7 Free Tools for Statistical Analysis

Which is the most important part of a research? Yes, it is ‘designing your experiments correctly’. Next comes ‘interpreting’ your results. Research in Biotechnology and other life sciences can produce a lot of quantitative data which needs to be analyzed for statistical significance. Many graduates know to use Word, Powerpoint and Excel to a certain level. However, many new emerging job opportunities in modern biology requires skill to deal with quantitative data.

Below, I’ve mentioned 7 free online tools to take care of statistical needs ranging from T-tests, multiple regressions to Cluster Analysis, Bootstrapping etc.

1. SISA (Simple Interactive Statistical Analysis)

Conduct your statistical analysis directly online, no need to download anything. Click SISA for more details. You can also study the given guides to determine the appropriate procedure for your research problem.

2. Open Epi

Open Epi is a free software program designed to cater for statistical needs in epidemiology. It can run from a web server or can also be downloaded and run without a web connection. You can also operate this program from your android or iphone.

3. Scistat Calc

This is actually a blog ( running on blogspot). It has online calculators for common probability functions and significance tests and also explanation of concepts and formulas behind each test. Please go through Scistat Calc, it’s a really useful blog.

4. Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics

It contains online statistics book, simulations, case studies and other resources for statistical analysis. You can access it here.

5. WINPEPI

This is a free software available only for Windows users. WINPEPI has many programs ranging from comparing any 2 independent samples to multiple poisson regression, for more details visit WINPEPI

6. Online Graph generators

Popular free online graph tools for producing neat scatter plots are Meta-calculator and Online Curve fitting. These are worth a try.

7. R ( Open Source Statistical software)

Most of the bachelors and masters students use MS Excel for their statistical needs. Excel can be used to calculate t-tests and other co-relations decently. But, when you are handling a lot of data and need to do something more, then Excel may not be the right choice.

R is more than a software. It is a language for statistical computing and graphics. It caters for a very wide variety of statistical analysis and the speciality of R language is that it produces quality graphs fit for publication (including mathematical symbols and formulae). It runs on Windows, Linux and also Mac. Moreover, it is free !!

Like any language it takes time to learn, but it has TONS of benefits. R language is widely used by statisticians and many commercial firms for data mining and analysis. To put it in very simple terms, it is comparable to MATLAB, but it is free. Download R language at https://www.r-project.org/

Details regarding Documentation can be found at R – documentation. Free online courses about how to use R can be found at Datacamp and Coursera (At coursera, the next session is from August 3 to August 30; 2015). R is actually one computer language which will always be useful for researchers and it is being constantly updated. Hence, it won’t be outdated soon. So why not invest your spare time to learn this useful language?

Flu Vaccine Becomes Universal

While many of us are spending the last half of the summer deciding where the nicest beaches are and who makes the best island cocktails, infectious disease scientists are looking ahead toward the next inevitable outbreak of the flu. Influenza hunters travel to hot zones that have long been the traditional breeding grounds and launching points for global seasonal pandemics. This is an important part of creating seasonal flu vaccines, which protect against only a few specific strains that researchers predict will be the most common for the upcoming year.

Anatomy of influenza virus. An array of subtypes for the surface coat protein hemagglutinin (blue) is what NIAID scientists used to create their universal vaccine. [CDC/Dan Higgins]

What if we could create a vaccine that could protect against most or all influenza strains? This has been the “grail quest” that numerous infectious disease researchers have strived toward for decades. Now, investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health, have developed a universal vaccine that may provide broad protection against numerous influenza strains, including ones that could cause future pandemics. 

"The reason researchers change the vaccine every year is that they want to specifically match the vaccine to the particular viruses that are circulating, such as H1N1. If the vaccine is just a little bit different to the target virus, it is not expected to offer much protection," explained senior author Jeffery Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the Viral Pathogenesis and Evolution Section, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at NIAID. "What we have done is design a strategy where you don't have to think about matching the vaccine antigen to the virus at all."

The findings from this study were published recently in mBio through an article entitled “An Intranasal Virus-Like Particle Vaccine Broadly Protects Mice from Multiple Subtypes of Influenza A Virus.”

Previous research into universal flu vaccines has focused on finding invariable regions of viral coat proteins that could be exploited to generate an immune response that provides significant protection. However, in this study the scientists took a different approach and engineered a virus-like particle (VLP) that expressed an array of hemagglutinin subtypes from the surface of the influenza virus, including H1, H3, H5, and H7.

"There are 16 different hemagglutinin subtypes that circulate in birds and are thought to be the basis for current and future influenza pandemics," stated Dr. Taubenberger. "The hypothesis was that the presentation of these different viral proteins would stimulate the development of cross-protective immunity that would provide broader protection against multiple subtypes."

The H1 and H3 subtypes were chosen as they have been linked to major influenza outbreaks since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which has been estimated to have killed close to 100 million people. The investigators chose H5 and H7 subtypes, as they have been the cause of recent bird flu outbreaks and have a high potential to spread into humans.

The results from the study showed that 95% of mice vaccinated with the novel cocktail were protected against a lethal challenge from eight different influenza strains, while only 5% of unvaccinated mice survived. 

"Almost all of the animals that were vaccinated survived, including mice that were challenged with viruses that expressed hemagglutinin subtypes that were not in the vaccine at all, viruses that expressed H2, H6, H10, and H11," noted Dr. Taubenberger. "What that suggests is that this approach really gives us broad spectrum protection, and could serve as a basis for an effective pre-pandemic vaccine."

The NIAID team was also able to show that vaccine’s efficacy lasted for at least 6 months and that it worked well in older mice—an important point since current vaccines are less effective in the elderly.

