Wisdom, or lack thereof...

It's taken thirty years to convince my lonely wisdom tooth to emerge from his burrow... It was a tiny sliver of enamel poking up of my upper-right mandible, only a couple of years ago... Then, it came out bit by bit, and my tongue learned every feature of its contorted surface. It never was much of help in chewing, having come out sideways compared to the other teeth. But alas, I didn't mind too much - it was a welcome (well tolerated) guest in my mouth...


Wisdom teeth have, by the way, quite an interesting scientific story. They come out later in life, after you've been adult for a while, and that's why they're called wisdom teeth. At least, that's my educated guess. Why do they come out later in life? because this way our ancestors would have at least a spare tooth when the other molars were rotten, or just too worn out. I guess they used them on much tougher food that we do today... Charles Darwin himself cites the wisdom teeth as 'rudimentary', in "The descent of Man', which I am reading right now in the new, concise edition curated by Carl Zimmer.



But let's go back to my single lonely tooth. Suddenly, just a couple of weeks ago, a dull pain started to manifest itself, and playing with my tongue and finger over it (just imagine the scene) I self-diagnosed that the last, invisible addition to the smile had started to push against the neighbor... yesterday took a dive and, for the first time in years, and only the third time in life, I went to the dentist.

She opened my mouth wide open, looking inside and poking with her shiny metal tools... And prodding around, found a cavity, my first cavity, in my little wisdom tooth... The bastard. Last one to come out, first one to cause me troubles... }8-[

She suggested to take it out, and I buggered off with an excuse (not before being asked to pay 84 Euros for the privilege), with the promise that I'll show up next wednesday to let her play a bit more with her pliers and drills.

She has, I noticed when she took out her mask, the most beautiful lips I've ever seen up close. Hopefully, having a crash on my dentist will help me bear the pain she'll inflict me. Ouch!

Stay tuned. More to follow...

Michael Pollan has a blog, too!

One of my favourite writers/journalists has a blog, about good agriculture and good food.

Check it out: On The Table

and make sure you read how agricultural policies of developed states influence the things we eat.

It's a pity he does not update it more often...

Have an Ice Day!!!

Pseudomonas syringae is an extremely interesting bacterium, which I discovered reading Olivia Judson's latest post on cloud-dwelling bacteria.

Usually, plants growing in cold regions use special chemicals as anti-freeze. This bacterium, though, secretes Ice Nucleation-active proteins to make ice crystals grow at temperatures as high as -2C. The crystals cause damage to cell walls of plants, and the bacterium vacuums up the nutrients released.

So, they use ice crystals as straw, although the name "syringae" doesn't come from there. Rather, it comes from the plants they were isolated from at first:

It is named after the lilac tree (Syringa vulgaris), from which it was first isolated^[2]

(from the wikipedia)

and always on the theme of vampires from the cold, the new Penny Arcade strip is out!

Double blind scientific review

John Denney over at Evilutionary Biologist makes an interesting point: How often and how much knowing the reputation of the author of a paper influences the opinion we get from reading it?

The discussion was sparked by a piece on the journal Nature.

Would it not be better if the review process was double blinded, as it happens in the case of clinical trials of new drugs?


I do happen to think it is a good idea too.

It is certainly possible to guess who the author of the paper is from the subject, his writing style and (possibly) the amount of self-citations(!).

But one more hurdle to accepting a paper as a gold nugget just because it's been crapped up (down) by Dr Eminent can't hurt, can he?

I am personally in the middle of the final touches to my paper before submission - and I think that another good point of it is that reviewers who will happen to read it (if it gets accepted for review, that is) will not know my name so they will not black list me for future collaborations.

Oh, come on, a bit of self-confidence, Dr Fenu...

Do supermarkets make our lives better?

The BBC radio program "World Have Your Say" points to an opinion piece by food critic Jay Rayner discussing whether or not supermaret are a good or evil force in our fight for better, affordable food.

I have to admit that I quite like his position, founding it well reasoned and far from the anti-supermarket crowd rants...

Yes, supermarket "are bloody convenient", as he points out. But they are not the "the dismal and anonymous places" they are made out to be... The people working in there are just, well, people, and they are as likely to behave nicely or badly with their customers as any other "small-retailer" who has been put out of business by them.

Also, I may add, from my personal experience, in Italy the small distribution is suffering now the revenge of customers who until now were forced to pay extortion prices for goods often 1/3rd cheaper in the supermarket.

And as Jay thoughtfully points out, all those chef recommending exotic ingredients would not be able to offer recipes for less than 5 pounds if it weren't for the big scale economies that allow big chain to sell these foods at a lower price.

There certainly is a lot to be done to force supermarket to pay an honest price to farmers... But as long as people pushes them to have cheaper and cheaper food, they're going to attempt anything they can to provide them with it. Once people will start demanding high quality food, we will see a shift in the chains' modus operandi. Not one second before.

Almeno l'itagliano... Impalalo!!!

Tanto x ripostare qua qualcosa che mi ha fatto ridere quando mi e' arrivato via e-mail... l'N-esima catena umoristica...

1. Mi puoi disinnescare la segreteria telefonica? (Ordigni moderni...)

2. Soffro di vene vorticose. (Sarà un ballerino...)

3. Di fronte a queste cose rimango putrefatto! (Che schifo!)

4. In farmacia: Puoi darmi un 'una tantum'? (forse si chiama 'tantum verde'?)

5. Quando muoio mi faccio cromare. (Valido!)

6. Arriva il treno, hai blaterato il biglietto? (.....)

7. Come faccio a fare tutte queste cose simultaneamente?
Dovrei avere il dono dell'obliquità! (la torre di Pisa???)

8. Un'onda anonima ha travolto i surfisti. (e nessuno la sa riconoscere???)

9. Almeno l'italiano... sallo! (Eh...)

10. Basta! Vi state coagulando contro di me!(trasfusione?)

11. E' nel mio carattere: quando qualcosa non va, io sodomizzo! (Stategli lontano!)

12. Anche l'occhio va dalla sua parte... (Si chiama strabismo...)

13. Non so a che santo riavvolgermi. (Una videocassetta devota....)

14. Avete i nuovi telefonini GPL? (No mi spiace solo benzina!!!)

15. Il cadavere presentava evidenti segni di decesso. (Ma va?! Strano)

16. Prima di operarmi mi fanno un'autopsia generale. (Auguri!)

17. Vorrei un pacco di cotone idraulico. (Ha una perdita???)

18. Abbiamo mangiato la trota salmonellata. (Ancora auguri!)

19. Vorrei un'aspirina in supposte effervescenti. (Quando si dice faccia da culo...)

20. Vorrei una maglia con il collo a volpino. (Non era lupetto?....)

21. Devo andare dall'otorinolalinguaiatra. (che dire...)

22. Ho visitato palazzo degli infissi a Firenze. (....si ci sono infissi alla finestre e allora??)

23. Vorrei una pomata per l'Irpef. (Herpes è difficile...)

24. Se lo sapevo glielo divo! (Ovvio...)

25. Usare il DDT fa diventare più grande il buco nell'Orzoro. (Addio colazione)

26. Tu non sei proprio uno sterco di santo. (Meno male...)

27. Tu l'hai letto il fu Mattia Bazar? (Antonella Ruggero???)

28. E' andato a lavorare negli evirati arabi. (Contento lui...)
29. Lo scontro ha causato 5 feriti e 10 confusi. (Uno dei confusi sei tu??)

30. A forza di andare di corpo mi sono quasi disintegrata. (O disidratata??? Alla faccia della diarrea!)

31. Mia nonna ha il morbo di Pakistan. (....)

32. La mia auto ha la marmitta paralitica. (...e al posto dei cavalli ha le sedie a rotelle??)

33. Verrà in ufficio una stragista per il tirocinio. (Si salvi chi può!)
34. Sono momentaneamente in stand-bike. (L'attesa in bicicletta....)

35. Che lingua si parla in Turchia? Il turchese. (...è logico)

36. Davanti alla sua prepotenza resto illibato. (....si....)

37. Scendi il cane che lo piscio. (...guinzagliato però!!!!)

38. Da vicino vedo bene, è da lontano che sono lesbica.(Aiuto...)

39. C'è una peluria di operai. (Che schifo!!)

40. E' inutile piangere sul latte macchiato. (Meglio farlo su un bel cappuccino...)

41. Sono sempre io il cappio espiatorio (L'impiccato)

42. Beviamo una Magnum di Kruger. (salute)

43. Signora, vorrei 100 grammi di prosciutto senza polistirolo. (...che faccio un po' fatica a digerirlo...)

44. Mi sono fatta il Leasing al viso. (..pensavo un mutuo...)

Ed infine (AUTENTICA sentita oggi in uno studio medico)....
“.... ci ho l’ernia letale”

Ankylosaurs' week is almost over...

Darren Naish has kept his promise to publish one wonderful post x day about Ankylosaurs for a whole week!!! There's only one day left but may be he'll skip to rest...

Go and read them all right now, cause they're worth it...

I personally loved Ankilosaurs when I was a child and used to play with it and beat the crap out of a plastic T-Rex with his knobby, armored tail.

Incidentally, my little brother used to keep the model dinosaurs in between cattle and poultry in his plastic little farm... Do you think he knew that chicken and T-Rex were, after all, very close genetically?

Folding Bicycle

I am considering to buy one, to keep in the car more or less always, so that when I need to go some medium distance I can use it...

For example in Antwerp, where parking in the centre is impossible and/or expensive, it'd be nice to park far from it, for free, then cycle there in two or three minutes.

Same at work, when I need to go to the bank, or the doctor, and so on...

The problem, is they're quite pricey... I've been suggested to go buy them in the netherlands where the market is larger and I could probably get a fair price for a model from last year... uhm...


The one you can see in the picture is a cool prototype... Called The Locust, probably because of its green color.

Let's see if I have any money left by the end of the month...



Or may be I could get this one?

Every little helps...

On 15/02/2008, An ingenuous friend wrote me:

SE GOOGLE AVESSE UNO SCHERMO NERO, VISTA LA GRANDE QUANTITA' DI
PERSONE
CHE LO USANO, SI CALCOLA CHE SI RISPARMIEREBBERO CIRCA
750MEGAWATT/ORA.

COME RISPOSTA A QUESTO GOOGLE HA CREATO UNA VERSIONE IN NERO,
CHIAMATA
BLACKLE, CON ESATTAMENTE LE STESSE FUNZIONI DI QUELLA IN BIANCO, CON
UN
CONSUMO DI ENERGIA MINORE... INOLTRE STANCA MOLTO MENO GLI OCCHI!!!

FALLO SAPERE E USALO, OGNI PICCOLA COSA CONTA.

http://www.neroogle.it

Scusate il francesismo, ma che coglionata.

La lampada dietro al mio schermo LCD resta accesa sia che il pixel sia bianco, sia nero.

Il colore e' dato dal pixel stesso che filtra la luce, facendola passare o meno...

Nel caso dei tubi catodici vale la stessa cosa, visto che il consumo principale e' dato dal tenere il cannone elettronico ad alto voltaggio, non dalla corrente effettiva sparata contro lo schermo. D'oh!!!

Ma chi si inventa certe cose?

Luca

Terrific!!!

What wouldn't I do to waste time...



thanks to my dear friend Dario for showing it to me...

Let's try to embed a podcast

The one from The Economist, for example:



It works!!!

Gufodotto's Shared Items

Look up there...

Since I often comment about news I read on the i.net, and now I don't get much time to wrte on them, I put up a new feed burner with a few of those I think it would be nice to share with you. It's all thanks to google's reader, which I restarted using since my blogroll was getting too long to keep a daily eye on all of them...

On the diary side of my life, I managed to start correcting the paper and hopefully will get it done by the end of the week. If I can get away from the internet, that is...

Boredom...

I am bored. I should correct my paper and get it finally submitted, but it's stronger than me and can't just decide whether to accept the corrections suggested by a co-author or not...

Scientific publications are so troublesome (at least for me) that I am almost tempted to give up on this career and pursuit a job in finance (lol, not really) or any other field where you are not required to write up your stuff. It's not that I don't want to share, I am more than happy of that and well willing to talk about my work. It's just that I am very very bad at writing up, possibly because none of the endless literature courses during my school in Italy ever concentrated on the basic of good and understandable writing.

IYou can see it from how long the previous phrase was. In Italy long phrases, branching in two or three nested level get you a premium by the professor. Ow, all this sucks. I wish I was like many of my colleagues, with a much wider cultural span but much more 'able' to do the job... They're like very sharp knives, good to cut steaks, whereas I am the jack of all knives (d`uh!) - with multiple skills but none up to an acceptable level.

Enough complaining. I'm leaving work early to discover the joys of having a Makro card - Then I will try to correct the paper in the evening at home, with the advantage of Word XP which lets you see the correction and the original at once...

see you soon...

New Blog on the block

I just discovered Desktop Tales, a blog (in Italian) where marco publishes, among other things, the comic strip with the same name, featuring a Mac and PC commenting current news from the computer world and not.

I loved it, so I thought you may want to have a look too.


Thanks to [Emo] for spreading the news.

Yuk!!!

George Bush at one recent G8 meeting, caught in the act of massaging Angela Merkel...

Ewww... May be he wanted to seduce her off the Tokyo Treaty?

Big Scarlet A

I've pasted a big scarlet A in my profile. For the non-cognoscendi, this is to show to everybody on the planet (well everybody with an internet connection) that I am an Atheist.

Yes, one of those godless creatures that only rely on their own judgement to act morally and make the world a better place, out of personal interest and not for fear of punishment.

With this, I mean not to despise people who feel that belief is important in their life, and certainly I don't want to stay on the side of those who assert religions are at all costs a bad things. I believe that they have a certain value, if nothing else as a way for humans to cope with a very very complex and indifferent universe. It must have had an evolutionary advantage, otherwise it would not be here. Or to be more precise, what caused religions to develop in our minds must have ALSO had an evolutionary advantage. May be religion is just a side-effect of arts, or story-telling?

Alas, I hope it's just a short transitory phase in our evolutionary path... Kind of teenagers' mood swings.

But back to the big scarlet A, you can click on it to get one yourself. Or not. Your choice.

new new digital camera...

D-40X with 18-55 and 55-200mm - which, because the camera is not full-frame (thanks to Luca for explaining me this bit), in fact are more like 24-70, and 70-300. Even better for naturalistic photography. I found it for 989 EUR at the Carrefour near home. The D-40 with the same objectives goes for 649 EUR, and the only difference is a 6Mpizel sensor rather than a 10Mpixel.


That's a steep price hike for just the sensor (as far as I can tell, the rest is absolutely the same). Plus I have the doubt that less resolution may actually improve the quality by diminishing the noise. less elements for the same size, means larger elements, so more light per pixel. And I've had lots of troubles with the new TZ-3 because of low luminosity.

So... May be the old new digital camera is better. And cheaper. Mah?

Of Mouses, and Moles...

After coming back from Rwanda, I was greetend by the discovery of a teeny tiny mouse in the house. She (as I assessed) had spent some two weeks eating her way through the bread my GF left in a basket, and making a cosy nest inside one of my oven gloves, by using the other one as source of fluffy bits...



I gently caught it with a towel, swiftly checked whether it was male or female, then let it out in the garden after he swore he would not enter the premises again.

Now, only weeks after, I have moles in my garden, poking their little volcano-like mounds of grounds here and there, under my watchful eye. They do not seem scared of me, so they keep pushing ground out even if I stand directly over the mound. Unfortunately, I can not catch them wit the camera, which is a pity since I have never seen one in my life - I don't think they are common in Sardinia, or may be they aren't there at all. Here's a piccie of them: aren't they cute critters?



Now I am on the lookout for a human way top get them out of there, not because I mind them (actually, quite the opposite) but I know the neighbors may and could resort to poison (but on which bait? what do moles eat? worms and/or tubers I guess?) Even worst, somebody may decide to cruelly drown them by sticking a hose pipe in their holes...

Old Blog Out, New Blog In

Ho cambiato il mio blog rool, non quello degli amici ma quello dei blog da seguire.

Sparisce GalacticaBlog, che da tempo non seguivo, fondamentalmente xke' l'autore e' un fascista (ah ah) appassionato di una serie che fascista non e' ma che da tempo non mi piace piu'.

Ed arriva Verso Itaca, che invece ho scoperto x caso (seguendo link da uno dei blog amici) e che penso rivisitero' in seguito. x cui, benvenuto ne mio blog roll (che per il momento rolla ben poco)

IR or Time-lapse? Questo e' il problema.

Ho comprato una webcam x 8 euro, ieri. dovevo aprirla x levarne il filtro IR, ma alla fine non ce l'ho fatta. Me la son portata appresso a lavoro, ed ecco che mi vien in mente un'altra cosa. xke' non usarla x fare un time-lapse movie della vista dalla finestra, con l'albero che lentamente riprende vita con l'arrivo della primavera?

edit: ci provo, con l'aiuto dell'unico sw free che mi consente di prender meno di un fps - HSSVSS.

x ora una semplice ripresa a 1 frame x minuto del panorama fuori dall'ufficio. domattina se il risultato e' decente, vediamo se si puo' fare qualcosa di piu' lungo.

e' un peccato che la qualita' della webcam sia cosi' bassa:


magari se questo va a buon fine prendo una webcam decente o trovo un modo di usare la vecchia digicam.

EDIT: in verita' la cam va piu' che bene, solo che era messa di default ad una risoluzione schifosa e la interpolava via sw, il che la rendeva estremamente lenta. Ora fila che e' una meraviglia. Wow!!! solo 8 EUR x l'equivalente di una webcam hercules con ottica in vetro (che di euro ne vien 50).

Infrared photography

I recently heard on the naked science podcast that pointing a remote control to my camera phone I could see it flashing, because the sensitivity of the CCD inside extends to the near-IR.

It wrks! And it gave me a terrible case of cognitive dissonance to look at the remote through the screen, then with the naked eye, then with the screen again and so on. I just could not believe it, PhD in physical chemistry notwithstanding my mind was not prepared to accept it.

Anyway, the cool factor of the thing pushed me to show it to all my friends (real, as virtual) and to look on the i.net for more info about it, and possibly for how-to on how to build a proper IR-camera.

I discovered that few of them IR-capable cameras are sold, mostly for forensic use, possibly because you can see through clothes. In general, CCD are screened against IR not for this reason, but because the color yield is altered by the IR noise.

Anyway, there are plenty of descriptions on line and may be this evening I'll buy a 9.99 EUR webcam to open it and remove the IR filter. I already have a ten diode IR lamp at home, so may be it'll be enough to get nice pictures of my house in human-eye darkness.

More to follow!

Wind

I've taken a LOT of wind last weekend in Oostende, going around to take this pictures. The least you can do is to have a look at them.

Do you believe that forks are evolved from spoons?

In fact, from recent genetic studies it is clear how the cutlery center of biodiversity is China, where an endemic population of primordial chopsticks still lives. From these, or a similar concestor, the ancestor of knives emerged, with a successive speciation into steak, fish and butter knives. More recently, a second clade gave birth to spoons and forks, with both adapting to different gastronomic niches and accordingly varying in size.

Loosing my Italian

It's finally happening. Mentre il mio amico Paolo festeggia l'avvento del suo inglese nativo, cioe' del momento in cui parla direttamente in questa lingua invece che dover tradurre back and forth dall'italiano, io mi rendo conto del contrario. Quando leggo in Italiano, mi suona strano, e cerco continuamente di ritradurlo in inglese, come a correggere gli errori di un incompetente (ma inesistente) doppiatore.

Arrgh!!!

LolCats!!!

I discovered yesterday this fantastic internet phenomenon of taking pictures of animals and adding funny caption to them, most often in a degenerate, gangster-rapper-like form of English language.

Here's one example:

It has been hard to get back to work after seeing the first few, yesterday.
In between the piccies I also found a funny movie posted on youtube:



So go here for moar funny pictures.

How much the (OECD) world invests in R&D

It's in this nice graph, from the latest edition of Nature. Sad to see Italy lagging behind, I did not expect the 4% that Sweden pulls but at least 2%, come on!!!

The latest analysis from the US National Science Board confirms that Israel leads the world in its economic devotion to research and development (R&D).
Its civilian R&D spending in 2005 accounted for 4.71% of gross domestic product (GDP), more than twice the average among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Although US R&D investment was the world’s largest ( $340 billion ) and in 2004, it was more than that of the rest of the G7 nations combined, the report offers some evidence of a slight decline in its standing.
Its 2.57% share of GDP is comfortably above the OECD average of 2.25%, but both South Korea and Switzerland have leapfrogged ahead of the United States by this measure since the board’s previous report in 2006.
Germany could now be poised to do the same.
Most countries are investing more in R&D than they were, says Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation, which published the report.
For example, although China ranks 23rd in GDP share ( just 1.34% ) it has pulled ahead to third in total R&D investment with an estimated $115 billion in 2005.

I am most surprised at the incredible figure for Israel expenditure: almost 5% of the GDP in R&D. and I thought they had to spend all of their GDP in weapons to keep their many enemies at bay...

Octopus loves Mr Potato

Here's a new one. I have always been trying to convince people that octopuses are very advanced creatures in terms of 'braininess'. That it really isn't a good thing to fish them out of the water and kill them bashing them on a rock, or even worse biting their heads while still alive, as my gilrfriend saw with horror in a beach in Sardinia (no picture of the event, unfortunately).


And now, I discover they can get emotionally attached to puppets, just like a six-year old boy. In the picture, an octopus who was given a Mr Potato toy some months ago, and has been defending it since then. Differently from me, the octopus must have liked the new Transformers movie, since the puppet is in fact OptiMash Prime, Mr Potato version of the Autobot's chief in command. Who would have thought that an 18-wheeler would need protection from a Kraken?

A New Digital Camera?

After only a few months with the DMC TZ-3? Yes.

It's not that I don't like it, it's a great camera, its seamless 28-280mm zoom is fantastic, but... there is always a but with me... the noise introduced by the chip messes up everything, I feel like my old nikopn gets better pictures after all, plus in darkness without a viewfinder the large LCD screen is a pain to use. I am pondering now on a big step, that is, to get a real SLR body with a good lens to start with.

Nikon, since I still love the little coolpix, plus the fact that my father has one so we could share lenses and stuff.

Probably the d40, or the d40x if I can cough up the cash.

The only thing I don't understand is whether the lenses works as in 35mm film cameras, or the 18-55mm is really more of a 24-70mm. Anyone who can tell me more?

Another one bites the dust...

Another friend leaves "old" Europe to fly away, to the West Coast nonetheless!

She's one of the smartest and prettiest girls around. And she makes good coffee too! (the link is broken. one day may be they will put it)

Francesca, good luck with your big American adventure!

EurAsia V Americas

I break for one post the diary from Africa series.

When I was a child in primary school, my teacher asked us to jot down a story with us as characters. Most people would have written about a picnic, I went for a Science-Fiction-Thriller.

At the height of the Cold War, I imagined a near future where Europe and Russia were united together, and the enemy was a super-state born from the US's annexion of most of the Americas. In this story, me and my classmate had to skate all the way up to Moscow to disable a weapon or explain a situation to some powerful man sitting in the Cremlin, and wish away a war. Crazy stuff uh?

I was reminded of this this morning when I heard that Poland is now joining the EU's Schengen Area. This is causing lots of protests from Ukrainian, who were used to freely cross the Polish border to trade (food for tobacco and alcool), but now an't any longer. I guess they will be the next to enter the EU, then. yet, I was surprised by how quickly the EU has grown during my lifetime... Where will it stop? At the South, Turkey is pressing to enter, how much before the whole Mediterranean Sea is encircled by it?

At the same time, a US Homeland Security officer yells that Europe is a breeding ground for the terrorists' next generation... May be my childish story caught the attention of a much more influential storyteller... (that's megalomania, for you)

Giraffe, Babbuini, e Impala: Parco Nazionale dell'Akagera.

Il giorno dopo natale, ci si sveglia prestissimo (h 5.00) x mettersi in viaggio verso l'estremita' orientale del paese, al confine con la Tanzania. Qua e' situato il Parco nazionale dell'Akagera, una splendida riserva naturale ricca e diversa come habitata, che ha sfortunatamente risentito del rientro degli esuli tutsi dopo il genocidio. Visto che infatti parecchi di loro non avevano i mezzi x acquistare un pezzo di terra altrove, il governo ha concesso loro (volente o nolente) di occupare meta' circa del l'akagera, dimezzandone la superficie a 1250 Km2 circa. Buona parte del territorio restante e' occupato da laghi e paludi, dunque non attraente x contadini o allevatori.
Della guerra risentirono anche le popolazioni di animali, specialmente la megafauna erbivora sterminata dall'esercito invasore (che ad oggi regna il paese). I pochi leoni superstiti vennero invece sterminati dai nuovi allevatori xke' minacciavano le mucche che pascolavano (illegalmente) nel territorio del parco. E vabbe'.

Alla fin fine, cio' che si vede oggi e' solo un pallido ricordo della ricchezza di qualche anno fa. La reintroduzione, sia essa forzata o naturale dall'adiacente Tanzania, e' lenta. X me comunque, questa prima esperienza nella savana e' stata eccezionale, e pianifico di ritornarci, possibilmente x dormire li' qualche giorno e cogliere gli animali all'alba.

Kibuye - Trip to il nido dei chauve-souris.

Perdonatemi x il titolo tetraglotta, ma in questi ultimi giorni le lingue si confondono nella mia mente.

Ecco qua uno slide show del viaggio in barca. Dalla guest-house Bethanie siamo arrivati sino all'isola Napoleone, cosidetta x via della forma che ricorda il cappello dell'omonimo condottiero/imperatore francese.



x il momento metto solo lo slideshow delle foto. a piu' tardi x un resoconto piu' dettagliato.

Day 3: The countryside

Rieccomi qua. fra una gta e l'altra, ho parecchio tempo libero visto che gli altri si svegliano a tarde ore la mattina e invece io non resco a non svegliari al sorgere del sole. X cui, ho tutto il tempo x commentare le foto, uploadarle su picasa, e scrivere qua un breve diario.

Allora, l'altro ieri siamo saliti su una fuoristrada mercedes scassatissima - che qua pero' passa x 'relativamente nuova'. E ci siamo avventurati verso il lago Kivu, nella provincia Orientale, al confine con la Repubblica Democratica del Congo. La destinazione era Kibuye, una localita' bellissima ma prima di arrivarci, c'erano 126 km di tornanti e saliscendi nella campagna ruandese...

Il panorama e' a dir poco, affascinante, con colline (ma chiamiamole pure montagne) ripidissime e scoscese dappertutto. Eda vederle capisci come questo posto abbia la stessa densita' abitativa dell'Olanda: quasi dappertutto, le colline son coltivate anche nei pendii piu' scoscesi, a sfruttare qualunque spazio a disposizione. Stranamente, le coltivazioni a errazza caratteristiche del paesaggio italiao in sone simili (es Liguria) qua son abbastanza rare. Marie mi ha detto (mi par di ricordare) che molto semplicemente, la gente non c'ha mai pensato. Credo dipenda dal fatto che la occupazione Bantu' di queste terre sia un fenomeno abbastanza recente, 600 anni max. La foresta, originale o meno; che copriva le colline e' ridotta, ma ancora presente, contrariamente a quel che mi aspettavo dalla lettura di "Collapse" di Jared Diamond - mi sorge il dubbio che l'autore non abbia mai visto il paese, ma si sia basato su resoconti di terza mano. Ad ogni modo, la situazione varia da punto a punto, con le zone piu' impervie ancora inonse x il semplice fatto che con le pioggie torrenziali caratteristiche della zona qualunque coltivazione verrebbe dilavata a fondovalle. Ma vabbe', io non son un esperto nel campo. Ogni piccolo appezzamento e' diviso in lotti dove cose differenti son coltiva, e solitamente uno spazio e' riservato alle banane che sembrano essere lo staple food della zona.

La popolazione e' apparentemente quasi tutta lungo la striscia pedonale della strada, camminando da e verso le loro cse da fare... Le case son fatte x la maggior parte di mattoni cubici di fango, non cotti ma seccati al sole. Spesso le case non son neanche intonacate, ma la cosa piu' sorprendente che ho notato e' che nessuna ha un fumaiolo x espellere il fumo cosicche' questo percola dalle fenditure fra le tegole. Ora capisco gli sforzi dell'Onu a cercare di fornire questa gente dei fornelli 'puliti' x diminuire le malattie polmonari che apparentemente mietono antissime vitime.

La gente veste davvero modestamente, con magliette color della terra (rossa, argillosa), probabilmente di quarta o quinta mano, eppure parecchi vestono giacca e pantaloni con una dignita' particolarmente africana. Le donne, come in tutto il mondo, variano nel vestire piu' degli uomini, mentre i bambini x lo piu' vestono cose 'avanzate'. Non e' raro vedere bambini curvi sotto il peso di bidoni d'acqua, o tegole portate sulla testa, eppure si vedon anche bambini che giocano allegri in un canale di scolo (!) o inseguono le onnipresenti caprette al bordo della strada, alquanto pericoloso visto che le macchine sfrecciano a velocita' autostradali (nostra compresa, ahime', nonostante quel che si dicesse all'autista).

Avvicinandosi al lago, e risalendo verso quota 1500 m, la vegetazione cambia, con eucalipti (nativi o importati?) e conifere, ed altri alberiche in eurpa non vedresti mai nello stesso posto, tipo cactus. Il paesaggio qua mi ricorda della Sardegna in alcune zone montane, probabilmente solo perche' son le uniche montagne che conosco bene.

Il lago e' fenomenale, con le colline 'a gaussiana' che spuntano dall'acqua, peccato x l'aria sempre un po' fosca...

A piu' tardi x la visita in barca alle isole sul lago, inclusa quella con una colonia di pipistrelli frugivori (credo - spero).

Day 2: Kigali

Secondo giorno, nella mattina ho fatto un giretto x il giardino mentre gli altri si svegliavano, facendo foto a piante, luertole e quel che capitava sotto tiro.

Poi, con Salvatore abbiamo deciso di fare un giretto nel quartiere. Credevamo di essere in una zona pos, a giudicare dalla casa dove stavamo e quella adiacente... Dallaltro lato, una setta di scamanati pregava ad alta voce e di tanto in tanto si scatenava in Allelujaaahhh da far gelare il sangue. A quanto pare, il Rwanda e' in preda ad una febbre religiosa... Ognuno sceglie la religione che vuole, se non piu' d'una... Boh...

Comunque, qualche passo oltre il cancello della casa, ed un altro universo comincia. La terra rossa, solcata dalle pioggie torrenziali, catapecchie di lamiera e legname recuperati, bambini scalzi che escon fuori dai vicoli x sfidarsi a vicenda a parlare coi due visi pallidi vestiti con colori sgargianti, che girellano baldanzosi sotto il sole... fatto sta che, in due o tre minuti, cminciamo a sentirci noi come auelli che vengon osservati, tipo le bestie del circo che vengon fatte sfilare nella strada generale... La gente e' comunque estremamente cordiale, e non ha problemi a parlare due o piu' lingue... alla faccia dell'Italia monoglotta, dove il 50% manco parla bene l'italiano... dopo un'oretta circa rientriamo a casa, non prima d'aver imboccato un paio di vcoli acaso ed esserci mezzi persi...

Nel pomeriggio, invece siamo andatoi a visitare la 'vera' Kigali...

a piu' tardi x il resoconto OK?

le foto le trovate su: http://picasaweb.google.com/gufodotto/RwandaDec07 e anche http://picasaweb.google.com/gufodotto/SalvaRwandaDec07 e http://picasaweb.google.com/gufodotto/FloraRwandaDec07

Day 1: the travel

Eccomi qua. proviamo a tenere un diario regolare del mio viaggio in Rwanda.

Allora, il volo e' stato abastanza uneventful, eccessivamente lungo e noioso. Speravo di riuscire a vedere l'Africa dall'alto ma, a causa del ritardo in partenza, il sole e' tramontato prima che si arrivasse sul Sahara. O forse c'eravamo gia' quando e' tramontato, ma c'erano le nuvole... pazienza. la cosa e' stata comunque interessante xke', x la prima volta, ho volato spra un'area del mondo non illuminata. In Europa, dove voli voli, sei sempre sulla testa di qualcuno che legge un libro sotto una lampadina, o guarda la TV. In africa, il niente... X quel che ne sapevo, saremmo potuti essere sopra l'Oceno Atlantico... ma avremmo visto pi' navi, mi sa... Invece buio assoluto sintanto che non siamo arrivati proprio sopra Kigali.

Una volta arrivati e recuperati i bagagli, si salta a bordo delle camionette (le classiche pick-up Toyota o Isuzu) o macchine (una Mercedes d'antan che la mamma di Marie si ostina a rianimare) e si va a casa...

a breve x il resto... ora vado a nuotare un po'...

Again on Gorillas

Seen yesterday Long Way Down's Episode where they are in Rwanda. Ewan Mc Gregor goes through Rwanda by Motorbike and stops by the national Park to see the Gorillas.

I am not sure they would let 'normal people get so close to them, but if they do, I understand why the prices are so high. They will want to keep visits to a minimum (once a day, at dusk) yet have enough money to run the conservation program off it.

All in all, it seemed a pretty well-run operation, and since the experience must be soo fantastic I am reconsidering it. Trouble is, there may be not any ticket left for when we'll arrive there. Well, in case may be I'll come back another time.

Look out, there's a Lion behind that bus!!!

copy-paste from Null-Hypothesis , which dubs itself as The Journal of Unlikely Science. It came to me through the facebook group We're scientists AND we're sexy! Ok, I admit, I am a member of it. Yeah, right. Me. Sexy. Ouch! It Hurts.

I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat

By Jamie Lawson

Scientists in California have been busy flashing images at people again. This is a favourite game of psychophysicists the world over, being a nice way of measuring reaction times to... well, Visual Things. This time they’ve been looking to see if people pay more attention to evolutionarily salient objects like lions and impala rather than novelties like cars, tables and lamps.

The result will come as no surprise to the evolutionary psychologists in the crowd. When presented with pairs of images, each flashed rapidly and identical except for a tiny change, participants were much faster and more accurate at identifying changes involving animals (including humans) than those involving your aforementioned inanimate things, even if the animal was hardly visible at all. This also held true when a failure to notice the inanimate object in the scenes would normally be associated with sudden and messy death, such as is the case with cars.

The explanation? Well, back in the day, humans would have benefited from attention to things that they could hunt and eat (like impala) as well as to things that could eat them (like lions) and things that may have filled both categories (like... each other). Humans who ignored these objects moving about would presumably have died from either a) starvation or b) being killed and/or eaten, so a tendency to attend to animate objects became hardwired in to the human visual system. Things like cars, although life threatening, are just far too modern to have been incorporated.

So, the good news is that you are very likely to spot a big cat as it sneaks up on you with every intention of making you its lunch. Sadly, in moving to avoid it, you may just end up being crushed beneath the wheels of a bus you have entirely failed to notice. Ah well, swings and roundabouts, eh?

Has Evolution Stopped, for Homo?

Not at all. If anything, it seems to have accelerated over the course of the past 80.000 Years.

It's what The Economist reports in this article. The original piece of research can be found in PNAS.

Since I don't have time to comment today, just go and read it, it's free.

An interesting personal side-note on the article: it points out how two version of lactose tolerance arose independently in the Indo-European and the African Tutsi populations. So, may be my child(ren) will inherit both versions. I wonder if there are any studies around investigating the effect of the two mutations present at the same time in people's cells. Will they reinforce each other? Or will they have a completely different effect? I guess it depends on the detailed mechanism of action of the two... I'll have a look on the world wide wikipedia...

Does eco-tourism disturb Gorillas?

So, here's the fact: I am going to Rwanda (Yes, we know, Luca) next week, and once there my GF's family wants to take me to see the gorillas.

Now I understand that it's nice they're making a conservation effort, so that even if the thing is expensive (500US$/person) it's better than local people shooting the primates for food then clearing the forest for coffee.

But, as far as I understand it, Gorillas are a very shy kind of primates, and may possibly be ennoyed by the continuous stream of tourist, how much concealed they are...

I'd personally go and look at other primates, Chimps in primis as they seem much more active and humans. And I don't know why, but I believe they may suffer less from the human interaction.

So I ask to the primatologists between you, should I stay or should I go? What is your take?

Back in Blog!

Eccomi qua di nuovo. parecchio tempo passato dall'ultimo post. troppo ipegnato fra terminare l'articolo di lunghezza indefinita, che sembra tendere asintoticamente verso le 16 pagine perennemente in correzione, preparare i documenti x il Rwanda e tutto il resto. Includi nel mix una influenza davvero malvagia nell'ultimo fine settimana...

Ora tutto sembra finito, oggi e la prossima settimana dovrebbero essere piu' rilassati. mi auguro. a piu' tardi x un post meno vacuo.

YouTube/FaceBook cross posting

Here's an example of what Internet 2.0 can do in terms of rapid dissemination of content: I join a group on facebook, where I see a youtube link which I promptly reference in my own blog: Cool uh? Not nearly as cool as the plant in the movie itself, though, a species of mimosa which folds her leaves when touched...



It apparently belongs to the Triffid family, of Sci-fi fame.

I, for one, welcome our shy motile plant overlords!!!

100 notable books from the NY Times

Too many to post them all in here.

So go and check them out there.

Talk about Health and Safety

This movie shows how a railway can become... a market!!!

Carl Zimmer has a new story up on WiReD.

The Decline and Fall of the Animal Kingdom

Incredibly interesting piece detailing how the glorious animal kingdom decreased in size and importance in the last decades.

Courtesy of facebook which let me know about it.

from: here to: eternity

Mac v PC

Daphne has a blog!!!

Full of pretty sketches!!! Go and check it out!!!

http://daphne-daphn3.blogspot.com/

My new camera has arrived!!!

I say goodbye to my old and battery-incontinent Nikon CoolPix 2100, who served me well for four years and still is in perfect operating conditions, exception made for the fact that a plastic flap has broken and she can't keep her batteries inside any longer. I will be happy to use it again underwater, if I only could find the waterproff case which costed me almost as much as the camera itself.

from now on, however, my main camera will be a Panasonic DMC TZ-3 (blue), one of the best long-zoom compact cameras one can find on the market.



very small ibn size, with hi quality Leica lenses and a formidable 28-280mm equivalent, it goes flawlessly from wide to tele. haven't had the ocasion to try it yet, yesterday I left the batteries to charge.

Tonight I plan on trying it out in some inside shots, followed by outdoor shots in the following days. But she'll have her camp day in one month, when I'll hop on the plane to visit Rwanda!

Mobius Transfrmations

This is an incredibly cool movie made I found on the Tube...



I apologize for my lack of postings, but although I was at home for one week due to a strike at work, I just didn't feel like posting. May be I didn't have anything interesting to say.

What Missing Link?

Rosario Elettronico.

And from the blog of the guy who was once my comic book pusher, comes the electronic rosario.

Sardinia is the 31st best preserved island in the whole world!!!

Vi giro una notizia riportata da Ila/Alice sul suo sito... ;-)

La Sardegna tra le isole meglio tutelate al mondo

La Sardegna risulta l'isola italiana meglio tutelata e più incontaminata in un monitoraggio con 522 esperti di turismo sostenibile, pubblicato sull'ultimo numero della rivista americana National Geographic Traveler. Lusinghiero il piazzamento tra le 111 isole prese in considerazione, sparse nei cinque continenti.
GeremeasCAGLIARI, 7 NOVEMBRE 2007 - La Sardegna è l'isola italiana più incontaminata. È la prestigiosa rivista americana National Geographic Traveler a certificarlo, con una speciale classifica pubblicata sull'ultimo numero.

La Sardegna si piazza al 31esimo posto nell'elenco generale che comprende le 111 isole più affascinanti del pianeta, staccando notevolmente le altre isole italiane. Il monitoraggio, effettuato in collaborazione con la George Washington University, ha coinvolto 522 esperti di tutto il mondo che hanno puntato la lente su tradizioni, cultura, paesaggio e ambiente delle isole selezionate. Il risultato finale è stato sintetizzato in un punteggio: 71 è il voto assegnato alla Sardegna, 87 quello attribuito alle Far Oer danesi, prime classificate. In fondo alla classifica, St. Thomas delle Isole Vergini e Ibiza con soli 37 punti.

National Geographic Traveler sottolinea come le isole siano "micro-mondi" molto vulnerabili ad inquinamento, cambiamenti climatici e "tourism overkill". È soprattutto il turismo "devastante" uno dei pericoli da cui guardarsi. È necessario piuttosto tutelare e proteggere le isole e promuovere un turismo responsabile. Non a caso svettano in classifica le "inarrivabili" Far Oer.

La Sardegna è descritta come una terra con montagne e villaggi nell'interno e chilometri di coste con lunghe spiagge. Senza dimenticare una "ricca e inusuale" cultura locale.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ed ecco la recensione di National Geographic:

Sardinia, Italy
Score: 71

"A rocky and mountainous interior dotted with remote mountain villages which preserve a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Miles of distinctive, unspoiled rocky coastline, with coves, caves, and long sandy beaches."

"A rich, unusual local culture. I particularly enjoyed the Ferragosto celebrations in Olbia. The local wine, cuisine, and handcrafts are all worth exploring."

"Countryside littered with debris. Poor transport networks and underdevelopment of tourist facilities. Aesthetic and cultural integrity of the island is good and needs to be protected."

Ed io aggiungo, alla faccia di Goletta verde che anno dopo anno continua a dare bandiere blu a sproposito a destra e a manca. Con la scusa che E. Coli non si vede le spiagge e le acque limpide di casa nostra vengon tacciate di esser piu' sporche di alcuni tratti devastati dell'Adriatico. Bah...

notare come la Corsica ottenga un punteggio anche piu' alto, 75, mentre capri becca un misero (x la fama che ha) 59.

Toyota Tundra - helping to make it the real thing

Toyota, which prides itself as the greenest car maker in the planet, launched its new HUGE Tundra pickup. Funny name, since thanks to the fact that Toyota, together with the Detroit block, is lobbying the US government not to impose too strict limits on car consumptions, the permafrost once common in the places the thing takes its name from will most likely melt away. Duh!!!



I guess they'll call the next model the Swamp... or something...

Anatomy of a Balloon Animal

I am stealing this post from the beautiful Streetanatomy blog:

Anatomy of a Balloon Animal

Cut-Off from the grid...

Some people are resorting to cell-phone jammers, illegal in the states (and elsewhere too), to avoid being pestered by loud people conversing close-by.

So say the NY Times.

I believe that the right of a person to enjoy silence is stronger than the right of another person to communicate when it is not strictly necessary...

What do you think?

I want to do it too!!!

I want to climb the kilimanjaro like the NY Times correspondent.

Oh, and between the various news, the NY Times is now on Facebook.

FreeRice.

Do something fun. Guess the synonym of the words on the screen, and climb to harder and harder levels. 40 of them overall.

Do something good. for every correct answer, the sponsor of the game will donate ten grains of rice through the United Nations. It's not much, but every little helps.


my level right now: 32 - I've donated 500 grains so far. At 20mg x grains, it's less than a hundred grams though.

thanks to Versus Itaca for the link.

Laelaps is on Scienceblogs!

Congrats to Brian!!!

You all, go and read his wonderful piece on Dinosauroids (or rather, lack of).

E' morto Enzo Biagi.

Che altro c'e' da dire?

Somewhere over the (B)rainbow

Colours light up brain structure

Neuronal circuits can now be seen in a multicolour 'brainbow'.

A mix of 5 colours can produce about 90 distinct shades.

Nature (once again) has a wonderful paper about a new coloring technique able to randomly color every neuron with about 90 different shades so that their wiring can be seen more clearly.

Here it is, better written than I ever will be able to.

Did you really write that paper?

It happens sometimes that the job done by a single scientist get published with more than his name on it. He's usually the first author, except in Italy and other third world countries, where some professors pretend them to be on top. He's relegated to second place, unless the professor above has a favorite pupil who needs a push to get/stay into the tenure track.

Anyway, this post is not about unjust usurpation of authorship at the hand of elder academics. It is rather on the careless co-authorships practiced in some research groups, where all those belonging share authorships to any papers so as to augment their paper count in their CVs. Bad, bad practice indeed, especially when they happen to admit candidly during an interview "Oh, no, I didn't really know anything about that work, I was in the group so I got my name on it" - then why on earth did you insert it in your CV as relevant qualification, you dumb4$$?

I was shocked when a colleague recently said that after two years of work she had eight publications, plus countless posters and participations to meetings. needless to say, seven of those eight were of the aforementioned kind. And who on earth would care about which meetings and school you attended, unless you presented one at the first or were prized as best-in-class at the latters?

