Category Archives: Biology

Biology

Science, biology and nature-based content rules at The Pinwheels … – Channel NewsAsia

Who do you think is Singapores content creator of the year? Given our obsession with anything food, travel and shopping related, it would be logical to say a vlogger from those genres. But nope at least not at last nights (Mar 3) The Pinwheels 2023.Instead, that coveted title went to the science and nature-based YouTube channel, Just Keep Thinking.

You might recognise the channels long-haired, bespectacled host, Biogirl MJ, who often greets the audience with hi, guys before enthusiastically launching into a factoid or two about Singapores coral reefs or even how podiatrists keep feet healthy.

The local science content creator beat the likes of Temasek Polytechnic, Mothership and TSL Media to clinch the title and a S$10,000 production grant.

Just Keep Thinking was also recognised as this years Best Newcomer and bagged an additional $5,000 production grant for its video How Does The Singapore Army's Artillery Hit Their Targets?

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Science, biology and nature-based content rules at The Pinwheels ... - Channel NewsAsia

Biology

Post-doctoral Research Fellow, School of Biology and … – Times Higher Education

Applications are invited for a temporary post of a UCD Post-doctoral Research Fellow Level 1 or 2 within UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.

We are seeking a post-doctoral fellow in pest-risk analysis and ecological modelling to join an active research team working on the analysis and communication of plant pest risks (https://www.ucd.ie/ecomodel/pesttool.html). The work is in collaboration with Met ireann, the UK Met Office, DAFM's Pest-risk Analysis Unit and a related project on forest pests (https://www.ucd.ie/ecomodel/forestpests.html).

This research will support Ireland's plant biosecurity policy and stakeholders in Ireland responsible for management of pests and pathogens. The post-doctoral fellow will be based in UCD's Earth Institute. The position is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and will be mentored by Dr Jon Yearsley.

This is a research focused role, where you will conduct a specified programme of research supported by research training and development under the supervision and direction of a Principal Investigator. The primary purpose of the role is to further develop your research skills and competences, including the processes of publication in peer-reviewed academic publications, the development of funding proposals, the mentorship of graduate students along with the opportunity to develop your skills in research led teaching.

In addition to the Principal Duties and Responsibilities listed below, the successful candidate will also carry out the following duties specific to this project:

Postdoc Level 1 Salary: 42,033 - 48,427 per annum OR

Postdoc Level 2 Fixed Salary: 49,790 per annum

Appointment on the above range will be dependent upon qualifications and experience.

Closing date: 17:00hrs (local Irish time) on 22nd March 2023.

Applications must be submitted by the closing date and time specified. Any applications which are still in progress at the closing time of 17:00hrs (Local Irish Time) on the specified closing date will be cancelled automatically by the system. UCD are unable to accept late applications. UCD do not require assistance from Recruitment Agencies. Any CV's submitted by Recruitment Agencies will be returned.

The PD1 position is intended for early stage researchers, either just after completion of a PhD or for someone entering a new area for the first time. If you have already completed your PD1 stage in UCD or will soon complete a PD1, or you are an external applicant whose total Postdoctoral experience, inclusive of the duration of the advertised post, would exceed 4 years, you should not apply and should refer to PD2 posts instead. or The PD2 post is intended for researchers that have completed PD1. As with the PD1, if you have already completed your PD2 stage in UCD or will soon complete a PD2, or your total Postdoctoral experience, inclusive of the duration of the advertised post, would exceed 6 years, you should not apply and should refer to Research Fellow posts instead.

Prior to application, further information (including application procedure) should be obtained from the Work at UCD website: https://www.ucd.ie/workatucd/jobs/

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Post-doctoral Research Fellow, School of Biology and ... - Times Higher Education

Biology

CBSE Class 12 Biology board exam 2023: Section-wise tips to ace the board exam – India Today

New Delhi,UPDATED: Mar 2, 2023 20:58 IST

By India Today Education Desk: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will conduct the Class 12 Biology board on March 16, 2023, for the current academic year for students of the science stream. As per the CBSE, the syllabus comprises five units: Reproduction, Genetics, Biology in Human Welfare, Biotechnology, and Ecology.

