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I wrote a java FeatureCodec for JSON with a the tribble library.Citing the GATK tream: "The Tribble project was started as an effort to overhaul our reference-ordered data system; we had many different formats that were shoehorned into a common framework that didn't really work as intended. What we wanted was a common framework that allowed for searching of reference ordered data, regardless of
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Not very big ones! The wrinkles on my knuckles should give you an idea about scale: Smaller than a can of pop! I had Muscovy ducks as a child, but I know next to nothing about keeping mallards. They are in a brooder right now. It’s very cold here today (in the high 40′s). So […]
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I am writing this, having just returned from the Illumina Scientific Summit (ISS) in Berlin. I don’t know about the rest of the attendees, but I had a brilliant time and learned a lot but also feel very tired. Looking for proverbs to tie into the previous blog post, I was struck by the large number of health-related proverbs and this one is quite appropriate today: “Eat well, drink in moderation, and sleep sound, in these three good health abound.” I think we all ate well, as the
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With apologies to Howard Andrew Jones; but I am at the beach and could not resist.
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a guest post by Ralph ImondiA statewide alliance of California colleges will enlist the participation of undergraduate students in building the global DNA barcode libraryVentura-based Coastal Marine Biolabs (CMB) recently partnered with California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI; Camarillo, CA) and the North Valley Biotechnology Center of American River College (NVBC; Sacramento, CA) to assemble a consortium of 10 California colleges that will adopt DNA barcoding as an embedded research
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The eagle-eyed among you may be able to determine an establishment where you could get a pair of these for yourself, or for a special crustacean loving man in your life.
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Suck Your Baby’s Pacifier To Stop Allergies
Parents who suck on their children’s pacifiers before giving them to their babies might be doing their kids a huge favor. Anthony has why that simple, somewhat gross act might help their kids lead a much more comfortable life.
via DNews Channel.
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Here’s a round-up of this week’s cancer news: A new research programme announced this week will lay the foundations for routine testing for inherited cancer genes in patients with the disease. Read more in our news story and on the … Continue reading →
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Reblogged from 9to5Mac: With the grand unveiling of Apple's next operating system for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch approaching, sources have provided detailed descriptions of what users and developers alike could expect from the software's fresh look. As we reported in April, Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jony Ive has been leading […]
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It's hard to keep your footing in a steep tunnel made of loose dirt while others are scrambling around and over your body. Harder still in pitch blackness. That's why fire ants build tunnels that will catch them when they fall—a strategy human engineers might want to steal.
"Slips and missteps are likely a constant, recurring feature of life underground," says Nick Gravish, a graduate student in Daniel Goldman's rheology and biomechanics lab at Georgia Tech. Yet ants have to traverse […]
Gravish, N., Monaenkova, D., Goodisman, M. & Goldman, D. (2013). Climbing, falling, and jamming during ant locomotion in confined environments, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302428110
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On the eve of the First World War, British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey is reported to have said: ‘the lamps are going out all […] Read moreThe post How Europe sleepwalked into war appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.
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Preservation of cultivar purity is a particular challenge for plants that are self-incompatible and have easily germinating seeds and vigorously spreading rhizomes. Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)The post Cultivar identification and maintenance in self-sterile Rubus appeared first on AoB Blog.
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Het was mij eerst niet opgevallen, het korte berichtje dat oproept tot revolutie in het wetenschapsbeleid. De Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie voor Wetenschappen (KNAW) adviseert een Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) aan te stellen, zo meldde de wetenschapsbijlage van de Volkskrant. Kerntaak van een GCSA: de overheid begeleiden in keuzes over de wetenschap. Profielschets: symboolfunctie,...
Lees meer op www.sciencepalooza.nl
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Welcome to our Friday feature link collection: SNPpets. During the week we come across a lot of links and reads that we think are interesting, but don’t make it to a blog post. Here they are for your enjoyment… RT @calestous: RT @mem_somerville: 50% in UK have never heard of “human genome” but “clear majority” [...]
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Check out our latest video about our CDG research and how it impacts patients.
