Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Blogs 
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This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.Torrent Site For Academics: Brilliant!
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts came up with a very simple but still brilliant idea of creating a torrent site for academics. They have community sites such as ResearchGATE and reference managers such as Mendeley, but this torrent site sharing even huge datasets could find its target audience quickly.
AcademicTorrents provides researchers with a reliable and decentralized platform to share their work with peers, as well as the rest of the world. The site currently indexes over 1.5 petabytes of data, including NASA’s map of Mars.
AcademicTorrents allows researchers to upload datasets, articles and ot...
Source: ScienceRoll - February 3, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Bertalan Meskó (MD, PhD) Tags: science Web 2.0 Source Type: blogs
Wikipedia and/vs Pharma Industry
A while ago, I published an open letter in which I asked pharmaceutical companies to name one of their employees who could make 100% transparent edits on Wikipedia entries related to their own products. Now John Mack, the Pharmaguy, posted some updates about new reports on the relation between Wikipedia and the pharma industry and he asked me what I think about it.
As I’ve been plenty of pharma companies since then assisting them in creating an efficient digital strategy, here is what I said:
“Since I announced my open letter for pharma companies, I’ve been in touch with several international pharmaceutic...
Source: ScienceRoll - February 3, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Bertalan Meskó (MD, PhD) Tags: Medicine Medicine 2.0 Pharma Web 2.0 Wikipedia Source Type: blogs
The Guide to the Future of Medicine: Looking For Health Innovators
Today is a big day for me as I start writing my second book, The Guide to the Future of Medicine, about the trends that shape the future and how to prepare for them. It should be published this July. It’s going to be an exciting but very challenging journey.
About 50 interviews with leaders of innovative companies are already lined up but I don’t want to miss new and silent players in this area, therefore if you lead an innovative company in medicine or healthcare, please let me know. (Source: ScienceRoll)
Source: ScienceRoll - January 30, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Bertalan Meskó (MD, PhD) Tags: Future Medicine Medicine 2.0 Source Type: blogs
Postdoc: genome evolution of mycoheterotrophic plants.
Naturalis has a position for a Postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Vincent Merckx
We seek a postdoctoral fellow for a 12-month project on the genome evolution of mycoheterotrophic plants. The project will employ next-generation sequencing techniques for de novo genome and transcriptome assembly of achlorophyllous mycoheterotrophic flowering plants. There will be a strong focus on genome assembly and genome comparison to dectect common genetic patterns in the evolution of mycoheterotrophy.
Full advert is here: Postdoc_Merckx
More information: mycoheterotrophy.com
Twitter: @VMerckx
YouTube: youtube.co...
Source: Fungal Genomes and Comparative Genomics - January 30, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Jason Stajich Tags: postdoc genome genome evolution mycoheterotroph next generation sequencing symbiosis Source Type: blogs
New Fast and Easy Technique to Reprogram Adult Cells May Have Ethical Issues
Scientists in Japan have developed a way to cheaply and easily take adult cells from mice and reprogram them back to a pluripotent or embryonic-like state. They demonstrated that these cells were capable of becoming all the cells in a full grown mouse. They call the technique stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency or STAP. Unlike, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that use viruses to reprogram a very small percentage of adult cells back to pluripotency, STAP uses stressors like acid baths or physical pressure to quickly reprogram a much larger portion of cells.Continue reading at LifeNews >> (Source: Mary Meets Dolly)
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - January 29, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Source Type: blogs
The Relation Between The Human Touch and Medical Technology: AND Instead of OR
I’ve been giving talks about the future of medicine for years and many times, part of the audience is worried about losing the human touch of practicing medicine by using more technologies. As a medical futurist, I want to make things clear here.
The relation between the human touch in medicine and disruptive innovations is and; instead of or as people tend to think. By losing the quintessence of practicing medicine, the real-life doctor-patient relationship, we would lose everything. Although without using innovative technologies, it is becoming more and more complicated (if not impossible) to provide proper care.
...
Source: ScienceRoll - January 28, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Bertalan Meskó (MD, PhD) Tags: eHealth Future Health 2.0 Medicine Medicine 2.0 Web 2.0 disruptive Healthcare Innovation technology Source Type: blogs
BioTalk, Episode 7: IVF -- Is it Really Good for the Children?
IVF advocates desperately want us to believe that biology is irrelevant when it comes to "family," but the testimonies of countless donor conceived children, prove otherwise. In episode 7 of BioTalk, Chelsea and I discuss the ironic legacy of third party reproduction: that couples are so desperate for a child to love and yet concern for whats good and right for the child itself is actually put last.
