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Tammy Titan Bloom may happen Thursday June 14 or Friday June 15
Tammy the Titan will bloom for “her” first time in the next few days at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory
http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/conservatory/index.html
(The blooming cycle only lasts about 36 hours)
Will be open till midnight on the night of the bloom June 14 or 15 (the afternoon that it opens and smells the strongest) since the center portion (spadix) will heat up 20deg F warmer than air temperature later that night to emit its odor!! The best time to see it is after 5pm the day that it opens( and to smell it late that day and into the second day to experience it fully open but not stinky) and till 9pm on the second day (when the flower is fully open). We’ll only be open on Saturday from 9am-4pm if the bloom opens on Thursday.
Visitation is free but of course we welcome donations and donor prospects!
Pictures from previous blooms can be seen at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/planthead667/collections/72157605648991761/
The Human Microbiome Project Tells Us What We’re Really Made Of
The Human Microbiome Project is an NIH funded group of researchers working to understand the microbial communities that not only inhabit our bodies but also have huge far ranging consequences on our health. Mapping and understand the human microbiome may actually be more beneficial to human health and disease than the mapping of the human genome!
Excerpt from “Human Microbiome Project reveals largest microbial map” by Smitha Mundasad of the BBC
The Human Microbiome Project has catalogued the genetic identity of many bacteria, viruses and other organisms that live in intimate contact with us.
They are not germs that need eliminating but a fundamental part of what makes us human, researchers say.
Yet until recently, little was known about the identity of trillions of the microbes populating our bodies.
‘Beneficial bugs’
For centuries we could only investigate microbes that can survive in laboratories and study them in isolation – often one microbe at a time.
But with the advent of ever-improving techniques to sequence DNA, the Human Microbiome Project has been able to uncover microbes that have never been seen before and look at how they behave as communities.
Many of the results of the five-year project, launched by the National Institutes of Health, have been published in Nature and PLoS journals.
Over 200 healthy men and women from the US had microbe samples taken from various parts of their bodies.
And researchers were able to find over 10,000 different types of organisms as part of the healthy human microbiome.
Most of these microbes appeared to do no harm at all. In fact, there is growing evidence that these bugs help us in many ways.
……
Dr Lita Proctor, programme director of the project says there is a growing understanding that we pick it up in the very early stages of life.
“The human genome is inherited but the human microbiome is acquired- that means it has a very important changeable, mutable property.
“This gives us something to work with in the clinic. If you can manipulate the microbiome you can keep a healthy microbiome healthy or re-balance an unhealthy one,” she says.
But who owns the microbiomes inhabiting our bodies? And what does this mean for the regulation of pro-biotics that can change them?, asks ethicist Prof Any McGuire of Baylor College of Medicine.
These are questions that will need to be ironed out as our knowledge of this area expands, she says.
But we only have half the story. We need to find out much more about how the microbiome talks to human cells says Prof David Relman of Stanford University.
“It is still an unknown land. Even though it is on home turf we are still discovering new life forms on it,” he says.
Researchers at MIT creates glucose fuel cell to power implanted brain-computer interfaces
By Sebastian Anthony : Original Article @ Extreme Tech
Neuroengineers at MIT have created a implantable fuel cell that generates electricity from the glucose present in the cerebrospinal fluid that flows around your brain and spinal cord. In theory, this fuel cell could eventually drive low-power sensors and computers that decode your brain activity to interface with prosthetic limbs.
