Gene Genie #11 is up

Gene Genie, the blog carnival of genes and genetic conditions, is up at Med Journal Watch. There’s quite a bit about genes - Junk DNA: from science to framing, Genes and diseases and New techniques.

My Childhood Asthma Probe is listed under Genes and diseases.

For upcoming editions see the Gene Genie carnival page. Gene Genie #12, which is scheduled for July 29, will be hosted by My Biotech Life. For any submissions clike here.

Mineral wells in Mauritian waters

Significant hydrothermal sites have been discovered in the territorial waters of Mauritius, which extend to 200 nautical miles. Minerals like zinc, copper and even gold may be present. But we are only at the research stage.

That’s what Prof. Kensaku Tamaki said at the Fourth National Ocean Science Forum held under the aegis of the Mauritian Oceanography Institute (MOI) on 11 and 12 July at the Octave Wiehe Auditorium of the University of Mauritius.

Prof K Tamaki of the University of Tokyo led a research team during November to January last in collaboration with the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the Mauritian government and the MOI. The team comprising scientists from Japan, Mauritius, France, US, China and Indonesia found considerable amount of manganese, which indicates the existence of hydrothermal sources.

That reminds me of another research in our waters in the 70’s when an oil slick was discovered around Mauritius. Drilling works were initiated and lasted several months before they were abandoned due to sinking evidences.

Let’s hope this time we have positive outcomes. The ocean hasn’t revealed all the secrets yet.

Financial Planning Blog

Just been listed in the Carnival of Financial Planning – July 12, 2007 Edition. This carnival as stated in the blog “focuses on efficient and sustainable personal financial planning practices that can lead to lifetime financial security”.

You’ll find posts about a wide range of finance issues from budgeting, debt management, estate planning, financial planning, financing a home, financing education, income, investing, retirement planning to savings and taxes.

Have a look and enjoy.

Grammar, punctuation and spelling - Do they really matter?

Successful writing is about good writing. Good writing requires a mastery of the language in which you want to write. And even more if it’s not your first language. English is no exception. Grammatical, punctuation and spelling mistakes can make all the difference between a good stuff and a slush item.

I recently read an article Grammatical Griping by Victoria Grossack at Fiction Fix, which I want to share if you are interested in furthering your basics about punctuation, spelling and grammar. For many it may sound like “it doesn’t matter much”. Whether English is your first language or not, there’s still something that you can add up to what you already have in your knowledge stock.

Here’s in a nutshell what Victoria Grossack talks about:

- Punctuation, which has to do with the proper use of periods and commas, colons and semi-colons, dashes and hyphens, apostrophes, helps us convey the meaning we want to; not something else.

- Misspellings can be as funny as irritating in what otherwise could be a good read. Spellcheckers cannot always catch all our mistakes.

- Subject-verb agreement, use of pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs are all that can make up grammatical mistakes if not used properly.

There’s also a number of links that offer more in-depth treatment of the issues mentioned above. An example is How to Use English Punctuation Correctly. Another one is How to Use Apostrophes.

Incidentally The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes is another interesting and informative site mentioned at Nick Daws’ Help With Apostrophes.

Hope that makes sense.

Childhood Asthma Probe

ORMDL3. Does that mean anything to you? Perhaps only a set of letters and a figure. That’s all. Idem for me too. Not for scientists though. It seems to be the culprit. It’s a gene found in a more significant amount in the blood cells of children with asthma than in those without. This higher level of ORMDL3 could increase the risk of having asthma by about 70%.

That’s what a group of researchers from Imperial College London, along with others from UK, France, Germany, USA and Austria, have concluded after a study carried out on more than 2000 children.

Childhood asthma is a common chronic disease. 10% of children in the UK are currently affected. It’s a tough time indeed, for the children as it is for the parents. Therapies have hitherto been limited to attenuating the episodes of asthma, without significant progress into its cure.

Deep probe has yet to be effected into the exact causes of asthma. It is not well understood how ORMLD3 exacerbates the risk of asthmatic conditions in children. But the combination of genetic and environmental factors provides a definite clue.

