Timed single-draft essays as summative assessment tasks have been argued to be inadequate for both teaching and assessing writing in the context of process writing. This is because single draft assess product rather than process. To address this concern, authors developed, implemented, evaluated two FL (foreign language) English courses that integrate various formative activities The course-emb...

Directions: Imagine that you are teaching a class in academic writing for first-year college students. In your class, drafts are not graded. Instead, you give students feedback and allow them to revise their essays before submitting them for grades. In response to your first essay assignment (given below), you have received the following draft from Madeleine X., one of your students. Write a br...

This is a skeletal and opinionated description of paper writing. Take from it the good things, and disregard the bad things. 1 First Draft The hardest thing about writing a paper (in my experience) is getting a first draft written. In particular, if there are proofs, the hard part means getting some draft of a proof written down on paper, not necessarily with every detail included. It is not ne...

Writing for scientific journals is not an inherently simple task for most people. It requires purposeful effort and multiple revisions of the initial manuscript draft. While each author and article has its own individuality, writing well to address the core elements of a scientific report is necessary. As editors of the IJTMB, we often see weaknesses in the core elements of the manuscripts we r...

Hyatt JP, Bienenstock EJ, Tilan JU. A student guide to proofreading and writing in science. Adv Physiol Educ 41: 324–331, 2017; doi:10.1152/advan.00004.2017.— Scientific writing requires a distinct style and tone, whether the writing is intended for an undergraduate assignment or publication in a peer-reviewed journal. From the first to the final draft, scientific writing is an iterative proces...

We describe how to measure site-specific rates of evolution in protein-coding genes and how to correlate these rates with structural features of the expressed protein, such as relative solvent accessibility, secondary structure, or weighted contact number. We present two alternative approaches to rate calculations, one based on relative amino-acid rates and the other based on site-specific codo...

A 2-year-old boy presented with delayed motor skills and language since birth. Family history disclosed consanguineous parents. Examination showed global muscular hypotonia, optic atrophy, oculomotor apraxia, and normal head circumference. Brain MRI showed optic atrophy and macrocerebellum (figure). Laboratory tests revealed deficient activity of a-L-iduronidase in peripheral blood leukocytes a...