Category Archives: Software

Philosophy, Software

Research not re-search

Zotero is a browser plugin that I am currently exploring as it can recognize PUBMED or PLoS entries and knows about Endnote/Refer/BibX export in UTF-8 format. The Open Office 2.1 insert reference macro produces a runtime error here and importing 100 references freezes my computer for about 5 minutes. Nevertheless Zotero follows a promising concept and holds much premises for the future; just discovered that data are stored in “…\zotero\zotero.sqlite”, great! one of the best available databases. This is the reason why I will
Support Zotero with WordPress
yea, yea.

Addendum 1

As there is no central Zotero server, I wonder how I could access my local installation from different sites. The recommended portable Firefox is not really an universal solution. As with other open source databases, surrounding code of SQLITE is getting commercialized but there seems to be a free? sqlite server for download.

Addendum 2

This is a more philosophical remark on science publication: With a technical sound solution for online referencing I expect that science blogs will get more influence while printed papers will loose their importance. Post publication peer review (attached comments) is certainly as good as pre publication peer review (that kills many new ideas, always delays publication and costs a lot of money better spent for research). You can cite me for that idea ;-)

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Genetics, Software

Annotation of regulatory sequences is largely insufficient

Of a proven set of regulatory regions in zebrafish, computer programs find only between 29% and 61% of the true motifs. This does not come very much unexpected given the vast array of data shown by the Encode project. It even relates to the most basic question: What is a gene?

The more expert scientists become in molecular genetics, the less easy it is to be sure about what, if anything, a gene actually is.

iwith at least 5772 21U-RNAs? So – if I am sitting on the other side of the table when you are being examined don’t talk about junk DNA anymore, yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Genetics, Software

Anonymizing genetic data

I have currently a paper under submission at the EJHG that covers ethical issues of genetic testing. One of the key messages is that genetic data are not anonymous if having simply stripped of names.
A story in a completely different field confirms my fears. According to a NYT article

Last October, Netflix, the online movie rental service, announced that it would award $1 million to the first person or team who can devise a system that is 10 percent more accurate than the company’s current system for recommending movies that customers would like.

but things turned worse by an article of Narayanan und Shmatikov Continue reading Anonymizing genetic data →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Genetics, Software

Genome explained

1 Comment

You may want to read the full story at Public Rambling (fiction), the NYT article of Amy Harmon (fact) or the “Peepshow” article of Marco Evers (fact) and come back here afterwards.
The recent advances in genome sequencing (and typing) has left us with an enormous amount of data. Although technology has been available for a couple of years knowledge exploded only recently, where people now may decide to participate in a genome study or even have their genes tested on their own costs at DeCodeMe, 23andme, Navigenics or other personal genome service provider.
The main question is, what do these data really mean for us? Should we start an Open Source Project Genome Explained to collect the necessary annotation rules and provide a platform to apply these rules to local data? The data mode may be quite simple: Continue reading Genome explained →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Software

Personal digital right management

is a serious issue as personal data in the internet grow exponentially. I have just recently completed a paper on informed consent in medical studies but think now it will not go far enough. In accordance with recent proposals at the Internet Governance Forum of the United Nations we might need a system that allows a personal digital right management where a server runs a checksum or does a reverse lookup before transmitting personal data – otherwise data tranfer should be aborted. See more at the EU funded project PRIME – I fear that people will no more participate in our studies if we can´t guarantee them confidentiality.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Software

Move your PC

Did you ever move a windows system to another computer? Reinstalling Office and R libraries, ODBC data sources, paths, skins, shortcuts? All your emails and other data? It takes me 2 days … Fortunately there is some software that can help.
mover.png

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Software

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.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Allergy, Genetics, Software

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 →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Software

Henryk Goldszmit (Janusz Korczak)

moblog – When being in Warsaw for the first time I wanted to honour Henryk Goldszmit / Janusz Korczak by visiting the orphanage. This was a home for Jewish children in the Jaktorowska (former Krochmalna) Street. Henryk, born 1878 or 1879, a physician, writer and outstanding pedagogue was the director of the orphanage since 1913. Continue reading Henryk Goldszmit (Janusz Korczak) →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026
Software

The first slide please

Thousands and millions of talks start with the “first slide please” although there is no “slide” at all. This post, however, is more about my problems to manage the 300 slide shows here while making a new one. I found some nice software, that can re-index my old PP slides, and let me drag and drop to a new slide show. Costs for Slide Executive are ~79€. Is there any alternative? Continue reading The first slide please →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026