“Job Wanted: Marine Biology - Local” plus 4 more |
- Job Wanted: Marine Biology - Local
- Bio Major Removes Intro Course; Two Electives to Take Its Place - Cornell Daily Sun
- Reportlinker Adds Bioinformatics and Computational Biology ... - SmartBrief
- The Changing Face of Venture Capital - Xconomy
- A Solution To Biology's 'Mystery Of The Mysteries'? - Eureka! Science News
| Job Wanted: Marine Biology - Local Posted: 02 Nov 2009 05:54 AM PST "Stockholm based developers, Avalanche studios are approaching the final home straight with Just Cause 2 and now have a new bundle of screenshots titled "No Ordinary Mission" for general viewing. Check out how the action on the island of Panau will look like when the game hits the shelves next year." READ »
Jobs - in Sweden, in English Property - renting or buying in Sweden Weather Introducing... Stockholm Syndrome Register now for: 75 jobs in Sweden, in English
This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Bio Major Removes Intro Course; Two Electives to Take Its Place - Cornell Daily Sun Posted: 01 Nov 2009 11:35 PM PST Beginning with two trial classes next semester, the undergraduate biology major will undergo a significant transformation that affects multiple majors in three of Cornell's colleges. After two years of planning, approval of the change was granted Oct. 22, according to Prof. Cole Gilbert, Entomology. Starting next year, all but one semester of lab has been eliminated from the introductory requirements for the biology major, according to Gilbert, instructor for BIOG 1101, the lecture course that will be eliminated. "Instead of intro lecture — this course will disappear — you'll have to choose two out of these three options: Ecology and the Environment, Physiology, or Cell and Developmental bio for a total of six courses" along with introductory lab, BIOEE 2781: Introduction to Evolutionary Biology, BIOGD 2810: Genetics, and one of the Introduction to Biochemistry courses, Gilbert announced to his class last Monday. "The idea is that there will no longer be this general survey course of biology and that you'll jump right in with a deeper but more specialized course," he said. Some freshman students are already taking specialized courses, according to Gilbert. Biology faculty advisors are recommending students with Advanced Placement credit for Introductory Biology to start with BIOEE 2780, which has already been modified to accommodate freshman. "The concept is to teach a relatively small group for a while," said Prof. Robert Turgeon, plant biology. Turgeon has taught introductory lectures for majors during the spring semester for the past three years. This will be his last semester doing so. "Different universities use different ways to introduce kids to biology. It is very hard to come up with the best way," Turgeon said. To answer this question, members of all disciplines within the department of biological sciences formed the Biology Curriculum Transition Committee. The instructors of the introductory courses, however, did not play a major role during the deliberation process, according to Turgeon. The members of the committee were unavailable for comment. This restructuring not only affects the biology major, but also other life sciences majors in the College of Human Ecology and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that require introductory biology. The nutritional science, plant science, animal science, entomology and human biology, health and society majors all require introductory biology. It is still unclear how each major will respond to the elimination of the class. "The introductory course will probably remain for non-biology students who are pre-med," Turgeon said. The course offerings are still being worked on for next year, but the auto-tutorial introductory class and the non-majors survey course will most likely stay. This spring two newly-developed electives, Physiology and Cell & Developmental Biology, will be taught for the first time. Each will be capped at around 30 students and may require an application to enroll this spring, according to Gilbert. Next year, all three electives will be available both semesters for anyone wishing to enroll. Without the broad introductory class and choice of electives, there will be some topics to which students will not be exposed. Yet many veterans of the introductory classes do not see the harm. "It was stuff I had already seen before. What it did was solidify concepts," said Christina Masco '10, a biology major who took introductory biology. "The intro lab was very good to go through because the lab program at my high school wasn't very good." Some students currently in the introductory lecture agree. In a clicker survey during BIOG 1101, nearly two-thirds of the students responded that they would rather take the new electives in the spring than continue with lecture. "I would have liked a more focused course because there is a lot of stuff in biology that doesn't really have to do with stuff that I am looking at to study, " said Barbara Moony '13, a prospective plant science major. Still, a third of the class disagreed. "I would stick with the course. People tried to assure me that medical schools wouldn't mind, but it seems a little sketchy," Nicole Karch '13 said. She added that, after learning about