Portable SynWrite is an easy to use, reliable and useful text editor designed to edit programs source codes with features such as syntax highlighting, code folding, tree structure etc.

This tool is a handy, easy to use text editor designed to edit programs source codes with such features as syntax highlighting, code folding, tree structure etc. It also offers support for many encodings.

Here are some key features of "Portable SynWrite":

· Syntax highlighting for lots of languages
· Fully customizable highlightings· Code folding
· Support for almost all encodings 

Panels:

· Tree structure view for source code· Project management
· Document mini-map
· Clipboard history
· Tools output
· Search results

Coding helpers:

· Auto-completion· Auto-closing of tags/brackets
· Code templates
· SmartTagTabbing feature
· SyncEditing feature to edit identical identifiers
· Zen Coding support (HTML + CSS + XSL high speed coding engine)
· Color preview + Color picker
· Inserting of image tag
· Search, replace with regular expressions
· Search, replace in multiple files· External tools support (capture of console output, errors navigation)
· Strings extraction feature
· Customizable hotkeys
· Bookmarks
· Keyboard macros
· Spell checking
· File sessions
· Plugin for file manager "Total Commander"
· Multilingual user interface
· Integrated HTML Tidy library
· Export to RTF/HTML with syntax highlighting
· Portable mode

Direct Download link: Click on this Portable SynWrite 4.8.742

A team of scientists just won a battle in the war against antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” — and only time will tell if their feat is akin to the bacterial “Battle of Gettysburg” that turns the tide toward victory.

Superbug bacteria

They won this particular battle, or at least gained some critical intelligence, not by designing a new antibiotic, but by interfering with the metabolism of the bacterial “bugs” –E. coli in this case — and rendering them weaker in the face of existing antibiotics, as reported today in Nature Biotechnology.

It’s the “kick ‘em when they’re down” style of fighting, and the team from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Boston University used sophisticated computer modelling and biotechnology as their weapons of choice.

“We are in critical need for novel strategies to boost our antibiotic arsenal,” said senior author and Wyss Core Faculty member Jim Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer of synthetic biology who is also the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he leads the Center for BioDynamics. “With precious few new antibiotics in the pipeline, we are finding new ways to harness and exploit certain aspects of bacterial physiology.”
In this case, the team targeted a little understood but key part of bacterial metabolism called ROS production.

ROS, or “reactive oxygen species,” include molecules like superoxide and hydrogen peroxide that are natural byproducts of normal metabolic activity. Bacteria usually cope just fine with them, but too many can cause serious damage or even kill the cell. In fact, Collins’ team revealed a few years ago the true antibiotic “modis operandi”: they kill bacteria in part by ramping up ROS production.

The precise genetic mechanisms by which E. coli produces ROS remain elusive, Collins said, so his team adopted a standard computer model that maps out the way scientists currently understand E. coli metabolism. Collins’ team began by adding to this “system-level” metabolic model hundreds of reactions that are known to increase ROS production. Then they deleted various genes to see which were involved in ROS production, honed in on the suspected targets after running thousands of computer simulations, and validated the model in the laboratory — achieving 80-90% agreement with the model-based predictions.

“The next challenge was to determine if increasing the ROS production by the cell itself would render it more susceptible to death by oxidative, ergo, antibiotic attack,” Collins said — and it did. The team deleted a series of genes that led to increased ROS production in the cell, added different antibiotics and biocides such as bleach — known cell-killers by way of increasing ROS production — and the cells died at a much higher rate than the cells without the deleted genes. In short, by interfering with the bacterial metabolism, the antibiotics and biocides were even more lethal to the cells.

“There is no magic bullet for the global health crisis we’re experiencing in terms of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Wyss Founding Director, “and yet there is tremendous hope in the kinds of pioneering systems biology approaches Jim and his team are spearheading.”

The team’s next steps are to use molecular screening technologies to precisely identify molecules that boost ROS production, Collins said, and to test the approach used in thisE. coli study on other kinds of bacteria — such as the mycobacteria responsible for tuberculosis, a potentially lethal lung disease.

 Source:  Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard

Windows 8 limits your start screen customization options to only 10 provided background images and a few pre-defined color schemes. Decor8 removes these limitations and provides the freedom to personalize your start screen with your own images and colors.

Decor8

-Add your own photos and images
-Select multiple images to create a custom slideshow
-Randomize background images in timed intervals for a fresh look
-Fade background images against the start screen color for a subtle effect
-Decor8 will automatically create a color scheme to match each of your background images or you can customize the color scheme, it's up to you.

