LLPOH Digital Archives: May 2003
Saturday, May 31, 2003
The Googlish Page Rank Discrepancy Chart doesn't look like it exists anymore ... so I go to its googlecache where I find the following:
What is googlish? Googlish is the extension of the concept of the infinite to the realm of the finite. We begin our investigations with a look at the most obviously googlish organization online -- Google itself.The Googlish Page Rank Discrepancy Chart
A table of site urls returned by Google when querying the string 'http' (for the top sites in raw order of PageRank). These are not represented commensurately in the Google Directory, largely because the Directory (and the Open Directory Project RDF file from which it is generated) hasn't been updated in many months. These are the first 970+ listings as of January 12, 2003. The Directory was simultaneously polled for corresponding Page Rank values. Googlish toolbar automation was not used; merely an API key and a simple script. These listings show that over 1/3 [each grey block site - a few errors are mine] of the 1000 highest Page Rank sites did not have listed values in the Directory, and another 1/3 had Page Rank values that had soared since the previous Directory update, around 9/2002.
I don't know if understand all of this ... but I know I need to figure it out, mainly because I am reading this microdot story Adwords Taught Me How to Get Better Listings in Google that says:
If you use a phrase that shows you thousands of times, you also need to get at a minimum click-through-rate to stay there. That's right, if you do not get a reasonable click through rate (CTR) Google will disable your advertisement. The idea in Adwords is to choose keyphrases that have low traffic but the likelihood of someone clicking your ad because it is highly relevant is the preferred mode of operation.
....On the free listings side of the page, the first entry gets 95% of the click-throughs while the advertisements get 5% of the click-throughs. It varies, but that is a good general rule of thumb.
Figby says:
Google becoming an OS? This article at Microdoc [[this is the MICRODOC item In general terms, an operating system is a management system. The operating system that runs your computer manages the demands that each of the different programs you are running at the same time, handles your filing system, hard drives, printers and more. Applying the concept of "operating system" to Google, a Knowledge Operating System (KOS) manages your knowledge activity on the Internet. Google, as a KOS, manages your requests for information, indexes your web pages, responds to applications you may be running on your computer that interface to it via the Google APIs, and integrates knowledge and information from millions of computers into a single large managed database.]] has been making the rounds. It suggests that Google is becoming some kind of "Knowledge Operating System". I don't think so. Maybe the Web itself is becoming something of a meta-operating system, but that would make Google an application launcher at best. Quite useful - essential in fact - but easily replaceable.O.K. so there's a lot to sort out ... I'll have to leave if for later ... in the meanwhile ... What's up with the NoCat?
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:28 PM CST [Link]
Friday, May 30, 2003
John Mauldin on The Muddle Through Economy, The American Growth Machine, the Consumption Wars, and more yup, Joh is continuing to develop and explaing some pretty interesting point over at investorsinsight. re The Muddle Through Economy, I see the Muddle Through thread running through many activities and institutions I encounter. Goals are not well defined, effort is not intense, pride is suffering, and stupid mistakes are acceptable ... I don't like it! Somewhere I was reading the Chinese have a plan to land on the moon in the next decade and claim it all for themselves.
Re consumption wars he says:
The US Consumer Begins to Withdraw from the Consumption WarsIt is simply that the spending growth that has come from the largest part of the population, the Baby Boomers, will slow down, and that gradual effect will work its way through the economy. This natural brake upon the economy will start slowly and last for years.
Read his article(s). IT WILL TAKE ALL OF US TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO CHANGE OUR FINANCIAL PARADIGMS; THE BELL IS RINGING!
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:29 PM CST [Link]
Bloglords, The Volokh Conspiracy, Blogging, powers, and alliances: Eugene Volokh comments on "Hugh Hewitt, in his 10 am and 8:10 am posts"
[8:10 am post:] . . . There are four major powers in the blogosphere of 5/29/03: Instapundit.com AndrewSullivan.com, Kausfiles.com and Volokh.com. A dozen others are in the second tier of allies of the Big Four, including KenLayne.com, MattWelch.com and Virginia Postrel. Dozens of others aspire to ally status, much as various powers hoped to be proclaimed "Friend of the Roman People" during the late Roman Republic.
But the blogosphere is rapidly changing, and new powers may be rising. I refer to Blog Alliances.
The first Blog Alliance grew in the wilds of Minnesota, and consists of the Northern Alliance of Blogs --Powerline, Lileks, FratersLibertas, ShotintheDark, and SCSU-Scholars. The Alliance actually executed a combined blog-exercise Wednesday --on the subject of John Carroll's mea culpa memo-- and opened my eyes to the power of synchronized blogging.
l've been refering to bloglords and the blogistocracy in earlier posts. All of this is really to be expected. The question is who are the obvious bloglords or powers, who'se the blogpope that annoints the blogroyalty ... is it/are they the blogcounters? The print and standard mass media that confer status by devoting real ink or RF transmit time? Are they the metalisters (blogdex, blogosphere, blogshares, ...)? Volokh Conspiracy is an alliance already with multiposters. I haven't studied this carefully, but I wonder if the blogpowers are equal in power (Volokh claims not, based on readership)? I also wonder about convergence ... is it appropriate for the powers to converge, or should there be some healthy debate? more later ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:55 PM CST [Link]
Plato founds the Academy - first systematic philosopher - writes extensivey. Noted for THE REPUBLIC ... its good to reming ourselves of Plato's Academy, Plato's Republic, and the Allegory of the Cave. Where are the modern Platoes, the new Beacons of Light and Enlightenment?
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 12:02 PM CST [Link]
Body Sculpting appears to be quite popular ... guess the Greeks and Romans weren't the only ones into extreme fitness.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 10:58 AM CST [Link]
Pericles rises to leadership of Athens. --- Bill "the pen" Shakespeare really enjoyed that ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:46 AM CST [Link]
BoingBoing - GoingGoing ... Today's BoingBoing links to some interesting listings ... "Aircraft Carrier for sale. $4.5 million. Excellent provenance." and a Sputnik (for $29,500) ... I guess if you're patient, just about anything will show up in some bazaar. If you can swing it, those could make some pretty snazzy father's day gifts ;-).
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:14 AM CST [Link]
Ancient Athens and Modern America ....Ancient Athens had its share of wars. Athens was the gem of progress an ancient enlightenment ... yet ... are there lessons there for us to learn? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:47 AM CST [Link]
508 B.C. - Clisthenes invents Democracy -- Athenian style Democracy that is -- the full story: Clisthenes divides Attica into demes to form tribal organizations that formed Athen's army and elected its government. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:28 AM CST [Link]
Thursday, May 29, 2003
Prime Radiant Timelines 2003 Edition additions now under way.
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:35 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
other circles concentrate on cash flow ... I wonder who's really ahead in the end? Or who's aend in the head?
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:33 PM CST [Link]
In some circles all you need to know are Tantra, and Dzogchen.
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:13 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Rainmaking and Law Firm Marketing ... Marketing the Law Firm: Business Development Techniques (Law Office Management Series) by Sally J. Schmidt seems to be the standard ... and they keep talking about rainmakers ... and rainmaking. Personally, I like sunshine ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:23 PM CST [Link]
Looking for Perfect eyebrows? from Nature Science Update review of Roth, J.M. & Metzinger, S.E. Quantifying the arch position of the female eyebrow. Archives of facial plastic surgery, 5, 235 - 239, (2003).
A model eyebrow hits its zenith 98% along the eye's width, towards the side of the face, ..., compared with 93% of the way over in other women. Both are shifted from the 75-80% position favoured in the 1970s, which aligns with the edge of the iris. "We've seen an evolution in our idea of beauty," Metzinger says.
Well, now we know the highbrow secrets of eyebrows [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:42 PM CST [Link]
According to today's SCI-BYTE Functional organization of the yeast proteome by systematic analysis of protein complexes - IS HOT! {Anne-Claude Gavin and 37 others, Nature, 415(6868): 141-7, 10 January 2002.] What does this mean? The abstract suggests "Comparison of yeast and human complexes showed that conservation across species extends from single proteins to their molecular environment. Our analysis provides an outline of the eukaryotic proteome as a network of protein complexes at a level of organization beyond binary interactions. This higher-order map contains fundamental biological information and offers the context for a more reasoned and informed approach to drug discovery"
O.K.
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:20 PM CST [Link]
Prions drive meiosis in fungi or, if you want the full title Sexual transmission of the [Het-s] prion leads to meiotic drive in Podospora anserina (via PNAS). What does this really mean? Does 'transmissible spongiform encephalopathy' ring a bell? IF that's too techie, what about Mad Cow and Chronic Wasting? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:01 PM CST [Link]
Investopedia is sure worth keeping a tab on ... they remind us that "Earnings means profit". Period. All else is imaginary ... they explain things like Currency Board (a currency board (CBR) is a country's monetary authority that issues notes and coins). They argue "With a currency board, a country's monetary policy is not influenced by the monetary authority's decisions (as is practice in a central banking system) but is determined by supply and demand." ... I haven't figured out what their underlying philosophy is (if they have one), but their site is neat!
