Social in Biological News

LabRoots Launches Social Networking Site for Scientists & Engineers

Yorba Linda, CA - March 23, 2009 / b3c newswire / -  LabRoots Inc. announced today the official launch of its website, a social networking site for the scientific community. Beginning today, scientists and engineers from around the world can go to LabRoots.com to begin building relation...

Execretion analysis aids primate social studies

The arrival of molecular genetic analysis of both genes and hormones is providing scientists unexpected and unprecedented information about animals -- provided the researchers can find ways to get acceptable samples, said Duke University biology professor Susan Alberts. When researchers first g...

2 genes influence social behavior, visual-spatial performance in people with Williams syndrome

SALT LAKE CITYUnraveling the genetics of social behavior and cognitive abilities, researchers at the University of Utah and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have traced the role of two genes,GTF2I and GTF2IRD, in a rare genetic disorder known as Williams Syndrome. Their results, publi...

International Journal of Social Robotics debuts at Springer

Starting in January 2009, Springer will publish the International Journal of Social Robotics , an important addition to its growing engineering publishing program. The quartely journal aims to provide an overview of the current state of the social robotics field, how the field and related techno...

Natural and social sciences: ICSU embraces the need to work more closely together

This release is available in French . Maputo, Mozambiquenatural and social sciences must work together to help solve some of the most pressing issues facing society. Thats the message in a report delivered today to the global scientific community at the 29th General Assembly of the Intern...

Using networks to map the social lives of animals

Dr Dick James from the University's Department of Physics has released a practical guide for biologists explaining how social network analysis, a method used widely in the social sciences to study interactions among people, can be used to study social structures within animal populations. Tradi...

Indiana U researchers launch social networking and research management tool for scientists

INDIANAPOLIS Indiana University researchers have introduced Laboratree, a web-based solution to the complex problems of scientific collaboration. Designed to streamline research and enhance collaborative social networking for the science community, Laboratree will enable scientists to securely...

Sociological research shows combined impact of genetics, social factors on delinquency

CHAPEL HILL, NC In one of the first studies to link molecular genetic variants to adolescent delinquency, sociological research published in the August issue of the American Sociological Review identifies three genetic predictorsof serious and violent delinquencythat gain predictive precision w...

Synthetic Biology: funders move to address social and ethical challenges

The report of an independent review of social and ethical challenges associated with research into, and the application of, synthetic biology, is published today (9 June). The report, commissioned by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council's (BBSRC) Bioscience for Society Strate...

SHRM CEO Testifies Before House Subcommittee on Social Security

HR Professionals Spearhead Effort in Support of "New Employee Verification Act" ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The world's largest association devoted to human resource management today led a coalition of business leaders and HR professionals to endorse the "New Employee...

Reflecting on the social implications of human genetics research -- past, present and future

COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. In 1911, the influential geneticist Charles Davenport published Heredity in Relation to Eugenics , advancing his ideas of how genetics would improve society in the 20th century. It became a college textbook and a foundation for the widespread eugenics movement in the ...

Research uncovers the social dynamics of yellow jackets

Michael Goodisman could be called the Maury Povich of the yellow jacket world. In his laboratory, Goodisman determines the paternity of yellow jackets to study family dynamics within a colony. Even though only one family lives within a colony, each yellow jacket queen mates with several males, cre...

Genes and environment interact in first graders to predict physical but not social aggression

Physical aggression in children comes from their genes and the environment in which they grow up. Social aggression, such as spreading rumors or ignoring other children, has less to do with genetic factors and more with environmental factors. One important environmental influence on children...

Effects of social isolation traced to brain hormone

The anxiety and aggression that result from social isolation have been traced to altered levels of an enzyme that controls production of a brain hormone. The study, done in mice by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, is reported in this week's online additi...

NHGRI funds new Centers for Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the establishment of two new centers to address the most critical ethical, legal and social questions faced by researchers and patients involved in genetic and genomic research. ...

454 Sequencing uncovers a genetic basis for different social behaviors in wasp

Branford, September 27, 2007 454 Life Sciences, a Roche company, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign today announced that they have uncovered genetic underpinnings to social behavior in wasps. Using the companys Genome Sequencer system, the rese...

Fish can determine their social rank by observation alone, study finds

A male fish can size up potential rivals, and even rank them from strongest to weakest, simply by watching how they perform in territorial fights with other males, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists. The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that...

Does a peptide affect the heart's response to social isolation?

A team of researchers investigating the effects of oxytocin, a peptide produced by the brain that regulates social behavior, has found that it can prevent detrimental cardiac responses in adult female animals exposed to social isolation. The findings may provide further insight into how these mecha...

Power emerges from consensus in monkey social networks

Research on communication typically focuses on how individuals use signals to influence the behavior of receivers, thus primarily focusing on pairs of individuals. However, the role communication plays in the emergence of social structures is rarely studied. In a new paper from The American Natural...

Honey bee genome holds clues to social behavior

By studying the humble honey bee, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come a step closer to understanding the molecular basis of social behavior in humans. "The honey bee (Apis millifera) has been called a model system for social behavior," said Saurabh (pronounced ...

Just like us, social stress prompts hamsters to overeat, gain weight

Put a mouse or a rat under stress and what does it do? It stops eating. Humans should be so lucky. When people suffer nontraumatic stress they often head for the refrigerator, producing unhealthy extra pounds. When Syrian hamsters, which are normally solitary, are placed in a group-living situati...

