“Biology forum features Russian biologist's migratory bird research - Hattiesburg American” plus 4 more |
- Biology forum features Russian biologist's migratory bird research - Hattiesburg American
- "Biology in Balance" Third Meeting in the "Exciting Biologies" Series ... - Forbes
- Biology in Balance” Third Meeting in the “Exciting Biologies ... - PR Inside
- Autumn with Topsail festival draws North Carolina artist back to area - Star News Online
- First Spider Known To Science That Feeds Mainly On Plant Food - Science Daily
| Biology forum features Russian biologist's migratory bird research - Hattiesburg American Posted: 12 Oct 2009 04:13 AM PDT Russian biologist Nikita Chernetsov, a senior research fellow with the Rybachy Biological Station on the Baltic Sea, recently presented his research on migratory birds to students and faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi. The presentation was part of the Department of Biological Sciences Friday Seminar Program and focused on the navigation of migrating birds. Chernetsov is visiting the university for three months to work with the Southern Miss Migratory Bird Research Group headed by Frank Moore, University Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences. The MBRG focuses on physiology, behavior, and ecology of migratory birds during their travels between breeding and wintering grounds. Having Dr. Chernetsov visit and present his research is a wonderful win/win situation, said Moore. Nikita gains first-hand experience with our university and the work we are doing here in Mississippi while our students our exposed to because the international nature and excitement of science. Chernetsov studies the biology of migratory birds at Rybachy, including the ability of birds to navigate over thousands of miles during migratory journeys. While at Southern Miss, he will participate in field work with MBRG researchers and share his expertise. Chernetsov said he was aware of Moores extensive research and wanted to work with his team. I wanted to get an idea of what was being done in the Western Hemisphere and working with Dr. Moore at USM was my first choice of sites in the United States, said Chernetsov. Rybachy Biological Station is part of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science and is located on the Cornish Spit of the Baltic Sea. It is one of the world's first ornithological stations where bird migration has been studied since 1901. My research on migratory birds in Russia is applicable to the ongoing research that Dr. Moore and his students are doing here in Mississippi, said Chernetsov. The approach that I use to conduct my research is very similar to that of Dr. Moore. In Russia we are building on the research done by Professor Moore and his coworkers. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| "Biology in Balance" Third Meeting in the "Exciting Biologies" Series ... - Forbes Posted: 12 Oct 2009 01:28 AM PDT BusinessWire - In a continuing series called "Exciting Biologies" Cell Press, Massachusetts General Hospital and La Fondation Ipsen collaborate to offer annual meetings designed to highlight emerging intersections in biomedical research and promote interactions between scientists from converging disciplines. This third meeting, held in Buenos Aires between the 8th and 10th of October, focused on "Biology in Balance". It drew together scientists studying various aspects of homeostasis and balance from a diverse range of approaches and disciplines. Homeostasis, a state of balance in the body, actively maintained by complex biological mechanisms is well known in physiology. Thanks to modern biology, the various cellular processes involved in balance are now identified. This third meeting of the "Exciting Biologies" series examined the concept of balance and system robustness and how balance and homeostasis are established and maintained within a cell, tissue, organism, or population. Topics of the various lectures included the mechanisms that maintain balance, how systems adjust balance, how balance can be tipped, and what happens when balance is lost. The meeting was organized by Kenneth R. Chien (Massachusetts General Hospital, USA), Emilie Marcus (Cell Press, USA), Connie M. Lee (Cell Press, USA), Marie Z. Bao (Cell Press, USA), Elena Porro (Cell Press, USA) and Yves Christen (La Fondation Ipsen, France). In 2007, Cell Press, Massachusetts General Hospital and La Fondation Ipsen came together to create a new series of scientific events: the "Exciting Biologies" -- three-day meeting -- highlighting some of the most dynamic sectors in biological and medical research. The second meeting in 2008 discussed a particularly current topic: the biology of cognition. Article ControlsThe success of the meetings is derived from the combination of excellent diverse speakers: Sebastian Amigorena (Institut Curie, France), Shelley Berger (Wistar Institute, USA), Dominique Bergmann (Stanford University, USA), Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands), Ivan Dikic (Goethe University, Germany), Michael Elowitz (California Institute of Technology, USA), Oliver Hobert (Columbia University, USA), Juergen Knoblich (Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, Austria), Roberto Kolter (Harvard Medical School, USA), Alberto Kornblihtt (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina), Beth