Sciencesque has an anonymous update of the impact factor and peer review discussion Continue reading < I often only have time to read abstracts >
An alternative to Pearson R^2
There is a nice online example of four datasets that show exactly the same variable mean AND Pearson R^2 although they look quite different!
I show here an alternative R solution for the correlation ratio eta that may help if you are dealing with such data.
anscombe.R
|wj_anscombe.R|
Sweave – seamless statistics and document automation
The R Munich user group likes Sweave. Here are 3 screenshots how to create a seamless R + Open Office integration (which works also for Word documents if you have installed the ODF converter plugin). First create your document
sweave.R
|wj_sweave.R|
the document
save it, open R and execute
Your document will then look like
Error prone
I confess: I have clicked here
Single use email
It’s quite easy nowadays – install this new Firefox plugin and click “random email”. Read your inbox by clicking “check”. Take care as everything is being lost if you delete cookies!
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
We should have listened to our parents — but so far I did not see a major adverse potential of cannabis. This might have been wrong having heard last year the terrible story of a friend who lost her son by drug induced psychosis. Last week I even learned that this may be Continue reading Sex and drugs and rock and roll
An editor is one who separates wheat from chaff and then prints the chaff I
Here is a little tale that could have happened every day. An author sends a major paper to a major journal. The major journal has a major editor that asks other major reviewers before writing a major email. Continue reading An editor is one who separates wheat from chaff and then prints the chaff I
Human parthogenesis
Stem cell researchers now believe that the human ES cell line SCNT-hES-1 (you may renember Hwang who claimed having first cloned a human by somatic cell nuclear transfer) is derived by parthogenesis – the result of a dividing human oocyte.
They test the origin of the Hwang cells by genome-wide SNP analysis as the initial DNA fingerprint was doubtful Continue reading Human parthogenesis
Allergy transplantation
A new paper in Transplantation takes up an old question – can you passively transfer asthma or allergy? It seems so – the current study reports in 5 of 42 patients elevated IgE plus allergy symptoms. This is in line with earlier reports. Sorry to say — you can get allergy also by bone marrow transplantation.
Addendum 10/6/08
Blood
A total of 16 nonallergic recipients with allergic donors were reported to develop allergic disease posttransplant, however, conclusive information was available for only 5 cases. Allergic disease was reported to abate in 3 allergic recipients with nonallergic donors, however, conclusive information was available for only 2 cases. Problems in interpreting the reports include incomplete data on allergic disease in the donor or recipient pretransplant, not knowing the denominator, and the lack of controls. In summary, review of the literature generates the hypothesis that allergic disease is transferable
Addendum 14/7/22
Ann All Asthma Immunol
How to lie with statistics
The current Greenpeace campaign attacks German car manufacturer Porsche as building climate killer machines. Porsche responds with large posters – see the online figures – that they Continue reading How to lie with statistics
Any new paper? A video cast how to stay informed
Following a frequent request, here is a short video how to create your own Pubmed news feed. You simply need the Sage plugin for Firefox; then goto to Pubmed, create your personal RSS feed and import this URL into the bookmark category that Sage is looking for. Here is the show: Continue reading Any new paper? A video cast how to stay informed
Detecting repoxygen infection
Doping rules are sometimes hard to understand. Sleeping in a low pressure chamber and training at high altitudes is allowed but taking epo is not – although net effects may be the same.
This might be a reason why some athletes are now trying to mimick more closely biology. Repoxygen is a viral vector known for some time that includes the human epo gene under control of a hypoxia control element. Clearly this drug has the potential to be used for doping (“Outlaw DNA“). Continue reading Detecting repoxygen infection
RNA genes – dark matter of human biology?
I currently hunting some transcripts of unknown function (see below), possibly a RNA gene? while it is difficult to locate any good annotation server. So far I tried RNAz based on a PNAS 2005 paper – another one was RNA Genie. Next step will be the new Gingeras paper that describes even a new class of RNA genes. Finally this may not even be a RNA at all but an alternative leading exon … Continue reading RNA genes – dark matter of human biology?
Question of the year in genetics
Nature genetics asked about 30 eminent scientists “What would you do if it became possibe to sequence the human genome for only $1,000?”. Unfortunately, this initiative has been launched 4 weeks too early as I believe some may have responded differentially if they could have a chance to read the ENCODE papers… The majority of scientists seems to follow the idea of Continue reading Question of the year in genetics
The world needs only five computers
The history of this quote is difficult to trace. cnet believes it is wrong to attribute it to IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson. Continue reading The world needs only five computers