ASU researchers find link between social behavior, maternal traits in bees

One of the puzzling questions in the evolution of bees is how some species developed social behaviors. Arizona State University Life Sciences associate professor Gro Amdam thinks part of the answer can be traced back to bee reproductive traits. A paper describing Amdam's experiments, "Complex so...

Mice lacking social memory molecule take bullying in stride

The social avoidance that normally develops when a mouse repeatedly experiences defeat by a dominant animal disappears when it lacks a gene for a memory molecule in a brain circuit for social learning, scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Healt...

Ancient DNA provides clues to the evolution of social behavior

A rare Patagonian rodent known as the colonial tuco-tuco fascinates biologists because it seems to defy all odds. This threatened species has so little genetic diversity that the slightest whiff of climate change or disease should have wiped it off the face of the earth long ago. Yet the hearty gop...

Sudden change in social status triggers genetic response in male fish, study finds

Throughout the animal kingdom, rival males routinely challenge one another for the right to reproduce. From the head-on collisions between bighorn rams to the ritualized wrestling matches of male rattlesnakes, combat is often the key to reproductive success. But now scientists studying a species...

Discovery that bacterium is phosphate gourmet key clue to what makes it most social of bacteria

New research into one of the world's most social bacteria - Myxococcus xanthus, has discovered that it has a gourmet style approach to its consumption of phosphates, which provides a key clue to what makes it the most "social" of bacteria. Myxococcus xanthus is amazingly social and co-operative f...

Rodent social behavior encoded in junk DNA

A discovery that may someday help to explain human social behavior and disorders such as autism has been made in a species of pudgy rodents by researchers funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Center for Research Resour...

'Shifty-eyed' Monkeys Offer Window Into Brain's Social Reflexes

Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center have found the strongest evidence yet that monkeys show the same keen 'social reflexes' that humans do -- shifting their attention in response to the direction of gaze of another individual. The researchers said their findings mean that monkeys can ...

Biologists determine genetic blueprint of social amoeba

An international team that includes biologists at the University of California, San Diego has determined the complete genetic blueprint of Dictyostelium discoideum, a simple social amoeba long used by researchers as a model genetic system, much like fruit flies and laboratory mice, to gain a better...

Elephants imitate sounds as a form of social communication

Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal. The discovery, reported in today's Nature, further supports the idea that vocal learning is important for maintaining individual socia...

EMBO pioneers pension plan for internationally mobile postdoctoral researchers

...health risks and accidents. The European Charter for Researchers, released by the European Commission (EC) in 2005, called for "adequate and equitable social security provisions" as a basic entitlement for researchers. A recent decision by the EC to co-fund EMBO Long-Term Fellowships commended the antic...

Brain difference in psychopaths identified

...aviour (eg rape and murder) and repeat offending, the biological basis of psychopathy remains poorly understood. Also some investigators stress mainly social reasons to explain antisocial behaviours. To date, nobody has investigated the 'connectivity' between the specific brain regions implicated in psychop...

Martin Hensen, head of e-strategies, UCB Germany: Making e-marketing more than just an add-on

... The health system is 100% regulated, Hensen says, making it Health 1.0. But pharma itself is no better. He says with content needing 100% approval, social media tools like YouTube and Facebook blocked at many companies, more SOPs than websites and more people in Legal than in e-Business, pharma companies...

MU researchers create drought conditions to unearth solutions

...e. Droughts increase consumer costs, kill livestock, reduce crop yields, and trigger wildfires and dust storms, which lead to malnutrition and famine, social unrest and political instability. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (CAFNR) are constr...

U of M study identifies risk factors of disordered eating in overweight youth

...family relationships for overweight adolescents. These youth face pressures above and beyond those faced by their non-overweight peers due to strong social pressures to be thin. Lack of family connectedness, including not eating family meals together, was found to increase the risk of disordered eating b...

1 in 6 health workers won't report in flu pandemic -- study by Ben-Gurion U. researchers

...a pandemic is a major concern given the "inevitable" nature of this threat and its associated challenges, including worldwide morbidity, mortality and social disruption," explains Dr. Balicer. The study concludes that in the context of pandemic influenza planning, the EPPM provides a useful framework t...

Ants more rational than humans

... (ONR) to enable to development of bio-inspired solutions to engineering problems. What do these findings potentially say about understanding human social systems? "It is hard to say. But it's at least worth entertaining the possibility that some strategic limitation on individual knowledge could impr...

Stuff of stink bombs investigated for role in pregnancy

... in the body- and the potentially critical role the chemical might have in term and pre-term births. Dr. Ray Carson of the Department of Medical and social Care Education at the University of Leicester presented his research at the First International Conference on Hydrogen Sulphide in Biology and Medicin...

UK bioscience sparkles with new Diamond fellowship

...rs. David Phillips Fellows are the bioscience leaders of the future. These researchers are the minds who will help UK bioscience to deliver answers to social and economic challenges in the coming decades. Examples include gaining a better understanding of energy metabolism which could pave the way for signi...

New theory on why male, female lemurs same size

...d evolutionary biologists have long wondered why lemurs evolved differently. Some theories have suggested that environment played a role or that lemur social development was altered due to the extinction of predatory birds. "Scientifically, this is quite a big question that researchers have debated for o...