I sit on my butt
Hiding from controversy
Dispensing wisdom

Yeah, he’s in admin now.

Can you do any better? Tell us what you do for a living, in haiku, limerick, rhyming couplet or other poetic form. For inspiration you could check what others have already written, and if any are good enough I might throw in a signed copy of this book…

And that’s it from me for a few days. I’m off on leave until September, and will be leaving you in the capable hands of Eleanor Howell.

While the latter paper makes some serious points (and, unfortunately, is ammo for the muppet brigade), what caught my eye was the footnotes:

GCSS had the original idea. JPP tried to talk him out of it. JPP did the first literature search but GCSS lost it. GCSS drafted the manuscript but JPP deleted all the best jokes. GCSS is the guarantor, and JPP says it serves him right.

So I’m wondering, what’s the best Acknowledgement/Footnote/other endnote matter you’ve seen? A copy of Sydney Brenner’s book to the best!

For this week’s dose of Friday fun, what’s the cleverest or funniest article title you’ve come across? Ian has suggested this 2011 article from Lester Lau of the University of Illinois at Chicago, which must surely win the F1000 “Best ever journal article title based on libretti form comic operas” award,

CCN1/CYR61: the very model of a modern matricellular protein
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00018-011-0778-3).

Where does he find them?

Anyway, please share your favourites. I’ll see what swag I can rustle up for the best.

David Rogers, who died two years after Benny Hill, was a scientist and physician, interested in infectious diseases and medical education. He made a famous video of a neutrophil chasing down and engulfing a Staph aureus bacterium.

Here, in honour of them both and all things Friday (and because I’m going on holiday now), is something that I hope amuses you. Watch out for the twist.

Enjoy—and I’m leaving you in the capable hands of Ian Stoneham for the next week.

Alison Thomson

Artist Alison Thomson has been collaborating with the British Society for Immunology on a knitting project to raise awareness about multiple sclerosis.

You can read more about the ‘Big Knit Project‘ at the BSI website, and see the tableaux at Cheltenham until Sunday.

Of course, it’s not about zombies; they don’t exist (or do they?). Rather it’s a very practical and readable guide to civil defence–something we’re not that big on in the UK, probably because we don’t get much in the way of serious flooding or earthquakes (although half an inch of snow and it all goes to hell in a handbasket).

The basic zombie survival kit consists of

• Water
• Food
• Medications
• Tools and Supplies (I assume this covers firearms, cricket bats, etc.)
• Sanitation and Hygiene
• Clothing and Bedding
• Important documents
• First Aid supplies

So now you can all be well prepared if there’s a zombie apocalypse following the Rapture on Saturday. Frank Peretti meets Shaun of the Dead, perhaps?

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

–William Blake

Peter Lawrence has weighed into the debate on the state of research in an article for Lab Times, boldly claiming that The heart of research is sick. See also Sir Iain Chalmers and pieces in Nature by Jennifer Rohn and Alison McCook (ex of this parish).

Peter, typically, pulls no punches. “Essentially, it’s the publication process,” he says. “It has become a system of collecting counters [to get grants and tenure] rather than to communicate and illuminate findings to other people. The literature is, by and large, unreadable.” He ties this in to the problems women face when trying to have a research career, and the “babies we want them to have”, while recognizing that equal representation of men and women in all careers is “silly”: “Individuals should do the kind of work they enjoy doing, that they’re good at. And this can lead to different proportions of men and women in the arts and sciences.”

There’s more, of course. He says that not having to write grants (he was at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge for nearly forty years) is a “much better way of funding sciences.” When you’re a young researcher, spending a third of your time looking for money, you’re not left with much energy for research itself. He touches on ethics, describing his experience of being ripped off by another research group, and how we might police ourselves to prevent this sort of thing happening.

And, gratifyingly, the article has attracted a couple of evaluations (free link). Helen Skaer at the University of Cambridge says “the solutions really lie in our hands, making this a must-read for everyone”, and Ferdinando Boero of the Universita’ del Salento classifies it as an oxymoronic “controversial confirmation,” making the rather distressing (but not untrue, unfortunately) observation that “Administrators rule. And scientists play the game.”

It’s another long weekend here in Blighty, so I’ll see you all again on Tuesday. But I think there’s enough there to be going on with.

The parasitic cycle of Reliquum (©Isabelle Desjeux 2010)

To my great surprise, there’s an entire field devoted to this phenomenon: failomics. And we’re fortunate indeed to have a couple of posters discussing reasons behind such failures, such as the content of reliquum and even a screen for arrest mutants. The pioneer in this field is one Isabelle Desjeux, Molecular Institute of Technology, Singapore.

She says, “a method as scientific as the data would allow was followed in order to obtain the results described in the poster [...] I do take my fun rather seriously.”

Fascinating stuff.

It cites a paper by David Leon of the London School of hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the International Journal of Epidemiology, Trends in European life expectancy: a salutary view (open access: 10.1093/ije/dyr061).

While I’m not going to comment on the review as such, I would like to direct your attention to Leon’s point that National trends do not of course reveal what is happening to mortality within countries. He continues,

Interestingly, recent analyses have found that life expectancy at the age of 50 years among members of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been increasing steadily over the past 60 years, almost in parallel and only just below that of the fellows of the Royal Society in the UK. Russian Academicians have apparently managed to isolate themselves from the massive fluctuations in mortality experienced by the bulk of the Russian population. This striking observation calls into question the contention that the health of even the advantaged suffer in societies that are inequitable.

(my emphases)

The message is clear. For a long and happy life, become a scientist.

Have a great weekend.

Just how much is shown by this analysis from researchers at MIT, Cornell University and University College London, with help from the BT Group in a little town you’ve probably never even heard of (Ipswich). The picture represents bidirectional traffic cooked up from 12 billion telephone calls over a one-month period.

Each of the 3042 pixels represents an area 9.5 km by 9.5 km, the opacity dependent on the length of the call time. London sits like a giant medulla, controlling the rest of the country.

For more, read the (Open Access) paper at PLoS, Redrawing the Map of Great Britain from a Network of Human Interactions. Or simply enjoy the graphic.

Back in January, Kevin Gaston at the University of Sheffield argued in Science that conservation efforts should be directed towards common species as well as the ‘obvious’, rare and ‘threatened’ ones¹.

The argument is beguilingly simple. In the absence of a detailed understanding of what each species does in an ecosystem, it would be foolish to allow the loss of any one of them.

The paper was selected by David Lindenmayer of the ANU in our Ecology Faculty (Spatial & Landscape Ecology) just two weeks ago. David says the paper makes a plea for the conservation and management of common species, which is different to much past conservation biology that has focused around the need to ensure the preservation of rare and endangered taxa.

However, we’ve just published a dissent by Ferdinando ‘Nando’ Boero of the Universita’ del Salento (who, by the way, claims that Frank Zappa has cited his work. Read the full story). Nando, in an intelligent and well-argued dissent, while granting that more common species are indeed important to the continued functioning of ecosystems, maintains that rare species do deserve special attention.

During battles, military surgeons divide wounded soldiers into three categories: those who will die anyway (and they do not treat them); those who need immediate care, otherwise they will die (and they are treated immediately); and those who can be treated later because the wounds are not life-threatening. Maybe, with conservation biology, we are caring more about species that are practically extinct (the ‘soldiers that will die anyway’) and, in doing so, we let other species die because we do not care as much about them.

It’s a fascinating debate: do feel free to share your thoughts here.

And for some light relief this Thanksgiving weekend, also check out this video of Nando talking about jellyfish, art and music, including Frank Zappa’s response to having a jellyfish—Phialella zappai—named after him.

