Nokia is one of the oldest mobile technology companies and has an amazing portfolio of phone-related tech. The networking equipment arm dates back almost to the company's inception, but the phone division was disbanded. A new company, HMD, recently took up the mantle and it just launched its first flagship, the Nokia 8. This brought back a lot of memories, so we decided to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard and share some of them.

We most fondly remember PureView, which debuted with the eponymous Nokia 808 PureView. There's no clear definition of what "PureView" means, though. It started with a huge, high-resolution sensor with on-chip image processing. 808's measly single-core processor would never have handled the torrent of data, but PureView made zooming into 38MP photos feel all so smooth.

Later, PureView added Optical Image Stabilization to its repertoire - the Lumia 920 introduced this concept to the mobile world. Carl Zeiss was by Nokia's side the entire time and it's back again. Of course, the Nokia 8 lacks the PureView brand (that is owned by Microsoft), but we care more about results than name.

Nokia 808 PureView Nokia Lumia 920

Another tech we loved was ClearBlack - the brand name for a polarization filter on the display. It debuted a year earlier with the Nokia C6-01 and Nokia E7. It has been used on both LCD and AMOLED screens with spectacular effect - just like polarized glasses reduce glare, so does ClearBlack.

These screens were effortlessly legible even at high noon in the summer. ClearBlack stayed at Microsoft too, but the Nokia 8 has an unbranded polarization filter. And while we haven't completed our dedicated test to give you an exact number yet, we can already tell it's pretty amazing.

Nokia C6-01 Nokia E7

The Nokia N86 had an impressive camera and screen of its own, but we want to talk audio recording. It featured MEMS digital microphones that promised CD-quality audio. The 808 PureView improved on that with high dynamic range microphones, "Nokia Rich Recording", which scaled to an impressive 140dB.

Nokia (not HMD) is building professional VR cameras through its OZO division and, as any movie maker will tell you, sound is just as important as visuals. So the Nokia 8 has HDR mics as well, three of them, plus the same advanced algorithms behind the OZO camera's sound capture.

Nokia N86 8MP

Speaking of audio, we can't help but think back to XpressMusic. It was Nokia's answer to the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones and Apple's iTunes (which was a day-one feature of the iPhone). Then there was Comes With Music, a year of free music downloads for Nokia 5800 owners. This later morphed into MixRadio which Microsoft shut down last year (it already has Groove, not need for two music services).

HMD made no mention of special music playing prowess, so we don't quite know what to expect from the Nokia 8 on this front. Well, we could guess - the Nokia 6 was pretty impressive, the 8 should be better.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Nokia had used the "Xpress" name earlier for Xpress-On Covers - a collection of phone covers (front and back) that could be changed quickly and easily. Those date back to at least 1998's Nokia 5110. (GSMArena trivia: this is the second phone that entered our database)

Back then, all phones had their own personality (i.e. not a screen-covered rectangle) and the best ones let you customize them. Of course, these days we have cases, not covers. In fact, most phones (Nokia 8 included) are sealed tight - no panels open, no batteries can be changed.

Nokia 5110

In 2007, Nokia bought NAVTEQ, the biggest supplier of electronic maps at the time, and Smart2Go by Gate 5, a smart and feature phone navigation app (which was later renamed Nokia Maps). Nokia quickly released it as a free download, but initially kept voice-guided navigation as a paid feature. That is until it made it completely free on all its Symbian phones in 2010.

Of course, Maps (later renamed Here) was sold off to a German automotive consortium in 2015, so the Nokia 8 just uses Google Maps. Nothing new, the Nokia 6110 Navigator used Route66, a competing app, instead of the in-house solution. The next version, 6210 Navigator did use Nokia Maps 2.0, though.

Nokia 6110 Navigator Nokia 6210 Navigator

Despite the name, the Nokia 8 is a product of HMD - a relatively new company. Still, it has a close partnership with Nokia and as you can see, the Finnish juggernaut has plenty of knowledge that it accumulated over the years.