The unit of Genetics carries the maximum weight of 20 marks, and the unit of Ecology carries the least weightage of 10 marks. Do go through the weight mark of each unit so that you can allocate preparation time accordingly.

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This section has VSA, each carrying 1 mark. It will have Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and Assertion Reasoning (AR) questions. While answering the MCQ, don't forget to mention the option that you have selected. AR questions require carefully reading of both statements to arrive at the correct answer.

This section has a question that carries two marks each. Your answer should have four points. If it is a "differentiate between" question, always tabulate your answer.

This will have Questions which will carry 3 marks each. Your answer should contain six points. A flow chart or a line diagram must support these answers.

This section contains Case Based Questions (CBQ) to test analytical/application/data interpretation skills.

Read the paragraph and carefully observe the data or graph so you do not miss any details.

Section E will have questions of 5 marks each. If the question has subparts, pay attention and see if it has two parts, then the marks division becomes 2+3 or 3+2. This will help you write the answer accordingly. These answers must be accompanied by a diagram wherever possible.

Please ensure that you write carefully to avoid cutting and overwriting. Always mention the answer number clearly.

Leave one line between answers; if you get time, please draw the line at the end of every answer. You can use a blue or black pen for writing and a sharpened pencil to draw and label diagrams.

NCERT rationalised syllabus for Classes 6 to 12: Check full deleted syllabus for 2022-23

- Tips and tricks shared by Dr Deepti Srivastava (HOD Biology) SNS Gurgaon.

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CBSE Class 12 Biology board exam 2023: Section-wise tips to ace the board exam - India Today

Biology

Smithsonian will honor biological males in Women’s History … – The Christian Post

Trans activists and their supporters rally in support of transgenderism on the steps of New York City Hall on October 24, 2018, in New York City. The group gathered to speak out against the Trump administration's stance on there being two sexes and not innumerable genders. Last week, The New York Times reported on an unreleased administration memo that proposes a strict biological definition of sex based on biology. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The interim director for the Smithsonian's planned American Women's History Museum revealed that the museum will also feature biological men who identify as women.

Interim Director Lisa Sasaki recently told The New York Times that the museum, which pays homage to female historical figures, including suffragists and civil rights leaders, will honor women's contributions to science, politics and popular culture.

Specifically, Sasaki said the museum would highlight the accomplishments of women like suffragist and civil rights activist Mary Burnett Talbert, actress Anna May Wong and Vice President Kamala Harris' mother and breast cancer researcher, Shyamala Gopalan.

Another aspect of the museum would allow visitors to submit their personal stories through the institution's oral history program.

Sasaki argued that there is no "monolithic experience of womanhood," saying she plans to include men who identify as women. The interim director believes that it's essential for the museum to feature trans-identified people, citing a "deep partisan divide" about accepting those who claim transgender identities.

"We have a job to build a museum that's going to serve the public for a very, very long time," Sasaki was quoted as saying. "From the DNA of this museum, there has been a desire to be inclusive."

The exhibit comes amid ongoingdebates about including biological men in female-designated spaces, including women's sports and restrooms. Regarding athletics, 18 states have enacted policies banning trans-identified biological males from competing in female sports.

The bans highlight arguments about competitive fairness and whether allowing biological men into female spaces celebrate males in areas intended to commemorate women's achievements.

Sasaki provided incoming staff and her advisory council with the book she's been reading, A Fool's Errand, to help prepare them for potential criticisms they may encounter.

The book, written by the Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, describes the challenges of building the National Museum of African American History and Culture, both personal and architectural.

The American Women's History Museum has 14 employees putting together a wishlist for the museum's collection under an annual operating budget of nearly $2 million, according to The Times. While some of the items included in the collection will come from donors, the museum can also pull from 157 million objects in the Smithsonian's possession.

Sasaki launched other Smithsonian exhibits, including the 2019 digital exhibit, "A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America." The exhibition examined queer life in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through short films, photography and long-form essays.