First, this poster on the DNA damage response from a group in Spain has a somewhat quirky design. I think the link to Star Wars comes from the “Wet side”/”Dry side” theme they have going on.

Harvard’s Laboratory of Personalized Medicine is listing posters that its researchers has presented at meetings. I guess this is the internet age equivalent of putting posters up in the corridor outside your lab after a meeting. A little reminder that you can check out the entire F1000 poster collection at the prototype site: because we’re getting so many submissions now the navigation has been improved, and our developers are beavering away on creating a search function as we speak.

My regulars might remember Steve Pogonowski, our erstwhile PR droid. Steve left us back in March: before that he wrote posts at blog.f1000.com (and I’ll recommend you remember that URL. More on that later) and such like. Before he returned to his native Australia, he toured the outer fringes of Europe, promising to send pics of him wearing one of our much sought-after T-shirts. Here he is outside Lenin’s tomb, flying the red flag:

I can’t imagine the Pogmeister getting up early in the morning for this stunt: I’m informed that the haze is smoke from forest fires.

This reminds me, actually, that I haven’t given away anything for a while. So… time for an off the cuff competition. Send me (or link to, or whatever) a picture of science being down in the weirdest of places. The strangest, or one that makes me giggle the most, gets a sweatshirt.

And with that, I think the clock on the wall says it’s a quarter to beer. Have a splendid weekend, all.

As promised, I’m giving away an awesomely awesome Naturally Selected sweatshirt, modelled here by Eva, for the best comment this month (in my opinion).

And the winner is

(drum roll please)

Ellen, for her comment about craziness in faculties, and for posing a question about “valuable lunatics”. Ellen, congratulations and please drop me a line with your preferred size (S, M, L, XL or XXL) and mailing address.

Other winners this month include Adam Ratner, for knowing too much about ignorance, and Stephen Curry, who successfully identified the structure of U1 snRNP. Adam and Stephen both get a copy of Sydney Brenner’s My Life in Science. By the way, if you want a laugh, Stephen is taking part in I’m a scientist, get me out of here. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him the best of luck!

More competitions and prizes next month, after the UK’s Bank Holiday weekend (yes, we’re hoping for some sunshine).

Amazingly, vitamin A completely rescued Fgf15 and Shp expression and reversed the derepression of Cyp7a1 caused by interrupted bile acid reabsorption in cholestyramine-treated animals.

That’s not what grabbed my attention, though. Back in my thesis days I did a few experiments with liposomes, so am no stranger to their strange and beautiful nomenclature. But the Methods section in this paper is something else entirely, and I’ve decided to share some of it with you.

After all, why should I suffer alone?

The following unconjugated and taurine-conjugated bile acids were used as calibration standards: cholic acid (5

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/05/18/something-kinda-oooooh/feed/ 2 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/04/01/faculty-of-a-million-2/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/04/01/faculty-of-a-million-2/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:58:57 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=1234 Continue reading →]]> Apparently, the two self-proclaimed ‘top’ scientific journals, Nature and Science, have ended their hundreds of years-old feud and teamed up to launch a new journal, to be called either Scientific Nature or Natural Science, depending on the result of a text-message vote by the scientific community.

Sounds good? Well, not really. We’re a bit upset that they’re also creating a social networking site called ‘Faculty of a Million’, funded by a grant from Facebook, where scientists can vote papers for acceptance by pressing a “Like” thumbs-up button or reject the paper by pressing a “Dislike” button. Our company lawyer has just had an apoplectic fit.

And this seems to be a direct invasion of privacy:

readers will have the option of Skyping authors directly to share their thoughts and feelings about a paper simply by clicking that author’s name. As an added incentive, the first 100 new subscribers will get free genome scans.

It’s a nice cover though:

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/04/01/faculty-of-a-million-2/feed/ 0 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/03/19/last-drinks/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/03/19/last-drinks/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:26:10 +0000 admin http://blog.f1000.com/?p=1170 Continue reading →]]> Richard has previously mentioned my imminent departure from f1000 and it’s come to the day where I pack up my desk, hand back the security pass and read my last free copy of The Scientist.

It’s been a great experience being involved in a forward-thinking project like f1000 and getting stuck into the social media side of PR (like it or loathe it, PR has a place amongst the Twitter, Youtube, Facebook generation)

But aside from meeting some brilliant people through Twitter (@scicheer, @tallscientist, @boraz, @sciencegoddess, @ritarubin to name a few), this humble blog is where most of the action has happened.

And so allow me to reflect back on some of the inspiring, thought-provoking or just plain amusing posts from my six months here.

Most recently, Callum’s post stirred up controversy on all sides with the Pubmed and PLoS discussion from a few days back, on a day where our usual daily hit count doubled due to the massive interest from the science community.

Richard’s weekly roundups have been getting a lot of interest as he, obviously, looks over the  week’s happening at f1000 and in the broader world of science.

His post on the Faraday Prize Lecture would have excited anyone with multiple passions into maths, music and science while the new competition on scientific mistakes, while not drawing the same enthusiastic responses as his #sci140 comp, has still been kicking along.

For my own part, the most enjoyable pieces I had the chance to write involved anything from the Great Garbage Patch to periodic table-chanting cheerleaders, how music can make us smarter and scientists with fantastic beards.

http://twitpic.com/13xbgb

I’ll leave you with this shot of my Science Online companions and I at the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina, which we visited during the SciOnline 2010 conference in January.

There’s some historic significance to this well that we are still unsure of but apparently it’s the place where freshmen kiss each other for luck. We declined to participate in the ritual (owing to being neither freshmen nor single) and instead opted for this memento.

It’s one of the good memories I’ll take away from my time at f1000, along with the all-too-regular Friday afternoon cakes and of course the dedication and enthusiasm of work colleagues towards making f1000 a quality database for post-publication peer-reviewed biology and medicine research.

I’m off to travel Europe for five months and then head home to Australia. Thanks to everyone for the support, keep reading the blog and, in the words of my friend Darlene, GO SCIENCE!

**PS I’m on Twitter at @stevepog for anyone wanting to keep in touch and my sports-focused blog is http://stevepog.blogspot.com

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/03/19/last-drinks/feed/ 0 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/03/05/music-to-my-ears-2/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/03/05/music-to-my-ears-2/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:02:22 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=1057 Continue reading →]]> A few weeks ago I went to the Faraday Prize Lecture at the Royal Society. The lecture, The secret mathematicians, was given by the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy. Du Sautoy talked about five artists, how they were inspired by mathematics, and how their art tells us things about mathematics: a musician (Olivier Messiaen); an author (Luis Jorge Borges); an architect (Le Corbusier); a painter (Salvador Dali) and a choreographer (Rudolf Laban).

Music probably has the most obvious connection to mathematics: rhythm and tonality are based on mathematical relationships, and du Sautoy reminded us of the saying of Gottfried Leibniz,

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

For me, the link between mathematics and music breaks down when composers take the maths and try to base music on it, without reference to several hundred years of music theory. In other words, just because you can use (for example) prime numbers to create a pattern, doesn’t mean you should. Schoenberg’s atonal compositions just sound like noise to me—yes, call me a Philistine if you like—and I reckon you should leave prime numbers to the cicadas. Mathematics can describe all music, sure; but not all maths is musical.