Decor8 is a simple app for Windows 8 that enables users to customize the look and feel of their desktops, lock screens and of course, the new Modern UI environment. Though Windows 8 comes stocked with some basic options, Decor8 adds extra features to give users that extra level of personalization and refinement.

After you install the app, Decor8 will appear on the Start screen like any other tile. When you open the app, you'll be greeted with an options menu that appears mighty hard to discern from a standard Windows 8 settings menu. From the Background settings, choose any custom image or photo to set as your background for the modern UI and add visual tweaks like fading, blurring, and color overlays. Decor8 also allows users to rotate through multiple background images, a feature that's also peculiarly absent in the Modern UI environment, compared to its older desktop cousin.The colors option lets you tweak the tile buttons and other elements of the color scheme. These were options that had existed in previous stock Windows builds since XP, but Stardock has a more more presentable and easier interface to work with. Other notable tweaks include changing the row count and background scroll rates and even changing colors of the charm bar.

Other Screenshots:- The image below has been reduced in size. Click on it to see the full version.

"Decor8 will help you not only customizing your Windows 8 Start screen but your Lock screen, background and even color scheme"
"The Settings panel will provide users with all the tools they need to tweak the appearance of their Windows 8 installtion"


"Users will be able to choose between using a standard Windows color scheme or a custom scheme within the Colors section"

The puzzle has been how the bird doesn't throttle itself in the process. If we did it, we'd cut the blood supply to our brains and pass out.

But according to two US-based scientists, the owl has some very smart bone and vascular structures running along its neck to the skull. These features protect blood vessels from damage and maintain the flow even when the head is swivelled 270 degrees. "They haven't developed just one answer to the problem; they have several answers," said Dr Philippe Gailloud from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "And it's because of this set of solutions that we don't see lots of owls lying on the forest floor having suffered strokes," the interventional neuroradiologist told BBC News.

Most birds have extremely flexible necks, but the owls are the avian species that have perhaps garnered the greatest attention for their neck-twisting exploits. They must turn their heads in this extraordinary way because of their eyes' narrow field of view and relative immobility. It's true they have double the number of bones in their neck compared with us - 14 versus seven cervical vertebrae. But it's really the way the animal manages the flow of oxygenated blood to its brain that underpins the impressive feat.

Dr Gailloud and science illustrator Fabian de Kok-Mercado used various imaging and dissection techniques to detail the anatomy of a dozen dead owls. They showed that the big carotid arteries, instead of being on the side of the neck as in humans, are carried close to the centre of rotation just in front of the spine. As a consequence, these arteries experience much less twisting and stretching. The potential for damage is therefore greatly reduced.

This arrangement is not specific to owls, of course; it is seen in other birds as well. What does appear unique to owls, however, is the way the vertebral arteries - the vessels that travel through channels within the neck bones - are given extra space.

In humans, the bony cavities are just big enough to carry the vertebral arteries. "By contrast, in owls, the canal is about 10 times bigger and it's filled with an air sac," Dr Gailloud said.

"You know birds have air sacs to make them lighter, and somehow they manage to put some of this inside that bony canal and cushion the vessel."

In addition, between the carotid and vertebral arteries, owls have a lot of smaller connecting vessels that permit the blood to find alternative pathways should one of the main flow routes close down during rotation. But perhaps most significant of all is the discovery that owls have wide segments in their carotids just under the skull base. The researchers found these could dilate and fill with a reservoir of blood.

"We believe this is kind of a new structure not really known before," said Dr Gailloud.

"It's probably a way to pool blood and get some continuity of flow even if there is disruption below at the next level."

Mr de Kok-Mercado completed the study as part of his masters research at JHU. He now works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

He commented: "There's no real clinical relevance here, other than 'don't try this at home'. But I think from a broader perspective, it just illustrates the amazing amount of biodiversity on our planet, and how there are so many things we still haven't discovered.

"You would have thought we knew everything there was to know about the owl. A lot of this is down to technology which allows us to break new ground," he told BBC News.

The study won top prize in the posters and graphics category of the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. This competition is co-sponsored by the journal Science and the US National Science Foundation.