The glucose-powered fuel cell is crafted out of silicon and platinum, using standard semiconductor fabrication processes. The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen. The glucose fuel cell products hundreds of microwatts (i.e. tenths of a milliwatt), which is a surprisingly large amount — it’s comparable to the solar cell on a calculator, for example. This should be more than enough power to drive complex computers — or perhaps more interestingly, trigger clusters of neurons in the brain. In theory, this glucose fuel cell will actually deprive your brain of some power, though in practice you probably won’t notice (or you might find yourself growing hungry sooner…)
A Glucose Fuel Cell for Implantable Brain–Machine Interfaces
Benjamin I. Rapoport, Jakub T. Kedzierski, Rahul Sarpeshka
We have developed an implantable fuel cell that generates power through glucose oxidation, producing
steady-state power and up to
peak power. The fuel cell is manufactured using a novel approach, employing semiconductor fabrication techniques, and is therefore well suited for manufacture together with integrated circuits on a single silicon wafer. Thus, it can help enable implantable microelectronic systems with long-lifetime power sources that harvest energy from their surrounds. The fuel reactions are mediated by robust, solid state catalysts. Glucose is oxidized at the nanostructured surface of an activated platinum anode. Oxygen is reduced to water at the surface of a self-assembled network of single-walled carbon nanotubes, embedded in a Nafion film that forms the cathode and is exposed to the biological environment. The catalytic electrodes are separated by a Nafion membrane. The availability of fuel cell reactants, oxygen and glucose, only as a mixture in the physiologic environment, has traditionally posed a design challenge: Net current production requires oxidation and reduction to occur separately and selectively at the anode and cathode, respectively, to prevent electrochemical short circuits. Our fuel cell is configured in a half-open geometry that shields the anode while exposing the cathode, resulting in an oxygen gradient that strongly favors oxygen reduction at the cathode. Glucose reaches the shielded anode by diffusing through the nanotube mesh, which does not catalyze glucose oxidation, and the Nafion layers, which are permeable to small neutral and cationic species. We demonstrate computationally that the natural recirculation of cerebrospinal fluid around the human brain theoretically permits glucose energy harvesting at a rate on the order of at least 1 mW with no adverse physiologic effects. Low-power brain–machine interfaces can thus potentially benefit from having their implanted units powered or recharged by glucose fuel cells.
FASEB 2012 BioArt Winners
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology hosts a yearly photo contest (with a volume submissions we can only aspire to), this year’s winner showcase some truly remarkable and incredible research, stunning visual imagery, and aesthetics on par with any great artwork.
FASEB’s Misson:
We are one year old!
This blog has been up for a year now. Let’s review what this blog has brought you so far and this blog’s statistics are:
First of all, how many page views did we have?
A total of over 41,000 to date, with the best day hitting over 3,000. The first few months produced on average 40 hits for weekdays and a bit less during the weekend. A trend that has maintained to date. Following the first big hits of our blog, our hits improved from 40 to 80 hits a day. The graph below shows the two months that stand out. November 2011 brought us the pepper spray incident, which this blog covered extensively. The second month that stands out is February 2012, which was sadly marked by the untimely death of Christina Takanishi. Seasonal slumps are also very obvious, and because of that, we anticipate reduced traffic during the upcoming summer months.
Which blog entry was most frequently visited over time?
Of course, the home page is the most visited page, in part because people search for “BMCDB” frequently, and this blog pops up in the first 5 hits. Several of the other top hit pages are related to the two events are mentioned above, thus really belong to incidental top hits, rather than pages that continuously being visited. But there are two pages that are very frequently being visited to our surprise: Science: public perception vs reality and Panda’s are more diverse than Caucasian humans.
Where do most visitors come from?
Not surprisingly most visitors are native to this country (USA that is, with 7,000+ visits), but overall this blog has had visitors from all over the world (all 6 continents represented on the map). Whereas all the other stats cover the entire time the blog has been in existence, this particular stat has only been available since February 25th, 2012. If you know people in other countries that have not yet visited this blog, please direct them to our blog to complete this picture. 
How do people find our blog?
By enlarge people find our blog via google searches, which is not surprising as we are the second hit when searching for “BMCDB”. Many of our posts are also posted on the BMCDB Facebook page, directing traffic to our blog. Some of the big references came when several of our postings on the pepper spray incident made it to Reddit, fueling our page hits, especially on November 21, 2011. All our most recent posts are instantly tweeted via @BMCDB, directing people frequently to our blog, especially when other people retweet our postings (notable mentions to @phylogenomcs, @kbradnam, @kalpasjack1 and @DPMelters).
What search terms do people use that direct them to our blog?
Sadly the most used search term is “Christina Takanishi”, which is understandable as many people were touched by her untimely passing and wanted to share their feelings. On the other hands a notable search term is “uc davis student community center” or “student community center uc davis”, which directed them to this blog entry, which comes in as the 5th hit in a google search. “BMCDB” and “TGIF” are also frequently used search terms, which don’t need much explaining.
What does the future hold for this blog?
More contributions by different BMCDB students. If you would like to write a piece about something that interest you, or want to bring to people’s attention or just because, just send it to BMCDB.UCDavis@gmail.com. If you recently published an article as a BMCDB student, this blog is a great way to do some self-promotion, especially if you use plain language as well as tell the story behind your publication. Do you have a tasty science-infused recipe, don’t keep it to yourself, but share it with all of us.
Above all, please keep returning to this blog to stay updated with the latest development at UC Davis, the BMCDB graduate group or just for interesting or funny science tit-bits.
Career Options Seminar: Jacqueline Alldritt, high school teacher
Career Options Seminar
Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
Jacqueline Alldritt, PhD
High School Teacher
10h30
LSA1022
Whatever you study, this will be a good talk to attend because Jacqueline will provide insight into how she succeeded in her career using the sheepskin we are all working for.
Tell your fellow grad students, techs, postdocs, and PI and we’ll see you on Tuesday June 12th!
Kind regards,
-Daniël Melters, Katrina Garvey, Damian Guerra
COS Committee
BMCDB Annual Meeting + BBQ
Tuesday June 12th is the BMCDB Annual Meeting and end of the year BBQ. At 3:30pm we will begin the Annual Meeting at the Putah Creek Lodge (
http://campusmap.ucdavis.edu/?b=122
). Faculty and students are encouraged to attend the meeting and participate in the business of the Graduate Group. Once the meeting comes to a close, we will tap the kegs and fire up the grills! The agenda will be sent out later today.
As with any good BBQ, there will be beer, wine, a plethora of grilled deliciousness (burgers, dogs, tri-tip, sausages, veggie burgers, etc.), various salads, snacks, etc., so bring your appetite!
Families are welcome, and backyard games are strongly encouraged. Bring your Frisbee, croquet set, whatever you want because we have the facility reserved until 8:30pm.
Of course, we are going to continue with the tradition of the nerdy t-shirt contest, so wear your “best” shirt for a chance to win a prize!
Please RSVP to Aaron to help make sure we get enough food.
See you there!
Last TGIF of the Year
Hey BMCDBers!
Come out TODAY to welcome the heat for the last TGIF of the school year! We’ll have pizza and the usual ice cold refreshments ready for you outside at 5:30 PM in the LSA courtyard instead of 1022 LSA, we hope to see you there! Don’t forget to bring a donation to help keep TGIFs going.
Also, don’t forget about the Annual Meeting & BBQ on Tuesday June 12th at 3:30pm at the Putah Creek Lodge. We still need a couple volunteers for cleanup duty after.
The TGIF Committee
UCSF Tetrad Granlibakken Skits 2006.
Tracking Drosophila melanogaster embryo development in real time
In an advance that could transform our understanding of the complex cellular dynamics underlying development of animals, researchers have developed a method to track individual cells in a developing fly embryo in real time. Two papers published on the Nature Methods website today describe similar versions of the microscopic technique … read more.
In an advance that could transform our understanding of the complex cellular dynamics that determine the development of animals, researchers have developed a method to track individual cells in a developing fly embryo in real time.
Tomer et al (2012) Nature Methods
Lubeck & Cai (2012) Nature Methods
bmcdb
