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RURO releases FreezerPro Add-On for Microsoft Excel

FreezerPro Add-On is compatible with Microsoft Excel 2007 and 2010.

Frederick, MD – February 23, 2012 – RURO, Inc., a developer of research software and inventory solutions announced today that it has successfully integrated its FreezerPro 2012 edition with Microsoft Excel. The Excel AddOn is provided to the user in a zip folder. It comes with on screen instructions and literally takes less than three minutes to install.

• With the Microsoft Excel (PC) AddOn software, a user can perform Import and Update of FreezerPro Samples, Sample Sources, and Sample Groups without leaving the familiar Excel environment.
• Data management has never been easier. The integrated Excel tab allows users to “data-dump” with a simple click of the mouse.
• Quick-start templates are provided.

For more information please visit http://www.ruro.com/support/knowledge-base/excel_plugin

“FreezerPro continues to lead the charge as the premier brand in our growing portfolio. We believe that consistent improvement and innovation are needed with all of our products. We want the FreezerPro brand to be recognized as the gold standard for frozen inventory solutions. I have charged our engineering team with the task of making our products more intuitive and efficient. Our innovation comes directly from customer feedback and the desire to become more user focused.” says RURO’s Systems Architect, Vlad Lebedev.

About RURO
Headquartered in the heart of Maryland’s biotechnology corridor RURO develops state of the art computer software and RFID solutions for research, biotechnological, pharmaceutical, healthcare and government (homeland security) laboratories in the US and worldwide.

For more information please visit RURO online at www.RURO.com

FreezerPro is a trademark of RURO, Inc. Excel is a trademark of Microsoft. Other product and service names might be trademarks of other companies.
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Transgenic mice that over-express or lack specific miRNAs have provided insight into the role of small RNAs in various malignancies. Several miRNAs have been found to have links with some types of cancer. MicroRNA-21 is one of the first microRNAs that was identified as an onco-miR. A study of genetically modified mice altered to produce oncogene c-Myc implicated in several cancers — shows that miRNA has an effect on the development of cancer. Mice that were engineered to produce an excess of miRNAs found in lymphoma cells developed the disease within 50 days and died two weeks later. In contrast, mice without the surplus miRNA lived over 100 days. Leukemia can be caused by the insertion of a viral genome next to the 17-92 array of microRNAs leading to increased expression of this microRNA.

A mutation of miR-96 causes hereditary progressive hearing loss. A mutation in the seed region of miR-184 causes hereditary keratoconus with anterior polar cataract. Deletion of the miR-17~92 cluster causes skeletal and growth defects.

Another study found that two types of miRNA inhibit expression of the E2F1 protein, which regulates cell proliferation. miRNA appears to bind to messenger RNA before it can be translated to proteins that switch genes on and off.

miRNA “signatures” may enable classification of cancer. By measuring expression levels of some 217 genes encoding miRNA, scientists were able to distinguish several types of cancer. This will allow doctors to determine the original tissue type which spawned a cancer and to be able to target a treatment course based on the original tissue type. miRNA profiling has already been able to determine whether patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia had slow growing or aggressive forms of the cancer.

A novel miRNA-based screening assay for the detection of early-stage colorectal cancer has been developed and is currently in clinical trials. Early results showed that blood plasma samples collected from patients with early, resectable (Stage II) colorectal cancer could be distinguished from those of sex-and age-matched healthy volunteers. Sufficient selectivity and specificity could be achieved using small (less than 1 mL) samples of blood. The test has potential to be a cost-effective, non-invasive way to identify at-risk patients who should undergo colonoscopy.

Another role for miRNA in cancers is to use their expression level as a prognostic, for example one study on NSCLC samples found that low miR-324a levels could serve as a prognostic indicator of poor survival, another found that either high miR-185 or low miR-133b levels correlated with metastasis and poor survival in colorectal cancer.

The global role of miRNA function in the heart has been addressed by conditionally inhibiting miRNA maturation in the murine heart, and has revealed that miRNAs play an essential role during its development. miRNA expression profiling studies demonstrate that expression levels of specific miRNAs change in diseased human hearts, pointing to their involvement in cardiomyopathies. Furthermore, studies on specific miRNAs in animal models have identified distinct roles for miRNAs both during heart development and under pathological conditions, including the regulation of key factors important for cardiogenesis, the hypertrophic growth response, and cardiac conductance.

Extra-cellular RNAs were first identified in the blood just three years ago. In September, a Chinese research team reported that fragments of genetic material known as microRNAs (miRNA) are making their way from vegetables into the human bloodstream. Even more surprising, these bits of plant genome may affect health suggesting that some biomolecules can remain active even after digestion.

Biochemist Chen-Yu Zhang of Nanjing University suspected that foreign miRNA might also be present there. “I had the crazy idea to check for nonhuman molecules,” Zhang says. He and his team tested hundreds of volunteers and found about 50 different kinds of plant miRNAs in their blood samples. The scientists noticed that one such molecule, called MIR168a—which is abundant in rice and plays a role in plant development—paired up with a piece of human RNA that helps remove “bad” LDL cholesterol from the bloodstream. Follow-up tests in human cell cultures confirmed that MIR168a interferes with production of a cholesterol-clearing protein. And an experiment with mice showed that LDL cholesterol stuck around longer in the blood of the animals who had eaten rice than in those who had not.

