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!

And again on Belgium splitting...

The NY Times this time.

Gingerbread Haka!!!

a movie in tune with the rugby world cup



grazie a mio fratellino paolo.

Neglected Diseases

The new Nature is out. I've stolen the time to my paper-writing to read the brief news, if not the real papers, but really can't discuss them right now. Too damn busy...

Draft is due tomorrow and I am still adding data to the discussion and introductory session!!! Bad bad practice.

Anyway, nature you have to pay for, but you can get the Neglected Disease report for free. So, go and check it out.

I fully agree

cut and paste from:

Belgium:Time to call it a day

Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Sometimes it is right for a country to recognise that its job is done

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

A RECENT glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent. And what they think of the government they may well think of the country. If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it?

Such questions could be asked of many countries. Belgium's problem, if such it is, is that they are being asked by the inhabitants themselves. True, in opinion polls most Belgians say they want to keep the show on the road. But when they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south for French-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north for Dutch-speaking parties. The two groups do not get on—hence the inability to form a government. They lead parallel lives, largely in ignorance of each other. They do, however, think they know themselves: when a French-language television programme was interrupted last December with a spoof news flash announcing that the Flemish parliament had declared independence, the king had fled and Belgium had dissolved, it was widely believed.

No wonder. The prime minister designate thinks Belgians have nothing in common except "the king, the football team, some beers", and he describes their country as an "accident of history". In truth, it isn't. When it was created in 1831, it served more than one purpose. It relieved its people of various discriminatory practices imposed on them by their Dutch rulers. And it suited Britain and France to have a new, neutral state rather than a source of instability that might, so soon after the Napoleonic wars, set off more turbulence in Europe.

The upshot was neither an unmitigated success nor an unmitigated failure. Belgium industrialised fast; grabbed a large part of Africa and ruled it particularly rapaciously; was itself invaded and occupied by Germany, not once but twice; and then cleverly secured the headquarters of what is now the European Union. Along the way it produced Magritte, Simenon, Tintin, the saxophone and a lot of chocolate. Also frites. No doubt more good things can come out of the swathe of territory once occupied by a tribe known to the Romans as the Belgae. For that, though, they do not need Belgium: they can emerge just as readily from two or three new mini-states, or perhaps from an enlarged France and Netherlands.

Brussels can devote itself to becoming the bureaucratic capital of Europe. It no longer enjoys the heady atmosphere of liberty that swirled outside its opera house in 1830, intoxicating the demonstrators whose protests set the Belgians on the road to independence. The air today is more fetid. With freedom now taken for granted, the old animosities are ill suppressed. Rancour is ever-present and the country has become a freak of nature, a state in which power is so devolved that government is an abhorred vacuum. In short, Belgium has served its purpose. A praline divorce is in order.

Belgians need not feel too sad. Countries come and go. And perhaps a way can be found to keep the king, if he is still wanted. Since he has never had a country—he has always just been king of the Belgians—he will not miss Belgium. Maybe he can rule a new-old country called Gaul. But king of the Gauloises doesn't sound quite right, does it?

New Books

Carl Zimmer let us know that he's just finished editing the concise edition of "The Descent of Man" by Charles Darwin. So, I went off to amazon to buy a copy together with "Fish with fingers, Whales with legs", and... "Pearls Before Swine: Blts Taste So Darn Good"...

Here's the proof:

Open Orders

Order Date: 8 Sep 2007 Order #: 202-4890542-7183528 Recipient: Luca A. Fenu

Items not yet dispatched: Delivery estimate: 28 Nov 2007 - 30 Nov 2007 1 of: The Descent of Man Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L. 1 of: Pearls Before Swine: Blts Taste So Darn Good Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L. 1 of: At the Water's Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs... Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L.

The only prob is that I'll have to wait to get the others too, since Amazon does make you pay for delivery (differently from Play.com, where I usually buy my stuff). So the stuff will not come through before end of November!!!

Beautiful Pictures

Produced with the 'processing' language, but most of all a keen artistic sense: http://complexification.net/



Thanks to Zimmer's latest post for the discovery.

...and the Big Cut&Paste

Turkish (self proclaimed) theoretical physicist accused of plagiarising papers.


According to Nature, the ArXiv removed their pubblications (70, 40 of which authored by one same guy - now that's a lot even for theoreticists), after ascertaining that they contained large sections from previous papers. two of the PhD involved had a host of papers in gravitational physics, but couldn't solve basic newtonian physics problems... Ugh!

The trouble began last November, when Salti and another graduate student, Oktay Aydogdu, underwent oral examinations for their PhDs. Although both had an extensive list of publications in gravitational physics, they struggled to answer even basic, high-school-level questions, according to Özgür Sariog brevelu, an associate professor at METU. "They didn't know fundamental stuff like newtonian mechanics," he says.

More worrying for me is that these people did actually publish their work on peer-reviewed journals, although Low Impact. Is this the kind of serious checks that publishers claim to offer when they oppose open publishing?

The Big Splash...

And the new Nature is out too, with a brief piece on how different sciences are homing in on the Dinosaurs' Asteroid Catastrophe, tackling it from various fronts and cross-fertilising each other with insights and suggestions on where and when EXACTLY this did happen.

I believe these links are freely available to anyone. If not, they should.

Climate changes, it rains more, snails die...

The new issue of Nature Reports: Climate Change is out.

Kind of confusing, in fact, to read in the same page of a species of snail going extinct because seasonal rains on the only atoll it leaves in are diminishing, while the next piece talks about increased rain due to Global Warming. Nothing strange, really, it only goes to show a point many scientist have made before: More energy in the atmosphere does not mean just hotter the year round, it means a more energetic atmosphere, therefore more storms, more rains, more extremes...

Like water in a bucket, which when still is flat, and when spun along the axis climb the walls following a parabolic shape, therefore higher on the walls and lower than still at the bottom.

So, may be the arid regions will become more arid, while the arctic regions will get even colder? I don't know. IANACS (I Am Not A Climate Scientist)