Similarly, the relationship between music and the rest of science has not always been harmonious. I came across the Symphony of Science this week, a musical project

designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

Sounds great, and the website looks nice with embedded videos and links to the lyrics. Unfortunately I’m not convinced it works: some pleasant enough but rather non-descript elevator muzak plays while voices of scientists are processed to sound synthesized (and yes, the pitch and tempo are adjusted to saound vaguely musical but anyone can do that in Garageband) and lip-synced with video. It’s not ground-breaking by any stretch, and is shot through with New Age-style philosophies that I find rather hard to stomach (and check out the strange collection of Google ads on the site!). Richard Dawkins repeatedly saying ‘science is the poetry of reality’ trivializes any meaning he might have been trying to get across. The only thing worth repeating was Jill Tarter’s The story of humans is the story of ideas; to shine light into dark corners but even that isn’t in the same league as Tom Lehrer, whether reciting all the chemical elements or poisoning pigeons in the park; or even Ron Laskey:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGIhI5Fcgo&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Haaaarvard

Back to du Sautoy. In a three-dimensional development of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the choreographer Rudolf Laban claims that Man is inclined to follow the connecting lines of the 12 corner points of an icosahedron with his movements travelling as it were along an invisible network of paths; and indeed his dancers trace out a Platonic shape with the tips of their limbs. But whether the maths drives this, or whether the mathematical description is simply an inevitable consequence of our bodily shape is not clear.

The Fibonacci series is very familiar to most scientists, and perhaps because it is the result of a simple geometric algorithm it describes many natural relationships: the expanding population of rabbits, for example, or the spiral shape of a snail’s shell. Architects such as Le Corbusier have used it to plan buildings in two and three dimensions, and even the Greeks knew about it: the proportions of the Acropolis follow the Golden Ratio, which is derived from the Fibonacci sequence.

Literature can also take inspiration from mathematics—not simply in the number of words or letters or syllables (although that is something that has occurred to this writer)—but in the inspiration of Borges’ Library of Babel. Borges, amazingly, uses a literary device to describe one model of the Universe: finite, yet unbounded (as opposed to spatially infinite but ‘flat’). Du Sautoy took the opportunity in his lecture to show how a simple computer game could also model the Universe, which caused not a little hilarity and some reflections on the nature of dimensionality.

Finally, Salvador Dali.

Dali once said

I am a carnivorous fish swimming in two waters, the cold water of art and the hot water of science

and in his art he is actually experimenting with mathematical relationships even as he creates. His art is informed by fractals (‘Visage of War’); by three-dimensional shapes and the Golden Ratio(‘The Sacrament of the Last Supper’); catastrophe theory (‘The Swallow’s Tail’ and ‘Topological Abduction of Europe’); and four-dimensional space:

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)

Christ floats above the exploded tesseract or hypercube (a three dimensional representation of a four dimensional shape); Dali uses a very mathematical and indeed scientific construct to explore how spirituality extends beyond the dimensions and senses normally available to us.

Mathematicians, says Marcus du Sautoy, do it for the beauty, for the art. There is a pleasure in counting, in numbers; and in their relationships to each other. Perhaps then it is not surprising that art and maths do have a great deal to say to each other.

The Michael Faraday Prize Lecture is available from the Royal Society website.

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/03/05/music-to-my-ears-2/feed/ 3 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/26/on-the-run-26feb10/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/26/on-the-run-26feb10/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:10:00 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=1006 Continue reading →]]> This week, I have mostly been in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, sometime this week

That was to meet The Scientist team, and sit down with Sarah Greene and figure out exactly how we’re going to run this new beast. The bottom line is that F1000 will now be feeding into The Scientist much more directly, and my job suddenly got a whole lot more interesting (not to mention busy). I’m very much looking forward to it.

We’ve already made a start: our Facebook page is now displaying links from The Scientist (there’s a few glitches that I need to sort out, but it’s there) and I’ll be pitching in with The Scientist’s Twitter feed. And readers should soon notice changes in some of the regular features, as well as additional stuff in print and online. Keep checking back here for updates. Check back here to find out what we’re doing.

Now, I’m totally jet-lagged (the extra two hours on the tarmac waiting to be de-iced didn’t help matters) so I’m going to wish you all a splendid weekend, and I’ll be back Monday.

Much as it was a productive week and they’re a great bunch in Philly, I’m glad to be in London again.

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/26/on-the-run-26feb10/feed/ 2 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/19/on-the-run-19feb10/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/19/on-the-run-19feb10/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:01:55 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=895 Continue reading →]]> It’s been a short week for me. As I implied elsewhere, I was off sick on Monday, and I’d already booked leave to be out of town Thursday and Friday (which should be today, if this scheduling thing works). And when I got back into the office on Tuesday, I was told that I should take a trip to Philadelphia to say hello to the guys in The Scientist office. The idea is that I can get to know the members of the team, and work out how we’re going to work together to bring even better content to The Scientist magazine. We might also discuss how to use their know-how to build community around F1000 itself.

So on Monday morning I’ll be heading to Heathrow, for a trip to the land of ice and snow. I’ll be back Friday morning London time. News-wise, then, it’s going to be a bit sparse from me, although I hope Steve and Callum will keep the flag flying.

What I can say is that the competition we ran on twitter appears to have been a great success, and some people are already asking when the next one will be. They’re actually asking for the same thing again, but I don’t know whether that has legs. What do you think? Should we limit it to historical papers, or maybe to your own stuff? What else would be fun to do in 140 characters (minus a hashtag)? I’m all ears.

And with that, I have to dash. I’m hoping there will be a new design on the development site when I get back, and I’ll post some screenshots for you to enjoy. Have a nice weekend!

Richard

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/19/on-the-run-19feb10/feed/ 0 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/16/on-a-new-publishing-model-the-winner/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/16/on-a-new-publishing-model-the-winner/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:02:03 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=871 Continue reading →]]> Ladles and gentlespoons, the results are in. We had an amazing response, and after sifting through a mass of #sci140-tagged tweets, discarding all the retweets and publicity (and a huge thank-you to everyone who spread the word), we had 197 unique entries (grep saved my life).

Many of you posted very witty ‘historical’ paper summaries, but there were several who managed to squeeze their own papers into 140 133 characters too. This, I think, was far more difficult, even if it did not lend itself so readily to humour.

It turned out to be quite an interesting social experiment, too. There were a number of themes, possibly the most popular being the structure of DNA (not surprising seeing as most of my twitfriends are at least vaguely biochemical). This from @SelectAgent was one of the best:

Salt of DNA structure= double helix. Strands anti-parallel; has implications. (PS Rosie didn’t help)

Physics, especially quantum mechanics, also featured heavily, and @pssalgado deserves a special mention for

Where are you, Heis? “Don’t know exactly, but I can tell you how fast I’m going!”

Galileo was another favourite among physicists, @sciencebase almost scooping the prize with

Dropped heavy and light ball at Pisa; saw landed at same time. Peer review problems now, especially after telescope incident.

Many entries had fun with Mendel; here’s @marymulv:

Peas for tea. Again! (Damn that gardener.) Smooth, wrinkly, smooth… Is that a pattern? Hm. Should I tell that Darwin fellow??

Stanley Milgram was the subject of a couple of tweets, @sciencebase again making me laugh with

Stanley, is this circuit really 450 Volts, those people look like they’re in real pain? Shut up and just push the lever

Some of you are obviously budding behavioural psychologists, as Pavlov’s famous experiment also attracted a lot of attention? My favourite? @enniscath‘s

Rang bell, fed dogs. Rang bell again, dogs drooled. NO FOOD FOR YOU! BAD DOG! (heh heh. Stoopid dogs).

Honorable mentions should also go to silentypewriter and yokofakun for sheer wit and volume dedication.

But there can be only one winner, I’ve decided. For his poetic take on Watson & Crick’s structure of DNA, and for a smart paper of his own, the winner of the #sci140 competition is…

@CameronNeylon (Cameron Neylon)

The winning entries from Cameron are

Take bacterial cell wall chemistry. Replace proteins + wall with any prot + beads. Easy protein labelled beads! (link)

and

2 interwound helices, with handedness right, and a 3.4 pitch, and hydration just right + keto not enol or they don’t zip up right (link)

A bag full of f1000 goodies will be winging its way to him very shortly.

