Biology - Plant Groups Development: The Basics In this video we discuss the general plant phyla and how they are separated, as well with an overview of the gametophytes and sporophytes of plants. By: Christian Day … Continue reading →

Celiac Disease - Biology Exam By: Lucca Vallarino … Continue reading →

Many biology labs fight with a glut of measurement data. New software aims to make this a thing of the past: it simplifies laboratory experiment evaluation and unifies how data is saved. It even identifies measurement errors on the spot. During laboratory testing, countless measurement results accrue. To completely and systematically archive this body of data is extremely time consuming. In fact, researchers in the life sciences spend a quarter of their time managing data, according to an online survey of 70 people working in biology laboratories conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT in Sankt Augustin. Many of those surveyed reported that they have no centralized or structured approach to data collection in their workplace. And when a PhD student or assistant with years of experience leaves the institute and the successor tries to find and make sense of previous results, the search often begins with cryptic Excel tables and stacks of paper. The FIT has taken steps to alleviate this problem. With its step-by-step operation, its "MPlexAnalyzer" software makes it considerably easier to manage data. Initially, the FIT experts concentrated on cytometric devices, which enable the simultaneous determination of a variety of proteins in a … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Jun-2014 Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Among the sciences, biology consistently attracts the greatest numbers of women to graduate school and academic careers. About half of all biology graduate students are women, and 40 percent of biology postdocs are female. However, those numbers drop dramatically among faculty members: Nationwide, only 36 percent of assistant professors and 18 percent of full professors are women. A new study reveals a possible explanation for this discrepancy: In the labs of the highest-achieving male biology professors winners of the Nobel Prize, the National Medal of Science, and other prestigious awards women are greatly underrepresented, compared with their overall percentages in the field. Those labs serve as a major pipeline to junior faculty positions at top research institutions, the study found. "What we found is that these labs really function as a gateway to the professoriate. So we think the fact that they're not hiring very many women is important for understanding why there are still so few female faculty members," says Jason Sheltzer, a graduate student in biology at MIT and author of the study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the … Continue reading →

Research suggests that people at increased risk for developing addiction share many of the same neurobiological signatures of people who have already developed addiction. This similarity is to be expected, as individuals with family members who have struggled with addiction are over-represented in the population of addicted people. However, a generation of animal research supports the hypothesis that the addiction process changes the brain in ways that converge with the distinctive neurobiology of the heritable risk for addiction. In other words, the more one uses addictive substances, the more one's brain acquires the profile of someone who has inherited a risk for addiction. One such change is a reduction in striatal dopamine release. Dopamine is a key brain chemical messenger involved in reward-related behaviors. Disturbances in dopamine signaling appear to contribute to reward processing that biases people to seek drug-like rewards and to develop drug-taking habits. In the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers at McGill University report that individuals at high risk for addiction show the same reduced dopamine response often observed in addicted individuals, identifying a new link between addiction risk and addiction in humans. Dr. Marco Leyton and his colleagues recruited young adults, aged 18 to 25, … Continue reading →

2 July 2014 Media Release Rangi Ruru Student to Represent New Zealand in Bali The first South Island school student in 25 years to represent New Zealand at the International Biology Olympiad leaves Christchurch today (Wednesday 2 July). Rangi Ruru Year 13 student Hanseul Nam, has been selected as one of only four students nationwide (and the only female) to attend the competition in Bali which will see more than 60 countries around the world take part. Hanseul is extremely excited about the competition and winning a place came out of the blue. I was in shock. I wasn't expecting it, she says. I thought it would be really cool if I did but I was happy to have been a part of the selection process which was an incredible experience in itself. The exceptionally talented and hardworking student sat a two-hour nationwide entrance exam at the end of last year together with more than 1000 others, after which she was selected to take part in an online training and tutorial programme with 120 students from around the country. Then another exam followed, whittling the number down to 24, who all attended a residential camp in Auckland, during the last … Continue reading →