Category Archives: Biology

FrontPage Magazine Liberal Biology Prof and Students Threatened for Opposing Campus Segregation FrontPage Magazine When fascism comes to America, it'll be draped in left-wing politics and shouting about the fragility of its brown bodies. Here's the bizarre situation at Evergreen State College where Brett Weinstein, a biology professor, was forced to teach in a ... Professor called racist and asked to resign by studentsDaily Mail Another Professor, Another MobNational Review White professor forced to flee campus as police say he's not safeThe College Fix all 18 news articles » See more here: Liberal Biology Prof and Students Threatened for Opposing Campus Segregation - FrontPage Magazine … Continue reading →

The 11th q-bio Summer School and Conference (qbSS) will be held at Colorado State University June 4-20, 2017 the first time the event has been held entirely at the CSU campus. The program was started in 2007 at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was geared toward an interdisciplinary audience, including engineers, computer scientists, biochemists, biologists and physicists. qbSS is recognized as one of the worlds best educational programs in quantitative modeling of biological processes. The core topics at the 2017 qbSS will be: single-cell gene regulation, cell signaling, synthetic biology and cancer dynamics. Participants will be introduced to statistical, mathematical, and computational tools for modeling cellular regulatory systems, and they will be engaged in numerous career-focused training and discussion sessions. This years program hasmore than 30 events open to the public including keynote talks, lectures, discussion panels and poster sessions. These events will be accessible to a broad scientific audience, and the events are free to local participants. Public Lectureswill include talks from over 20 invited speakers including two members of the National Academies: ProfessorHerbert Levine (Rice University, June 14) and ProfessorMichael Savageau (UC Davis, June 13). Career Discussion Panelsfeaturing an additional 20-plus senior scientists and experts will include:Choosing the … Continue reading →

New research published in Genome Biology finds that N-BLR, a primate-specific non-coding transcript, modulates the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and leads to colo-rectal cancer invasion and migration. Here to tell us about this are authors of the research George Calin and Isidore Rigoutsos. George Calin & Isidore Rigoutsos 26 May 2017 The relevance of sequence conservation in molecular biology cannot be disputed. Ever since the pioneering work of Linus Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl in the early 60s, it has been the driving force behind numerous discoveries. By the mid-60s, Margaret Dayhoff was already leveraging computers to draw links between sequence similarity and evolutionary relationships while her Protein Atlas introduced the concept of gene families. In the more than 50 years since that time, scores of amino acid and nucleic acid sequences with various degrees of conservation among numerous organisms and viruses have been linked to fundamental pathways. Discoveries over the last 20 years have revealed striking instances of conservation in organisms separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Characteristic examples include the let-7 family of the regulatory non-coding molecules known as microRNAs (miRNAs) that is conserved from worms to humans, and the tumor suppressor gene known as TP53 that is … Continue reading →

Stephanie Wang, The Indianapolis Star Published 1:26 p.m. ET May 23, 2017 | Updated 3:45 p.m. ET May 23, 2017 LGBT people have gained more legal recognition in recent years, but LGBT rights remain a central issue in Indiana politics. Stephanie Wang/IndyStar Jackie and Lisa Phillips-Stackman hold their daughter, Lola, on Dec. 4, 2015, at their Indianapolis home, The couple joined a lawsuit against Indiana to try to get the state to recognize both same-sex parents on their children's birth certificates.(Photo: Michelle Pemberton, The Indianapolis Star) A panel of three appeals-court judges are examiningwhether Indiana discriminates by not recognizing two married women both as parents on their children's birth certificates. Judge Diane S. Sykes of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago drew distinctions Monday between biological parentage and parental rightsand which of the two should be represented on birth certificates. "You can't overcome biology," Sykes said. "If the state defines parenthood by virtue of biology, no argument under the (Constitution's) Equal Protection Clause or the substantive due process clause can overcome that." "Your Honor, with all due respect, we maintain that parenthood is no longer defined by biology," said Karen Celestino-Horseman, the lawyer for eight same-sex couples … Continue reading →

LGBT people have gained more legal recognition in recent years, but LGBT rights remain a central issue in Indiana politics. Stephanie Wang/IndyStar Jackie and Lisa Phillips-Stackman hold their daughter, Lola, at their Indianapolis home, Friday, Dec. 4, 2015. The couple are filing a lawsuit against the state to try to get Indiana to recognize both same-sex parents on their children's birth certificates.(Photo: Michelle Pemberton/The Star) In oral arguments Monday, a panel of three judges for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals examined whetherIndiana discriminates by not recognizing two married women both as parents on their children's birth certificates without having to adopt. Judge Diane S. Sykesdrew distinctions betweenbiological parentage and parental rights, and which of the two should be represented on birth certificates. "You can't overcome biology," Sykes said. "If the state defines parenthood by virtue of biology, no argument under the Equal Protection Clause or the substantive due process clause can overcome that." "Your Honor, with all due respect, we maintain that parenthood is no longer defined by biology," said Karen Celestino-Horseman, the attorney for eight same-sex couples who brought the lawsuit against the state for only allowing only a mother and a father to be named on birth … Continue reading →

