The Aftermath of the Ice Bucket Challenge

As a public health advocate, I was ecstatic to watch the “Ice Bucket Challenge” social media campaign raise for ALS. Over the past two and half weeks, the ALS Association earned over 13 million dollars in donations. Last year, during the same period, the ALS raised a paltry $1.7 million in comparison. The viral campaign, sparked by the heartfelt plea of a college baseball player, Pete Frates, grew funding exponentially.

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Paving The Way For More Women In STEM

The future, like that notebook, is hers for a beautiful moment. This moment is fleeting and harsh in its brevity. The raw probabilities are not in this girl, or any girls favor. Only a quarter of academic professors are women. Only twelve percent of biotechnology and pharmaceutical CEOs are women. Only four percent of healthcare CEOs are women.

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Akhila SatishForbes
Immortal Mice and Men

My inner biology geek was thrilled with the recent “vampire mice” studies that hit mainstream media last week. There were three studies that together formulated the content behind the attention-grabbing headlines “Young Blood Restores Old Mice“ and “Could Young Blood Be the Fountain of Youth?“

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Lost in Monty Hall: The Risk Within Statistics

My favorite statistics brainteaser is the Monty Hall problem. The setup is that a game show host asks you to stand in front of one of three doors. Behind one of the three doors is a prize. After you choose a door, he opens one of the two remaining doors to reveal an empty room. At this point you’re offered the chance to switch doors. What would you do?

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Lost The Bracket Challenge? Don’t Lose Sleep!

As every basketball fan knows, there was only room this week for news of upsets, overtime games, and three pointers. One set of headlines, however, caught my eye. “Shift workers beware: Sleep loss may cause brain damage, new research says” , “Lost sleep leads to lost brain cells”, “Lack of Sleep Kills Brain Cells, New Study Shows”.

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The Twitter IPO: The Incalculable Cost Of 140 Characters

It is a poignant fact in American history that one of the greatest speeches of our nation was among the briefest. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was a mere ten sentences- and in a clear, concise manner, communicated exactly what was needed to a war-torn nation. There is a historical precedent for the power and impact short communications can have.

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Akhila SatishForbes
The Greatest Scientific Mistake

Every single day that we do not educate our population on science in a meaningful way is a day we let our hard-earned scientific victories gather dust, a day we leave our federal funding from taxpayers in jeopardy, a day we let millions of dollars slip away on poor investment choices and a day we fail to inspire the next Nobel Prize winner.

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Akhila SatishForbes
Update on the Kelch-like (KLHL) gene family

The Kelch-like (KLHL) gene family encodes a group of proteins that generally possess a BTB/POZ domain, a BACK domain, and five to six Kelch motifs. BTB domains facilitate protein binding and dimerization. The BACK domain has no known function yet is of functional importance since mutations in this domain are associated with disease.

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