I try to put only first-author papers on my CV. which also implies it is desperately short. But at least I know I can defend that work with my claws, whereas if somebody is mifdly interested in me can always look up the other papers on pubmed or elsewhere and discover which fields I also happened to brush on. I probably know more than the average person in those, but don't claim nor brag to being an expert about them.

Why am I doing this post, you may ask? Oh, because Nature just came out with a similar theme this weekend. With a wider view than mine, in fact, covering the responsibilities of co-authors on the scientific accuracy of the papers, real-world cases and so on. Go and read it, it's certainly better than my rants anyway.

Hello Kitty, kiss your 4$$ Goodbye

I hope that removing the image I linked from here to this post of mine, traffic on this website will not be driven any longer by people looking for the pretty jap-cat... Let's see if it works...

I am a genius.

This morning, I open facebook instead of starting to work straight away. Bad guy...
I notice that a friend, who seems to have the typical feminine passion for tests, has just taken the IQ tests. I've always been skeptic about the definition of Intelligence tested by such tests, yet after lunch I have not much to do, and I start it. I see that it only gives you 15 minutes. Panic. but the questions are mostly boring math in textual form, so start picking them randomly... Out of four answers I will at least answer 25% of them correctly, no? So,l if they're difficult (and should be if they want to test your intelligence), you stand a good chance of getting a decent score anyway... I only stop (ten seconds each) to answer the one with pictures, unless they're too complicated... otherwise, random for those too...

Hit the submit button that there's still 9 minutes plus left. The machine asks me if i want to share the results with my facebook friends. Uhm, I don't think i want to share a 78 with anyone... so no, thank you. Skip it.

Here's the result: 119!!! Definitely above the average!!!

Now, either I really am a genius, or I have a big reserve of good luck (stored in my fat abdomen), or may be the results are not really objective. I start thinking that being facebook populated by americans, they would never return a number lower than 100 for fear of being sued by all the lawyers or lawyer-capable rich dumbasses who may get it. me included. Well, no, i would not sue them. I am not going to waste my hard earned cash this way...

Anyway, it was fun... Albeit quite silly.

When will we come to a decent definition of 'intelligence'? Such as "the ability of a men to whoosh a girl into her bed by the use of any possible mean, either verbal, vocal or corporeal".

Italians are quite honest, after all

The Economist publishes a summary graph detailing how often european people use undeclared labour to purchase goods or services.
Quite surprisingly, Denmark, The Netherlands and Sweden come to the first places... Rather than, say, Italy. Is iot that we really buy less 'grey' goods and services? Or just that Italian don't even perceive buying sunglasses from the senegalese street-kiosk and paying the car's mechanic cash without fiscal receipt as 'the same kind of thing'? Me thinks the second one is more correct...

Finally, house prices start to fall...

The bane of every young couple, their ability to buy a house to live in without wasting money on the monthly rent, has been getting worse and worse for the past years everywhere in Europe. Luckily, things are starting to change, with a contraction of prices close to 2% in most European states. If it continues that way, may be in a couple of years' time I'll start considering buying one - by that time hopefully we (marie and me)should be more financially stable and able to take advantage of an eventual free fall of prices.

Dog eats mobile phone

It happened to a friend of mine.

I am so tempted to give her a ring or two... :-)

Evolution

Here is my new Xmas present:


Evolution, by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu (Auteur), Patrick Gries (Auteur), Jean-Pierre Gasc (Préface). I was in a library in Liege and saw it cover, a snake skeleton, and had a look inside. It contains a huge amount of beautiful photos of different vertebrates skeletons, shot in black and white against a dark background. Just wonderful. It's 50EUR, but what the hell...

Rwanda!!!

update, appena preso il biglietto, x la modica somma di 1080 euro tutto incluso. cioe', 16 ore di volo (a+r) e dunque un bel po' di carburante.

date previste x il viaggio, dal 20 dicembre al 12 gennaio. quasi un mese, eh eh eh... mi sa che la mamma di marie mi mette a lavorare nei campi x pagarmi l'affitto...

ecco qua la mappa x i curiosi che non hanno idea di dove sia: Rwanda

L'idea e' di andare a vedere la regione del lago kivu, coi suoi vulcani. Fra le altre cose.

Wish me good luck. Proprio ieri ho avuto un incubo in cui mi trovavo nel bel mezzo di una guerra civile. mado'. per di piu' peggiorata dal fatto che alcuni dei cattivi sembravano avere poteri paranormali - come se non fosse gia' abbastanza orribile sentirsi gli spari dietro

Tornando alla marzulliana realta', le foto le posto se rientro, sopratutto se riesco ad avere la nuova fotocamera dagli US, dove costano la meta' (anche includendo le tasse)

Ciao ciao.

Luca

DMC-FZ18 Reviews, finally!!!

I have finally found some reviews of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18. Here, and here. I am sold. I am ordering it as soon as I can from the US, together with a DMC-TZ3 for my lady. I still can't understand why prices in the EU are so outrageous, with the TZ3 costing 400 Euros and well below 300 US$ on the other side of the pond. Even counting in taxes, it still makes no sense.



Stay tuned for my next pictures, probably starting with my trip to Rwanda at year's end.

Yesterday

I happened to listen to this song some minutes ago...
For the first time, I listen to what it said. Sad. Yet that's how I felt two years ago. Now things are different, may be better, yet I still feel something piercing my heart when I think back... So, here's to the past:

Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe
In yesterday

Suddenly
I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday
Came suddenly

Why she
Had to go I don't know
She wouldn't say
I said
Something wrong now I long
For yesterday

Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe
In yesterday

Why she
Had to go I don't know
She wouldn't say
I said
Something wrong now I long
For yesterday

Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe
In yesterday

(hum to "I believe in yesterday")

Not Alway Free market is the way to go...

At least, that's what the German government, publishers, retailers and consumers altogether say, defending a system threatened by the opening of discounting on german-language books in Switzerland. Until now, the price of a german book would have been the same whether you bought it in the shop down the road, online or... well I can't think of an alternative, but you get the idea.

This helped small sellers, and small publishers, to keep at bay big chains, fostering a wider, and arguably better, market.

What can I say? Good luck to the Germans. I will alway cheer on anybody who's pro-books.

Who would have thought so?

Once again, Carl Zimmer surprises us: I thought he was concentrating solely on his soon-to-come book on E. Coli, instead he's busy on many fronts, the latest of which to come to fruition to us non-paying readers is his NY Times piece on migratory birds sleep. Check it out, as it is certainly worth. I, in my humble ignorance, would never have though that a bird could fly non stop for eight days. now, that's ENDURANCE.

House prices from the satellites

Wow, this is very Web 2.0.


a website, http://www.housepricemaps.co.uk/, where you can check how much were the houses around yours sold for. Only if you're in the UK, at the moment. But one day, all this power will be at our fingertips for the whole world.

They are at it again...

I mean, trying to wipe out plasmodium malariae... or, at the very least the disease it causes, by using knock-out plasmodii cultured in live anopheles to create a vaccine. They extract them and inject them in humans. 65% success rate, high enough to make me consider sticking my forearm in one of the boxes where the mosquitoes incessantly buzz.

I wonder why don't they do like this, to vaccine people. I mean, it's not as if keeping mosquitoes alive is any difficult. just stick your arm in the box twice a day and they should have plenty of blood. so the vaccinated themselves shall provide the maintenance. Wanna see that, instead of genociding the anopheles as we already tried and still is advocated by Olivia Judson (who propose to use bio-engineering defective anopheles to do so), the buzzing insects will switch side and become our allies? Now, that would be cool. and perverse, sort of...