"These initial findings are very positive and suggest a promising and practical strategy for developing a vaccine with amazing, broad protection," concluded Dr. Taubenberger.

Source: http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/flu-vaccine-becomes-universal/81251534/

NASA finds ‘another Earth’ in Milky Way and it's called Earth 2.0

Earth 2.0 or Kepler 452b is so like Earth that Nasa believes it is possible that life once inhabited the planet. 

Nasa has found a twin Earth orbiting a star like the Sun in the Milky Way which scientists say ‘would feel a lot like home.’

Kepler 452b - which has been dubbed Earth 2.0 - is six billion years old, has a 385 day year and orbits its star at the same distance as us. It is 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.


It is believed to be rocky, with active volcanoes and is so like Earth that Nasa believes it is possible that life once inhabited the planet.


Scientists said that the sunshine is so similar that plants could survive if taken to Kepler 452b.

But because it is 1.5 billion years older, scientists say it gives a ‘peek into a crystal ball showing a possible future for Earth’ as it reaches a point where it is no longer habitable.

“If Kepler 452b is indeed a rocky planet, its location could mean that it is just entering a runaway greenhouse phase of its climate history,” said Doug Caldwell, a SETI Institute scientist working on the Kepler mission.

“The increasing energy from its aging sun might be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans. The water vapour would be lost from the planet forever.

“Kepler 452b could be experiencing now what the Earth will undergo more than a billion years from now, as the Sun ages and grows brighter.”

The Kepler spacecraft has been looking for signs of new worlds outside the Solar System since May 2009, and has so far found more than 4,000 planets in the so-called ‘Goldilocks Zone’ – neither too hot, nor too cold to sustain life.

On Thursday Nasa announced they had found 500 new possible planets to add to the 4,175 already found by the telescope, and 12 were ‘Earth-like.’ But Kepler 452b is the first of the 12 to be confirmed as a planet and Nasa said it was the 'closest' to Earth that has ever been seen.

It is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet.

“Today the Earth is a little less lonely because there is a new kid on the block,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

"If you travelled to this star with an arkful of plants...the plants would photosynthesise just perfectly fine. It would feel a lot like home from the standpoint of the sunshine.

“It is six billion years old. That is considerable opportunity for life to arise on its surface and its oceans should all the necessary conditions for life have appeared on this planet.

“This is the closest thing that we have to another planet like the Earth. And the Earth follows nearly in the footsteps of its older cousin and will be there in 1.5 billion years time.”



The area of the Milky Way in which Kepler is looking Credit: NASA

The discovery gives new hope that alien civilisations may exist beyond the Solar System. Earlier this week Professor Stephen Hawking and the Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees announced they were joining a $100 million project to seek out signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence in the Milky Way.

"We won't be going to this planet but our children's children's children might be," said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at SETI Institute in Mountain View, California "It's a very long term goal but a very exciting one."

Kepler’s task is to look for rocky planets between half and twice the size of Earth where water could still exist on the surface.

Since liquid water is critical to life on Earth, many scientists believe the search for extra-terrestrial life should focus on planets where liquid water occurs.

The size of the planet also means it has enough gravity to pull in gases like hydrogen and helium to form an atmosphere.

The space observatory detects planets as their orbits cross in front of their star and cause a very tiny but periodic dimming of the star’s brightness.

Nasa is also trying to determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets.

“We’re trying to answer fundamental questions, Where do we come from, where are we going? What’s the future of our Solar System,” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate .

“We’re going to take one small step in answering that question today.”

MicrobeWorld's After Hours - Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

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Titled: MicrobeWorld's After Hours - Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

Difference between CV and Resume...........

With renovation in world, people become educated and smart but still there are few things people are unaware. Therefore today will talk about an important issue facing by beginners especially. You might be thinking that what it is. Yes there is an issue people are unaware that is difference between resume and CV. Now day’s even adults and working people do not know the exact difference. However, for understanding the difference, first of all everyone should know the definition of resume and CV.

CV Vs Resume

These two terms are entirely different from each other. People should know the difference between CV and resume.

What is CV? 

CV is basically called Curriculum Vitae.

• CV basically provides a complete summary of your educational background and extra achievements.
• It also contains your different experiences, researches, awards, honors, presentations and speeches.
• There is no word limit in CV.

CV used for what?

Normally fresh graduates and job seeker use CV. Moreover, purpose of CV is to apply for any internship, scholarship and job. It can also be called an application by a person who is applying for something.

What Resume means?

• Resume basically means complete information about your professional experiences.
• There is word or page limit in resume. Like you cannot extend from two pages.
• Precisely, resume is a way to show your capabilities in a proficient manner.

Resume used for what? 

It is used to apply for any industry, company, organization and governmental job. Through using resume anybody can show inner talent by offering good impression of personality. Main reason of resume is to get a reliable and good job.

Difference between CV and Resume: 

The major difference between CV and Resume is that person has to alter details for different position in Resume but in CV, it remains the similar. Moreover, in CV everything listed in a chain or we can say sequence but in Resume, you have to add your professional achievements and information in different manner without following any chronological order. Furthermore, CV has entire record of your educational career and your information. On the other hand, in Resume only target information is existed. No format is followed in Resume but in CV you have to follow certain format. CV can be prolonged but resume cannot be. In addition, Canada, America UK, South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland, is the countries where it is preferable to for CV instead of Resume. However, in India and Australia these two terms are transposable. People can also get differentiation information by taking help from internet as now people getting informed day by day.

So are you ready for a better life?

If you really want to achieve few goals in your life then make sure to know the dissimilarity between these two terms. Otherwise, you are unacquainted from a major distinction and for having a first-class job, cleverness and brain power both matter. So live a life with self-reliance and information by attaining your goals of life.