Let's get it straight - we don't care about the brand names. But if the functionality of PureView and other old Nokia tech can be included in these new phones, we'd be more than happy. It seems that ClearBlack is back already, in spirit if not in name. That's a good start!

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Counterclockwise: Nokia genetics and the features it evolved - GSMArena.com

The white-nationalist forum Stormfront hosts discussions on a wide range of topics, from politics to guns to The Lord of the Rings. And of particular and enduring interest: genetic ancestry tests. For white nationalists, DNA tests are a way to prove their racial purity. Of course, their results dont always come back that way. And how white nationalists try to explain away non-European ancestry is rather illuminating of their beliefs.

Will the Alt-Right Promote a New Kind of Racist Genetics?

Two years agobefore Donald Trump was elected president, before white nationalism had become central to the political conversationAaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan, sociologists then at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to study Stormfront forum posts about genetic ancestry tests. They presented their study at the American Sociological Association meeting this Monday. (A preprint of the paper is now online.)After the events in Charlottesville this week, their research struck a particular chord with the audience.

For academics, there was some uneasiness around hearing that science is being used in this way and that some of the critiques that white nationalists are making of genetics are the same critiques social scientists make of genetics, says Donovan, who recently took up a position at the Data and Society Research Institute. On Stormfront, the researchers did encounter conspiracy theories and racist rants, but some white-nationalist interpretations of genetic ancestry tests were in fact quite sophisticatedand their views cannot all be easily dismissed as ignorance.

If we believe their politics comes from lack of sophistication because theyre unintelligent or uneducated, says Panofsky, I think were liable to make a lot of mistakes in how we cope with them.

Panofsky, Donovan, and their team of researchers analyzed 3,070 Stormfront posts spanning more than a decadeall from forum threads in which at least one user revealed the results of a DNA test. Some of the results were 100 percent European, as users expected. But oftensurprisingly often, says Panofskyusers disclosed tests results showing non-European ancestry. And despite revealing non-European ancestry on a forum full of white nationalists, they were not run off the site.

While some commenters reacted with anger, many reacted by offering up arguments to explain away the test results. These arguments largely fell into two camps.

First, they could simply reject all genetic ancestry testing. Genealogy or the so-called mirror test (When you look in the mirror, do you see a Jew? If not, youre good) were better tests of racial purity, some suggested. Others offered up conspiracies about DNA testing companies led by Jews: I think 23andMe might be a covert operation to get DNA the Jews could then use to create bio-weapons for use against us.

The second category of explanation was a lot more nuancedand echoed in many ways legitimate critiques of the tests. When companies like 23andMe or AncestryDNA return a result like 23 percent Iberian, for example, theyre noting similarities between the customers DNA and people currently living in that region. But people migrate; populations change. It doesnt pinpoint where ones ancestors actually lived. One Stormfront user wrote:

See, THIS is why I dont recommend these tests to people. Did they bother to tell you that there were whites in what is now Senegal all that time ago? No? So they led you to believe that youre mixed even though in all probability, you are simply related to some white fool who left some of his DNA with the locals in what is now Senegal.

Panofsky notes that legitimate scientific critiques are often distorted by a white-nationalist interpretation of history. For example, the mixing of DNA in a region would be explained by the heroic conquest of Vikings. Or a white female ancestor was raped by an African man.

The team also identified a third group of reactions: acceptance of the genetic ancestry test results. Some users did start to rethink white nationalism. Not the basic ideologyStormfronts forums are not exactly the place you would do thatbut the criteria for whiteness. For example, one user suggested a white-nationalist confederation, where different nations would have slightly different criteria for inclusion:

So in one nation having Ghengis Khan as your ancestor wont disqualify you, while in others it might. Hypothetically, I might take a DNA test and find that I dont qualify for every nation and every nations standards, though I'm sure that at least one of those nations (and probably many of them) will have standards that would include me

Another user dug deep into the technical details of genetic ancestry testing. The tests can rely on three different lines of evidence: the Y chromosome that comes from your fathers fathers father and so on, the mitochondrial DNA that comes from your mothers mothers mother and so on, and autosomal DNA that can come from either side. One user suggested that a purity in the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA were more important than in the autosomal DNA. But others disagreed.

