Grant preparation costs may exceed grant given

19.05.2009 admin

FYI – a citation from “Accountability of Research”

Using Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) statistics, we show that the $40,000 (Canadian) cost of preparation for a grant application and rejection by peer review in 2007 exceeded that of giving every qualified investigator a direct baseline discovery grant of $30,000 (average grant). This means the Canadian Federal Government could institute direct grants for 100% of qualified applicants for the same money. We anticipate that the net result would be more and better research since more research would be conducted at the critical idea or discovery stage.

Will that be ever read by our governments? Nay, nay.

Allergy, Vitamins

T_S_L_P

14.05.2009 admin

SPQR (is not necessary to be remembered) but certainly TSLP – at least if you are interested in allergy research (see the discussion here 2 years ago) when we knew from a PNAS paper that topical vitamin D3 induces thymic stromal lymphopoietin and triggers atopic dermatitis (in mice). Now there is an update – TSLP even mediates the progression to experimental asthma

vitamin D3 … not only triggers AD as we previously reported but also aggravates experimental allergic asthma induced by ovalbumin sensitization and challenge. Our study, which provides a mouse model to study human “atopic march

will be continued after Continue reading T_S_L_P →

Allergy, Genetics

A fancy new category for a GWA result: same direction

13.05.2009 admin

Isn’t that a funny new category as reported in the last asthma genome scan – “same direction”? Should that provide evidence that isn’t there?
Of 10 samples only one replicates (FHS) and one shows borderline (COP) association to PDE4D / rs 1588265.

… in the absence of biological evidence we cannot exclude the possibility that the associations we measured were due to chance only

yea, yea.
BTW Also here – magically, previously associated genes disappear …

Joke, Video

Summertime

9.05.2009 admin

Software

10% of the energy consumption of computers by unwanted threads?

8.05.2009 admin

The title already says it all – I think that poorly programmed software leads a lot of traces on the harddisk, in the memory and even on the CPU load.
It took me more than 1 hour and even several emails to figure where launchd starts this process:

Finally, just silence, several months after deinstallation of the client, yea, yea.

Joke, Philosophy

FGA

8.05.2009 admin

Frequently given answers – an article at Spiegel online has some of the answers you will need when being asked by research administratives or journalists for your work.

Everything is possible, we will make progress, future research will show, adds significantly to our understanding – blabla attack
Sorry, could you repeat your question (usually when asked to give short! summary) – the noway attack
Can I send you some more documents – the flooding attack
sorry for having to go now to the kindergarden – the privacy attack
no idea – the unpolite attack
silence – the ivory tower attack

Please, please, please don’t try on my phone.

Joke

Do or die or don’t try

8.05.2009 admin

A quote assigned to Max Dellbrück (according to Kay’s 2000 Book of Life p194 – the letterhead of the RNA tie club). Isn’t that a wonderful MOTD? Yea, yea.

Genetics

Security of genetic data

7.05.2009 admin

The judge at the highest court in Germany Hans-Jürgen Papiersaid in an interview last week

Wir stellen nicht erst seit gestern fest, dass dem Grundrecht auf Datenschutz nicht nur von staatlicher, sondern auch von privater Seite Gefahren drohen können

What will happen once my genome once it is on “medical” hardware? Is it as save as the 8,257,378 Virginian patient records that are now under ransom? Continue reading Security of genetic data →

Genetics, Philosophy

Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab

5.05.2009 admin

Campbell writing at Edge about Maddox

Despite his original establishment of the peer-review process at Nature, Maddox always had strong reservations about its conservatism. These were perhaps best reflected in his view that the Watson and Crick paper on the structure of DNA wouldn’t pass muster under the current system. That paper was published as a result of recommendations by Lawrence Bragg Continue reading Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab →

Philosophy

Paper, supplement or what?

5.05.2009 admin

A reviewer just wrote in response to one of our papers

I am first concerned over the structure of this manuscript, being divided into what will be a printed article and an on-line supplement. The description of what I consider to be essential methods are fragmented across these two segments, making the article disjoint and difficult to follow.

I fully agree as I have the same problem with many Nature and Science papers. By the online evolution papers are even more difficult to read. Curiously, even PLoS does this split although there is no printed paper at all.
What about abandoning the supplement practice in favour of a full and an abbreviated version of an article? So we would have an abstract for quick screening, a brief version for the printed journal and a long, fully referenced online version, yea, yea.

Addendum 1-7-09

NG continues with this artificial setup

Starting this month, readers will notice a new section called Online Methods in our Letters, Articles and Technical Reports. Material previously published as Methods and Supplementary Methods is now combined, fully edited and hyperlinked in the new format that will be present on the journal’s website and reprints, and can be downloaded in PDF format. Readers of the monthly print journal will now be directed to find the Methods online.

Genetics, Philosophy

Is evil contagious?

3.05.2009 admin

Here comes an update of the Lucifer post as there are new books on the market. Some want to understand (like Arendt or Amery) while others (like Nietzsche and Sartre) would strongly oppose. I am somewhere betweenboth parties with an increasing tendency to explain human (and corporate) behavior by social group pressure while there is still room by inborn personal differences. Continue reading Is evil contagious? →

Software

Complains about the next generation

3.05.2009 admin

This seems to have a long tradition going even back to Plato’s republic. Sure – the demonstrated fierceness covers only the crudity of the growing identity. Continue reading Complains about the next generation →

Allergy, Philosophy, Vitamins

Shift happens

22.04.2009 admin

The current issue of the blue journal has more stuff on the vitamin D hypothesis (that has been shifted recently into the opposite direction). I agree with the editorial that

Intervention studies of vitamin D in the primary prevention and treatment of asthma raise a number of difficult scientific, ethical, and regulatory issues.

That may be true while the editorial includes the widely quoted myth that immunological effects occur only at high doses Continue reading Shift happens →