As I make greeting cards
For my love of cardmaking and creativity
I collect random leftover stuff

When I saw the notification on Medium that Rochelle Silva has tagged me in her poem Impossible to Throw Away, I felt so happy to be reminded of how I have been making greeting cards since I was a kid. I have been sending handmade Christmas cards (yes, handmade by me!) to all my teachers who have taught me from kindergarten to high school. I also send handmade birthday and Christmas cards to my family and friends.

I collect random stuff (it can be leftover paper bags, leaflets, old newspapers, colourful toffee/chocolate wrappers or old wrapping papers), dry flowers and leaves, and collect many thrifty things (beads, buttons, sequins, chords, ribbons, etc.), just to make greeting cards. I know you might think its all junk, but it is not when it comes to cardmaking. I made the cards in the collage above when I came to Australia and decorated them only using colour pens and stickers as I had to leave my “cardmaking junk” collection at home in Sri Lanka. …

Graph matching can be applied to solve different problems including scheduling, designing flow networks and modelling bonds in chemistry. In this article, I will give a basic introduction to bipartite graphs and graph matching, along with code examples using the python library NetworkX.

Before moving to the nitty-gritty details of graph matching, let’s see what are bipartite graphs.

Bipartite Graphs

According to Wikipedia,

A bipartite graph is a graph whose vertices can be divided into two disjoint and independent sets U and V such that every edge connects a vertex in U to one in V.

In a bipartite graph, we have two sets of vertices U and V (known as bipartitions) and each edge is incident on one vertex in U and one vertex in V. There will not be any edges connecting two vertices in U or two vertices in V. Figure 1 denotes an example bipartite graph. …

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria develop resistance towards the medicines that are designed to destroy them. The bacteria will not respond to medicine and continue to grow, leading to severe complications and even death. This has led to serious implications, especially in people with chronic illnesses as we become unable to treat infections and affect global health. In this article, let’s see what is antibiotic resistance, how it occurred in the first place, its impact and what steps can be taken to prevent and control its impact.

Antibiotics

Bacteria are single-cell organisms that can be found everywhere. Your body houses trillions of bacteria and they help the body carry out essential functions. If you have come across my previous article Metagenomics — Who is there and what are they doing? you may know that these bacteria play an important role in our metabolism and immune system. …

If you are into research like I am, you may know that getting your work published in a top journal is a huge achievement and you can gain more reach to your work. I was able to publish my first piece of work in my PhD in a top journal. In this article, I will share with you 5 things I learned while writing my first journal article.

1. Select the Right Journal

Selecting the right journal is crucial to getting your work published. The scope of the journal should be relevant to your field. …

Blue as the sky
Filled with might
As waters sigh
In currents of fight

Bubbles and speckles
Splashing on waves
Nubbles and freckles
Crashing on caves

Home for the world
Of the aquatic living
All being whirled
In the wail of reliving

The beauty in blue
She covers the world
As they all drew
In a wonder-world

I found this poem as a draft in my thoughts blog Thoughts by Viji. This poem was inspired by the song Under the Sea from “The Little Mermaid” cartoon. …

Similar to languages, music also has its own punctuation marks to help the listeners understand and enjoy what is played. If it weren’t for music’s punctuation marks, it would have been monotonous and boring to listen. Don’t worry, I won’t be going into technical details of music. This article is a short poem highlighting the different punctuation marks in music. Enjoy!

Music is a language
With its own punctuation
Everyone can enjoy
During all life moments

Slurs mark phrases of music as
Commas and semi-colons do in a sentence
Double bar lines mark the end of a piece as
Full-stops do in a…

When we think of the word marker, the first thing that comes to our minds is something that is used to indicate a place. For example, it can be your current location on Google Maps or it can be the place where you planted some seeds in your garden. Similarly, in genomics studies, we can find marker genes in bacterial genomes. In this article, I will introduce you to marker genes used in metagenomics analysis, how they are used and walk you through an example of a commonly used gene prediction tool.

What are Marker Genes/Genetic Markers?

According to Wikipedia,

A genetic marker is a gene or DNA sequence with a known location on a chromosome that can be used to identify individuals or species. …