Water is one of the most critical factors essential to support life. The lake Vostok has been buried under an enormous sheet of ice for about 30 million years and may harbor microbes that have evolved to survive and adopt the cold and crushing pressures underneath the ice sheet.

Scientists hope to drop a robotic submarine into the bore hole to explore the lake and recover water samples and sediments from the bottom of the lake in hope to find new forms of life.

Some people fear unleashing 30 million year old bacteria into the modern world. The other say that the lake has a unique and fragile ecosystem and it would be tragic if it becomes contaminated with bacteria from the surface hitching a ride on the drilling equipment.

The team cleared out until next year when they hope to retrieve samples from the bottom of their bore hole.

April 10-13, 2012
Sokolniki, Moscow, Russia

See RURO software and RFID solutions at booth B141.

Fur protects the skin of animals from wounds, bites, cold temperatures, and UV radiation and is advantageous for survival. Additionally, it can be used as a communication tool and as a camouflage. To this end, it can be concluded that benefits stemming from the loss of human body hair must be great enough to outweigh the loss of these protective functions. There are many hypotheses why people evolved to have less hair. Here are those that seem more plausible.

About Early hominids likely possessed fur similar to other large apes, but about 4-5 million years ago, our ancestors came out of the forests and started exploring open space of African savannas. In order to survive in savannas, people had to chase animals for many miles under the scorching sun. Lack of body hair (as well as bipedalism) gave persistence hunters of hot savannas survival advantage and allowed them to chase larger game animals for longer distances and avoid body overheating, the goal that would have been unattainable otherwise. Also, eating soft tissues of prey allowed surviving with smaller jaws. Small jaws allowed some extra space for brain to enlarge. The lack of insulation and protection was compensated for by larger brains, which allowed early people to invent shelters, tools, weapons and clothing.

Bipedalism was advantageous to survive in savannas. Total solar irradiation of the upright body is less for about one-third, and at noon it is up to four times less as compared to that of horizontal body. Head hair remained as it served essential for survival role to protect the head from brain overheating and mutagenic UV irradiation. In addition, the upright body and long thin extremities are cooled more efficiently by the wind, which also increased relative survival rate of the taller and slimmer humans.

In parallel with the loss of hair, humans acquired increased number of sweat glands to cool the body more efficiently through evaporation. That was also advantageous to survive in hot climate of African savannas and chasing the prey more efficiently.

Apparently, beard and mustache served the same function as peacock tail to attract females and as an indicator of sexual maturity and social status.

The armpits and pubic area include special sweat glands that secrete more dense and oily sweat. It is often assumed that it contains sex pheromones that spread on the hair and evaporate from the surface of the hair. The presence of sex pheromones in human sweat so far has not been clearly proven. However, women distinguish the smell of armpit sweat of men and react to it differently depending on its composition.

Eyebrows divert sweat running down the forehead from the eyes. Eyelashes cover the eyes from bright light and also protect from the wind, dust, sand and what can hurt the eyes.

Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair

See RURO software and RFID solutions at booths 1961 – 1963.

It would seem that all of us should suffer from numerous hereditary diseases, however the vast majority of the world population does not have these diseases because each cell has powerful machinery specialized in finding and repairing the mutations. There are additional lines of defense against harmful mutations. For example, every human gene in the genome is represented by two copies of the so-called alleles, one from the father, the other from the mother. Usually defective alleles are recessive that means they do not manifest themselves as they are dominated and neutralized by healthy alleles. The disease manifests itself only if the child inherits both alleles with the same defect. There are more than a thousand of such systemic diseases with autosomal recessive type of inheritance found so far. The most famous of them is cystic fibricationosis and amaurotic idiocy.

Technological progress dramatically reduced natural selection in the developed countries and causes rapid accumulation of harmful disease-related mutations in the population. A new rapid DNA test that is able to identify dangerous mutations is now at the stage of clinical trials. DNA tests of parents-to-be allow them to make educated decisions as far as continuing or terminating pregnancy, having their own children or adopting. Biotechnology methods of the future will allow modification and improvement of human genome through in vitro manipulation of human embryonic stem cells that will hopefully improve health of rapidly degrading human population.

Parthenogenesis has been observed in dozens of species such as birds, amphibians, insects and fish. This asexual reproduction occurs when an egg cell is triggered to develop as an embryo without the addition of any genetic material from a male sperm cell. Occasionally scientists do find a parthogenetic clone competing with its ancestral sexual species. Usually the clone is found to be steadily outcompeting the ancestral species without strong selective pressure. So why have sexual species survived and prospered?

To give a simplified example, consider a lake populated by a million fish of one species that lives for only one year, and in which fathers do not help raise offspring. Every year, half the fish (the females) lay eggs. For the population to be stable, on average two eggs from each female must be fertilized and successfully reach adulthood.

