How long can you drive in reverse gear???

That is, before the police pulls you over? An aussie tried to do this... he was stopped by the police after only 20Km, but his p;lan was to do the full 500 which separated him from Perth... the guy justified himself saying that his gearbox had broken...



it is true that service stations are few and far between in the australian outback, but come on!!!

(click on the link for the full details)

and what about weddings?

regarding my bro' wedding, my other younger bro has put up some piccies online... enjoy the view of me wearing a suite... and a typical (modern) sardinian wedding. peace and love, brothers and sisters...

tonight is relax time, will watch "The Constant Gardener", which seemingly portray Pharma industries as big ugly multinational corporation bent on exploiting poor people in developing countries... which may be the true... Only, may be they don't exploit just developing countryman... how about young post-docs? just kidding mate... or may be not? hasta la vista!!!

and here we are again...

it's the weekend. I've given a very interesting presentation (no shit, really) to the MedChem board here at Jans(s)enn... my work of the last six months did cause quite a lot of buz (sorry that I can't show it, it's classified). I liked that, kicking a wasp nest...

now it's the weekend, with my girlfriend busy working (night watch in the hospital) and voting (back to Liege) I'll try to concentrate on my thesis writing the whole of saturday and sunday... so that next weekend will be able to spend some quality time with her... good weekend to everybody reading, then...

Gnam!!!

here comes a nice dragonfly... but there's something else on the flower...

lost my counter and all other customisations...

Damn, I switched over to the new blogger/google/beta and have now lost everything... will take some time to recover them, hopefully my counter wioll not have been reset.

On The Nature of Marriage

Realising that my brother was getting married (for real!!!) got me thinking... Mind you, I've never been adverse to it as some friends, but talking to my girlfriend I tried to explain her how i did saw the marriage in my very personal, atheistic, humanistic view of the world...

Marriage is not about being christians. It's present in all cultures of the world. or at least, 99.9%. It's not certainly about GOD, since atheist chinese and japanese still marry... the way I see it, it is a vow, you taking responsibility of caring about your broom/bride, in front of those who constitute your immediate society. Parents, friends, everybody you care about and whose opinion you deem important. It's a pledge that you make to other person, in my case a pledge of exclusivity (being faithful to him/her), a reassurance that once she's pregnant I will not escape with another one, no matter how strong the temptation... As a matter of fact, a very mundane thing. An insurance policy for her. it's my way of saying "Don't worry, I'll be there for our children to grow responsibly."

So, when I'll take the big step (or plunge?), I'll go to church (for very social reason, namely my gf and family being catholic), gleefully lie about all that GOD stuff, and be sincere about loving her and taking care of her until death do us part... I guess it's a reasonable and honest compromise... 'nuff said...

let's go back to space/science/funny things now... ;-)

Speedy Planets...

Astronomers have discovered Jupiter sized planets orbiting their home stars in less than one days... this means they're so close that their surface is heated at 3000 Celsius!!! If we had one of them here, it would probably appear like a bulge on the sun ball... wouldn't that be cool?

Isn't it unfair?

Another year goes by, and yet I haven't won the Nobel... Physics went two days ago, Chemistry yesterday...

it's really depressing... makes me think that may be a career in finances would have been more proficuous... especially noting that at my same age or less, young finances people here have their car and home bills footed by the company... grrr... as if they were the one who make the drugs... enough ranting, I better get back to work, or the prize will escape me next year too :-)

Sticky, Stinky, Fishy, Piggy!!!

the four adjectives which me and Marie were serving to each other during our holidays in sardinia... it was damn hot and we were coming back home after one day spent out touring the northern coast... badly in need for a shower, as you can guess...

Piggy was added at the last minute, when a couple of wild boar crossed our path as we were driving back to the B&B... While one of them cruised along my car, I half thought about hitting him for the barbecue the day after... Luckily I didn't do it. First, we were inside the borders of a national park, so big fine... Second, even if i did hit him, our landlady told us, it would probably have killed la macchinetta but wouldn't have done much harm to him - this was the fate of my landlady car when she did the same.



incidentally, here's the powerful moyen de transport we used during the epic holidays...

let's come back to the boar now:
Third, had he/she been in heat (the pig, not us), the meat would have been very disgusting...

so, long live the wild boar!

Back to belgium...

Ehy I'm back... very very tired, so that I had to take one day more of vacation to sleep it over... not that it did help... being Belgium as gloomy as ever, today I still feel very very sleepy. may be because I had to wake up at 5.30 to dodge the traffic in the Brussels and Antwerpen rings? anyway, I'll try to get my act to gether, now, lil breakfast, lil checking my emails, lil tour saying hello to everybody...

then plunge myself into real work... well, more like powerpointing another idiot-proof presentation...

I leave you with a picture taken during my holidays...

Physics of Superheroes

an interesting read? I don't know... (EDIT: in fact quite a boring one. the first part with the history of superman powers is nice, but in the second one the author goes to infinite lenghts to explain how he computes the force necessary for superman to leap a tall building... or may be I'm just forgetting that most people don't leave as I do in the Mathemagic realm)

I'll be trying to finish Judas Unchained during the flight, and in the small bites of free time during my holidays...

time to go now...

see you soon!

Richard "Hamster" Hammond hurt in car crash

Many of you know of my fascination for the BBC program TOP GEAR. I do enjoy the mix of light entertainment and car news, get angry to their unreasonable stand against global warming (albeit some of their stances are reasonably put). anyway, it's possibly my fav program...

Today's news is that one of his presenter, Richard hammond has been seriously hurt during the filming of the next series of episodes.

what can I say? get well soon, Hamster...

My Pirate name is...

keeping up with yesterday's Talk Like a Pirate Day, here it comes!!!

My Pirate Name Is...

Cannibal Sultan of Timor

What's Your Pirate Name?

WOW!!!

a lots of visits (37 pageloads) yesterday...

it must depends from the fact that I posted a lot so it did often pop up in the 'recently updated' list of blogspot... let's see if I can repeat the exploit today...

before the hyatus of my holidays... I guess I will not be posting a lot during the coming ten days...

will try to put up some holidays pictures when I get back... :-)

How much does the National Security budget of the US amounts to?

I can't know (you have to pay to get access). I wish I did though. I have always been wandering what a drag the "Defense" expenses are on countries. How better will we be if we didn't have to spend all those money and energies in unproductive things? Of course we may niot be that better as our neighbours would invade us to rob our richs...

It is a sad, sad world...

Wii is wiith us...

No pesky PS3, thanks, I have been a Nintendo fans since I saw Pikmin on the gamecube... I love challenging, yet cute-looking videogames, and there's nothing like nintendo for them...

And Gamecube successor, the Wii, is coming out soon... featuring a new two-pieces, motion-sensitive, free-hand controller which I really believe is going to make games more fun... think about playing soulcalibur by really punching your opponents sitting in the sofa close to you... or most likely standing in front of the TV...

I can't wait to play next gen's Zelda: Twilight Princess



and Wii Sports:



and what else? well, I don't care. I play very rarely (not at all in the last nine months or so), so even very few (possibly PARTY/multiplayer) games will do for me.

But I hope they keep up a decent pipeline so that the user base will not switch over to the more muscular PS3 and X360... XP

Personally, I think M$ is going to loose anyway. Nintendo has shown with the DS that it can keep up and beat the crap out of Sony, let's hope tey keep up with the good job...

Project Bioshield: The Mess

No, it's not a new videogame title for PS2...

it's the US initiative to protect themselves from unlikely bio-weapons terrorist attack...

Tara talks about it. Original source from the NY Times.

apparently, big pharma companies are not interested in the deal (I wonder why), so small start ups with no proven track record are stepping in. I feel like making unsubstantiated allegations today, so I will put out mine: is this the truth? or is just simply that lots of these start ups sprouted from nowhere are just clocely linked to government personalities in charge of assigning the fundings? Are americans, once again, lining someone's pockets with public money? nothing wrong, mind you, if they were getting something in return... but... let me doubt this...

Now that I've sprouted non-sense, I can even read the article :-)

EDIT: read the article... it seems I wasn't so wrong. As Andreotti says, to think bad of someone is a sin, but you always get it right.

quote from the article:

“A torturous labyrinth of federal fiefdoms into which billions disappear,” Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, said of the program. “Yet few antidotes have yet to emerge.”

I am a Tiger!!!

thanks to the chick

Men's issue with their body...

Too many hair, too smelly, too much... male? yep, that's it...

some scientists tackle the fact that we men are not all Brad Pitt

We smell, we fart, we have hair spread all around our bodies, and so on... some people are ok with it. I am ok with myself, but my GF sometimes complain about my body odour - strange, since previous acquantainces never raised the issue - age effect?
mah...

interestingly, the people most obsessed are those addicted to MTV and such 'entertainment'... not surprising... potato couches sitting on the sofa all day looking at beautifully sculpted male/female dancers. your self esteem isn't certainly going to go up...

again, I find strange that am not disturbed by the fact of spending my free time watching Desperate Housewives or Ally Mc Beal. it must be 'cause I enjoy the stories more than the picture (albeit the girls in the show are certainly hot). or may be I don't need to fantasize on them. I have a real woman sharing my life - kudos to her... ;-)

It's Talk Like A Pirate day!!!

A bit everywhere in the big ol' net. (that's the official site though)



I first found out about it looking for a movie (will not tell you which one) in the Pirate Bay.

but even Pharyngula is celebrating it, with a very weird tampons ad:



if you want to know more, just google it

I can not believe this...

a piece of news as a follow up to my post regarding Steve Irwin: (some of) his fans may be taking their revenge by mutilating sting-rays...

no, really, what do they think they're achieving?

(thanks to Boltgirl)

A new species of bird!!!

It doesn't happen every day. in fact it hasn't happened at all in the past 50 years...
A new species of bird has been identified in India...



Shelley has more about it.

(also on yahoo news)

SubNormali

Now I can't stop posting... it's raining anyway and don't want to get wet going home, so... will wait for it to stop. in the meantime, enjoy this nice amateur sub-movie of a nightime immersion:

No AdSense, thanks...

At least, not if the ads presented are unappropriate as in this case: Scientific Evidence (is this Gore the ex US's VP? who knows?)

I mean, a weblog about science and google put in it pseudo-scientific burble like "Modern Science Finds God" and "The Final Theory"? pu-lease...

I better keep AdSense at bay, then... poor but honest. augh!

To the Movies (II)

Frankly, though, this one, featuring my old-time favourite Edward Norton, seems to be so much better: The Illusionist

In turn-of-the-century Vienna, a magician (Norton) uses his abilities to secure the love of a woman far above his social standing.

looks like a plan. I'd do the same, if I had magical powers :-)

To the Movies

Snooping around the IMDB, I found the trailer for this nice movie: School for Scoundrels... there's no vote as of yet, but I'll check it out on the torrent to see how it is and report to you... have a nice evening, guys and girls... ;-)

wellcome to all visitors... (updated)

My counter below is burgeoning toward the one-hundredth visit. who will it be?

Until now, I've had mostly visit from Italy, and the UK (from my ex-lab). The one from Italy come from Turin, but mostly from Tuscany... The usual suspects here too...

Unexpected visits from all over the world, the US, Australia, India and so on... you're all wellcome!

now that I have a referrer list you can check where visiting people comes from, too. ;-)

UPDATE: and the one-hundredth is... PAC, if I am not mistaken, who's checking me out from his university public station. Him, or someone else from Pisa. Gio' may be? no way of knowing unless they come forward and confess...

Judas Unchained

What does Judas Unchained means? Frankly, I don't know. It's just the title of the book I am reading now. Follow up on last week's book, Pandora's Star, it did arrive in the post the same day I was done with its prequel...

The commonwealth traversies goes on and on, charachters become more tri-dimensional, or may be not. Frankly, I enjoy the book but its main players are far from the detail of Hamilton previous cycle. It certainly is a page turner for me, and am looking forward to discovers what the Guardians are up to. i only hope it won't be another Deus Ex Machina like in the Naked God. In there, the solution did look enat, but lazy too... Too easy postulating a superhuman intelligence which fixes things for us... well, enough spoiling...

I just hope I'll manage to finish reading it before I fly to sardinia. or may be in flight. who knows?

have a nice week you all!

The Intermediate Countdown

Minus three to the so long delayed holidays...

Minus two Presentations to go: one for Management, one for the Cardio Vascular Centre Of Excellence...

Minus one back pain to get rid of...

and then it's GO! Fly away where no gufo has been before!!!

(I dis-like Star Trek but have to admit liking their tag-line)

ready, steady...

go!

only half an hour left before my presentation to the scientific committee which is supposed the judge the goodness of my first six months here at JnJ, and suggest new investigation routes... finger crossed.

I managed to swap slides in my presentation even now, hopefully nobody will grunt about their printouts diverging from what I am going to show...

well, that's it for now, more news to follow! and good luck to me!

It was about time...

that someone did stand up and supported animal testing. I'm sick of animal rights hypocrites... I know animal testing is unpleasant, and it would be nice to have an alternative. but there is none.

I am personally working for that - how many self declared animal-lawyers can say the same? Still, the day we will be able to get rid of those extremely valuable aids is very far in the future.

have a nice day!

ps: the Pro-Test organisation also has a blog, which act as more as a science-oriented discussion forum...

What happens if/when

you put together Harvard's evolutionary (socio)biologist like Robert Trivers, and MIT's linguist Noah Chomsky?

a lot of interesting discussions, that is.

you can also look/listen at them:



they jump from one disparate subject to another: from the Iraq War to self-deception in animals...

funny that in the transcription it says that these two never met each other even if they did work in the same city... :-)

oh, and by the way: kudos to SEED for giving this (and others) away for free...

and thanks to the scientific activist for letting me know

My NERD-iness score...

I just don't know how to spend my time, today...

TopGun Galactica

Hey there, wellcome back. it's showtime again, so here comes a video grabbed from youtube where some fan put together BattlestarGalactica scenes with the theme from TopGun (Highway to The Dangerzone). Enjoy!

here's something funny about sex

Hi there. for this weekend, I want to suggest my italian speaking friends a website where some wacko gather crazy questions about sex from various online 'forums' - one of them is from the infamous teen-magazine "Cioe`" - which bradly translated means "That is", but is an often used interjetion for teen agers, kind of 'dig it'.

so, click here - girlpower vs cioe - and enjoy!

What to listen

Just a quick link to the very good BBC Radio Player. Not as simple as the Rai Radio Player (just six buttons, nothing more), but the sheer number of channels and broadcast prorams available makes it worth a check.

cheers, and thanks BBC for making this available to "offworlders" too... Kudos!

(best channel for open minds: BBC Channel 4)

Of Time Machines and Birthday Cakes

So, suppose you forgot that monday last week was your birthday. Any reference is purely coincidental. Suppose you felt ashamed that you didn't buy a cake to share with your friends, so that you didn't say it to anyone. You obviously want to amend this.

The first idea that came up to my mind is to devote yourself at creating a new branch of physics, and manage to create a wormhole which acts as a time machine. you then step back in the future, drop to the nearest patisserie/supermarket, buy a cake - you birthday cake must obviously be produced the day of your anniversary. Finally, you step forward in time and you share the cake with your friends. However, since cakes have an 'eat me before ' typically less than one week, you end up witha cake who's rotten. or may be not. but it doesn't really matter, none of your friends is going to believe that it's still good when they see the writing on the wrappings... damn... So much time wasted for nothing...

well, you're left with no friends, but a time machine, and that is reasonably cool. you can always go and look for new friends in different ages...

What am I reading

May be you're interested, may be you're not.

but here comes what's been keeping me awake at night - no, it's not my GF.



a book which is the follow up to 'The Lexus and the Olive tree' (which I haven't read yet). In essence, it talks about how the world market is being flattened by globalisation, and how this is going to impact our lives. Unfortunately, as many american books, after a good start he only stress the point over and over again...

So that after a while I lost interest and cast it aside. it's been lying on my kitchen floor for two weeks until my GF picked it up.

Now, it's been substituted by a very clever book by Peter F Hamilton, author of the acclaimed (by me, if nothing else) "Reality Disfunction" cycle. The new Book is called Pandora's Star (click here to read the prologue on the author's official web page)



As in the Reality Disfunction cycle, humans have spread along the galaxy but this time using WormHoles rather than Spaceships. The first chapter is very good indeed, and after that is a jump of three hundred years in the future, to when a neighboring (only one thousand light years away from Earth) star is secluded from the rest of the universe by mean of a gigantic shell of exotic matter - The Dyson Pair, since there are two of them, puzzle the human, which decide then to send their first faster-than-light spaceship to investigate - 'cause wormholes don't get that far without five or six intermediate steps, and each one needs very expensive infrastructure to be mantained.

The Universe is accurately detailed as in Hamilton's tradition, and reminds strongly of the Hyperion universe. However, it lacks credibility in the semi-fantasy social ordering, and the absolute monopoly over technologies such as Force fields and WormHoles transport - the Corporation who runs the latters can decide to cut everybody off the Commonwealth, and I can believe the governments would allow that. and if so, after three hundred years I'd expect the same technology to be available to everybody, so that worlds cut out would eventually form a kind of shadow commonwealth... mah... annyway, as Space Operas go, there's certainly a lot of meat and high-tech-babbling and gizmoes and stuff to keep me entertained. a tad below the previous saga, though. you can't beat the combination spaceships+zombies, can you?

The Crocodile Hunter killed by... a StingRay

I often watched his documentaries when I was in the UK... always meddling with very dangerous animals such as snakes, sharks, and of course, crocodiles. one of his pets was... a dingo, which isn't exactly tame...

at the end, what was inevitable (IMHO) happened. while shooting a documentary swimming along a sting ray, he must have ennoyed it too much, and the ray put the sting in his heart...

Goodbye Irwin!

Happy Birthday to me...

happy birthday to me...