Mad props to Cameron, and a big thank you to everyone who participated. It was such good fun, I rather think we might run something like this again. Keep an eye on @f1000 on Twitter for the next one. The full list of #sci140 entries are below the fold.

• stuffysour A. Yonath: Fall off bike, hit head-great idea, let’s get ribosome structure from extremophiles. Crazy? No, but decades of headaches #sci140
  Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:42:51
• kejames How many scientists does it take to s̶c̶r̶e̶w̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶b̶u̶l̶b̶ select a DNA barcode for land plants? Fifty-two. #sci140
  Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:11:21
• kejames Model organisms, schmodel organisms! DNA microarrays can ID & type polymorphic loci across tree of life, starting w/ cryptogams. #sci140
  Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:57:52
• lreyzin #Chebyshev’s Thm: Let E[X]=μ, std[X]=σ, P[|X-μ|>kσ]<1/k^2. Pf: P[|X-μ|>kσ] = P[(X-μ)^2>(kσ)^2] < [by Markov's] (σ^2/(kσ)^2) = 1/k^2 #sci140
  Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:47:20
• lreyzin An absolute: laws of physics are same for all inertial frames; the speed of light is universal and all else is relative. [Einstein] #sci140
  Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:38:26
• cientounero Con envidia veo que una ciudad media (140.000 hab) de Suecia es puntera en biomedicina, Uppsala. #sci140
  Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:42:06
• cientounero La ciencia que más gusta. Chocolate Linked to Lower Stroke and Stroke Mortality Risk. #sci140 http://bit.ly/9ZQI7h
  Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:09:15
• scimomof2 Direct bioelectrocatalysis of glucose oxidation shown by entrapping in silica/CNT composite obtained by lysozyme-catalyzed synthesis #sci140
  Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:13:15
• aemonten Identification of mutants from X-rayed N.crassa cultures with specific nutritional requirments.Biochemical genetics was born (1941) #sci140
  Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:45:26
• markjabbal Synthetic jets: pulses of air that can enhance aircraft wing flaps to reduce fuel burn and CO2 emissions http://tinyurl.com/y924etu #sci140
  Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:23:21
• cientounero Descrito el acoso y la violencia de la mujer hacia el hombre #sci140 http://bit.ly/ce3rc4
  Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:35:50
• cientounero Aznalcollar como ejemplo de evolución, como se recupera un ecosistema tras un cambio brutal de ecosistema #sci140 http://bit.ly/9XYdyV
  Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:38:45
• medodofak Intensive fysioterapitiltak for barn med CP: http://tinyurl.com/intensivtreningCP #sci140
  Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:30:44
• axiomsofchoice surf(S m²),vol(V m³),field(͢F m³m⁻²s⁻¹);flux(@dS,dt)=͢F∘͢͡n;∀Δprisms(Vₓ):dydz.(͢F̋ₓ-͢Fₓ́)=dydz.∫(∂͢Fₓ∕∂x)dx;∴∯͢F∘͢͡ndS=∭∇∘͢FdV;Gauss #sci140
  Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:28:33
• teaburns 1 + 1 = 2 #sci140
  Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:18:47
• djryan "What do you mean ‘ethics committee’? Just deliver the shock please." – Stanley Milgram #histsci140 #sci140
  Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:18:29
• lifeaquatic Pterosaurs couldn’t fly with their bills in the water. #sci140
  Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:11:41
• hufbauer Q: do introduced species evolve to be larger, more competitive? A: yes; bigger, better and faster. #sci140 So easy! Why ever write more?
  Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:41:35
• scimomof2 Predictive model built by MLR-genetic algor. from correlation b/n XPS & electrochem. activity 4 non-Pt electrocatalyst 4 fuel cells #sci140
  Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:57:21
• dange82 shaky shaky parahydrogen + catalyst makes NMR signals 1000 times bigger #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:28:25
• doctornige Rev Stone: I have an uncanny feeling that I will feel a lot better if I eat that willow tree over there. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:02:00
• boris_gorelik E=mc^2 (Einstein) #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:28:31
• boris_gorelik DNA, AC-GT 2 helices (Watson, Crick, forget the girl) #sci140http://bit.ly/aX9eaQ
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:27:34
• enniscath Rang bell, fed dogs. Rang bell again, dogs drooled. NO FOOD FOR YOU! BAD DOG! (heh heh. Stoopid dogs). #sci140 – Pavlov. http://tr.im/NEqq
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:18:05
• microecos There are lots of little animals swimming around in this stuff! p.s. I didn’t defile myself, just so you know (Leeuwenhoek 1677) #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:37:11
• microecos Those "tongues" are teeth (Steno 1667) #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:47:15
• microecos The bees go to the blue card, even when the sugar’s gone ∴ flowers are colorful (Frisch 1914/1915) #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:44:30
• tomroudS Lorentz transfo. implies kinetic energy of a body diminishes after emission of a radiation, therefore mass is energy (Einstein1905b) #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:11:35
• tomroudS c is independent from referential, therefore Lorentz beats Galileo (Einstein 1905a) #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:11:26
• tomroudS Phil Anderson did much better than140 characters with his famous paper self contained in the title : "More is different" #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:11:18
• tomroudS Selected for bacterial resistance. Got non poissonian distrib. of mutants with huge variance, ergo mutations preexisted selection. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:11:06
• moreno web altera comunicação científica clássica. sugiro novas metodologias de validação qualitativa do conhecimento #sci140 http://bit.ly/d6gV0p
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:14:40
• delahar Carrying variant P11S increases risk for autism, when it’s from mom. Oh no! Refrigerator mothers again! http://bit.ly/ddGxJJ #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:16:12
• erikacule WTCCC GWAS of 7 common diseases in 14K cases + 3K shared controls. Prior SNPs confirmed + new ones found. Yay for large data sets!
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:04:02
• aemonten Say, Bernard, you messy kid, why did you leave your plates in the sterilizing oven?Wait, the spores germinated! http://bit.ly/cKo3n2 #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:43:42
• pssalgado "Stan, stop prying around mad cow brains!" "Did you say prion? That’s it, that’s what causes it!!!" #histsci140 and #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:13:41
• razZ0r If you fumigate maize kernels, they will feel stressed, and grow faster and larger. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:57:22
• cientounero PCR de sangre entera para diagnostico de bacteriemia por neumococo carece de sensibilidad y especificidad #sci140 http://bit.ly/9tSmKG
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:36:42
• newprof1 I am sure it’s just the regular flu. Now get ready for an awesome 1918 new years party! #sci140 #histsci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:15:28
• DizzyD242 #sci140, man, fire, farming, tools, buildings, books, from then on it was downhill for the planet
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:05:21
• pssalgado "Archi, stop messing about with the earth!" "if I can just find the right lever, I’ll move it!" #histsci140 #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:36:59
• suthers Galileo makes a telescope and is astonished to see what his neighbours are getting up to. #sci140 #histsci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:33:01
• pssalgado Where are you, Heis? "Don’t know exactly, but I can tell you how fast I’m going!" #histsci140 #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:25:02
• silentypewriter Zapped pencil with laser. Saw 60-atom carbon clusters. Reckon they look like footballs. We dub this new substance soccerene! Maybe. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:22:48
• suthers Isaac Newton observes a falling apple and discovers a great new recipe for pie. #sci140 #histsci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:22:37
• Research_BI Feelings are necessary to make good decisions. However, the temperature must not become too high http://bit.ly/cA6V1V #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:16:57
• choklitfiend Good grief Walter, *how* many eyes??? #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:10:19
• pssalgado Anna, just put your hand there in that cardboard plate, dear. "Oh, my god, Roet, I have seen my death!" #sci140 #histsci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:04:55
