Author: admin123TerRe

In this SciArt profile, we meet Petra Korlević, a scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, interested in retrieving DNA from historic mosquito collections. Can you tell us about your background and what you work on now? I work on human malaria transmitting mosquitoes; population genetics, insecticide resistance, and currently trying to marry all that up with landscape genomics. My background is on getting DNA from difficult samples, for my PhD I worked on method development for ancient DNA extraction from bones and teeth, for my postdoc I developed a method for minimally morphologically destructive DNA extraction from museum pinned insects.…

Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Some argue that our universe being fine-tuned for life is merely an accident. After all, there might be millions of flopped universes out there. There is no evidence for them but, they say, we can’t rule them out either. Durham University philosophy professor Philip Goff explains at IAI.TV why he doesn’t think that the idea of a multiverse can explain away the obvious fine-tuning of our universe. An Example of Fine-Tuning First, he offers an example of that fine-tuning,: The claim is just that, for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall in a very narrow range. For…

isbscience.org/news/2024/11/13/americorps-member-faduma-hussein-joins-isb-as-public-health-ambassador-coordinator/  Posted on November 13, 2024 Faduma Hussein is the newest AmeriCorps member to join ISB. Faduma Hussein recently joined the ISB Education team as the Public Health Ambassador Coordinator, becoming only the fourth AmeriCorps member to serve at ISB. In this Q&A, she shares insights into her education, what drew her to ISB, career aspirations, and more. Please read on and get to know Faduma Hussein. ISB: How long have you been in the AmeriCorps? Faduma Hussein: I did a summer service term before I started my degree, but this is my first full year as a member. ISB:…

No such thing as a standard career path – an interview with Sara Morais da Silva Sara Morais da Silva is currently a Reviews Editor at Journal of Cell Science, but publishing wasn’t her first calling. In fact, Sara has had years of experience in the lab, and then tried out careers in teaching and the industry. How did she end up as a journal editor? Here, we chatted to Sara about her research experiences, her ventures into various other careers, and why she ultimately decided to choose a career in publishing. Could you talk briefly about your research experience…

By David Tuller, DrPH *This is a crowdfunding month for Trial By Error. Donations (tax-deductible to US tax-payers) go to the University of Calinfornia, Berkeley, to support the project. The link to the crowdfunding campaign is here: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/42302 In the past, Professor Michael Sharpe, one of the lead PACE investigators, has intervened in my Berkeley crowdfunding and given my efforts a significant–although presumably unintended–boost. In the spring of 2018, I spent six weeks traveling around Australia, a trip that overlapped with that April’s crowdfunding campaign. During the campaign, Jennie Spotila endorsed it with a lovely post on her blog Occupy M.E.,…

Impressive though it is, the human body has some pretty embarrassing design flaws, from retinas that face backwards to nasal passages that drain upwards. (Someone should write a book!) One of the most commonly cited examples is the jumbled conduit we call the neck. I mean seriously: who came up with the bright idea of eating and drinking through the same narrow tube that we must also breathe through? Birds have a much better system, with one-way airflow achieved by bifurcating airways and additional air sacs up- and down-stream from the lungs (which also helps reduce the overall density of…

isbscience.org/news/2024/11/13/sid-venkatesh-publishes-co-first-authored-paper-in-science/  Posted on November 13, 2024 ISB Assistant Professor Sid Venkatesh and his team. (Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures) ISB Assistant Professor Dr. Sid Venkatesh is the co-first author of a paper in the journal Science. Following his 2019 work, where he co-led the development of a new class of nutritional interventions, microbiota-directed complementary foods (MDCFs), Venkatesh and Dr. Jiye Cheng (co-first author on the recent paper) identified a novel gut microbial enzyme that impacts satiety-related signaling pathways in undernourished children treated with MDCFs.  Venkatesh made the discovery as a postdoctoral research associate in Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon’s laboratory at Washington…

Four faculty members from three departments in the College of Natural Resources and Environment have received $1.7 million from the National Science Foundation to fund research into the dynamics of socio-environmental factors impacting coastal fisheries.Credit: Photo by Lee Friesland for Virginia Tech. Four faculty members from three departments in the College of Natural Resources and Environment have received $1.7 million from the National Science Foundation to fund research into the dynamics of socio-environmental factors impacting coastal fisheries.Holly Kindsvater and Willandia Chaves of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Craig Ramseyer of the Department of Geography, and Michael Sorice of…

Brief summary: Congenital heart defects are the most common human birth defect, affecting around 1% of newborns. People with heart defects often show low levels of a protein that helps transport a key metabolite, citric acid, in their cells. Now, researchers in China have shown that although this protein does not directly affect heart development in mice, its loss causes problems with placental growth, leading indirectly to heart defects. The researchers also suggest potential treatments. Image of a healthy 40-day-old mouse heart. Image credit: Wenli Fan Press release: Congenital heart defects are the most common form of human birth defect,…

Post provided by Michaël Beaulieu A cold Encounter in the Wild When talking about animal welfare to scientists who commonly use biologging tools to monitor the behaviour or physiology of wild animals in an ecological or conservation context, I have noticed that the first thing that usually comes to mind for them is the unwanted impact that biologging may have on animal welfare. Much has indeed been discussed and written in the last two decades about the side effects of biologging that may worsen the welfare of the studied animals. So, naturally, these effects can no longer be ignored by…