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:45 PM CST [Link]
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making announces article markup language for electrocardiogram data acquisition and analysis (ecgML) [Haiying Wang , Francisco Azuaje , Benjamin Jung and Norman Black]. The article argues "minimum set of information for the representation and storage of electrocardiogram signals has been synthesized from existing recommendations. This specification is encoded into an XML-vocabulary. The model may aid in a flexible exchange and analysis of electrocardiogram information." Interesting ... you never know where a good markup language might lead you ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:05 PM CST [Link]
According to the Scientist Blood oxygen-level depletion (BOLD) fMRI tracks changes in neural activity by measuring the decrease in deoxyhemoglobin. Interesting ... the analysis also states this can be done to ... a scale finer than current standard methods ... GREAT ... I am looking for the results. Perhaps these can contribute to elucidating and improving Brain Theory [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:53 PM CST [Link]
Monday, May 26, 2003
Thomas Jefferson - American Sphinx? Joseph J. Ellis authored American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. TJ did some amazing things aside from being the third president ... I like Publishers Weekly's characterization "Jefferson saw the American Revolution as the opening shot in a global struggle destined to sweep over the world". IT sure looks like the struggle is continuing! I didn't know he wrote Jefferson's Bible; where TJ, using a razor, cut out passages directly attributed to J, and organized them in a temporal flow. "From Ellis we learn that Jefferson sang incessantly under his breath; that he delivered only two public speeches in eight years as president, while spending ten hours a day at his writing desk". TJ is certainly fascinating .... I haven't gotten to the Templar thing yet.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 11:04 PM CST [Link]
If you like conspiracy theories ...Alan Butlers and Stephen Dafoe's Warriors and the Bankers: A History of the Knights Templar might be just right for you. Another topic to explore is Rennes-Le-Chateau [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:18 PM CST [Link]
Michael Baigent : DEAD SEA SCROLLS, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Temple and Lodge It would appear that Michael has been quite active ... (beyond the earlier post) does anyone know more about this?
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:53 PM CST [Link]
The Holy Grail, there's more to it then Monty Python As the previous post suggests, there's more here than meets the eye. There's the entire Jesus' lineage / bloodline issue ... and Arthurian legends ... and who knows what ...
a recent review states " Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh, authors of The Messianic Legacy, spent over 10 years on their own kind of quest for the Holy Grail, into the secretive history of early France. What they found, researched with the tenacity and attention to detail that befits any great quest, is a tangled and intricate story of politics and faith that reads like a mystery novel. It is the story of the Knights Templar, and a behind-the-scenes society called the Prieure de Sion, and its involvement in reinstating descendants of the Merovingian bloodline into political power. Why? The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail assert that their explorations into early history ultimately reveal that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry and father children whose bloodline continues today."
The latter is hard to accept ... but too many leaders' names have been popping up with a Holy Grail / Knights Templar connection ... so what's the truth? Where there's smoke, there must be something generating it ... the questions are what and why? Yet more mysteries to return to.
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:41 PM CST [Link]
Merovingian? Beyond the Matrix Reloaded ... there's lots more to Merovingians. My first close encounter (not of the third kind) with Merovingians was in the Matrix Reloaded. Googling, one finds Merovingian Order of the Holy Grail-1787 where the starting paragraphs read:
In 1787 our seperate Orders merged into one body to be governed by a Grand Master and a High Council. This body is called The United Orders of the American Rite-1787.
The principle Order of this esoteric body is the Order of the Holy Grail, founded by Joseph of Arimathea in 54AD at Rheddae (Rennes le Chateau) France. This order exists in an unbroken lineage of succession from that time.
Its purpose is to preserve, protect and Quest for the Holy Grail. Within this order is the Merovingian Gnostic Church, which contains the Templar High Priesthood which performs the Grail Rites.
The protectorate of the Merovingian families and lineage is the Knights Templar-Strict Observance, whose esoteric system is contained in the Order of Illuminati, founded in 1776.
The primary teachings of the O.H.G. is contained in the Merovingian Bible which was translated by Thomas Jefferson, himself a Grand Master of the Strict Observance-Knights Templar. The Merovingian Bible, also called the Book of the Holy Grail contains the doctrine of the Hidden Church ie. Merovingian Gnostic Church.
This sacred text was imparted to Joseph of Arimathea by the Neutral Angels who have dominion over the Holy Grail. Its doctrine is critical to the Grail Quest as well as understanding the war between good and evil which is a critical part of the purpose of the Quest for the Holy Grail.
I don't know what to make of this yet as the text above attributes pretty significant role in this to Thomas Jefferson. I'll have to investigate this and report later ... all very interesting ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:16 PM CST [Link]
First Amemdment First: Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What's on the bookshelves?
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:44 PM CST [Link]
Toronto on SARS List Again ... Epidemiologists' nightmare? May 26 — The World Health Organization today reinstated Toronto to its list of places where severe acute respiratory syndrome is spreading, after an announcement that there is a fresh outbreak of the disease. [via NY Times] ... this reverses the earlier trends.
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:40 PM CST [Link]
7.0 Richter Earthquake Hits Northeast Japan We assume that the earthquake occurred due to the sliding down of the Pacific Plate," the head of Japan's Meteorological Agency's earthquake monitoring section, Noritake Nishibe, told reporters. [via the New York Times].
Pretty scary if you ask me, this "sliding down of the Pacific Plate" ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:22 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, May 25, 2003
One Day in the News and Plant Sciences added. Mesophase Experiment 525 completed.
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:26 PM CST [Link]
From Acthar, Actinomycosis, and Akathisia, to Skeletal abnormalities, Skin dysplasia, and Wrinkly skin syndrome ... all in one place ... so what's next?
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:50 PM CST [Link]
Synthetic Securitization - Does it add to happiness? I don't know ... but ... the coming title Collateralized Debt Obligations and Structured Finance: New Developments in Cash and Synthetic Securitization, by Janet M. Tavakoli, might help answer this question .... (Credit Derivatives may be important too) ....
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 09:50 AM CST [Link]
Saturday, May 24, 2003
hypergenetics ... the rest of the story. Yes, I made-up the term hypergenetic just a few minutes ago ... but it would appear others have mad up this term as well. It appears in "Geochemistry of Skarn and Ore Formation in Dolomites" and in the Merck Manuals (hypergenesis - excessive development, hypertropy, redundancy). I was refereing to Deep Genetics ... Sort of Like Deep Time ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 04:03 PM CST [Link]
Mendelian Inheritance in Man might be interesting ... again ... if you are interested in things other than peas (or pea soup).
Posted by E Moritz @ 03:41 PM CST [Link]
From rodent models to human obesity -- Inhibition of hypothalamic carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 decreases food intake and glucose production-- Pursuit of Happiness? I've never seen any good looking rodent models on the fashion runway ... actually this is what happens when you concatenate (Latin concatenatus) Tudor Toma's note Central inhibition of fatty acid oxidation may be sufficient to suppress food intake . Toma reports on Silvana Obici et al's finding that "inhibition of hypothalamic carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 (CPT1) decreases food intake and glucose production" (Nature Medicine, DOI:10.1038/nm873, May 18, 2003).
Toma explains: "CPT1 controls the import of long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondria, where they are oxidized. Using rats, Obici et al. selectively decreased the activity of CPT1 by administering a ribozyme-containing plasmid designed to decrease the expression of CPT1 or by injecting CPT1 inhibitors into the third cerebral ventricle. They observed that after either genetic or biochemical inhibition of hypothalamic CPT1, the food intake of these animals and endogenous glucose production diminished." Well, I would like to know which ... IF its hypergenetic (I just made that up) ... we might all have a good excuse. If its biochemical we might have a bad excuse ... In any case Toma also provides this reference: "J.G. Mercer et al., Hypothalamic neuropeptide mechanisms for regulating energy balance: from rodent models to human obesity, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 25:101-116, March 2001." ... Thanks Toma ...
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 03:22 PM CST [Link]
Week Ending May 20, 2003 Google Zeitgeist Top 10 Gaining Queries: matrix reloaded, boston globe, brigitte bardot, judging amy, fizzer, xbox, trinity, buffy, smallville,big brother australia. Top 10 Declining Queries: mothers day, the bachelor, survivor, muttertag, jessica morasca, dia de la madre, hazing, juventus, animatrix, flowers.
By the way who is jessica morasca?Posted by E Moritz @ 02:54 PM CST [Link]
Relocated .... The Volokh Conspiracy Eugene says ... "We've moved! We are now here at volokh.com -- we're still using blogger to post things, but we're just not hosted on blogspot any more. We hope that the result will be much quicker access for our readers".
That's great ... the Blogspot server was starting to be the molasses server ... it serves/ed its purposes for many ... but when you become a bloglord ... its time to get your own fiefdom ;-0
Posted by E Moritz @ 01:26 PM CST [Link]
SARS is CAT STUFF According to recent stories, civet cats are responsible ...
"Scientists at a Hong Kong university have isolated the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in civet cats .... Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the World Health Organisation Western Pacific regional office, said: "If these findings are true, then this is a significant breakthough. First of all, it confirms the theory that the virus has crossed the species barrier. Secondly, it will help scientists work on an effective diagnostic test." "
The fact monster says "civet or civet cat,any of a large group of mostly nocturnal mammals of the Old World family Viverridae (civet family), which also includes the mongoose. Civets are not true cats, but the civet family is related to the cat family (Felidae). Most civets have catlike bodies, long tails, and weasellike faces."
In a totally unrelated tangent ....Andrea Rinaldi (The Scientist Daily News story) reports "Fkbp6 is essential for chromosome pairing during meiosis and for male fertility ....During meiosis, homologous chromosomes pair to form bivalents, enabling crossing-over—the physical exchange of chromatid segments. This crucial step requires proper alignment and synapsis of chromosomal pairs, a task mediated by the synaptonemal complex (SC). ... In the May 23 Science, Michael Crackower and colleagues at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences report that a newly identified protein component of the SC, Fkbp6, is also critical for male fertility in mice and rats (Science, 300:1291-1295, May 23, 2003).
