As i mentioned in the last post, you can register with a cheap domain registrar and direct the domain to a free hosting provider. In my case what i do is,
I registered the domain with godaddy and direct the website to awardspace. In my opinion it is one of the best hosting providers with adequate facilities to host a decent website.
If i have gone with some other hosting provider for this matter, it would have cost me around $50 per year. But now it's just $5.99 per whole year. But in my experience it takes some time to connect to the FTP server, when uploading and the connection is not that stable. Anyways, if you want to go cheaper, then it's a small price to pay.
There's not much water though. Some parts are covered by the ground. But unfortunately, when we got to the point where the water fall is fully uncovered, the camera battery was exhausted. This was the last picture that we could take. Bad ha!! :(
Please do not copy with out the permission of the author. really a gr8 view. It's aranayake - mawanella in the valley. The water fall is just right to this view. Next post will be the water fall.
Sri lanka is a country rich in genetic diversity. Is is so, because of the fact that it is a island surrounded by the ocean. Evolution theory can explain why it has such a diverse set of plants and animals. Plant genetic resource center at gannoruwa is the home for a collection of all the plant genetic material found in sri lanka. The priority of preservation is given to plant that are important in agricultural perspective.
Normally students or out side people are not allowed to the facility. But we sleeked in some how. Hey i was just joking. We got the chance to get in cos director there was a kind person. But taking pictures was strictly prohibited.
The genes are preserved as seeds. First they select good seeds and put them in a air tight container and then in a controlled environment, where humidity and temperature is controlled. They have still not started cryopreservation techniques. But they said they will be starting that soon.
This is not inside the genebank, this is where they prepare the seeds to be put in the gene bank.
Japanese Gardens! They always build one as a mark of their presence. This i got at the plant genetic resource center, Gannoruwa. Do not copy with out the permission of the author. all rights reserved by the author.
There are a variety of scientific opinions about how life on earth began. Some believe that life on earth arose from outer space, either as primitive cell or as DNA deposited from another planet. The hypothesis that life began on some far-off planet, at best, simply begs the question. How did life begin on that planet? A more scientific explanation is that life slowly formed under conditions present on our planet 4 to 5 billion years ago, Evidence supporting this idea has come from experiments in the laboratory that reconstruct the of the primitive earth. Many experiments along this line have been done within the last 20 years. When plausible conditions on primitive earth are simulated in reaction vessel, many simple organic compound s of biological significance from spontaneously and in relative abundance these includes amino acids, aliphatic hydrocarbons, sugar, purines, and pyrimidines, which are the precursors of proteins and nucleic acids. To carry this to the next logical steps, investigators have produced peptides, but in relative small amounts. If dry amino acids are heated from week or so at 1200 C, large numbers of protein-like molecules with molecular weights of about 10,000 can be produced. Similarly, polymers of nucleotides can be produced,
This brings up an important question, which came the first protein (the chicken) or the nucleic acid (the egg)? The protein catalyze biological reaction including synthesis of nucleic acid s provide the information required to make proteins. It would seem that you can not have one without the other. This was indeed a big quandary until the early 1980’s when Thomas Cech discovered for the first time that nucleic acids, specifically RNA, could also catalyze reactions. This was true an astounding discovery, and in 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
It is now postulated the evolution began with RNA molecules performing the catalytic activities necessary to assemble themselves from nucleotide precursors. The RNA molecules evolved in sell replicating patterns, using recombination and mutation (RNA mutation is much more rapidly than DNA mutation) to explore new functions and adapt to new niches. RNA molecules then began to synthesize proteins, eventually arranging them according to RNA templates. Eventually protein was able to carry out catalytic functions better than RNA. At some points, single single –stranded DNA appeared with its unique properties of increased stability and faithful self replication.
How did cells arise? Most scientist believe that protocells , the precursors of modern-day cells, developed first . These were cluster of proteins and nucleic acids. Billions of years ago nucleic acid evolved more capacity to encode new proteins that stabilized the protococells, and primitive bacteria arose. Further evolution over about 3 billion years gave rise to what we see around us.
Normally i watch few DVDs per week. When i was using windows, i used to use a disk image creating programme such as "Alcohol120%" or "diskmagic" to create the image and watch it later when i'm free. It also enable you create a whole collection of DVDs right on your Hard drive. And if you need, you can easily burn them later.
Linux has a built-in iso image creation programme, which makes your life easier. It also has built in mount function which can be used to mount what ever the image you want where ever you want. That makes life so much easier when it comes to handling a library of DVDs.
I use "ubuntu feisty fawn". You can just right click on the disk and select "copy disk". Following window will appear.
Then you can select "file image" from drop down list. Click write and you will be asked where to save the disk image. After you input the path to save disk image you are done.
Mounting the iso images First we need to create a folder where we going to mount the iso image. Open the terminal and type
mkdir /media/isodisk
This will create a folder called "isodisk"in "/media" folder. Now you just need to enter following command and you'll have your iso image mounted on the folder that we created.
mount (image location) (path to mount the image) -t iso9660 -o loop
ex:
mount /home/pulasthi/asrto_farmer.iso /media/isodisk -t iso9660 -o loop
Now the mounted folder will appear on your desktop.
If you want to watch it with subtitles, use "VLC media player". It's great.
I was searching in the internet for a book marking tool that will allow the users of my blog to submit each and individual url of my blog to many bookmarking sites from the site it self. But I couldn't find any. So decided to create it my self. You can see the code below. If you want add it to your own blog and enable your users to book mark individual urls with out any prob. It will automatically generate the url and title of the page, so the users don't have to worry about typing them into the bookmarking site. It will be automatically inserted into the bookmarking site
click on the text area and right click. then select copy from the menu and paste it into your webpage html in an appropriate place. If you have problems just let me know. I can give you a hand.
Just found an amazing work of art and science produced by Biovision, University of Harvard. This is just quite amazing. It explains the processes within the cell. most importantly the underlying processes of leukocyte - endothelial adhesion. This is just great. No words to describe it. Great work.
Hypersensitivity is an inappropriate immunological response to an antigen that can cause tissue damage. As we know immune response is there to protect us from any foreign antigens ( antigen is a foreign substance that can bind with components of the immune system / Or it can be defines as any substance, against to which antibodies are formed. ex: viruses, bacteria, parasites, toxins). Not only infectious things but also non infectious particles like duct, pollen can act as antigens.
There are four types of Hypersensitivity reactions,
1. Type I hypersensitivity - Immediate hypersensitivity (anaphylaxis)
2. Type II hypersensitivity - (Autoimmunity)
3. Type III hypersensitivity
4. Type IV hypersensitivity - Delayed Hypersensitivity
Pair of venom producing glands are found in all the poisonous snakes, which are positioned below and behind the eyes. They are accompanied by a pair of maxillary teeth called fangs.
We can identify two types of venom producing glands.
1. True Venom
Elapids, Viperids and sea snakes have this type of venom glands. The fangs are situated anteriorly.
2. Duvernoy's glands
Found in some Colubrids. Relatively small gland situated posteriorly. Venom is ejected through a posterior fang. Colubrids with well developed Duvernoy's glands are mildly poisonous.
Google has been resetting PR values of websites/blogs that display sponsored content / paid content and links with out nofollow tag recently. If you are also one of those bloggers who faced this tragedy!, then you have a solution.
In the perspective of google, paid links certainly alter the search results and as they say they can not provide a quality service due to that.
So what you will have to do is to convert all the paid links to "nofollow"
[a href="" rel="nofollow"] some text [/a]
( [ = < , ] = > )
and then send a reconsideration application to google using google webmaster tools. Then with in few days, your page rank will be restored to the previous value.
Recently visited Katharagama. It's a very well known destination for pilgrimage traveling in sri lanka. There are lot and lots of small street shops, where they sell variety of things, from vegetables to small toys. I took this picture because it was very aesthetically appealing to me. It certainly has a great combination of variations of green.
Before talking about antioxidants you should know what are free radical. Free radicals are the molecules or atoms with one or more unpaired electrons. These are highly reactive as the unpaired electron / electrons try to acquire most stable electronic configuration by taking an electron from another molecule or an atom.
In recent years free radicals have become a major health issue. The potential health risks are discussed throughly through out the world.
Genetic disorders can be either inherited or not inherited.
Inherited diseases
A disease inherited from parents (vertical transmission). But all the diseases inherited from parents are not genetic disorders.
Genetic diseases
All the genetic diseases are not unnecessarily inherited. For example the chromosomal disorders are not inherited from generation to generation. They are a result of defects in the formation of gametes. Cancers are also genetic diseases but not inherited.
Cause
- Mutation (Genetic anomalies)
-> inherited -> spontaneous (de novo)
These mutations have to be able survive in order to be transmitted to the next generation. In other words, the person with the mutation should be able to survive and reproduce.
- Chromosomal anomalies ( Numerical anomalies)
Always not inherited.
Mutations
- Can occur die to errors in DNA replication process.
- or due to UV light, Chemicals, Radiation.
Types of Mutations
Point mutations
Substitution of one nucleotide for another. Only one codon is changed. Outcome can vary. Three possible out comes are idetified
- Silent
Phenotype is the same. But there's a small difference in the base sequence. The change in the base sequence has not been able to make a difference in the Three dimensional structure and function. This results in gene polymorphisms (Slightly different gene, but the result is the same).
- non Sense
The change in the base sequence will add a termination codon infront of the real termination codon. This will result in premature termination of the amino acid sequence synthesis.
- Mis Sense
The change in one codon results in a change in the amino acid sequence (one amino acid). So there's a defective expression that leads to a disease.
ex: sickle cell anemia
Glutamic acid is replaced by a Valine Molecule, resulting in structural defect in the beta globine chain (change in the 6th codon of the beta globine chain).
Frame Shift Mutations
Deletion or an insertion of a nucleotide changing the reading frame.
ex:
AT[G] CGG ATC GAT - reading frame before the mutation
ATC GGA TCG AT - reading frame after the mutation Below are some example diseases.
1. Some forms of Thalassaemia 2. Duchenne muscular dystrophy 3. polymorphisms in the angiotensine converting enzyme (DI, DD)
This is the 2nd episode of our journey to Sri Lanka's water falls. This time we had a team of 8 friends (last time it was only two). We traveled by bus to Ginigathhena. Had to wait some time in the ginigathhena bus halt till our friend comes. He had prepared lunch and everything at his place. So went there. It was a very tiresome journey to his place, because it was very rough road. After about 2 hours of traveling, we got to his place.
Spent some time there with his family. Luckily we found a van to give us a ride to the water fall. At about 4.00pm in the evening we got to the water fall.
Finally after descending some few thousand small steps we got to the great lakshapana water fall. It was just amazing. No words to describe. Certainly better and more entertaining than the last water fall at Galaboda. Lakshapana Falls, which at 126 metres are the 7th highest in Sri Lanka, are situated on the Maskeliya Oya.
Ascending those steps was a good exercise. It was dark when we returned to the top. There was a cool hut, in which we stayed until the vehicle comes to pick us up.
We had to wait about two hours for the vehicle. Then we went off to climb Adam's peak (sri padaya kanda).
Yesterday one of my friends came to my place and we were thinking of any productive way of spending the day. So we decided to go hiking. To be really honest we didn't even know where we are heading to. Just got on to the badulla train. there was a big delay of about 3 hours due to some accident.
Got off the train near a very remote area. Pleople in that area said that there's a very beautiful water fall near by. So we went looking for that water fall. To add up to the excitement we decided to skip the regular road and go upstream along the water way.
Finally we got to the water fall and it was so amazing. The height of the water fall was about 50m. Since there was no one to stop, we went into the base of the water fall. It was really very hard to stay at the base of the water fall more than 1 - 2 minutes due to momentum of the water falling from 50m - 60m height.
Spent about 1 - 2 hours admiring the beauty of this great creation of nature and returned to the train station. We were really lucky to find a train back to kandy. Finally it was a great day. It is so amazing how things work out pretty well when we are not planing it at all.
It is said that bioinformatics is the marriage between biology and information technology.
the basics and the anatomy of information technology / computer science and biology / life sciences are completely different. But their combination has given the humans a new tool to explore the hidden mysteries of science.
Bio informatics has domains in biology, computer science, statistics, genetics, maths and various other fields.
The applications of bio informatics can range from
- accessing the internet to read literature - manuscript preparation - DNA sequence analysis - protein modelling - Using virtual reality experiments - Running biological simulations
It's worth considering why such a field came into existence.
First nucleotide sequencing directly from DNA was performed in 1973. In late 1970s some on e could get a PHD by just sequencing any gene. By 1982 this became a very straight forward task.
Then accumulation of sequence data increased so rapidly with the Human Genome project which was started around 1990.
for example,
in 1999, 1.5Mb of human genomic sequences were deposited in genebank monthly. In 2001 15 billion bases of sequence information were deposited. So there's a very rapid growth curve of sequence information. It became virtually impossible to handle these information manually by humans or by simple computations. So there was need of extensive integration information technology with biological information handling. Bio informatics is a result of this integration.
Bioinformatics can be divided into two broad categories.
1. computational biology 2. analytical bio informatics
Computational biology uses formal algorithms and testable hypotheses if biology, then encode them into various programmes. Mainly considering the mathematics of biology. For example the development of tools like BLAST, FASTA are results of computational biology. So in this sense, computational biology is making tools.
Analytical bio informatics is using these tools.
ex: sequence retrieval from gene bank.
analysis of various regression using local statistical software.
With the expansion of internet and world wide web the tools and data became available to almost any one in the world. So using these resources is not a feat in any sense.
So what really matters is internet research skills to find where information is and to retrieve right kind of information for your purpose.
Once you retrieved your data, the researcher should be able to manipulate these data as he/she wish. There are large amount of pre-built tools to do what you need to do. But to truely exploit the capacity of data analysis tools, a researcher need to be able to at least use a scripting language and databases properly.
Yesterday We finished Extracting DNA from Both Plant and Animal tissues. So now it's time to quantify our DNA samples and see how successful we were in extracting DNA.
We can quantify our DNA sample to measure the purity of the sample and to measure the amount of DNA present in our sample.
We added 50 - 100 ul of TE buffer to the dried DNA pallet.
TE buffer contains,
1M tris - 1ml
0.5M EDTA - 200ul
Distilled water up to - 100ml
Then the solution was homogenized by pipetting in and out about 30 times.
All most all the animal tissue contain DNA. We used mammalian blood for this practical. Only white blood cells in the mammalian blood contain nuclei. As RBC contain no nuclei, we have to remove the RBC first.
We destroyed RBC by a freez shock. For this we stored our blood samples at -20C over night. This freezing process destroys the RBC cell membrane.
Then before the practicle we thawed the blood samples at room temperature. After that 700ul of blood sample was transferred to an eppendorf tube.
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This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.
Google has been resetting PR values of websites/blogs that display sponsored content / paid content and links with out nofollow tag recently. If you are also one of those bloggers who faced this tragedy!, then you have a solution.
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