EvoSwarm

Nature by Numbers

2010-03-30T14:12:00.000-03:00

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Avoiding common errors in epidemiology

2010-03-26T17:48:00.000-03:00

All sciences make mistakes, and epidemiology is no exception. Raj Bhopal has chosen 7 illustrative mistakes and derived 7 solutions to avoid them. The mistakes (Roman numerals denoting solutions) are: 1. Failing to provide the context and definitions of study populations. (I State the location and timing of fieldwork and describe the study population in detail, especially age, sex, socio-economic

Multidrug and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis

2010-03-22T15:39:00.000-03:00

In memoriam of Sir John Crofton (1912–2009), The greatest disaster that can happen to a patient with tuberculosis is that his organisms become resistant to two or more of the standard drugs... The development of drug resistance may be a tragedy not only for the patient himself but for others. For he can infect other people with his drug-resistant organisms... The World Health Organization (WHO)

Moving (carefully!) beyond molecular typing

2010-03-11T18:40:00.000-03:00

When they take a look at teaching science and how kids learn, they will be much better prepared and much more focused. While doing my PhD, I am a teacher assistant for undergrads students. When mining recent paper to help them along with their phylogenetic studies, I found one focused for veterinary students. When reading at the title (Applying phylogenetics analysis to viral livestock diseases:

8th floor visitors

2010-03-11T12:28:00.006-03:00

These are some of the fancy guests I have from time to time in my apartment.

A brief review of The Cove

2010-03-07T17:57:00.014-03:00

The Cove is a critically acclaimed documentary film about the annual slaughtering of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. At first glance, Taiji is a beautiful small town that extols both whales and dolphins. That first impression derives from sympathetic murals and statues, museums, and tour boats shaped like whales and dolphins. Taiji, however, is "a little town with a really big secret."The film follows

Preparedness: Bioterrorism

2010-03-06T16:51:00.001-03:00

Last post I briefly typed about Ebola virus as a potential bioweapon. With the ongoing advances in genetics research and technologies, biological weapons does not looks anymore as a promising movie plot (The zombie nation!) or the higher level weapon in a video game. Even so, manufacturing an effective weapon using germs (viruses, bacteria, fungi or other) would require advanced knowledge and

An emerging killer

2010-03-03T18:11:00.004-03:00

One of my favorite resident evil characters is Rain Ocampo, a soldier who became infected with the t-virus, discovered that there is an antidote, managed to find it, and hoped it would work. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, RIP Rain. A similar scenario occurred in real world in 2009; a scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used for injecting the Ebola virus into mice. The accident

Ignite 2010 is coming! Enlighten us, but make it quick

2010-03-01T14:30:00.000-03:00

Ignite is a free event where local people share fun ideas, raise the collective IQ and build connections. Each talk takes only 5 minutes, therefore, if a lecturer wants to enlighten us, he HAS to make it quick. The clock is ticking! It started as a local event among geeks in Seattle in December, 2006 and now is a worldwide event with entrepreneurs, technologists, DIYers, creative professionals

House of numbers: WTF!

2010-02-25T21:54:00.006-03:00

I want to share this time the trailer for a stupid documental I watched a few minutes ago. It is named House of numbers and promotes what is known as AIDS denialism, a movement that deny that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)! I was stunned when reading about it (Sick people!). Silvia, a virology student from Harvard University

If that happens, I will retire immediately and lock myself

2010-02-24T18:05:00.003-03:00

Some of us are familiar with “virus / infection movies” where a xxx virus is created and spread leading us to become zombie (I really want to live a zombie holocaust, I do!), an angry creature or da da doo-doo-mmm just die. The latter scenario might not be far away. Influenza (the flu) is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. Flu season occurs during the cold season of

Frog love songs

2010-02-24T13:24:00.009-03:00

Well, it is time to get myself started with this blog. Recently, I read an article by Goicoechea and colleagues published in Zoologica Scripta about phylogenetic signal in frog mating calls. Traditionally, the variation in these sounds has been “associated to sexual selection and thus is expected to present high levels of rapid evolutionary divergence among sister species," and therefore having

Photography

2010-02-22T02:06:00.001-03:00

Missing a legTook while walking to faculty Fev, 2010By C. Julián

Timing: messing with gamers

2010-02-21T17:13:00.009-03:00

I do research and I am a gamer (It sounded sooo group therapy). I play RPGs (role-playing game) since Final Fantasy (a classical) was released and started playing WOW (World of Warcraft, a popular massively multiplayer online RPG) years ago. I consider myself moderately addicted. Warning: If you want to be successful in your research, while playing along videogames, time and priority are

Photography

2010-02-20T10:27:00.002-02:00

Gift of the rainTook while walking to scholar restaurant Fev, 2010By C. Julián

Virus with nanny services

2010-02-19T10:44:00.011-02:00

Can you imagine viruses taking care of your children when you are not around? Some wasps have done so! Polydnaviruses (The nannies!) are so named because of their polydisperse genomes< they are organized as series of different circular DNAa (or segments). These nannies are associated with parasitoids wasps (parasites that kill their hosts) which attack caterpillars (They are of particular

Paleovirology, hunting Fossil Viruses

2010-02-17T20:09:00.006-02:00

Paleontology... the first image that comes to my mind is two guys carefully chipping rocks and cleaning out fossils. Paleontology comes from three greeks words: palaios= ancient; ontos= being, y logos= study and is the study of ancient life (when we were atoms of carbon). Paleontology allows discovering much of the evolutionary history of life, almost all the way back to when Earth became capable

Life is written with 64 words of three letters each

2010-02-16T02:01:00.017-02:00

Mi native language is Spanish, I learnt English while studying at the university, I am improving Portuguese and started German a few days ago. When I googled a definition for “language” I found that it is defined as a particular kind of system for encoding and decoding information. I started thinking about it, after reading a joke in a colleague’s wall: A bioinformatician walks into a bar. The

Photography

2010-02-15T00:02:00.004-02:00

Borboleta no ponto de ônibusTook while waiting for scholar bus at university Nov, 2009By C. Julián

HOME: A wake up call

2010-02-14T23:30:00.024-02:00

Earth is the only planet I have been. I don’t have too much money so I haven’t travel around it. I love it. It allows me playing with the wind, smiling under the rain, walking barefoot on the wet grass, drinking refreshing water, eating delicious fruits, meeting interesting people and being stunned with its incredible beauty. Hey! It is our HOME! Our HOME is the third planet from the Sun, and the

We are descendants of primates... and virus

2010-02-14T23:26:00.015-02:00

Scientists have estimated that we branched off from our common ancestor with chimpanzees - the only other living hominins - about 5–7 million years ago. For most DNA sequences, we and chimpanzees appear to be most closely related. An striking points is that nearly 8% of the human genome content thousands of sequences derived from virus! Have been identified nearly 98,000 elements and fragments

If you watch an ant try to accomplish something, you'll be impressed by how inept it is

2010-02-14T23:00:00.040-02:00

One of the best animated films I have ever seen is “Finding Nemo”. I love the characters (Dory!) and funny dialogues. I remember viewing one of the promo movie posters which I found simply and stunning: I liked the sunshine, the blue ocean, Marlin wondering around and a fish school. How to forget the fish school! They played an important role giving advice to our heroes. I remember watching all