Levine (UT Southwestern Medical Center, USA), James Lupski (Baylor College of Medicine, USA), Diane Mathis (Harvard Medical School, USA), Richard Morimoto (Northwestern University, USA), Jodi Nunnari (University of California-Davis, USA), Paolo Sassone-Corsi (University of California-Irvine, USA), Alejandro Schinder (Leloir Institute, Argentina), Pamela Silver (Harvard Medical School, USA) and Juleen Zierath (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden). About La Fondation Ipsen Established in 1983 under the aegis of the Fondation de France, the mission of La Fondation Ipsen is to contribute to the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge. The long-standing action of La Fondation Ipsen is aimed at furthering the interaction between researchers and clinical practitioners, which is indispensable due to the extreme specialisation of these professions. The ambition of La Fondation Ipsen is not to offer definitive knowledge, but to initiate a reflection about the major scientific issues of the forthcoming years. It has developed an important international network of scientific experts who meet regularly at meetings known as Colloques Medecine et Recherche, dedicated to six main themes: Alzheimer's disease, neurosciences, longevity, endocrine system, the vascular system and cancer science. In 2007, La Fondation Ipsen started three new series of meetings. The first is in partnership with the Salk Institute and Nature and is an annual meeting which focuses on aspects of Biological Complexity; the second is the "Emergence and Convergence" series, and the third is with Cell and the Massachusetts General Hospital entitled "Exciting Biologies". Since its beginning, La Fondation Ipsen has organised more than 100 international conferences, published 68 volumes with renowned publishers and close to 206 issues of a widely distributed newsletter Alzheimer Actualites. It has also awarded more than 100 prizes and grants. About Cell Press Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier, is committed to improving scientific communication through the publication of exciting research and reviews. Each of its titles is viewed as a must-read by the scientific community it serves. Cell Press primary research journals include the flagship journal Cell, as well as Neuron, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, Cancer Cell, Current Biology, Structure, Chemistry & Biology, Cell Metabolism, Cell Host & Microbe, Cell Stem Cell and, new to Cell Press in 2008, The American Journal of Human Genetics. Also new to Cell Press this year are the fourteen Trends reviews journals, including Trends in Cell Biology and Trends in Neuroscience. As it introduces publications and expands online content to serve its growing audience, Cell Press's mission remains to publish and develop journals that deliver the highest possible intellectual rigor, promote community trust, and are widely disseminated. For more information, please go to http://www.cellpress.com/ About Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital, located in Boston, is the third oldest hospital in the United States and the largest in New England. It consistently ranks as one of the country's best hospitals by U.S. News and World Report. Massachusetts General Hospital is guided by the needs of their patients and their families. They aim to deliver the very best health care in a safe, compassionate environment; to advance that care through innovative research and education; and, to improve the health and well-being of the diverse communities they serve. For more information, please go to http://www.massgeneral.org/ SOURCE: Fondation Ipsen Brunswick Group Robin Gilliland Telephone: +1- 212 333 3810 Email: rgilliland@brunswickgroup.com or Justine McIlroy Telephone : + 44 (0)207 396 3536 Fax: + 44 (0) 207 936 7836 Email: jmcilroy@brunswickgroup.com This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Biology in Balance” Third Meeting in the “Exciting Biologies ... - PR Inside Posted: 12 Oct 2009 01:07 AM PDT 2009-10-12 10:03:05 -
In a continuing series called "Exciting Biologies" Cell Press, Massachusetts General Hospital and La Fondation Ipsen collaborate to offer annual meetings designed to highlight emerging intersections in biomedical research and promote interactions between scientists from converging disciplines. This third meeting, held in Buenos Aires between the 8 th and 10 th of October, focused on "Biology in Balance". It drew together scientists studying various aspects of homeostasis and balance from a diverse range of approaches and disciplines. Homeostasis, a state of balance in the body, actively maintained by complex biological mechanisms is well known in physiology.Thanks to modern biology, the various cellular processes involved in balance are now identified. This third meeting of the "Exciting Biologies" series examined the concept of balance and system robustness and how balance and homeostasis are established and maintained within a cell, tissue, organism, or population. Topics of the various lectures included the mechanisms that maintain balance, how systems adjust balance, how balance can be tipped, and what happens when balance is lost. The meeting was organized by Kenneth R. Chien (Massachusetts General Hospital, USA), Emilie Marcus (Cell