Allergy, Genetics

25 years Transatlantic Airway Conference 1997 on asthma genetics in Key Biscayne

Gallery

The conference series started in 1986 while the 12th conference was organized by Jeff Drazen with local support of Adam Wanner.

 

Sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim, the participant list is the WHO is WHO in pulmonary genetics at that time: Bleecker, Meyers, Woolcock, Weiss, Burrows, Postma, Kauffmann, Dizier, LeSouef, Blumenthal, Banks-Schlegel, Slutsky, Zamel, Ober, Bousquet, Vercelli, Barnes, Adcock, Dahlen, Pauwels, Lewitt, Aron, Martinez, Cookson, Moffatt, Rosenwasser, Liggett, Rich, Papadopoulos, Levitt, Holgate, Elston, Morton and Marsh. Many of them do not live any more [1,2,3,4,5], some have made big careers [1,2], others have been fallen somewhat into disgrace [1,2,3]  and many already retired. Continue reading 25 years Transatlantic Airway Conference 1997 on asthma genetics in Key Biscayne →

 

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Genetics

Lander landed

He basically killed one of my best papers by the Kruglyak-Lander rule of what is being “significant”. He started the stupid  CRISPR origin discussion. But now he steps down

President Biden’s top science adviser Eric Lander resigned on Monday after an investigation revealed he violated the White House‘s workplace policy by mistreating staff members

details at dailymail.co.uk

Lander ‘retaliated against staff for speaking out and asking questions by calling them names, disparaging them, embarrassing them in front of their peers, laughing at them, shunning them, taking away their duties, and replacing them or driving them out of the agency. Numerous women have been left in tears, traumatized, and feeling vulnerable and isolated,’ Wallace told the outlet.

Statnews has  a good commentary about “The fall of Eric Lander and the end of science’s “big ego’ era”

 It’s not quite “big science,” which isn’t going anywhere. Call it “big ego.” In science, “big ego” isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. But in recent decades it grew with the emergence of researchers who could both handle the kind of gloves-off debate that can mark academic discourse and marshal vast resources to make certain types of scientific discoveries, like mapping genomes.

 

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Theology

Haltet euch nicht selbst für klug

Benedicite persequentibus vos : benedicite, et nolite maledicere. 15 Gaudere cum gaudentibus, flere cum flentibus : 16 idipsum invicem sentientes : non alta sapientes, sed humilibus consentientes. Nolite esse prudentes apud vosmetipsos : 17 nulli malum pro malo reddentes : providentes bona non tantum coram Deo, sed etiam coram omnibus hominibus. 18 Si fieri potest, quod ex vobis est, cum omnibus hominibus pacem habentes : 19 non vosmetipsos defendentes carissimi, sed date locum iræ. Scriptum est enim : Mihi vindicta : ego retribuam, dicit Dominus. 20 Sed si esurierit inimicus tuus, ciba illum : si sitit, potum da illi : hoc enim faciens, carbones ignis congeres super caput ejus. 21 Noli vinci a malo, sed vince in bono malum.
ad Romanos 12:16

 

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Genetics, Philosophy

What is needed is a confrontational approach

Google showed me today a long forgotten abstract. Although I am not an expert in schizophrenia we collaborated two decades ago on this particular chromosomal region.

What is even more remarkable is the challenging keynote of the Xth World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics in The Palais des Congre ́s Brussels, Belgium October 9 –13, 2002 by Irving Gottesman [+2016], the father of epigenetics in psychiatry. He wrote there

We cannot escape the history of our field and are constantly guided today by the accumulation of facts with either positive or negative valences from our past. But when did the clock start—with the domestication of animals, with Galton’s musings and amoral passion for data collection about individual differences in behavior, or with the initially objective scientizing of Mendelism applied to schizophrenia but ending with a Nazi-tainted albatross around the neck of psychiatric genetics. In regard to the long quest for the distal and genetic (partial) causes of mental diseases, the conclusion that both genetic and environmental factors, none yet known in detail, provide the distal causes of mental disorders—that statement is too general to be of use to making further progress. What is needed is a confrontational approach based on evidence collected from competing ‘schools of thought’, and then reconciliation before some kind of omniscient and impartial Science Court.

I couldn’t agree more. What is needed is a confrontational approach based on evidence collected from competing ‘schools of thought’, and then reconciliation before some kind of omniscient and impartial Science Court.

 

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Software

Personalized PDFs

Scientific publishers are creating now more and more dynamic PDFs. Why do we know? There is an unexpected loading delay of a PDF from Routledge / Taylor & Francis group that I observed recently. First I thought about some DDos protection, but is indeed a personalized document.

These websites are all being contacted while creating this PDF:

Scitrus.com seems to be part of a larger reference organizer network and links to scienceconnect.io. Alexametric.com is the soon to be retired Alexa internet / Amazon service. Snap.lidcdn.com forwards to px.ads.linkedin.com, the business social network. Then we have Twitter ads, Cloudflare security and Google Analytics. All major players now know that my IP is interested in COVID-19 research. Did I ever agree to submit my IP and time stamp when looking up a rather crude scientific paper?

This is  exactly what the German DFG already warned us about last October

For some time now, the major academic publishers have been fundamentally changing their business model with significant implications for research: aggregation and the reuse or resale of user traces have become relevant aspects of their business. Some publishers now explicitly regard themselves as information analysis specialists. Their business model is shifting from content provision to data analytics.

Another paper describes the situation as “Forced marriages and bastards”…

My question is : Will Francis & Taylor  even do more? The structure of PDFs allows including objects including Javascript. When examining “document.pdf” using pdf-parser  I could not find any javascript or my current IP in clear text.  I cannot exclude however that the chopped up IP is stamped somewhere in the document. So I will have try again at a later time point and redo a bitwise analysis. of the same PDF delivered on another day.

At least the DFG document says that organisations might argue that such software allows for the prosecution of users of shadow libraries. While I have doubts that this is legal, we already see targeted advertisement as I received this PDF from Wiley that included an Eppendorf ad.

Screenshot 20.1.2022

When I downloaded this document a second time using a different IP it was however identical. Blood/Elsevier only let’s you even download only after watching a small slideshow…

Screenshot 20.1.2022

 

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