Science Simplified!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2015 at 11:31am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 17, 2015 at 7:04am

Big Data: Astronomical or Genomical?
Genetics is poised to overtake astronomy, YouTube and Twitter as a data-generating champion, Michael Schatz, a quantitative geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues say. Challenges for collecting, analyzing, storing and sharing genetic data are already at least on par with some of the other most demanding big data endeavors, the researchers report July 7 in PLOS Biology.

The amount of genetic data doubles about every seven months. By 2025, researchers may have deciphered, or sequenced, 100 million to 2 billion human genomes — each the full set of genetic instructions for a person and each containing more than 3 billion DNA bases. Researchers are also compiling genetic data from thousands of species of microbes, animals and plants. No one knows for sure how much genetic information is currently available; thousands of laboratories around the world have DNA sequencing machines and most of the data are not yet in public databases.
If the doubling trend continues, genetics will soon catch up to radio astronomy’s vast data collections, Schatz says. He proposes that “genomical” may one day replace “astronomical” as an expression of gargantuan proportions. “Whether people will adopt ‘genomical,’ only time will tell,” he says.

Abstract

Genomics is a Big Data science and is going to get much bigger, very soon, but it is not known whether the needs of genomics will exceed other Big Data domains. Projecting to the year 2025, we compared genomics with three other major generators of Big Data: astronomy, YouTube, and Twitter. Our estimates show that genomics is a “four-headed beast”—it is either on par with or the most demanding of the domains analyzed here in terms of data acquisition, storage, distribution, and analysis. We discuss aspects of new technologies that will need to be developed to rise up and meet the computational challenges that genomics poses for the near future. Now is the time for concerted, community-wide planning for the “genomical” challenges of the next decade.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 16, 2015 at 8:07am

A new kind of subatomic particle called the pentaquark has been detected for the first time, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said on 14th July, 2015.
The lab, known by its French acronym CERN, said the findings were made by a team of scientists working on the LHCb experiment, one of the four at its Large Hadron Collider.
The existence of pentaquarks was first proposed in the 1960s by American physicists Murray Gell-Mann and Georg Zweig. Gell-Mann, who received the Nobel Prize in 1969, coined the term "quark" to describe the building blocks that make up hadrons — subatomic particles such as the proton and the neutron.
Until recently, only hadrons with two or three quarks had been found. In recent years, physicists have seen evidence of hadrons made up of four quarks, called tetraquarks.
Studying pentaquarks may help scientists to better understand "how ordinary matter, the protons and neutrons from which we're all made, is constituted."

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 14, 2015 at 7:23am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 14, 2015 at 5:31am

World Population from Population Education on Vimeo.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 13, 2015 at 7:33am

This is What Happens When Mosquitoes Bite:

When a mosquito bites you, it injects an anticoagulant into the skin to make the blood thinner and flow easier and longer to feast on enough of your blood.
In reaction, the skin releases histamine, causing an inflammatory reaction. The skin gets red and forms a bump. If left alone, the swelling and redness often goes away quickly. If scratched or rubbed or if the individual has an allergic reaction, the little bump can swell considerably or even become infected.
So don’t scratch the mosquito bite! Scratching the itch of the bug bite might provide temporary relief but it also causes more skin trauma and this can lead to hyperpigmentation. Scratching can also allow bacteria from your fingertips and under the fingernails to get into the small break in the skin caused by the bite and cause an infection.

How to deal with it:

When you get a mosquito bite, cleanse the area with a gentle soap or cleanser. Acu- Life Poison Ivy Soap, while for the relief of poison ivy, oak and sumac, actually relieves the itch from mosquito bites.

If the mosquito bite itching persists:

*try an anti-itch cream with hydrocortisone like Cortizone 10 Hydrocortisone Anti Itch cream
*try an antihistamine like Benadryl Itching Stopping Gel
*there are other anti-itch creams and gels like After Bite (which contains ammonium) and After Bite Outdoors (ammonium and baking soda and tea tree oil) that some sufferers have found provide relief
*calamine lotion has also been suggested for insect bites, but it’s debatable whether it really stops itching. Calamine lotion seems to help more with a rash or irritation caused by the mosquito bite. Women who are pregnant or nursing shouldn’t use calamine lotion. It’s also a good idea to ask your doctor if calamine will interact with any medicines you’re taking.

