Lizbeth Mota & Austin Soto
ENGL 21003 Section K
Digital Communications Pattern
11/3/15
Patterns of Communication in Scientific Societies
The way that societies as a whole interact has changed tremendously since the beginning of the modern communication era. With the development of electronic computers and, subsequently, the invention of the internet, the science community particularly has had a drastic shift in the scientific publication process. Journals that took months to publish, print and be delivered, are now instantly made available through online websites. Moreover, modernizing resources results in the increase in the available, accessible information for the community. Since the beginning of the century, online science journals have made the scientific community cohesive by providing with the most up to date findings for research being conducted in particular fields as well as all are new ways to “interact” amongst individuals. For this report we have chosen four online resources that provide information on the area of biomolecular biology and neurology, we will enumerate their usefulness to our particular field of interest and their incidence in our future professional careers. In the 1850’s, an Austrian monk Gregor Mendel discovered that he can manipulate plant offspring to breed plants selectively with traits that he wished to see; he cross-bred two tall pea plants and found that the offspring almost certainly expressed the "tall" feature. At the time, the scientific community was ignorant with genetic and DNA comprehension, but Mendel's work would prove to be a precursor to Darwin's evolutionary theory and eventually a foundation for all medical practice performed today. While our understanding of genetics is superb at best, new ideas and practices keep the medical field in constant progression.
"Gene Editing Could Make Pig-to-Human Organ Transplants Feasible": The article written by Carl Engelking touches upon successfully deleting the viruses on a pig’s DNA, something that made pig to human transplant detrimental to recipients. Approximately 21 people die each day because they have to wait for a necessary organ to survive. The idea of using organs from other individuals was developed by Indian surgeons who found that they could use skin from other parts of the body to heal cuts and burns. Later in the 19th century, doctors began looking for transplants from animals but patients did not last a week. Later, however, as medicine advanced, surgeons found ways to connect blood vessels and study exact matches, making transplants possible by the mid-1900s. Today, the conversation at hand is whether scientists can successfully transplant an organ from a pig to a human. According to the article “Organ Transplants: A Brief History” from the website history.com, popular for noting events in history, one person goes on the donor list every 10 minutes. Using pig organs as other means of organ transplants would be cheaper and organs would be more common for people who would need them to survive. Essentially, the outcome is that people would live longer and using pig organs for human treatment could be the start of trans-species transplants. The number of online journals available to the scientific community increases exponentially as the modernization of communication progress. Here is a sample of our most used journals for the career interests we have chosen.
Biology Direct Biology Direct is a peer-reviewed web journal that reports on molecular biology, ranging from evolution biology to cell and organelle functionality. This journal has created an alternative and “unique peer review model” (Biology Direct, 2015) by allowing the authors to select their reviewers from an editorial board, “making the peer review open rather than anonymous” (Biology Direct, 2015). The journal accepts research papers, reports, hypothesis and application notes from authors from laboratories all around the world, which then are peer-reviewed by an editorial board and published. Biology Direct offers a is diverse range of educational level research and articles, allowing readers from all stages of their career to familiarize themselves with alien terminology. It is also convenient because the user can choose which topics are of most interest, and set email alerts when a related paper published. Moreover, it is free of charge, making it favorable to university students. Genome Medicine This web journal is the most complete when it comes to getting information regarding new methods, tools and articles in all areas of studies with a genetics perspective. All the literature published is peer-reviewed by the site editor board. The site publishes invaluable information in the field of genetics that ranges from disease epigenomics to pathogen and microbiome genomics to immunogenetics. The feature that makes this site even more attractive, other than free membership, is that for researchers to have their documents read by the editor board, they must make one-time payment to the organization. Hence, most of the information available on the website is of significance and conclusive to the genetics community. This site contains information crucial to the future health care professional because it is very likely that articles on gene mutation and possible gene modification via innovative processes found here can serve as a reference for any future research projects or genetic counseling. It is also helpful to frequently take a look while taking introductory genetics classes because this articles can further explain how things work.
Neural Development
This website focuses mainly on the publication of notes, article, research projects and with an emphasis on the neural system. Neural Development is open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers researchers that use a molecular, cellular, physical or behavioral methodology to provide insights into the systems that are primal for the development of the nervous system, its rebirth and regeneration in adults. This site includes research, done by top laboratories around the world, to discover the process of how the nervous system arises, and develops the ability to incorporate signals and translates them into responses. Most importantly, this website includes neuronal development to the field of genetics and psychology by focusing on research papers that study the effect of prenatal and postnatal in the development of the nervous system. This feature is extremely helpful for undergraduate students because we rarely see several factors affecting a single variable or system.
Clinical Epigenetics
The clinical epigenetics journal aims to make epigenetics clinical trials concerning human disease, diagnosis, and treatment available to the science community. It is an open-access journal, which means that there is no charge for readers, that focuses on epigenetic variations in healthy and diseased cells, as a response to environmental factors, consequently to be able to translate fundamental epigenetic research into prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. For someone trying to pursue a future career in the medical field, this is one of the journals to take a look at, because not only does it involve genetics, but also it means preventing diseases, methylation of genes to treat a condition. Moreover, Epigenetics is a relatively new field in Biology, but it is a promising one because it encompasses a variety of areas in an innovative way, and that is the direction that modern medicine is taking.

Reference
Kooning et. al. 2015. About Biology Direct Journal). Retrieved from http://www.biologydirect.com/about/edboard
Gene Editing Could Make Pig-to-Human Organ Transplants ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/10/12/crispr-pig-organ-transplant