Category Archives: Software

Software

What is the best logistic model?

I have never heard a formal lecture answering this question even after many years in epidemiology. It should be parsimonious of course to avoid too many missings but seems largely a subjective approach to keep or drop a variable. It was therefore quite helpful to find now an online lecture that exemplifies a sound approach – check out unc.edu/courses/2006spring. I already used anova to compare models (at least since my move from SAS to R) while using AIC is something that I am adding now to my toolbox. Continue reading What is the best logistic model? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Software

Mac OS X running Sigmaplot

screenshotI haven’t found any replacement yet for Sigmaplot that is offered only as a native Windows application. Even buying a copy of Aabel didn’t bring me back the fast and intuitive plotting capabilities. Running Sigmaplot under Parallels is a pain using too much of the system ressources while Crossover failed to start up even after following these step-by-step instructions. Finally, with Crossover 8, it seems that a win98 bottle can run Sigmaplot 9!

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Philosophy, Software

Science flies

Still in the spirit of the last few posts, here comes something exciting: sciflies.org aims at

We look forward to receiving your application for funding of initial proof-of-concept STEM research projects in the range of $5,000 to $12,000. To participate in this unique online grassroots-funded opportunity, please complete the questionnaire about your project, including details of its possible outcome/impact and profiles of the researchers or research team.

but, sorry, I have to warn you – the website does NOT save your project – it took me 20 minutes to figure that out.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Genetics, Philosophy, Software

Mirror neurons and science careers

Spiegel online has an excellent report about mirror neurons, empathy, social background and research (taking up a theme in the ZEIT 2003)

“In unserer Kultur sind am erfolgreichsten die”, sagt Gruen, “die am meisten von ihren Gefühlen, von der Fähigkeit zum Mitgefühl abgeschnitten sind.”

Continue reading Mirror neurons and science careers →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Allergy, Genetics, Software

Why just C11orf30?

I have already seen this data in Washington and even talked to one of the two first authors (pun!) at the airport – the first genomewide scan for atopic dermatitis is now being online at the nature genetics website. The overall effects are disppointing small – my quick plot gives the cumulative (sic!) negative log p values.

screenshot
Continue reading Why just C11orf30? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Allergy, Joke, Software

Clickstreams

An American team believes to describe science activity by web clicks on journal pages.

Over the course of 2007 and 2008, we collected nearly 1 billion user interactions recorded by the scholarly web portals of some of the most significant publishers, aggregators and institutional consortia.

with the conclusion Continue reading Clickstreams →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Genetics, Philosophy, Software

A better search engine for science?

New rumors say about Wolfram alpha

In this respect it is vastly smarter than (and different from) Google. Google simply retrieves documents based on keyword searches. Google doesn’t understand the question or the answer, and doesn’t compute answers based on models of various fields of human knowledge.
…
or those who are more scientifically inclined, Stephen showed me many interesting examples — for example, Wolfram Alpha was able to solve novel numeric sequencing problems, calculus problems, and could answer questions about the human genome too.

I have applied for a test account as I am interested in methods how to deal with genomic and all the other pentabyte of data — we urgently need a paradigm shift as single genome prices will go down to 1000 €. Continue reading A better search engine for science? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Allergy, Genetics, Software

So many advertisers

It’s a pleasant experience to write something that is being translated afterwards into so many languages afterwards. It is, however, irritating that this dissemination is irrespective of what I (and all second and third hand journalists and translators) understand of this curious world.

screenshot1-4

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Software

Pen scan it

I always wondered why it is not possible to scan just a few sentences from a book. As there are some products on the market, I ordered such an IrisPen. It took only 15 minutes to convince me, that this device is largely useless – a cheap plastic pen with a flimpsy contact but rather rigid USB cable.
screenshot-2
What I even did not consider that syllabicated words at the end of every line can not be recognized by any OCR. So scanned words will require a lot of editing – while it may be better to invest into a typing course using all your fingers, yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026
Software

iWork Pages now supports Endnote X2

Although many journalists have been disappointed from the last MacWorld keynote, there are some good news for scientists who like the clean writing style in Pages as it supports now also MathType and EndNote (so far I am using Lyx with BibTex as Zotero and NeoOffice were a dead end). So I will have to finish my next paper within the 30 day trial period which creates some time pressure, yea, yea.

Addendum

You need an immediate patch otherwise the system is largely unusuable.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 19.09.2026