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From Amy: Analysis of DNA from museum specimens has identified the pathogen responsible for the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. …the strain that changed history is different from modern day epidemics, and is probably now extinct. From Sarah: Digital visualizations may be making it easier to teach students how to understand evolutionary trees. As in, […]
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This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Tracing the origins of the fungus among us.Yay! Charges against DIY chemist Kiera Wilmot have been dropped, and she's going to space camp.Wow: "75 percent of all tornadoes on Earth occur in North America." For the devastating tornadoes that hit Oklahoma this week, some meteorlogical context.Yum! Acacias ensure that no one steals the food rewards provided for mutualistic ants by making poisonous food rewards.Good enough is good enough. The magic of
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Schott, Gaspar. Physica Curiosa (1662).From Superstition to Scientific ReasoningThe seventeenth century was a time of great advancement for science, but it also presented a curious juxtaposition between superstition and science. A part of Europe's Early Modern period and the birth of the Baroque cultural movement, the 1600s also encompassed the early years of the Scientific Revolution, when superstition and religion gave way to scientific reasoning. Furthermore, the Enlightenment, which […]
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From blue-balled monkeys to a meat-eating sponge, these new creatures show that Mother Nature hasn't forgotten how to amaze us.
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Even though I’m in a profession where I interview people every week (if not every day), I’m no good at talking to people in real life. Anne Sasso has posted some great ideas for how to navigate a conference and I look forward to trying them out. When I went to my first ScienceWriters conference, [...]
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For all fans of our Wellcome Film of the Month: a quick note to say it hasn’t disappeared but has moved to the Wellcome Library blog. The first in the new look column was posted today, on ‘Your children and you’. You’ll find the same fabulous film from our archives each month with commentary and analysis […]
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It’s well-known that I have my own opposition to religious tenet of blood purity that has unfortunately poisoned so much of dog culture. If it were acceptable that golden retrievers could still be crossed with flat-coats or Labradors and still get the puppies registered with the AKC and the entire FCI system, I’d be all […]
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There are some days when you have to ask yourself, just what is the deal with men. I don't mean our general demeanour, or the pretensions of superiority over other genders. No, I'm talking about the strange things that men decide to do when left alone for too long.The men who happily dangle their members inside bottles, or in reach of the spinning blades of a vacuum cleaner not thinking of the consequences.
With this in mind, we arrive at a case study by Bedi et al, where they […]
Bedi N., El-Husseiny T., Buchholz N. & Masood J. (2010). 'Putting lead in your pencil': self-insertion of an unusual urethral foreign body for sexual gratification, JRSM Short Reports, 1 (2) 18-18. DOI: 10.1258/shorts.2010.010014
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How much would it cost to provide every person on Earth with electricity and clean-combusting cooking fuels by the year 2030? According to a multinational team of researchers led by Shonali Pachauri of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, about 75 billion U.S. dollars per year.Currently, over 20% of the world’s population do not have electricity. You can imagine how much less productive a society is if it must cease most types of work or learning at sunset. The
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As I have mentioned before, I am very interested in sustainable agriculture. Whilst doing my usual morning sweep of tweets, I spotted a post about a recent report, ‘The State of Nature’, published on the RSPB website. This report looks at the current state of ecological decline in the UK, with worrying findings, such as […]
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In the first two posts in this series we've discussed the notion of single-gene causation. We don't mean the usual issues about genetic determinism per se, which is often a discussion about deeper beliefs rather than a biological one. We are asking what it means biologically to say gene X causes disease Y. Is it ever right to use such language? Is it closer to right in some cases than others?As we've tried to show, even those cases that are considered 'single gene' […]
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Populations of the German cockroach (Blattella germanica) have rapidly evolved to be repelled by the glucose in insecticide baits that are used to kill them. Scientists found that the cockroaches had a ‘re-organised’ sense of taste which makes them perceive the glucose in the insecticide bait as bitter and repellent rather than sweet. Researchers first […]
Wada-Katsumata, A., Silverman, J. & Schal, C. (2013). Changes in Taste Neurons Support the Emergence of an Adaptive Behavior in Cockroaches, Science, 340 (6135) 972-975. DOI: 10.1126/science.1234854
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Populations of dioecious flowering plants (which have male and female individuals) often depart from the expected male:female ratio of 1:1. The causes of skewed sex ratios are complex and still poorly understood. As with many species that have two sexes, females must invest more resources in reproduction. In the case of flowering plants, this is [...]Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)The post Gender inequality (in plant populations). What causes unequal numbers of males and females? appeared first on
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Number theory is chock-full of easily stated problems that are very difficult to solve. One such is the twin primes conjecture, which asserts simply that there are infinitely many twin primes. I’ll assume you know what a prime number is. Twin primes are primes that differ by exactly two, such as 3 and 5, 5…
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Molluscs have amazing super-powers. But you know what? So do humans. We air-breathing terrestrial bipeds are able to enter strange alien worlds and return with a digital record of the events that even the lubbers among us can appreciate.
