These are just a scant few of the common questions asked by bioinformatics students as they ready themselves for the next exam sitting. If you read the entire Syllabus (and I know that everyone does), you will see a section devoted to study and exam techniques. The section discusses such broad concepts as motivation, scheduling, and retention. Upon reading this section, however, I find the "hints" to be too general. Much of the advice boils down to read, study, understand, and memorize the material. The techniques mentioned apply to everyone and thus the overall advice ends up as a broad overview of the learning process.

The idea behind this article is to give students ideas on different approaches and techniques in the preparation for exams. By providing various ways to prepare for the exam process, fascinated readers may gain some additional insight to help complement their studying methodology. There are, of course, many common themes expressed in this small empirical sample of students' study habits. The idea of note cards, memorization, and problem solving are frequently mentioned by all students. No matter what technique a candidate uses, it always takes a significant amount of time and personal resources to successfully complete the examination process.

1 Explain it in your own word

Your teacher or lecturer can explain something to you, you can learn it from a text book, your friends can study with you, even your own notes can explain it to you but all these explanations are of little use if, by the end, you can’t explain what you have learned to yourself. The BINC exam looking for ability to write and explain the concept in your own word. You, therefore, need to illustrate in an exam to get top exam results, then you won’t be happy with your end exam result. So don’t just memorise and tick off the list – make sure you understand your theory.

2 Be an examiner yourself

Of course, depending on what you’re studying, it may be quite difficult to get into a position to understand a concept, theory or other information you need to learn. Ask ‘stupid’ question to yourself and train yourself for the worst! Embrace your curiosity, for as William Arthur Ward said: “Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.” Doing so will allow you to fill in the blanks and better prepare you for exams.

3 Quiz yourself

Once you feel you understand topic, it is important to test yourself regularly. Try yourself to replicate exam conditions as much as possible: turn your phone off, don’t talk, time yourself etc. You can set yourself a study quiz or practice exam questions and, so long as you approach it with the right mindset, you can get a very good idea of how much you know. You gain a greater insight into where you stand in relation to what you’ve studied so far.

4 Online study

Keeping the fact that, bioinformatics is ever changing subject, you might need to update yourself on timely basis. Don’t feel obliged to just sit in front of a book with a highlighter; there are many different ways to improve your bioinformatics knowledge. Login and check almost all web servers and keep yourself updated, like how many genomes sequenced, sizes, techniques used, software names etc.

5 Study plan

In order to achieve exam success, you need to know what you want to achieve and focus on. That’s why it is extremely important to set your Study Goals now and outline to yourself what you need to do. With your study goals in mind, you properly need to attention all subjects. It should be broad enough to allow you to add and change aspects but concise enough so you know you’re covering each subject/topic as best you can at this point.

Project: Indo-UK Centre for improvement of Nitrogen use efficiency in wheat Dr. Soma S. Marla, Pr. Scientist (Bioinformatics), Division of Genomic Resources, ICAR, NBPGR, ND.

Qualification: Ph.D. Degree in Computer Sciences/Bioinformatics OR 1. First class Master’s degree in any discipline of Plant Sciences with specialization in Computer Sciences/ Bioinformatics having 1st division or 60% marks or equivalent overall grade point average with at least two years of research experience as evidenced from Fellowship/ Associate ship. 2. NET qualification is essential for the candidates with 3+2 years B.Sc.+ M.Sc. Desirable: Demonstrated experience & skills in database design, management, UNIX OS, in NGS data analysis. Experience substantiated by publications of high quality will be preferred.

No.of Post: 1

Pay Scale: Rs. 40,000 (Ph.D)/ Rs + 30 % HRA; Rs.38,000 ( Masters Degree 0 + 30 % HRA).

Age Limit : below 40 years for RA position
How to apply
Applicants for RA post should send their complete CV (Advance copy of the application may be sent by email to :soma.marla@icar.gov.in or ssmarl@yahoo.com, should enclose the copy of the research publications; one page summary of their achievement relevant to the post applied for; and should enclose two reference letters (one must be from the person with whom worked latest). Shortlisted candidate will be intimated for interview by email.

