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Dr. rer. photocop.

This is an old saying among medical students – you get your degree by copying a lot of papers.
When it comes to copy music I learned only recently that it makes a differences which software you are using to create a mp3 from your CD. Exact audio copy reads audio CDs almost perfectly while some other software does a jitter correction on scratched CDs. Differences can be really heard!
Back to photocopies – when I visited the largest medical library in Germany, the ZMB in Cologne, I was deeply impressed by all the students wearing headphones and sun glasses while copying pages hour by hour, an eldritch scenery, yea, yea.

Precisez, mon cher, precisez

I am currently reading Geert Mak’s “In Europa”, an excellent history of European history (in particular important for me as my high school education ended with the Weimar republic! I always wanted to ask my former teacher R. Grundel for the reasons but he died recently). This book finds and connects all the lost threads while being excellently written and easy to read. I am citing here from the notes of Harold Nicolson (p 137), a young British diplomat, who served as an advisor to Lloyd George, Clémenceau and Wilson: Continue reading Precisez, mon cher, precisez

Who’s the boss?

A news focus in Science Magazine asks “Who’s the queen? Ask the genes” and shows new research that in some social insects nature, not nurture, determines whether offspring becomes worker or royalty.
I am not aware of any genetic studies of bosses but there might be also inherited personality traits in humans that favor a certain behavior.
Given my interest in a German gene-test law and the corresponding passivity of the German government, I am now proposing a “Biobank German Bundestag” that will allow me to go for gene variants that make our representatives different from us, the commonalty. I am sure that we will have a gene test law within 12 months …

You may fool all the people some of the time

Nature news reports an unpublished meta analysis of Cesarean section and asthma risk. The authors interpret the outcome in the light of the hygiene hypothesis: unhygienic siblings, risky! Normal delivery, risky!! No early bullshit, risky!!!
Again, delivery mode may be a proxy for physician contact and iatrogenic causes. Having heard today also lectures that take the hygiene hypothesis for granted, the old adage comes to my mind:

You may fool all the people some of the time. You can even fool some of the people all of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

GPS for biological pathways

After running a dual core CPU for two weeks I have a list here of all transcripts that are associated with the “ORMDL3” SNP gene cluster. Making sense from this list is a difficult task even with dozen of dedicated websites.
To get an overview of what is available I would start Continue reading GPS for biological pathways

Do not stand between me and the sun

Diogenes, “the Cynic,” Greek philosopher, was born at Sinope about 412 BC, and died in 323 at Corinth, according to Diogenes Laërtius.
Do not stand between me and the sun – the vitamin/allergy story is getting confusing with the new JACI review. Continue reading Do not stand between me and the sun

Can you see these neat little fingers

mucosa3.png
… reaching into the intestinal lumen? They belong to dendritic cells and are depicted also in a nice review about immune responses to commensal and environmental microbes Continue reading Can you see these neat little fingers

Eat peanut to avoid peanut allergy

There is a new comment in the BMJ about a Lords committee report

a number of recent epidemiological studies had indicated that early peanut consumption in countries such as Israel was associated with a low incidence of peanut allergy in the population. These observations had led many academics to say that exposing a child’s immune system to peanut allergen at an early age might result in tolerance.

It seems that allergen avoidance versus sportively exposure is a never ending story – forth and back and back and forth – and largely irrelevant as being only about the second line of defense?

Look here

From an email that I received today:

while open access has provided the scientific community with broader accessibility, little seems to have been done to make better use of the on-line content. We are trying to address this shortcoming through pubcasts. Pubcasts are 5-10 minute video clips which are integrated with the contents of the open access paper.

I agree with the observation that Open Access hasn´t been very innovative so far in technical terms. On the other hand I feel that my job is less about marketing than development. Are you climbing on this bandwagon? Continue reading Look here