The researchers compared the genetic makeup of childhood asthmatic and non-asthmatic patients. They probed into the mutational behavior of the nucleotides, the building blocks of genes making up the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid – a self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms carrying the genetic information). Mutations were observed and the researchers unveiled those specific to childhood asthma.

The new findings will, it is hoped, pave the way for the development of new therapies. For further information see links below:

More about the gene linked with childhood asthma.

What is asthma?

How can I treat my asthma?

Released… after 114 days of living nightmare

The world was awakened with the good news of the release of BBC reporter Alan Johnston this morning. “Alan Johnston freed” reads the latest entry in the BBC Blog Network, The Editors.

Captured on 12 March in Gaza by the Army of Islam group, Mr. Alan Johnston, 45, was released early this morning. He was handed over to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza City. He is now in the British Consulate in Jerusalem waiting to fly back to UK.

“I literally dreamt many times of being free and always woke up back in that room,” Mr. Johnston said shortly after his release.

The reporter describes his captivity as a frightening experience as he was uncertain how it’d end. He said he had fallen ill from the food but was not tortured during the captivity period. It was hard for him to believe he’d be freed as he said he was “in the hands of people who were dangerous and unpredictable”.

Thanking his colleagues and all who supported him throughout his captivity, he cheered at the overwhelming international campaign for his release. “The thing you don’t want is to be left behind, buried alive, and have the world go on around you,” he said.

Several hundreds of thousands of people around the world had petitioned and rallied for his release.

“It’s been 114 days of a living nightmare,” said his overjoyed father Graham soon after his son’s release.

Answering to questions in the UK Parliament new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “The whole country will welcome the news that Alan Johnston, a fearless journalist whose voice was silenced for too long, is now free.”

Hats off Mr. Johnston for your perseverance and bravery during 16 weeks’ tough times. As we say in French: “Tout est bien qui finit bien”. (All is good that ends well).

Sweet and Sour

The Mauritian Finance Minister delivered his budget speech on Friday 15 June. It was his second speech since the “social alliance” (comprising multiple political parties including the Labour party, Parti Mauricien Xavier Duval, Mouvement Republicain, Mouvement Socialiste Democrate and Parti Mauricien Social Democrate) is in power.

He depicted a sound economic management under his ministership, which has resulted in an “early harvest” (meaning early economic recovery) thanks to his so-called bold measures taken last year. He even announced duty remissions on certain electronic devices used mainly by women: hair driers, utensil washing machines, microwave ovens and others.

People were still recuperating when five days later, on 20 June, they ended up in the hypers… only to witness soaring prices of some basic commodities, namely milk – all brands. Some brands which had disappeared from the stalls just before the budget day reappeared out of magic. The price of rice soared too. These rises were explained by “external factors” (appreciation of foreign exchange, drought in Australia, etc), an argument the common people swallowed although somewhat bitter.

Intense parliamentary debates followed the speech during two weeks. They were centered on the foreign direct investments which herald to some extent the “early harvest” as propounded by the minister in spite of contradictory arguments brought by the opposition team. Several questions arose, while members of the government, as could obviously be anticipated, took sides of their colleague minister and defended his policies and strategies with vehemence. “The 2007-2008 budget wouldn’t have been possible without the 2006-2007 (last year’s) budget,” chimed the minister. All to sum up a good budget year ahead, much to the satisfaction of the common people.

The debates ended on Friday last, that is on 29 June. Today it was time for the Automatic Pricing Mechanism panel to deliberate on the price of petroleum products. This panel meets on a quarterly basis to readjust the price of petroleum, no more than 20% change based on current world trend. Guess what? It announced an increase in the price of petrol and fuel oil by about 20%; while diesel increased by about 5%. External factors again (Middle East crisis, strike in Nigeria, high price in the world market), was the explanation given by the Chairman of the State Trading Corporation, the body that imports petroleum products.

Whatever the reason, the public has to pay… or perish. The cascade effects are yet to be anticipated. You can never know how sour a pill is until all the sweet coating is sucked up.

Wind chill

Everybody’s shivering since yesterday. True it’s winter time; but it’s not that cold. The lowest temperature recorded last night was 13.7 deg C on the central plateau (middle and higher region of the island). It was hardly one degree below normal. Night temperature has often dipped to 10 degrees C in the past.

Day temperatures recorded yesterday varied from 21 to 27 deg C, about 2 degrees below normal during this period. However, south easterlies are blowing at an average speed of 25 km/h peaking at 50 or 60 at times, bringing in cold air from the South Pole. And the sea is rough beyond the reefs with waves of the order of 3 meters high.

This is a typical situation due to a strong anticyclone to the south east of the mascarenes. Anticyclones are common in winter and they bring along strong winds, rainy and cold weather most of the time. Although temperatures may be within the range of normal for the period, you feel colder than expected. It’s a sensation of cold due to what is called wind chill or often referred to as wind chill factor.

Wind chill relates to a condition of enhanced feeling of cold due to the combined effect of temperature and wind speed in a relatively dry air. It is usually lower than the actual air temperature. For instance, for an actual temperature of 15 deg C together with a dry wind of 40 km/h, you may have a sensation of 10 deg C. The reason why you can see everybody draped in loads of woolen pulls, coats, scarves, caps and huge jackets. No way can you have a good night’s sleep without double blankets. And while I’m at my keyboard my fingers are virtually numb.

It will become more comfortable by the end of the week as the anticyclone moves away eastwards. That’s what the local meteorological services are forecasting.

Writing Tools

I just wanted to share what I picked from Nick Daws’ latest post at mywritingblog.com. You remember Nick, the freelance writer, editor and coach I interviewed some time ago?

Nick alerts us on Fifty Tools Which Can Help You in Writing. This is a set of articles written by Roy Peter Clark, Senior Scholar at the Poynter Institute. “These articles,” says Nick, “are aimed primarily at journalists, but any writer could benefit from studying them, and many are relevant to fiction writers as well.”

I must confess I haven’t had time to go through all the articles myself. But I’ve been able to peruse quite a few of them in a random manner. I can tell you they are full of tips, illustrations and exercises that will no doubt help improve your writing. Like Nick I’d be surprised if you don’t find anything useful.

Getting started writing a book

Everybody wants to become a writer. Everybody cherishes his name in print. But you got to start somewhere. Every beginner often gets stuck right at the start. He’s lost. The first step is the hardest, isn’t it?

Is writing a big deal? …Ummhh. That’s a big question. It depends. Perhaps not for those I’d call erudite. For others, especially beginners, it’s kind of “Ooohh… But how do I get started?” These are the ones that need to do something. What? We’ll try to find out together.

Many writers find it difficult to sit down and write everyday. But that’s just what you have to do if you want to be a writer. So much time is often wasted doing nothing or just dwelling on non-constructive thoughts and activities. If only these times could be used to concentrate on the writer that you want to be, you’ll realize that in the end it may not be that big deal to get started writing a book and getting it published.

I just came across two articles written by Sid Smith at Write and Publish Your Book:
(i) “How to Write a Book: Steps For The Beginner”; and
(ii) “Want to Write a Book? You’d Better Start Now”.

Sid Smith gives an insight on how you can go about writing a book in simple terms. Here’s in brief what you need to do to get started:

1. Invest. Invest time and money in developing and improving your writing skills. No one becomes a writer overnight.
2. A writing class or tuition is essential to learn the lingoes.
3. Read books about writing.
4. Writers’ groups or online forums for writers are very helpful. There are many. Find out the appropriate ones and join them. I belong to one, mywriterscircle.com, where you may interact with many established writers eager to help. You can even submit a piece for professional comments.
5. Equip yourself with the tools required for writing. Basically you’d need editing software.
6. Plan your writing and write. Keep to a strict writing schedule.
7. Keep aloof from time wasters. Just write. Write every single day. That’s what serious writers do.

So sitting down and doing the writing is all about writing that book you so much cherish.

Don’t give up.