• beautyscientist #sci140 Hooke’s law. Ut tensio, sic vis, meaning, "As the extension, so the force" I think Hooke would have loved Twitter..
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:04:24
• grahamsibley @LouiseJJohnson objects will come a rest pretty quickly if no further force is applied – it stands to reason really #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:02:58
• ely_peddler Hey Benoît that’s a pretty picture #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:01:19
• beautyscientist #sci140 Darwin – the more you use it, the bigger it gets.
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:00:51
• pssalgado Hey, Schrodinger, is your cat dead or alive? "- Both." – Lets open the box and see,then #sci140 #histsci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:59:45
• pssalgado I put light through 2 parallel slits and see light-dark & discret pattern Having two minds about this #sci140 #histsci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:56:35
• LouiseJJohnson The earth goes round the sun. But the stars must go round the earth or they’d have to be MILLIONS of miles away & that’s ridiculous #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:41:43
• LouiseJJohnson This tree weighs more than the soil I grew it in. Trees must be made of water: they could hardly be made of air! #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:40:30
• choklitfiend Robert, if you keep playing with all that uranium, you’ll have someone’s eye out! #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:38:54
• sciencebase Archi, you’ve just had a bath, get some clothes on before you catch your death of cold, are you dense, or what? #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:36:42
• sciencebase Professor, these X-ray patterns are incredibly symmetrical, best not mention them to Jim and Francis #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:35:15
• wittyremarkhere My grandparents weigh 14/15 what I do, and my parents 29/30. So I must be semi-conservatively replicated. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:34:43
• sciencebase Stanley, is this circuit really 450 Volts, those people look like they’re in real pain? Shut up and just push the lever #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:33:08
• NTNUmedicine Resting heart rate positively asocciated with risk of death from ischhaemic heart disease among women, physical activity reduce risk #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:30:07
• sciencebase Fido, get down, you’re slobbering all over my good lab coat…it’s only the doorbell #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:27:32
• sciencebase I’m sorry Alex, I forgot to put your Petri dishes away and now they’ve got all mouldy…hang on… #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:25:52
• wittyremarkhere Measure and enhance protein stability in cells by linking folding to antibiotic resistance. Evolution of function limits stability. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:23:01
• lablit Cells change shape when you knock down genes: we can learn a lot about basic rules of architecture via RNAi visual screening #sci140 ^jlr
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:22:43
• sciencebase Brother Gregor, purple and white pea flowers are so boring, why can we not grow pink ones? #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:22:04
• sciencebase Ernie, either I’m a very bad shot with these alpha particles, or atomic nuclei in this gold foil are a lot smaller than we thought #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:19:07
• sciencebase Astronauts came back nanoseconds younger than their stay-at-home peers; Einstein was right…again #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:16:54
• lifeaquatic Aerosols, particles and small organisms can be collected more easily than we thought. Simple (no really!) fluid properties explain #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:40:51
• aeporreca If you have more time at your disposal, you can do more things. Also works with space. http://bit.ly/cX6nBC #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:19:09
• jujurama When using FeCl3 to precipitate nano-Fe onto GAC lower concentration/longer reaction time gives best results. High conc. clogs pores #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:13:41
• jujurama Impregnating GAC w/nanozirconium results in hybrid media that can remove organic & inorganic contaminants from H2O via adsorption #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:08:35
• jujurama Type of base GAC affects hybrid Fe nanoparticle-GAC media’s ability to remove As & TCE from water. Lignite-based works best. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:43:11
• scimomof2 Get X-ray photoelectron images @ diff.depth from polymer blend. Register quantify & fuse images. Visualize phase separation in 3D. #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:45:31
• scimomof2 Capture separation of dyes in nanofluidic channels. Apply MCR to temporal image series. Get velocity of dyes. http://bit.ly/aOJ9sl #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:35:40
• JLVernonPhD 2006: Junk DNA in the form of Group II introns can be targeted to disrupt plasmid DNA containing therapeutically relevant sequences #sci140
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:08:17
• murmur55 Men with personality disorders act in extremely dangerous ways against their female counterparts at work, at play,& in family #sci140 #psych
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:33:20
• jefferickson #sci140 For any convex polyhedron,V-E+F=2 [Euler]. For any genus g polyhedron, V-E+F=2-2g [L'Huillier]. And so on [Poincaré].
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:17:34
• SelectAgent #sci140 RNAP R1.1 acts as gatekeeper, modulates trxn initiation. ftprint & trxn assays show RPc to RPo rate varies w/ Promoter spacer.
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:05:51
• jefferickson #sci140 For any plane graph, V-E+F=2. Proof: The complement of a spanning tree of G is a spanning tree of G*. [Whitney]
  Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:36
• SelectAgent #sci140 Salt of DNA structure= double helix. Strands anti-parallel; has implications. (PS Rosie didn’t help)
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:47:28
• aeporreca It’s impossible to determine whether a guy with an infinite piece of paper will ever stop doing maths. http://bit.ly/9qKV5E #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:19:37
• pssalgado Active site of single-unit RNAi polymerase = multi-subunit transcriptional enz -> evolution at structural level http://bit.ly/cSLB38 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:36:17
• pssalgado Fact: Ca2+ inhibits prot. Exp: X-ray prot xtal +/- Ca2+. Obs: Ca2+ coordinates PP, alters geom, rx stopped. http://bit.ly/cdY7Hi #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:28:03
• yokofakun Fig. 1: ▇ ▂ figure 1: "kissing couples: about 80% turned their heads to the right to kiss" DOI:10.1080/13576500600886614 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:23:33
• orthostichy Little circles of DNA change adipose stem cells into pluripotent stem cells: http://bit.ly/aMmB06 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:04:43
• johnlogsdon A Phylogenomic Inventory of Meiotic Genes: Evidence for Sex in Giardia and an Early Eukaryotic Origin of Meiosis #sci140 (original title)
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:04:42
• pssalgado coherent light through 2 parallel slits: light-dark interference pattern + discrete pattern observed. concl: particle-wave duality #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:00:52
• 2020science Short and tangled carbon nanotubes behave like particles in the body; long straight ones behave like fibers. http://bit.ly/9uSaCP #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:55:38
• axiomsofchoice p,q∈ℕ;p²=2q²⊧p∈2ℤ;gcd(p,q)=1⊧q∈2ℤ+1;∵4∣a²,a∈2ℤ⊧q∈2ℤ⊧⊥;∴√2∉ℚ;QED #sci140 http://ff.im/fFJeG
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:51:21
• pssalgado cat in box + decay triggered poison. box closed: cat alive & dead. when box opened: cat live or dead #Schrodinger #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:28:03
• johnlogsdon Meiosis genes found in Giardia indicate they are capable of undercover sex and that meiosis arose early http://tinyurl.com/y882saw #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:25:04
• aemonten Mouse embryonic and adult fibroblasts can be made pluripotent by introducing 4 transcript.factors (Takahashi & Yamanaka, Cell, 2006) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:19:08
• geomblog > 1/2 edges adj. to vert. of d-polytope point up/down -> v is unique bot/top vert. of face of dim d/2 CH has size n^d/2 Seidel #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:15:22
• pssalgado green + yellow peas -> all yellow peas -> 3:1 yellow:green peas. concl: inhereted charact from 2 info containing particles #Mendel #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:10:09
• BoraZ How many eggs does a bird lay? Clock determines, was domesticated to make more. Works the same in the wild: http://bit.ly/bqHxCe #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:08:53
• BoraZ Two quail eyes REALLY want to be synchronized and don’t need optic nerves to do so: http://bit.ly/ZJSst #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:07:24
• la_science_nue #sci140. #Cloning:Take a mammal egg. Remove nucleus. Insert the nucleus of a somatic cell into this empty egg. Pulse. (Wilmut et al.1996)
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:05:13
• lifeatblandings Ar. ramidus lacks characters re: knuckle-walking, suspension. Ancestor last shared differed substantially from extant African apes. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:04:33
• BoraZ Many tried and failed, but persistence pays: quail eyes work in a dish: http://bit.ly/c7uJUi #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:04:22
• lifeatblandings White, T. et al. 2009. ‘Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids.’ Science. Vol. 326. no. 5949, pp. 64, 75-86. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:03:11
• BoraZ Very hungry? Clock keeps ticking and saving your energy at night: http://bit.ly/al7uVd #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:02:45
• mcshanahan News commenters don’t question others who say they’re scientists. Writing posts like a scientist helps citizens get voices heard. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:00:45
• BoraZ Clocks, how many? At least two in quail – no need for eyes or light, either: http://bit.ly/99Dbep #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:00:41
• BoraZ Everyone uses clocks to measure daylength. Quail, too? Close, but no cigar: http://bit.ly/bmW3FI #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:56:36
• BoraZ On a new publishing model – Tweet your paper: http://bit.ly/9xoG4B #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:52:28
• yokofakun ζ(s)=∑[n:1→∞]( 1/n^s)=1/1^s+1/2^s+1/3^s+…for Re(s) > 1 (Riemann B., 1859) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:36:12
• rweba Vast majority of interesting problems are NP-Complete (Karp) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:35:44
• razZ0r With just a short duplication, RNA sequences of MDMV are better, stronger, nicer! #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:18:25
• geomblog Random projection into log n dimensions preserves distances among n points to within eps relative error. JL lemma #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:17:06
• bonebraking Rel8ed parrot productivity 2 habitat. 2 avoid predation (+ risk infanticide): -trees, +H2O. Satsfys IFD assump. http://bit.ly/cL0zgC #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:16:55
• bparsia All your theorems are belong to us (Euclid, 300BC) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:12:56
• yokofakun (gene:704923 mesh:Protein_Binding gene:705847)+ gene:7011355 = (gene:704923 mesh:Protein_Binding gene:7011355)+ gene:705847 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:12:31
• michiexile #sci140 Vertex degrees easily predict existence of paths visiting each edge exactly once: At most two of odd degree allowed. – Euler 1735
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:05:48
• michiexile #sci140 It is impossible to give a closed formula for exact solution of polynomial equations in a single var. of degree > 4. – Galois & Abel
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:04:01
• EvoMRI Take larva. Put in magnet. Repeat (Add radio. Get 3D image & spectrum) until -40ºC. Thaw. Still crawls. #sci140 http://bit.ly/aZ3keq
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:02:27
• EvoMRI Prey survives attack. Wait some million years. Dig out. Put in magnet. Add radio. Get 3D image. Diagnose. #sci140 http://bit.ly/RHNXP
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:02:20
• EvoMRI Ask people whether musical chords you play are regular or not. Take EEG. The latter answers more correctly. #sci140 http://bit.ly/c833xc
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:02:09
• EvoMRI Let people fill in questionnaire. Take their ECG. The latter hints at their emotionality. #sci140 http://bit.ly/c833xc
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:01:55
• bparsia The computer told us: "Four colors suffice. " (Calculators *were* allowed, right?) – Appel and Haken, 1976 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:01:36
• misskher Meet Ida, missing link. Just kidding – we wanted to be on TV! #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:01:18
• EvoMRI Fertilize egg. Put in magnet. Repeat (Add radio. Get 3D image.) until hatching. #sci140 http://bit.ly/afl8Js
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:00:59
• CameronNeylon De novo sequencing of genomes>10Mb no good with next gen sequencing #sci140 http://bit.ly/clZcYw [paired end reads later solved this prob]
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:00:42
• EvoMRI Trap cell in light. Repeat (Spin it in electric field. Change frequency.) for 5min. Deduce temperature in cell. #sci140 http://bit.ly/bO8kDv
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:00:35
• lovysinghal primality of a no. can b decided in polynomial time – Agarwal, Kayal & Saxena #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:59:47
• MitchKeller Four colors suffice – Appel and Haken, 1976 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:59:33
• lovysinghal Primes is in P. – Agarwal, Kayal & Saxena #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:57:28
• michiexile #sci140 Complete. Concise. Consistent. Pick two. – Gödel 1931
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:55:30
• michiexile #sci140 Take 3×3 pixel patches from a photo databank. Normalize them twice. The result looks like a Klein bottle. Kinda – Carlsson et.al.
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:54:10
• geomblog All minor-closed graph properties can be tested in polynomial time. Robertson/Seymour #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:52:44
• michiexile #sci140 We can do PCA, but with coordinates on a hypertorus, using cohomology and least squares optimization. – de Silva-Morozov-@michiexile
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:52:30
• michiexile #sci140 The homology of a differential graded algebra is a Stasheff A-infinity algebra. – Kadeishvilli 1982.
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:50:03
• rpg7twit @grace_baynes You might be right! It’s a monster out of control. (ooh, this *is* the paper. Very meta) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:31:19
• CameronNeylon Take bacterial cell wall chemistry. Replace proteins + wall with any prot + beads. Easy protein labelled beads! #sci140 http://bit.ly/9Fk8X6
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:11:08
• Miss__Tina (Almost) everyone grew, nobody died. J Clin Endocrinol Metab Feb 2008; 93(2):352-357 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:06:49
• bparsia "it is not easy to determine whether a given propositional formula is a tautology, even if the formula is in normal disjunctive form"#sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:05:00
• dullhunk We wish to suggest a structure 4 the salt of DNA. This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:55:47
• Etche_homo Islet-1 transcription factor is a major orchestrator of morphogenetic signalling pathways in the embryonic human heart. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:51:32
• marymulv Peas for tea. Again! (Damn that gardener.) Smooth, wrinkly, smooth… Is that a pattern? Hm. Should I tell that Darwin fellow?? #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:30:28
• labgrrl Rat and Al are all, like, cool, then Rat+Al+BANG! Now, rat, and Al’s like "WAHHHHH!!!" @ rat. (Watson, 1920) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:21:57
• mauro_fantini No one knows what B1 cells do. Let’s use skin allografts to find out. Skin died faster in WT mice than in mice lacking B1.B1 are bad #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:19:02
• tomroud Lorentz transfo. implies kinetic energy of a body diminishes after emission of a radiation, therefore mass is energy (Einstein1905b) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:18:37
• labgrrl #sci140 Hors d’œuvre + electricity= jump. It’s latently obvious. Helmholtz, 1850
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:17:16
• modelpractice NP = ESO. Fagin, 1974. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:15:37
• silentypewriter Healthy stomach + H. pylori = peptic ulcer… + penicillin = healthy stomach. ∴ Peptic ulcer = bacterial! #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:15:24
• labgrrl E pur si muove!! (Nonetheless, it moves!) Galilei, 1633; Brown, 1821 Hubble, 1929; McClintock,1950; et al. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:09:15
• tomroud c is independent from referential, therefore Lorentz beats Galileo (Einstein 1905a) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:07:36