Crackower et al. used immunochemical techniques to localize Fkbp6 in mice and detected protein expression within the SC of spermatocytes, associated with meiotic chromosome cores and regions of homologous chromosome synapsis. Deletion of the Fkbp6 gene caused no abnormalities other than complete sterility in male mice, whereas females were completely normal. Fkbp6-lacking males showed reduced testes size and increased apoptosis in spermatocytes, with a complete block in spermatogenesis. Loss of Fkbp6 resulted in gross meiotic defects, such as abnormal pairing and misalignments among homologous chromosomes. Fkbp6 was shown to colocalize with Scp1, another SC-associated protein, at the regions of chromosome synapses, suggesting that the two proteins may functionally interact. They also found that deletion of exon 8 of the Fkbp6 gene was the cause of sterility in a rat model (as/as) of male infertility, providing further evidence of the importance of the gene in controlling male gametogenesis."
I don't know how and if this might be related to Civet Cats ... but this may be a way of understanding and perhaps controlling animal SARS vectors ....
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 12:51 PM CST [Link]
ROBODOMINANCE ... the times they are a changin' ... do you want to ROOMBA?
This is what the iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac Robotic Vacuum can do for you:
* Automatically cleans your floors while you enjoy life
* Safely and quietly sweeps and vacuums hard wood, carpet, and tile floors
* Great on pet hair and all kinds of dirt and debris
* Rechargable battery and charger included along with Virtual Wall and Smart Sensors to keep Roomba cleaning where you want it.The next thing you you know ... ROOMBA will want to drive the family car and ask you to take the trash out ... (and you thought the Matrix was scary?)
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:48 AM CST [Link]
In following up on LIPIDS STUFF ... The Lipid Handbook seemed it might be usefull. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:35 AM CST [Link]
STUFF? What's this STUFF? I often here the words STUFF and THEY ... So what are THEY doing with this STUFF? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:19 AM CST [Link]
Thursday, May 22, 2003
brane new world? I guess ... if Joe Polchinski is right ... according to the L. A. Times, "In the last few years, a mathematically rigorous version of Plato's 2,000-year-old thought experiment has been refashioning the way physicists think about everything from subatomic particles to the Big Bang. The universe we see, according to this scenario, is stuck on a thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos. And our membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, wiggle, connect and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions. Physicists call this new frontier the "brane world." "
Apparently a "Ekpyrotic Universe," movement is taking hold -- its one that might "blow one of the basic tenets of the Big Bang to smithereens." -- one where there are parallel branes and five dimensions.
the story also refers to Justin Khoury, Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt, and Neil Turok's explanation that "The building blocks of the Ekpyrotic theory are derived from Superstring theory. Superstring theory requires extra dimensions for mathematical consistency. In most formulations, 10 dimensions are required. In the mid 1990s, Petr Horava (Rutgers) and Ed Witten (IAS, Princeton) argued that, under certain conditions, an additional dimension opens up over a finite interval. Six dimensions are presumed to be curled up in a microscopic ball, called a Calabi-Yau manifold.
The ball is too small to be noticed in everyday experience, and so our universe appears to be a four-dimensional (three space dimensions and one time dimension) surface embedded in a five-dimensional space-time. This five-dimensional theory, called heterotic M-theory, was formulated by Andre Lukas (Sussex). Ovrut and Dan Waldram (Queen Mary and Westfield College, London). According to Horava-Witten and heterotic M-theory, particles are constrained to move on one of the three-dimensional boundaries on either side of the extra dimensional interval."
Edward Witten is also mentioned in (esi-topics) in regards to branes as "among the top 5 researchers in this area over the past decade, with 23 papers cited a total of 1,928 times". But Igor Klebanov Princeton University appears to lead the pack in the brane race (esi states "Klebanov ranked as the most-cited author, with 44 papers cited a total of 2,450 times to date. His most-cited paper, written in collaboration with Steve Gubser and Alexander Polyakov, is "Gauge theory correlators from non-critical string theory," / Physics Letters B 428[1-2]: 105-14, 28 May 1998/ " The paper was cited 778 times when the story was posted). Are you confused? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:37 PM CST [Link]
Talking about the New Poet Laureate, Its Billy Collins ... Again! AWESOME ... [background: Billy Collins' books of poetry include a volume of new and selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, which was published by Random House last September; Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist; Questions About Angels (1991), a National Poetry Series selection by Edward Hirsch; The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988); Video Poems (1980); and Pokerface (1977) --- He is distinguished professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years. He is also a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence University, and he has served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.] [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:11 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Value of Life ($6.1 Million) I was always wondering what life was worth ... according to the Washington Post, apparently the EPA values life at $6.1 million (on good days ... but not always, the article also cites "in a clean-air policy initiative early last year reduced that value to $3.7 million per life, and then $2.3 million for citizens over 70. Critics seized upon it as the "senior death discount." ). Well several issues were brought up, older people (over 70) were considered to be woth 3/5 of a non-old person.
However, after research and a report by Alan J. Krupnick, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, OMB dropped the senior discount. OMBWATCH has an interesting discussion, and points to an interesting discounting calculator at duke law. Despite the political steps and backsteps ... the question of value of life is still a valid question ... is the life of a convicted felon with a life sentence the same as that of the Poet Laureate of the United States? I suspect we'll return to this issue again ...
For convenience, I've reposted the OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET's Draft 2003 Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulations --Notice and request for comments. (Federal Register / Vol. 68, No 22 /Monday, February 3,2002/ Notices) here.
It turns out that EPA has a National Center for Environmental Economics that deals will all sorts of environmental valuation issues ... and in looking at the record ... it appears that this is quite a popular field ... another case of live and learn ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:53 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Practical Futurist Michael Rogers is impressed by HOWARD DEAN CHANNEL "Presidential candidate Howard Dean has already distinguished himself in one way from the vast Democratic field: he smartly used the Internet service Meetup.com to organize grass-roots campaign volunteers.
Now Dean has taken another interesting high tech step by launching what is essentially his own Web-based television channel www.howarddean.tv"... I know not from Dean or Rogers ... all I know ... this is sad ... tell me about ideas ... tell me about goals ... tell me about how America realizes its potential .... please please don't tell me about gadgets ... we've got gizmodo for that.
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:10 PM CST [Link]
Question Time (via parliament) is an opportunity for MPs and Members of the House of Lords to ask Government Ministers questions. These questions are asked in the Chamber itself and are known as Oral Questions. Members may also put down Written Questions.
In the House of Commons, Question Time takes place for an hour on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays after Prayers. The different Government Departments answer questions according to a rota and the questions asked must relate to the responsibilities of the Government Department concerned.
In the House of Lords up to four questions may be asked of the Government at the beginning of each day's business. They are known as 'starred questions' because they are marked with a star on the Order Paper. Questions may also be asked at the end of each day's business and these may include a short debate. They are known as 'unstarred questions' and are less frequent.
Questions in both Houses must be written down in advance and put on the agenda and both Houses have methods for selecting the questions that will be asked.
.... well I notice Question Time comes after Prayers ... I wonder, are they praying to get a good question, or praying that they'll be able to answer the questions? (more here).
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:50 PM CST [Link]
Research Overdose? The Scientist states "For the pharmaceutical industry, the numbers do not add up. Investment in drug development has tripled in the past 10 years to more than $30 billion (US), but the industry has fewer new drugs to show for it. After peaking at 131 in 1996, the number of new drug applications filed with the US Food and Drug Administration dropped to 78 in 2002." Maybe its time to start thinking? Or maybe the problems are getting tougher ... or maybe both.
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:44 PM CST [Link]
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was the top album in 1970's ... that's hard to believe ... or, believe it hard ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:54 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: What ever happened to the MACARENA? It was so big and peppy ... that MACARENA ... what happened? ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:38 PM CST [Link]
Monday, May 19, 2003
Lewis M. Branscomb's "Science in 2006, Revisited" Retrospective Prospective ... throw in a few extra words and see what happens (Natural selection operating on random variations) ... in any case ... Branscomb prepared a 2006 dateline piece 20 years ago ... he assesses his convergence three years ahead of the target date ... I find the following alarming ...
One of my more regrettably bad predictions was the idea that the importance of complexity, irreversibility and nonlinearity in science would bring about a resurgence of mathematics. In the United States, that has not happened. Although the mathematicians and the theoretical physicists are working together again, the U.S. government has certainly continued to starve mathematics and has done little to encourage a new generation of American mathematicians. In this critical field we not only import our students; we must import faculty as well.
Another disappointment is in education. One could foresee in 1986 a massive shift from focus on teaching to focus on learning, especially as the cognitive sciences made such good progress. But alas, between parents who don't care, schools that can't function, and politicians who sell clichés but are unwilling to address the basic issues, again in the U.S. education at the pre-college level still struggles in a swamp of neglect and ideological determinism.
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:20 PM CST [Link]
House of Lords Trivia: Backwoodsman
Backwoodsman was a term sometimes used to describe a Peer who was seldom present in the House of Lords.
When there was a very important vote in the House of Lords, political parties tried to encourage those that supported them to turn up for the division, including those who rarely attended the House.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 11:07 PM CST [Link]
Are Sign Languages Universal? I just came across a reference to BSL (British Sign Language), and I recall hearing about ASL (American Sign Language). This suggests the following question ... can ASLers and BSLers communicate? How does their communication compare to spoken communication (in terms of ambiguity, errors, etc?) How uniform or different are sign languages across different language groups?
