Francis Collins wrote in a commentary

A growing chorus of concern, from scientists and laypeople, contends that the complex system for ensuring the reproducibility of biomedical research is failing and is in need of restructuring. As leaders of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), we share this concern and here explore some of the significant interventions that we are planning.
Science has long been regarded as ‘self-correcting’, given that it is founded on the replication of earlier work. Over the long term, that principle remains true. In the shorter term, however, the checks and balances that once ensured scientific fidelity have been hobbled. This has compromised the ability of today’s researchers to reproduce others’ findings.
Let’s be clear: with rare exceptions, we have no evidence to suggest that irreproducibility is caused by scientific misconduct. In 2011, the Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services pursued only 12 such cases3. Even if this represents only a fraction of the actual problem, fraudulent papers are vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of thousands published each year in good faith.

I agree, that a major part of current research output is not reproduced anymore.

Furthermore,  there are doubts that science is self-correcting anymore even on the long-term run. Who will ever assemble 500K GWAS data 50.000 asthma patients and another 50.000 controls? Sharing data is the only solution to discover any false claims. Unfortunately, I could even not even get within an EU FP 5 project the genotype data from my own probands.

And let’s be clear: was is scientific misconduct? Just fraud or the long slippery slope?

According to the FDAAA, failure to comply with its provisions may result in civil penalties of as much as $10 000 per day.

Maybe the EU should implement a similar policy like the FDAAA??

Am Brenner heute morgen im Fernbus von Bozen nach München. Zwei österreichische Polizeibeamte gehen durch die Reihen und kontrollieren die Ausweise. Eine alte Frau ganz vorne in der ersten Reihe ganz entsetzt zu dem doch recht jovialen Polizisten: Aber wir sind doch alle Tiroler!

gesehen in Wien / Josefstadt Anfang April

At the recent bike festival Sattelfest here in Munich, I had the chance to try out an in frame electric motor Vivax Assist. The wheel was spinning slowly leading to a seat stay temperature difference of at least 5 degree Celsius compared to the top tube. There was also a clear gradient towards to the bottom bracket that should be visible with conventional thermography.
You could use the Seek Thermal Smartphone add ons for thermography (249€) while also Raspberry just released an updated camera sensor with no IR filter (23€). Unfortunately 1um wave length is way ahead from the 3um IR wavelength required for thermal imaging but there is also a 16×4 array sensor MLX90620 from Melexis that could work. Could anyone take some pictures of race bikes next week during the start of the Giro?

Chrome has a deeply hidden checkbox under rendering settings:

… is a form of encryption that allows computations to be carried out on ciphertext, thus generating an encrypted result which, when decrypted, matches the result of operations performed on the plaintext…

First publication: acm.org
Introduction: technologyreview.com
Details: en.wikipedia.org
Use in genomics: nature.com
R package: www.louisaslett.com

install.packages(c("Rcpp", "RcppParallel", "gmp")) 
install.packages("http://www.louisaslett.com/HomomorphicEncryption/dl/HomomorphicEncryption_0.2.tgz", repos=NULL)
library("HomomorphicEncryption")
p <- pars("FandV")
k <- keygen(p)
c1 <- enc(k$pk, c(42,34))
c2 <- enc(k$pk, c(7,5))
cres1 <- c1 + c2
cres2 <- c1 * c2
cres3 <- c1 %*% c2
dec(k$sk, cres1)
dec(k$sk, cres2)
dec(k$sk, cres3)

A new study – repeated by many newspapers – claims genes that rescue even in severe Mendelian disorder: cystic fibrosis, Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, familial dysautonomia, epidermolysis bullosa simplex, Pfeiffer syndrome, autoimmune polyendocrinopathy syndrome, acampomelic campomelic dysplasia and atelosteogenesis.

A comprehensive screen of 874 genes in 589,306 genomes led to the identification of 13 adults harboring mutations for 8 severe Mendelian conditions, with no reported clinical manifestation of the indicated disease.

But we know about the reliability of 23andme results

Finally! 23 and the FDA warning

who even mixed up samples in the past.

Searching for genes that makes your resilient to disease is interesting of course but not very new with more examples of cystic fibrosis survivors available. Any new proof by the 23andme study is missing so far as the authors were unable to recontact any of the 13 resilient indiviuduals for whatever reasons.

This still not a trivial task given the patchwork of code pieces floating around. When writing a route finder app I came up with the following solution

# html
<form id="myform" enctype="multipart/form-data" action="upload.php" method="POST" target="_parent">
  <input type="hidden" name="uuid" value="1"/>
  <input id="myfile" type="file" name="file"  style="display: none;"/>
  <input type="submit" value="send" style="display: none;"/>
</form>

# query javascript that starts the upload
$("input[id='myfile']").click();

# upload.php
# note the redirect with javascript not with php allows to pass state parameters
$uuid=htmlspecialchars($_POST["uuid"]);
$uf = basename($_FILES['file']['name']);
$fn='data/'.$uuid.'.gpx';
if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], $uf)) {
  rename($_FILES['file']['name'],$fn );
  file_put_contents ($fn , $txt, FILE_APPEND );
  echo '<script type="text/javascript">window.parent.location = "index.php";</script>';
}

The upload needs a quick refresh of the webpage (which could be avoided by posting to an hidden iframe and controlling response by an ajax call). The download doesn’t need a refresh:

# note the combined get and post commands
# don't know why this is necessary
$.ajax({
  data: "uuid="+fn,
  type: "post",
  url: "download.php",
  success: function() {
    window.location = 'download.php?uuid='+fn;
  }
});

There is a huge economical interest in bitcoins. And reading a bit more about the blockchain technology behind, I expect that scientific data will soon move towards the same path as soon as we drop Nature, Science and many more journals as gatekeepers

A block chain or blockchain is a permissionless distributed database based on a protocol that maintains a continuously growing list of data records hardened against tampering and revision, even by its operators. The initial and most widely known application of block chain technology is the public ledger of transactions for bitcoin,which has been the inspiration for similar implementations often known as altchains.

Although people are talking so much about releasing study data into the public domain – allowing reviewers to test central claims of a paper – there is no progress at all. Even being part of an EU funded collaborative study, I could never get the full data set.

Maybe it isn’t block chain alone – it may be also  cooperative storage cloud as in the following video example.

Added 31 Dec 2016: Blockchain started back in Jan 2009, occupies currently 105 GB and is distributed among 5400 nodes. Zündfunk (in German) has a nice feature about the blockchain referring mainly to the “Blockchain Revolution“, a new book by Don and Alex Tapscott.

Note to myself

* backup system data to SD card
* get new Honor 6 firmware (H60-L04,Android 5.1.1,EMUI 3.1,West Europe) from Huawei (mirror), copy it to the SD card and install it using the existing emui app
* restore system data
* get bootloader unlock code from Huawei and send it via open usb connection to phone (fastboot oem unlock ****************)
* install kingroot root app from playstore and root
* install droidwall