagiarism
Below is a statement from the Caltech Honor System handbook (2000):
In Bi 1, this policy applies to all written work submitted for the course. Although you may include sentences from the work of others in your homework, you must enclose the sentences in quotation marks and provide a proper reference for the quotation (see example below). If plagiarism is discovered in any course work, we will notify the Board of Control and the grade will be impacted accordingly.In collecting data and information, students need to actively avoid plagiarizing the work of others. Proper footnoting of source material and documentation of borrowed ideas are absolutely essential. Many professors are willing to show students how to correctly document their papers. Plagiarism, whether inadvertent paraphrasing or direct substitution, takes unfair advantage of any original authors, the instructor who incorrectly believes that the ideas are the plagiarist's, and other students who correctly footnote all sources.
Material cited verbatim should be formatted as in the following example:
Also, ideas and results must be cited even when the source text is not used verbatim and the material cited is not quoted. Example:"Copying material verbatim from a source and not explicitly quoting it and citing it is plagiarism. Students who plagiarize should expect a very poor grade." (Bjorkman and Rees, 2004; Clemons and Rees, 2006).
The E. coli protein MutS repairs DNA mismatches (Su et. al., 1988).
Senior Policy
Due to the timing requirements of graduating seniors taking this course, seniors have two options regarding the final exam:
1. They may take the final, but must turn it in early (by 10 AM on June 7, 2009) so that it can be graded before graduation.
*OR*
2. Instead of taking the final, they will be required to write a research paper (3-5 pages single spaced, must reference papers in the literature, no Wikipedia references allowed) on one of the following topics:
- Endogenous HIV restriction factors (TRIM5alpha, tetherin, APOBEC3G)
- Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs): Write either on the relation of ERVs to disease, or the evolutionary significance of ERVs
- One or more of the following anti-HIV gene therapy strategies:
- Engineering immunity (gene therapy to produce anti-HIV antibodies)
- Zinc finger nucleases specific to CCR5
- Antisense RNA therapy
- Ribozymes against HIV
- siRNA targeting HIV genes
- Introduction of dominant-negative HIV genes
- Advanced biological imaging techniques (TIRF, STED, structured illumination, 4-pi, etc) and their applications
- Alternatively, the paper may be based on one of the following books:
• The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS, by Edward Hooper
• The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, by John M. Barry
• The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston
• Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter H. Duesberg
- We welcome suggestions for alternative topics or resources, but they must be approved in advance by the instructors!
There will be specific guidelines posted later for the papers, including questions that must be addressed depending on the topic chosen. By the time of the midterm, graduating seniors must identify to the Head TA which topic they have chosen, and further guidance will be given.
- Research papers must be submitted by the end of the term in Microsoft Word (.doc) format only (not PDF).
The option to write a paper applies only to seniors. All non-seniors must take the final.