• Apply ice to reduce swelling.
• Aloe vera is an anti-inflammatory that can be used to soothe a bite and lessen the itching, as well as help heal the skin. You can dab the gel or juice on the bite.
• Mix baking soda and water until you make a paste and apply to bites. (You can also use baking soda toothpaste.)
• Make a paste of aspirin and water and apply to bites.
• Rub the affected area with an onion slice immediately after the bite to stop the itching. Onion is an anti-inflammatory. (If you rub it on after scratching the area, it will sting.)
• Take a colloidal oatmeal bath to sooth itching.
• Rub tea tree oilon the bite. Tea tree is an antiseptic and can kill bacteria and reduce allergic skin reactions.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 11, 2015 at 12:37pm

Science Journalism! Well that is one of the things I do! I am a freelancer though!

Comment by Arjit Kishore Jere on July 11, 2015 at 12:13am

Great work.Does anyone here work in the scientific journalism field?I think the creator of this grp does?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 10, 2015 at 8:32am

DSM honors scientists around the world
Royal DSM, a science-based company active in nutrition, health and materials, recently launched a campaign to honor scientists around the world including one working to fight malaria.

In addition to paying tribute to the scientists, the Bright Science campaign is designed to encourage discussions about how important science is for society. The campaign emphasizes major societal needs via inspiring storytelling. A short documentary describing the perseverance and personal sacrifices of scientists around the world is the centerpiece of the campaign.

The documentary, titled Unsung Heroes of Science, shows how scientists in the future will use their discoveries to feed 9 billion people in 2050, create a bionic walking machine for disabled people, and transform methane gas into biodegradable plastics. One scientist, Bart Knols, leads a team that has created a plastic tube fitted with mosquito-killing gauze that can be built into roofs in Africa.

The general public, governments, customers, businesses, opinion leaders and others are invited to discuss their opinions about how science impacts social purpose at www.sciencecanchangetheworld.org
http://www.sciencecanchangetheworld.org/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 8, 2015 at 7:25am

Bivalent separation into univalents precedes age-related meiosis I errors in oocytes

Defective chromosome separation in the egg cells of older women can cause miscarriage and congenital diseases according to scientists
researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan have used a novel imaging technique to pinpoint a significant event that leads to these types of age-related chromosomal errors. Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that as egg cells mature in older women, paired copies of matching chromosomes often separate from each other at the wrong time, leading to early division of chromosomes and their incorrect segregation into mature egg cells. Most cells have two copies of each chromosome—one from each parent. Immature egg cells also begin this way, but are transformed through a process called meiosis into mature egg cells that only have one copy of each chromosome. At the beginning of meiosis each chromosome copies itself and joins with its matching pair to form a group of four chromosomes that swap genetic material. These groups of four chromosomes—called bivalents—then split apart into single pairs, and the cell divides. One part continues as the egg cell and the other part degrades. In the second stage of meiosis, the single pairs of chromosomes—two sister chromatids joined in the middle—separate and the egg cell divides again in the same way, leaving a single mature egg cell with one copy of each chromosome.
They found that chromosomes were always distributed correctly in young egg cells, but that a little less than 10 percent of older cells suffered from segregation errors. Closer examination of the chromosome-tracking data showed that the dominant type of error was predivision of sister chromatids, and not movement of intact chromosome pairs to only one of the new cells. The tracking data also allowed researchers to go back in time and look at what was happening to chromosomes that eventually segregated incorrectly. They found that a large majority of them had been part of bivalents whose connection between paired chromosome copies had become hyperstretched and then snapped earlier in meiosis, leaving single pairs. The researchers then confirmed that the number of singly paired chromosomes—also called univalents—was higher in older mouse and even human egg cells, indicating that age-related segregation errors could be tracked back to increased numbers of prematurely separated chromosome pairs.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150701/ncomms8550/full/ncomms8550...

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