Category Archives: Biology

The Frankstein-themed event brought students from across the University to the sci-fi event Fly Blimps! a series of autonomous helium filled blimps whose movements are controlled by house flies was exhibited at Emerge, Festival of Futures: Frankenstein during the Night of Open Door at ASU's Tempe, Arizona campus on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2017. Art enthusiasts, science students and sci-fi fans alike gathered at last weekends eventEMERGE: A Festival of Futures to explore science through art. The event, themed "Frankenstein,"took place at the ASUNight of the Open Door on the Tempe campus Friday. The annual event hosted by the University Clubmixes biology and art to create a multitude of unique exhibits calledbio- art. May of theexhibits featuredbudding science research experiments on campus. You wont see that many green monsters with neck bolts roaming around, but instead youll see a lot of themes that are introduced in the novel replayed in the exhibits here," Ruth Wylie, facultyco-director of the event, said. "... Mary Shelly herself was a great futurist when thinking about these questions so we borrowed a lot from those questions and explore them in these different exhibits you can see." The theme "Frankenstein"showcased the benefits and consequences of newly developing … Continue reading →

I immediately spot Ned Brooks when I walk into the lobby of New Yorks Yale Club. Hes dowdily dressed in a puffy navy vest, a striped shirt, and corduroy pants. In the dim chandelier lighting, his gray buzz cut and serene, no-nonsense demeanor makes him distinctly average: a sore thumb amidst the sharp suits of the sophisticated Yale Club but the kind of vague, familiar face you feel like youve seen. Hes taken the train down from suburban Connecticut to tell me about the kidney he gave away and, when he recognizes me, he ambles towards me, his hand outstretched. We shake and he escorts me across a marble floor to a staircase that flows into a long hall and drains into an empty ballroom. Then he leaves me to get us drinks. Save for staff rushing to set the ballroom up for a party and a wall of portraits university presidents beatified with oil paints Im alone. Im also uncomfortable. Ned Brooks has gone hours out of his way to do me a favor and seems totally at home in the club, even though he didnt go to Yale (hes from a sister Ivy, Dartmouth). Its an unusual social … Continue reading →

On Feb. 24, Christian Alsterberg, a biology researcher from The University of Gothenburg Sweden, visited University Hall at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His visit was part of the Biology Departments Biology Seminar Series, where speakers with expertise in the field discuss biological, environmental, and sustainability issues. The biology seminars take place every Friday during the Fall and Spring Semesters. Last Friday, Jarren Byrnes, a biology professor at UMass Boston, hosted the event and welcomed Alsterberg. Undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors alike attended. The talk itself was titled, Habitat Diversity can Maintain Ecosystem Diversity. Alsterberg and his coworkers conducted an experiment to investigate whether diversity in a habitat can maintain or increase the multifunctionality of an ecosystem. The researchers first proposed a hypothesis: an ecosystem with at least two or more habitats is the better functioning ecosystem, capable of producing more oxygen and nutrients to sustain its own health, and will function better than an ecosystem with less than two ecosystems both with less than two habitats. Alsterbergs research also proposed that ecosystems all around the world are facing homogenization, with urbanization as a contributing factor. Alsterberg stated that although there is a general acceptation in the idea, he … Continue reading →

Feb. 4 was a busy day for Valeri Lapacek. A University of Guam master of science in Biology candidate and University of Guam Sea Grant fellow, Lapacek was hosting a community outreach called A Day in the Life of a Marine Biologist. During the outreach, Lapacek taught kids about what marine biologists do, shared her excitement about the ocean and its inhabitants, and educated them about the importance of corals. I am trying to spark passion and excitement in the participants for coral reefs. In order to increase conservation and protection, people must care about the environment, said Lapacek. If you dont find it exciting or you dont know much about the ocean, why would you want to protect it? Sea Grant fellowsUOG graduate students receiving funds to support their researchmust design and implement outreach activities as part of their proposed work plans. The five-hour Day in the Life at UOGs Marine Lab included tasks that a marine biologist may perform regularly. Youth participants, ages 7 to 15 years old, observed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, and starfish in touch tanks, practicing survey techniques used to describe and monitor organisms. They also spent a few hours doing lab work. At one station, … Continue reading →

"You can't study biology yet you're writing geography" - Pitso Mosimane Khanyiso Tshwaku | 2017-02-26 15:12:36.0 Mamelodi Sundown's head coach Pitso Mosimane. Image by: REUTERS/Toru Hanai / REUTERS Sundowns departed from their normal flowing football style and engaged in an arm-wrestle that not only frustrated Gavin Hunt's side but showcased Sundowns' versatility and adaptability. When the sides first met on October 1 in Mbombela Wits handed Sundowns a 3-0 hammering. You can't study biology yet you're writing geography" Mosimane said. "You've got to study what's coming to you. We knew they were not going to change their game plan and they've been destroying teams. "I was watching them during the Baroka game and I didn't even finish that game. Baroka wanted to play football and Wits didn't allow them to. "I knew Wits weren't going to play football and I wasn't going to do the same. This game was a heavyweight boxing bout and it didn't look good and I'm sorry about that. Normally Mamelodi Sundowns does not win these types of matches. "This team can play pretty football but they can also graft at the same time. "That's something we learnt during the Champions League and with the style … Continue reading →

