“Normal vitamin D status despite of abundant sun exposure” would have been my title for a study in the JCEM this month. The authors, however, have choosen a different title: Continue reading News about vitamin D’ficiency
Do you wonder what QQ means? These are quantile – quantile plots that rank observed test statistics against expected test statistics. They allow a visual inspection of overdispersion due to population substructure or other sources of biases.
QQ plots have been recommended earlier, are now frequently used and available in the snpMatrix R package. Yea, yea.
Answering this question always takes me 30 seconds – looking for my mobile and doing some pen strokes OR starting Outlook on the laptop and clicking to the desired week (BTW Sunbird is still in version 0.5). Finally I found a solution that gives me a chance for a response within 3 seconds. Continue reading Can we meet on next Tuesday at 2 pm?
Allergy research continues to be one of the most active research fields. New studies show that that fullerenes may inhibit the allergic response
Human MC and peripheral blood basophils exhibited a significant inhibition of IgE dependent mediator release when preincubated with C60 fullerenes.
Continue reading Allergy – everything from fullerenes to cannabis
This is a German quote – frequently used in the context of alternative medicine – “who heals is right”.
The history of the qutotation is unclear; maybe it is a modification of the Latin “extra ecclesiam salus non est” .
In todays English “the doctor’s always right” (or “might is right”?)
Anyway it is utter nonsense as (1) a healer wants to be successful and not rightful (2) healing (at least on a few occasions) is no proof for the right treatment only fo the good outcome.
To evaluate software that is depends on an expired system date, you may want to use this batch that wraps around calling a program.
rundate.cmd.
|wj_rundate.cmd|
So far in epidemiology case – control studies are defined by an approach where
… the past histories of patients (the cases) suffering from the condition of interest are compared to the past histories of persons (the controls) who do not have the condition of interest, but who otherwise resemble the cases in such particulars as age and sex ….
I usually explain controls as non-cases in the same overall environment Continue reading When controls are no controls
I have written earlier about the hygiene hypothesis and my doubts that more or less “hygiene” influences the development of allergy (blog | paper). As we are further swamped with regular statements like Continue reading Believe me, it ‘s not hygiene
That seems a usual phenomenon now: I am reading an interesting article (at Edge), want to know more about an author (Fitch) and end at a storming website at University of Tübingen (recording new German words). German linguistics seem to merge day after day with English linguistics.
Nature web focus today reports an overview of the four year project Encode (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) that tried to identify all functional elements in 1% of the human genome. In addition, there are 28 companion papers in the June 2007 issue of Genome Research. The Nature issue includes a pull-out poster featuring a screenshot of the UCSC Genome Browser.
I am still in the process of reading all the GWA studies, so don´t expect any intelligent remarks. The main point seems to be that the majority of the human genome is being transcribed which is in sharp contrast to the textbooks (Strachan/Read IInd ed, p142 says that only ~3% of the nuclear genome is being transcribed). Using gene centric SNP panels in some of the GWAs therefore have not been such a good idea, yea, yea.
Here is a little scientific experiment for you – click wadsworth.com/psychology_d. My results:
(had to answer a phone call during the third trial ;-)
but fortunately there is a little help. Have you ever been wondered about the power-on time of your hard disk? It’s all there and this utility will reveal it: Continue reading So many threads to my data
Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD)
Finding Global Solutions for the Origins of Disease
see www.congresswest.com.au/dohad/program.html
Perth, Australia
190 years ago, today on 12th June 1817, Karl Drais presented to the world his running machine (“Laufrad”, “Velociped” – as he called it, “Draisine” – as others called it). As I believe it is the first bicycle (bi – cycle) and therefore one of the most advanced inventions ever made. It is an invention that I need 2 hours every day and an invention that could cure many of the problems discussed now at G8 conference in Heiligendamm. Continue reading Karl Drais