Publications in 2011

Well the Image, tells the "story" !

Published by Nature, this week, [Title: 365 days: 2011 in review; Link: http://www.nature.com/news/365-days-2011-in-review-1.9684] , this says the following Equations: Just a rough overview:

Publication Number-wise:

USA x 2 = China
China = India x 6
Japan = India x 1.5
UK = Germany= India x 2
India = South Korea = Australia
India= Singapore x 4 [Best scientific Hub in East ?]
India= Malaysia x 6 [Am presently here !!!]


Thus, compared to 2010, India has achieved a 10 % growth in scientific publications, which is the same as of Spain, Korea etc. While the growth is just 5 % in USA and UK [a decline ?]. Unsurprisingly, China registers a 15 % growth ! and Iran, with all issues around, still 20 % growth !!
Food for thought ? But certainly, doe snot reflect on the quality [my freinds would be glad to add on the Cumulative Impact Factor and then measure if India stands, even there or the decline in UK/USA are significant at all, and if Chinese declaration in R and D are really elephantine !].

Science-O-Nomist goes to grab a snack !

Catch ya all soon !

NSF Data: TABLE 56. Statistical profile of doctorate recipients in life sciences fields, by sex and field of study: 2010

Rats Helping Trapped Rats in Cages: Science Article: Peggy Mason's Neurobiology Group

Wonder, why I am attarcted to class acts published in Science and Nature, even though am far....distantly associated in being related to such High Impact Classico Scientific Literary Artciles. However, there is no Harm in praising and reciting such works, is not it ?

So in the process, I end up into another articl "Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats"[Link: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1427, Bartal et al., Science 18th October, 2011].

To me, I have a single complaint with this: Why on Earth we took so many years to find this out ? On the contrary, we all must be thankful to Professor Mason's  Group to at least perform this kind of study and come out with so-relevant-to-human-life story.

Well, experiments are lucid, addresses very basics of anima [and hence, human] ethical and social behaviours. Loved the study from the abstract it self, at he slightest of the gaze.

Simple experiments were devised to show:

a. a free [noun] rat tends to free [verb] the cage-mate trapped in a restrainer.
b. learning comes quickly, and the rapidity at which it frees the mate, becomes improved.
c. rats end to not open inanimate restrainers.

d. freed cage-mates even if they were not "socially"-linked previously.

e. when chocolate containing restrainers were added to rat restrainers, rats opened both restrainers and shared he chocolate.

There-by leading the study to conclude that, roots of empathically motivated helping behavior is evident in rodents even !!!

Well...well....the cause for this study must be to shed light on the Human Social behaviour, no doubt, but we all know, how much human is ready to do ? Time to learn from rodents on social and empathic behaviours ? Must be...or else grue-some killings, hate-crimes, racism, crimes, death penalty, abuse, stratification of socio-economic statuses of most ethinc groups would not exist, if at all we behaved like animals, i.e., like rodents even !

TIME TO LEARN ANIMAL INSTINCTS !

Until something more thought-provoking comes to me for You.

Singing off.

Yours

Science-O-Nomist

War in a Bowl of Rice !: Story of BGI vs BIG both Chinese Genome Greats !

Welcome....

Well, to start up, please have a  sneak peak into the 2 articles:

1. Genome-wide association study of flowering time and grain yield traits in a worldwide collection of rice germplasm [Link: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.1018.html#; Nature Genetics, Huang et al, 4th December, BIG; Beijing Institute of Genomics-Beijing ].

2. Resequencing 50 accessions of cultivated and wild rice yields markers for identifying agronomically important genes [ Link: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2050.html#; Xu et al., 11th December, BGI, Beijing Genomics Institute-Shenzhen ]

Reminiscence goes back to the Pigeon Pea genome wars between 2 Indian ICAR [Indian Council for Agricultural Research] Institutions.

The 1st remains first, no matter where it is:

1. The first draft of the pigeon pea genome sequence [Link: http://www.springerlink.com/content/g78774q222672082/, Singh et al., 2011: Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology]

And always the 2nd but the best one:

2. Draft genome sequence of pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), an orphan legume crop of resource-poor farmers [Link: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2022.html; Varshney et al., Nature Biotechnology, 2011]

But, I would not like to delve into the controversies and allow readers to go straight into the starchy-rice genomics !

BIG, clearly laid strong footholds on the largest ever pool of rice genotypes covering 950 worldwide accessions of oryza sativa indica and japonica varieties to perform GWAS ! No wonder, they end-up reporting 32 new loci associated with flowering time and 10 loci associated with grain-related traits. Admittedly, the authors claim a lowe-coverage sequencing data to frame a haplo-tpe-based de novo assembly for rice. Hence, they laid forth a novel approach to direct future research to do sequence-based GWAS and functional genome annotations to provide immensely useful tools to study complex traits and their polymorphisms. Clearly, a strong tool is developed to attain maximum advantage from low-coverage sequencing data when combined with detailed annotations.


BGI, on the other hand, report to have sequenced 40 cultivated and 10 wild ancestral progenitor genomes of rice up to >15 X data coverage, there by identifying 6.5 million SNPs, associated with many agronomic characters. Potentially they provide diagnostic markers and tools for future explorations in rice breeding programs for sure.

Hmm. So 2 big Giants on path for Rice Genome Explorations at the scale of loci and SNPs, ranging ina ccessions of 50's- to ~ 1000s, projecting tools to study basic polymorphic features to use of SNPs in breeding programmes.

Quite contrasting approaches, no doubt, but the end results are not blurred at all: all leading towards the "Application of Genomics for a Sustainable Human Society- Food and Health".

 Until finds a few more Mind-Churning News......

Signing Off,

Science-O-Nomist