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Source: Mary Meets Dolly - January 27, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: IVF Source Type: blogs
Social Media in Clinical Practice: Chapter 14, Creating Presentations and Slideshows
When I realized Springer made the individual chapters of my book, Social Media in Clinical Practice, available, I thought it would be useful for future readers to get some insights about each chapter one by one.
Here is the short summary of what you can read about and an excerpt of the fourteenth chapter, Creating Presentations and Slideshows:
Interpreting and sharing research results and clinical findings became more important than ever as social media is changing the landscape of online communication. The common way of doing that is by giving presentations online and offline. As clinicians are overwhelmed and being u...
Source: ScienceRoll - January 27, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Bertalan Meskó (MD, PhD) Tags: Medicine Medicine 2.0 Social Media in Clinical Practice Web 2.0 Source Type: blogs
Postdoc: Leibniz-IGB Berlin — Aquatic Fungi Genomics Ecology
Via @EvolDir – Post Here
2 Postdocs and 2 PhD Studentships
Biodiversity, Ecology, and Genomics of Aquatic Fungi
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB)
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
The Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) is the largest freshwater ecology research institute in Germany (www.igb-berlin.de) and one of 8 member institutes of the Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V (www.fv-berlin.de). IGB offers world-class laboratory and field facilities for interdisciplinary research and is a founding member of the Berlin Center for Genomic...
Source: Fungal Genomes and Comparative Genomics - January 26, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Jason Stajich Tags: postdoc Source Type: blogs
ELLE Writer Calls IVF a "Scam"
This personal narrative by Ali Margo at ELLE about her experience with the fertility industry will break your heart. She chronicles her two rounds of IVF that end with a call from the clinic telling her that all 20 of her embryos are dead. Read between the lines and you will find greed, exploitation and snake-oil. Margo paints a very unflattering picture of a billion dollar industry that she points out has a 70% failure rate. Here are some excerpts from "$47,000 Dollars Later, I Have No Baby: The IVF Scam":You think your uterus is why youre here, but thats not why youre here, the fertility doctor said, ...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - January 22, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: IVF Source Type: blogs
Sex-selection in the West
Everyone knows that sex-selection is rampant in the places like China and India where ultrasound and legalized abortion mean that roughly 160 million women are "missing." What many people do not know, or refuse to acknowledge, is that the practice of aborting girls just because they are girls is growing in the West as well.A study done by Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund, of UC Berkeley that looked at U.S. 2000 Census data. They found that among U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents there is a male bias especially in third children. They report, "If there was no previous s...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - January 15, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Abortion Source Type: blogs
More Media Stem Cell Confusion
This reporter is clearly confused. Regular adult stem cells, which have been used to treat leukemia and lymphoma for decades, are found naturally in bone marrow and other tissues. In contrast, iPSCs are adult cells, like skin cells, that have been reprogrammed back to an embryonic-like state. So while adult stem cells are naturally found in many parts of the body, iPSCs are embryonic-like stem cells that are created in the lab. iPSC technology is relatively new and is not being used to treat patients. As far as I know, there is only one clinical trial going in the world right now using iPSCs in humans. Because iPSCs are pl...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - January 13, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Source Type: blogs
Mini-Kidney Likely Grown from Embryonic Stem Cells Not Skin Cells
In this study, we have successfully directed the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) through posterior primitive streak and IM under fully chemically defined monolayer culture conditions using growth factors used during normal embryogenesis.So it seems some news outlets mislead us. I doubt this was a deliberate attempt to confuse the public. This may be a genuine case of confusion about the differences between ESCs and iPSCs on the part of the media.Nonetheless, it is becoming more and more difficult to piece together what research is ethical and which is not just from mainstream media reports. We pro-lif...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - January 8, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Stem cells, Embryonic Source Type: blogs
What is a gene?
A gene is all of the DNA elements required in cis for the properly regulated production of a set of RNAs whose sequences overlap in the genome. I formulated that definition c. 1990, when I started teaching genetics to graduate students. I think that the course I actually taught was quite different from the plans leading to that formulation, but I remember sitting for several hours in a coffee shop in Newark airport and coming up that definition. This was after the discovery of splicing, transposable elements, remote enhancers, overlapping genes, nested genes, long noncoding RNAs and many short noncoding RNAs, a...
Source: On Genetics - January 4, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Michael Pollan on plant behavior, good and bad
A friend asked my view, so I read the recent article by Michael Pollan in the New Yorker, "The Intelligent Plant."Michael Pollan is a very good writer and he picked an interesting topic. Plant behavior is indeed fascinating and he does a good job of fascinating his readers without obviously going far beyond what can be supported. I also think he does justice to the community of plant biologists by presenting people's views in their own words. However, I fear that he may have incited enthusiasm for bad science. A critical point in the article occurs when he points out that the argument is about language. Many of the s...
Source: On Genetics - January 3, 2014 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Source Type: blogs