Sociologists have long pointed out the categories of race are socially constructed. The criteria for who gets to be whiteItalians? Arabs? Mexicans?are determined by social rather than biological forces. And DNA is the newest way for white nationalists to look for differences between the races.

In these years of posts on Stormfront, you can see users attempting to make sense of DNA, figuring out in real time how genetics can be used to circumscribe and preserve whiteness. The test results are always open to interpretation.

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When White Nationalists Get DNA Tests Revealing African Ancestry ... - The Atlantic

August 17, 2017

Photo credit: Dreamstime

What makes humans different from chimpanzees? Evolutionary biologists from Howard University and the Yale School of Public Health have developed a unique genetic analysis technique that may provide important answers.

Michael C. Campbell, Ph.D., the papers first author and assistant professor in the Howard University Department of Biology, and co-author Jeffrey Townsend, Ph.D., the Elihu Associate Professor in Biostatistics at Yale, published their findings in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Their methodModel Averaged Site Selection via Poisson Random Field (MASS-PRF)looks at protein-coding genes to identify genetic signatures of positive selection. These signatures are actually DNA changes that contribute to the development of beneficial traits, or human adaptations, that emerged during human evolutionary history and that are shared across the human species.

It's a quantum leap in our statistical power to detect selection in recently diverged species.

Other approaches have examined this question but analyses have focused on whole genes, typically missing focused evolution that often occurs in small regions of genes. The method Campbell and Townsend created identifies selection within genes, pinpointing sets of mutations that have undergone positive selection.

Our method is a new way of looking for beneficial mutations that have become fixed or occur at 100 percent frequency in the human species, Campbell said. What we are concerned with are mutations within genes and traits that are specific to humans compared to closely related species, such as the chimpanzee. Essentially, we want to know is what are the mutations and traits that make us human and that unite us as a biological species.

Townsend said the technique has far-reaching implications. It helped the research team discover several genes whose evolution appears to have been critical to the divergence of humans from their common ancestor with chimpanzees. The genes play roles in neurological processing, immunity, and reproduction, and the method could eventually help scientists identify many more. It's a quantum leap in our statistical power to detect selection in recently diverged species, Townsend said.

Campbell began the research project with Drs. Zhao and Townsend while they were associate research scientists in the Department of Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health, before he arrived at Howard University in 2015. Dr. Zhao, currently a research scientist at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, co-authored the paper.

This article was submitted by Elisabeth Ann Reitman on August 17, 2017.

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Evolutionary Biologists Probe Long-standing Genetics Mystery - Yale News

A decline in the Northern Ireland suckler herd numbers and more emphasis on beef from the dairy herd has highlighted the need for specialised and targeted breeding programs to ensure success in both areas.

In addition, the importance of differentiated and tailored genetics for Northern Ireland livestock has been highlighted as one of the aims of the AgriFood Strategy Boards recommendations to government, while current research work by AFBI, in conjunction with commercial partners is investigating the use of synchronised breeding in the suckler herd in order to improve calving interval and quality of calves.

Always in the lead when it comes to new breeding initiatives, Genus ABS has introduced a new era (NuEra) of beef genetics that encompasses all available beef breeding programs, evaluations and indexes which will open up a whole new breeding concept for beef farmers. This new era of genetic improvement will produce more value for the entire chain including producers, processors and retailers according to Ervin McKinstry, Ireland Manager for Genus ABS.

He said: NuEra Genetics will improve the genetic gene pool, improve production efficiencies and increase sustainability thus benefitting the entire beef production and retailing chain. While this is a world wide program it is particularly relevant to Northern Ireland in that the number of suckler cows has declined over recent years and a considerable number of beef animals are derived from the dairy herd.

Ervin added: We need to have genetic programs that are specifically tailored for the dairy herd to produce the type of animal that will meet the needs of the retailer and consumer. In addition, using targeted beef genetics on lower ranking dairy cows adds a significant revenue stream to the dairy business. We also need to have more targeted genetics in the suckler herd to suit the environment, farming systems and the specific market that the farmer is supplying.

