BOL: BioStar's News

Mpox Public Health Emergency of International Concern

BioStar — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 07:28:39 -0500

The World Health Organization Health Organization has also declared Mpox Public Health Emergency of International Concern barely 24 hours after Africa CDC declaration
The World Health Organization Health Organization (WHO) declared the mpox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern
(PHEIC) just 24 hours after the Africa CDC declared a public health emergency of continental security.
This rapid escalation underscores the severe threat the outbreak poses and the urgency of a coordinated global response.
What does PHEIC mean
1 Global Recognition of the Threat
→ The WHO's PHEIC declaration is a global call to action, prompting nations worldwide to prepare for potential mpox spread beyond Africa.
→ This designation unlocks international resources, including vaccines and treatments, crucial for controlling the outbreak.
2 Vaccine Availability
→ The WHO has invited vaccine manufacturers to apply for emergency use listing.
→ This is essential for distributing vaccines in low-income countries.
→ It is estimated that 10 million doses of Mpox vaccine will be needed to control the outbreak.
3 International Support and Action
→ The WHO's PHEIC declaration is intended to catalyze international cooperation, ensuring that vaccines, treatments, and other resources are swiftly distributed to the most affected areas.
→ A rapid global response is essential to prevent further spread and protect vulnerable populations, including children and those with weakened immune systems.
4. The Need for Swift Action
→ With the potential for global spread, this outbreak requires immediate and comprehensive action from African nations and the international community.
→ The coordinated efforts of the African CDC and WHO are critical to halting transmission and preventing further devastation.
These declarations highlight the critical nature of the current mpox outbreak and the need for urgent, concerted efforts to safeguard global public health

NCBI Datasets pages

BioStar — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 06:29:31 -0500

Update! Assembly and Genome record pages now redirect to new NCBI Datasets pages. NCBI Datasets is a new resource that makes it easier to find and download genome data. Learn more: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2023/07/11/ncbi-datasets-genome-assembly-pages/ #NCBICGR

Effective July 10, 2023, NCBI’s Assembly and Genome record pages now redirect to new NCBI Datasets pages. As previously announced, these updates are part of our ongoing effort to modernize and improve your user experience. NCBI Datasets is a new resource that makes it easier to find and download genome data.  

The following pages have been updated:

The NCBI Assembly record pages now redirect to the new NCBI Datasets Genome record pages that describe assembled genomes and provide links to related NCBI tools such as Genome Data Viewer and BLAST. 
The NCBI Genome record pages now redirect to the NCBI Datasets Taxonomy record pages that provide a taxonomy-focused portal to genes, genomes, and additional NCBI resources.

During this transition, you will have the option to return to the legacy Genome and Assembly record pages. We will remove the legacy pages in early 2024. 

SPADes team announce new version SPADes v3.15

BioStar — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:24:27 -0600

New SPAdes 3.15.0.0. announced by the SPADes team This release includes such new features as:
- CoronaSPAdes pipeline for the assembly of transcriptomic and metatranscriptomic data of full-length coronaviridae genomes;
- Meta-Viral and RNA-Viral pipelines for metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data defining viral genomes;
-New trusted contiguous use algorithm;
-Switched to the memory allocator mimalloc;
- PlasmidSPAdes and bgcSPAdes are now provided as an input assembly graph;
- Important improvements and corrections to the metaplasmid pipeline;
- Multiple performance improvements in procedures for simplification and repeat resolving.
Please, consider updating.

Check out more at https://cab.spbu.ru/software/spades/

The pandemic has worsened the plight of postdoctoral researchers !

BioStar — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 11:19:42 -0500

The pandemic has worsened the plight of postdoctoral researchers. Funders need to be offering more than moral support.

Nature conducted a poll ran in June and July, and more than 7,600 people responded from across 19 disciplines. The sample, a self-selecting group scattered over 93 countries, is not fully representative globally, because the overwhelming majority of respondents are in Europe and North America. But the picture that emerges is undoubtedly concerning.

Six out of ten respondents think the pandemic has worsened their career prospects, and one in four feel that their supervisors have not done enough to support them during the pandemic. Moreover, 23% of respondents said that they have sought help for anxiety or depression caused by their work, and a further 26% would like such help but have not yet sought it. This is in line with other findings of pandemic-related mental ill-health.

