A recent manuscript (Ferguson et al. in Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, London, 2020. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/ imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf) from Imperial College modelers examining ways to mitigate and control the spread of COVID-19 has attracted much attention. In this paper, we will discuss a coarse taxonomy of models and explore the context and significance of the Imperial College and other models in contributing to the analysis of COVID-19.

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The National Science and Technology Council, within the Executive Office of the President, established the Pandemic Prediction and Forecasting Science and Technology Working Group in 2013 to advance US Government epidemic prediction and forecasting capabilities. Working Group leaders will provide an overview of activities, and seek feedback on the Working Group direction from the ISDS community.

Evolution and Medicine is a curriculum supplement designed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) for high school students. The supplement is freely available from NIH's Office of Science Education (OSE) as a part of the NIH curriculum supplement series. Development of the supplement was a collaborative effort that included input from a panel of experts in medicine, evolution, education, and educational technology. In total, the curriculum supplement includes five inquiry-based lessons that are integrated into the BSCS 5E instructional model (based on constructivist learning theory). The goal was to develop a 2-week curriculum to help students understand major concepts of evolution using the dynamic, modern, and relevant context of medicine. A diverse group of students and teachers across the US participated in a formative evaluation of a field test version of the curriculum. High school students made significant learning gains from pretest to posttest, with a relatively large effect size for student understanding of common ancestry and a relatively small effect size for student understanding of natural selection. There was no statistically significant difference in achievement gains between white students and all other racial/ethnic categories. Overall, the evaluation suggests that a curriculum that emphasizes the role of evolution in medicine, uses a constructivist instructional model, and is grounded in inquiry is relatively well-received by teachers and students and shows promise for increasing student learning in evolution.

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Four populations of Drosophila mimica and 1 population of D. kambysellisi collected at sites which differed in wetness were examined for several water balance characteristics. Net water loss per hour increased as a (relative humidity/100) decreased in all populations, but the rate of increase was lower in populations from dry sites. When exposed to 0.70 a, D. kambysellisi, which were from a rain forest, lost water faster and died sooner than did D. mimica. Two D. mimica collecting sites were divided into smaller units based on substrate type at one site and on litter wettness at the other site. The D. mimica at the first site were homogeneous with respect to the water balance properties studied here, but in the second site, there was evidence of population differentiation associated with litter wettness.

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