Now suppose one egg is a mutant. It survives and becomes an adult parthogenetic female. There is no reason to believe that the survival rate of this female’s eggs will be different, so next year there will be two parthogenetic females, genetically identical to their mother, or in other words the beginning of a clone.

Just to keep the arithmetic simple, let us make the unlikely assumption that the lake expands just quickly enough to keep the number of sexually reproducing fish constant at one million. Under these circumstances, the number of parthogenetic fish will double every year. After about twenty years, there will be one million parthogenetic fish, the same as the number of sexual fish.

To continue our arithmetically simplifying assumptions, let the lake shrink at just the rate required to increase competition to the point that on average only one egg from each female fish survives. Now the number of parthogenetic fish will stay constant, but the number of sexual fish will be cut in half every year, until after another twenty years there is only one sexual fish and the lake has returned to its original size. At this point, the sexual species is doomed.

If the size of the lake remained constant, or changed randomly, the proportion of parthogenetic fish would be the same, and so the same result would be achieved. For a larger population, more generations would be needed to eliminate sex, but this analysis would seem to indicate that all sexual species are doomed within a few hundred generations of a viable parthogenetic mutant appearing. Yet sexual reproduction has continued to thrive for at least two billion years. Some other factor must be present.

In our above example, sexual reproduction would seem to disappear after forty years. Whatever factor causes sex to survive must efficiently destroy clones. What factor can be so powerful?

One of the factors that can eliminate clones with such efficiency is disease. That is when the sexual reproduction and associated with it diversity helps population to survive. Let us focus on a disease caused by deadly bacteria. Bacteria divide (parthogenetically, by the way) two or three times an hour, so during the course of a year, or one fish generation, these bacteria would duplicate 25,000 times. Each time a bacterium divides, it introduces DNA mutations because bacteria copy their DNA less accurately than higher organisms.

While the bacteria are infecting a single fish, most mutations will be disadvantageous (i.e. the mutated bacterium will either fail to reproduce, or will reproduce more slowly) but there will be an occasional beneficial mutation that will actually speed up reproduction in the specific environment of that individual fish. If it takes a month for an infection to kill a fish, that is approximately 2,000 bacterial generations. If there is a beneficial mutation every 200 generations, then by the time the fish dies, the most rapidly reproducing bacteria will have accumulated ten mutations helping them prosper in that particular fish.

To outlast the individual fish, the bacteria must have the capability of leaving that individual and infecting another. In a sexual species, the bacterium with ten mutations will find itself in a genetically different fish, in which the very mutations that helped it in its prior home may now be an impediment to survival and reproduction. Before the bacteria manage to shed these mutations and adjust themselves to this new environment, the fish’s immune system may destroy them. If both fish are members of the same clone, on the other hand, the bacterium entering the new fish will find itself in exactly the same environment as it previously prospered in, and should have no difficulty in multiplying rapidly and ultimately killing this fish.

The more numerous the clone becomes, the higher the concentration of bacteria specifically bred to infect and destroy them. It seems almost inevitable that the clone will be completely eliminated well within the 40 years (one million bacterial generations) that it would otherwise take for the clone to destroy the ancestral sexual species.

Problem solved. Sex is here to stay. Perhaps, we should be grateful to bacteria and pathogens for having pleasures of sex and for love in general!

Stop by our booths 343-347 and see SmartFreezer in action.
http://www.ruro.com/resources/slas2012/slas2012.html

Males of some spiders and insects present valuable ‘wedding gifts’ to females before mating. Usually, these gifts are freshly caught prey that female would eat during copulation. Sometimes males cheat and bring to their girlfriends inedible objects such as petals, seeds and even their own feces. In order to increase the effect and distract the female for longer time, male spiders wrap the gift in a bright fluffy cocoon of spider web. Female spiders Pisaura mirabilis are equally willing to mate with males who offer either edible or symbolic gifts, while rejecting those that have no gifts at all. In case if the female received an inedible gift, she interrupts intercourse sooner, which reduces the reproductive success of the ‘cheating’ males: they have less time and give less sperm to the female than the rivals who have spent time and effort in obtaining nutritious gifts. Apparently, this explains the fact that the majority of male P. mirabilis spiders still prefer to give edible gifts to females. Sometimes males-cheaters temporarily win the race and the cheap gifts become widespread. When the females win the race, more expensive, hard to find gifts are in fashion in the population of spiders.

Like many people, females of P. mirabilis apparently believe that the most valuable gift is the one in a good packaging. The packaging has three useful functions for the male. First, the packaging itself attracts and predisposes the female. Second, the packaging itself does not allow a female to see immediately what’s inside, that gives the male additional time to approach female and start intercourse. Third, it is much easier for a male to get hold of the gift wrapped in a web as females often try to prematurely terminate copulation and get away before the male can fill special seminal receptacle on the bottom side of the abdomen of female. Male spiders are smaller and weaker than females and cannot retain them by force, so they use tricks to over-smart females. When the female interrupts the copulation and tries to escape, the male spreads legs around the wrapped gift and pretends to be dead. The female cannot shake off the “dead” boyfriend hanging on the gift, so she drags him along. As soon as she starts to eat the meal again, the male “wakes up” and resumes copulation.