According to Ervin, NuEra Genetics symbolizes the next chapter in the history of Genus ABS beef genetics. A chapter that is focused on providing robust improvement and delivering value to customers throughout the beef supply chain. They will benefit through increased efficiency leading to greater profitability and ultimately a more sustainable system.

The Genus ABS Beef Calving Survey and Beef Advantage will be marketed under NuEra Genetics going forward, as both are proprietary to Genus ABS. Customers should look for new products to be released under the NuEra Genetics brand in the coming months. Such products include proprietary indexes tailored to specific customer needs, making it easier for customers to select the most efficient and profitable genetics.

For further information on NuEra Genetics contact your Genus ABS representative or phone the office on 028 3833 4426.

Read more here:
New era of beef genetics at Genus ABS - Farming Life

Deutsche Bank upgraded Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN), as it believes the risk/reward is now balanced following the company below-consensus sales and earnings per share guidance for 2018.

The firm upgraded the rating from Sell to Hold, with the price target at $28.

At time of writing, shares of Myriad Genetics were rallying 3.19 percent to $28.75.

Analyst Dan Leonard said he was earlier concerned that the Street numbers were too high and didn't sufficiently reflect downside in the company's Hereditary Cancer Testing, or HTC, business, which accounts for 74 percent of the total sales. The company's sales guidance for 2018 was 4 percent below the Street estimates at the midpoint, the analyst noted.

See also: August PDUFA Dates: Biotech Investors Stay Tuned To A Month Of Plenty

Deutsche Bank believes the price erosion in the core hereditary cancer testing business is likely to be metered post 2019, given that cost of HCT isn't a large portion of spend at any given payer.

Additionally, the firm noted that payers have historically used prior authorization as the primary lever to limit genetic testing spend, rather than price. The firm said payers may not prefer discriminating between providers, given the challenge posed by getting acquainted with the evolving medical practice, the firm said.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank also indicated Myriad Genetics is able to convince payers that the other HCT options aren't perfect substitutes for its tests due to its variant database and the FDA approved status of its BRCAnalysis test.

The firm also sees opportunity for volume gains to continue.

Deutsche Bank believes the Street estimates through 2020 now appear more appropriate, while opining that its estimates are largely in line save some timing differences.

"We would be more constructive on greater conviction in MYGN's efforts outside of hereditary cancer testing and/or greater volume growth in hereditary cancer testing," the firm concluded.

View More Analyst Ratings for MYGN View the Latest Analyst Ratings

Posted-In: Deutsche Bank - Dan LeonardAnalyst Color Upgrades Analyst Ratings Best of Benzinga

2017 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Link:
Increased Confidence Earns Myriad Genetics An Upgrade - Benzinga

AN EAST Yorkshire company has agreed an initial five-year contract to supply beef genetics to a French co-operative.

The Stabiliser Cattle Company (SCC) of Givendale, near Pocklington, York, has signed an agreement for Bovinext to be the exclusive provider of Stabiliser genetics to French breeders.

Stabilisers continue to be the fastest growing breed of cattle in the UK, and their moderate, easy calving frame with high fertility and efficient feed conversion traits opened the gates to the new international export market.

Laurent Rouyer, president of Bovinext, said French farmers are increasingly aware of their native breeds becoming too big for the market and not delivering consistent, high-marbled meat quality for which there is growing consumer demand.

He said these factors, and the desire to increase farm margins had generated a lot of excitement on the French market with 50 breeders already making plans to use Stabiliser semen and embryos.

The initial five year contract is set to deliver genetics through extensive semen sales and embryo transfers, with an initial target of 1,000 Stabiliser breeding females in France.

Live cattle exports will also be a crucial component of meeting the target and the first set of breeding heifers will arrive in France in November according to SCC technical manager Dr Duncan Pullar.

French born Stabiliser calves will be included in the UK EBV evaluation programme to ensure continued genetic progress and on-going links with Stabilisers in the UK.