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:55 PM CST [Link]
I googled "I've looked at it" +"it looks quite good" and got only two hits.
deWalick.com Weblog Entry
... of the MS XML parser to work correctly. I've looked at it, played a bit with and it looks quite good. I'm no fan of IIS, but the ...
e.dominodeveloper.net/dewalick/home.nsf/perm/LOG-2003031301/?open cachedGreg's diary--July 2001
... He has a PowerBook with MacOS X, and we spent a bit of time looking at that, the first time I've looked at it in any detail. It looks quite good. ...
www.lemis.com/grog/diary-jul2001.html cachedthat's pretty surprising .... I would've thought the combination would be more popular ... I guess not too many things are both looked at and are quite good at the same time.
"I've looked at it" gets 4370 hits
"it looks quite good" gets 2210 hitsHowever, with the inescapable logic of quantum theory, the observation will now affect that which was observed.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:38 PM CST [Link]
Matrix Reloaded Overloaded Reversed? BBC Reports: "The web's hacking community has been impressed by the film's depiction of a hack attempt that employs future versions of tools and techniques widely used now." ... Now that's scary.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:23 PM CST [Link]
http://boingboing.net/ is worth monitoring ... they come up with some pretty snazzy stuff there ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:15 PM CST [Link]
SCI-BYTES, 17 MAY Hot Paper in Medicine: Risks and benefits of estrogen plus progestin in healthy postmenopausal women Principal results from the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Trial," by the Writing Group for the Women's Health Initiative Investigators (J.E. Rossouw, et al.), JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association, 288(3):321-33, 17 July 2002 get the nod this week. Abstract: Context Despite decades of accumulated observational evidence, the balance of risks and benefits for hormone use in healthy postmenopausal women remains uncertain. Objective To assess the major health benefits and risks of the most commonly used combined hormone preparation in the United States. Design Estrogen plus progestin component of the Women's Health Initiative, a randomized controlled primary prevention trial (planned duration, 8.5 years) in which 16608 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years with an intact uterus at baseline were recruited by 40 US clinical centers in 1993-1998. ... Conclusions Overall health risks exceeded benefits from use of combined estrogen plus progestin for an average 5.2-year follow-up among healthy postmenopausal US women. All-cause mortality was not affected during the trial. The risk-benefit profile found in this trial is not consistent with the requirements for a viable intervention for primary prevention of chronic diseases, and the results indicate that this regimen should not be initiated or continued for primary prevention of CHD."
According to the citation analysis - the paper was cited 87 times in current journal articles indexed by Thomson ISI during January-February 2003 and "scored as the most-cited non-review paper published in 2002 (based on a year-end citation total), this JAMA article has now topped the list of medicine's most cited for two bimonthly counts in a row. During the January-February count, in fact, this was the fourth-most-cited paper in all of science published in the last two years, including reviews."
Congratulations! I wonder if the conclusions have changed actual practice.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:04 PM CST [Link]
California dreamin' ... after all these years ... I find myself listening to the Mamas and the Papas 'n dreamin and wanderin' good times never seemed so good ... (that's Neil Diamond) ... but what the heck ... Sweet Caroline, Good Times Never Seemed so Good ... and I still like California ... and New York, and Florida, and ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:50 PM CST [Link]
Eugene Volokh's Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, and Seminar Papers is getting rave reviews. Glenn 'InstaPundit' Reynolds says "I've looked at it over the weekend and it looks quite good; I plan to require my seminar students to buy it. .... This book provides a lot of useful guidance for students -- and, I suspect, rather a lot of junior faculty -- in a slim and easy to assimilate form, on everything from how to choose a topic and title, to how to edit your own work, and deal with editors, to how to get published. I expect that it will do very well."
What else can you ask for? ... its sure to be a winner!
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:35 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, May 18, 2003
Steven Weinberg on Nuclear Apocalypse According to a The American Academy's news release, On March 12, 2003, Steven Weinberg, who holds the Jack S. Josey-Welch Foundation Chair in Science and is Regental Professor at the University of Texas in Austin, addressed the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at its 1868th Stated Meeting at the House of the Academy in Cambridge. Weinberg concentrated on these[Is the United States Heading Toward a Nuclear Apocalypse?] and other questions in his lecture "Nuclear Terror: Ambling Toward Apocalypse."
When Steven talks ... the Nation should listen. How come we haven't heard the message?
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:04 PM CST [Link]
Mate choice theory and the mode of selection in sexual populations by H. L. Carson will appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA
The Abstract states: "Indirect new data imply that mate and/or gamete choice are major selective forces driving genetic change in sexual populations. The system dictates nonrandom mating, an evolutionary process requiring both revised genetic theory and new data on heritability of characters underlying Darwinian fitness. Successfully reproducing individuals represent rare selections from among vigorous, competing survivors of preadult natural selection. Nonrandom mating has correlated demographic effects: reduced effective population size, inbreeding, low gene flow, and emphasis on deme structure. Characters involved in choice behavior at reproduction appear based on quantitative trait loci. This variability serves selection for fitness within the population, having only an incidental relationship to the origin of genetically based reproductive isolation between populations. The claim that extensive hybridization experiments with Drosophila indicate that selection favors a gradual progression of "isolating mechanisms" is flawed, because intragroup random mating is assumed. Over deep time, local sexual populations are strong, independent genetic systems that use rich fields of variable polygenic components of fitness. The sexual reproduction system thus particularizes, in small subspecific populations, the genetic basis of the grand adaptive sweep of selective evolutionary change, much as Darwin proposed."
Nanrandom mating?
What does "Over deep time, local sexual populations are strong, independent genetic systems that use rich fields of variable polygenic components of fitness" mean? What the xyz is "deep time"? Is it like "deep space"? Will we get "deep time 9"? Some times we learn some new things. Some times we don't.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:17 PM CST [Link]
From Matrix to Anime: Which Naturally Leads to Trigun once you get started on the thread ... Matrix ... Evangelion Trigun, Outlaw Star, and Escaflowne. Ok, there more to be seen but what about the time ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:42 PM CST [Link]
Beyond the Matrix: Neon Genesis Evangelion Evangelion is being touted as something to co-see with the Matrix ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:27 PM CST [Link]
MATRIX OVERLOAD? nah ...Just came back from seeing The Matrix Reloaded with the fam. I like the film. Actually, I like it a lot ... on several levels. Great cinematography, great music, great casting, ..., but mostly, I like the topic it raises. DETERMINISM vs. Free Will; Choice vs. Predestination, Inevitability vs. Options. Faith Vs. Reason. (the chicks will like chickflick nods of not one but three or more relationships ...). I read somewhere mentions of Descartes' Meditations and Plato's Cave Allegory. I am sure there are many more philosophical tie-ins. I'll get to it later. We need to keep straight ... Keanu Reeves .... Thomas A. Anderson/Neo; Laurence Fishburne .... Morpheus; Carrie-Anne Moss .... Trinity; Hugo Weaving .... Agent Smith ... all do a great job. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski (The Wachowski Brothers) -- A BIG THANK YOU! The Merovingian and the Architect are nice additions, although they don't live up to their full potential. The plot twists and turns as the wheel of time wills. The pattern weaves as the pattern does. I still think howver that Forbidden Planet was the all time best.
Was it all a dream within a dream ... is this the 13th floor revisited? We'll have to see, but I think not ...
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:36 PM CST [Link]
John Mauldin over at investorsinsight.com is discussing deflation ... he too is noticing a pickup in deflation discussions ("I must have read 40 or so treatises on the deflation debate this week alone"). I like his Orwell quote ("In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality - we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twist the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps against the solid reality, usually on a battlefield.")
Mauldin suggests price deflation is a natural consequence of a "productive, competitive economy" and cites Gary Shilling's book Deflation (factoid: "wholesale prices dropped on average 1.8% per year from 1880 through 1996",while "national incomes rose 5% per year".)
Mauldin states "In the US, we are currently using less than 75% of our production capacity. Historically, the long-term average is 82%. There is little incentive for businesses to invest in new production lines when they can produce all the consumer wants now. The rather large part of what business investment there is stems from introducing new cost-cutting systems or replacement of worn out machines. There is not a lot of equipment being bought to add to capacity."
What's the difference between good and bad? good deflation -- prices going down while profits going up, as results of technological and mangerial advances, and bad deflation where prices go down while costs remain high, an there's no profit and often there are real losses. (the prices go down because of excess inventory and/or difficulty in selling).
He alerts to the fact that Europe and Japan make 42% of the world's economy and are not pulling their weight in a positive economic manner.
So what is Mauldin's conclusion? "Therefore, we are going to have a lot of economic stimulation from the Fed for quite sometime. I think it is clear they are not going to raise rates until inflation is comfortably back above 2% and/or the economy is growing above 3% for a rather long period of time."
Like Mauldin who will be facing the absence of deflation in prospective college costs .... I ask, how come we don't see deflationary prices where they could help mere mortals?
I encourage everyone to read his excellent column. It is more straightforward than the Matrix Reloaded [Come to think about it, I wonder if there's any relationship between delation and Matrix Reloaded?](quoatationsource: John Mauldin's E-Letter johnmauldi@investorsinsight.com) [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 04:07 PM CST [Link]
Geoffrey Nunberg, the barbershop savant, and googlewashing. An interesting week in review column on the merits and sins of google in reflecting our 'shared collective mind' - Is the internet really a "second superpower"?