• labgrrl Oops, Who would’ve thought that absolute power corrupts absolutely? (Zimbardo,1971) #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:03:52
• tomroud Phil Anderson did much better than140 characters with his famous paper self contained in the title : "More is different" #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:00:27
• labgrrl #sci140 Gave half the scurvy lot fruit, now have half a scurvy lot, Limey! (Lind, 1753)
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:58:46
• michaelgrr Structure function paradigm is wrong. Unfolded proteins can have biological function – check FlgM, regulation of flagella synthesis #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:57:07
• Browntideguy Nutrients/grazing/physical parameters change. Aureococcus anophagefferens experiences excessive growth. Ecosystem is devastated. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:57:04
• tomroud le dernier tweet était bien sûr l’expérience de Luria-Dellbruck en 140 caractères http://bit.ly/aEvd3V #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:55:51
• tomroud Selected for bacterial resistance. Got non poissonian distrib. of mutants with huge variance, ergo mutations preexisted selection. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:54:41
• rgcjk guaranteed enumeration of all topologically distinct membrane protein tunnels. http://dx.doi.org/10.1529/biophysj.108.135970 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:54:13
• jsnsndr Neurogenesis literature is conflicted so we compared rats & mice. New neurons in rats: more, faster, better. #sci140 http://bit.ly/awBIFl
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:53:00
• SFriedScientist Empty beer bottles better for smashing heads #cit: http://bit.ly/drbHTE #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:52:20
• simon_frantz Water can remember a molecule diluted out of existence. Oh hang on, no it can’t #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:51:36
• michaelgrr We did some messing about with wire and stuff, found double helix fits the Xray patterns of DNA. Rest is obvious. Suck that, Linus! #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:49:15
• jamie5on Speed of light same for all; laws of physics constant in all un-accelerated frames. Hence length contraction + time dilation. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:48:53
• 2020science Mdlng hist data sgsts causal rship btwn inhaled PM surface area & increased risk of dth #sci140 http://bit.ly/8YWKh3
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:48:16
• jamie5on Medium-range structure of very-high-density amorphous ice a lot like disordered crystalline ice at same pressure #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:47:09
• SFriedScientist Null alleles don’t affect assignment tests, probably #cit: http://bit.ly/by5tYF #sci140 #notmine
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:46:17
• rgcjk searching proteins for drugable binding sites finds known sites and potential allosteric sites http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ci600229z #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:46:13
• kzelnio Dive in deep sea, ID vent shrimp, 1 yr ltr look agn new species! describe it, COI phylo, key to family – taxonomy & biodiversity FTW #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:41:50
• sciencebase Dropped heavy and light ball at Pisa; saw landed at same time. Peer review problems now, especially after telescope incident. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:41:43
• JLVernonPhD 1865: 28,000 Pisum plants reveal: 2 factors from parents (1 dominant, 1 recessive) sort separately when passing only 1 to offspring #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:38:55
• jeffsayre @2020science: Example –> 2x+ colas/week = ~2x risk of pancreatic cancer #cit: http://bit.ly/9Sosde #notmine #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:37:27
• DrMathochist Witten: path-integral heuristics give invariants of knots embedded in 3-folds, incl. Alexander, Jones, Bracket, etc. Quantize! #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:36:06
• alphalo BZ is dissipative autocatalytic process where chemicals catalyse each other to create self-organizing spirals http://bit.ly/76a6Nt #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:30:32
• sc_k #sci140 For a pair of non-commuting operators, knowing one precludes knowing the other. ∴ QM gives an incomplete reality. EPR, 1935.
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:29:52
• AlvFdezFdez I pick one of your hairs and… Voilá! I transform it in stem cell #sci140 OK, it does not describe iPS cells 100%, but… hehe
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:24:42
• sc_k #sci140 Quantum correction added to the prob. of a configuration for the low temp. range. Thermo-equilibrium now right with QM. Wigner, 1932
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:24:21
• drmsrosenberg #sci140 e = mc^2
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:21:40
• rgcjk quantitative depth measure of proteins-binding sites are deep-little effect on affinity http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2006.07.022 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:15:47
• brembs The Drosophila mutant ‘radish’ exhibits hyperactivity and deficits in attention-like processing. Ritalin rescues most deficits. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:11:49
• dabaum77 #sci140 Human genome busted up, pieces sequenced by many people, put back into order, and published in Nature. 1st draft book of life.
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:09:46
• ralphmercer shit happens, and if left undisturbed will continue to happen #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:09:21
• aemonten DNA is structured as a double helix; Nature 1953; 171: 737 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:56:08
• Luxegen Cummings,Kalf,Moore,Miller,Jirik,Wilson.SOD-1 influences timing & post-hypoxic stability neonatal breathing. Adv Exp Med Biol 2008 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:43:53
• rgcjk hyperthermostable proteins are more spherical; fewer pockets, more buried atoms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/prot.22558 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:42:26
• rgcjk model for ligand affinity based on receptor desolvation predicts target druggability and HTS hits http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt1273 #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:37:42
• silentypewriter http://twitpic.com/128q1v Left: Ag beam X-section, no B-field. Right: Ag beam X-section, inhomogeneous B-field. ∴ spin is quantized. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:35:18
• CameronNeylon 2 interwound helices, with handedness right, and a 3.4 pitch, and hydration just right + keto not enol or they don’t zip up right #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:31:25
• Luxegen Weljie,Miller,Vogel,Jirik.An inflamm arthritis-assoc. metabolite biomarker pattern by 1H NMR spectroscopy J Proteome Res 2007 .#sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:30:24
• rpg7twit (on behalf of Richard Wintle) Used density clustering to estimate genomic copy number. Acceptable FDR on simulated data. Worked like a charm on real cohort data.
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:30:07
• IanMulvany Mikelson + Morley looked at light crosswise, damn, it didn’t interfere. No worries, just means no ether. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:29:19
• LouWoodley The eureka moment of deep-sea squid shows that team working between your (symbiotic) partners can be illuminating #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:25:32
• IanMulvany #sci140 dog + bell + food = saliva. Repeat. Eventually dog + bell = saliva, where’s my nobel prize?
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:23:47
• NeilWithers #sci140 ‘Venus flytrap’ sulfide compound selectively hoovers up nasty caesium ions and holds on to them. doi:10.1038/nchem.519
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:23:08
• IanMulvany from giants’ shoulders saw apple fall to earth, gravity is inverse squared, oh and geometry with fluxions too. #principia #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:20:59
• brianclegg EPR: Two particles from one, measure position/momentum. Either no locality or hidden variables. Must be locality, so there. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:15:07
• doctorzen Giant neurons for escape tailflips in slipper lobsters? The behaviour and the backfills say no! #sci140 Original: http://bit.ly/9KYOn0
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:14:29
• IanMulvany #sci140 geodesics locally flat, globally it’s complicated
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:13:23
• razZ0r We collected a large number of animal and plant promoters, determined the conserved regions, and made a web search interface for it. #sci140
  Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:12:07