Dr Pullar said: Including the performance data generated in France in our UK evaluation is going to make a good project even stronger because French breeders will be able to compare their cattle with those in the UK and make good breeding decisions based on the same EBVs.

AHDBs French export manager Rmi Fourrier, who facilitated the agreement, said it was a win-win situation in that it supports UK farmers while showcasing quality beef and genetics the UK has to offer.

Richard Fuller, SCC business development director, predicted the agreement would increase future demand for UK beef genetics.

He said: The potential in France is enormous for UK beef genetics by working with Bovinexts million-cow network.

French breeds swept into the UK in the 1960s and 1970s because they outperformed the native breeds on growth and yield.

How exciting now that we can export Stabiliser beef cattle genetics that excel in growth, yield and eating quality to the French! We fully expect more demand for our genetics.

See original here:
East Yorkshire company to supply beef genetics to a French co-operative - Darlington and Stockton Times

This weeks headlines were filled with news from Charlottesville, Virginia, after a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people opposing a march of supremacists and noe-Nazis, killing one woman and injuring many others. Which leads one to ask: how white are American white supremacists?

For most of them, the most convincing way to prove their whiteness is DNA tests from companies like 23andMe.com and Ancestry.com. To their consternation, the results are often not what they expected. White supremacist Craig Cobb was outed on daytime TV in 2013 as 86 percent European, and 14 percent Sub-Saharan African.

Whats interesting is how the white supremacists respond to these disconcerting test results. Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan, sociologists at UCLA, studied online discussions of genetic ancestry test results on the white nationalist website Stormfront. They found that the participants used fairly sophisticated reasoning to challenge the results and regain their whiteness.

Cobb, for instance, denounced his test as statistical noise and described it as a Jewish conspiracy to spread junk science whose intent is to defame, confuse and deracinate young whites on a mass levelespecially males. Using a test from another company he was able to claim that he was European, apart from a 3% Iberian thing.

Panofsky and Donovan conclude that genetics cannot refute racist views. Even though mankind probably came from Africa and even though the notion of racial purity is absurd, racists can manipulate and interpret data for their own purposes. They conclude:

clear communication, simple forms of education, and collective denunciations of scientific misuses, scientists preferred forms of anti-racist action, are insufficient for the task. Challenging racists public understanding of science is not simply a matter of more education or nuance, but may require scientists to rethink their research paradigms and reflexively interrogate their own knowledge production.

Continue reading here:
Can genetics refute white supremacist theories? - BioEdge

Gov. Pete Ricketts was on hand Tuesday to help celebrate the opening of Hendrix Genetics new hatchery in Grand Island.

The $18.5 million facility at 2325 W. Schimmer Drive covers 20 acres in the northeast section of Grand Islands Platte Valley Industrial Park-East.

Along with Ricketts, representatives of Hendrix Genetics from Europe and North America were in attendance. The new hatchery operation will serve 10 percent of the U.S. market demand.

It is a fantastic state-of-the-art facility for this hatchery, said Ricketts, who toured the facility with Nebraska Department of Agriculture Director Greg Ibach.

The governor called the plant a great example of value-added agriculture and how we are going to grow Nebraska.

It is not only a $20 million investment here that will create between 40 to 50 jobs, but it is going to allow area farmers to put up these barns for the eggs that will supply this hatchery and a diversified revenue stream for those farmers who are participating, Ricketts said.

The farmers who are putting up the barns to raise the eggs for Hendrix Genetics will be feeding their layers feed thats coming from out state, he said.

It is an example of how we take a commodity and add value to them in order to grow our state and grow our economy, Ricketts said.

By continuing to focus on value-added agriculture, like with the Hendrix Genetics facility, he said, jobs will be created that will allow the next generation of Nebraskans to remain in the state.

Attending the ceremony was Antoon van den Berg, chief executive officer of Hendrix Genetics.

This is a showcase for the company, van den Berg said.

He said having the facility in Nebraska is important.

It is a big important and high-value market, van den Berg said.

Currently, Hendrix Genetics has 25 percent of the U.S. market.

We needed the facility here to grow markets, van den Berg said.

