All posts by admin

Allergy, Genetics

Lets not call it “gene-environment-interaction” anymore

(reminescence)
Gene-environment-interaction is a large bubble in complex disease research area with a label that is itself questionable. Genes do not interact with the environment (or only indirectly); the environment does not interact with genes (situations like epigenetic modification or induction of mutations are at least not meant here).
What is being meant by “gene-environment-interaction”, could be described as “genetically conditioned environmental influence” (GCEI) but not as GxE interaction… BTW is there any online list of GCEIs?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.03.2026
Allergy

Allergy prevention – the European guidelines

Here is an ad for our new paper on infant feeding and allergy prevention

… although all authorities agree that breast milk is the food of choice for infants, the evidence that it prevents allergic outcomes is contradictory, with different studies showing, protection, no effect and even increased risk…
… due to inconsistency of findings, there is no clear-cut evidence that the early use of cow’s milk hydrolysate exerts a preventive effect Continue reading Allergy prevention – the European guidelines →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.03.2026
Genetics

Born to run

There was a news item in the Jan issue of NGR

Born to run? A DNA test to identify future sports stars. The latest personal DNA test to hit the US market, from Atlas Sports Genetics in Colorado, promises to “determine if a child would be best at speed and power sports such as football or sprinting, or endurance sports such as running”

What a nonsense! It would be even deleterious if anybody would be influenced by any genetic test to decide on physical fitness.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.03.2026
Software

Justice for Alan Turing

Petitions #10 has the full details:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before … we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing … Continue reading Justice for Alan Turing →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.03.2026
Software

Thunderbird 3 – finally with tabs

As I could now get an update for my quicktext plugin, I finally switched to Thunderbird 3. I like the new clean interface and the immediate access to many folders.

screenshot

The only question that I have – is there any way to force the “new email window” into a tab?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.03.2026
Software

Internet neutrality

A new Science paper is worried about internet neutrality:

… Researchers who support “network neutrality” have become worried that the Internet may lose its innovative edge. They are concerned that control could be shifting from the edges of the Internet toward the service providers at the center, which would allow the providers to have “gatekeeper” capacity and would contradict the Internet’s “end-to-end” principle . This core tenet states that control over information flows should take place, to the extent possible, at the end points of the network…

While politicians are still debating on that issue, Continue reading Internet neutrality →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.03.2026