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:43 AM CST [Link]
DAVID LEONHARDT's Report from The Fed . from today's New York Times ... a few interesting tidbits:
* William J. McDonough, the departing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has said that problems with accounting standards and executive pay continue to harm the economy — and need solving. Anthony M. Santomero, the president of the Philadelphia Fed, recently went out of his way to refute the idea that the Iraq war was the sole cause for slow growth, noting that the recovery began losing momentum last summer.
* "We've had a lot of people running around saying, `Deflation — it can't happen here,' " Harvey Rosenblum, the research director of the Dallas Fed, said in a telephone interview last week. "I think it can." [note here comes the D Word again]
* "People at the Fed don't want to be too clear if being too clear would be discouraging," said Wayne D. Angell, a former Fed governor under Mr. Greenspan in the late 1980's. "The chairman naturally has to be much more careful in what he says because it is watched so carefully."
*If the economy continues to weaken and job cuts continue, consumers could eventually pull back their spending more sharply, setting off a vicious cycle that could include deflation. Deflation can cause people to wait for future discounts on products and make their loans harder to pay off because each dollar of their debt is worth more.
interesting ... I'll have to look more carefully at this deflation thing. Fixing the corporate executive pay and governance seems like something to really get going on ... forget the divadents tax cut ... no taxes=no government ... its that simple. For a glimpse into no government take a look at Iraq.
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:34 AM CST [Link]
Saturday, May 17, 2003
Mild stress increases longevity: Heat shock response and insulin signal transduction combine in the control of aging. According to an article By Cathy Holding in The Scientist, "genes that control oxidative or other damage may have an effect on the timescale of the aging process. Insulin also has a role in the modulation of longevity, mediated via one of the insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1-R) signal transduction pathways. The Caenorhabditis elegans IGF1-R homolog is known as DAF-2, and daf-2 signaling negatively regulates daf-16, a forkhead transcription factor controlling expression of genes involved in metabolism and redox control. ... Ao-Lin Hsu and colleagues ... demonstrate that a molecule important in modulating heat shock response also has a role in the control of aging and that DAF-16 and the heat shock factor 1 (HSF-1) transcription factor may work together to promote longevity (Science, 300:1142-1145, 2003).
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 11:11 PM CST [Link]
Academy Report Finds Empirical Information About Humanities Lacking according to the press release "The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is releasing a groundbreaking report that finds that the Humanities lack even the most basic empirical information about the state of the field or those who teach in the humanities disciplines.The report contrasts this situation with the wealth of statistical
information compiled for the sciences and social sciences by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies.The authors of the study believe that such data is critical for policymakers and philanthropic institutions to shape the future of the Humanities."more later ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:30 PM CST [Link]
xmlhack looks interesting, if you're into XML. Through it, I learned that Jon Bosak is the "father of XML", and is advocating UBL, a royalty-free XML B2B tag set, as well as ebXML, a royalty-free B2B infrastructure. According to the report;
Bosak noted several key advantages of ebXML for open source development, particularly its exemption from an IBM patent on electronic trading partner agreements, courtesy of the UN/CEFACT and OASIS involvement in the development process. Combined with the similarly royalty-free Universal Business Language (UBL), a vocabulary for describing business documents, developers can create standard business communications systems without concerns over intellectual property. Some tools, notably freebxml, are already available.
neat!
xmlhack also reports on Sydock Document Processor [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:18 PM CST [Link]
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was "founded during the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock" and others, does NOT have the same standing as the NATIONAL ACADEMIES (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, National Research Council) I think that's rather sad ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:46 PM CST [Link]
Electronic Texts Links:
o Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
o Biblomania [Guide to Language Change - Study Guide looks interesting]
o Great Books Index
o Oxford Text Archive
o Project Gutenbergo Hutchinson Dictionary of Difficult Words is interesting ...
o Linguistic Data Resources
o Library Electronic Text Resource Service (LETRS)via the BA
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:14 PM CST [Link]
More Hidden Treasures at the British Academy: Here are some more hidden treasures... (partial list)
Acta of Henry II
Anglo-Saxon Charters
Bentham
British Documents on the End of Empire
Carlyle Letters
Cassiano Dal Pozzo: Museo Cartaceo
Catalogue of English and Welsh Town Maps
Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture
Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues
Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum
Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland
Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani
Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum
Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi
Early English Church Music
English Place-name Survey
Evergetis
Fontes Historiae Africanae
Foxe's Book of Martyrs [http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/bajfp/]
Francis Bacon
Historia Numorum
Iconographical Lexicon of Classical Mythology
Letters of Charles Dickens
Lexicon of Greek Personal Names [http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/]
Medieval Latin Dictionary
Medieval Texts
Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Prosography of the Byzantine Empire
Records of Social and Economic History
Romano-British Writing Tablets
Sylloge of coins of the British isles
Sylloge Nummorum GraecorumFASCINATING!
Posted by E Moritz @ 04:43 PM CST [Link]
Hidden Treasures at the British Academy: Codex Theodosianus THEODOSIANI LIBRI XVI, sive
CODEX THEODOSIANUS -- transcribed from:Theodosiani libri XVI cum Constitutionibus Sirmondianis et Leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes Consilio et autoritate Academiae litterarum regiae Borussicaeediderunt Th. Mommsen et Paulus M. Meyer.
-- Ed. 2, lucis ope expressa. -- Berolini : Apud Weidmannos, 1954. -- 2 v. in 3. -- Contents:
Vol. 1. Theodosiani libri XVI cum Constitutionibus Sirmondianis ; edidit adsumpto apparatu P. Kruegeri -- v. 2. Leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes.This is part of Projet Volterra ... "established in honour of the memory of the distinguished Roman Lawyer Edoardo Volterra (1904-1987), whose widow left his substantial and rich collection of Roman law books to the École Française de Rome. The general aims of the Projet Volterra are to promote the study of Roman legislation in its full social, political and legal context"
pure awesomeness ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 04:36 PM CST [Link]
According to its site: "The British Academy, established by Royal Charter in 1902, is the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It is an independent, self-governing fellowship of c. 750 scholars, elected for distinction and achievement in one or more branches of the academic disciplines that make up the humanities and social sciences."
Another resources to visit frequently.
Posted by E Moritz @ 04:25 PM CST [Link]
rearranging molecules ... as I observe the scene in the backyard ... I can't help but notice the plants; some of them quite intricate and growing tall. What's going on here? every second, or perhaps microsecond or even nanosecond, a few photons are captured by some leaves, and by some mysterious sequence, molecules that are sucked up from the ground and the air are rearranged into cells in patterns that make up new leaves, and branches, and roots. Pretty amazing, considering there's no financial system involved; no diva-dents taxes, no congress; by contrast, us mere mortals, are constructing all kinds of conceptual and physical edifices and perhaps not accomplishing as much; or pehaps much more ... I'll have to sleep on this.
Posted by E Moritz @ 04:16 PM CST [Link]
Dave Winer's Test Site has a fresh feel to it I particularly like his News Aggregator.
The Ernie the Attorney story help Larry Lessig re-populate the public domain illustrates the point. ... while you're here ... some interesting observations from the story:
* unless someone with money proposes a law, or an exception to a law, no one in Congress will listen.
Posted by E Moritz @ 12:41 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, May 15, 2003
DNA microarrays ... the Next Big Move in Genomics ... ok may be its not the next big move .. but it sure seems like something is going on here ... Lee Smith and Andy Greenfield's review article DNA microarrays and development [Human Molecular Genetics, 2003, Vol. 12, Review Issue 1 R1-R8] suggests it. ABSTRACT: Gene expression is a central concept in molecular biology: its control, frequently exquisite in terms of cell specificity and timing, forms part of our explanation of most biological processes. The importance of the control of gene expression for developmental biologists is made obvious by just considering the nature of their discipline. Development is the term we use to describe the coordination in time and space of numerous cellular activities such as mitosis, migration, differentiation and apoptosis. Understanding the role of genes in these processes thus necessitates the use of methods to determine patterns of transcription during development with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity, conventionally by in situ hybridization. However, there is a widespread conviction amongst biologists that the description of gene expression patterns is of no immediate functional relevance: definitive functional data are the exclusive prerogative of biochemistry and genetics. In this review of recent applications of DNA microarray technology by developmental biologists, we suggest that genome-wide expression profiling has met with some resistance owing to such preconceived ideas about the status of gene expression pattern descriptions and, in particular, the format in which these are delivered by microarrays.
find out [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:58 PM CST [Link]
Retrotransposons and retroviruses ... the real story ... Zhu Y, Dai J, Fuerst PG, Voytas DF.
in Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2003 May 13;100(10):5891-5 authored "Controlling integration specificity of a yeast retrotransposon." where they present "a mechanism by which retrotransposons shape their host genomes and suggest ways in which retroviral integration can be controlled." in fact, they abstract their findings as "Retrotransposons and retroviruses integrate nonrandomly into eukaryotic genomes. For the yeast retrotransposon Ty5, integration preferentially occurs within domains of heterochromatin. Targeting to these locations is determined by interactions between an amino acid sequence motif at the C terminus of Ty5 integrase (IN) called the targeting domain, and the heterochromatin protein Sir4p. Here we show that new Ty5 integration hot spots are created when Sir4p is tethered to ectopic DNA sites. Targeting to sites of tethered Sir4p is abrogated by single amino acid substitutions in either IN or Sir4p that prevent their interaction. Ty5 target specificity can be altered by replacing the IN-targeting domain with other peptide motifs that interact with known protein partners. Integration occurs at high efficiency and in close proximity to DNA sites where the protein partners are tethered" [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 10:45 PM CST [Link]
October 30, 2000 Hot Paper in Physics, just in case you missed it. and the prize goes to "An alternative to compactification," by Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum, Physical Review Letters, 83(23):4690-3, 6 December 1999.