plant biology this semester, she is considering switching her concentration, something she might never have discovered in the new system. "It's not good if you know what you want to do, but it is good if you don't," Moony said. One of the more advanced classes in which students can directly enroll is BIOEE 2781: Evolution. The course now has a broader scope — both evolution and biodiversity are included — as well as a large portion of freshmen. "We've known about it for a while. Nothing like this gets decided quickly," said Prof. Irby Lovette, biology, who works at the laboratory of ornithology teaches the evolutionary biology core course. "We were lucky because we were already reorganizing the class before we knew. We have modified the level of material because half of the class is new to Cornell," Lovette said. "In our case, the advising office particularly recommended those students with AP credit to join the class." In the new organization, only one semester of lab would be required, instead of the full-year version most students take. Although TAs and course administrators may wish for the two semesters to include slightly different material or experiments to prevent monotony, keeping fall and spring courses interchangeable is important so students would have more flexibility. The lab will adjust to suit new requirements as well. Although the poster project will remain, most of the experiments will be spanning more than one week and new technological components will be added as early as this spring, according to Kuei-Chiu Chen, director of BIO 1103-1104 Introductory Biology laboratories. "Each [semester] can satisfy a particular concept list," Chen said. "But we are still working on it." This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Reportlinker Adds Bioinformatics and Computational Biology ... - SmartBrief Posted: 26 Oct 2009 01:15 PM PDT NEW YORK, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue. Reportlinker Adds Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: Bottlenecks and Options http://www.reportlinker.com/p0156561/Reportlinker-Adds-Bioinformatics-and-Computational-Biology-Bottlenecks-and-Options.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=prnewswire The interdisciplinary fields of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology are locked in a high stakes race with analytical instrument developers and innovators. The pace and scope of change in many fields of biomedical research rivals what we once associated only with semiconductor devices. This report explores the interlocking challenges facing instrumentation advances, computational demands and our evolving systems biology knowledge. Key challenges presented in this report include: -- Instrumentation capable of generating terabytes of raw data daily -- Storage requirements for human gene sequences -- Need for cross platform data analysis standards -- Appropriateness of analysis & modeling applications -- Database data quality and annotation protocols Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: Bottlenecks and Options reviews the state of the art and aims to determine the significant technological and market trends in the application of informatics and computation techniques to biological research and drug discovery. The progress of molecular biology has given us a profound understanding of human physiology and pathology at a molecular level. However, we understand that a functioning organism is more than simply a sum of chemical reactions. In recent years a concerted effort has been directed at moving from a reductionist approach to understanding physiology in an integrative systems framework complete with the associated mathematical-based models. The growth of systems biology has been aided by the availability of constantly evolving computational capacity of cheap hardware as well as advances in analytical research instruments capable in some applications of generating terabytes of data each day. Such instruments are being used to make time series measurements of multiple-analyte fluxes during the perturbation of a physiological system. The robustness of such data are the building blocks for computational biology. This report describes the tension the combined fields of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology are experiencing by first reviewing the capabilities of innovative analytical instrumentation to generate terabytes of data and then considering the availability of approaches, both in software and hardware, to compress, store, retrieve and combine these data. The report identifies this supply and demand as a strategic bottleneck issue. The discussion also considers issues of cross platform data analysis standards and the appropriate use of analysis and modeling applications on data quality. Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: Bottlenecks and Options presents an analysis of the state of the field in terms of the current systems biology models and their applications, where the field is headed and the possible implications for applied biological science. The report also includes profiles of systems biology vendors and their products as well as a discussion of the applications in areas such as personalized medicine and drug discovery. The report closes with an overview of the strategy pressure points and the interlocking challenges inherent with instrumentation advances, computational demands and our evolving systems biology knowledge. Chapter One INTRODUCTION TO BIOINFORMATICS AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY 1.1. Definitions; Principle and Applications To order this report: Reportlinker Adds Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: Bottlenecks and Options http://www.reportlinker.com/p0156561/Reportlinker-Adds-Bioinformatics-and-Computational-Biology-Bottlenecks-and-Options.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=prnewswire More market research reports here! CONTACT: Nicolas Bombourg Reportlinker Email: nbo@reportlinker.com US: (805)652-2626 Intl: +1 805-652-2626 This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| The Changing Face of Venture Capital - Xconomy Posted: 02 Nov 2009 02:55 AM PST VC, innovation, communityMark Ashida 11/2/09The University of Washington's Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department's Affiliates day is one of the most fun and rewarding days of the year for me as venture investor and geek. It involves a showcase of projects and research areas by professors and students and is a festival of creativity, new ideas, and engaged smart people. It is a day my colleagues and I look forward to every year. Last Thursday's meeting ended with a panel on "The Changing Face of Venture Capital" moderated by UW's Ed Lazowska, who prompted us with a series of provocative questions. On the panel with me were Greg Gottesman of Madrona Venture Group, Ron Howell of WRF Capital, Bill McAleer of Voyager Capital, and Cam Myhrvold of Ignition Partners. One of the first topics was the impact of the recession on startups and venture capital. Most VCs expressed the opinion that money was harder to find but that if you could get funded, it was a great time to start a company because skilled people were available, cloud computing providers such as Amazon have made it possible to do with less capital, and there were fewer competitors being funded. There was recognition that it has to be done with less, given the exit markets. But if anything, Greg Gottesman said Madrona is sticking to its model and not changing given a one-year blip. Cam Myhrvold made the point that there were a lot of entrepreneurs using Amazon Web Services and open source to quickly bootstrap companies with much less capital than prior years. My comment was that if you play at the application layer using open source and AWS, you better think hard about marketing and customer knowledge since there are few technical barriers to entry. One topic that was raised was why should entrepreneurs go for VCs over angels, money aside. I disagreed that money could be ignored and said that the quality of money was critical in these times. The recession has meant that almost all companies have needed more cash and, given that outside funding is tough, insiders had to step up. Many investors have not stepped up, which has made all VCs more conscious of the quality of their co-investors. Ed asked what areas were particularly attractive for Seattle, and we got a consistent set of answers. Digital media, gaming, software, and the emerging areas of IT applied to green tech and IT applied to biology are core areas of interest. Each firm had its own areas of interest—for instance, Bill McAleer liked mobile apps and the application of social networks to the enterprise as one of his areas. Bill related a story from a recent trip to NYC where the cab driver was touting his favorite iPhone app—a map of all the public bathrooms. When asked about really innovative new ideas, Greg Gottesman mentioned 3-D printers and how his son was willing to empty his bank account to get one. At OVP, we like the investment thesis that green tech and biology are becoming more compute-intensive, and that companies that can bring a view of IT applied to these areas are particularly attractive. My conclusion from the evening is that Seattle is a great place for innovation and has a set of dedicated VCs who want to see a vibrant, risk-taking community. Each firm had its own areas of focus, some overlapping, but all were focused on creating great companies and skilled entrepreneurs here in Seattle. I left feeling that we were lucky to have UW CSE, a great research department generating innovative ideas, and a VC community very committed to fostering growth. Mark Ashida is a managing director at Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners. He focuses on investments in infrastructure, software as a service, networking, and enterprise software. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| A Solution To Biology's 'Mystery Of The Mysteries'? - Eureka! Science News Posted: 26 Oct 2009 10:44 AM PDT "Speciation is one of the most fascinating, unsolved problems in biology," says Harmit Malik, Ph.D., an associate member of the Hutchinson Center's Basic Sciences Division. The first appearance of new beings on Earth - the mystery of mysteries - is a great puzzle for scientists and philosophers alike. read more Read the whole article on Scientific BloggingMore from Scientific BloggingRelatedThis content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Biology - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment