The use of short reads for de novo assembly only makes sense if you want a rough draft of a genome, not the complete thing. There are way too many transposable elements, repeats, variation, etc. to accurately reconstruct even a bacterial genome with short reads. Nowadays, people don't even bother trying to piece it all together. They get down to a few dozen large fragments and say "good enough". It just costs too much to get the last 1-2% with a random sequencing approach.
On a related note, in some fields there is a greater tendency to cite. I would consider an IF of 3 relatively low in biology for example, but it's decent in bioinformatics. The IF is for granting agencies who'd rather judge your work by the journal it's in, rather than actually reading the article or looking up its citation count in Google Scholar (if it's been around a while).
Incidentally, I've noticed that good open access journals in biology/bioinformatics are getting better IFs these days, so that model seems to be working. Our university in fact has started paying for OA processing charges, so we're sticking with OA journals with good IFs. Gotta keep those agencies happy:-)
It's somewhat unfair to compare countries. As people have pointed out, there are lots of taxes that depend on your jurisdiction. Alberta and Quebec are polar opposites within Canada w.r.t. provincial taxes. The amount of property tax can vary wildly throughout the States, etc., etc.. Any comparison should be done on a state-vs-province or city-vs-city basis. I agree with you on the parental leave though, that's national. In Canada there's enough time that you can split it between the parents if you like.
When I get a key copy made from the original key, half the time it doesn't work! And it costs more money to drive back to the store to get another one than the copy costs. Grr...
Besides, China doesn't have to monitor and censor every message, only the ones from the outspoken people.
I have a friend who was working in the south of China as a tour guide. She visited Beijing after a few months in the country, and was assaulted by a rickshaw driver after he tried to stiff her with a fare with a few extra zeros tacked on. Anyway, she loved being there, but was quite upset after this episode, so she texted a friend back in England and used the phrase "f***ing China" [my masking] in the message. 45 seconds later, she got a message back saying something like "While in China, you must abide by the rules of communication", etc. and the e-mail address she had used when signing up for the mobile account was no longer accessible.
Anyhow, my point is that they must check lots of SMS messages, not just of dissidents.
There is ongoing debate within the Alzheimer's community about the role of aluminum, even 28 years after the correlation was found. This is yet another example of why the "cloud" argument of the original article is bunk. Aluminum is probably no worse an aggravator of amyloid-beta plaque formation than other common metals such as iron:
The impact of aluminum on AD via oxidative stress may be the same at that seen in iron or copper intake, or any other oxidative stressors.*
*Takashima, A. (2007). "Does Aluminum Contribute to Alzheimer Disease Directly, Indirectly, or At All?" Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 11(4):431-432.
Interestingly, AD [Alzheimer's Disease] and Down's syndrome are linked in that in both conditions the gastrointestinal absorption of Al is significantly increased (Moore et al., 2000; Moore et al, 1997). Whether the increased production of Ap in both of these diseases is as a consequence of a higher body burden of Al or vice versa is not known.^
^Exley, C. (2005) "The aluminium-amyloid cascade hypothesis and Alzheimer's disease" Subcellular Biochemistry 38:225-234.
There is some evidence that aluminum prevents the breakdown of plaques, etc., etc. so it may be that there is a positive feedback loop. In any case, the arrow of causation is not always the "obvious" choice, or easily discernible (even after 28 years!).
The correlation != causation tag is usually applied because either:
There are obvious confounding factors the article fails to mention
There's a good chance the direction of the arrow of causation is incorrect. e.g. just because fireman tend to be where you see big fires, doesn't mean they cause them. Or perhaps less obviously, aluminum doesn't cause Alzheimer's, it builds up in the brain as a consequence of Alzheimer's. Statistical inferences are only as good as the data available to you, and you need theories to drive the data collection...that's where the original article's logic fails.
A valid point the article could have made in the biological sciences is that we are returning (including my research group) to an observation-driven approach rather than a theory driven approach to initial experimental design. What do I mean? For probably the last 50 years, you needed to have a specific target (e.g. a given protein, mRNA, etc.) in order to test for its presence or concentration, etc.. So you came up with a theory for the condition of interest, and tested for the target it implied. With new techniques, you can test an experimental condition for many thousands of targets at once, allowing you to build theories from the observations then you design more experiments to confirm the theories you developed. Science is not dead, it just has a better leg up now.
Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government?
The question is specious: there are dozens of countries with public health care, but they don't have such crazy restrictions (including your neighbour, Canada). I chalk it up to a Japanese culture that accepts such a standard. And don't give me the fat-people-will-cost-me-more in a public system argument, because they are costing you more in a private system, unless fatter people at your work pay more for their insurance plan...
My problem with today's opinion is more fundamental still: The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad;
The problem is that Guantanamo is, for all intents and purposes NOT abroad, which is what the majority found. They've closed that legal loophole in their decision:
The Court does not question the Government's position that Cuba maintains sovereignty, in the legal and technical sense, over Guantanamo, but it does not accept the Government's premise that de jure sovereignty is the touchstone of habeas jurisdiction. Common- law habeas' history provides scant support for this proposition, and it is inconsistent with the Court's precedents and contrary to fundamental separation-of-powers principles.
In his dissent, Roberts argues that the case law quoted in the majority decision may not be applied properly because of the nature of those temporary occupations, but he himself is stretching logic by calling Gitmo "abroad". It is not "abroad" in any practical sense because Cuba has absolutely no ability, forever into the future to exert its control over Gitmo. Either Gitmo is lawless, or it is subject to American law, you cannot have it both ways. If it's lawless, how can Congress legislate about the people there?
The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law's operation...
This is the stupidest part of the dissenting opinion. I'm not sure Roberts even read the majority opinion, because they specifically say that they don't need to enumerate the rights of the detainees, because the lack of adversarial nature in the MCA proceedings (they don't get a lawyer proper) precludes a proper trial, and the appeal process set up cannot review findings of fact. So you get no real lawyer representing you, and the appeal can't introduce facts not in the original trial. You don't need to avail yourself of such a system to realize it's crap.
The guy who is the basis for the SCOTUS case was an Algerian living in Bosnia. He was picked up on suspicion that we was planning to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo. He was released a few months later by the supreme court of that country for lack of evidence, but the Bosnian Special Forces promptly handed him over to the Americans with his alleged co-conspirators.
While I agree with you that the MC is important in common law, I have to point out (having actually read the SCOTUS decision) that the case we are talking about was a ruling on the constitutional right to haebeus corpus (whose limits are inferred from the Suspension Clause). Any statutory right to habeus corpus was legislated away from the detainees in 2006.
I like the quote from Edsger Djikstra which always puts it in perspective:
The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.
The best indicator of my enjoyment of a film...
on
Iron Man Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I usually trust Rotten Tomatoes, they haven't let me down so far, and Iron man is "Fresh". Of course, there may be false negatives, but I haven't encountered any false positives in the last few years.
The opposite of broadband is baseband in computerspeak. I've lamented the misuse of narrowband in this context for years, and now even the geek sites are getting it wrong. Ever heard of 100 base T?
Well, I will qualify this with a statement that health care is a provincial jurisdiction is Canada, so the rules vary a bit depending on where you live. Despite Chaoulli v. Quebec, there hasn't really been any movement to dismantle the disincentives for doctors to accept private insurance. The disincentives tend to be a bit like in the U.S., where every hospital treats emergency patients without checking insurance first, because otherwise they aren't eligible for Medicare reimbursements.
I say he's full of it, or more generously very confused, at least on the British side. I was watching a documentary on the NHS last week, and they are using a carrot rather than a stick. GPs get a bonus if their patients get healthier or stay healthy, encouraging GPs to promote cheaper prophylactic measures, but certainly no one's forcing people to do push-ups, eat celery, etc..
Given a choice I'd rather live a short life as a Free man than a long healthy one as a slave but the whole idea is that Democrats want to make the decision for me at gunpoint. There won't BE any opt out, accepting payment for medical services outside of Hillarycare will be a felony. They already TRIED it in Canada, thankfully a few judges weren't quite ready to go there yet. Yet.
You obviously have limited knowledge of the other health care systems. In Canada, you can pay for private treatment if you want, but not through insurance. Only one insurance for medically necessary procedures is allowed, and that's the public one. That covers 70% of people's overall medical costs (though you never see a medical bill, so most people don't know the percentage). The remaining 30% is for dentistry, glasses, therapeutic massage (one of my wife's favorites) and chiropractic, and non-catastrophic medications. 65% of people have private insurance for these items, usually through their employer. If you get it independently, it's about $75 to $150 per family per month depending on the co-pay you choose.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my favorite adages: "In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they're not."
The use of short reads for de novo assembly only makes sense if you want a rough draft of a genome, not the complete thing. There are way too many transposable elements, repeats, variation, etc. to accurately reconstruct even a bacterial genome with short reads. Nowadays, people don't even bother trying to piece it all together. They get down to a few dozen large fragments and say "good enough". It just costs too much to get the last 1-2% with a random sequencing approach.
On a related note, in some fields there is a greater tendency to cite. I would consider an IF of 3 relatively low in biology for example, but it's decent in bioinformatics. The IF is for granting agencies who'd rather judge your work by the journal it's in, rather than actually reading the article or looking up its citation count in Google Scholar (if it's been around a while).
Incidentally, I've noticed that good open access journals in biology/bioinformatics are getting better IFs these days, so that model seems to be working. Our university in fact has started paying for OA processing charges, so we're sticking with OA journals with good IFs. Gotta keep those agencies happy :-)
It's somewhat unfair to compare countries. As people have pointed out, there are lots of taxes that depend on your jurisdiction. Alberta and Quebec are polar opposites within Canada w.r.t. provincial taxes. The amount of property tax can vary wildly throughout the States, etc., etc.. Any comparison should be done on a state-vs-province or city-vs-city basis. I agree with you on the parental leave though, that's national. In Canada there's enough time that you can split it between the parents if you like.
Cosmic radiation, hydrolysis, oxidation. These are always affecting DNA in living organisms (well, cosmic rays more on very long living stuff).
When living things freeze, the DNA repair mechanisms that are constantly keeping the genome in check stop.
When I get a key copy made from the original key, half the time it doesn't work! And it costs more money to drive back to the store to get another one than the copy costs. Grr...
I have a friend who was working in the south of China as a tour guide. She visited Beijing after a few months in the country, and was assaulted by a rickshaw driver after he tried to stiff her with a fare with a few extra zeros tacked on. Anyway, she loved being there, but was quite upset after this episode, so she texted a friend back in England and used the phrase "f***ing China" [my masking] in the message. 45 seconds later, she got a message back saying something like "While in China, you must abide by the rules of communication", etc. and the e-mail address she had used when signing up for the mobile account was no longer accessible.
Anyhow, my point is that they must check lots of SMS messages, not just of dissidents.
If want us to clean, dammit, you'll have to learn how to say things in our language: rain gutter = eavestrough.
There is ongoing debate within the Alzheimer's community about the role of aluminum, even 28 years after the correlation was found. This is yet another example of why the "cloud" argument of the original article is bunk. Aluminum is probably no worse an aggravator of amyloid-beta plaque formation than other common metals such as iron:
*Takashima, A. (2007). "Does Aluminum Contribute to Alzheimer Disease Directly, Indirectly, or At All?" Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 11(4):431-432.
^Exley, C. (2005) "The aluminium-amyloid cascade hypothesis and Alzheimer's disease" Subcellular Biochemistry 38:225-234.
There is some evidence that aluminum prevents the breakdown of plaques, etc., etc. so it may be that there is a positive feedback loop. In any case, the arrow of causation is not always the "obvious" choice, or easily discernible (even after 28 years!).
The correlation != causation tag is usually applied because either:
A valid point the article could have made in the biological sciences is that we are returning (including my research group) to an observation-driven approach rather than a theory driven approach to initial experimental design. What do I mean? For probably the last 50 years, you needed to have a specific target (e.g. a given protein, mRNA, etc.) in order to test for its presence or concentration, etc.. So you came up with a theory for the condition of interest, and tested for the target it implied. With new techniques, you can test an experimental condition for many thousands of targets at once, allowing you to build theories from the observations then you design more experiments to confirm the theories you developed. Science is not dead, it just has a better leg up now.
The question is specious: there are dozens of countries with public health care, but they don't have such crazy restrictions (including your neighbour, Canada). I chalk it up to a Japanese culture that accepts such a standard. And don't give me the fat-people-will-cost-me-more in a public system argument, because they are costing you more in a private system, unless fatter people at your work pay more for their insurance plan...
I will let you judge for yourself the evidence of Fox's journalistic excellence.
Our culture of freedom is superior to the bacterial culture, therefore we must liberate them.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. They should've used the RFC designed especially for this purpose instead.
The problem is that Guantanamo is, for all intents and purposes NOT abroad, which is what the majority found. They've closed that legal loophole in their decision:
In his dissent, Roberts argues that the case law quoted in the majority decision may not be applied properly because of the nature of those temporary occupations, but he himself is stretching logic by calling Gitmo "abroad". It is not "abroad" in any practical sense because Cuba has absolutely no ability, forever into the future to exert its control over Gitmo. Either Gitmo is lawless, or it is subject to American law, you cannot have it both ways. If it's lawless, how can Congress legislate about the people there?
This is the stupidest part of the dissenting opinion. I'm not sure Roberts even read the majority opinion, because they specifically say that they don't need to enumerate the rights of the detainees, because the lack of adversarial nature in the MCA proceedings (they don't get a lawyer proper) precludes a proper trial, and the appeal process set up cannot review findings of fact. So you get no real lawyer representing you, and the appeal can't introduce facts not in the original trial. You don't need to avail yourself of such a system to realize it's crap.
For clarification:
The guy who is the basis for the SCOTUS case was an Algerian living in Bosnia. He was picked up on suspicion that we was planning to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo. He was released a few months later by the supreme court of that country for lack of evidence, but the Bosnian Special Forces promptly handed him over to the Americans with his alleged co-conspirators.
While I agree with you that the MC is important in common law, I have to point out (having actually read the SCOTUS decision) that the case we are talking about was a ruling on the constitutional right to haebeus corpus (whose limits are inferred from the Suspension Clause). Any statutory right to habeus corpus was legislated away from the detainees in 2006.
In North America and Europe, an electronic signature is generally legally binding, so it's the people, not the law that are the barrier.
I usually trust Rotten Tomatoes, they haven't let me down so far, and Iron man is "Fresh". Of course, there may be false negatives, but I haven't encountered any false positives in the last few years.
The opposite of broadband is baseband in computerspeak. I've lamented the misuse of narrowband in this context for years, and now even the geek sites are getting it wrong. Ever heard of 100 base T?
Well, I will qualify this with a statement that health care is a provincial jurisdiction is Canada, so the rules vary a bit depending on where you live. Despite Chaoulli v. Quebec, there hasn't really been any movement to dismantle the disincentives for doctors to accept private insurance. The disincentives tend to be a bit like in the U.S., where every hospital treats emergency patients without checking insurance first, because otherwise they aren't eligible for Medicare reimbursements.
I say he's full of it, or more generously very confused, at least on the British side. I was watching a documentary on the NHS last week, and they are using a carrot rather than a stick. GPs get a bonus if their patients get healthier or stay healthy, encouraging GPs to promote cheaper prophylactic measures, but certainly no one's forcing people to do push-ups, eat celery, etc..
You obviously have limited knowledge of the other health care systems. In Canada, you can pay for private treatment if you want, but not through insurance. Only one insurance for medically necessary procedures is allowed, and that's the public one. That covers 70% of people's overall medical costs (though you never see a medical bill, so most people don't know the percentage). The remaining 30% is for dentistry, glasses, therapeutic massage (one of my wife's favorites) and chiropractic, and non-catastrophic medications. 65% of people have private insurance for these items, usually through their employer. If you get it independently, it's about $75 to $150 per family per month depending on the co-pay you choose.