Today I watched the full length video of the Nobel prize ceremony last week. I had to think of Stefan Zweig saying in “Sternstunden der Menschlichkeit” (my own translation)
No artist is always an artist during 24 hours of daily life; everything that is important, ever lasting and successful, happens within a few and rare moments.
in other words Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” that we are always chasing, surfing the ultimate wave, yea, yea.
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
yea, yea.
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.
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 ;-)
Steven Pinker complains in this week Nature about the recent review of his book “Stuff of Thought“.
The fact that I (like most cognitive psychologists) have not signed up to these views is the only point of contact between my book and her review.
While Pinker could have got at least his opinion through, my comments on ORMDL3 remained stuck although I also claimed that the authors of this paper
free-associate to her own beliefs.
Yea, yea.
or in German “wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing’ – the recent PLoS blog is about Continue reading He who pays the piper calls the tune
Is there a working alternative to Endnote(R) or Reference Manager(R) for Open Office (noR)? The Bibliographic Project Homepage says that Continue reading bibliographic.openoffice.org.call
We always need replication in scientific studies. I therefore can´t understand why there is now such a fuzz in Nature as they
… took the unusual step of soliciting an independent verification of the paper during the process of peer review. This is the first time that Nature has obtained second-party replication ahead of publication.
this could have saved thousands of dollars if it would have been also applied to other studies before, yea, yea.
Dedicated to honor Professor Dr. Kurt Spohn, former director of the Department of Surgery, Städtische Klinikum Karlsruhe from 1960-1984 (where I worked from 1978-1985). Continue reading In honor of Professor Kurt Spohn (1919-1998)
The former nature genetics editor has been recently here in Munich giving a talk on Open Access. Chatting after her talk, she told us that on another occasion a guy was yelling at her “you are my nemesis” because she once declined to publish his paper. We laughed but there is some serious background – journals editors often decide on careers of young people.
From my recent experience Continue reading Barbara you are my nemesis
was in 1986 at the German Society of Endocrinology in Lübeck. I just scanned these old B&W films but can’t renember so many details. My results were only published under pseudonym as my clinical advisor (#3 from left) did not renember my name correctly when publishing it in Acta endocrinologica.
Only recently I came across the curiousexpeditions website with wonderful pictures. I have seen only a few of these libraries but the most remarkable was in Strahov, Prague – my picture is more than 20 years old.
I am currently reading Geert Mak’s “In Europa”, an excellent history of European history (in particular important for me as my high school education ended with the Weimar republic! I always wanted to ask my former teacher R. Grundel for the reasons but he died recently). This book finds and connects all the lost threads while being excellently written and easy to read. I am citing here from the notes of Harold Nicolson (p 137), a young British diplomat, who served as an advisor to Lloyd George, Clémenceau and Wilson: Continue reading Precisez, mon cher, precisez
A news focus in Science Magazine asks “Who’s the queen? Ask the genes” and shows new research that in some social insects nature, not nurture, determines whether offspring becomes worker or royalty.
I am not aware of any genetic studies of bosses but there might be also inherited personality traits in humans that favor a certain behavior.
Given my interest in a German gene-test law and the corresponding passivity of the German government, I am now proposing a “Biobank German Bundestag” that will allow me to go for gene variants that make our representatives different from us, the commonalty. I am sure that we will have a gene test law within 12 months …
Here is a rare occasion where you can identify “guests” and “ghosts” in a paper – a common practice. Continue reading Of guests and ghosts
From an email that I received today:
while open access has provided the scientific community with broader accessibility, little seems to have been done to make better use of the on-line content. We are trying to address this shortcoming through pubcasts. Pubcasts are 5-10 minute video clips which are integrated with the contents of the open access paper.
I agree with the observation that Open Access hasn´t been very innovative so far in technical terms. On the other hand I feel that my job is less about marketing than development. Are you climbing on this bandwagon? Continue reading Look here
Getting the right expression is not always easy if you are thinking in a different language. “Borrowing good English” as confessed now by a Turkish scientist is therefore understandable. Best regards to Mark Twain from an awful German language speaker.