Abstract: Conventional wisdom states that Newton's force law implies only four noncompact dimensions. We demonstrate that this is not necessarily true in the presence of a nonfactorizable background geometry. The specific example we study is a single 3-brane embedded in five dimensions. We show that even without a gap in the Kaluza-Klein spectrum, four-dimensional Newtonian and general relativistic gravity is reproduced to more than adequate precision.
I will sleep better tonight knowing that if I wind up in a nonfactorizable background geometry, there are opportunities for more than four noncompact dimensions. I will still wonder about compact dimensions and for sure I will hunt the famed Kaluza-Klein gap monsters until they'll yield. I just don't understand why we would restrict ourselves to 3-branes in five dimensions. Buckaroo Banzai made the case for eight dimensions ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:27 PM CST [Link]
WHO Removes Toronto From Its SARS List first good news in along time ... according to the Washington Post "TORONTO, May 14 -- The World Health Organization today removed Toronto from the list of areas affected by the SARS virus, saying that Canadian health officials had broken the chain of transmission and stopped the spread of the respiratory disease."
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:59 PM CST [Link]
Falling Producer Prices Stoke Fears of Deflation? from N.Y. Times story ... "The producer price index, which measures prices paid at the factory, farm and refinery gate, plummeted 1.9 percent in April, the biggest drop on records dating to 1947, the Labor Department said. .... Much of the decline was due to an 8.6 percent fall in energy prices. However, the so-called core PPI, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, also tumbled sharply, falling 0.9 percent on the back of drops in prices for cars, SUVs and other light trucks, and cigarettes. It was the largest decline in core PPI since August 1993." ...
I don't know ... I don't smoke ... so I haven't seen the decline in expenses for cigs ... I haven't seen any of my expenses decline, except for return of gas prices to just mildly higher than pre Operation Iraqi Freedom levels. The analysis omits food prices, I do happen to buy food ... I can report though that all of my insurance premiums have gone up, as well as seeing reduced medical coverage and higher medical costs. It doesn't look like the things I usually buy have gotten cheaper; I must be missing something ... or maybe its just selective deflation ... let me know when the deflation trickles down to where I can actually notice it.
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:02 PM CST [Link]
MACROETHICS and METAETHICS I haven't seen much discussion on grand challenge problems in ethics. Yes, there are debates and contests on taxes, capital punishment, choice, right to life, animal rights (soon to include fish, as reports indicate fish exprience pain), etcetera etcetra ... but ... to my mind, these don't pass the test of a grand challenge problem ... perhaps they are not yet articulated in an appropriate way ... what do you think?
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:22 PM CST [Link]
Medical College of Wisconsin provides this information about Spinal Cord Injury
About 450,000 people in the US live with SCI. There are about 10,000 new SCIs every year; the majority of them (82%) involve young males between the ages of 16 and 30.
according to the article: "Although there is no cure for SCI, researchers have made many advances in treatment, including some that could result in a decreased amount of damage at the time of the injury. Steroid drugs such as methylprednisolone reduce swelling, which is a common cause of secondary damage. Certain experimental drugs, although not completely understood, appear to reduce the loss of function. "
Its still sad that SCI occurs ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:15 PM CST [Link]
Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum? well, I guess. someone wrote the official book ... hard to believe ...unless ... well ... find out for yourself ... (Agenesis of Commissura Magna Cerebri; Asymptomatic Callosal Agenesis; Corpus Callosum Agenesis)?
Healthlink (Medical College of Wisconsin) provides this definition: Agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) is a rare congenital abnormality in which there is a partial or complete absence (agenesis) of the corpus callosum.
Do you want to know [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 06:32 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
From the you've got to check this out archive: Electricity extracted from grape in Nature article by P. Ball states Researchers prove plants or animals could power tiny sensors. Dicussion of article by Mano, N., Mao, F. & Heller, A. Characteristics of a miniature compartment-less glucose-O2 biofuel cell and its operation in a living plant. Journal of the American Chemical Society, -- states: Scientists have extracted electrical power from a grape. ... The set-up is called a biofuel cell. It harnesses metabolic energy and does not generate any toxic by-product. Made by Adam Heller and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, the cell produces only about 2.4 microwatts - several million wired-up grapes would be needed to power a lightbulb.
Yet another interesting avenue to explore ... if only Carl {Sagan} were here to discuss the possibility of beelions and beelions of grapes working together .... If that were to happen, would Carl be happy?
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:33 PM CST [Link]
Week Ending May 13, 2003 Google Zeitgeist Top 10 Gaining Queries: Week Ending May 13, 2003: matrix reloaded, muttertag, mothers day cards, survivor, animatrix, dia de la madre,metallica, juventus, hazing, festa della mamma. Top 10 Declining Queries: sarah kozer, x-men 2, kentucky derby, miss elizabeth, vappu, earthquake, formula 1, possum bourne, may day, jerry nadeau
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 09:14 PM CST [Link]
EXOTIC ANIMALS: The Search is on. It would appear looking for information on exotic animals is, well, not that exotic ... in case you're wondering why ... its a popular topic ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:00 PM CST [Link]
Life: Can Dysferlin reverse Rhabdomyolysis?. Yet another interesting question ... This story caught my eye ... Muscle repair proteinDysferlin is involved in resealing the holes in, and repairing the muscle membrane - By Tudor P Toma ....
Muscular dystrophies represent a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by wasting and weakness of skeletal muscle. A novel mammalian gene, dysferlin — predicted to encode a product related to Caenorhabditis elegans spermatogenesis factor fer-1 — is mutated in limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2B and in Miyoshi myopathy, but the molecular mechanisms that lead to muscle degeneration in these conditions have been unclear. In the May 8 Nature, Dimple Bansal and colleagues from University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, show that disruption of the muscle membrane repair machinery is responsible for dysferlin-deficient muscle degeneration (Nature, 423:168-172, May 8, 2003).
there's more about .. functional dystrophin–glycoprotein complex and Ca2+-dependent sarcolemma resealing, but you'll have to check it for yourself. If this leads anywhere ... let me know ...
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:59 PM CST [Link]
Life and the Pursuit of Happiness: Longevity gene identified: according to Cathy Holding (The Scientist), PNC1 is necessary and sufficient for increasing lifespan in calorie-restricted yeasts. So if I understand this correctly, morph into yeast and go on a diet ... This is what she actually says:
Restriction of calorie intake increases lifespan in many organisms, including mammals, and is mediated by gene silencing at telomere and rDNA loci through the activity of a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) –dependent histone deactylase, Sir2. NAD is produced either de novo, or by recycling NAD degradation products in the salvage pathway, where nicotinamide is the starting point. It has been unclear if increasing NAD levels activate Sir2, or decreasing levels of nicotinamide relieve the inhibition of Sir2. In May 8 Nature, Rozalyn Anderson and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, Boston, further address the issue in yeast by focusing on the nicotinamide cleaving enzyme, PNC1 (Nature 423:181-185, May 8, 2003).I don't really understand all of this, but it is intriguing .... there's
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:45 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: SIBERIA {BLACK} GOLD RUSH?. According to EurasiaNet [Via Heh-man InstaPundit], High noon is drawing near in a contest over Eurasia’s richest oil reserves, the outcome of which will affect world trade patterns and the global balance of power for much of the coming century. No, it is not of post-Hussein Iraq that we speak, but of Siberia. ... Russia’s oil wells, at the current rate of extraction, will still gush long after many of the Middle Eastern ones have run dry. But there is a more immediate factor. One of the players in Siberia’s great game - Japan - has made a strategic decision to diversify its energy sources, for reasons that go far beyond short-term financial calculations. Hence the prospect of a spectacular reconciliation between Russia and Japan ... but there's an issue to resolve ... Kurile Islands.
This is something worth watching closely ... apparently China wants in also .... I say ... get serious with hydrogen economy and fuel cells. [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:17 PM CST [Link]
Business Mapping is a new kind of business software ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:42 PM CST [Link]
Equatorial Guinea Business Law Handbook. It really exists and people are interested. I wonder who and why. Fernando Po is a place I always wanted to find out more about .... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:39 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
LATE BREAKING / EARLY BREAKING -- what's all this about? Why does it need to break. What's wrong with wholeness? Why have we become so easily transfixed by breaking news or late breaking events? Seems like poor planning to me. I'd rather things didn't break at all. In fact, FAST GLUING or FAST JOINING seems a lot better to me.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:45 PM CST [Link]
LATE-BREAKING TECHNO-DOOHICKIES at GIZMODO (via William Gibson)
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:23 PM CST [Link]
Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:03 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The American Dream and Dream Interpretation: Sometimes, it all seems like a dream, and then sometimes, its chasing the American Dream ... In the end, it requires some interpretation, and that's where the American Dream Starts. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:49 PM CST [Link]
Do Regge-excitations of all standard model particles turn you on? If so, you would be fascinated to know that the HOT PHYSICS PAPER for December 25, 2000 was "New dimensions at a millimeter to a fermi and superstrings at a TeV," by Ignatios Antoniadis, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos, and Gia Dvali, [Physics Letters B, 436(3,4):257-63, 24 September 1998]. where according to the abstract ... they "show that .... models have a perturbative description in the context of type I string theory. The gravitational sector consists of closed strings propagating in the higher-dimensional bulk, while ordinary matter consists of open strings living in D3-branes. This scenario raises the exciting possibility that the LHC and NLC will experimentally study ordinary aspects of string physics such as the production of narrow Regge-excitations of all standard model particles, as well as more exotic phenomena involving strong gravity such as the production of black holes. The new dimensions can be probed by events with large missing energy carried off by gravitons escaping into the bulk. We finally discuss some important issues of model building, such as proton stability, gauge coupling unification and supersymmetry breaking."
