Category: Society of Biology - Page 4

The Everyday Brain

by Zara Gladman On Friday 19th October 2012, schools, universities and individuals across the country will attempt to set a record for the World’s Largest Memory Game. Guided by neurobiologist Dr Daniela Peukert, I stuck on my thinking cap and took a journey around this highly complex organ . . . We all have one. Einstein’s was smaller than average. The scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz pined for one. I am of course talking about that squidgy, tofu-like lump of “grey matter”, encased in your skull: the brain. This amazing organ controls just about everything you do, from making a cup of tea to falling in love. The biggest part of the brain, the cerebrum, can be broadly divided into two regions called “hemispheres”. Generally, the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body and vice versa. The right hemisphere is also associated with functions like creativity and…

An American crayfish in London (and beyond!)

by Zara Gladman, PhD student at the University of Glasgow and intern at the Society of Biology In my last blog I waxed lyrical on the wonders of crayfish, those large freshwater invertebrates that grace our rivers, lochs and your M&S sandwiches. Today I’d like to discuss one of the biggest threats to aquatic biodiversity: the introduction of non-native crayfish to new ecosystems. For the past four years, my life has been devoted to learning everything I can about one such invader, the North American signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus, pictured right). Originally from western North America, this species was imported into Sweden for aquaculture in the 1950s and 60s. Thereafter, introductions were made to several other countries including the UK. Today, the signal crayfish is the most widespread non-native crayfish species in Europe. This is not good news for our native plants and animals. Signal crayfish are large, mobile “keystone…

Flying ant day is back

Submit your flying ant sightings! After the excitement of flying ant day, which happened in the last week of July in most of the UK, there has been a sudden encore and swarms of flying ants were sighted around the UK on 8th August. In some cases at least it appears that the same nests have produced a second batch of males and new queens. Thank you to everyone who has filled in our flying ant survey – we have had over 5000 records so far which will be fascinating data for analysis. Even if you submitted sightings previously your results from this week will be just as valuable as those from July. We will present the results in October during Biology Week. This sound track to this quick video explains about flying ants, and my last blog post answers some more questions.

Have your say on Open Education Resources

Eva Sharpe, Higher Education Policy Officer, Society of Biology calls for people to fill in a HE teaching survey There are many excellent teaching resources publicly available for lecturers to use and re-use in the biosciences across various websites, publications and discussion forums. Although some of these resources are featured in specific online repositories such as Jorum, many are hosted directly on institutions’ own websites and require a bit of searching to find them. Preliminary results of a survey we’re currently carrying out suggest that the main barriers to the use of Open Education Resources (OER) are that people don’t always know where resources are located or can’t find what they are looking for. The Society of Biology recently received funding from the Higher Education Academy and JISC through their OER Programme to work with the Heads of University Biosciences (HUBS) to address this by promoting the use of OER by the bioscience community. As part of…

Calling everyone with wacky ideas for the MRI scanner!

In honour of the Biology Week competition calling for ideas of objects to put in an MRI scanner, here is a guest blog from Katy Ordidge. Firstly, let me introduce myself… My name is Katy Ordidge and I am a second year PhD student working in UCL’s Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI). We are a fairly large lab, consisting of 18 PhD students, 6 post-docs, a senior research associate and our director, Mark Lythgoe (@MarkLythgoe). We are actually a bit like a large and rowdy family! The best thing about working in CABI is the people. We try to help each other out as much as possible, for example, by teaching someone to use a piece of equipment, or even being on hand with tea and chocolate when a big experiment goes wrong. Life in a research lab can be quite hard going at times. Sometimes you have to spend…

Is it a bird, is it a plane?

Sometimes it isn’t ants that alert people to flying ant day, but raucous flocks of gulls. Flying ant day occurs once a year, around now, when winged black garden ants emerge in their millions ready to mate. This is quite a spectacle, partly because of the birds it attracts. Thousands of gulls often loudly make their presence known where they aren’t normally present in large numbers. Often, they are nowhere near the sea. In fact, many of our species of ‘seagull’ will spend lots of time inland. The gulls making the most of flying ant day include the herring gull and the black-headed gull. Black-headed gulls are smaller and daintier than herring gulls, and are the most common gull species seen inland. In the summer it is recognisable by its black head (actually chocolate brown) but it loses the colour over the winter. Like most gulls, black-headed gulls live…

Why become a Chartered Scientist?

The Society of Biology has recently been awarded the 27th licence to offer Chartered Scientist by the Science Council, in addition to our current Chartered Biologist Status. Although for a lot of our members bioscience is their main interest, their work often crosses into other areas of science, and Chartered Scientist status will benefit their recognition in pan-science roles. Professionally recognising those who work in the life sciences at a high level, Chartered Status helps public confidence in professionals and gives employers confidence in their employees. Chartered Status is open to Members (MSB) and Fellows (FSB) of the Society of Biology with a Masters level qualification or equivalent, who can also demonstrate the required professional competences and a commitment to Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The world in which all professionals practice is changing, and the biosciences are no exception. Professionalism is continually strived for but encompasses much more than just a job…

Science, sport, and politics combine for Parliamentary Links Day

Around 250 MPs and distinguished scientists gathered at the House of Commons to discuss Science and Sport, as the Society of Biology hosted the biggest ever Parliamentary Links Day. House of Commons speaker Rt Hon Jon Bercow MP opened the event, telling delegates that although there was a ‘great distance to travel’ in terms of promoting scientific understanding among MPs, there had been a great deal of progress in recent years. Science and Universities Minister Rt Hon David Willetts MP said Parliamentary Links Day had become “the biggest gathering of scientists coming to parliament”. “Often the sporting environment is one of the first places where technical innovations are seen and can be tested. Sport drives innovation,” he said before taking questions on scientific understanding in politics. In the first of two panel discussions Andy Parkinson, chief executive of UK Anti-Doping, explained how new scientific techniques meant…

Flying ant facts

Submit your flying ant sightings! We have had an overwhelming response to our flying ant survey and some very interesting questions about flying ants. So I thought I’d bring them all together, along with a couple of videos of ‘my’ flying ant colonies in Hertfordshire. You can also read about why ants fly on our website or the BBC. If you have any more questions, add a comment below and I will do my best to answer them. Firstly, a question from Mandy from Rochdale: Hi, just read your article about flying ants, I recall an incident about 16 years ago. Went outside to be greeted by a carpet of thousands upon thousands of dead and dying flying ants covering the garden. Is this a normal phenomenon or would it have been something toxic they flew into, It has always puzzled me. This is a natural event, which many of…

A personal thought on photography, art, biology and science

A guest blog from Dr Wei-Feng Xue, winner of last year’s photography competition “What inspired you to be a biologist?”. Wei-Feng is a Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the University of Kent and uses his flikr photostream to communicate photography. People often ask me, as a child what did I want to do when I grew up. “Have you always wanted to be a bio-scientist?” they ask. Perhaps it surprises some when my answer is “no”! As much as I wanted to become a scientist, I was also equally excited about becoming a visual artist or a designer. I spent a lot of time on painting, crafting, drawing, photographing and designing, but science eventually won the career path “tug-of-war”. In a blink of an eye it feels, I had my degree in science, completed a postdoc in a biosciences lab, and more recently started an academic position in a…