Allergy (or at least an associated trait) may have its roots somewhere in Africa – where helminth infections are frequent. A new Nature Immunol Review has an overview but I am quite disappointed. From the abstract Continue reading Wormy world
Having identified earlier the largest problem in epidemiology I trying now to identify the second most relevant problem. Hopefully I can do it by just one sentence: Continue reading The second largest problem in epidemiology
All4quotes and becontent have (mainly German) quotes. My all time favorites are
Aurelius Augustinus: Irren ist menschlich, aber aus Leidenschaft im Irrtum zu verharren, ist teuflisch.
August von Kotzebue: Menschen irren, aber nur große Menschen erkennen ihren Irrtum.
Christian Friedrich Hebbel: Die Menschheit läßt sich keinen Irrtum nehmen, der ihr nützt.
Friedrich von Schiller: Liegt der Irrtum nur erst, wie ein Grundstein, unter dem Boden, immer baut man darauf, nimmermehr kömmt er an den Tag.
Friedrich von Schiller: Hundertmal wer ich’s euch sagen und tausendmal: Irrtum ist Irrtum! Ob ihn der größte Mann, ob ihn der kleinste beging.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Nur der Betrug entehrt, der Irrtum nie.
Continue reading Errare humanum est
First monday has an interesting paper on the 100 most visited Wikipedia pages for the period of September 2006 to January 2007 (Wikipedia is the ninth most visited site in the U.S. with 43 million visitors). The crystal search link in the paper does not work but the table reports that science ranks at place 5 – not too bad.
Anglia English bookshop, München, Schellinstrasse
more desks … and 10 tips for keeping your desk clean…
I am still thinking about coping and resilience, and have read again Antonovsky‘s salutogenesis concept of a continuum between health and disease.
If we are not lucky to find any risk factor Continue reading Salutogenesis
The BMJ blog has a comment on “raising meteors” and other intelligent study acronyms. I will never understand how all this trials are being connected – maybe somebody could create a map like the famous Biochemical Pathway Maps by Roche?
The Lancet has a comprehensive review of bipolar disorders- finally I learned about the distinction between type I (includes mania) and type II (hypomania). BTW the author thinks that there is no sound evidence for the DSM-IV priority for mood changes; Kraepelin had no priority for mood, thinking or activity altering changes after all). Continue reading Hypomania
Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the Hanna-Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarism has dismissed its director as three quarter of the scientific staff now voted against him. This seems to be a quite unusual case that the scientific staff has such a strong voice – I can’t renember so many other cases in the hierarchical academic system.
Sorry, can’t tell you anything about user dungeons and don’t have any second life avatar (only various nicknames at various sites). Has anybody experience with science there?
Even universities are jumping in this field for example the UIC with Virtual Reality for Virtual Eternity. Continue reading My avatar
Curative medicine contributes only 10% to 40% to individual health (figures are depending on models and methodology according to a recent commentary in the Deutsche Ärzteblatt, for milestones check the BMJ) – a reason why I finally decided to become an epidemiologist. Continue reading Gary Taube’s limits and my interest in molecular epidemiology
.. another thoughtful essay by Sean Eddy in PLOS Computational Biology cites the NIH Roadmap Initiative
The scale and complexity of today’s biomedical research problems demand that scientists move beyond the confines of their individual disciplines and explore new organizational models for team science. Advances in molecular imaging, for example, require collaborations among diverse groups—radiologists, cell biologists, physicists, and computer programmers.
which sounds great like all interdisciplinary science but has also all the drawbacks (“to temper the wind to the shorn lamb” seems to be the English translation of the German “weakest ring of the chain”).
Progress is driven by new scientific questions, which demand new ways of thinking. You want to go where a question takes you, not where your training left you.
Sure, the game is more about interdisciplinary people than interdisciplinary teams
A motley crew of misfits
and not EU accountants drive progress.
(in US dollars) asks Pimm – the partial immortalization blog. A first response to this question -based on Google adsense revenues- is about $0.47/post. I think that prices depend on context – from negative balance (wasted time) to a new research direction (+tenure +$100,000) there is everything possible.
Sciencesque has noticed it first: T shirts at Biomed Central for sale. Do your really want that shirt?
The New Yorker has the background details
Stephen is Joyce’s only living descendant, and since the mid-nineteen-eighties he has effectively controlled the Joyce estate. Scholars must ask his permission to quote sizable passages or to reproduce manuscript pages from those works of Joyce’s that remain under copyright—including “Ulysses†and “Finnegans Wakeâ€â€”as well as from more than three thousand letters and several dozen unpublished manuscript fragments…
Over the years, the relationship between Stephen Joyce and the Joyceans has gone from awkwardly symbiotic to plainly dysfunctional…
and the Lessig blog the results of the current controversy
As reported at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, Shloss v. Estate of James Joyce has settled. As you can read in the settlement agreement, we got everything we were asking for, and more (the rights to republish the book). This is an important victory for a very strong soul, Carol Shloss, and for others in her field.
Public Rambling on copyright problems in science blogs