Jason Bobe › Comments

"The BOLD Identification System (IDS) for COI accepts sequences from the 5' region of the mitochondrial Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene and returns a species-level identification when one is possible. Further validation with independent genetic markers will be desirable in some forensic applications." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"international online community for dna barcoding professionals" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"mHealth Initiative Inc (mHI), a not-for-profit organization incorporated in Massachusetts, USA, envisions the emerging mHealth Revolution. Cell phones and other mobile Devices (mDevices) are becoming prized tools of clinicians after initially being viewed as forbidden gadgets." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"SeqMonitor: Influenza Analysis Pipeline and Visualization Unprecedented sequencing effort has led to daily submissions of influenza genomes to public repositories such as the NCBI GenBank. With the decreasing cost of genome sequencing, it is expected that rapidly evolving viruses such as influenza will be sampled in even greater depth in the future. Keeping analyses up to date and managing this data is a prime concern for researchers and public-health officials alike. We have developed an influenza sequence pipeline, polymorphism data warehouse, and an interactive web-based analysis program to assist in managing the flow of sequence data. The system provides a framework for studying polymorphic associations with various metadata, for downloading subsets based on metadata criteria, as well as for tracking polymorphisms geographically and temporally. SeqMonitor is accessible at http://ratite.cs.dal.ca/SeqMoni...." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"The GEBA project is aimed at systematically filling in the gaps in sequencing along the bacterial and archaeal branches of the tree of life. Though the wide variety of microbial sequencing projects undertaken throughout the world has created a rich, diverse collection of microbial genomes, strong biases in what has been sequenced thus far are evident. This project represents the first systematic attempt to use the tree of life itself as a guide to sequencing target selection. JGI is beginning by collaborating on a pilot project with DSMZ." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Scientists Start a Genomic Catalog of Earth’s Abundant Microbes By CARL ZIMMER Published: December 28, 2009 If you want to appreciate the diversity of life on earth, you will need a microscope. There are about 5,400 species of mammals on the planet, but just a spoonful of soil may contain twice as many species of microbes. They can dwell in habitats where so-called higher life forms like us would quickly die, including acid-drenched mines and Antarctic deserts. By one rough estimate, there may be, all told, 150 million species of microbes. “Microbes represent the vast majority of organisms on earth,” said Hans-Peter Klenk, a microbiologist for the German Collection of Micro-organisms and Cell Cultures, a government microbiology research center. Yet scientists still know very little about our microbial planet. The genomes of only about 1,000 species of microbes have been sequenced. That leaves 99.99999 percent to go. Making matters worse, the genomes scientists have sequenced so far... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Scientists Start a Genomic Catalog of Earth’s Abundant Microbes By CARL ZIMMER Published: December 28, 2009 If you want to appreciate the diversity of life on earth, you will need a microscope. Skip to next paragraph Multimedia Filling Out the BranchesGraphic Filling Out the Branches RSS Feed * Get Science News From The New York Times » There are about 5,400 species of mammals on the planet, but just a spoonful of soil may contain twice as many species of microbes. They can dwell in habitats where so-called higher life forms like us would quickly die, including acid-drenched mines and Antarctic deserts. By one rough estimate, there may be, all told, 150 million species of microbes. “Microbes represent the vast majority of organisms on earth,” said Hans-Peter Klenk, a microbiologist for the German Collection of Micro-organisms and Cell Cultures, a government microbiology research center. Yet scientists still know very little about our microbial planet. The genomes of only about 1,000... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you that all of the species displayed above were found in local supermarkets and homes in New York City. A feather from a duster yielded Ostrich DNA. A delicacy labeled "sturgeon caviar" instead turned out to be from the strange-looking Paddlefish. A popular Asian snack was revealed as Giant flying squid. Bison DNA was found in a dog biscuit. We found DNA evidence all around us. We found DNA "name tags" in all kinds of human and pet foods including raw, cooked, dried, and processed items. We obtained DNA from dried soup mix, scrambled eggs, dog food, chicken McNuggets, hamburger, beef jerky, bologna, yogurt, cheese and even butter. By analyzing DNA, we traced tiny, unrecognizable bits of once-living things to their source. We could identify animals from what they left behind in the environment. We found tell-tale DNA in dried-out horse manure in Central Park, a pigeon feather on the sidewalk and a shed snakeskin." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Hand sanitizers also tend to whitewash actual human usage from their laboratory testing. "It's the optimal environment for the hand sanitizer to work," says Jason Tetro, a microbiologist at the University of Ottawa. "This differs greatly from the real-world setting." [Cleaning Up] Mr. Tetro showed the difference by testing three hand-sanitizer products for CBC News last month among eighth graders in Hamilton, Ontario. Three popular sanitizers killed between 46% and 60% of microbes on the students' hands, far short of 99.99%. Bugs that aren't killed by sanitizers aren't necessarily more dangerous than those that are. But the more that remain, the greater the chance of infection, doctors say. The companies whose products were evaluated responded that those lab tests are what health regulators require. "Real-world application is completely subject to interpretation," says Jay Beckman, head of sales for MGS Soapopular Inc., the U.S. distributor of Soapopular, one of the products tested.... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"ZigBee Health Care provides a global standard for interoperable wireless devices enabling secure and reliable monitoring and management of noncritical, low-acuity healthcare services targeted at chronic disease. It promotes aging independence, overall health, wellness and fitness by providing more information about one's state of health." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"GAS SENSORS" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Toumaz Technology Limited, the leading provider of ultra-low power wireless infrastructure for body monitoring solutions and wholly owned subsidiary of Toumaz Holdings (AIM: TMZ.L), today announces that it has begun clinical trials of its Sensium™ “digital plaster” wireless body monitor. The trial of the ultra-low power, ultra-small size body monitoring system is being conducted by a specialist clinical research team at Imperial College London. The study, which is being funded by global healthcare corporation CareFusion (a recent spin-out of Cardinal Health) and conducted at St Mary’s Hospital (part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust) is expected to demonstrate the high quality physiological data that can be continuously acquired by wireless, unobtrusive Sensium-enabled devices. Initial results are expected by the end of December this year. In the milestone trial, volunteers and patient groups will be provided with a wearable Sensium digital “plaster” or “patch” that can... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Actigraphy The WakeMate uses a science called actigraphy to analyze your sleep. Actigraphy uses an actigraph (the WakeMate unit) placed on a subject’s wrist to monitor the motion. The motion data is then analyzed to determine sleep patterns and circadian rhythms of the subject. For more information, you can download a paper on actigraphy here." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Actigraphy The WakeMate uses a science called actigraphy to analyze your sleep. Actigraphy uses an actigraph (the WakeMate unit) placed on a subject’s wrist to monitor the motion. The motion data is then analyzed to determine sleep patterns and circadian rhythms of the subject. For more information, you can download a paper on actigraphy here." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

