Yesterday we had been in “Schloss Nymphenburg” for the “Serenade im Park“. I did not know about the close connection of Munich and Venice where even Gondolieres had been hired by the former Bavarian emperors… So it was quite natural to hear some Canzoni Napolitane, traditional songs like La Danza, Torna a Surriento, La´Addio Napoli, Santa Lucia while my favorite was “Tu vuo´fa l ámericano” by Maria Tselegidis, simply wonderful also the encore. My limited Italian did not allow to understand the Neapolitan dialect that says

Puorte’ o canzone cu’ ‘nu stemma arreto,
‘na cuppulella cu ‘a visiera aizata. (Show me more…)

The father of Mendelian Inheritance in Men died yesterday, one of the grand old men in Human Genetics. Go out for the plenty obituaries, for example at Johns Hopkins, Metro or Wikipedia.

The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences has some interesting videos online – no need to travel – just sit back and relax, yea, yea.

PLoS medicine has a report about “Surveillance Sans Frontières: Internet-Based Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence and the HealthMap Project” that goes far beyond old-fashioned disease reporting. They write

These Web-based data sources not only facilitate early outbreak detection, but also support increasing public awareness of disease outbreaks prior to their formal recognition. (Show me more…)

Sometimes we think we are alone with our difficulty of getting a good paper published. In lucid moments, however, we find others making the same experience- see a commentary in Science

The stress associated with publishing experimental results–a process that can take as long as obtaining the results in the first place–can drain much of the joy from practicing science (Show me more…)

One of the PLoS editors has a vocal report on a recent meeting “Why accurate reporting is an ethical duty“. When dealing here with a misconduct case, I had the impression that many colleagues as well as some other editors think of (Show me more…)