The candidates who wish to attend the walk-in interview are requested to bring with them five copies of the CV (one copy with photograph) as per the format given below. Also, the candidates should bring the original documents such as degree certificates, marks sheets, publications, thesis, experience certificate etc. for verification.

Date of Interview: 17.8.2016.

More at http://www.nbpgr.ernet.in/Downloadfile.aspx?EntryId=7133

Applications are invited on plain paper from eligible candidates along with biodata and copies of certificates in support of age, qualification and experience for the following position:

Particulars Description

1. Position & No. JRF (Junior Research Fellow) 01

2. Title of the Project Molecular modeling and docking studies on Deguelin and its derivatives with cell cycle arrest, apoptosis and anti-angiogenesis pathway proteins in cancer cell signaling pathway

3. Tenure 3 years

4. Investigator Dr. K. V.Swamy

5. Institute Dr. D. Y. Patil Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Institute, Tathawade, Pune 411033.

5. Qualifications/Eligibility

Essential: NET (National Eligibility Test) qualified M. Sc Bioinformatics/ M. Tech Bioinformatics/M. Sc Biotechnology/M. Tech Biotechnology or Graduate degree in Professional course with NET qualification or Post graduation degree in professional course

The following examinations conducted by various Central Government Departments/Agencies are considered as National Eligibility Test (NET).

1. CSIR-UGC-LS
2. GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering)
3. JAM (Joint Admission Test)
4. GPAT (Graduate Pharmacy Aptitude Test)
5. BET(Biotechnology Eligibility Test)
6. BINC(Bioinformatics National Consortium)
7. JEST( Joint Entrance Screening Test)
8. JGEEBILS(Joint Graduate Entrance Examination for Biology & Interdisciplinary Life Sciences)
9. NBHM Ph.D scholarship Screening Test
10. ICMR- JRF Entrance Examination
11. AICE (ICAR-All India competitive Examination )
(For all above examinations valid score considered at the time of interview)

Desirable: Knowledge and skills in Bioinformatics tools/ softwares

6. Monthly Emoluments Rs.25,000/ (As per DST-SERB rules)

7. Last date for submission of prescribed application 20/08/2016

Kindly send your applications to “Dr. K. V. Swamy, Asst.Professor, Dr. D. Y. Patil Biotechnology & Bioinformatics Institute, Survey No. 87/88, Mumbai-Pune Express Way, Tathawade, Pune - 411033, Maharashtra, India”. Highlight the envelope with “Application for post of JRF (Junior Research Fellow)”.

Note: No TA/DA will be paid for attending the interview.

Advertisement: http://careers.dpu.edu.in/Biotech.aspx

More at http://www.nipgr.res.in/careers/vacancies_latest.php#

More at http://www.du.ac.in/du/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=12859&cntnt01returnid=83

Address of the bookmark: http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/cgview/

If you have any questions or comments, post them on one of the trackers on BRIG’s SourceForge page: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=328245.

Features:

• Images show similarity between a central reference sequence and other sequences as concentric rings.
• BRIG will perform all BLAST comparisons and file parsing automatically via a simple GUI.
• Contig boundaries and read coverage can be displayed for draft genomes; customized graphs and annotations can be displayed.
• Using a user-defined set of genes as input, BRIG can display gene presence, absence, truncation or sequence variation in a set of complete genomes, draft genomes or even raw, unassembled sequence data.
• BRIG also accepts SAM-formatted read-mapping files enabling genomic regions present in unassembled sequence data from multiple samples to be compared simultaneously

Address of the bookmark: http://brig.sourceforge.net/

You see, for the past couple of years, I’ve been a bit frustrated because OS X does not come with a whole lot of Perl modules pre-installed, and for all I googled, I couldn’t find an “idiot’s” guide for moderately-savvy-but-not-expert users like myself to install modules and dependencies on demand.

