Sleep Loss and College Student Performance

The college experience is of great value in providing emerging adults with a structured environment in which they can gain the knowledge, skills, and independence to chart their own path, become successfully employed, and contribute to society. However, this experience comes at great cost given rising tuition fees and ballooning student debt, and thus, it is vital that the college years be as efficacious as possible. A potential obstacle to maximizing success in college is the high prevalence of sleep loss and irregular sleep schedules among college students.

 

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Microbial Farming for Future Agriculture

Intensification farming practice which mainly depends on agrochemical fertilizers and pesticides to meet the global food demand causes many problems to the environment. For instance, the high rate of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers utilization in the farmlands could damage the environment through some chemical and biological processes such as leaching, run-off, and volatilization.

 

Image source: Neutrog’s

Translational Bioinformatics to Accelerate the Life Sciences Research

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary science which develops algorithms and software tools for analyzing and understanding large amounts of biological information. It is a highly interdisciplinary field combining diverse types of specialists, including biologist, molecular life scientists, computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians.

 

Figure source: https://www.applicationnexus.com/bioinformatics/

The possible risks in applying genome-editing technology to human beings

Over the last decade, the exited development of genome editing technology has revolutionized research on the human genome, which has enabled investigators to better understand the role of a single-gene product to a disease in an organism. In the 1970s, the development of genetic engineering (manipulation of DNA or RNA) established a novel frontier in genome editing. Based on engineered or bacterial nucleases, genome editing machinery have been developed at a rapid pace over the past 10 years and have begun to show extraordinary utility in various fields, ranging from basic research to applied biotechnology and biomedical research.

 

 Figure source: BioEdge, February 04, 2019

Redesign of Terpenoid Biosynthetic Pathway in Plant by Genome Editing toward Human Health

I would like to share with all of you my experience when I joined a student exchange program at Bioengineering, Osaka University, Japan. I was there for a month and attended some lectures which were very exciting to share with all of you.

The first topic was presented by Prof. Dr. Toshiya Muranaka

Topic 1: Redesign of Terpenoid Biosynthetic Pathway in Plant by Genome Editing toward Human Health

Figure source: National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH), December 08, 2015