Shouts of Nothingness

Quantified Germany
Nature 437, xiii (1 September 2005) | doi: 10.1038/437xiiic

I came across this interesting read from nature which is about the numerics of German Publications to Nature.It is quite encouraging to see that Germany is slowly but steadily rising up in academics and there is no doubt that it will overtake the United States in quite some time.

537 submissions to Nature have come from Germany since 1 January 2005 (total global submissions = 8,987)

269 authors published in Nature so far this year were working in Germany (total number of published authors = 3,725)

22 authors working in Germany have had more than one paper published in Nature since 1 January 2005.

8 authors working in Germany are presenting original research in Nature this week.

This should also come as a good news for PhD aspirants who were eying America as a destination for Graduate studies.

Ocean bug has ’smallest genome’

I came across this news article on BBC..about the organism that has the smallest genome..you can read more about it here.

The greatness of the net lies in the fact that it has something or the other to offer for people who find them really useful.Now this one (Connotea) is a fabulous app for any budding biologist.As biologists we always keep tabs on what is coming up new not only to keep our knowledge up to date but also expose oneself to the different schools of thought prevalent among contempraries.

We all read scientific papers or atleast abstracts(..this one’s me).Most often we come across literature that is very interesting/appealing and would like to include that in our writings,presentations.Ofcourse these days most of the journal content is avaialble online for ready reference.But how do you keep track of them once they increase in volume?.Answer - Connotea.

“Connotea is a place to keep links to the articles you read and the websites you use, and a place to find them again. It is also a place where you can discover new articles and websites through sharing your links with other users. By saving your links and references to Connotea they are instantly on the web, which means that they are available to you from any computer and that you can point your friends and colleagues to them. In Connotea, every user’s links are visible both to visitors and to every other user, and different users’ libraries are linked together through the use of common tags or common bookmarks.”

So whats special with Connotea when there is Furl,pluck and on…well…Connotea is scientific literature what Flickr is to photos!..got the idea..
Thats enough for a description,there’s more to connotea.Dont take my word for it..chek Connotea today.
“Organise your references. Share them with others. Discover new leads.”

This post is my reflection on the article by the same Title by Michael Balter in Science, Vol 309, Issue 5732, 234-237 , 8 July 2005
[DOI: 10.1126/science.309.5732.234]

I believe this question carries very little meaning in the light of modern day science,especially biology.Not only humans but every other organism has to evolve either for the better of for the worse (which depends on the point from which it is viewed).

But why should a life form evolve?
Look around you, right from when you were a kid to your present age whatever it may be have you noticed change,change in every aspect of life.The universe in itself is dynamic,putting in a little physics,we’r not alien to the concept that there are innumerable number of galaxies in the universe and that in every galaxy something is going on.A star bursts, a planet is formed..radiations by radioactive decays…emissions etc. which makes the whole System a very dynamic one.Therefore any form of life that has to survive has to adapt/evolve.In other words all life existing today has undergone evolution and all that has to exist morrow will evolve.Now this is logic,but then experimental/observations are necessary to validate this fact.

A group of men were selected and asked to fill up questionaires,which was used to determine the volunteers’ social dominance. later were told to use sweat pads to collect their odour.”A group of 65 women then smelled the pads and rated the sexiness and masculinity of the scent.”

The results were:
Women in the middle week of their menstrual cycle, the point at which fertility is at its peak, tended to prefer the smell of the men who scored highest on the dominance quiz. This preference was not shown by women at other points in their cycle.


Further the article states that:

The results support a theory of mixed mating strategies, which argues that women should want different things from different men at different times. Females are expected to pair up with the males most likely to invest in parental care, but any affair is likely to be conducted with successful males who, although they may not be good dads, provide good genes.


Wow..!…now that should be surprising.But thats the way nature is expected to drive selection by evolution.

I’ll conclude with this excerpt from the article..(which was what i wondered right from the beginning!!!??)


Perhaps the most controversial part of the study is the claim that women find the smell of sweaty cotton pads enticing. "Some raters found particular body odours sexy; others simply found them 'not repellent'," Havlícek admits. "But laboratory conditions are rather unnatural, and the smells would be judged more positively in more relevant, that is, intimate, conditions."

No wait…dont throw away your Deos yet…!

Mercury in vaccines!!

Mercury poisoning is known as Minamata in Japan from 1940s due to eating
mercury contaminated fish.By 1997, scientists in USA and Russia found that children given Hepatitis B vaccine and DTP vaccine suffer from severe mental disorders. The vaccines contain 50 mcg mercury/ml in children dose and 100 mcg mercury/ml in adult dose. This mercury is in the form of thimersol or thiomersal as ethyl mercury as preservative, which is as dangerous as methyl mercury. No wonder Japan and Russia have banned use of mercury in vaccines many years ago. Recently some European countries also banned its use. Safer
technology is available as preservatives in vaccines but is not being used by many companies knowingly. A crime!

USA is now using safe technology for its people but exporting old mercury
containing vaccines to thirld world countries.Scientists actually found that as little as 0.08 mcg/ml of mercury is poisonous to man. Hence 50 to 100 mcg mercury /ml is very high and causes severe rapid mental disorders. Male children are more susceptible. In USA 100,000 children were found with mental disorders by 1998 but it was hushed up. Another crime! In India, Serum Institute of India, Pune, manufactures HB and DTP vaccines, and Shanta Biotech in Hyderabad manufactuires HB vaccine. Both contain 50 to 100 mcg mercury/ml depending on children or adult dose according to their data.India does not have a surveillance and monitoring systems working and do not have data on these aspects. But ignorance should not be cashed upon.Lessons should be learnt from others. That is wisdom.

Act as it is already late.

You can get more information from CBS news.

Just read a finding from Nature News and the article is entitled:

Ovulating women favour dominant men's smell - Michael Hopkin
Published online: 6 July 2005; | doi:10.1038/news050704-6


This research finding suggests that women in the ovulating period find socially dominant males to be attractive!This study was published by a Czech group(Jan Havlícek, of Charles University in Prague, and his colleagues) recently.Now we all are aware of pheromones,(these are chemicals that are involved in Chemo-communication between systems..or lets say individuals here)now this experiment was done by collecting sweat by sweat pads from men who were initially asked to fill a questionnaire in order to rate their social dominance by another group of volunteers.

65 women were selected and were asked to rate the sexiness/masculinity of the smell.I would like to quote their words now exactly “Women in the middle week of their menstrual cycle, the point at which fertility is at its peak, tended to prefer the smell of the men who scored highest on the dominance quiz. This preference was not shown by women at other points in their cycle”.

Well so much for that deodrant!