The H5N1 swine flu pandemic that swept the world in 2009 infected at least one in five Indians,with the highest rates of infection being among children.
A joint study of Imperial College,London and the World Health Organization (WHO) released on Saturday found that 47% of those aged 5 to 19 showed signs of having caught the deadly influenza virus in India.Only 11% of elderly people were infected.Multiple exposures to circulating flu viruses may have given them protection,it deduces.
The study analysed data from 19 countries,including India,UK,US and China,to assess the global impact of the 2009 pandemic and collated results from over two dozen studies involving more than 90,000 blood samples.It showed the virus affected 20-27 % people studied during the first year of the pandemic.The study was published in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses journal on January 26.
Imperial Colleges Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said,This study is the result of a combined effort by more than 27 research groups worldwide,which shared their data to improve our understanding of the impact the pandemic had globally.

Source: TNN

In 1953, Cambridge researchers Watson and Crick published a paper describing the interweaving ‘double helix’ DNA structure – the chemical code for all life.

Now, in the year of that scientific landmark’s 60th Anniversary, Cambridge researchers have published a paper proving that four-stranded ‘quadruple helix’ DNA structures — known as G-quadruplexes — also exist within the human genome. They form in regions of DNA that are rich in the building block guanine, usually abbreviated to ‘G’.

The findings mark the culmination of over 10 years investigation by scientists to show these complex structures in vivo — in living human cells — working from the hypothetical, through computational modelling to synthetic lab experiments and finally the identification in human cancer cells using fluorescent biomarkers.

The research, published January 20 in Nature Chemistry and funded by Cancer Research UK, goes on to show clear links between concentrations of four-stranded quadruplexes and the process of DNA replication, which is pivotal to cell division and production.

By targeting quadruplexes with synthetic molecules that trap and contain these DNA structures — preventing cells from replicating their DNA and consequently blocking cell division — scientists believe it may be possible to halt the runaway cell proliferation at the root of cancer.

“We are seeing links between trapping the quadruplexes with molecules and the ability to stop cells dividing, which is hugely exciting,” said Professor Shankar Balasubramanian from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry and Cambridge Research Institute, whose group produced the research.

“The research indicates that quadruplexes are more likely to occur in genes of cells that are rapidly dividing, such as cancer cells. For us, it strongly supports a new paradigm to be investigated — using these four-stranded structures as targets for personalised treatments in the future.”

Physical studies over the last couple of decades had shown that quadruplex DNA can form in vitro — in the ‘test tube’, but the structure was considered to be a curiosity rather than a feature found in nature. The researchers now know for the first time that they actually form in the DNA of human cells.

“This research further highlights the potential for exploiting these unusual DNA structures to beat cancer — the next part of this pipeline is to figure out how to target them in tumour cells,” said Dr Julie Sharp, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK.

“It’s been sixty years since its structure was solved but work like this shows us that the story of DNA continues to twist and turn.”

The study published January 20 was led by Giulia Biffi, a researcher in Balasubramaninan’s lab at the Cambridge Research Institute.

By building on previous research, Biffi was able to generate antibody proteins that detect and bind to areas in a human genome rich in quadruplex-structured DNA, proving their existence in living human cells.

Using fluorescence to mark the antibodies, the researchers could then identify ‘hot spots’ for the occurrence of four-stranded DNA — both where in the genome and, critically, at what stage of cell division.

While quadruplex DNA is found fairly consistently throughout the genome of human cells and their division cycles, a marked increase was shown when the fluorescent staining grew more intense during the ‘s-phase’ — the point in a cell cycle where DNA replicates before the cell divides.

Cancers are usually driven by genes called oncogenes that have mutated to increase DNA replication — causing cell proliferation to spiral out of control, and leading to tumour growth.

The increased DNA replication rate in oncogenes leads to an intensity in the quadruplex structures. This means that potentially damaging cellular activity can be targeted with synthetic molecules or other forms of treatments.

“We have found that by trapping the quadruplex DNA with synthetic molecules we can sequester and stabilise them, providing important insights into how we might grind cell division to a halt,” said Balasubramanian.

“There is a lot we don’t know yet. One thought is that these quadruplex structures might be a bit of a nuisance during DNA replication — like knots or tangles that form.

“Did they evolve for a function? It’s a philosophical question as to whether they are there by design or not — but they exist and nature has to deal with them. Maybe by targeting them we are contributing to the disruption they cause.”

The study showed that if an inhibitor is used to block DNA replication, quadruplex levels go down — proving the idea that DNA is dynamic, with structures constantly being formed and unformed.

The researchers also previously found that an overactive gene with higher levels of Quadruplex DNA is more vulnerable to external interference.

Download link: Basic Microbiology and Immunology (Practical)

Authors: Andrzej Polanski · Marek Kimmel

ISBN 978-3-540-24166-9 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York

Download link: Bioinformatics.pdf