I wonder whether the popularity of digital currency will be greatly affected by our knowledge about the extent to which physical currency serves as microbial vector. - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

""Encouraging young people to be makers of things, not just consumers of things." -- President Barack Obama" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say. The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"smartDNA Kits: The patented smartDNA nucleic acid detection method represents the future in DNA diagnostics. Investigen is developing this flexible technology for use in laboratories, at point-of-care and in low resource settings - where ever the need for fast molecular diagnostic capabilities is required" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Continua Health Alliance is a non-profit, open industry coalition of the finest healthcare and technology companies joining together in collaboration to improve the quality of personal healthcare. With more than 200 member companies around the world, Continua is dedicated to establishing a system of interoperable personal health solutions with the knowledge that extending those solutions into the home fosters independence, empowers individuals and provides the opportunity for truly personalized health and wellness management." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Hawkins began building an electronic sound machine that would produce waves of 16 hertz—the same frequency at which the cilia move—to help break up the mucus. Generating a hum of such a low frequency normally requires van-size subwoofers, and so he spent 15 years honing and shrinking the speakers. Then one day as he was testing a mouthpiece filter for his machine, he noticed that blowing through it sent a slight vibration into his chest. Within five seconds, he sketched out the Lung Flute to amplify the effect. Blowing into the tube flaps a reed-thin sheet of plastic, which vibrates the chest and shakes the mucus until it’s thin and mobile enough for the cilia to usher it up your throat. “I felt so stupid because the answer was so simple,” Hawkins says. Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"We describe the system architecture and template design of "Scratchpads", a data-publishing framework for groups of people to create their own social networks supporting natural history science. Scratchpads cater to the particular needs of individual research communities through a common database and system architecture. This is flexible and scalable enough to support multiple networks, each with its own choice of features, visual design, and constituent data. Our data model supports web services on standardised data elements that might be used by related initiatives such as GBIF and the Encyclopedia of Life. A Scratchpad allows users to organise data around user-defined or imported ontologies, including biological classifications. Automated semantic annotation and indexing is applied to all content, allowing users to navigate intuitively and curate diverse biological data, including content drawn from third party resources. A system of archiving citable pages allows stable referencing with unique identifiers and provides credit to contributors through normal citation processes." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

""I once read about a bacterium which lives only in a single poorly constructed pissoir in a castle. The system didn't drain properly, and when examined, there was a unique species which had evolved there. Do you have any advice on how to track down such a story?"" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Beamer's interest in dust stems comes from her effort to measure people's exposure to toxic substances. In a recent paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, she calculates the proportion of dust that's from indoor sources, compared with the amount from outdoor sources. She figures that one-third comes from indoor inorganic sources like carpet fibers. "Two-thirds comes from both soil tracked in, and the outdoor air particles," Beamer says." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet