Feeling Romantic?

Tell your significant other I love you in all the language of the world!!!

from http://www.freelang.com/expressions/jetaime.html

AFRIKAANS	ek het jou lief / ek is lief vir jou
ALBANAIS	të dua
ALLEMAND	ich liebe Dich
ALSACIEN	ich hab die lieb
ANGLAIS	I love you
ARABE DIALECTAL (maghrébin)	n'bghick
ARABE DIALECTAL (oriental)	bahebbak (à un homme) / bahebbik (à une femme)
ARABE LITTÉRAIRE	ouhibbouka (à un homme) / ouhibbouki (à une femme)
ARMÉNIEN	yes kez siroumem
ASTURIEN	quiérote
ATTIÉ	min bou la yé
AZERI	men seni sevirem
BAMBARA	né bi fè
BAS-ALLEMAND	ik heef di leev
BAS-SAXON	ik hou van ju
BASQUE	maite zaitut
BAOULE	mi klôa
BENGALI	aami tomakey bhalo basi
BERBÈRE	righ kem
BIÉLORUSSE	Кахаю цябе (kahaju ciabie)
BIRMAN	nga nin ko chit te
BOBO	ma kia bé nà
BOSNIAQUE	volim te
BRETON	karout a ran ac'hanout / da garout a ran / me az kar
BULGARE	обичам те
CATALAN	t'estimo
CHEYENNE	ne'mehotatse
CH'TI	j't'aquiers
CHINOIS	wo ai ni
CORÉEN	saranghe
CORSE	amu tè / ti tengu caru
CRÉOLE ANTILLAIS	mwen enmen
CRÉOLE GUADELOUPÉEN	mwen enméw
CRÉOLE GUYANAIS	mo contan to
CRÉOLE HAITIEN	mwen renmen'w / mouin rinmin'w
CRÉOLE MARTINIQUAIS	mwen inmin'w
CRÉOLE MAURICIEN	mo content toi
CRÉOLE RÉUNIONNAIS	mi aime a ou
CROATE	volim te
DANOIS	jeg elsker dig
DIOULA	mi fê
ESPAGNOL	te amo / te quiero
ESPÉRANTO	mi amas vin
ESTONIEN	ma armastan sind
FÉROÏEN	eg elski teg
FINNOIS	minä rakastan sinua
FLAMAND	ik hou van jou / ik heb je lief
FRANCIQUE LORRAIN	ich lìwe dich
FRANCIQUE RHÉNAN	ich honn dich gäer
FRIOULAN	o ti vuei ben
FRISON	ik hâld fan dy
GAÉLIQUE D'ÉCOSSE	tha gaol agam ort / tha gaol agam oirbh
GAÉLIQUE D'IRLANDE	tá grá agam duit
GALICIEN	amo-te / ámote / quero-te / quérote
GALLOIS	rydw i'n dy garu di
GÉORGIEN	me shen mikvarkhar
GREC	s'agapo
GUARANÍ	rojhayhû
GUJARATI	hun tane prem karun chhun
HAWAÏEN	aloha wau iā 'oe
HÉBREU	ani ohev otakh (homme > femme) ani ohevet otkha (femme > homme)
HINDI	main tumse pyar karta hoo
HMONG	kuv hlub koj
HONGROIS	szeretlek
INDONÉSIEN	saya cinta padamu / saya cinta kamu
ISLANDAIS	ég elska þig
ITALIEN	ti amo
JAPONAIS	aishitemasu / aishiteru (peu utilisé) anata ga daisuki desu (plus "mignon")
KABYLE	hamlagh-kem (homme > femme) hamlaghk (femme > homme)
KANNADA	naanu ninnanna pritisutteney
KHMER	bang srolaïgn ôn (homme > femme) ôn srolaïgn bang (femme > homme)
KINYARWANDA	ndagukunda
KURDE	ez te hez dikim
LANGUEDOCIEN (OCCITAN)	t'aimi
LAO	khoi hak tchao lai
LATIN	te amo
LETTON	es tevi mīlu
LIBANAIS	b'hibik (homme > femme) b'hibak (femme > homme)
LIGURE	mi te amu
LINGALA	na lingi yo
LITUANIEN	aš tave myliu
LUXEMBOURGEOIS	ech hunn dech gär
MACÉDONIEN	te sakam
MALAIS	aku cinta padamu
MALAYALAM	enikku ninné ishtamaanu
MALGACHE	tiako ianao / tia anao aho (plus fort)
MALTAIS	inħobbok
MANXOIS	ta graih aym ort
MAORI	kei te aroha au i a koe
MONGOL	Би чамд хайртай (bi chamd khairtai)
MORÉ	mam nong-a fo
NAPOLITAIN	t'ammo
NDEBELE	niya ku tanda
NÉERLANDAIS	ik hou van jou
NEPALI	ma timilai prem garchhu
NORVÉGIEN	jeg elsker deg
OCCITAN	t'aimi
OURDOU	mein tumse mohabbat karta hoon (locuteur M) main tumse mohabbat karti hoon (locuteur F) mujhe tum se pyar heh
OUZBEK	men seni sevaman / men seni yahshi ko'raman (moins formel)
PAPIAMENTO	mi ta stima bo
PERSAN	dustat dâram (formel) / duset dâram (courant)
PICARD	ej t'a kèr
POLONAIS	kocham cię
PORTUGAIS	amo-te / eu te amo (portugais brésilien)
PROVENÇAL	t'aimi
PUNJABI	mein tenu pyar karda han (locuteur M) mein tenu pyar kardi han (locuteur F)
QUECHUA de CUZCO	munakuyki
RAPA NUI	hanga rahi au kia koe
ROMANI	kamaù tut
ROUMAIN	te iubesc
RUSSE	Я тебя люблю (ia tibia lioubliou)
SAMOAN	ou te alofa ia te oe
SANGO	mbi yé mô
SARDE	deo t'amo (logudorois) / deu t'amu (campidanois)
SAVOYARD	jhe t'âmo
SERBE	volim te
SESOTHO	ke ya ho rata
SHONA	ndinokuda
SINDHI	moon khay tu saan piyar aahay
SINHALA	mama oyata aadareyi (spoken) / mama obata aadareyi (formal)
SIOUX	wastewalake
SLOVAQUE	ľúbim ťa / milujem ťa
SLOVÈNE	ljubim te / rad te imam (locuteur M) / rada te imam (locuteur F)
SOBOTA	volim te (courant) / se te volime (littéraire)
SOMALI	waan ku jecelahay
SONINKÉ	na moula
SOUSSOU	ira fan ma
SUÉDOIS	jag älskar dig
SWAHILI	nakupenda
TAGALOG	mahal kita
TAHITIEN	ua here vau ia oe
TAJIKI	jigarata bihrum duhtari hola (homme > femme) tra lav dorum (femme > homme)
TAMOUL	naan unnai kaadhalikkarn
TATAR	min sine yaratam
TCHÈQUE	miluji tě
TELUGU	nenu ninnu premisthunnanu
THAI	ผมรักคุณ (phom rak khun) - locuteur M ฉันรักคุณ (chan rak khun) - locuteur F
TIBÉTAIN	na kirinla gaguidou
TURC	seni seviyorum
TURKMÈNE	seni söýärin
UDMURT	mon tone jaratiśko
UKRAINIEN	Я тебе кохаю (ia tebe kohaiu)
VÉNÈTE	t'amo
VIETNAMIEN	anh yêu em (homme > femme) em yêu anh (femme > homme)
WALLON (orthographe à betchfessîs)	dji vs voe voltî
WOLOF	nob nala
XHOSA	ndiyakuthanda
YIDDISH	ich hob dir lib
YORUBA	moni ife e
ZULU	ngiyakuthanda

Darren Naish has lots of goodies

Have been missing its his new posts, since he moved to scienceblogs.

So, go and check them out!!!

Big cats
(these are two posts)

Seriously big squirrels: check out the piccie.

a post on Rhynos used during wars (fact or fiction?)

Narwhal's Sonic Lance (no it's not something out of sci-fi)

weekend preparations...

As preparation for the weekend, it's started to rain again, as usual...

Well, luckily I didn't wash the car, and most certainly will not wash it tomorrow, unless the sun shines so strong when i wake up that I need sun glasses. ah! not a chance, I'd say...

let's see how it turns out...

plus, my machine today is sluggish like never, there must be something (firefox with 141MB of RAM?) which is dragging it down... Memory leak? who knows? but even so, having 1GB of RAM I should have more than enough juice left to run the house, no? Nope: windows task manager says: mem usage 1411248K/2502016K. So I'm crunching on Virtual memory only. pants!

Ok, may be it's also my fault for keeping firefox + excel + word it open for one or two weeks at a time, before being forced to reboot.

But why, ho why, does this only happen on windows?

I have a new address

So, it's done. I signed the contract (co-signed, since Marie signed with me) and from the first of june we'll be living together. Woah! Big move uh?

Lots of things to do now, organise for the utilities contracts to be moved, which one to keep out of the various ones, when exactly move and so many tiny little things. I guess I am becoming adult. Finally. It was well time...

Back to work now, it's going to be hectic today, and plenty of things to do before leaving. tomorrow, I am off with some friends and colleagues at Durbuy, for the chocolate festival - although it sounds like just a market, on the net. mah...

Sunday at home cleaning, resting, watching movies, unless saturday evening I head off to BXL to catch my GF coming out of work. We'll see.

By all means, have a nice weekend you too!!!

Coffee Break

Curiosita': a che ora fate pausa? quante al giorno? con chi? avete una stanza comune x staccarvi dall'ambiente del lavoro/studio?

all'Uni di Soton c'era una stanzona dove tutti si riunivano, miriade di sedie, e due signore inglesi attempate (sotituite poi da una punk, e una cinesina niente male) che servivano in cambio di una modica offerta x te' e biscotti.

qua le coffee area son sparse un po' x tutto il compound. I Chimici Computazionali si riuniscono nell'area comune del rispettivo piano, ma si tengono separati dagli oncologi (le cui biologhe son uno spettacolo da guardare, specie SuperGirl che c'ha il fisico atletico e due puppe da paura)

Dove lavoro io invece, in ADMETox, ognuno va x conto suo, alcuni semplicemente alla macchinetta del loro piano - noi tre moschettieri si va alla cucina/meeting room appena creata. stefan si fa il suo te', vikash preme i tasti della macchinetta x un caffe', io invece verso un qaurto di litro di latte nella tazza, caffe' solubile ed altre spezie e zicco tutto nel microonde. si parla di biologia (io), o di porno (stefan), o di chissa' che altro (vikash) mentre si spera che Barbie girl passi vestita provocante. :-)

Did you ever wonder where you are?

How your work connect to that of other people around you? Somebody did, and decided to scourge citations from 800,000 scientific papers to assemble this map:



I am currently somewhere where it says "Therapeutic Research" (lower left), but have been between "Material" and "Physical Chemistry", and almost reached "Computer Science" already.

Click on it to download it, but be careful, it's huge. 5.7MB.

Never mind conservapedia

Many people (including Carl Zimmer) seems very worried about conservapedia, a wiki-like-pedia essentially full of rubbish. Don't worry, I say to them... People who visits it are mostly intelligent people who think of it as an alternative to the daily visit at The Onion, or AvantNews. And those few who visits it as source and repository of conservative information, well, they would not visit wikipedia anyway. Just let them wither away, and let's just hope that we outbred them, and not the other way around as it happens in Idiocracy, a movie I talked about some time ago...

have a nice sunday. I am off to see the science tunnel with a friend, after lunch.

labels on the side bar

so that you will be able to browse my posts by subject. :-)

Remember a Giant...

of italian journalism: Indro Montanelli.

I learned history from his books, rather than the school-suggested textbook, and God it was funnier! I still remember with fondness the wide open eyes of my history teacher, when I told her that Julius caesar was a womanizer (and gay too), citing don't remember who (svetonius? boh!) called him Moechus Calvus.

Go and read up his story, certainly more movimented than most of us.

A Venn's Diagram for the state of the Union

I took it from Pharyingula, cited so many times in here that you don't really need the link anymore I guess. Just google it. Feel lazy today uh? Ok I inserted it.

Also on pharyngula, the incredible news of a woman with one more nipple in her foot

Eran Trecento, giovani e forti...

e sono morti...

yes I am talking about the Termopilae battle, and the new movie 300 based on Frank miller's comic which re-tells the story.

My dear friend daniele is longing to see it, although the NY Times review I sent him didn't quite covince him. I couldn't be bothered to read it. But I did check the IMDB, and the movie has quite a high rating, at 8.4. Not half bad, having jumped as high as #156 in the best 250 movies ever (for the voters of the site). Unless the 17848 voters are all Miller fanboys, i can't see how the movie can't be bad. I'll check it out, then.

I guess there will not be much suspense, though, with the ending known since two thousand and a half years... :-|

for some reviews in italian, go here.

Pasta with Bottarga

first, a link to it.

then, the way I make it:

first off, these are ingredients for 4 hungry italian boys, so scale them accordingly:

- 5-600 gr of pasta (yes, that's 125-150 gr each: I did say we were hungry)
- a bunch of parsley, flat leaf if possible 'cause it's softer and it cuts better...
- 50-80 gr of butter, if you really have to substitute it with margarine, but believe me it's not healthier :-)
- two cloves of garlic, as fresh as possible if you can.
- one strong chili pepper dry or fresh.
- and yes, some 50 gr of bottarga, freshly grated/ground.

ok, start putting the water on the fire. some 4 liters should be fine, plus a fistful of salt.
in the meanwhile it gets hot, you finely chop the garlic and the chili, melt the butter in a sauce pan (a wok is perfect, if you have one, 'cause you'll need to mix the pasta in it afterwards) and put them in. leave like that for two to three minutes, make sure that the butter is on the verge of boiling but do not burn the garlic. in those three minutes, you finely chop the bunch of parsley, and you add them to the pan. leave one minutes and then shut the fire off.

now, your water should almost done, when it's happily boiling pour in your spaghetti, barilla number 3 if you can find them or any other kind of dry pasta you like. it'll cook itself just stir it from time to time.

don't keep your thumbs idle, though, you grind/grate the bottarga and pour it in the wok, mix it with the rest until it adsorbs the butter and creates a kind of sauce. if it's too dry, add a little bit of butter or olive oil or else some water from the pasta (diet choice).

roughly drain the pasta before it's "al dente", and turn on the fire behind the wok/saucepan. pour the pasta in with a lil bit of cooking water (a few spoonful, or what's left if you drain it quickly), and stir vigorously, until the sauce has spread more or less evenly. then divide it in portion and serve. enjoy! (keep the dishes slightly warm, so that the pasta will stay warmer while you eat it)

variation:

- chives instead of parsley, black pepper instead of chili, and so on. just experiment!!!

luca




other recipe with pictures (that's where I took them from - mine looks much more different, with lots of parsley and ground garlic all over the place

Silly me, you may need to buy it. (never tried it, though)

Keep an eye on this guy

He always has something interesting to talk about: in this case, an exhaustive article about the varying size of genomes in different animals (and plants too) with a rationalisation of why this may happen (hint: varying metabolism levels)

Many thanks to Science for keeping this nice piece freely available

House Hunting

I've spent the weekend doing two things. No wait, three, of which two had to do with houses.

First on saturday morning, We (me and Marie) set off to Breda, to join my MI colleagues in the effort of bringing down the ceilings of Wendy's place. It was nice, I got to know the whole of her family, Henry (husband), Kirsten and Maren (daughters), Jasper (helpful son). Other colleagues were present as I said, Daniele, Pascal, Libuse, Theo, his wife keeping the little ladies entertained. Is that it? yes, that's it. Pretty heavy job a nice change for us, whose hardest work is pressing buttons, be them those of a keyboard, or at the most the coffee machine's.

At midday, I stopped that and started cooking my worldwide renowned pasta with bottarga (dried ovaries of cod-like fishes), who was very appreciated. I'd have called it a day, already, but it wasn't nearly done: whereas the other restarted to bring down the third room, Marie and me quickly changed and left for Mechelen, where we had six (!) houses/apartments to check.

Pretty good fun, if it hadn't been for some misunderstanding between me and various agents who messed up my carefully crafted timetable. But, (there's always a but) marie and me could not agree on any of the houses really. the stylish one which I liked (inhabited by a couple of (gay?) musicians had two very steep flight of stairs, which would make it very difficult to move stuff in and out. Another one, which I insisted for visiting, she liked but I absolutely hated. Old and badly mantained, with a nightmarish layout.

Luckily, we managed to intrude ourselves unexpected in a apartment which we both liked: no surprise, being it the most expensive of the bunch. here it is:



Click on it to go to the google map. I'd post the pictures, but hopefully the weblink will be broken once the house is taken off the market by ourselves. Anyway, as you can see from the pictures it's in a nice green area. the road it sits on is quite trafficked, there's a hypermarket just down the road, which is however a good thing for us - plus, over that wood in front there's a double rail-line, but nothing to fret about: the house is anyway new and quite well sound-proofed, so no troubles for sleeping at night (or at day, should we want to). The garden on the back is simply huge, and I can foresee many many barbecues in it. Of course me being me, I al;ready checked how far the nearest swimming pool is (2.8 Km):



The station is close enough for a bike ride every day, so hopefully i'll get rid of my car sometime in the near future. the idea is to move in the begin of june. Which incidentally means no africa trip, and I'm also going to forgo my training in perugia - substituted by a more useful one in Oxford anyway - end of June, so that I can move and settle down before leaving.

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of the sunny weather to stroll around at the national botanic garden in Meise:



Very nice place, we managed to go straight through it from the entrance in the village side 'til the greenhouses, which we visited in their entirety (albeit quickly). I'd like to post some pictures of the inside but they are crap since I didn't have my camera, only my mobile phone. X-P

In the afternoon, another tour of a nice green area, the region around the lake de la cambre (in Ixelles):



On the monday, no work for me, I tried to arrange a meeting with the owner of the house we liked, but couldn't make it. we just went to visit another one, which we didn't like particularly, so we decided to stick with the one we already applied for. cross your fingers for us, guys and girls. We'll let you know more later on!!!

Wish I was like him?

The NY Times has an article about Terence Tao, probably the most gifted mathematician of this generation. At age two, he knew hot to read and count. At seven, he was tackling calculus, At 20, he had a PhD. So, do I wish i was him? Uhm, I don't know. He himself admits he wasn't perfect in all fields, getting frustrated when asked to write essays, for example. Also he does not know any language other than english, from what he says: he certainly is excellent in his own fields, far more than I'll ever be in my own (whichever that is). Still, I would not exchange my place with his. better for both I guess. I am sure he would not enjoy to be a still running PhD at the age of 32 :-D - that, and I am better looking ;-)

Jon move up come on, I can't wait for ever to get that damn title. One more year and I will give up science and transfer to organised crime. Much more fun, and safer occupation.

Nietzsche

Un nuovo blog da leggere - in Italiano. Non son sicuro dello stile che l'autore usa. non capisco se vive a cavallo fra gerusalemme, tokyo e NY. o magari in un paesino della bassa padana. mah... importa poco. xo' sembra avere una maniera originale di pensare. x cui ve lo link, dategli uno sguardo. ;-)

Parasites, parasites...

I've managed to complete a few chapters of my copy of Parasite Rex. Incredibly interesting, more so since Carl Zimmer does freely update on the state of parasitology research on his blog. Yesterday, for example, with an interesting piece about the evolution of human crabs (piattole) and lices (pidocchi). (trackback)

Happy women's day

as per topic. something like a hundred+ years ago a bunch of women died in a fire... here you can get the whole story.

Women of all the world, get this digital bunch of flower from me:

The mistery of the vanishing honeybees

you may not know it, but honeybees do provide an incredibly important service to us - other than honey, that is. In fact, much more important than honey. They do pollinate the vast majority of crops, to the point that one out of every three bites we take would not be there if it wasn't for them.

Oh, I'm sorry I wiash I could write more on the foolishness of marketing and moving around bees as if they were people, on the crazyness of instituting no-fly- zones for bees to avoid them pollinating citruses and so obtain seedless clementine (!), and other americanities (but I am pretty sure the rest of the world has similar practices. I just don't have the time, so go and read the NY Times piece.

new pictures

linked on the sidebar...

for your education, they were taken in Platamona, during the second day of my sardinian holidays last september...

click on the slideshow botton to see the slideshow (duh!) with my comments too...

they only need to add some nice transitions, and some background music to Picasa to make a complete slideshow...

Vanishing forests

Carl Zimmer, the author of Parasite rex, has a piece on the NY Times regarding the Tanzanian Eastern Mountain Arc, where the surviving patches of forest, encroached by human development, contains an enormous quantity of species to be still discovered. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there will be time enough for biologist to even describe the species before they are driven to extinction, let alone make efforts to preserve them.

This all development business makes me sad. When people all over the world will understand that your success is not measured by how many children you have but how well you can rear them? Most people still behave as if we were hunter gatherers, sparse on an enormous territory and barely able to leave a dent on it, whereas this is not obviously the case anymore. And hasn't been for the past three hundred years to say the least.

I understand the need for providing means for a decent life to all the people alive on the planet right now, I do understand their strong will of having descendant.
I do also concede that they are entitled to the same level of life that we westerners enjoy. pity that the world can't cope with this all.

It's just OUR problem. If we mess up the environment, we will not wipe out life from the planet. Life is tough and in a couple of million years will be able to recover from it. may be more, but it will no doubt on this. But we are a fragile species, and our very same advanced society relies on a stable environment to prosper. Exactly the thing we are messing with. Good luck to us all.

Thoughts from Kansas has a comment on the article too.

PARASITE REX

I've finally received this book in my mailbox. I did order it after Dr Tatiana's Sex Advices to All Creation, but that one got lost in the post, so I had to notify Play.Com of this and have a replacement copy sent. They rocks!!! So much better than even Amazon (no link for them, eh eh).

Anyway, now it's here, in all the splendor of his colored scansion-micrography cover art. And God it's disgusting!!! I've only managed to read the preface in a quick sto at the loo after lunch, and yet I was captured, and revolted too - never mind the situation I was in, sitting on the company's WC, but reading about the effect of Tripanosoms or even worse, Onchocerca Volvulus, really scares the shit out of me. Luckily, as I said, I was already ibn a good sitting position. Did I mention that the author, Carl Zimmer, has a very nice blog called The Loom? He also writes for the NY Times, and National Geographic, but also Forbes. ;-)

Well, I guess I'll know what to read tonight, since I forgot at my gf's place :-(
Good Omens and Culture Matters (which was lent to me by her brother)

You all, have a nice evening!

Being a PostDoc

I feel morally obliged to post a link to the second Postdoc Carnival.

I've read a handful of post from there today, and I find strange how most of the post-doc posting are seeing their temporary research as a way to enter Academia - I, on the converse have accepted an industrial PostDoc as a way to stick my foot inside industry. Otherwise, the situation we PostDoGs feel here is pretty much the same, as far as frustration are concerned. Thankfully though, I'm part of a glorified trio of PostDoc involved in science-only, rather than being glorified technicians in the labs like some other complain.

Tribute to Carl Sagan

thanks to Coturnix

California Scientists Map God Genome

from AvantNews

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor
Davis, CA, July 22, 2010

Researchers at California's UC Davis announced today the successful completion of a three-year, highly secretive project to map God's genetic code. Originally commissioned by filmmaker James Cameron, who supplied the research team with holy genetic material on which to perform the study, the results of the God Genome project are expected to profoundly influence human conceptions of divinity and origin.

Amazing!!!

There's more than one tool user on this planet. that much we knew. chimp abitually use sticky sticks to eat Termites... (edit: the list of users of toolw is apparently quite long and includes not only primates, but even birds such as owls, and crows)

But actively hunting??? With spears? Made from branches sharpened with their teeth? That is unheard of!!!

I am sorry for all the exclamation marks!!! here's a link to the pre-print of the paper, from Current Biology website. Enjoy!

Up! Darren Naish has something to say too. I usually listen to him...

Scramble!!!

Yesterday, I heard, then saw, two fighter planes flying low over our buildings. No, I didn't think Pfizer or GSK had launched a pre-emptive strike against J&J. But since I just caugh a glimpse of them, I coudln't identify them properly. So went looking for what kind of planes does the Belgian (or alternatively, the Dutch) Air force uses. I found the answer in this nice and accurate website, where lots of detailed info on which armed forces and government corps have planes and copters in service are freely available (albeit not easily found). Kudos!

Food for the brain... and the body too...

Carl Zimmer points out an interesting review on Nature Reviews Cancer - abstract follows:

Darwinian medicine: a case for cancer

Mel Greaves

Epidemiological, genetic and molecular biological studies have collectively provided us with a rich source of data that underpins our current understanding of the aetiology and molecular pathogenesis of cancer. But this perspective focuses on proximate mechanisms, and does not provide an adequate explanation for the prevalence of tumours and cancer in animal species or what seems to be the striking vulnerability of Homo sapiens. The central precept of Darwinian medicine is that vulnerability to cancer, and other major diseases, arises at least in part as a consequence of the 'design' limitations, compromises and trade-offs that characterize evolutionary processes.

te last two sentences (about human vulnerability to cancer and Zimmer comments on genomic conflicts (Some important cancer genes appear to have rapidly evolved because they help sperm reproduce faster or allow fetuses to manipulate their mothers. It appears that these genes also make tumors more sucessful.) got me thinking...

So, we're more susceptible than normal to cancer because we've been evolving quicker than normal in the recent past? If so, when did this start? Since our environment has been kind of stable in the last thousands of year (ok, ice ages apart), is our evolution accelerating as a response to the increased demands of our social environment? So, is our evolution accelerating exponentially to follow the accumulation of knowledge (which certainly seems to be exponential)?

Uhm, lots of food for thought here.. have a nice evening...

gotta cook some pasta - otherwise my brain will run out of his preferred food :-)

Good Life

This show is incredibly good (ah! ah!). I've managed to watch the first two episodes only (download is kinda slow). However, I have to admit that I find it hard to follow. Either they used to speak quicker at that time, or the audio isn't that great. I guess it's the second. The alternative would be that I'm getting more used to the US accent, and less to the UK one. God not...

Anyway, I didn't have that much difficulties with the second episode. May be it was just matter of getting used to the actors' voices.


And I confirm my impression: Barbara Good (Felicity Kendall) is gorgeous! I've always liked her since when I first saw the show... The sheer power of her optimism it's just heart warming...

Good Omens

And, since I've named one of the authors in the previous post, I want to tell you what I am reading. Good Omens, or The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Neil gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

This was the first book I bought in english land, and had to wait one year or so before being able to read it. Now it's been five year since i last read it, so i don't remember much about it, other than the joke about the M25 (the London Ring) being a kind of satanic mandala / prayer wheel...

So, I've started reading again, since my latest purchases from play.com are lost somewhere between Jersey and Beerse.

God this book is funny. Thankfully, the class of Gaiman tempers down Pratchett's jokes so that they don't bore me after a while. When is a movie about this due?

Unfortunately, as wikipedia says: A film, directed by Terry Gilliam, was planned, but as of 2006 seems to have come to nothing. Funding was slow to appear and Gilliam moved on to other projects. The film has been removed from IMDB. Johnny Depp was originally cast as Anthony Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale. According to an interview in May 2006 at the Guardian Hay Festival, Gilliam is apparently still hoping to go ahead with the film.

Good Movies...

I've seen these two movies, the last two days. both were quite good.
Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes 500 years in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.

I loved this one. The plot starts today, when intelligent people think twice before making a baby, whereas the mother of stoopids is always pregnant, as P.T. Barnum once put it. With technology to pamper humanity from natural selection, quickly stupids outbred the (not so uh?) smarts. resulting in a civilisation (?) where everybody drinks Gatorade (also plants) and speaks a pidgin english made-up from ghetto-jargon. The highest form of expression is a movie consisting exclusively of ninty minutes of fart scenes (ouch). Our unwilling hero, now the smartest person alive, is forced to take care of this unbearable situation...

Pity the movie did only concentrate on the United States of Uhmerica.

Possibly, other countries did escape this terrible fate?

--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**



An IRS auditor suddenly finds himself the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to affect his entire life, from his work, to his love-interest, to his death.

This is a less accomplished movie, with some better acting but less fun. Will ferrel shows that he can be a little bit serious, and I loved Emma Thompson's character. Dustin hoffman's was instead a bit off, his talking not quite the ones I would expect from, you know, a literature scholar. In essence, the movie fall short of being truly Literary. the love story between the auditor and the bakery's girl is too simplified, as are many other of the plot's keystones. Pity, 'cause the initial idea was quite nice. I guess they should have called some better writer :-|

I can think of an english name for this kind of plot... (Neil Gaiman)

Singularity

Nice tidbits of info in this YouTube presentation


frankly, I'm not so sure about all the data shown in the video. Regardless, it makes some interesting insights.

wrong wrong wrong...

the NY Times stick his foot in it...

"Pro Evolution Soccer, a popular soccer game produced by Electronic Arts." wrong wrong wrong, PES is made by Konami. I just had to say it to someone :-) I know you don't care... :-|

The Departed

So, yesterday I almost forced my GF to watch this movie, which had been setting top of my list since last week. What can I say? very very nice movie, although I admit that I may have missed some nuances of the plot and dialogues. Sharp and hard on all accounts, it eaves you hoping until the end that things will turn for the better, but no, they just go down to hell... It's nice to get an american movie without the feel-good Hollywood ending, from time to time...

So, did it deserve the 4 oscars? I don't know - Martin Scorses was long due for one, sure... Best writing, probably yes. I liked the idea - the symmetric play remindimg me of a chess game, where every opponent has the same pieces and the same likelihood of victory (at least, thisi is what I believe in my ignorance). Bes Editing, most likely, although haven't had the time to check the other nominated for this. But as I said, it's sharp, with no unnecessary scenes. Best movie? It certainly is a good one. I voted it a 9 on the imdb - very good but not perfect - not one of those movies which win your heart. Well, not mine.

But I'd suggest anybody to watch it - that is, anybody who doesn't mind seeing some ten brain splattered on walls.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Oh yes, I also saw The Pursuit of Happyness this weekend - my girlfriend choice :-P

Nothing special. Will Smith as usual (plus one son). American dream as usual (crap-effort-success!). Happy Ending (but were's the wife? Did he take her back? did he marry a beautiful actress that the boy will hate for the rest of his life? Will the two fight for the inheritance of Will's fortune? - Pah...

The Osteodensity machine sucked, though... And the rubik cube scene too...

Mind you, an enjoyable movie, but will forget it within the month. time filler. My vote on IMDB: 6 - Avg User rating 7.4

Good for a laugh...

I know, I'm late for the party, but will give it a link anyway.

Since wikipedia is apparently too biased, they build their own - surely unbiased, just look up the name... Conservapedia... How this people can hope to pull something like this? May be it's just a prank. Nope. Sadness...

The Sinhas at Nr 43

or the Kumars at Nr 42?

Last weekend I spent it with an indian colleague and family in a chalet in the Ardennes. I realised when I arrived that the flat number was 43. just one number off the famous 42, which main character Sanjeev chose because of the Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

What a coincidence, uh? I wonder if there's any deeper meaning...

Disintoxication...

...from Battlestar Galactica :-)

Two weeks without it. more in fact. and I am not feeling the lack of it :-)

I'm going to celebrate buying or downloading "The Good Life", a BBC series which I adored when I was in the UK, where it's constantly re-aired...

Belgian Police sucks

There's no other way of putting it. they must sucks socks...

I was notified a speeding ticket (for a whopping 200 EUR!!!) three months late, may be 'cause it was done on a rental car - and the company, not me, rented the car. so i could have understood if they had had a bit of difficulties to trace me, back then. Anyway, I paid as soon as I got it. and forgot about it.

Last month, i get a call from a secretary or like at the company, telling me that the police is asking them the money (again!!!) and they'll pay and detract it from my salary. I look for the receipt in the online bank service, print it out and send it to them, they say OK it's all fine now. Sod the police.

Now, a policeman phones me up telling me that he absolutely has to talk to me regarding this. they want another copy of the receipt - but I'm pretty sure the belgian government would rather have me pay another time - not a chance in hell - unless this is a new fine - But I seriously doubt it... pof!!!

I hate this place!!!

No wonder French and Dutch make jokes on Belgian being kinda thick... We in Italy make jokes about the policemen bein particularly 'unclever'... may be the union of the two things (a belgian policeman!!!) is the archetype of thickness? mah...