After searching throughout the U.S. for a location for a new hatchery, he said, the company found that the Grand Island location fitted its goal to expand its market share because of the communitys central location in the U.S. and the fact that it isnt located in a densely populated area for biosecurity.

I think Nebraska has done an excellent job to motivate us to build here, van den Berg said.

Dave Taylor, president of the Grand Island Area Economic Development Corp., said the Hendrix Genetics plant will add 43 jobs and represents a more than $40 million infusion to the area economy.

Taylor said the facility will not only have an economic impact on Grand Island, but Central Nebraska as a whole.

In addition to the main hatchery in Grand Island, 11 outlying barns to support the facility are planned for development within 100 miles of the facility, with eight already in progress or complete.

The barns are located in Buffalo, Fillmore, Franklin, Nuckolls, Merrick, York, Clay and Gosper counties.

It is a very exciting time for us and for our ag economy with the addition of poultry, Taylor said.

The Grand Island Area Economic Development Corp. played a large role in recruiting Hendrix Genetics to Grand Island.

Just being able to hire 43 new people to the area is really exciting, Taylor said.

Serv Hermans, Hendricks Genetics managing director for layers, said the company is pleased to be opening our state-of-the-art layer hatchery in Grand Island.

The city and state offered a number of benefits for our operations, including proximity to our customers and feed sources, strong partnership with local representatives and community incentives, Hermans said. The opening is just the next step in building a long and positive relationship with the Grand Island people and establishing our production hub here in Nebraska to serve the U.S. market with high-quality products.

Hermans said the Grand Island plant will produce enough chickens to produce 10 billion eggs or about 25 eggs per person in the U.S. In 2016, the U.S. consumption was estimated at 268.4 eggs per person.

Hendrix has two other hatcheries in the U.S.

We feel extremely proud here today in this new building so we can contribute to feeding the world, Hermans said.

Hendrix Genetics is a privately held, international multi-species breeding company with activities in layer, turkey, swine, traditional poultry and aquaculture breeding. The layer business unit of Hendrix Genetics breeds pure line layers in seven R&D centers, located in Canada, France and the Netherlands, and produces parent stock of day-old chicks in five main production centers, located in Canada, Brazil, Netherlands, France and Indonesia. Hendrix Genetics is headquartered in Boxmeer, the Netherlands.

The company has more than 2,800 employees and leads the world in turkey, layer and trout breeding. It also has a growing share in swine, salmon and guinea fowl breeding worldwide.

Also attending the ceremony was Doug Metzler, general manager for layers for Hendrix, and Peter Mumm, Hendrix director of business development.

This is a huge development for us, said Metzler. It is a wonderful opportunity. It signals a growing business that is exciting and a great opportunity to be involved in distribution in a new area of the country for us.

He said the Grand Island facility will produce layer hens that will be sold to Hendrix customers to produce table eggs and eggs for the food product industry.

The fertile eggs will come from the 11 area farmers that Hendrix has contracted with as soon as they are hatched. Hendrix provides the producers with the breeding stock.

Once the freshly laid eggs come to the plant, theyre incubated for 21 days in the facility. When the baby chicks are hatched, they are distributed to Hendrix customers for their own operations to produce eggs for the industry.

Read the original here:
Hendrix Genetics opens new hatchery in Grand Island | Agriculture ... - Grand Island Independent

South San Francisco, CA-based Fluidigm Corporation FLDM , a leading player in the analysis of single cells and industrial application of genomics, recently announced that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Baylor Genetics.

Per the agreement, Fluidigm licensed the rights to commercialize the CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator) library prep assay developed by Baylor Genetics for research purposes. This would be used with its proprietary Juno automated microfluidic system. The targeted library prep assay enables accurate identification of variants from each of the 27 exons in the CFTR gene and selected intronic regions. When combined with Fluidigm microfluidics, this solution has the potential to significantly simplify complex labor-intensive laboratory workflows and improve the efficiency of CFTR sequencing. This would invariably improve the efficiency of its Juno automated microfluidic system and help the company to capture a considerable market share.