Press, USA), Connie M. Lee (Cell Press, USA), Marie Z. Bao (Cell Press, USA), Elena Porro (Cell Press, USA) and Yves Christen (La Fondation Ipsen, France). In 2007, Cell Press, Massachusetts General Hospital and La Fondation Ipsen came together to create a new series of scientific events: the "Exciting Biologies" – three-day meeting – highlighting some of the most dynamic sectors in biological and medical research. The second meeting in 2008 discussed a particularly current topic: the biology of cognition. The success of the meetings is derived from the combination of excellent diverse speakers: Sebastian Amigorena (Institut Curie, France), Shelley Berger (Wistar Institute, USA), Dominique Bergmann (Stanford University, USA), Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands), Ivan Dikic (Goethe University, Germany), Michael Elowitz (California Institute of Technology, USA), Oliver Hobert (Columbia University, USA), Juergen Knoblich (Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, Austria), Roberto Kolter (Harvard Medical School, USA), Alberto Kornblihtt (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina), Beth Levine (UT Southwestern Medical Center, USA), James Lupski (Baylor College of Medicine, USA), Diane Mathis (Harvard Medical School, USA), Richard Morimoto (Northwestern University, USA), Jodi Nunnari (University of California-Davis, USA), Paolo Sassone-Corsi (University of California-Irvine, USA), Alejandro Schinder (Leloir Institute, Argentina), Pamela Silver (Harvard Medical School, USA) and Juleen Zierath (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden). About La Fondation Ipsen About Cell Press Each of its titles is viewed as a must-read by the scientific community it serves. Cell Press primary research journals include the flagship journal Cell, as well as Neuron, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, Cancer Cell, Current Biology, Structure, Chemistry & Biology, Cell Metabolism, Cell Host & Microbe, Cell Stem Cell and, new to Cell Press in 2008, The American Journal of Human Genetics. About Massachusetts General Hospital
Brunswick GroupRobin GillilandTelephone: +1- 212 333 McIlroyTelephone : + 44 (0)207 396 3536Fax: + 44 (0) 207 936 7836Email: jmcilroy@brunswickgroup.com : mailto:jmcilroy@brunswickgroup.com This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Autumn with Topsail festival draws North Carolina artist back to area - Star News Online Posted: 12 Oct 2009 06:50 AM PDT Lambert, who last year won both 3-D and craft awards at the Autumn With Topsail festival and art competition at Topsail Beach, said he enjoys the local festival and plans to return this year. A North Carolina native, Lambert has lived and worked in Wilmington, Greensboro and outside of Charlotte. He currently resides in Beaufort. He retired from a 34-year career as a teacher and focuses on creating and selling his art full-time. Lambert has at different times taught painting, drawing, pottery, sculpture and other art courses. He has taught at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, Gaston College outside Charlotte and for two years at Hoggard High School just after it opened. He also spent four summers teaching at the University of Georgia and creates everything from paintings to pottery and sculpture. He has traveled across several countries for art competitions. Lambert won the International Painting Competition in Beaufort-en-Valle, France, and recently traveled to South Korea after one of his pictures was selected for a show there. Lambert began creating art in the eighth grade, inspired by his biology teacher. "I grew up in a small town in North Carolina," he said. In biology class, "we had to draw things, birds and plants." Today, he works at his studio in Beaufort and travels to local and international art shows. "I'm full-time working now, on my art, selling it. That keeps me busier than ever," he said. "I started doing some of these local shows. I wanted to get to places close to where we live, so we started doing local shows like this." About three years ago, Lambert started coming to Autumn With Topsail. While he creates a variety of types of art, he entered pottery in last year's show and plans to enter a similar piece at this year's festival. "The piece I'm going to enter is a large jar, wood-fired and salt-glazed, which gives it a texture," Lambert said, adding that he enjoys the Autumn With Topsail festival. "I like the location of it. I'd rather be up and down the coast. It's just exposure to meet a lot of good new people." This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| First Spider Known To Science That Feeds Mainly On Plant Food - Science Daily Posted: 12 Oct 2009 09:35 AM PDT ScienceDaily (Oct. 12, 2009) — There are approximately 40,000 species of spiders in the world, all of which have been thought to be strict predators that feed on insects or other animals. Now, scientists have found that a small Central American jumping spider has a uniquely different diet: the species Bagheera kiplingi feeds predominantly on plant food. The research, led by Christopher Meehan of Villanova University and Eric Olson of Brandeis University, has revealed the extraordinary ecology and behavior in Bagheera kiplingi, which lives throughout much of Central America and southern Mexico. There, the spider inhabits several