The only instructions I could find point to Fink, which basically installs modules in a path that isn’t included in the Perl @INC variable, meaning you have to manually specify the full path to the modules in every script — which is not a lot of fun if you’re developing on OS X and deploying on Red Hat, for instance.

Moreover, Fink doesn’t seem to make every module available, and it’s not very easy to determine which Fink package you need to install if you need a particular module.

So, with a script that called on several apparently unavailable modules, and a deadline looming, I finally decided to suck it up and figure out how to use CPAN to install them:

1) Make sure you have the Apple Developer Tools (XCode) installed.

These are on one of your install discs, or available as a huge but free download from the Apple Developer Connection [free registration required] or the Mac App Store. I thought I had them, but apparently when we upgraded that computer to Tiger, they went missing.

If you don’t have this stuff installed, your installation will fail with errors about unavailable commands.

1.5) Install Command Line Tools (Recent XCode versions only)

(Thank you to Tom Marchioro for informing me about this step.)

Older versions of XCode installed the command line tools (which are required to properly install CPAN modules) by default, but apparently newer ones do not. To check whether you have the command line tools already installed, run the following from the Terminal:

$ which make

This command checks the system for the “make” tool. If it spits out something like /usr/bin/make you’re golden and can skip ahead to Step 2. If you just get a new prompt and no output, you’ll need to install the tools:

1. Launch XCode and bring up the Preferences panel.
2. Click on the Downloads tab
3. Click to install the Command Line Tools

If you like, you can run which make again to confirm that everything’s installed correctly.

2) Configure CPAN.

$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell

perl> o conf init

This will prompt you for some settings. You can accept the defaults for almost everything (just hit “return”). The two things you must fill in are the path to make (which should be /usr/bin/make or the value returned when you run which make from the command line) and your choice of CPAN mirrors (which you actually choose don’t really matter, but it won’t let you finish until you select at least one). If you use a proxy or a very restrictive firewall, you may have to configure those settings as well.

If you skip Step 2, you may get errors about make being unavailable.

3) Upgrade CPAN

$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Bundle::CPAN'

Don’t forget the sudo, or it’ll fail with permissions errors, probably when doing something relatively unimportant like installing man files.

This will spend a long time downloading, testing, and compiling various files and dependencies. Bear with it. It will prompt you a few times about dependencies. You probably want to enter “yes”. I agreed to everything it asked me, and everything turned out fine. YMMV of course. If everything installs properly, it’ll give you an “OK” at the end.

4) Install your modules. For each module….

$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Bundle::Name'

or

$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Module::Name'

This will install the module and its dependencies. Nice, eh? Again, don’t forget the sudo.

The first time you run this after upgrading CPAN, it may prompt you to configure again (see Step 2). If you accept its offer to try to configure itself automatically, it may just run through everything without a problem.

There are a couple of potential pitfalls with specific modules (such as theLWP::UserAgent / HEAD issue), but most have workarounds, and I haven’t run into anything that wasn’t easily recoverable.

And that’s it!

Did you find this useful? Is there anything I missed?

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM - 695 562

Traineeship on Bioinformatics(2)

First class M.Sc. Bioinformatics/ Agriculture/ Botany/ Biotechnology @ Rs.8000

Those candidates who fulfill the above criteria may attend a walk PCC Coordinator in-interview on 28th November 2016 at Saraswathy Thangavelu center, JNTBGRI, Puthenthope, Thiruvananthapuram between at 10.00 am and 2.00 pm with all the relevant document and testimonials.

No TA/DA will be given to candidates for attending the interview.

More Info : http://jntbgri.res.in/downloads/traineeship_notification.pdf

This collection highlights important statistical issues that biologists should be aware of and provides practical advice to help them improve the rigor of their work.

Nature Methods' Points of Significance column on statistics explains many key statistical and experimental design concepts. Other resources include an online plotting tool and links to statistics guides from other publishers.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/collections/qghhqm