Next-generation sequencing offers a more comprehensive approach to CFTR genetic analysis by allowing a complete view of the sequence. Targeted sequencing library prep workflows, however, can be very labor-intensive. With the application of Fluidigm automated microfluidics technology, library preparation can be streamlined to provide significant efficiencies.

Over the past one month, Fluidigm has underperformed the broader industry . The stock has shed 7.1%, compared with the industry's decline of 3.1%.

Fluidigm develops, manufactures and markets life science analytical and preparatory systems for markets such as mass cytometry, high-throughput genomics, and single cell genomics. The company caters to leading academic institutions, clinical research laboratories and pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and agricultural biotechnology companies worldwide.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Currently, Fluidigm has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked medical stocks are Edwards Lifesciences Corp. EW , Lantheus Holdings, Inc. LNTH and Align Technology, Inc. ALGN . Edwards Lifesciences and Align Technology sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while Lantheus Holdings carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here .

Edwards Lifesciences has a long-term expected earnings growth rate of 15.2%. The stock has gained around 3.2% over the last three months.

Lantheus Holdings has a long-term expected earnings growth rate of 12.5%. The stock has gained 66.1% over the last six months.

Align Technology has a long-term expected earnings growth rate of 26.6%. The stock has rallied roughly 29.6% over the last three months.

4 Surprising Tech Stocks to Keep an Eye on

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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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Fluidigm (FLDM) Licenses CFTR Assay From Baylor Genetics ... - Nasdaq

Genetics is the study of heredity. Heredity is a biological process where a parent passes certain genes onto their children or offspring. Every child inherits genes from both of their biological parents and these genes in turn express specific traits. Some of these traits may be physical for example hair and eye color and skin color etc. On the other hand some genes may also carry the risk of certain diseases and disorders that may pass on from parents to their offspring.

The genetic information lies within the cell nucleus of each living cell in the body. The information can be considered to be retained in a book for example. Part of this book with the genetic information comes from the father while the other part comes from the mother.

The genes lie within the chromosomes. Humans have 23 pairs of these small thread-like structures in the nucleus of their cells. 23 or half of the total 46 comes from the mother while the other 23 comes from the father.

The chromosomes contain genes just like pages of a book. Some chromosomes may carry thousands of important genes while some may carry only a few. The chromosomes, and therefore the genes, are made up of the chemical substance called DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid). The chromosomes are very long thin strands of DNA, coiled up tightly.

At one point along their length, each chromosome has a constriction, called the centromere. The centromere divides the chromosomes into two arms: a long arm and a short arm. Chromosomes are numbered from 1 to 22 and these are common for both sexes and called autosomes. There are also two chromosomes that have been given the letters X and Y and termed sex chromosomes. The X chromosome is much larger than the Y chromosome.

The genes are further made up of unique codes of chemical bases comprising of A, T, C and G (Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine). These chemical bases make up combinations with permutations and combinations. These are akin to the words on a page.

These chemical bases are part of the DNA. The words when stringed together act as the blueprints that tells the cells of the body when and how to grow, mature and perform various functions. With age the genes may be affected and may develop faults and damages due to environmental and endogenous toxins.

Women have 46 chromosomes (44 autosomes plus two copies of the X chromosome) in their body cells. They have half of this or 22 autosomes plus an X chromosome in their egg cells.

Men have 46 chromosomes (44 autosomes plus an X and a Y chromosome) in their body cells and have half of these 22 autosomes plus an X or Y chromosome in their sperm cells.

When the egg joins with the sperm, the resultant baby has 46 chromosomes (with either an XX in a female baby or XY in a male baby).

Each gene is a piece of genetic information. All the DNA in the cell makes up for the human genome. There are about 20,000 genes located on one of the 23 chromosome pairs found in the nucleus.

To date, about 12,800 genes have been mapped to specific locations (loci) on each of the chromosomes. This database was begun as part of the Human Genome Project. The project was officially completed in April 2003 but the exact number of genes in the human genome is still unknown.

Reviewed by April Cashin-Garbutt, BA Hons (Cantab)

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What is Genetics?