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:38 PM CST [Link]
Curious about Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health? SCI-BYTES reports High-Impact U.S. Universities, 1998-2002 ratings (based on citations per paper):
1 University of Minnesota
2 University of Wisconsin, Madison
2 Ohio State University
3 University of Kentucky
4 Washington State University
5 University of California, Davis [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:28 PM CST [Link]
New York Times reports: Taiwan, May 13 — Taiwan may have suffered another hospital outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, the disappointed leader of its fight against the epidemic said today. ... The country now has 220 probable cases of SARS and 25 deaths, which means it has surpassed Canada and is rivaling Singapore for the third-worst outbreak outside of mainland China and Hong Kong. ... The newest outbreak is at Kaohsiung Chang Gang Hospital, a modern 2,000-bed center in southern Taiwan's largest city. The World Health Organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control sent down a team to look into it.
Related notes: 05/08/2003, 05/04/2003, 05/02/2003 *, 04/19/2003, 04/18/2003,
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Posted by E Moritz @ 07:13 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Herotica? Herotica? Never heard of it, and not what I would have expected .... maybe sherotica would be more appropriate ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:23 PM CST [Link]
Monday, May 12, 2003
SARS is not the only bugaboo .... While we were sleeping ... global incidence rate of TB is growing at approximately 0.4%/year WHO Report 2003 on Global Tuberculosis Control reveals TB is not yet licked ... in fact "the global incidence rate of TB is growing at approximately 0.4%/year, but much faster in sub-Saharan Africa and in countries of the former Soviet Union." Some consider Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis a veritable global epidemic if not a ticking timebomb ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:54 PM CST [Link]
Pontifical Academy of Sciences: Just in case you missed it ... the Vatican has its very own Academy. 70 Life time Members range from Werner ARBER [Professor, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1978] to Antonino ZICHICHI [Physics Professor] and include luminaries such as Lucasian Professor Stephen William HAWKING, John Charles POLANYI [Professor, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1986], Rudolf Ludwig MÖSSBAUER [ Professor, Nobel laureate in Physics, 1961], Genetics Professor Luigi Luca CAVALLI-SFORZA, Chen Ning YANG [Nobel laureate in Physics, 1957] and other shining lights of our times.
Its works are compiled under Scripta Varia [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:38 PM CST [Link]
SOMETHING SNAPPED ... It began sometime around mid June 2001. Thats when snap 1 started taking place. Snap 2 occured around August 2001. By mid October snap 3 was in full bloom; slight recovery by the Christmas shopping season, but by mid February 2002 another major snap occured. May 2002 brought in another major snap. July 30 2002 saw a real low. Mild recovery again before the Christmas holidays, only to collapse again around December 20, 2002. We're not out of it yet. Is it permanent? Is this a structural snap down of the US? We're now post Iraq, 2 space shuttles down and the space shuttle program on hold. O'Reilly now joined by several copycats to keep blasting Clinton, Bennet reveals he's no shining compass either. Average Joe's being taken to the cleaners again and again and again (will they ever learn?) [What you ask? Fake power shortages in California, ENRON, Medical Insurance, Executive Pay, tax cuts, negative return Mutual Funds.] Embedded reporting and hot air cable managed to make TV incredible (not credible for those who need close captioning), blogging seemed to offer a possible relief; it too is settling mostly into repetitive posts (HEH). The movie industry and Italian fiction (ECO) are the only ones that seems to really offer breaths of fresh air. America's got so much potential ... what happened? Where are the good guys hiding?
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:06 PM CST [Link]
ITS SO COLD ITS HOT ... Hot Paper in Physics: Superconductivity at 39K in magnesium diboride That's what SCI-BYTES says; Jun Nagamatsu, Norimasa Nakagawa, Takahiro Muranaka, Yuji Zenitani, and Jun Akimitsu, Nature, 410(6824): 63-4, 1 March 2001 gets the credit.
from the abstract ... highest reported values of Tc for non-copper-oxide bulk superconductivity are 33 K in electron-doped CsxRbyC60, and 30 K in Ba1-xKxBiO3. (Hole-doped C60 was recently found to be superconducting with a Tc as high as 52 K, although the nature of the experiment meant that the supercurrents were confined to the surface of the C60 crystal, rather than probing the bulk.) Here we report the discovery of bulk superconductivity in magnesium diboride, MgB2. Magnetization and resistivity measurements establish a transition temperature of 39 K, which we believe to be the highest yet determined for a non-copper-oxide bulk superconductor [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:42 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Instant Gratification: I was wondering what would bubble up on this topic ... this not what I was expecting ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:20 PM CST [Link]
About Adhesion Proteins ... What about them ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:15 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, May 11, 2003
WHEEL of TIME: CROSSROADS OF TWILIGHT Robert Jordan ... What's going on ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:46 PM CST [Link]
A Trillion Years From Now: The Far-Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective ... George F. R. Ellis collected a unique and ambitious compilation of essays based on a symposium at the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:56 PM CST [Link]
Brian Hayes is On the Threshold ... he says ... Last night I called technical support for the universe to report a bug ... Some things in this world take entirely too long to compute—exponentially so, in the worst cases. "That's not a bug, that's a feature," was the inevitable reply.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:37 PM CST [Link]
Scott Carpenter, (former) NASA Astronaut ( and Aquanaut). According to NASA Biographies -- one of the original seven Mercury Astronauts, served as backup pilot for John Glenn during the preparation for America's first manned orbital space flight.
Carpenter flew the second American manned orbital flight on May 24, 1962. He piloted his Aurora 7 spacecraft through three revolutions of the earth, reaching a maximum altitude of 164 miles. The spacecraft landed in the Atlantic Ocean about 1000 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral after 4 hours and 54 minutes of flight time.
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:39 PM CST [Link]
Doc Graveline and LIPITOR, THIEF OF MEMORY Revisit ... note section "A great many doctors and patients are concerned that statin drug associated myositis and rhabdomyolysis with its muscle cell breakdown and release of myoglobin causing secondary blockage of kidney tubules may be based on this loss of membrane integrity" and related statement "Doctor Frank Pfrieger, leader of this research group which also included the National Center for Scientific Research in Strasbourg, France explained that the brain cannot tap the cholesterol supply in the blood since the lipoproteins that mediate the transport of cholesterol, including both LDL and HDL, are too large to pass the blood-brain barrier. The brain has to depend upon its own cholesterol synthesis which the glial cells provide"
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:15 PM CST [Link]
Jon David Reuter, Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), and the blood brain barrier. Jon is researching related topics. According to his Expertise and Research Interests statement: "The site of viral entry into the CNS may have a significant impact on the clinical course of disease. Most pathogens gain entry to the CNS through one of two routes. Direct extension from the olfactory mucosa into olfactory brain has been demonstrated for a number of viruses. Alternatively, CMV may gain access through the blood brain barrier secondary to viremia, either through capillary fenestrations or loss of capillary integrity. Previous work has demonstrated mouse CMV (MCMV) in endothelial cells in the brain indicating that it may initially infect CNS vessels." ... We wish him success in his research and experimental studies.
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:51 PM CST [Link]
TO DO: review The Might of Mitochondria, and Power of Power Laws
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:39 PM CST [Link]
Good Morning Bombay ... Check AMY WALDMAN's NY Times story More 'Can I Help You?' Jobs Migrate From U.S. to India. According to her story ... "A study by Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., estimated that this type of labor migration, generally referred to as outsourcing if contracted to another company, or offshoring if run by a company itself, could send 3.3 million American jobs overseas by 2015. India, with its large pool of English-speakers and more than two million college graduates every year, is expected to get 70 percent of them." and ... "American companies are using Indian labor — often working around the clock — to do research and development, prepare tax returns, evaluate health insurance claims, transcribe doctors' medical notes, analyze financial data, dun for overdue bills, read CAT scans, create presentations for Manhattan investment banks and much more.
Seeking both to increase senior analysts' productivity and to lower costs, J. P. Morgan Chase & Company is planning to hire 40 junior analysts and support staff in Bombay to set up an equity research department there. It also plans to increase the several hundred employees doing back-office work at its Technopolis office park in Bombay to 1,100 by the end of the year."
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:01 PM CST [Link]
P.J. O'Rourke and Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: P.J. has a delightful essay 'Life, Liberty, and Whoop-de-do!'
He states Much of the world is confused and infuriated by America. And I contend that happiness is the source of the confusion and fury. Other countries are established upon pride, power, nationality, blood, and religion. Not America. Pursuit of happiness is what we're all about. It's front and center in our charter, an inalienable right; the Declaration of Independence says so.. I AGREE! If you want to understand us, understand the Declaration of Indepenedence! [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:19 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Who IS Trammell Crow? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 01:31 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Scientist Another great journal The Scientist. It adds to happiness and joy.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:26 AM CST [Link]
Just ran across another interesting online abstract database ... this one for Human Molecular Genetics. The article of interest? Genetic dissection of anxiety in autoimmune disease. [Nakamura K, Xiu Y, Ohtsuji M, Sugita G, Abe M, Ohtsuji N, Hamano Y, Jiang Y, Takahashi N, Shirai T, Nishimura H, Hirose S. Hum Mol Genet 2003 May 15;12(10):1079-1086].
