Babies have five colour categories: red, yellow, green, blue and purple, experiments showed. Photograph: Alamy Categories of colour are not born of language but are rooted in biology, according to research that shows babies divide colours up into red, blue, green, yellow and purple. Humans see colour as a result of cells in the eyes known as cones, which are sensitive to either long, short or medium wavelengths of light. The way in which the brain interprets combinations of signals from these cells allows us to see a whole spectrum of colour. But whether biology underpins the way in which we label colours has been a matter of debate. While babies have previously been shown to have some colour categories, different languages have different groupings some do not separate green and blue, for example suggesting categorisation of colour might be down to culture. We wanted to find out whats the connection between the two, what is it that babies are using to make their colour categories and what can that tell us about the way we talk about colour as adults, said said Alice Skelton, first author of the research and a doctoral candidate at the University of Sussex. Writing … Continue reading →

The News Tribune Indiana beekeepers turn to biology to save colonies The News Tribune Standing feet from around 250,000 bees, Ellie Symes spoke about the nearly 4.25 million more The Bee Corp. is in the process of acquiring. The fact that she is allergic earned a casual mention. "I used to bee-keep in dresses," Symes said, adding that ... and more » See the original post here: Indiana beekeepers turn to biology to save colonies - The News Tribune … Continue reading →

An important skill for scientists is knowing where to spend your funding, which explains why Keene State Colleges Denise Burchsted sounded proud when she described her protocol for studying beaver ponds: Rather than investing in winches to pull undergraduate students out of the muck, I invested in a few GoPro cameras. Dont worry, KSC parents: This assistant professor of environmental studies isnt abandoning biology majors to the Cheshire County mire. Rather, Burchsted is developing a new and cheap way to understand the difficult-to-investigate ponds that are created by beaver dams, which are a focus of her research partly because they havent been analyzed as much as you might think. Its hard to study beaver ponds. Boating is usually difficult, because the ponds are too shallow and full of dead trees (gunk holes, as my colleague says). Wading is also difficult, because the bottom is incredibly mucky, is how Burchsted described the situation. Its well-known that beaver ponds are important for the New Hampshires ecosystem, since theyre rich in nutrients and organic material, and are home to a variety of invertebrates, fish and birds, but even a very basic fact like how many fish live in them is hard to obtain, … Continue reading →

Science Daily Dual-channel biological function generator: Tool brings ... Science Daily Bioengineers who specialize in creating tools for synthetic biology have unveiled the latest version of their 'biofunction generator and bioscilloscope,' an ... and more » Read the rest here: Dual-channel biological function generator: Tool brings ... - Science Daily … Continue reading →

Subject expert writes to CBSE to get these questions reviewed and resolve the issue in the answer key, which is yet to be released A day after a couple of national eligibility-cum-entrance test (NEET) candidates pointed out an error in the biology section, city-based NEET trainer wrote to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) highlighting that three questions in the exam were ambiguous. Biology subject expert, Dr Arvind Goyal, stated that three questions in the biology section of code W paper of NEET UG 2017, confused a lot of students even when this section was the easiest. There were a total of 180 questions in the paper and each question is of four marks. If a student has marked an incorrect answer, according to the answer sheet, they will lose five marks (-1 negative, in addition to the 4). The competition is really tough and rank can drop by hundreds of places on a difference of 2-3 marks, said Goyal. Question number 18 of the biology question asked that hepatic portal vein drains blood to the liver from which body part? Four options given were heart, stomach, kidneys and intestine. Dr Goyal stated that in this question both options … Continue reading →