General Discussion / Free-for-All

A light-hearted look at a career in science, from pre-school to postdoc...

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/ar…

Is the kg being redefined?

See recently in Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110121/full/news.2011.51.html

The February 2011 issue of Sky & Telescope has an article on solar storms and what they can do to our infrastructure (see attached). This is an interesting article because it reminds us of how vulnerable we are to space events that are totally out of our control and that are usually not on our radar until they actually happen.

This lab does a lot of work with Fortran, but is it time to switch to C?

The following letter will probably be of interest to anyone interested in student-mentor relationships and the conduct of scientific research in general:

Mol Cell. 2009 Sep 24;35(6):726-8.
How to choose a good scientific problem.
Alon U.

Abstract

I remember the time when computer users worried about spyware which was referred to as malware because it could potentially harm your computer or you (for example by stealing banking information). It seems that this has all changed and spyware is nowadays willingly installed by millions of users - as apps on their smartphones.

A battle has been going on between the University of California and Nature Publishing Group.

In this week’s Time Magazine is an interesting article on myths and facts that caught my attention. It explains how a significant number of people (in the US, but presumably also elsewhere) loves conspiracy theories. According to the article, the trust in facts is dwindling as more facts become readily available to everybody (e.g. through media like the internet). Essentially, one can pick and choose what appears to support one’s own prejudiced theory of the world.

The Wall St Journal on the over-use of cookies by websites:
Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry

I suggest adding md5 sums to all downloadable data - this ensures data integrity and authenticity.

Command md5sum filename creates checksum.
User runs same command after download to compare with checksum on website.

e.g.:
md5sum pymol-1_2r2-bin-linux-x64-centos45.tgz
2b8b7e826966938f277c4ea58e222e7c pymol-1_2r2-bin-linux-x64-centos45.tgz

Matthias