BIRS – Bioterrorism Information Retrieval System

Bioterrorism is the intended use of pathogenic strains of microbes to widen terror in a population. There is a definite need to promote research for development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostic methods as a part of preparedness to any bioterror attack in the future. BIRS is an open-access database of collective information on the organisms related to bioterrorism. The architecture of database utilizes the current open-source technology viz PHP ver 5.3.19, MySQL and IIS server under windows platform for database designing. Database stores information on literature, generic- information and unique pathways of about 10 microorganisms involved in bioterrorism. This may serve as a collective repository to accelerate the drug discovery and vaccines designing process against such bioterrorist agents (microbes). The available data has been validated from various online resources and literature mining in order to provide the user with a comprehensive information system.

Availability

The database is freely available at http://www.bioterrorism.biowaves.org     

Pain: A Distributed Brain Information Network?

Understanding how pain is processed in the brain has been an enduring puzzle, because there doesn''t appear to be a single “pain cortex” that directly codes the subjective perception of pain. An emerging concept is that, instead, pain might emerge from the coordinated activity of an integrated brain network. In support of this view, Woo and colleagues present evidence that distinct brain networks support the subjective changes in pain that result from nociceptive input and self-directed cognitive modulation. This evidence for the sensitivity of distinct neural subsystems to different aspects of pain opens up the way to more formal computational network theories of pain.On the surface, pain should have been one of the easier brain systems to understand. Its fundamental importance in organism defence means that its anatomy should be well conserved across species, unlike systems for language, for instance. And its relatively simple scalar signal (from less pain to more pain) should not require extensive computational processing, unlike sound or vision. However, since Penfield''s failure to convincingly locate a “pain cortex” during his classic awake brain stimulation studies in the 1950s [1], trying to piece together the pain system in the brain has been a story of frustration and debate.     

House Officer Information System—HOIS

The design and operation of a clinical information system called HOIS (House Officer Information System) is described. Information about the management of 78 common acute medical problems is available to the user from this system. An analysis is presented of the medical problems found in 631 medical in-patients. It is reported that 98% of patients had at least one of the 78 problems found in HOIS's data base, and that 82% of all problems in these patients were found in this database.     

“Protected Biological Control” – Biological pest management in the greenhouse industry

This paper briefly describes the foundations and characteristics of biological control in protected cropping and what drivers are behind adoption of this management system within this industry. Examining a brief history of biological control in greenhouses and what makes it a successful management strategy within the industry, the authors describe the rapid growth of biological control in parts of Europe and what this may mean for the industry in other parts of the world. The reaction of the greenhouse industry to several consumer led campaigns aimed at reducing the incidence of pesticides in the marketplace may be replicated in many other parts of the world. The size and robustness of the biological control industry in greenhouses, which is a reflection of the inherent characteristics of this industry that lends itself to biological control, is strong and growing with indications that this trend will be followed in many areas of the world.