From the Abstract:
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a complex multigenic disease, is characterized by hypergammaglobulinemia, autoantibody production and immune complex-type lupus nephritis. In addition to these signs and symptoms in SLE, there can be symptoms of neurological disorders, including anxiety. To clarify mechanisms governing the anxiety seen in lupus, we carried out genome-wide scans, and found that the region including interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) on NZB chromosome 4 is significantly linked to the anxiety-like behavior seen in SLE-prone New Zealand Black (NZB)xNew Zealand White (NZW) F(1) (B/W F(1)) mice. [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 09:49 AM CST [Link]
Saturday, May 10, 2003
From PNAS Online : Nicolas Bouché, Aaron Fait, David Bouchez, Simon G. Møller and Hillel's paper "Mitochondrial succinic-semialdehyde dehydrogenase of the -aminobutyrate shunt is required to restrict levels of reactive oxygen intermediates in plants" will appear soon.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 11:46 PM CST [Link]
SPANKING HOT MATH PAPER ... OK maybe not spanking, but maybe yes ... you judge ... according to SCI-BYTES April 28, 2003 What's New in Research "On the modularity of elliptic curves over Q: Wild 3-adic exercises," by Christophe Breuil, Brian Conrad, Fred Diamond, and Richard Taylor, J. [in Amer. Math. Soc., 14(4): 843-939, 2001] IS HOT! The Abstract states: "We complete the proof that every elliptic curve over the rational numbers is modular." I wish I had known that thirty two years ago; I think I'll sleep better tonight.
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:32 PM CST [Link]
Apparently rhabdomyolysis is not limited to mere humans ... in equines one runs into Tying-Up Syndrome. For horses suffering Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy (PSM) the link has this suggestion "PSM primarily affects heavier breeds such as Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, Paints, Drafts and Warmbloods. It is caused by an excessive storage of glycogen (muscle’s form of storing carbohydrate for energy) in the muscles. It is definitively diagnosed by muscle biopsy. The paramount aspect of treatment is to severely limit dietary carbohydrate in the form of simple grains and replace with high fat and complex carbohydrate diets" I don't know much more about this, and certainly ask your vet ... but I am curious what the analog is for humans.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 11:23 PM CST [Link]
Week Ending May 6, 2003 Google Zeitgeist Top 10 Gaining Queries: x-men 2, kentucky derby, cinco de mayo, mike price, jerry nadeau, muttertag, formula 1, sarah kozer, vappu, miss elizabeth; Top 10 Declining Queries: dixie chicks, nfl draft, lyric benson, nina simone, real madrid, hamburg marathon, american airlines, santorum, secretarys day, sars toronto. X-MEN 2 deserves the attention ... i am not sure about the others :-) Dixie Chicks? Chuck the Chicks? The cover was in bad taste ... and so was the entire episode ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:06 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, May 8, 2003
Pursuit of Happiness: JOY Enough of this SARS stuff ... What about JOY? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:05 PM CST [Link]
Life / Death: SARS - UPDATE. Date May 7 2003, WHO (World Health Organization) revises fatality estimates. This is getting more serious ... Rense.com cites a story "The central People's Bank of China was putting more new cash into circulation and holding used banknotes for 24 hours before putting it back into people's hands, the People's Daily newspaper said on its Web site on Tuesday.
The Communist Party mouthpiece said some banks were even sterilizing grimy bills and showering them with ultraviolet radiation to try to kill the SARS virus ... "As I see it, this SARS thing looks like it has the potential for massive cultural shifts. An earlier story from Canada indicated a change in several religious practices ... who knows where this will end ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:54 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is getting a lot of downloads ... what's the story here? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:47 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, May 7, 2003
Pursuit of Happiness: Bryan Caplan's Top Ten Economics Ideas According to Bryan Caplan, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, George Mason University, in Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist "Here are a few of the best new ideas to come out of academic economics since 1949:
Human capital theory
Rational expectations macroeconomics
The random walk view of financial markets
Signaling models
Public choice theory
Natural rate models of unemployment
Time consistency
The Prisoners' Dilemma, coordination games, and hawk-dove games
The Ricardian equivalence argument for debt-neutrality
Contestable markets"
OK .. so what's the whole list?
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:11 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Hot Paper in Chemistry - Room-temperature ultraviolet nanowire nanolasers ... by Michael H. Huang and 8 others, Science, 292(5523):1897-99, 8 June 2001 (via SCI-BYTES):
Room-temperature ultraviolet lasing in semiconductor nanowire arrays has been demonstrated. The self-organized,<0001>oriented zinc oxide nanowires grown on sapphire substrates were synthesized with a simple vapor transport and condensation process. These wide band-gap semiconductor nanowires form natural laser cavities with diameters varying from 20 to 150 nanometers and lengths up to 10 micrometers. Under optical excitation, surface-emitting lasing action was observed at 385 nanometers, with an emission linewidth less than 0.3 nanometer. ...
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 10:46 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, May 4, 2003
Life: SARS Update. Distressing news from the Washington Post. Apparently the SARS virus is hardier than thought earlier "The SARS virus apparently can survive on common surfaces at room temperature for hours or even days, which could explain how people can catch the deadly lung infection without face-to-face contact with a sick person, scientists have found" [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:25 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Daniel Robert Graham. Bob Graham as a modern-day Paul Revere? Michael Grunwald's Running Scared analysis / essay about Bob Graham's new message is scary ... you better read it for yourself.
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:14 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Emmerich De Vattel's Law of Nations . Emmerich de Vattel's The Law of Nations may be of signficance ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:30 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Free Stuff I've noticed a lot of searches reach this blog with search terms happiness + free. What is this indicative of? Dreams are free; freedom costs blood and treasure. Perhaps YOU can shed some light. Meanwhile, Vornado 510W Compact Air Circulator can make you feel cool. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:59 PM CST [Link]
Friday, May 2, 2003
LIFE: The Chicken and The Egg - The Stem Cell Version Charles Murtaugh writes :There's been a lot of buzz about the report, published online yesterday by Science, that mouse embryonic stem cells could be coaxed into making eggs in a dish." -- Wow ... (the story actually links to the Nature article Eggs made from embryos: Reprogramming step towards safer reproductive cloning.2 May 2003 by TOM CLARKE that states "By tweaking the chemical conditions in a test tube, researchers have for the first time coaxed stem cells from an embryo to produce a clutch of eggs ...") HOWEVER WHATEVER ... THIS IS HUGE!
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:53 PM CST [Link]
Life and the Pursuit of Happiness: Bba Proteins And Proteomics Bba Proteins And Proteomics lists for $3,032.59 (16 issues/12 months ) - WOW -- Proteomics is not cheap ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:30 PM CST [Link]
LIFE: Protein Protocols ... LALLAL (Live a little, Learn a little) ... I didn't know Protein Protocols was such a huge topic ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:17 PM CST [Link]
LIFE: Protein Kinase. New PNAS paper Protein kinase involved in lung injury susceptibility: Evidence from enzyme isoform genetic knockout and in vivo inhibitor treatment (Mark S. Wainwright, Janet Rossi, James Schavocky, Susan Crawford, David Steinhorn, Anastasia V. Velentza, Magdalena Zasadzki, Vladimir Shirinsky, Yuzhi Jia, Jacques Haiech, Linda J. Van Eldik, and D. Martin Watterson -- Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.1031595100 looks like one that might be pretty important, and possibly have implications for SARS ...
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:01 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Marriage of True Minds is really funny and insightful ... you just have to read it!
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:42 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: the most powerful nation. Wayne Jones is absolutley right when he says "We have, for lack of a better word, emerged onto the world stage in the course of a mere 227 years as not simply one of a host of powerful nations, but the most powerful nation."
We do have special responsibilities, and we all ought to be thinking about them!
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:35 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: First Amendment First - THE ECONOMY No matter who tells you otherwise, the economy is in the dumps ... or is it the basement. Tax cuts or tax increases have nothing to do with it. The spark is missing!
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:08 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Really Bad PowerPoint is getting quite a following - I wonder why.
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:54 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Bootstrapper's Bible. Martin Schray says "
The Bootstrapper's Bible has a extremely pragmatic approach to starting a business without capital" [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 06:54 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, May 1, 2003
Liberty: Yogi Berra, Polybius, ... Gray Rinehart had a penetrating reflection on the terror issue ... quoting Yogi Berra “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” I am not sure what it may have to do with Japanese Architecture ... but I think there's something there ... perhaps in the converse. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:16 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Machu Picchu according to experts ... Machu Picchu is one of the most stunning archaeological sites on Earth. Located in the heart of the Andes in Peru, it is a five-centuries-old Incan relic - a must see and experience site --- [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:55 PM CST [Link]
Life (Death?): SARS Recovery May Presage Worst Phase. The SARS chameleon reveals its true colors, maybe. According to the New York Times:
With SARS, Initial Recovery May Presage Worst Phase
By KEITH BRADSHER with LAWRENCE K. ALTMANHONG KONG, May 1 — Some SARS patients who appear to recover are actually late in suffering the worst effects of the disease, while many recovered patients may still have some of the live virus in their bodies when they are discharged from hospital, doctors said here today.
Both phenomena could create problems in controlling the spread of SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and underline how little is known about the later stages of the disease.
Molecular Biology, Genetics, Genomics ... I bet these will be getting a lot more attention.