Nature
Is panda PR a good idea?
by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer, Society of Biology Panda conservation is not ‘greenwash’ read the headline of BBC Nature’s thought-provoking write-up of the Biology Week debate ‘should we save the panda’. This referred to the evening’s extensive discussion about the use (and misuse) of pandas in conservation PR. Whether or not you think it is … Continue reading
How does Chris Packham’s garden grow?
Since the completion of the human genome project, DNA sequencing has become much faster and cheaper, opening up exciting possibilities for medicine and our understanding of human biology. But it goes far further than that, as is demonstrated by this video, first shown at the Biology Week launch event in Parliament held in partnership with … Continue reading
Podcast: should we save the panda?
by Rebecca Nesbit With just five days to go until the Biology Week debate, ‘Do we need pandas? Choosing which species to save’, the votes on the Society of Biology website poll are swinging in favour of the panda. To help me decide which way to vote, I produced this podcast in which I interview … Continue reading
bTB or not bTB? How to control it is still the question
Guest post by Catherine O’Connor, Epidemiologist for the Health Protection Services, discussing the badger cull As an epidemiologist, my job is to understand the how, what, when, where and whys of disease transmission. Though we now possess much fancier tools than those used by the father of epidemiology, John Snow (he of the Broad Street … Continue reading
Bumblebees’ gruesome parasites
Guest blog by Sive Finlay, a PhD student from Trinity College Dublin who recently won Best Biology Student at the 2012 SET awards for her undergraduate project Bee populations are in severe decline, an alarming and worrying trend when you consider their vital importance as commercial and ecological pollinators. Research and media attention often focuses … Continue reading
Ethical dilemmas: pest control
Guest post from Eve Potter, a health writer with an interest in the ethical debates that modern biology produces. In advance of the panda debate she looks at an environmental issue which she finds exciting but scary: biocontrol Biological pest control essentially refers to the use of natural enemies to control pests. Various predatory mites or … Continue reading
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: … Continue reading
Should we save the panda?
by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer at the Society of Biology This week I added a poll to the Society of Biology website in honour of our upcoming debate during Biology Week: ‘should we save the panda?’. I admit I haven’t yet voted, because I don’t know what to say. If I look at the question … Continue reading
Species of the week: the crayfish
by Zara Gladman, intern at the Society of Biology My name is Zara and I’m an “astacologist”, which is a fancy way of saying that I study crayfish, lobster-like freshwater crustaceans of which there are more than 640 described species. In Australia, they go by the name of “yabby” (as in “Yabby Creek” – Home … Continue reading
A Shootful of Sugar
The xylem and phloem are two very important tissues in vascular plants: together, they form the transport system. Xylem vessels consist of dead cells which are arranged into long, hollow tubes and allow the transport of water and minerals from the roots to the leaves. Phloem vessels are alive and transport nutrients such as sucrose … Continue reading