Monthly Archives: May 2012
A colour change for laboratory mice
Mice are the most widely-studied mammalian model organism, but not all lab mice are alike. Most varieties, or strains, of mice used in science originate from mice kept as pets by enthusiasts at the end of the 19th century. Scientists in many fields such as immunology prefer to work using a strain called C57BL/6 (known … Continue reading
Fascination of Plants Day: 18th May 2012
Two years ago at their Annual Meeting, the European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO), muted the idea of supporting a pan European day to celebrate plants. Tomorrow, Friday 18th May, over 560 organisations in 39 countries will take part in the first ever international Fascination of Plants Day, with over 80 of those organisations in the … Continue reading
Ecological and economic perspectives on sustainable agriculture
This week, the Natural Capital Initiative ran a workshop to discuss how ecologists and economists can collaborate to increase sustainability in agriculture. Two keynote presentations outlined how farmers could be given incentives to protect environmental goods and services. These came from the perspective of ecologist Professor William Sutherland (University of Cambridge) and economist Professor Ian … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading