- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will be one of three guests on the National Public Radio program, Science Friday, on Friday, May 24. The program will air live at noon.
“I will be talking a bit about my research and extension program and will be there to answer questions from the public about bees,” said Niño, who will be interviewed tomorrow (Friday) at a studio on the UC Davis campus.
The program, hosted by Ira Flatow, features two other guests: Professor Tom Seeley, bee scientist, researcher and author, of Cornell University, Ithaca; and New York city police officer and beekeeper Darren Mays, who keeps hives on the roof of the 104th precinct.
Senior producer Christopher Intagliata said plans call for introducing Seeley at the top of the hour, and then bringing in Niño around 12:30. Officer Mays will be introduced at 12:40.
ElinaLastro Niño
Niño, who joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in 2014 from Pennsylvania State University, researches honey bee biology, health, reproduction, pollination biology, insect ecology, evolution, genomics and chemical ecology, and genomics. She directs the California Master Beekeeper Program and the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee garden located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road.
Born and reared in Bosnia in Eastern Europe, Elina moved to the United States with plans to become a veterinarian. She obtained her bachelor's degree in animal science at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., but while there, enrolled in an entomology class on the recommendation of her adviser. “I was hooked,” she recalled.
Following her graduation from Cornell in 2003, she received her master's degree in entomology from North Carolina State University and her doctorate in entomology from Pennsylvania State University. She then served as a postdoctoral fellow in the honey bee lab of Christina Grozinger, who studies the genomics of chemical communication.
Tom Seeley
Seeley, a frequent speaker at UC Davis, keynoted the 2018 UC Davis Bee Symposium. He is the Horace White Professor in Biology, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University. He joined the faculty of Cornell in 1986 and holds a doctorate in biology from Harvard.
Seeley says that is scientific work primarily focuses on "understanding the phenomenon of swarm intelligence (SI): the solving of cognitive problems by a group of individuals who pool their knowledge and process it through social interactions. It has long been recognized that a group of animals, relative to a solitary individual, can do such things as capture large prey more easily and counter predators more effectively. More recently it has been realized that a group of animals, with the right organization, can also solve cognitive problems with an ability that far exceeds the cognitive ability of any single animal. Thus SI is a means whereby a group can overcome some of the cognitive limitations of its members. SI is a rapidly developing topic that has been investigated mainly in social insects (ants, termites, social wasps, and social bees) but has relevance to other animals, including humans. Wherever there is collective decision-making—for example, in democratic elections, committee meetings, and prediction markets—there is a potential for SI."
Seeley is the author of numerous books, including Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life, Princeton University Press; The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies. Harvard University Press; Honeybee Democracy. Princeton University Press, Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting. Princeton University Press; and The Lives of the Bees: The Untold Story of Honey Bees in the Wild, Princeton University Press.
Darren Mays
Mays is a well-known rooftop beekeeper. According to a 2018 article in the Business Insider, he "gained temporary fame this summer when he vacuumed up a migrating swarm of bees that perched atop a hot dog cart umbrella in Times Square." At night, he patrols the streets of Queens, and by day, he keeps the bees.
"Mays and another officer, Michael Lauriano, are responsible for responding to any issue a New Yorker calls in with that involves a 'stinging insect.' He said he responds to about a dozen calls during a typical summer, as people request help with bee swarms, wasps nests, and more. Before Mays and Lauriano, an officer named Anthony 'Tony Bees' Planakis served as the NYPD's first bee 911 responder."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
His presentation, “Common Errors that Bedevil Biomedical Research and How to Fix Them,” will take place from 4:10 to 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow the lecture.
“Richard Harris has written a very important and unsettling book based on his careful investigation of the biomedical research enterprise. We can expect an intriguing and thought provoking lecture,” said Mark Winey, distinguished professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and dean of the College of Biological Sciences, UC Davis, who is hosting the journalist.
American taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research. “We all rely on biomedical research for new treatments and cures,” Harris says. “But this critical enterprise is not in the best of health itself. Most experimental treatments fail. One reason is that the underlying research does not hold up to scrutiny. Scientists find that far too often that they are unable to repeat experiments that other researchers have carried out.”
By some estimates, half of the results from these studies can't be replicated elsewhere—the science is simply wrong, Harris asserts. (See NPR)
The award-winning science journalist has covered science, medicine and the environment for NPR Radio since 1986. He took a year-long sabbatical to explore the issues facing biomedical research. Rigor Mortis, published in April 2017 by Basic Books, is his first book.
Harris, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, holds a bachelor's degree in biology from UC Santa Cruz, graduating with highest honors and serving as a commencement speaker. He began his journalism career as a reporter for the Livermore (Calif.) Tri-Valley Herald, discovering that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was working on a new generation of nuclear weapons—ones that use nuclear explosives to generate energy beams. Scientists at the time, he wrote, contemplated using the weapons in space to shoot down incoming missiles.
He later joined the San Francisco Examiner as a science writer. He is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers and the Northern California Science Writers' Association, and co-founded the DC Science Writers Association.
His work covers everything from oil spills to the hazards of smoking to climate change. In 2010, he revealed the U.S. Government was vastly underestimating the amount of oil spilling from the Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. He shared a Peabody award with colleague Rebecca Perl for their 1994 reports about the tobacco industry's secret documents, which showed that company scientists were well aware of the hazards of smoking.
He has also reported on climate change, traveling from the South Pole and the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic Ocean. The American Geophysical Union awarded him with a Presidential Citation for Science and Society.
In 2014, he turned his attention back to biomedical research and took a year-long sabbatical at Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes to research and write Rigor Mortis.
The Tracy and Ruth Storer Lectureship in the Life Sciences, established in 1960, is the considered the most prestigious of the endowed seminars at UC Davis. The lectureship is funded through a gift from Professor Tracy I. Storer and Dr. Ruth Risdon Storer to bring eminent biologists to the UC Davis campus.
Past Storer Lectures have included Nobel laureates, members of the National Academy of Science and acclaimed authors in the life sciences and medicine.
(Editor's Note: Joanna Chiu, associate professor and vice chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is coordinating the Storer Lectureships in Life Sciences for the academic year. She may be reached at jcchiu@ucdavis.edu)