An astronaut administers a shock to an alien life form in a Petri dish aboard the International Space Station, in a scene from the movie Life. Bad idea? (CTMG via YouTube) A real-life organism provides the inspiration for the alien monster at the center of Life, ahorror movie thats set on the International Space Station. But youd never guess which one. Would you believe slime mold? We used that as a model, working with the effects team, but ramped it up enormously, said Adam Rutherford, who served as a science consultant for the film. Moviegoers can get a glimpse at the results in the online trailers for Life, which opens in theaters on March 24. Rutherford didnt just throw a dart at the tree of life to select slime mold. Its a weird kind of fungus-like critter that can be considered a one-celled or multicellular organism. Studies have shown that although it doesnt have a brain, it seems to be capable of learning and even figuring out railway routes. Thats not a bad model for a fictional organism from Mars that combines neural and muscular functions in one cell. And its not a bad pick for Rutherford, a geneticist who … Continue reading →

Are you envious of Dutch men and Latvian women? They are, after all, the tallest people on the planet, and there are a variety of theories as to why this may be. As a new study by researchers at the University of Washingtons School of Medicine (UWSM) reveals, Neanderthals may have had something to do with it. Homo neanderthalensis, our ancestral cousins that suddenly died out around 42,000 years, had a thing for getting frisky with H. sapiens. This naughty interaction meant a lot of gene-swapping, and plenty of the human population today derives part of their genome and its physical effects from Neanderthals. Writing in the journal Cell, a team of geneticists wanted to know whether some of these genes were inactive, or whether they played an active role in our own evolution and contemporary biology. As it turns out, these genes affect the way other genes behave or express themselves so often that traits like disease resistance and, yes, height, are influenced by them. Even 50,000 years after the last human-Neanderthal mating, we can still see measurable impacts ongene expression, study co-author Joshua Akey, a geneticist at UWSM, said in a statement. Although working out how much of … Continue reading →

Homegrown in southern Utah, Jeremy Evans is taking the biology department by storm. Evans is a senior biology and zoology major from Hurricane who not only enjoys his studies but also takes advantage of every opportunity to learn more about his field. He is currently working on three projects in addition to his studies: building a zebrafish habitat, photographing beetles and studying invasive turtles in the Virgin River. In his spare time, Evans is starting a chess club on campus. Samuel Wells, a lecturer of biology, is working with Evans in many different capacities. Jeremy is an ideal student, Wells said. Hes always interested in whats going on, whatever subject it is ... He thinks a lot about projects that he can do and then he designs his projects and goes out and does more than hes expected to do, so its fun to have him. Wells thought of starting a chess club at SUU and was excited when Evans liked the idea and decided to be the president and founder. The club is currently under review with SUUSA and should be finished soon. Jeremys a natural at presiding over these sorts of things, Wells said. He sends out emails … Continue reading →

The University of New Mexico Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology presents the Milton Kahn Annual Lectureship on Friday, March 3 at 4 p.m. in the Science and Math Learning Center (SMLC) 102. The talk features Todd Martinez, a David Mulvane Ehrsam and Edward Curtis Franklin Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Martinez, who is also a professor of Photon Science at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will present Discovering Chemistry with Advanced Computing and Machine Learning. He will discuss how novel computational architectures and methodologies are revolutionizing diverse areas ranging from video gaming to advertising and espionage. In his talk, he will discuss how these tools and ideas can be exploited in the context of theoretical and computational chemistry, and discuss how insights gleaned from recommendation systems (such as those used by Netflix and Amazon) can lead to reduced scaling methods for electronic structure (solving the electronic Schrodinger equation to describe molecules) and how the algorithms in electronic structure can be adapted for commodity stream processing architectures such as graphical processing units. Martinez will describe how these advances can be harnessed to progress from traditional hypothesis driven methods for using electronic structure and first principles molecular dynamics to a … Continue reading →

Teacher helps blind sisters 'see' science Marvin Hurst, KENS 1:58 PM. PST February 22, 2017 SAN ANTONIO - Graciously seeking acceptance as normal college students is a box Katy and Olivia Shaw are trying to check. Yet, their navigation in the classroom and through everyday life yields the inquiry they've heard a million times: 'How does it feel to be blind?' "We do everything we can when it comes to living everyday life," Olivia said. The 19-year-olds said being visually impaired is the only normality they've known. They are both living with a disease affecting their vision called retinopathy. The sisters were diagnosed after being born prematurely. Katy is blind in her right eye and the teenager has some vision in her left eye which makes reading large print possible. Seeing is more challenging for Olivia. She has some light perception and some colors are visible to her. However, this hasn't stopped the Shaw sisters from doing chores at home, cooking and even earning academic fortitude. Katy has a 3.9 grade point average and Olivia has a 4.0. The sisters are both dual credit students at Northwest Vista College. "Definitely having this impairment has made it somewhat challenging," Katy said. … Continue reading →