Our Very own BiRGer -> Dr.Holly in the News

Check out the link below (Scroll down on the page to read about Dr. Hollingsworth)

http://homepages.ius.edu/Horizon/021808P05.pdf

Meeting Minutes from 02/15/2008

Feb 15 BiRG Meeting:

Announcements:
* Next week (2/22) tour of Biology facilities (by John Norman), then to Sitar
* Following week (2/29) Tom will present his lab

Prof. Manwani's presentation on Ayurveda Informatics
ayur - life
veda - knowledge
Turmeric can be anti-septic, anti-cancer, anti-arthritis agent

presentation (Dr. Bhushan Patwardhan, University of Pune)
Overview:
Foundation of modern drugs:
* morphine from poppy
* cocaine from coca
All of these are derived from natural sources

Modern pharmacy industry experiencing innovation deficit
* Pre-clinical and clinical time increasing. Less effective

Ayurveda: discovery engine
* 300 well documented and used medicinal plants, sound philosphical, rational base
* Discovery and development process is reversed : starts with large scale trials (we all eat turmeric)

Ayusoft : Ayurvedic Data warehouse
* Composed of drug Database, disease database, treatment pricinples, diet/lifestyle db
* Language issues. India has 400+ languages. So, texts are scattered and not available in one single language
* Good to know Sankrit

AyuGenomics:
* Classifying human composition, broken down into 15 primary variables. The permutations of these variables makes each person a unique entity

Venter Keeps Himself in The News: Synthetic Genome Created

Wired article detailing the Venter Institute's creation of a long string of synthetic DNA. Next step: synthetic organisms!

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthetic_genome

Free tuition at Harvard

FYI BiRGers

Harvard University announced over the weekend that from now on undergraduate students from low-income families will pay no tuition. In making the announcement, Harvard's president Lawrence H. Summers said, 'When only 10 percent of the students in Elite higher education come from families in lower half of the income distribution, we are not doing enough. We are not doing enough in bringing elite higher education to the lower half of the income distribution.'

If you know of a family earning less than $60,000 a year with an honor student graduating from high school soon, Harvard University wants to pay the tuition. The prestigious university recently announced that from now on undergraduate students from low income families can go to Harvard for free...no tuition and no student loans!

To find out more about Harvard offering free tuition for families making less than $60,000 a year visit Harvard's financial aid website at:   http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu or call the school's financial aid office at (617) 495-1581.

Meeting Minutes from 11 January 2008

For this semester, each BiRGer will select and present a research article in her or his informatics area of interest.

As of now, the weekly meeting is set for Fridays at 5pm in the BiRG Lab (LF264).

On Jan. 18, Tom House will present on the nature of his work with Dr. John Doyle: using protein-generated magnetic fields in electronic application.

On Jan. 25th, John Lannon will present the findings of his research project on Alu distribution and discuss its implications and derivative research ideas.

Starting next week, a couple of biology students will be joining the group.

First BiRG Meeting of 2008

BiRG will hold its first group meeting of 2008 at 5pm on Friday, 11 January in LF 264. All are welcome.

Scientists map imprinted genes in human genome

Article, from December 3rd issue of Genome Research, details Duke University study that used machine learning to identify
imprinted genes in the human genome.

http://www.physorg.com/news115623039.html