species of acacia shrubs involved in a co-evolutionary mutualism with certain ants that has long been a staple of ecology textbooks: the ants fiercely guard the plants against most would-be herbivores, while the acacias provide both housing for the ants via swollen, hollow spines and food in the form of nectar (excreted from glands at the base of each leaf) and specialized leaf tips known as Beltian bodies. The Bagheera spiders are "cheaters" in the ant-acacia system, stealing and eating both nectar and—most remarkably—Beltian bodies without helping to defend the plant. The spiders get the job done through active avoidance of patrolling acacia-ants, relying on excellent eyesight, agility, and cognitive skills. How do the spiders get around the ants that are supposed to be guarding the acacias and gobbling up the Beltian bodies themselves? First, Meehan said, the spiders have what might be thought of as "sheer wit." "Jumping spiders in general possess incredibly advanced sensory-cognitive skills and eight-legged agility, and Bagheera is no exception," he said. "Individuals employ diverse, situation-specific strategies to evade ants, and the ants simply cannot catch them." The spiders also seem to build their webs in less attractive plant "real estate" and to actively defend their nests against ant invaders. Finally, Meehan added, the spiders might actually mimic the ants. Young spiders in particular look a lot like and seem to act like ants, one reason they have perhaps flown under scientists' radar for so long despite intensive study of the ants and acacias. Meehan suspects that the spiders wear the ants' chemical scent as well, a notion he is now investigating in more detail. The research will appear in the October 13 issue of Current Biology. Co-author Olson first discovered herbivory by the spiders in Costa Rica in 2001. In 2007, Meehan independently observed the same behaviors in a spider population in coastal Quintana Roo, south of Cancún, Mexico, during a field project for a Tropical Biology course taught by Villanova professor and study co-author Robert Curry. The two research groups subsequently combined efforts to jointly publish the discovery. The research also formed the basis of Meehan's Masters degree from Villanova, completed in 2009. In the field, the researchers documented behavioral patterns through direct observations and high-definition video recordings. Herbivory was especially clear in the Mexican population: Beltian bodies accounted for more than 90% of 140 food items identified. According to Meehan, "This is the first spider in the world known to deliberately 'hunt' plant parts; it is also the first found to go after plants as a primary food source." Spiders in Costa Rica more frequently supplemented plant food with animal prey items, including ant larvae. "What surprised us most about discovering this spider's extraordinary ecology was to find it on the ant-acacias," according to Curry. "This well-known mutualism has been studied by tropical ecologists for nearly 50 years, yet the spider's role was not noticed until Olson's discovery in 2001. We were lucky to find in Mexico an area where the spider is both exceptionally abundant and even more herbivorous than in Costa Rica." The researchers backed up their field observations with the results of laboratory analyses—conducted with the help of co-authors Matthew Reudink and Kurt Kyser of Queens University, Canada—of carbon and nitrogen isotopes for the various components of the ant-acacia system (Beltian bodies, ants, Bagheera spiders) and for other kinds of local spiders. The ratio of 15N to 14N, which provides an indication of a species' trophic position, showed that Bagheera kiplingi was more similar to the herbivorous acacia-ants than to any of the other spiders sampled. Meanwhile, the ratio of 13C to 12C, which generally yields a match between an animal and its food, was almost identical for Bagheera spiders and the Beltian bodies. Collectively, the data show that Bagheera kiplingi obtains most of its diet directly or indirectly from the ant-acacia plants, especially in México. This research has broader implications, according to Meehan and Curry. It shows that coevolution between an ant and a plant can result in the development of plant structures that may be especially vulnerable to exploitation by third parties, including species such as spiders that normally focus on completely different kinds of prey. Also, Bagheera lives and nests on the acacia plants at very high densities, with hints of males helping to care for eggs and young, another behavior that is virtually unknown among spiders. This suggests that the transition to herbivory in Bagheera may have strongly influenced the species' social evolution, a possibility that the researchers are continuing to study. The researchers include Christopher J. Meehan (Villanova University), Eric J. Olson (Brandeis University), Matthew W. Reudink (Queen's University), T. Kurt Kyser (Queen's University), and Robert L. Curry (Villanova University). Funding for the research was provided by the Animal Behavior Society and Sigma Xi-The Scientific Research Society (student research grants to CJM), by Villanova University, and by the Earthwatch Institute. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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