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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 4, 2015 at 11:00am

Jennifer Doudna, who invented a gene-editing tool that has taken the research world by storm, was named one of five laureates of the 2016 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Awards in the field of life sciences.
The awards, given annually to one female scientist from each of five continents, were announced Oct. 2 in Paris by the L’Oréal Foundation and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, which partner on the award.
Doudna and the other laureates will be honored at a ceremony on March 24, 2016, at the Sorbonne University’s Grand Amphitheatre in Paris. Each laureate will receive €100,000.

Doudna, the laureate from North America, is joined by European laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier. Doudna and Charpentier together discovered a unique technique used by bacteria to cut and kill viral DNA, and reengineered this system to cut any type of DNA, including human. First reported in 2012, the technology is being used worldwide to create potential genetic therapies for inherited disease, and in basic research to discover the causes of disease.
In the 18 years since the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards were founded, 92 women have been recognized and two have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, including Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for work conducted at UC Berkeley.
http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/10/02/doudna-receives-women-in-scienc...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 3, 2015 at 7:18am

Good News: India Pledges to Curb Greenhouse Gas Growth
India has pledged to slash its emissions intensity relative to economic growth and make a massive push on clean energy by 2030 as part of its formal submission to the United Nations ahead of landmark global warming negotiations in Paris.

India’s vow to unconditionally cut emissions intensity 33 to 35 percent below 2005 levels and boost the share of non-fossil-fuel energy sources more than threefold as long as it receives assistance from Western countries was widely praised by the environmental community.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 3, 2015 at 6:57am

Children who acquire four kinds of gut bacteria in the first three months of their lives can be protected from developing asthma, according to new research.

The four bacteria, called FLVR (Faecalibacterium, Lachnospira, Veillonella, and Rothia), are naturally acquired by most babies through exposure in their home surroundings. However, some infants miss out, and it’s those children who are at most risk of developing asthma, according to researchers from the University of British Columbia in Canada.
This research supports the hygiene hypothesis that we’re making our environment too clean. It shows that gut bacteria play a role in asthma, but it is early in life when the baby’s immune system is being established.
The researchers looked at faecal samples from 319 children who took part in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development Study. The samples revealed that the three-month-old infants at high risk of developing asthma – determined by allergy tests to see if the children demonstrated wheezing – had lower amounts of FLVR bacteria than the kids who didn’t show such signs of developing the disease.

The researchers also found that by one year of age, the differences in gut bacteria between the high-risk and low-risk children had significantly lessened, suggesting that early exposure to FLVR bacteria in those first three months of life could be crucial in warding off asthma later on. The study emphasises that in that first 100 days the structure of the gut microbiome seems to be very important in influencing the immune responses that cause or protect us from asthma.
" Early infancy microbial and metabolic alterations affect risk of childhood asthma"
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/307/307ra152

http://allergen-nce.ca/research/strategy/child/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 2, 2015 at 10:04am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 2, 2015 at 6:08am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 1, 2015 at 7:01am

Reasons some scientists gave why most of the scientists and innovators are professors:
Self-education: You learn the most by explaining to others. I know more about MOS-transistors after teaching a class on MOS transistors last semester than I ever did by taking three classes taught by three different teachers on this subject during my graduate and undergraduate studies.
Cheap-labor: in form of graduate students. In a research lab setting, it is really hard to find collaborators, but who needs collaborators when you can have really smart people working for you for practically free?
Control on information: How many scientists do you know who work at Microsoft Research or IBM Research? Even if you know them, these companies keep most of their research secret, so you probably don't know about their work. But, professors have complete control over how much information they want to release to public.
Recognition: One has to be a really great scientist to be known. But, professors get recognition quite easily through teaching so many students and open nature of universities.
Posterity: A professor's Ph.D. students keep his name and field alive even after he retires or dies.
Opportunity to pursue long-term research: academic setting provides the opportunity to conduct focused research, which may not have an immediate payoff, but will have great long-term impact. Most "real" breakthroughs are made after long term research - over several years, or even decades. With very few notable exceptions, industry is currently focused on short term research which has immediate payoff. Enterprises like Bell Labs that reported fundamental research have collapsed. Majority of companies are interested only in incrementally modifying ideas and algorithms that already exist. On the contrary, academicians focus on knowledge creation that produces a ripple effect - eventually creating value for all stakeholders.
Encapsulation from economics risk: In academia, you can work on ideas that may have a small chance of working, but if they do, they will produce a huge impact. In other words, academia is more forgiving in allowing your projects to fail. One can keep trying new ideas over and over again - attacking the problem with multiple strategies until success is achieved! If you work in a commercially driven enterprise, you may be fired if you are not able to produce something viable over a short time. This is expected - a manager is unlikely to fund your work on a project that has a small chance to workout, or will bring revenue after a hiatus of a decade! On the other hand, several examples exist where academic scientists have focused on a single important problem for decades, solved it successfully and were then awarded a Nobel prize (or at least found immense intellectual satisfaction). I must mention, however, that these days funding for academic research is getting scarce, which is discouraging scientists from thinking big.

But I think complete independence is the right answer if this assumption  is really true!- Krishna

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 26, 2015 at 9:26am

Why a simple definition of species is hard to come by.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150924-species-definition-video/?u...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2015 at 7:53am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2015 at 6:53am

Washing your hands with antibacterial soap containing triclosan – the most common microbe-killing ingredient used in these soaps – may be no better than ordinary plain soap, according to South Korean researchers. This confirms previous studies which have reached similar conclusions and could help settle the controversy of triclosan use.
Triclosan is widely known for its antimicrobial properties, and was first introduced in hospital scrub soap in the 1970s. Currently, 0.3% triclosan is the maximum amount permitted in consumer soaps in most countries and several studies under lab conditions have shown that soaps containing this amount tend to be no more effective at killing bacteria on hands than plain soap.

Furthermore, triclosan remains controversial with reports of various adverse effects, including allergies and carcinogenic impurities.

Min-Suk Rhee and colleagues at Korea University, Seoul, say they have found compelling evidence that triclosan-containing soap is no better than plain soap. They believe their study is more accurate than previous work because they only used one variable – the presence or absence of 0.3% triclosan – and fixed all of the other factors which can affect the results.

The team exposed 20 bacterial strains to plain and triclosan-containing soaps for 20s at room temperature and then slightly warmer temperatures – conditions that were chosen to simulate home hand washing. They also contaminated the hands of volunteers with Serratia marcescens bacteria to test how well each soap removed bacteria.

The results revealed there was no significant difference in bactericidal activity between plain soap and antibacterial soap at either test temperature, although after 9 hours the soap containing triclosan showed significantly greater bactericidal effects.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/09/antibacterial-soap-triclo...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2015 at 6:01am

Quantum teleportation over 100  km of fiber using highly efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors
Quantum teleportation is an essential quantum operation by which we can transfer an unknown quantum state to a remote location with the help of quantum entanglement and classical communication. Since the first experimental demonstrations using photonic qubits and continuous variables, the distance of photonic quantum teleportation over free-space channels has continued to increase and has reached >100  km. On the other hand, quantum teleportation over optical fiber has been challenging, mainly because the multifold photon detection that inevitably accompanies quantum teleportation experiments has been very inefficient due to the relatively low detection efficiencies of typical telecom-band single-photon detectors. Here, we report on quantum teleportation over optical fiber using four high-detection-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs). These SNSPDs make it possible to perform highly efficient multifold photon measurements, allowing us to confirm that the quantum states of input photons were successfully teleported over 100 km of fiber with an average fidelity of 83.7±2.0%.
https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/abstract.cfm?uri=optica-2-10-832

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