Hi everybody, I'm 32 today... since the crucial date of 33 (Jesus Christ's age) is approaching, I thought about making a balance of my life to date:

- find a nice girlfriend (check)
- starting a family (on the way there)
- being liked by my friends (check... ehr... right?)
- getting a degree (check and a half)
- getting a job (half-check)
- starting my own religion (to do)
- lifting one hundred Kg on the bench (check)
- parachuting (to do)
- win the nobel prize (to do)

I believe it's all... I guess this puts me above JC in the list of accomplished things. after all, He didn't have a degree, one of his friends betrayed him to death, and as for girlfriend... well, let's skip over it. Over all, he only managed to start a religion, ad get hung like a thief. sad uh? Luckily, I am here to dave the day... Ok I stop being such a pun and start my first honest day of work as a thirty-two year old... what? boy? man? bah, whatever...

a zent'annos!

To AdSense, or not to AdSense?

here's the question. should I subscribe to adsense advertisement and let them stick some box with ads from which I can gain a sh*tload of money (unlikely since the measy trafic of this weblog, but you never know...)
Frankly, I don't think I should. if only 'cause they'd go somewhere where I don't want them to be... On the other side, I'm very curious about what kind of ads google will think are 'appropriate' to this blog... but what if once subscribed I can't get the bloody thing out of my html code?

any suggestions? any one who's already had experience on this?

La scritta sul muro

and here it is a blog (italian only, I'm sorry) with some hilarious signposts/graffiti from (w)all(s) over the world...

just an example of what you'll find in there:



damn, I had to hack the html code in the site to grab the pic. I hate when people disable the right-click menus...

Back in the water

I've finally made it. I managed to wake up early enough to go to swim right before working... I know that many readers may find this very strange, and borderline crazy, but that's the best way to start the day for me. I've been going to the gym, or to swim, or both, in the morning for the mosty part of my extended PhD time. and before, at University in Italy, I would study until 10 and then rush down to my friend Fulvio's gym (PaleXtra 2000 - Fulvio, come on, put up a nice web site!!!).

I had abandoned this healthy habit after moving to the new house in April - in fact I started doing sport in the evening after I moved to Belgium. But I didn't like it, really, in the evening I like to relax, watch a lil bit of TV (I have a penchant for humour romantic TV series, such as Ally Mc Beal, and Desperate Housewives). So it really wasn't ideal to trin after work. Some people find it relaxing. It takes the stress they accumulate during the day, at work. I don't. Sport is not for relaxing, is for training. And your mind must be fresh if you want to be able to handle those weight seriously.

But work here has been getting heavier and heavier, and at the evening I pledged to finish off my PhD thesis, so I had to relinquish something. Either my lovely girlfriend, or sport. Which way would you have gone?

What convinced me to do the effort to get back was a streak of pain in my back in the last week (some friends say this was 'caused' by my GF, but I like to think of myself as a gentleman so I can't confirm (nor deny). Anyway, it made work impossible, thanks to the wonderful hammock/chairs that some architect decided would fit the hyper-space workplace. I'd rather sit on a wooden bench.

but never mind, 'cause this pushed me to enter the water once again. which is good, I have to shed some weight (not really, rather put up some in the right places) and get back in shape for my brother's wedding the end of this month. Otherwise the suite I bought last year will not fit me...

well, I haven't spoken too much about swimming, in this post. may be next time. have a nice day! :-)

A new counter

Keeping an eye on who visits the blog is important. this way I'll have a better idea of who's reading it, and then I may modify my posts accordingly. Since the NeoCounter has expired, I decided to switch over to another free counter: StatCounter
it should appear on the right hand side bar, more or less like this:

whoops!!!

View My (Pitiful, for the moment) Stats

check it out, and make it tick higher and higher!!!

EDIT: may be it doesn't show in this post. but it does on the side bar, of this I'm sure.

EDIT II: never mind, can't put javascript inside my posts, apparently. well, as I said, just check the side bar. I'll do the same!

Those people at BMW are certainly funny...

here comes an old commercial from those funny germans over at BMW (click on it to start the download and play of it)



it doesn't seem to work, does it? Oh yes it does now!!!
(I'm the lord of html hack'n'slash!!!)
Enjoy the fine german humour ;-)

Humour for Geeks

Nuff' said.

Busy busy damn busy...

as the title, says, I've been damn busy this couple of weeks. writing up reports for the finishing cardiovascular projects, then at home wirting up the ninth chapter of the thesis... and finally, when i get the time/chance, trying to keep mi social life... well, alive...

some few weeks left before presenting what I did in the past six weeks to a bunch of scientist colleagues, then to management... Briefly before that a poster is going to fly to San Francisco for the ACS meeting with my name on it... the same work I'll try to publish in paper form in the next few months (keep an eye on J Med Chem) - and my boss thinks he may be good to push it for next year sheffield MGMS meeting. good! but that's for the future...

it is still september now, and it's going to be a pretty hard month... until the 23rd, that is... then finally holidays!!! getting back to sardinia to be the best man at my brother wedding... good lord I'm so waiting for this... the holidays, more than the wedding

the river on the bridge kway...

What kind of crazy person would build a river on a bridge? well, me. in my "most favourite movie" section, that was the title. kudos to Gupy for spotting it. now it's corrected.

now, how could I actually build a river on a bridge? and if the river goes on the bridge, what is below? another river? or a non-river, i.e. the space left empty when we moved the river up-bridge? who knows...

too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...

NOT using the GPS will enlarge your brain!!!

It's what this paper from PNAS says: "Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers."

they are not kidding, PNAS stands for Proceeding of the National Academy of Science - so this is a serious paper... apparently they found out that a region of the ippocampus gets enlarged (and a close one shrinks to leave space for it) depending on the time the driver have been working in the london roads.

thanks to shelley at retrospectacle for this

Comparative advertisement

'botta e risposta' in the automotive industry...

Movie of (her) life

that's something interesting: a girl takes a picture of herself every day, for three years:



pity that she doesn't change that much. I wish someone did it with some child: I wish I had had the idea and taken piccies of my lil brother from 12 to 17. now, that would have been cool...

kudos to the Allen Almanac (found, as usual, via pharyngula)

and for more stop-motion human animations fun, check out this: a guy takes a picture of her wife every other day while she's pregnant...

And now for some sad remembering...

It was Marcinelle's anniversary some days ago. A very sad date for all those italians who came to belgium. Frankly, I didn't really know anything about it before coming here myself. But I've been told that it's been pretty much ignored by the italian newspapers. I hope they didn't forget - as I did :-( - the other two very sad events that happened the 6th and 9th of August, 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I'm joust posting a piccie taken from Pharyngula:

Zidane-Materazzi

I couldn't help myself, I had to post this: Some humorous french (I guess) have put up a series of animated gifs showing how the incident was seen by people of different nationalities...

the germans:



the frenchies:



les italiens:



les journalistes:

I'm on Google...

A friend was all too excited about our blogs appearing on google. that is, if you are looking for me and type in 'gufodotto'... for example.

in fact, my first reference is to the TypeKey profile which i use to comment on ScienceBlog's Pharyngula (according to Nature, the most visited science blog!!!). not strange, in fact, since every comment posted there has a link to my profile.

The second link is in fact this blog. Frankly I don't know how this may happen, except may be that Im the only gufodotto in the whole world. Fair enough...

after that, it's a trickle of references to various forum to which I do currently take part or did in the past.

As for less cryptic references to myself, searching google for "luca antonio fenu" returns as first hit an email I sent long time ago to the CCL (Comp Chem List) looking for a forgotten program for Atom Typing... the next two don't match at all, the fourth is my personal empy webpage from the University of Southampton. that's it. The rest is rubbish...

So, assuming that in the future Google's hard drives don't get erased by some cataclysmic event, and someone can put together my real name and my totem name, my grand-grand-grand -posthuman-children will be able to piece together my life from 2001 onward at least... good luck to them, I hope they'll still have a decent civilisation by then...

Best pull-line ever!!!

An old fav of video-games-'n'-comics addicted: Penny Arcade.



where the now defunct SEGA Dreamcast (my second fav console) drinks its way toa premature dismissal... and try to pull a girl at the bar... what a line!!! "Are those moon pants? 'cause that ass is outta this world!!!" (for my anglophobic friends: "Son mutande lunari quelle? xke' il tuo sedere non e' di questo pianeta" - no, it doesn't sound nearly as funny - italian is for romantics)

Comic of The Week - or - Is All Coffee Evil?

A nice strip featuring a young computer scientist graduate who start to work for a pretty Mad Female Scientist (TM) busy ironing the bugs out of her DoomsDay Machine, and her Evil (still learning) Intern.



I just post the first sunday strip which tackles with the moral dilemma associated with caffeinated beverages.

Who's this?

Someone is posting bogus comments on my blog. get the hell outta here, yo'...

this is for friend only. and no, we don't want to fly cheap to canada. and if we wanted we wouldn't be using your pitiful website.

On another, more relaxed note, I see that some people I actually don't know are actually visiting my blog... romania, germany(is this who i think he is?)... you're all wellcome! and please leave a comment... bye bye!

EDIT: and the counter keeps creeping upwards! now even people from the US and Austria are coming here... welcome to you all!!!

Diamonds

Sooner or later you have to tackle the problem. should you give a diamond ring to your GF to ask her to marry? but that's not what I want to talk about tonight... in fact, the question has come about between me and my lovely but never mind, we'll talk about this another time.

I was reading a book (Pandora's Star - P.F. Hamilton) and there it was cited the very high thermal conductivity of diamond. And it didn't make any sense to me. I mean, thermal conductivity is provided mostly by free electron flow. and of all materials, Diamond is the hardest one, i.e. the one with less available electron of them all... To fact check on this, I did ask a person who knows about diamond. A skype-friend of mine who's engineer in a diamond mine in namibia (yes I do meet some particularly interesting people over the net)
. Tpo no avail, however. She certainly knows how to get them out of the ground, but knows nothing about their characteristic. so i went to the (free) repository of all knowledge, wikipedia, and found out that what good Ol' Peter writes is absolutely true. But also what I say it's true. In fact, diamond's "highest than everything else" conductivity is caused not by free electrons, but by phonons, which because of the very regular 3D structure of the crystal lattice can propagate very efficiently. This is SO COOL!!! Oh God I do love science. And on this diamond bombshell, it's time to say goodnight!!!

Jeremy Clarkson as a London mayor

at least that's what he's saying in his weekly ranting on the times. just what we need. a global-warming-denying petrol-head directing the busiest city in the western world.

NB: I still have to read more than the first two lines, but I thought I'll update later on on the factual content.

EDIT: now I've read it. it's full of its usual rant-rubbish... but I guess it is as usual, show.

coming back

to posting on this blog. am sorry if I went away for a while. but life tends to become hectic, at periods, here in flat-land...

I do have a draft-post containing pictures of my new house, to satisfy the curiosity of some friends who've been asking this for oh so long time. but haven't found the time to put it together as it deserves.

As for the news, I just spent the week end stranded in turnhout as my car's turbo-compressor kicked the bucket... it's now at the dealer and I'm running around by bike and loving every moment of it. well, except when it rains, that is.

for a change, my GF has come up here rather than me driving down to brussels, and we've gone around by bike. the fields around are crisscrossed by cycle paths (as every civil region of earth should be) and it's incredible the amount of people that actually enjoy it. at least for some one like me from sassari, sardinia, where the only person above 14 to use the bike
as a transport method really were me, my brother Carlo and a few others.

mah...

other than that (cycling), thanks to my lovely Marie I was able to go on a brief hunting expedition to Ikea to finally get two stylish-modern-looking-suspended armchairs, and then experimenting in the kitchen. as a result, I'm one Kg heavier today, but I now am comfortably sure that I know how to do Pasta with Scampi and Courgettes (zucchine), and Salmon and Gamberi spiedini (brochettes)... All this with a side serving of Melanzane with tomato/basilico sauce, and ricotta secca. and, of course, a good glass of white wine (Le Arenarie, Sella & Mosca, 2004). hope your mouth is watering by now... may be next time we'll have a barbecue together?

cheers

new counter!

my first experimentin personalising this blog's code. so i will be able to see how many people actually look at it... very few I'm afraid... have a nice day you all who come around here...

splash!!!

half an hour ago I managed to get back home - just. it started to rain. heavily. I mean it. like tropical storm, albeit I've nevcer been to the tropics. anyway, here's the result. I'm stuck home, since one exit of the road is flooded.

(I know, it's sideway, I couldn't be arsed to flip it.)

and the other end is gridlocked by a trafic jam... damn... it's my girlfriend's birthday
today, I did what I could to free up myself, but to no avail. there must be some kind of curse upon me...

another one...

Oh, my, this one is soooo goood...

survival of the cutest

these hot summer days (yes, hot, in belgium) mosquitoes are a real nuisance... they get in my room while I'm reading my books after dark, and wait until I'm half asleep to start zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-ing around my ear. if you want to suck my blood, just do it and the hell with the noise. let me sleep!!! for the moment, I amuse my present and past sleeping partner by waking in the middle of the night and going hunting. pretty refined tactics, too, now I know they tend to hide on the underside of ledges in furnitures. the little bastards are very good at this... may be one day we will move to another planet, and will not bring the with us... we will finally get rid of them... but... is this going to be such a good idea? here's a nice comic strip on the subject...

Dance like a monkey!!!!

may be, not many of you know about Intelligent Design and Creationism issues in the Us of A. Some of you do know that I do care about this though... here's a videoclip from someone else who seems to care too... I'm loving this song!!! got to blast it through the lab at full power!!!



Oh, Iforgot, the song is from The New York Dolls, which is (I am told) a thirty year old pre-punk band...

and continuing on the evolution-based songs, here we go with Emerald Rose's : We come from monkeys - lyrics here

Wanna know?

What will happen in the next seventy thousand years? look at the past: The loom has a nice post about it. it talks about a recenta paper in PNAS regarding the evolution of earliest primates, and their voyage around a world deeply changed by global warming - whatever caused it back then, 55 Milions years ago...

seventh at last

ehy there, I'm back... after a writing frenzy, I just posted to my boss chapter six and seven of my PhD Thesis... yes capital since it's costing me hell to write... I plan on finally finishing this writing session by the end of the month, and then apport corrections before submitting... then I'll be Dr Gufodotto, PhD!!!

have a nice day you all everywhere you are. after a week of canicule, here in belgium rain has come back... and temperatures are a tad better now... am going off for stereo-shopping, now... bye bye!!!

Escherland...

here's a very nice piccie showing something really weird on Google map, and some interesting comment from Notional Slurry:


look at the palace with the blue X. and now look at the palace on the left, slightly above it. notice something strange? right... Escherland really exists, and it's in America...

have a nice week!

The Power of Models

I'm going to break non-discolusre agreement, here... may be... or may be not. but haven't talked about my work for a while. I'm currently developing predictive models for generic cardio toxicity
to be used by chemist to decide which way to go when they are pondering about new syntheses. usually, they make the molecule, then send it to the biologists to test it against some protein target. ion channels in the case of cardio toxicity, the same proteins which lets ion in and out of the cardiac cells when your heart beats - if you stop them, goodye heart - and life too.
in vitro inhibition of the channels is good indication that something nasty may happen in vivo. so if the molecules come back with a red flag, well, they've had it, and it's back to the drawing table (and the synthesys bench).

but now there's another way. with my models, they do not have to synthesize the molecule any more - they can use the models I created (based on previous experience - i.e. on the data accumulated in years of trial and errors procedures) to see whether the molecule is active or not just from its expected chemical structure.

and the incredible thing is, it works! as good as the best ion channel inhibition test they've used until now.

here's a picture:

the three bars on the left represent the percentage of success of the three commonly used ion channel assays. Sodium, Calcium and Potassium. this percentage tells you that for example the socdium channel assay is consistent with cardiotoxicity for 80% of the time. whether there's or there is no toxycity, that is.
on the right, instead, the success percentage of two models I built, one based on bayesian statistics and arcane entities called fingrprints - the other one on chemical properties and the exotheric practice of Projection to Latent Structures by means of Partial Least Squares - Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA for friends).
as you can see, both are slightly below the sodium accuracy, but the good thing is, you need to make the molecule for the assay - with my test, it's all done in one second or less within a computer... and this rocks!!!

see you soon! I'm going to enjoy a well deserved week end, now!!!

neck pain?

and before you think I'm complaining some more about my physical state, have a look at this: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/07/development_medicine_and_evolu.php

once again, PZ Myers at Pharyngula shed some lights on a very interesting piece of evolutionary biology...

had I had a biology professor as good as him, and not that pretty face of my teacher, I'd probably be in Richard Dawkins lab, right now... she had nice legs though... :-)

have a nice week end!!!

EDIT: and there's an update to the question, also showing how disagreeing and competing teams of scientists can nonetheless exchange data and information in order to solve the issue. at least until new data comes around to mess up the scene... GOD!!! I love science...

Live Wires

here's a scientist at Pacific Northwestern Laboratories that has discovered something very curious. some bacteria are able to conduct and exchange electricity between themselves.

don't really have time right now to comment on this. go and read the link... and have a nice week end!

what kind of animal is this?

yesterday I was going to prepare myself a pasta... never mind the recipe, what happened awakened my naturalist side and sidetracked me...

when I took the pan from the cupboard this tiny beast was in there...

Now, I have absolutely no idea of what it could be... it did look like a tail-less scorpion, but the big legs are in fact at the back... and from the enlarged piccies you can see that there's antennae at the front... I don't know whether the flurry stuff he's got all over it's natural, or it's put there on purpose... my guess is that it fell down from the wooden flooring of my kitchen cupboards onto the pan...
here's a few enlarged shots...



I spent a few minutes playing wit him and taking pictures, then it dropped on the floor and escaped under my washing machine...

if anybody could tell me what it is, I would be grateful...

tooth ache...

I'm plagues by pain since a few days... steady, and ennoying... can endure it but takes the joy out of life, really...
actually, it's more like a 'mouth ache'... my gums swell and the teeth close-by seems on the verge of falling (and a old friend knows how much I fear this)... my private doctor says it may be aftosis, but she hasn't really watched inside my mouth... mah...

anyway, I'd be tempted to shot a piccie with my mobile phone, and post it... but I'll spare you... god it hurts... see you soon, I'm going to buy a mouthwash...

unexplained diarrhea

No, it's not me to be sick. nor is anyone I know... just wanted to point your attention to this interesting post aout an unexplained epidemic outbreak of Diarrhea. from aetiology, as usual... the post, not the diarrhea... you silly... :-[

Campioni del Mondo!!!

do I need to say anything else? I'm sorry for the frenchies who read this blog... or may be not. we won fair and square.

outsourcing FROM india...

you read well. not TO india, but FROM india... apparently, faced with a shortage of skilled labourers in the arts conservation business, india will outsource part of the workload to private agencies elsewhere... funny uh? we export high tech (and call centre) jobs there, and they export back... original post from The history Blog. What? did you think that I only read about science and stuff?

The Elegant Universe

I thought I'd share this. a three hours long documentary about the Theory Of Everything (TOE), Strings and hidden dimensions. Haven't watched it yet, but looks good.

thinking about... boobs...

or, more exactly, mammories... I bought a new T-shirt on saturday: the drawing on it is... well, here's a picture of it:
the picture of the little mammal sucking his mother's tits got me thinking... how's it that cows have their mammories close to the hind legs, while women have them closer to the upper part? I can see a clear advantage for the primates to have nipples on the upper body - it make it easier to keep their infants with the hands - young veils/zebras/antelopes do instead walk on their own...

but... how the position of the nipples is decided during development? I always thought they were 'linked' to the chest, but that's very anthropomorphic... I wish I had an evolutionary biologist at hand to ask him... may be I should contact Richard Dawkins... or may be PZ Myers will answer...

Kayaking is fun!!!

just back from the ardennes, where I did my first twenty km of kayaking... it's incredibly nice but I would go somewhere else if I were you... too many people in Dinant, there were something like 1k kayaks on the river, it did look like a city centre traffic jam... no capsizing, nor other unpleasant events, for me at least. pictures to come later on... have a nice week. and Go!, Italy!!!

Blog of the week

here I am again... to suggest you another blog to check out: Aetiology, by Tara Smith. it's part of SEED's scienceblogs constellation, and extremely interesting: it talks about bacteria, diseases, and such... from both a medical, and biological / evolutionary perspective... well, see you soon... you know I'm going to post again, right?

again on movies...

the previous movie-related post started something in my mind... which book/comic would you like to see (decently) translated in celluloid by next year? if I were to pick one right now, I'd probably say The Reality Disfunction. there's enough material to shoot three movies, there's plenty of charismatic charachters (Al Capone, for God's sake), plenty of Hollywood-style action, spaceships, whole fleets of them, anti-matter weaponry, culture clashes (between Adamists and Edenists), and then more: Nanotech, Aliens, there's even Zombies!!! it's a free-for-all extravaganza. and it also works out pretty well. There's a princess in a high castle, although the blue prince is a bit on the cheap side, and at the end he goes with another girl - good old fashioned english upper class girl... did hamilton manage to leave anything out? it's "The importance of being Earnest" meets "Gone with the Wind" meets "Battlestar Galactica"... Uhm, I better go to work now... but if you want to jot down your favorite conversion, please do so. and good afternoon ;-)

a night to the movies

yesterday I went to see a movie... any movie, "she" said... of course in belgium movies are either in french (dutch subtitles) or english (dutch and french subtitles - essentially, half of the screen is wasted)... that does not make me particularly enthusiastic about going to movies, I have to say, coupled with the exceptionally belgian attitude that, after paying the ticket to enter the cinema. they expect you to pay if you go to pee, too. crazy people... I just hate that.

anyway, due to my languages restrictions, only movies in english were in the rose of candidates... and I already saw CARS (good!), and Ice Age 2 (not so fresh anymore)... not that my sweet half would compromise on going to see cartoons, of course they're for children... yeah right. have a look at Barefoot Gen... Oh God I lost my thread... Oh yeah I remember, ok long story short, I went for 'The Da Vinci Code'. I know it was stupid of me, but could not resist... I mean, ok Yom Hanks is in it, and that's a big minus, but Sir Ian "Magneto" McKelln, and most important of all Audrey Tatou!!! Oh yeah and that frenchman, what's his name? Leon... Uhm no... not really...

Anyway, went in very much convinced that i was going to be bored to death... and I was not!!! I thought I was going to laugh at the risible plot, after a dear friend told me that in Agels and demons CERN is depicted like a double-face organisation kind of the X-Men academy, sporting a mach 15 jet... well I was expecting to see crazy things like the pope slaugghtering people with a light saber jumping up and down inside san pietro. kind of Yoda in SW ep III. well may be not that crazy... None of all this instead. a very measured and well paced plot, even if too long... Martin Mystere would have managed to fit it within 140 pages, I'm sure... it actually did...

never mind however, it's a movie that you can relax in the armchair and enjoy. but I have not read the book, so please don't come and say "It was soo different"... Hunt for red october was incredibly different from the book, but it still is a good movie. as it is V4Vendetta, despite its dissimilarity form the comic book...

Ok, have a nice day you all (two o three person I presume) who are reading this blog...

Gufo a.k.a. Luca a.k.a. The Menace (by janssenn's girls apparently- someone has been spreading rumors, damn him)

Did I took the wrong path?

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have gone to biology, rather than chemistry, during my studies. It certainly seems so from my interests... just have a look at the previous posts in this blog... and the books I read, and those of you who knows me in person
know how much time spend wondering about dinosaurs and such stuff... a lot...

well, I wanted to do biology or physics but the first one wasn't very promising at my place, and the second one was out of discussion - no physics degree at my place, and not enough money to go anywhere else. So I did chemistry, good compromise in between the two and with good employment perspectives... and after the Comp Chem specialisation I've been slowly transitioning to biological sciences... with a computational twist all the way around...

who knows what the future holds for me?

The Black Death is back...