We are not happy with wrecking the ecosystem, we're recluting the worst components of it in our own personal army...

I really don't understand the talk of eradication, though. what the hell do they want to eradicate, with a vaccine? It would not be a problem if, like smallpox, the parasite went only from man to man. then, vaccine the whole population and the bug will not be able to jump any longer. But in a parasite which can affect more than one species, as Plasmodium can, what use would it be to vacinate all man? as soon as you stop, the reservoir of bacteria in cows, or camels, or whatever, will kick back. Ditto if you vaccine those species, unless you vaccine them all. I can just picture the hunt for the smallest african mammals in order to vaccinate them...

I am sorry, but it doesn't sound sound to me. I'd side with the 'control' side, for the moment being.

Where do you come from?

I have just discovered (thanks to my new friend massimo) an exciting and massive DNA-testing of people sponsored by the National Geographic: The Genographic Project. In practice, you subscribe, get e-mailed at your place a DNA-testing kit, then spit on it, send it back and they'll let you know where your ancestors came from. Of course you know who your father was, and your grandfathers and so on... But then? This way, if you're italian you'll discover that may be you're one of the few survivors of the pre-indo-europaean populations, or may be a late-comer born out of a barbaric rape following the Roman Empire fall. Who knows? May be this will be my Xmas present to myself. And may be I'll give one too, so that I'll discover when the common ancestor of Marie and mine lived. You never know, we may be cousins (yes, at the 7569th level may be).

A hurdle on the road to personalised cancer treatment

The new Nature is out, (since a couple of days, in fact) with a nice piece on the difficulties facing the development and approval of biomarkers-based cancer diagnostic assays.

Quickly, they work by taking a broad look at the proteins (or RNA, or else) expressed in your body at the moment, and compare them with similar sample in healthy and sick people. if the fingerprints (protein prints, or RNA-prints, or else-prints) match, then there's a good chance that you may share the same medical condition.

Trouble is, these tests do not yet seem able to differentiate between different kind of cancer enough to be useful in suggesting a treatment. To do so, large, long, expensive clinical trials are necessary. And the companies that produce those diagnostics do not have that kind of money. Pharmaceutical companies do, and they also have some interest in this: with clear diagnoses and treatment indication,s their drugs could be given only to patients likely to responds. Of course, this means that they would sell more or less drugs than they currently do. It can go both ways.

However, there are good chances. If it is true that the UK government will soon require certainty of effect on drugs before re-imbursing them to the company, then such a test would act as a shield in those cases where the drug were not to work nonetheless. I guess a middle ground will have to be found, with the government accepting a certain rate of failure in the prediction of the treatment and therefore shouldering the price of ineffective drugs rather than unloading it onto an already unstable pharmaceutical complex. Whether you like them (us) or not, the world needs new medicine and that's the most efficient way to create them.

let's play

Thanks to Alice:

1 - Prendi il libro che hai più vicino, vai a pagina 19, scrivi la linea 11:
pagina 19 e' occupata da una figura... tipico.

2 - Se estendi il tuo braccio destro, cosa riesci a toccare?
il laptop, la bottiglia d'acqua, la cioccolata, la PSP nuova, l'ombrello, milioni di altre cose. questa scrivania e' ingombra. e poi ho le braccia lunghe.

3 - L'ultima cosa che hai visto in tv?
Il notiziario delle 7 della BBC

4 - Senza guardare, che ora è?
boh. 13.45?

5 - Adesso guarda, che ora è?
14.21 - sto perdendo tempo eh?

6 - Oltre al suono del computer, cosa riesci a sentire?
sibil-rozio del condizionatore. il ticchetio dei tasti. porta che sbatte. i tacchi di barbie girl.

7 - Quanto tempo sei stato fuori di casa la volta che sei stato più tempo fuori?
sei mesi. ma mi sa che l'abbandono comincia ora.

8 - Cosa stavi facendo prima di scrivere questo Journal?
leggevo gli altri blogs. invece di lavorare

9 - Cosa indossi ora?
camicia bianca con quadri marroni piccoli e leggeri, pantaloni in velluto a righe crema con sovra-toni verdicchi, maglione in lana verde. mutande rosse. credo... controllo. affermativo.

10 - Cos'hai sognato stanotte?
non ricordo.

11 - Quanto tempo hai riso l'ultima volta?
mezzo secondo.

12 - Cosa c'è sulle pareti della tua stanza?
due lavagne piene di formule e numeri. il bistrattato Credo della ditta. un calendario con avvenimenti fittizi. scritti da me. che si son poi avverati. scary!

13 - Hai notato qualcosa di strano ultimamente?
quando sto seduto, mi fa freddo alle gambe. x quello ho appena calato il giubbottone in pelle sulle coscie.

14 - Cosa pensi di questo giochetto di domande?
troppo lungo.

15 - L'ultimo film che hai visto?
South Park - Bigger, longer and uncut.

16 - Se diventassi milionario cosa compreresti?
Una casa in campagna dove passare il tempo a coltivare l'orto, e osservare animali ed insetti. e le piante crescere.

17 - Qualcosa su di te...
Strano ma pigro.

18 - Se potessi dare una cosa al mondo, cosa daresti.
Dinosauri.

19 - Ti piace cantare?
In macchina, visto che la radio e' rotta.

20 - Cosa pensi di Bush?
L'uomo tipico.

21 - Hai una bambina, senza pensarci, come la chiami?
Sara.

22 - Invece è un bambino, come lo chiami?
Paolo.

23 - Ti piacerebbe vivere in uno stato estero?
Ci sto in belgio. essendo appena rientrato da casa (Sardegna) non e' proprio il massimo.

24 - Cosa ti piacerebbe di dicesse Dio arrivato in paradiso?
Hai sbagliato la scommessa. Mi reggi sti fulmini nel mentre che li lancio?

25 - Chi vorresti che rispondesse a queste domande?
Chiunque capita nel mio blog e proprio non ha altro da fare.

Finito.

Ugly Scansion Microscopy...

Ugly Overload posts a nice link to an interesting yet disturbing set of Pictures from the Time and CNN.

Title, The Fascinating, Frightening World of Insects.

Everyone can find his less favourite picture here, mine is this one though:



the caption simply says: Dust Mites
Seen at a magnification of 350x, a group of Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus forage for human skin on a bedsheet.

Brr... The fascinating thing here is the fact that a whole ecosystem surrounds us in our houses, and we are mostly unaware of it. For this dust mites, my bedlinen are the equivalent of north american prairies for buffaloes, and my girflriend vigorously stirring them every morning a kind of atlantidean catastrophe brought about by a beautiful yet indifferent goddess :-)

Back to Blog

... and back to work too.

After ten days spent in Sardinia, between two weddings (again, my congrats to Giangi and Alessandra, and Miriam and Manlio - I reallly appreciated the parties)

Sardinia was wonderful this time of the year, with clear blue skies and a diamond sun shining. I even managed a brief escape to the sea, Platamona was clear as crystal and inviting...

Mostly, I messed about with old and new friends, and wasted some mornings looking for a gps/pda substitute to my defunct Mio. I ended up being disappointed and decided to try and resuscitate it. Hack!

In the next few days, I shall try to post something.

I am still working part time on my paper, may be i'll post some layman explanations since they keep coming in my mind and I can't fit them in the boring and uninteresting scientific style requested by todays publications.

Man, this sucks. You hope to be the next Carl Zimmer, instead you found yourself forced to be the next George Bush. Ok, may be not that bad, but definitely boring. Ugh!