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/16/on-a-new-publishing-model-the-winner/feed/ 6 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/12/on-the-run-12feb10/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/12/on-the-run-12feb10/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:02:14 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=865 Continue reading →]]> Cancer Causes Cancer!

Well, that was the headline we should have gone with. It is of course a hat tip to the Daily Mail, a tabloid publication that is desperate to tell the UK population that just about everything causes cancer. (I found that website by googling ‘cancer causes daily mail’, which is in itself quite a neat headline. Unfortunately I think we’re closer to curing cancer than curing the Daily Mail. Oh well.)

So, we know that tumours have this nasty habit of sending out malignant cells into the rest of the body. They break off from the primary site and get into the blood and lymphatic systems, occasionally washing up in convenient organs where they can settle down and create new tumours, or metastases. This is partly why cancer is so difficult to cure: you can cut out the original malignant growth, zap it with X-rays and take all sorts of evil drugs (‘evil’ because they are designed to kill cells, and you’re made up of cells; and discrimination between the cancer cells and normal cells is a huge problem); but if one metastatic cell survives, you have to start all over again. And if it’s managed to find a home deep in a bone, or the brain, or somewhere equally inaccessible, it’s game over.

It turns out things are even worse than that. Circulating tumour cells, if they find their way back to their original ‘home’, can actually stimulate growth of the original cancer. Nasty. As the authors say,

Tumor self-seeding could explain the relationships between anaplasia, tumor size, vascularity and prognosis, and local recurrence seeded by disseminated cells following ostensibly complete tumor excision.

‘Ostensibly complete tumor excision’—that’s right, because no matter how good your surgeon is, you can never be sure you’ve cut every last bit out; or that some cells haven’t already gone walkabout.

The good news is that certain cytokines derived from the tumour, IL-6 and IL-8, act to attract the circulating cells, and that they get back in via the matrix metalloproteinase collagenase I (MMP-1) and fascin-1 (it’s the actin cytoskeleton again! These guys get everywhere). If we can find a way to selectively block these pathways we should be able to start thinking about appropriate therapeutic approaches. Gentlemen (and ladies), start your (grant-writing) engines.

Kim, M., Oskarsson, T., Acharyya, S., Nguyen, D., Zhang, X., Norton, L., & Massagué, J. (2009). Tumor Self-Seeding by Circulating Cancer Cells Cell, 139 (7), 1315-1326 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2009.11.025

Twitter storm

It’s been pretty hectic on the twittertubes this week. Following a random conversation at the Scholarly Kitchen I suggested writing papers in 140 characters would be a wheeze. I turned it into a competition, and we had an amazing response. Check back on Monday to find out who’s the lucky winner of a bag of f1000 swag.

Badger Wars

I don’t have a lot to say about badger culling to prevent/reduce bovine TB (except maybe to say that killing vermin with a high-powered rifle and decent ‘scope is one of the most humane ways of doing this).

I just like the sound of a ‘randomized badger culling trial’. Oh, and when someone ‘explains’

This trial was undertaken in very specific circumstances and it could be misleading to extrapolate the findings to any future control program.

you can be pretty sure there’s a vested interest or extreme prejudice somewhere. Even when the trial shows that there’s no economic benefit.
Jenkins, H., Woodroffe, R., & Donnelly, C. (2010). The Duration of the Effects of Repeated Widespread Badger Culling on Cattle Tuberculosis Following the Cessation of Culling PLoS ONE, 5 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009090

Valentine’s Day

Just a reminder to all you chaps out there—it can’t hurt to buy some flowers, even if you don’t want to buy into the whole commercialization thing. A nice dinner doesn’t cost you much either, and could pay dividends in the romance stakes. But at the very least, show you really care by getting checked out:

Take a test for #Valentine‘s Day. Sexual health appointments across Lincolnshire within 48 hours. Call 01522 539 145

It gets pretty lonely up there in Lincolnshire. Have a good weekend, and I hope it’s full of lovehearts and kisses. Failing that, a beer or three can have much the same effect.

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/12/on-the-run-12feb10/feed/ 1 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/09/on-a-new-publishing-model/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/09/on-a-new-publishing-model/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:02:31 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=826 Continue reading →]]> UPDATE: Entries so far

Twitter, what is it good for? Hunh.

There’s been rather an interesting couple of posts over at the Scholarly Kitchen, recently. What am I saying? They’re all interesting. Anyway, Kent Anderson says that blogs are for fogies and David Crotty talks about ‘talking’ vs ‘doing’. Elsewhere on Nature Network we’re re-visiting the meme of why do we blog anyway? (to which I’m not going to contribute, myself having decided to do rather than talk about). You can look up the links yourself if you can be bothered.

Anyway, in the middle of a rather long and involved conversation, someone made a throwaway comment on David Crotty’s post. Then I thought it might be fun to see if I could write a scientific paper in 140 characters.

“Clned gene _cancer_. KO in Ms. Ms dead. Cure cancer.”

But why stop there? Here’s a challenge for you.

Your task is to re-write a scientific paper, a real, peer-reviewed and published one, in 140 characters. Twitter it with the hashtag #sci140 so we can track them (OK, so that’s 7 characters you’ve just lost but no one said it would be easy). You can do this as many times as you like, as many papers as you like, and it would be nice if they were your own, but they don’t have to be. I’ll see if I can get some f1000 swag for what I deem to be the best entry.

Go for it.

Crossposted at Nature Network.

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/09/on-a-new-publishing-model/feed/ 2 http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/05/on-the-run-04feb10/ http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/05/on-the-run-04feb10/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:39:24 +0000 Richard P. Grant http://blog.f1000.com/?p=814 Continue reading →]]> What was that? I think it was the sound of a week flashing past.

I keep saying things like “We’ve got a brand new website… but you can’t see it yet.” This must be quite frustrating. Truth is, the dev team are working very hard (and specs have changed and changed again—but let’s not go there now) and a lot of stuff has to come together all at once. There’s actually no point showing you what we have at the moment because it’d all “ignore that, we’re changing it” and “the design is going to be different than this” and “oh, yeah, we know about that bug”.

But I can tell you that the new search is very funky and we all like it, and that the new design is very spiffy (hang on, I did that already). On Monday we’re going to work out once and for all what we can deliver and work to that. So far, the ‘definite’ list contains the new design (both what it looks like and functionally), the improved search, comments on evaluated articles and RSS. There are a heap of other behind-the-scenes changes too. Then after we go live we can add on all the other things that are on the backlog, so you will see new things appear as we keep building and tweaking and rolling out new features.

I spent some more time on our journal rankings this week. The critical thing appears to be the timing: as I’ve said before, most of our evaluations are published quite quickly after the original article appears. We get around 90% of all evaluations within about three months of the publication date. So what we want to do, for yearly journal league tables, is capture as many as possible while making our stats as up-to-date and relevant as possible. The issue is that if we took April, say, as the cut-off for the previous year we’d end up giving the journals that publish more stuff towards the beginning of the year an unfair advantage. So we’re going to implement a rolling cut-off, with a provisional ‘current’ ranking and publish the official f1000 stats somewhere around May each year, which gives us four months to collect evaluations for each original article.

However, the big news this week is that we welcomed Sarah Greene into the office. This is part of the move to bring f1000 and The Scientist closer together: f1000 is going to start seeding The Scientist‘s scientific content, and use it to help build a community around the service.

As part of this, my own role is changing. I’m going to move away from web development (although I’ll still have input into the design and user experience), which will free me up to be more editorial/journalistic. I’ll still be running the Twitter feed and Facebook page and wittering about things that catch my eye in f1000 (perhaps even more so). There’ll also be the ‘special projects’, such as the rankings, federated comments and various research collaborations. I guess Eva will still be wanting me to make logos for her too.

And finally

The late pick-up of the disenchantment of a small number of researchers with the peer review process is still making waves this week. Cameron Neylon gives his own take on the matter at his blog. I’m not at all sure that I agree with his analysis, having had my own manuscripts subject to both what I might call ‘good’ and ‘bad’ review. I think that too many people view peer review as a stamp on the ‘rightness’ of the paper, rather than a technical check that the experiments and controls are done correctly and that the literature has been read.

Cameron has also been having a go at Nature Communications. The argument hinges on the Creative Commons licences they ask authors to choose. You can sign up and join the conversation at Nature Network.

With that, have a great weekend. And sorry, no cytoskeletal porn this week. Maybe next time.

Richard

]]> http://blog.f1000.com/2010/02/05/on-the-run-04feb10/feed/ 0