Here's an interesting piece from Tara Smith at Aetiology. A Plague outbreak in Republic of Congo... She already told us about a woman in california who got plague some time ago... Check out her blog 'cause it's incredibly interesting... (and she's pretty and has tattoos too) :-)

And if you want to help out with the outbreak, I guess you can do your part sending money to Medecins sans Frontieres...

did you ever wonder...

where your gills have gone, when your grand-grand-parents became ground-walking animals and didn't need them anymore? Until now, in my ignorant chemistry-oriented world vision, I assumed they became our lungs... but no, actually. they became our neck glands, and face muscles, and part of the jaw... I mean, how cool is that?

Can you clone schrodinger's cat?

Interesting idea, but I'd rather have started a Lorentz's butterfly farm to become all-powerful king of storms...

Remember, remember, the fifth of November...

I've seen this movie in the weekend... WOW! It does rehabilitate the wachowsky brothers in my view of the world. After the awful mess they made with the matrix... I don't remember the comic book well enough to say whether the plot of the movie was 'TOO" different, but it ceratinly did give me the same emotions. all the important parts have been kept, the action (esp the Kung-fu sequences) is not excessive, the acting is good, the sfx and scenery wonderful and the whole movie only drags a little in the third quarter... but I wholly recommend it!!!

my brain is wired the wrong way around...

hey, some people at UCL have discovered that we use the same part of the brain to speak different languages... it just switches back and forth from different modes... I could've told them so
from long ago, since now that I know english, every time I try to speak french
some english words trickle down with it... I guess my brain's switching system doesn't work properly... my parents would probably say that this isn't a surprise, either...

vroom!!!

and I've finally bought my own car... a second hand one, just to start... but not a city car, as it happens. after having tried the yaris didn't really like it...

so went for a 156 sport wagon...

juan, I'm ready to bet that I could beat you up the mountain with this... and don't worry, I'll let you have the cheese... but I have to admit I forgot to send it last time I went down. my fault. too much messing around to get the driving license done...

bye bye to everyone

Blog of the week

Darren Naish is a tetrapod paleontologist at Univ of Portsmouth, not far from where I did my own PhD (good old Soton). He has quite a few interesting things to say about rabbits (my friend at the rabbit's lair would love this, although he probably already knows) and many other tetrapods...

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass

and now, it's time for a little cross-posting from pharyngula:

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass

old, but always funny...

What am I reading: Updated

and here I am again... Recently, I have been catching up on my Science Fiction, ater so much time spent reading real science. so, it's been the time of Evolution, a majestic plot which takes something like one billion years to unwindle, following a dinasty of primates from small critters at the foot of dinosaurs to man, to an ending I don't want to reveal... it certainly is interesting, although some of the theories exposed inside I don't particularly agree with, especially after reading the red queen... but it's an interesting read, although may be a little below Baxter standards. Too much time is spent, in my opinion, on the 'human' persons (I actually skipped this part ah ah) and I'd have loved to see something more on the primeval mammals, who scuttled at the feet of dinosaurs since 200 millions years ago... but hey, may be I'll get to write my own book about them, one day...

the part I appreciated most where those about the Antarctica T-Rex (cool), but most of all the
brief story about the Jurassic Hunters, intelligent and self-aware dynosaurs who hunted diplodocus and made simple tools... I wish he could extend on them... and I wish I could know whether something of what we are doing now will be left over to be found by our successors in another hundred million years...

Now, I'm almost done with stephen johanson's book Lucy's Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor. I'm reading it in the italian version, though. excatly the same book I read when I was fourteen and started my long lasting interest in paleonthology/paleoanthropology...

Driving!!!

Hi everyone,

this is my first day as a commuter... well, as a car commuter, since until now I did the same
but by bus. so, to be sure I could find an easy spot to park my unwieldy Audi A4, I decided to get to work at... 6.30AM!!! OMG...

So, if you happen to pass in Belgium, be aware that the fifth Apocalypse Horseman has been unleashed!!! Wroooommm...

If you think that giving birth is too painful...

Think again.

and now I do understand a friend of mine when he used the expression "To suffer like a hyena"...

Hyenas really got the long end of the stick (pun intended)

And there's more...

Exactly as it says on the title, there's more than my driving license. Work is proceeding well, I'm building and veryfying new models regarding Cardio vascular effects of would-be drugs, and have also started providing service to some 'real' chemists. Someone from Spain asked my (my model's) opinion on the CV activity of four drugs. And one of them is seemingly active on two out of three indicators... my first useful and practical contribution to Drug Design, other than the Methodology Development which was my PhD's primary aim.

Back here again...

I'm back at blogging again. After quite a long iatus. that's a gap, for those of you latin-challenged... :-)

It's been a busy month, this one, have been back home and
very busy re-connecting with my friends, both old and new.

and I finally managed to cross the last line that divided me from Adulthood:
I've (at last) got a driving license now!!!

So beware citizen of Belgium, a new danger is roaming your roads...

First animal optimised for supersonic flight

Muton: sharovipteryx
- don't have time now to comment, but how cool is that???

For Your Children

Ehy, I just discpvered this fancy web-page from the Boston Children Hospital where young-fellow-toddlers can learn about latest development in bio-medical sciences...
some bio-themed flash games...
I hope you (or your children) will enjoy...

AvantNews

Have you ever had the curiosity of reading tomorrow's news... Today? well, now you can: have a look at http://www.avantnews.com/
I just got to admit I love it...

an example articles: Tactical Nuclear Weapons Approved for American Consumers

make sure you check the 'science' section, it's great. just an example: Most Studies Find Nothing, Study Finds

bye bye...

Luca

Back To Work

Here I am, back again... back, to work, and back from a very long weekend spent between Turnhout and BXL... Had lots of fun, and now, even if tired, I feel ready to tackle difficult scientific problems... but don't have one for the moment... am just trying to order some analysis to be performed on some sompounds here... need data to work on... it's all very new to me, sometimes I know what to do, sometimes I do not... That's why, at the age of thirty-one, I've been given a mentor, a colleaue of name Wendy... that reminds me of Betty, the graduate student who helped me move my very first step in research long time ago, when I was still working in Italy on my degree...

Ok, now I've got to do some literature on astemizole binding motifs... hopefully someone else in the world is interested in this and will have done some work on which to build upon... have a nice week, and a nice stay in this nest!

Luca a.k.a. Gufo Dotto