Category Archives: Software

Genetics, Software

Human language, DNA language?

A new paper in PLoS ONE argues that human languages may adapt like biological organisms. By doing a large-scale analysis of over 2,000 of the world’s languages the authors find striking relationships between the demographic properties of a language—such as its population and global spread—and the grammatical complexity of those languages. Languages with the most speakers (like English) were found to have far simpler grammars than languages spoken by few people and in circumscribed regions. This reminds me to bottlenecks in population history (and founder effects for certain DNA variants) while the authors describe this phenomenon as “Linguistic Niche”. A Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium of declension types?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 07.05.2026
Genetics, Software

PLINK: Bug or feature?

I am struggling now for 4 weeks with some unusual behaviour in PLINK that gives me different results with a trait of the alternate phenotype files either by calling that trait directly

plink –file mydata –tdt –pheno pheno2.txt –mpheno 1

or from a loop over all traits

plink –file mydata –tdt –pheno pheno2.txt –all-pheno

It seems that I am working with different numbers at both occasions – click to enlarge the log Continue reading PLINK: Bug or feature? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 07.05.2026
Software

SQLite and a graphical ER diagrammer for OS X

I am looking for some time for a MS-Acess like graphical interface addressing my large SQLite databases. Having tried out now more than dozen different packages, I found only one that fills my needs and even that only by 80% – RazorSQL.
Writing complex SQL queries is possible hwith an “autocomplete” function Continue reading SQLite and a graphical ER diagrammer for OS X →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 07.05.2026
Software

The art of a clean Mac OS X desktop

I spent considerable time this week as my MBA showed major quirks – the finder’s trashcan did not respond, clicking on the finder in the dock suddenly opened a second icon, while the finder crashed frequently. Running harddisk maintenance, correcting access rights, deleting several plists, experimenting with safe mode, even deleting PRAM and NVRAM – nothing helped until Continue reading The art of a clean Mac OS X desktop →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 07.05.2026
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 07.05.2026
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 07.05.2026
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 07.05.2026
Software

Crantastic

As I am currently in London, here comes only a quick link for all R users. It goes to crantastic, a community site for R packages where you can search for, review and tag CRAN packages.
screenshot
Yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 07.05.2026