Dr. Martina Kniger, adjunct assistant professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College in the U.S. spoke on Monday at the Southern Cross Club as a guest lecturer in a recurring Reef Lecture Series, organized by the Central Caribbean Marine Institute. Dr. Knigers research and her presentation focused on the physiological and cellular mechanisms that allow plants to deal with light intensities that vary dramatically. I have been coming to CCMI for seven years now to teach an introductory tropical biology class for Wellesley College students, Dr. Kniger said in a press release. The students take a lecture class in the spring semester at Wellesley College to get prepared for this trip. Being at CCMI provides a unique opportunity to explore both the marine and terrestrial environments of this beautiful island and allows my students to develop their own research ideas. They not only explore different aspects of reef biology, but also investigate how plants manage to survive and thrive in this dry and hot environment. Many of the students who have participated in this course have greatly benefitted from this opportunity and have gone on to get PhDs in marine biology or other areas of biology. The target species of … Continue reading →

Immunitys Black Box Few systems approach the complexity of our own immune system, which promotes a swift and powerful host defense by coordinating a dynamic, multiscale set of hierarchically organized molecular, cellular, and organismal components. I believe the immune system represents the original problem to be addressed by systems biology, declared Naeha Subramanian, Ph.D., assistant professor, Institute for Systems Biology. Immune cells respond to infection and environmental cues through a variety of intracellular and extracellular receptors. Ligation of these receptors, Dr. Subramanian continued, leads to activation of many signaling cascades eliciting such processes as protein binding, phosphorylation, degradation, and nuclear localization that can subsequently alter gene expression. Dr. Subramanian then related this observation to her work, which focuses on deciphering the molecular mechanisms of innate immunity: The goal of my laboratory is to utilize a systems biology approach to examine these layers of information and derive hypotheses from emerging biological signatures. According to Dr. Subramanian, small alterations in gene expression resulting from infection or homeostatic dysregulation may lead to significant pathological effects associated with autoimmunity and other immune diseases. By examining how expression changes more globally, we can detect such alterations, she explained. We now know, for example, that regulatory … Continue reading →

Seventh grade students from Harrells Christian Academy took a trip to Salter Path. Harrells Christian Academys seventh grade class immersed themselves in the hands-on marine biology classroom called The Sound To Sea Program at the Trinity Center in Salter Path. Students from Harrells Christian Academy spent time learning about marine biology. For three days and two nights, Harrells Christian Academys seventh grade class immersed themselves in the hands-on marine biology classroom called The Sound To Sea Program at the Trinity Center in Salter Path. Guided by expert teachers, students took in a tremendous amount of knowledge about North Carolinas barrier island ecology, human interaction with local plants and animals, and how threats to this habitat are harmful to human health. Whether wading in the sound with collection nets, dissecting squid and using its ink, learning survival skills like making rope, or performing the classic team-building blind walk exercise, every element of these seventh graders week-long experience was used for learning. Instruction about the impact of food waste was applied in the dining room, where after every meal students collected and measured their ort (food waste), graphing the results and cheering as the amount got lower and lower. At night, the … Continue reading →

Last year, a group of Montanans, including wildlife biologists and hunters, launched a ballot initiative that would have banned trapping on public lands. They called trapping barbaric because peoples pets, as well as threatened and endangered wildlife, inadvertently get killed in traps. Trappers responded with outrageous claims, charging that the initiative was backed by out-of-state animal-rights ex-tremists,who were uninformed about wildlife. Foes of trapping, they claimed, were trying to destroy our way of life. And this was just the start: Once they stop trapping, they will come after hunting, and fishing, and ranching, and logging. Many of my fellow hunters also defended trapping with the same arguments. When it comes to predators like wolves or bears, its all black-and-white to some people. Youre either one of us or one of them, and there is little room for rational discussion; if you dont agree with them, they attack with fervor. During the trapping debate, hunting organizations dusted off the ballot-box biology defense, saying that such decisions should be made by wildlife professionals whose opinions are based on science, not by citizens acting out of emotion. We hunters love to claim that our approach to wildlife management is based on science. It … Continue reading →

Same-sex couples are suing the state of Indiana for not including both partners' names on their children'sbirth certificates. The case appeared before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where possible Trump SCOTUS nomineeJudge Diane Sykesmade some no-nonsense, scientifically factual remarks. And naturally, people were offended. Lesbian couple Ashlee and Ruby Henderson of Lafayette, Ind.,launchedthe suit in 2015 and were later joined by eight other same-sex couples, including Lisa and Jackie Phillips-Stackman of Indianapolis. They are challenging the states Parenthood Status policy, which requires that a parent have either a biological relationship to a child or go through a formal adoption process in order for their name to appear on that childs birth certificate. Judge Diane Sykes A federal court in Indiana has already ruled in favor of the couples. Citing the landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held the Indiana statute created an unequal condition for same-sex couples who have children through sperm donation, like the Phillips-Stackmans. In oral arguments on Monday, Judge Sykes dared to state the obvious: that a child can only biologically have one mother and one father. You cant overcome biology," she said. "If the state defines parenthood by virtue of biology, no … Continue reading →