Reference:

https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-020-02541-9/d41586-020-02541-9.pdf

Primer BLAST !

BioStar — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:28:49 -0500

BLAST team added a new feature (Max 3' match), shown in Figure 1, to Primer-BLAST that limits the length of 3' exon matches when designing exon-exon spanning primers. This makes it less likely that primers specifically designed to amplify transcripts will also amplify genomic DNA contamination in expression assays. See the NCBI Insights post (https://go.usa.gov/xvUT4) for more details.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact blast-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

SAMHAR-COVID19 Hackathon

BioStar — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 06:47:10 -0500

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under the aegis of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), a Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Science & Technology (DST) initiative, in association with NVIDIA & OpenACC, announces the SAMHAR-COVID19 Hackathon.

Pandemic outbreak such as Coronavirus outbreak can create huge challenges for the Government and Public Health Officials to gather information quickly and coordinate a response. In such a situation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play a huge role in predicting, minimizing and stalling its spread of the virus.

C-DAC has embarked on a program SAMHAR-COVID19 (Supercomputing using AI, ML, Healthcare Analytics based Research for combating COVID19). This opportunity will provide researchers to find solutions for Identifying, Tracking and Forecasting outbreaks of COVID19 and Facilitating Drug Discovery as well.

Participants can update submissions multiple times till the Registration End date.
Each entry can be submitted by a Team comprising of minimum 3 and maximum 5 members (Including the Team Lead).
Participants will have to share the complete work activities with C-DAC. And C-DAC will have right to use the submitted application/solution for SAMHAR-COVID19 programs.
The Award will be given to the Selected/Winning Entry irrespective of the number of members in the Team (members may choose to distribute the amount among themselves).
The decision of the Eminent Jury on the I3 Award will be final and binding.
Award can be for the Team/Company/Institution, as submitted in the Application and cannot be changed later.
Submissions will be considered void if they are in whole or part ill-eligible, incomplete, damaged, altered, counterfeit, obtained through fraud or late submission.

More at https://samhar-covid19hackathon.cdac.in/

Artificial intelligence is more accurate than doctors in diagnosing breast cancer

BioStar — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 22:12:34 -0600

Artificial intelligence is more accurate than doctors in diagnosing breast cancer from mammograms, a study in the journal Nature suggests.

An international team, including researchers from Google Health and Imperial College London, designed and trained a computer model on X-ray images from nearly 29,000 women.

The algorithm outperformed six radiologists in reading mammograms.

AI was still as good as two doctors working together.

Unlike humans, AI is tireless. Experts say it could improve detection. Read More: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-50857759

JNU openings !

BioStar — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 11:04:25 -0500

Opening for Faculty positions (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor)

Advt. No. RC/62/2019 for Assistant Professor :- Window advt. and Detailed advt.

Advt. No. RC/61/2019 for Associate Professor :- Window advt. and Detailed advt.

Advt. No. RC/60/2019 for Professor :- Window advt. and Detailed advt.

Click to apply Online

Last date for submission of applications completed in all respects, shall be 19 August, 2019 (5.30 PM)

NCBI to assist in Virus Hunting Data Science Hackathon

BioStar — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 12:55:01 -0600

NCBI Hackathon are pleased to announce the second installment of the SoCal Bioinformatics Hackathon. From January 9-11, 2019, the NCBI will help run a bioinformatics hackathon in Southern California hosted by the Computational Sciences Research Center at San Diego State University!

NCBI Hackathon specifically looking for folks who have experience in computational virus hunting or adjacent fields to identify known, taxonomically-definable and novel viruses from a few hundred thousand metagenomic datasets that we’ll put on cloud infrastructure. This event is for researchers, including students and postdocs, who are already engaged in the use of bioinformatics data or in the development of pipelines for virological analyses from high-throughput experiments. If this describes you, please apply! The event is open to anyone selected for the hackathon and willing to travel to SDSU (see below).

https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2018/11/09/ncbi-sdsu-virus-hunting-data-science-hackathon-january-2019/