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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 1, 2015 at 9:58am

Nest decorations: an ‘extended’ female badge of status?

A study suggests that ...
Nest ornamentation (feathers) by rock sparrows using experimental data has been studies in detail.

Males in the experimental group (feathers addition) invested more in nest defence.
Females spent more time guarding nests with experimental feathers.

Experimental nests were visited less by intruders.

the researchers propose that nest decoration can act as both a sexual and a status signal.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347214004102

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 1, 2015 at 7:31am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 31, 2014 at 10:03am

Prediction of antibiotic resistance by gene expression profiles
Abstract:

Although many mutations contributing to antibiotic resistance have been identified, the relationship between the mutations and the related phenotypic changes responsible for the resistance has yet to be fully elucidated. To better characterize phenotype–genotype mapping for drug resistance, here we analyse phenotypic and genotypic changes of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli strains obtained by laboratory evolution. We demonstrate that the resistances can be quantitatively predicted by the expression changes of a small number of genes. Several candidate mutations contributing to the resistances are identified, while phenotype–genotype mapping is suggested to be complex and includes various mutations that cause similar phenotypic changes. The integration of transcriptome and genome data enables us to extract essential phenotypic changes for drug resistances.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141217/ncomms6792/full/ncomms6792...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2014 at 9:12am

Inspirational words some guides told their Ph.D students:

"PhD is a Marathon not a Sprint"!

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
" My Advisor told me, Dont worry about what you are going to do? Just select the area and start reading. The more you read the more you will know what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. One more thing is don't be obsessed about what you are going to achieve, enjoy the journey of learning where you will learn a lot about life as well as about research.
1. Don't reinvent the wheel.
2. Don't even think of a model till you have seen your data.
Life is a race without a victory line, so beware of complacency.
In science , Failure is also a result, the one you should achieve at least once to succeed. "
If you don't feel guilty when you're watching TV, you should consider getting into another field not science.
When you are going through hell, keep going. "Winston Churchill"
3Ds of a doctoral degree - discipline, determination and dedication.
You should be all or nothing.
In science "There is no such thing as low hanging fruit"
--
Depend on 'your' gray matter not on 'mine'! Yes, this is exactly what my supervisor told me to do and what I followed very religiously.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2014 at 9:09am

Imagine you're at the foot of a mountain. Initially, when you look up, all you can see is a part of the mountain, not even all of it. As you start climbing, the perspective changes. By the time you reach the peak, you can see a whole range in front of you. The point of climbing the mountain is to see the whole range, but that realization doesn't hit home until after you have climbed it. Doing a piece of research is exactly like that.

"Nothing is as easy as it sounds in research".

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2014 at 9:07am

Guides and supervisors

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2014 at 8:27am

Optogenetics, two-photon microscopy observe neuronal transmission in live mouse brain
Using optogenetics, scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL; Lausanne, Switzerland) have observed and measured synaptic transmission in a live animal for the first time. Synaptic transmission is critical for the brain and the spinal cord to quickly process the huge amount of incoming stimuli and generate outgoing signals. However, studying synaptic transmission in living animals is very difficult, and researchers normally have to use artificial conditions that don't capture the real-life environment of neurons.

http://www.bioopticsworld.com/articles/2014/12/optogenetics-two-pho...

http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/neuron-transmission-observed-live-fo...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 28, 2014 at 1:01pm

DDD project finds 12 new genetic causes of developmental disorders
The first results from a nationwide project to study the genetic causes of rare developmental disorders have revealed 12 causative genes that were unidentified before. The Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD) project, the world's largest, nationwide genome-wide diagnostic sequencing programme, sequenced DNA and compared the clinical characteristics of over a thousand children to find the genes responsible for conditions that include intellectual disabilities and congenital heart defects, among others.
http://www.sciencecodex.com/project_pinpoints_12_new_genetic_causes...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 26, 2014 at 9:59am

Artificial sweeteners bring on glucose intolerance and alter gut microbiota

Those who consume high amounts of artificial sweetener may be putting themselves at risk of developing glucose intolerance, according to new research.
The Weizman Institute team in Israel discovered that sweeteners are messing with our gut bacteria in a way that could lead to weight gain and diabetes. Continuing their research, they’ve now found that because most sweeteners pass through the gastrointestinal tract without being digested, they're directly impacting the composition of helpful bacterial colonies that live in our gut. These colonies are responsible for maintaining a number of crucial biological processes, including how the body metabolises sugar. The the sweetener-induced glucose intolerance is caused by changes in the gut flora and the different proportions of its bacterial representatives”, the team reports in the journal Nature.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/abs/nature13793.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 26, 2014 at 9:44am

A mysterious phase of matter stands in the way of high-temperature superconductivity, new evidence shows

Scientists have just found the first direct evidence that a mysterious phase of matter known as the “pseudogap” is standing in the way of high-temperature superconductivity.
Earlier this month, researchers even managed to acheive the incredible feat of superconductivity at room temperature for the first time ever - but only for (literally) a split second.

Despite the advances, it's always felt as though there was something standing in the way high-temperature superconductivity. And now scientists think they may know what that is - a mysterious phase of matter known as the "pseudogap".
For the past 20 years, researchers at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US have been trying to work out whether the pseudogap was helping or hindering high-temperature superconducitivty.

And they've finally found the first direct evidence that this phase of matter steals electrons that would otherwise pair up and allow a material to superconduct.

"Now we have clear, smoking-gun evidence that the pseudogap phase competes with and suppresses superconductivity," said Makoto Hashimoto, the lead author, in a press release. "If we can somehow remove this competition, or handle it better, we may be able to raise the operating temperatures of these superconductors."
The pseudogap was first spotted using a technique called angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (or ARPES), which knocks electrons out of a copper oxide material so that researchers can plot their behaviour and then work out how they would behave inside the material.

Researchers have been doing this for decades with copper oxides, one of the very few materials known to display superconductivity at relatively high temperatures of around -135 degrees Celsius.

During superconductivity, electrons leave their usual positions and pair up into something known as Cooper pairs, so that they can conduct electricity with zero resistance and 100 percent efficiency. The researchers were able to see this behaviour using ARPES as a clear gap in their plots of electron behaviour.

But the in the mid-1990s, they discovered another strange gap in their plots of copper oxide. It looked like the “superconducting” gap left by electrons moving into pairs, but it was being seen at temperatures far too high for superconductivity. They called this phase the pseudogap, and have been studying it ever since.

To finally work out what was happening, the team studied not only the energies and momenta of the electrons, but also the number of electrons of particular energies that come out of the material. They tested this over a wide range of temperatures and after altering the electronic properties of the material.

In their experiments, they found strong evidence that at the “transition temperature” of around -135 degrees Celsius, the pseudogap and superconductivity states in copper oxides are competing for electrons. Their results are published in Nature Materials.
http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v14/n1/full/nmat4116.html

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