The eNotes Blog Dantes Confession and a New Circle of Hell forProfessors

Dantes Confession and a New Circle of Hell forProfessors This week, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a lengthy confession of a man who works for a custom essay writing service. It is a growing industry, as plagiarism detectors, like turnitin.com, are increasingly being used to catch cheating in both high schools and universities. Even though the price for a customized essay is high, about $20 per page, students are willing to pay for work that earns them a good grade.   Since the work is original, it passes the plagiarism detectors and professors often cannot take action against the cheater without proof of wrongdoing. The  writer, who calls himself Ed Dante for this article,  Ã‚  is unapologetic and largely blames our educational system for failing to properly meet the needs of its students.   Two of his most frequent types of buyers are ESL students and educationally deficient students (another other group who avails themselves of his services, he says, are lazy rich kids). Dante argues: Students who come to American universities from other countries find that their efforts to learn a new language are confounded not only by cultural difficulties but also by the pressures of grading. The focus on evaluation rather than education means that those who havent mastered English must do so quickly or suffer the consequences. My service provides a particularly quick way to master English. And those who are hopelessly deficient- a euphemism, I admit- struggle with communication in general. Another reason Dante cites for choosing a non-traditional career in writing is the money.   He claims to make about $66,000 a year,   typically much more than your average humanities professor. It may not be right, it may not be fair, but its out there. What can a professor do to combat this type of cheating?

Gastropod Fast Facts

Gastropod Fast Facts The class Gastropoda includes snails, slugs, limpets, and sea hares; the common name for all of these animals is gastropods. Gastropods are a subset of mollusks, an extremely diverse group that includes over 40,000 species. A seashell is a gastropod although this class contains many shell-less animals as well. Fast Facts: Gastropods Scientific Name: GastropodaCommon Name(s): Snails, slugs, limpets, and sea haresBasic Animal Group: InvertebrateSize: From .04–8 inchesLifespan: 20–50 yearsDiet:  Carnivore or HerbivorePopulation: UnknownHabitat: Oceans, waterways and terrestrial environments of all sorts worldwideConservation Status: Most are Least Concern, at least 250 are extinct, and many others Near Threatened or Endangered. Description Examples of gastropods include  whelks, conchs, periwinkles, abalone,  limpets, and  nudibranchs. Many gastropods  such as snails and limpets  have one shell. Sea slugs, like nudibranchs and sea hares, do not have a shell, although they may have an internal shell made of protein. Gastropods come in a wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Gastropods with one shell use it to hide in. The shell is usually coiled  and may be left-handed or sinistral (spiraled counter-clockwise) or right-handed or dextral (clockwise). Gastropods move using a muscular foot. Due to torsion, a behavior in which the gastropod twists the top of its body 180 degrees with respect to its foot as they grow, adult gastropods are asymmetrical in form. The class of gastropods belongs to the Animalia kingdom and the Mollusca phylum. fotandy/Getty Images   Habitat and Distribution Gastropods live just about everywhere on Earth- in salt water, fresh water, and on land. In the oceans, they live in both shallow, intertidal areas and the deep sea. On land, they are in wet marshy environments to deserts, from shorelines and beaches to the mountaintops. The complexity of a given habitat, whether on sea or shore or mountaintop, positively affects the density and richness of the gastropods found within it. Diet and Behavior This diverse group of organisms employs a wide range of feeding mechanisms. Some are herbivores and some are  carnivores. Most feed using a radula, a bony structure of tiny teeth used for scraping food off a surface. The whelk, a type of gastropod, use their radula to drill a hole into the shell of other organisms for food.  Food is digested in the stomach. Because of the torsion process, the food enters the stomach through the posterior (back) end, and wastes leave through the anterior (front) end.   Annika Bornheim / EyeEm / Getty Images Reproduction and Offspring Some gastropods have both sexual organs, meaning that some are hermaphroditic. One interesting animal is the slipper shell, which may start out as a male and then change to a female.  Depending on the species, gastropods may reproduce by releasing gametes into the water, or by transferring the males sperm into the female, who uses it to fertilize her eggs. Once the eggs hatch, the gastropod is usually planktonic larvae called a veliger, which may feed on plankton or not feed at all. Eventually, the veliger undergoes metamorphosis and forms a juvenile gastropod. All young (larval stage) gastropods rotate their body as they grow, resulting in the placement of the gills and anus above the head. Gastropods have adapted in a variety of ways to avoid polluting their breathing water with their own wastes. Threats Most gastropods on earth are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Least Concerned. However, there are many exceptions, such as the Xerocrassa montserratensis, a terrestrial gastropod that lives in shrublands and mountain peaks in Spain and is listed as endangered by fires and fire suppression and recreational activities. Well over 200 species are listed as extinct by the IUCN; many others, particularly freshwater and terrestrial species, are listed as endangered. Sources Aktipis, S.W. et al. Gastropoda: an overview and analysis. Phylogeny and Evolution of the Mollusca. Eds. Ponder, W. and D.L. Lindberg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 201–237.Auld, J. R., and P. Jarne. Sex and Recombination in Snails. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology. Ed. Kliman, Richard M. Oxford: Academic Press, 2016. 49–60.  Beck, Michael W. Separating the Elements of Habitat Structure: Independent Effects of Habitat Complexity and Structural Components on Rocky Intertidal Gastropods. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 249.1 (2000): 29-49.Frà ½da, J. Fossil Invertebrates: Gastropods. Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences. Elsevier, 2013.  Martà ­nez-Ortà ­, A. Xerocrassa montserratensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2011: e.T22254A9368348, 2011.