According to Stacey Combes, it’s not hard to train a bee to fly upwind in a wind tunnel. “They like certain colors and certain scents. And they like to feed.”
A group of female academics is calling on scientific conferences to do more to accommodate nursing mothers and parents to help normalize parenthood in academia — removing a significant barrier to women beginning their careers in science.
Neurobiology, physiology and behavior undergrad Alec Avey’s passion for sports was kindled at an early age. An outside linebacker on his high school’s football team, he took hits on the pitch and suffered his share of injuries. Now, as an undergraduate researcher in Professor Keith Baar’s Functional Molecular Biology Lab, Avey examines and modifies ligaments in Petri dishes in hopes of finding new therapeutics to aid ligament recovery.
A three-year, roughly $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative, will aid a team of researchers at UC Davis and UC Berkeley, led by Associate Professor Karen Zito, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, in developing new brain imaging tools to visualize how synaptic connections between neurons shift during learning.
How can universities best prepare students for a career in neuroscience? Ask Professor Mark Goldman, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and the Center for Neuroscience, and he’ll tell you it’s time to rethink the traditional biology curriculum. To unravel complex systems like the brain, students need advanced training in quantitative and computational techniques.
Why study the brains of birds? Do birds even have brains worth talking about? In fact, birds can show complex behavior and mental function. We can learn a lot from studying the neuroscience of birds — knowledge that we can relate to how human brains function in health and disease. In this video, Rebecca Calisi Rodriguez, assistant professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, introduces her own work on bird brains and talks to some prominent neuroscientists about their work.
Associate Professor Aldrin Gomes, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis, studies the underpinnings of heart disease, focusing on the machinery within heart cells responsible for producing the heartbeat. Along with colleagues in the Gomes Lab, he’s searching for molecular clues that will help medical professionals better manage heart disease.
In the United States, around 30 million people live with diabetes. It’s among the top 10 leading causes of death in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With no cure, treatment and control remain the only options for diabetes patients.
To encourage students to gain hands-on experience, Assistant Professor Rebecca M. Calisi Rodríguez, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, launched the Calisi Lab Undergraduate Research Program. Relying heavily on philanthropic support, the program employs students as researchers in animal science, neuroendocrinology and reproductive behavior. Calisi Rodríguez’s goal is to make sure students don’t sacrifice research opportunities to make ends meet.
While the definitive causes remain unclear, several genetic and environmental factors increase the likelihood of autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, a group of conditions covering a “spectrum” of symptoms, skills and levels of disability.