"As an extension of our 2014 digital exhibition 'A Day in the Life of Asian Pacific America,' this project examines everyday life all across Asian Pacific America in order to illuminate the vast and complex nature of the Asian Pacific American identity," Sasaki said in a 2019 statement.

"Most importantly, it brings much-needed visibility to the Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ community by sharing the stories of elders, youth and through calls for crowd-sourced material any community member."

While the American Women's History Museum doesn't yet have a designated location, the Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that it has received more than $55 million in gifts to boost the project's development. The museum also doesn't have final Congressional approval.

The list of donors includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, Alice L. Walton Foundation, Acton Family Giving, Target Corporation, Bank of America and Tory Burch.

Melinda French Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Pivotal Ventures, argued that stories detailing the country's history often overlook women's contributions.

"By paying tribute to the women who shaped our past, the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum empowers and inspires the ones who will shape our future," Gates said.

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at:samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follower her on Twitter:@Samantha_Kamman

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Smithsonian will honor biological males in Women's History ... - The Christian Post

Biology

New institutions, not necessarily biological, are needed to create a … – Stabroek News

Dear Editor,

Last Thursday evening I attended a pre-Phagwa event at a Mandir. Such events are very common but this one was special for several reasons. The Mandir is dedicated to the worship in the Shakti tradition brought by Indian indentured labourers from the then Madras Presidency in South India. In that tradition the Divine is worshipped in the female form; more specifically as Mariamman (Amman means mother) a village deity that was later syncretized with other divine female forms like Kali and her incarnations. In Guyana the tradition is called Kali Mai worship.

Since only 6% of the 239,000 Indian immigrants originated from Madras, it is remarkable that the tradition continued and even expanded; including from other races. In this Mandir at Cornelia Ida, from the iconography alone one could also see many other changes signaled in the practices as the community adapted to the new circumstances in Guyana. Unlike the older Kali Mai Mandirs, the Goddess in her manifestations, along with her consorts, were not housed in separate structures but in one building as do the wider Sanaatani Hindus. The worship also incorporated many of the Sanaatani practices that it had incorporated western elements such as discourses by the Pujari (priest). The celebration of Phagwa itself is an adaptation since if the spring festival were celebrated in South India it would be dedicated to Kaamadeva, the god of love.

The centerpiece of the pre-Phagwa program was the performance of a Chautal group from Suriname. Chautal is a folk musical genre associated with Phagwa. It originated from the Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Western Bihar part of North India, called the Bhojpuri belt, from where most of the indentured servants originated. However, Chautal has almost disappeared in India but very intriguingly has survived and indeed flourished in Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname and Fiji and their diasporas in North America and Netherlands. But both in the instrumentation from the single dholak (barrel drum) and Jhaals (cymbals) and Dhantal (steel rod and U-shaped clapper) Fijians and Surinamese now use several dholaks, and sometimes the large booming Tadja drum, while Guyanese are introducing Tassa Drums. Continuity and change.

What the event brought to my mind was the ever-increasing blurring and disintegration of boundaries between the descendants of North and South Indians as they navigated the field of institutions created by successively; the plantations, the colonial and then the post-colonial states; to become Indians. Prior to them, individuals from diverse tribes of West and Central Africa had also had their differences obliterated to become Africans after the slave experience. While it is a commonplace to explain the present relations between the Africans and Indians by the latter undercutting the wages of the former when they were brought in, we must remember that forty-two thousand African West Indians, fourteen thousand Chinese and thirteen thousand West Africans were also brought in to also undercut those same wages. But today, the boundaries between the eighty thousand freed Guyanese Africans and the sixty-nine newly introduced non-Indians also were disintegrated.

What that means is that group identities are not fixed nor boundaries impermeable: the salience of the Indian and Portuguese Guyanese identities must be interrogated. Are there, for instance, different values between them and African Guyanese towards the accumulation of wealth which help maintain a boundary? What studies in various disciplines have shown is that the simple explanation of cultural differences creating divisions is inadequate. As one theorist since the 1960s had posited, it is not the stuff of the different cultures that is necessarily the key, but the boundaries. During the colonial period under a divide and rule strategy, institutions such as government, the plantations, the Civil Service, the Police, the judiciary etc., were actuated by a hegemonic white-bias culture that reified and kept the boundaries in place.