Anyway. I decided to get rid of my car. I know I haven't had it for one year. But I think it's rather pointless to keep it. If I move, and commute by train, it'll stay at home al week long. I will not need it in the weekends since my girflriend will live with me, and we;ll go together to places... so what's the point of paying 400 euros per month? they would be better spent in food, holidays, gadgets. or may be a cradle, in one year's time. who knows, a baby may be on his/her way here from god-knows-where-babies-come-from... ;-)

I've run out of space...

On my hard drives (both). External and Internal. So, no more downloads until I get paid, and can afford a shiny new one, or at least a pack of DVDs... pants!!!

on the BloodBrainBarrier

Just today I started working on BBB, or Blood Brain Barrier - and here comes a post from Omics quickly explaining how it works (so that I don't have to) and why Avastin, an antibody avoiding vascular growth which would otherwise feed the tumor, may be able to cross the barrier even if usually antibodies aren't allowed in the Sancta Sanctorum of the human body, the brain - which has its own immune system, apparently.

So, the trick (may be) that the brain tumor itself seems to impair the BBB functionality, so that avastin can slip through... and kill it. Kind of a burglar which leaves open the door of the apartment he's robbing, only to be surprised by a policeman who got curious about the open door. But why does the BBB give in where a brain tumor is growing? Apparently, this may have to do with the fact that the tumor needs to be fed by new capillaries, and for growing this the tight junctions have to be disassembled. Tough chance for the tumor. Good for us, and some hope for those patients who may, one day be saved.

Counterfeiting drugs...

Yesterday's NY Times has a piece on the plague of counterfeited drugs in Asia (and Africa, too). Watch out for those miracle antimalarial - the technique counterfeiters are adopting are quite sophisticate using not only placebos but sometimes active ingredients which 'simulate' the presence of the real drug, or even adding a lil bit of it, just enough to fool fake-detection methods - a practice which could pose an even serious threat, since giving low doses of a strong active is the best way to engender resistance to it.

Damn these bastards. I hope that one day they'll need the very same drugs, and will discover that what they bought was... fake!
But it will not bring back to life person who died at their hands...

As the article points out, a counterfeit alarm system is in place, but without incentives is hardly used.

I am moving

Ehy. I did it. I finally gave notice to my landlady (and her vampyr minion, her housing-agent - pretty lady who sucks my blood) that by May I'll leave the apartment, to tranfer with my girlfriend Marie in Mechelen, or Malines, for the francophones.



I already posted about this nice city, close enough to Brussel so that she'll be able to commute easily, and may be we'll be able to enjoy the nightlife (yeah, right). At the same time, I hope that I'll be able to catch the hourly direct train to Turnhout to come to work. And in the future, since it's so central to Belgium, we may stick there whatever our workplace. let's hope so... It looks very nice.

The life of tapeworms

Carl Zimmer, who's a knack for parasitology, has an interesting piece about the evolution of tapeworms, commonly known in Italy with their latin name: Taenia.

Also, a nice picture of their evolutionary tree (from the original paper)

So, what?

Audible Magic is selling a software which allows copyright holders to check whether or not someone has uploaded any of their stuff on youtube. So what? do they think they're going to stop people from downloading?

In fact the program is quite easy to fool. Just crop the image. Uhm don't like it, really, I would miss part of the movie. but I have another solution, in fact: juist split the picture in quarters, and scramble them. it isn't going to affect too much the encoding, rebuilding the picture will be easy for players - and I bet their software can't cope wth it. Of course, you'll need to store info on the file somewhere, so that they could still do their trick. and that may be an hassle for people who are used to downloading quickly. still, companies can't play catch and run for ever...

when will they get round the fact that their business model is broken and they've to look for another one? I mean, is it that difficult to ask advertising buyers to pay directly for the production of series and stuff with embedded ads? how can they not see this???

They shot a Robin into Space!!!

Ehy I'm back, after a long lapse due to the weekend in the Ardennes (which has not gone as planned unfortunately - worst than you may think, since the weather was ideal for a long walk in the forest which we were denied by adverse conditions - gr!

Anyway, bak home yesterday, I've seen the latest episode of TopGear: s09e03, for those interested (click on the link to download the torrent :-) ). And, apart from the usual Clarkson's trashing around in an expensive and hyper powered car, the highlight was the attempt of building a no-nonsense, down-to-earth (in all senses) space shuttle from a Reliant Robin (picture below) on the impeccable rationale that it's cheap, and being pointy it already resemble a spaceship.



as you can see, plenty of people think it's suited to become many different things :-)

Anyway, they asked (once again) the help of the Rocketeers, a rocket-fan-club somewhere in England, borrowed a wind tunnel from some University, testing grounds from the Royal Army, and went down there to assemble the whole shebang.

And it did work!!! well, almost... It did lift-off beautifully, with the solid booster detaching themselves at the right moment, just like in the REAL space shuttle, it did turn belly-up to insert into orbit (ah!), but then the explosive bolts supposed to separate the big rocket didn't work out, so that instead of flying down to the grass it tumbled and exploded, leaving a big hole somewhere in northumberland, just off the A68. Well, it was fun!!!



Anyway, here you can check out the whole assembly and stuff. ;-)

Novaya Zemlya

I'm sad. In my absolute ignorance of geography, I just discovered this island, well, this archipelago of two big ones plus a host of small ones. It sits above siberia or there, and reminded me of the place where Stephen Baxter, in his book Behemoth, set his Mammoth stories. In his north siberian island, almost unexplored by humans with the exception of the southernmost part, which hosted a Soviet Air Force base during the cold War, a colony of mammoths manages to survive until our days. The story, mammoths excluded, parallels that of Novaya Zemlya, with another important exception. This site, since the end of the second world war until 1990, has been the main soviet site for nuclear testing, both atmospherical and subterranean. Reading wikipedia, one understands that roughly 70% of his enormous territory has been hit one way or another, by some of the 224 nuclear explosions, for a total of 265MTons. the largest Fusion bomb ever made, the Tsar Bomb (50Mton!!!) was detonated here. What a firecracker!!!

Now I don't think that there were any mammoths left there, since the human inuit-like population would have gotten rid of them much before the rise of western civilisation. But still, when I saw it on google maps I imagined it like an uncontaminated land... Kind of like Kamchatka, which instead, I read, thanks to the very strong military servitude imposed on it has been saved by exploitation of its resources, and is now the main and one of the few refuges of the pacific salmon (I read it on the NY Times some time ago, I think). As a general rule, I think that military servitudes (as they're called in Italy often have the very good side effect of protecting the nature in the training grounds. It holds true for the scottish highlands, for Kamchatka but also for some places in sardinia too. I'm pretty sure that similar examples can be found in the US too. Military exercises are very limited in time, and although they can be disruptive of the natural order at those times, ensure that the forest will be left undisturbed for most of the year, without noisy tourists to soil it.

