All posts by admin

Not so big data

Lesenswert https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2016/12/03/ich-habe-nur-gezeigt-dass-es-die-bombe-gibt/

Zwei Psychologen war in den 1980ern der Nachweis gelungen, dass jeder Charakterzug eines Menschen sich anhand von fünf Persönlichkeitsdimensionen messen lässt, den Big Five: Offenheit (Wie aufgeschlossen sind Sie gegenüber Neuem?), Gewissenhaftigkeit (Wie perfektionistisch sind Sie?), Extraversion (Wie gesellig sind Sie?), Verträglichkeit (Wie rücksichtsvoll und kooperativ sind Sie?) und Neurotizismus (Sind Sie leicht verletzlich?).
… Bald kann sein Modell anhand von zehn Facebooks-Likes eine Person besser einschätzen als ein durchschnittlicher Arbeitskollege. 70 Likes reichen, um die Menschenkenntnis eines Freundes zu überbieten, 150 um die der Eltern, mit 300 Likes kann die Maschine das Verhalten einer Person eindeutiger vorhersagen als deren Partner.

Backlink to http://www.michalkosinski.com and his seminal 2013 PNAS paper. Plus the online prediction.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Shorten your URL

Based on a tutorialzine.com article, I wrote an own URL shortener. Put everything in directory /s

.htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /s/index.php?$1 [last]

index.php

$links = parse_ini_file('links.ini');
$l=filter_var( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$l=preg_replace ('/\/s\//','',$l);
if($l!='' && array_key_exists($l, $links)){
  header('Location: ' . $links[$l]);
}
elseif (substr($l,0,4)=="http") {
  $sl = sprintf( '%04x%04X', mt_rand( 0, 0xffff ), mt_rand( 0,, 0xffff) );
  echo $_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]  . '/s/' . $sl;
  $out = $sl.' = '.$l;
  file_put_contents('links.ini', $out."\n", FILE_APPEND);
}

links.ini

Gel = "https://www.google.com/"

Bookmarklet ShortenURL

javascript: document.location = 'https://www.www.wjst.de/s/' + document.location.href

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Wissenschaft in der Filterblase?

Zuerstmal Entwarnung: die “Filterblase” ist keine Erfindung von Facebook, Zitat der SZ

Jeden Tag fällt Facebook also Urteile und bringt Menschen in der öffentlichen Debatte zum Schweigen. Für das eigentliche Sperren und Löschen hat Facebook Arvato, ein Subunternehmen von Bertelsmann, engagiert … Wäre Facebook ein Staat, wäre es eine Diktatur.

Trotzdem Entwarnung,  die Filterblase ist ein Mythos denn entscheidend ist mehr der Bekanntenkreis. Nach einem Science Artikel bekommt man ca acht Prozent weniger Inhalte von der anderen politischen Seite angezeigt, was eigentlich vernachlässigbar ist. Continue reading Wissenschaft in der Filterblase?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Mitarbeiter des Monats

Vor kurzem fiel mir ein Artikel in die Hand, bei dem ich wissen wollte was für ein Autor so etwas schreibt. Wurmerkrankungen als “old friends” zu bezeichnen, ist dumm und zynisch dazu, auch wenn es Tradition hat. Sorry an Frau I. S., “Forscherin des Monats” an einer Medizinischen Fakultät.

screen

Die Wirtschaftswoche erklärt was es bedeutet, wenn Firmen ein

Foto in der Hall of Fame zwischen Kantine und Herrenklo an die Wand hängen. So kürt beispielsweise die Fastfood-Kette McDonald’s den Mitarbeiter des Monats oder der Autobauer Daimler den Verbesserungsvorschlag des Monats … Das sind die Möhren, die man dort dem Esel Angestellten vor die Nase hält, damit er schneller läuft.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Rat race

While working on a review about vitamin D and the microbiome, I came across an interesting article Immune-Microbiota Interactions: Dysbiosis as a Global Health Issue

Recent research, however, demonstrated that a number of specific interventions can lead to (partial) primary prevention of allergy, especially of atopic dermatitis (AD) and food allergy (FA). Three types of primary prevention strategies have been successfully studied: early administration of bacterial products (most studies are on probiotics), early moisturizing in infants at risk for AD and early exposure to allergenic foods (peanut and egg).

I am not so much convinced of any successful probiotics research that prevents all kind of allergy (ref, ref, just to name two). The interesting point, however, is the new recommendation to early exposure of allergenic foods. Does earlier exposure mean less exposure under vitamin D suppression that shouldn’t start before week 6?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Ciguatera

I will have a paper in the next issue of the  MMW describing a case report of Ciguatera in Cienfuegos / Cuba. Seems to be a common phenomenon there but unfortunately there is nothing in the Cuba guide books so far.
The pathology is extremely interesting  – sodium channel activation by P-CTX. I only wonder why there are no therapeutic attempts with long-lasting class Ia aNa channel blockers  Chinidin, Procainamid, Ajmalin, Disopyramid, Propafenon, Prajmalin. Or valproate for CNS activity.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Imagick library for R

When working for an exhibition in 2017, I found a new R library that allows nearly every image modification you could think of.