At Independence, one would have thought that new institutions would be created to encourage a civic Guyanese identity in the nation-state we inherited. It is my thesis that the totalitarian regime between 1964-1985 that was instituted to keep Burnham in power the exclusivist single-party led by the dictator; the official ideology; the system of terroristic control; control of mass communication, state coercive institutions, the economy and social organizations also further reified those boundaries. We need new political, cultural, economic and social institutions to create Guyaneseness in Guyanese citizens. Biology does not have to be destiny.

Sincerely,

Ravi Dev

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New institutions, not necessarily biological, are needed to create a ... - Stabroek News

Biology

Fluorescent protein sheds light on bee brains – EurekAlert

image:The sensor bee can be used to investigate how bees process external stimuli and how their social behaviour is represented in the brain. (Photo: Christian Verhoeven (www.verhoevenfoto.de)) view more

Credit: Christian Verhoeven (www.verhoevenfoto.de)

An international team of bee researchers involving Heinrich Heine University Dsseldorf (HHU) has integrated a calcium sensor into honey bees to enable the study of neural information processing including response to odours. This also provides insights into how social behaviour is located in the brain, as the researchers now report in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.

Insects are important so-called model organisms for research. Despite more than 600 million years of independent evolution, insects share more than 60% of their DNA with humans. For several decades it was mainly the fruit fly whose genetic code could be used to study biological processes. Later, such research was expanded to other insects, with particularly promising results coming from the honey bee. Bees display complex social behaviour they perform sophisticated behaviours while employing orientation, communication, learning and memory abilities, which make them interesting subjects for research into the brains function and neural processing.

A team of researchers from the Universities in Dsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Paris-Saclay and Trento has now developed a method to enable direct observation of bee brains, a work which has now been published in PLOS Biology.

A calcium sensor was integrated into the neurons. Calcium plays an important role in nerve cell activity. We modified the genetic code of honey bees to make their brain cells produce a fluorescent protein, a sort of sensor that allows us to monitor the areas that are activated in response to environmental stimuli. The intensity of the light emitted varies according to neural activity, explains Dr Albrecht Haase, Professor of Neurophysics at the University of Trento.

Professor Beye indicates that the realisation of this sensor bee was particularly challenging because we had to work on the DNA of queen bees. Unlike fruit flies, the queen bee cannot easily be maintained in the laboratory, because each one needs its own colony.

The research started with the inoculation of a specific genetic sequence into over 4,000 bee eggs. The protracted breeding, testing and selection process ultimately resulted in seven queens carrying the genetic sensor. When they reproduced in their own colony, the queens transmitted the gene to some of their offspring.

The sensor developed by the team of researchers was then used to study the bees sense of smell and how the perception of smell is encoded in the neurons. Dr Julie Carcaud, Assistant Professor at the University of Paris-Saclay and Dr Jean-Christophe Sandoz, Research Director at CNRS in Paris, explain: The insects were stimulated with various odours and observed with a high-resolution microscope. This made it possible to detect which brain cells are activated by these smells and how this information is distributed in the brain.

Dr Marianne Otte, co-author of the study from Dsseldorf: The recordings were performed in vivo using techniques which enabled us to look into the brains of the bees. The insects were fixed in a measuring stand and then presented with various odour stimuli.

Professor Dr Bernd Grnewald from Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Director of the Honeybee Research Center in Oberursel: The new sensor bee makes it possible to study how communication works within colonies and, more generally, how sociality affects the animals brains.

Carcaud J, Otte M, Grnewald B, Haase A, Sandoz J-C, Beye M (2023) Multisite imaging of neural activity using a genetically encoded calcium sensor in the honey bee. PLOS Biol 21(1): e3001984.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001984

Animals

Multisite imaging of neural activity using a genetically encoded calcium sensor in the honey bee

31-Jan-2023

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Fluorescent protein sheds light on bee brains - EurekAlert