But then again, one thing is having a tank strolling around for a couple of day, may be even some planes dropping some couple of tons of bombs, or disseminating even depleted uranium projectiles. nature can cope with this... But MegaTon bombs? Radioactive fallout? I don't think so... Do you?

Busy Busy Busy again... then nothing.

Just spent two hours putting together a presentation on the last two-weeks worth of work, one hour showing it, another one listening to my two co-post-dogs, then lunch... a short walk in the sun and that's it.

a few hours left before our dear friend/colleague is treated to a welcome party. then possibly swimming pool, or may be I'll feel guilty and head off home for a final rehashing of my thesis pictures.

Find it boring? well, story of my life...

let's put up a picture to spice up this post


A schematic of the way I plan to screen my pKas... yes it looks pretty enough... a detail of the central seelction in the next one.

Heavy news day this one...

On the heels of the Nowak affair, and right in time for valentine's Day, the NYTimes has a piece regarding the misdemeanor of famous (and not so) scientist of this and the past century...

I didn't know that Schrodinger was such a womanizer... ;-)

Google gets a slap on the wrist...

NY Times reports that the brussel court ruled Google guilty of infringing copyright for linking to articles of belgian newspapers.

I do not agree with the court, however. Google is linking freely available stuff, which is exactly what it does in any case. It is not bypassing any firewall or offering premium content for free.

If I were Google, I'd cancel them from the face of the web. See how much trafic goes to those newspapers website once every search in the major engines returns links to the competitors.

Happy Valentine's day!!!

LOL Happy valentine's day...


My lovely marie is busy at work this night, so no romantic dinner - in fact, we will not even meet. (sad sad luca - there seems to be a curse on my valentines)

Anyway, I bought her a present. A book. Well Ok may be she will not appreciate but I'm going to enjoy. So may be it's a present for me... uh...

Anyway, here it is:

And there's more!!!

I'd like an Octopus and Peach cone, thank you very much!!!

click on the title (or here) to go to the original page

Yummi!!! Tasty Cookie...

Thanks to PZ Myers for these mo'fa'kin' spiders on a mo'fa'kin cookie...

And Oh, this is just too great!!!

The largest bit-torrent site around has launched an incredibly good initiative. Torrents linking to the oscar-nominated movies, so that you can download them and express your opinion.

I think it's rather nice, indeed. Just what I need to grab a couple movies for this weekend in the Ardennes

And you know what i think about p2p, pirates all this stuff. the world has changed. MPAA and RIAA complaining now instead of adapting to the new reality is like the horses's stable suing FORD for mass-producing cars. Get a (new) life... be creative and ask someone to sponsor your movie, so that you can distribute it with spots embedded. there's no need for middlemen (distribution houses) anymore.

Now, what?

Study: P2P effect on legal music sales "not statistically distinguishable from zero"

Take this, RIAA/MPAA!!!

sorry for ripping through without commenting but I'm off for lunch. may be later I'll update.

eccomi qua: will quote the article from ars technica: A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

So, it's not ome bonker's (or lawyer's) study, but one peer-reviewed within a respectable journal. This confirms my idea. Those who download music either would not buy it in first place, or do it to sample at their own ease something before actually purchasing. If anything, pirated music does increase the awareness that something new has come out, exactly as radio broadcast does. The industry should be giving away the songs in radio-quality files, for exactly the same reasons.

And again on the matter of diets

I did post recently about my most beloved american gardener / journalist, Michael Pollan - author of "The Botany of Desire", which I loved, and "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which I'm going to.

Now, an article on the Guardian debunks the scientific credibility of 'Dr' Gillian McKeith, who's been abusing the PhD title, which she apparently got from a mail-university in the US or somewhere else. I didn't know i could get one like this, Stupid me for wasting years in research and half the evenings of the last year in writing a thesis. Pants!!! Why I'm not so clever as this PhD people?

On a pleasant side note, I've worked on the pictures and tables of the sixth chapter y/day. Hopefully that chapter is now FINAL (pending judgement of the external examiner). Tonight for the seventh, and may be by the end of the week i'll get to re-write better conclusions. Ah, how sweet is to see the end in sight...

After this is done, i'll be able to concentrate on... writing writing and publishing publishing this work before it's superseded and obsolete by other people.

And I'll have to do the same at work too. Well, my Word proficiency is now up to the job, I should be able to manage it. :-)

Do I have the time?

for a quick post? yes I do...

things to do today:

training. downloading the latest episodes of: Top Gear, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galactica. Oh, yes, write up the thesis since my ex-spervisor doesn't seem to be busy with it. At least it'll have less to correct.

cheers... gotta go to training, now.

Unhappy Meal

This really deserves a link. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, takes on the confusion which grips most americans when it comes to food. He starts from the beginning of the '50s and shows how food industry and (bad) journalism have changed the perception of what is good to be eaten.

He focuses mostly on americans, but unfortunately I can see the same thing happening in Italy, notwithstanding the claim that our food is proper food and probably the best balanced diet in the whole world.

Shame on me, in the past few days I ate so many mini-mars-bars... :-(

Amarone, californian wines..

The NY Times has a piece regarding the Amarone, a wine made from dired grapes which has a very strpng alcohol content - in italian, we call them 'passiti'. The article boasts about californian wines having 17 degrees, but they're just weak if compared to other passiti, italian and not.

Anghelu Ruju, from Sardinia, for example, or Mavrodaphne from Greece, although this last one isn't technically a passito.

Oldest people on Earth...

Here's the hand of a 102 years old sardinian woman, Rosa Frau - nothing to do with germans, have no idea why but Frau is quite a common surname in Sardinia.

Anyway, the picture introduces the subject of the post, which is that we sardinian are one the populations on earth with the most ultra-centenaries, i.e. people with 100 years or more. I personally know a friend who's grandma is now 103 or so, and still kicking ass...

As far as I know, we do share this primate with Kazakhstan, a region where like Sardinia people have a very peculiar diet, which would probably starve to death the average american. or me, for that matter. There's a lot of indications in the scientific literature that a reduced-calories diet may increase your life span... Pity that I love eating... I try to keep my weight and fat percentage under control of course, but I can hardly say that I am doing it for having a longer life.

Uhm, I think i lost my thread... where the hell did I want to bring this post?

see? too much food makes you dumb....

update: nice link on (certified) ultracentenaires - which apparently dispels my previous knowledges. But hey, I'm a scientist, I don't mind changing my mind.

What a shame...

I was looking for info regarding the fact that sardinia and kazalhstan share the oldest populations on earth (I will post about this later on), and came across this Unesco page about the Island of Asinara.

Pity it isn't properly translated, and they didn't even get the name right.

Too Little, Too Late?

What's the point in having a web page today, wehen you have a blog? I don't know. But here it is.

May be it'll come in handy when I want to put up a new CV?

I know where you've been last summer

and the previous winter... and the summer before...

Well, I know if you're a girl or a man with long hair. Otherwise I don't.

Ever seen Point Break? the police find out that the bankrobbers must be surfers from the heavy metal content of their hair, pointing to a polluted beach.

Now canadian police is taking the thing further. "When you eat and drink, the isotopes from the water are incorporated into the core of your hair strand, and that isn't changed by bleaching or dying your hair. It remains consistent. It's like a record of your movement," she said. "By taking the hair from the root, we can travel back in time through that person's travel history."
Isn't this incredibly cool?

I guess it's not going to work with men who shave their heads. unless a pretty undercover agent slips into their bed and manages to retrieve some pubic hair.

And there's another problem I can foresee. namely that most people in the western world eat food and drink water produced some thousand of km away. I mean, checking my drawers, the garlic comes from china, the onion from New Zealand, the oranges from Spain and Sicily, the sausages from Sardinia. How will they cope with it?

thanks to the forensic science blog for the heads-up. Way better than any CSI fudge technique.

Let's try Post2Blog

Let's try this new software (Post2Blog). It should automagically allow me to post a pre-formatted entry to the Owl's Hide.

With automagic image placing and upload!!!

(which doesn't seem to work, though - let's try w/o piccies)

So let's try!!!

Oh forget it this thing is so crap that even cutting and pasting it in blogspot still would not take the piccie. Pants! Immediate Uninstall!!!

Cant's stop the signal...

That's Serenity's tagline, I know... But I'm writing this post just to inform you that, yet again, can't finish the 13th episode opf BSG. I just can't. I started it. But there's no way... I got to the point where Atena and Helo have a meaningless discussion, then one of them shoot the other. So lame.

I can't even start watching again Ally McBeal, since Billy died. I am too afraid of such a big change... or may be I'm afraid that nothing will change for the people in the firm... mah...

But I still have some episodes left of The future is Wild, thank God (thanking someone who doesn't exist doesn't really help, uh?) Anyway, this series is just great. Although the ecosystems presented are somehow too simplified... No background noise, if I can make myself clear. It looks like every region only hosts 3 to 4 animals. and a bunch of plants to provide a nice backdrop.

And as I said, the plant's evolution is grossly underestimated. Still, as good as any BBC "The world of..." series.

Now, I wonder...

Scientists at University of Yale have shown that chains assembled from beta amino-acids, instead than alpha as the one our proteins are built from, can show similar properties.

Frankly, the fact does not strike me as a particularly impressive discovery... But I wonder... what if we were to insert this kind of stuff in our body? Would we be able to create novel enzymes able to act on our own biochemical make-up? Would our enzymes be able to work on it? Now, that would be something... here follows the abstract.

thanks to Coturnix for pointing this out.

High-Resolution Structure of a beta-Peptide Bundle

Douglas S. Daniels, E. James Petersson, Jade X. Qiu, and Alanna Schepartz*

Departments of Chemistry and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8107

alanna.schepartz@yale.edu

Received December 4, 2006

Abstract:

We recently reported that beta-peptides can form discrete hetero-oligomers in aqueous solution. Here we describe the structure of such an oligomer as determined by X-ray crystallography. The structure of Zwit-1F reveals a homo-octamer of two cupped "hands" composed of both parallel and antiparallel 3₁₄-helices. The core of the assembly is composed entirely of solvent-excluded beta³-homoleucine residues. The Zwit-1F assembly shares many of the physical characteristics of natural proteins.

Conservation?

My Girlfriend kind of shocked me when she told me that the lions in the Rwanda's National Park were killed by shepherd who didn't want the big cats to hunt on the cows, illegally present in the park itself... This is the only link I can find regarding the things or some thing similar... You would think OK, this is Africa so you can't expect people to be reasonable about conservation when they need to feed their children...

But how about the rich US? First in the world they established a national Park, Yellowstone. And now they're taking it down piece by piece... Until 2000, snowmobiles were free to roam inside the park, disturbing animals, but also ruining the experience of more quiet human visitors. Measures to regulate and control the access were put in place, but have been the object of various reversal at the hand of local business and generally Bush-appointed administrators. Now they're trying to triple the number of snowmobiles allowed per day...
Tutto il mondo e' paese, we say in Italy. All the world is the same... Shame.

Children aren't stupid.

Not even creationist children - this comment comes from pandagon.net:

Zog showed his 7th and 8th grade parochial school students An Inconvenient Truth. There was a rather heated discussion, where one of his parochial school students openly questioned that God would ever let such a thing happen to us. Before he could sort an appropriate answer through his atheistic brain, the other students took over with a bunch of “What about Noah! Duuuhhhh!”.

Even within their religious frame, these kids had their bullshit detectors on.

Ripp It After Me!!!

Nice utility to manage codec, and easily convert between video/audio file formats. Completely free (as in beer) - as far as I understand it's just a wrapper of codecs and programs such as xvid, vdub and so on...

be aware that it will require some space on the harddrive when working with temporary files.

Clever Genetic Programming

Here's a clever Java applte written by Lee Graham which graphically shows the evolution of a series of strings... incredibly well done, I wish I had done it in fact... excellent screensaver, if you can mnage to run it off-line.

run it and see the genes while they're crossed, mutated, inserted and deleted from/to the string/chromosomes... (rules here)

also great in graham's site is the origin codes, a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to the bible codes.

thanks to PZ Myers for pointing this out!!!

So, now it's 90% true...

Are we going to do something about it? I thinl not.

Sadly, but "very likely" true, Jeremy Clarkson is right when he says that rather than discussing on how to stop Global Warming, we better focus on trying to solve the problems it will cause. in his words: I am also fearful that unless we stop thinking of ways to prevent global warming, and start to address the problems it will cause when it gets here, our children are going to finish their days in an overcrowded, superheated vision of hell.

But I just don't see China and the US willing to cut down on their economies to avoid the looming disaster. Not that we europeans are withut fault. after ll, we buy stuff from china and pretend low prices, all of which drives their environmentally unfriendly economy.

Pessimism and depression only, on this blog - I'm disilluded... As a species, we could have achieved so much, instead we are squandering the family fortunes and ruining the very same shop which keeps us live. Hopefully, the next species up will do better...