install.packages("magick")
library(magick)
magick_config()

gives you

image_read(path, density = NULL, depth = NULL)
image_write(image, path = NULL, format = NULL, quality = NULL, flatten = FALSE)
image_display(image, animate = TRUE)
image_browse(image, browser = getOption("browser"))
image_append(image, stack = FALSE)
image_average(image)
image_coalesce(image)
image_flatten(image, operator = NULL)
image_fft(image)
image_map(image, map, dither = FALSE)
image_montage(image)
image_morph(image, frames)
image_mosaic(image, operator = NULL)
image_join(...)
image_info(image)
image_animate(image, fps = 10, loop = 0, dispose = c("background","previous", "none"))

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

“Doodle” calendars on mobile devices

It’s always difficult if you can’t see all calendar entries on the road. So I am setting up new dates at wjst.de/dudel, cut + paste the subscription link to the Nextcloud/Owncloud calendar web frontend.

screen

“Doodle” dates will then magically appear on all other devices.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Window of Opportunity

I very much liked the “Window of Opportunity” in the Nestle Nutrition Workshop Series 61, published by Karger in 2008. Page 180 has an interesting account of the hygiene hypothesis:

Dr. Bier: … The other is the issue of the hygiene hypothesis, the cleaner environment. We are just in a somewhat less dirty environment, we are not in a clean environment, and that is the problem I have with that particular approach.

So, I am not alone

Dr. Barker:… I am guilty of inventing the term “hygiene hypothesis” as an explanation of the epidemic of appendicitis that followed the introduction of running hot water into housing of Western countries.

According to Sozanska et al. the hygiene hypothesis has more fathers

In 1970, Peter Preston1 posed the following question: ‘‘Is the atopic syndrome a consequence of good hygiene?’’ If this was the case, he argued that ‘‘the manifestations of atopy . would have appeared in given areas only after standards of hygiene . had been raised to high levels.‘‘

while David Strachan calls  it a misnomer since I know him. The last occasion was in the BMJ in August 2014

As the authors correctly point out, the term “hygiene hypothesis”, which is often attributed to my BMJ 1989 paper, is actually shorthand for a line of argument established much earlier. When presenting my own work, I regularly remind my audience that the ideas presented in the BMJ 1989 paper were inspired by David Barker’s publications on acute appendicitis a year or two before. However, as the authors acknowledge, Barker’s “hygiene hypothesis for appendicitis” was in turn influenced by earlier thinking.
I also recount that the inclusion of “hygiene” in the title of my paper (along with “hay fever” and “household size”) owed more to an alliterative tendency than to my aspiration to claim a new scientific paradigm. What interested me over the subsequent years was how, after initial disdain on grounds of implausibility, the immunological community enthusiastically endorsed the concept of the “hygiene hypothesis” as soon as they had proposed a cellular mechanism to explain it!
[…]
Indeed, the frustration over 25 years of epidemiological and immunological investigation is that so little progress has been made in identifying the biologically relevant exposures which “explain” the frequently replicated epidemiological observations linking allergic sensitisation and atopic disease (inversely) to family size and to “unhygienic” environments such as farming, separately and in combination…

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Low serum vitamin D – reverse causation or true risk factor?

Even with thousands of studies, one of the most basic questions in vitamin D research is being unanswered. Low serum 25(OH)D3 – is it reverse causation or a true risk factor? As plasma 25(OH)D3 can be easily determined, it became the standard measurement for vitamin D supply. Unfortunately numerous other factors – season, genetics, sex, age, race – all influence serum 25(OH)D3 levels.

Then in 2011 David Reid et al. published a paper of 25(OH)Dfollowing up changes during acute inflammatory response after knee surgery. In essence, plasma concentrations of 25(OH)D decreased after an inflammatory insult and are not a reliable measure of 25(OH)D status in subjects with a significant systemic inflammatory response. This observation is being confirmed in the meantime by 2 further studies (Barker 2012 and Waldron 2013). I think this is a clear result now.

I have never been convinced that Mendelian randomization will help here at all – as done in earlier studies. These are clearly situations where Mendelian randomization does not work as shown  by Smith and Ebrahim back in 2004

—failure to establish reliable genotype (seldom)
—intermediate phenotype genotype—disease associations (frequent)
—confounding of genotype—intermediate phenotype—disease associations (unclear)
—horizontal pleiotropy and multi-functional genes (frequent)
—canalization and developmental compensation (unclear, but expected to be frequent)
—Lack of suitable polymorphisms for studying modifiable exposures of interest (no more a problem)

So, 25(OH)D3 is more an acute phase indicator where low levels in inflammatory diseases is effect not a cause but an effect. A recent review concludes therefore

Reversed causality is described as a possible factor interfering with the correct assessment of the Vit D status. It is concluded that further widespread fortification of foods and stimulation of supplement use should be reconsidered.

It is, however, unclear if low 25(OH)D levels is due to an increased demand (as the vitamin D lobby argues), a shift in free/bioavailable metabolite by hemodilution, binding protein capacity (what I am expecting) or just some unknown further factors.

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026

Die Liebe ist stärker als der Hass

Ein einprägsames Bild. Lady Gaga, übernächtigt, am Aussenspiegel eines Trucks hängend, mit einem Schild in der Hand “Love trumps hate”.
Was das Wahlergebnis mit Wissenschaft zu tun hat? Vielleicht niedrigere Studiengebühren? Vielleicht mehr Geld für Penn State? Sicher erstmal Stundentendemos an der Westküste.
Sind wir nun fehl “am Platz in unserer Social-Media-Zerrwelt, in der bildungsferne Reality-Stars mehr Macht haben als Intellektuelle”? Wo Populismus mehr Überzeugungskraft als gute Argumente?
Wir werden abwarten müssen.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 25.03.2026