Monthly Archives: March 2017

Zhang advocates for convergence

zhang

On January 1, 2017, Guigen Zhang, Professor and Associate Chair for Program Development and Outreach, Department of Bioengineering; and Executive Director, Institute of Biological Interfaces of Engineering, began his term as president of the Institute of Biological Engineering. Here, Zhang shares his vision on the possibility of a biological revolution and his belief in solving worldwide problems through convergence. IBE, a professional society, was started in 1995.

Biology
1

Why the long face? Horses can sense negative and positive emotions

horse2

In this podcast, Dr. Elodie Briefer talks to us about her work at ETH, Zürich. Her team looked at the response in domestic horses to whinnies (high pitched neighing) from both familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics. They showed that horses can perceive acoustic cues to both valence and familiarity present in whinnies and that this is similar to the perception of linguistic rhythm found in humans.

Biology

Biology 2.0: It is time to delegate understanding to computers

brain-1845944_960_720

In the biological sciences we seem obsessed with simple solutions and questions directed towards simple answers and neat headlines. However, biological systems are complex. Can we really expect to gain simple solutions and are we as humans even capable of fully understanding them? Here to explore this topic is guest blogger Ferdi L. Hellweger.

Biology

The bat blueprint

70379275-MDT_120824_TH3_7669-Edit-Edit

An ambitious international effort titled BAT1K has recently been launched. Its aim: to sequence the genomes of all living bat species. In this blog, Sonja Vernes, one of the leaders of the consortium, tells us about BAT1K, its importance and what makes the only flying mammals so special.

Biology
1

Establishing symbiotic nitrogen fixation in cereals and other non-legume crops: The Greener Nitrogen Revolution

wheat-863392_640

The Haber-Bosch process has enabled us to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizers leading to higher crop yields and a boom in the world population. However this has come at a costly environmental expense. A review article published today in Agriculture and Food Security describes a program of research that looks to take the natural nitrogen fixing bacteria found in legumes and place it in crops like maize, wheat and rice. Here, co-author of the review, Ted Cocking, tells us about this potential dawn of the greener nitrogen revolution.

Biology

Pioneers in Infectious Agents and Cancer Meeting

On March 23 in occasion of the 80° birthday of Prof. Robert Gallo the Pioneers in Infectious Agents and Cancer Meeting will be held in Naples at the Conference Hall of the Royal Continental Hotel. The 2017 Pioneers in Infectious Agents and Cancer Meeting, whose main objective is to celebrate scientists who contributed most to… Read more »

Biology