I couldn’t resist to buy some of these praised flash (and camera!) triggers from an ebay shop in Hongkong. Pocketwizards have been out of reach for me, being sold in .de at incredible prices here in Germany. But pride goeth before a fall – these new devices simply work. Here comes my first picture here where I clamped a SB-600 on a RF-602 (56 gram) on a Gorillapod (45g) – with the gorilla being certainly at it’s limit.

Just a minor warning (Show me more…)

Given my sceptical view that ORMDL3 is really an asthma gene (that may be even shared by the authors of the initial association) the train has now departed with more groups speculating about ORMDL3 function.
For example this new paper by Gerard Cantero-Recasens(facebook profile) is about the unfolded protein response (UPR) that may be triggered by a putative loss of function mutation in ORMDL3 via a Ca2+ decrease in the ER. Although I am quite intrigued about the fact that the story now moves to calcium and vitamin D we far away from any conclusive evidence.

Addenddum 3.3.2010

And here is another paper that associates ORMDL3 to the sphingolipid metabolism. Although that may be also an interesting pathway (given a bulk of literature not cited in the paper ( more, more, more, more) I still wonder if this is wishful thinking. The authors do not touch the main problem – the weak connection of some genomic variants in that region to ORMDL3 function to asthma pathogenesis.

The Biomed Experts site has a nice email notification of new papers which have been authored by my earlier co-authors – which is great! by focusing more on (Show me more…)

I am looking for some time for a MS-Acess like graphical interface addressing my large SQLite databases. Having tried out now more than dozen different packages, I found only one that fills my needs and even that only by 80% – RazorSQL.
Writing complex SQL queries is possible hwith an “autocomplete” function (Show me more…)

A new Thorax review finds

The hypotheses have arisen from a desire to explain epidemiological differences, and those such as the “hygiene” hypothesis had a seemingly corroboratory immunological explanation. However, they have not taken us to the point where we can proudly announce a primary preventive strategy.

I agree with the last statement but have severe doubts on any “immunological explanation” (Show me more…)

Wikepedia defines

“Fake it till you make it” (also called “act as if”) is a common catchphrase (Show me more…)