And as a college professor, I can say beyond a shadow of doubt that the existence of "illustrations and eye-catching chapter header graphics" in a "collegiate thesis" is a guarantee that the writer doesn't give a damn about the subject matter, and is in fact trying to distract the teacher into giving him a better grade.
At least in the world of "collegiate theses," fancy fonts + unnecessary illustrations == crappy writing and worse research.
Your complaints about money going to someone other than the artist seem to contradict these comments by an artist. Sounds like artists have the option of doing exactly what you want.
Mathematica doesn't directly implement any of Tufte's ideas, but again, the ability to directly control every aspect of the figure makes it possible for the user to do so him/herself. I try to follow Tufte's advice as much as possible, and I don't think I could do it if I used anything but Mathematica+Illustrator.
I don't think any graphics package produces truly publication-quality figures. What I do is make the figures in Mathematica, and bring them up to publication quality in Adobe Illustrator. Okay, it's not the cheapest solution, but Mathematica allows precise control over every quantitative aspect of the figure, which is missing from all but the most user-unfriendly command-line packages out there. If you use Mathematica already, this is your best option.
A few comments from a professional evolutionary biologist (sadly responding several hundred posts in, and therefore unlikely to be read by many):
The New Scientist article is (presumably, I haven't read it) referring to the observation that when a stress-related protein called Hsp-90 (Heat-shock protein #90) is turned off or otherwise knocked out of whack, "cryptic" genetic variation is made non-cryptic. Hsp-90 basically buffers the development of an organism, making sure that, say, a fruit fly can function as a fruit fly even if there are a bunch of small errors (caused by genetics or the environment) in the development process. So if Hsp-90 functions, a fly can have a large number of mutations in various proteins, but those proteins will still function as normal. That is, you can have a large amount of DNA sequence variation that doesn't actually cause any outward ("phenotypic") change in the functioning of the organism.
So the basic idea is that, as long as Hsp-90 is working, the organism can build up genetic variation without paying any cost in the face of natural selection. If Hsp-90 gets shut down or loses effectiveness, all that genetic variation then leads to phenotypic variation. Since the circumstances under which Hsp-90 fails are also likely to be circumstances under which the organism needs to be able to respond rapidly to selection (because Hsp-90 only fails under extreme conditions), all this genetic variation gets converted to phenotypic variation exactly when it's needed.
That's the idea, anyway. At this point, the evidence is pretty good that removing Hsp-90 really does convert "cryptic" genetic variation into non-cryptic variation. The argument that this is actually adaptive (i.e. that Hsp-90 and similar proteins have been specifically selected to shut down when the organism needs to respond to selection) is not supported at all.
This is not the same as punctuated equilibrium, contrary to someone's assertion above. It could be seen as a possible mechanism for PE, but it was never proposed by the originators of the PE idea. In fact, the basic idea harkens back to work by CH Waddington 40-50 years ago.
I know it's very tempting to join the fray and sue their asses off. But did you try a simpler remedy first -- like, for instance, trying to return the CD for a refund? I doubt you really have a course of action unless you experienced real harm (e.g., a broken computer or lost money because you couldn't (as opposed to didn't) return the disc.
Though, as some others have pointed out, some portions of the installer to Office for MacOS X run as root (but only after asking for an administrator password), the Office programs themselves run as user processes, not as root.
work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
Or, alternatively, point out to M$ that if schools can't use their products because they can't afford them, they'll have to teach students to use F/free software instead. Given M$'s recent campaign against the GPL et al., that should give them pause... [/naivete]
(1) To many biologists, the "value" of the genome project has been questionable from the beginning. It's not hypothesis-driven science, which is usually the interesting kind; instead, it's blind data collection.
(2) To many others (dare I say most biologists -- including myself), the immediate value of genome projects has not been in the ability to track down the causes of genetic diseases -- any reasonably informed biologist has known all along that having an entire reference genotype sequenced is neither necessary nor sufficient to fulfill this goal, though it will undoubtedly help in the long term. Instead, the value has been twofold:
(a) The information is just plain cool in its own right. It's absolutely fascinating that we've got fewer predicted genes than expected. It's even more fascinating that almost half our genome is made up of transposable elements. Both of these things (and hundreds of other tidbits in the data), rather than
decreasing the value of the data, give us insights into the way our genome works. So many of us biologists feel the need to sell our work as "useful" -- and that's certainly necessary in order to fund something as massive as a genome project -- but in fact the reason we do what we do is because we like finding out interesting things. And, frankly, that's valuable: knowledge for its own sake is worthwhile.
(b) Second, the raw sequence is an incredible source of data for what some might call "real" (i.e., pure, hypothesis-driven) biology. The buzzword is "genomics" (as in "comparative genomics" or "functional genomics"); the reality is that we can now compare the genomes of related organisms in order to test specific hypotheses about the functions of genes, sure, but also the sources of variation in natural population; the nature of interactions among genes; the regulation of genes through development (and the differences in regulation in different species); etc., etc. Having an entire genome's worth of data to start from for such studies is an incredible resource to people doing basic research into all aspects of biology.
So, sure, we won't be getting thousands of new gene-therapy strategies for genetic diseases within a couple of months of getting the genome. But everyone's always known that that aspect of genome projects has been oversold. But, wow, what an incredible opportunity this database is for the rest of the biologists in the world!
Re:Dissappointed to hear it is biased.
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I will not respond to the trolls. I will not respond to the trolls.
Awww, hell with it.
The "Nazi is short for National Socialist, therefore the Nazis weren't right-wing" blather is frankly offensive. Totalitarianism isn't unique to either the right wing or the left.
And anyone who thinks the Conservative Party is resurgent in the UK is either in the UK and in a dreamworld, or elsewhere and twenty years behind the times.
Leaving your door unlocked requires NO action on the users part, thus it can be done accidentally or absent-mindedly. However, by default there are no public shares when you install Windoze. The user has to specifically share a drive, device, or folder. They cannot claim "whoops, I didn't know it was shared" because the only way for it to get shared is to perform the proper action(s).
Yes, but if I have a door that automatically locks, I might unlock it temporarily for some specific purpose. If I forget to lock it again, it's still unauthorized access if someone walks in. The same argument surely holds for file sharing.
In those stores (ones near college campuses) , SoundScan data shows that record sales have actually dropped 4 percent in the past two years. In stores near the 67 colleges that have banned Napster, citing an overload on their internal networks, sales have dropped 7 percent in two years.
So, if Napster caused the decrease, local sales should have increased again after Napster was banned. Why do I suspect these RIAA flacks didn't bother to look at that piece of data?
Slashdot Mirror
And as a college professor, I can say beyond a shadow of doubt that the existence of "illustrations and eye-catching chapter header graphics" in a "collegiate thesis" is a guarantee that the writer doesn't give a damn about the subject matter, and is in fact trying to distract the teacher into giving him a better grade.
At least in the world of "collegiate theses," fancy fonts + unnecessary illustrations == crappy writing and worse research.
Oh, yeah: I've got a whole world of recipes to choose from via the internet, and I'm gonna get 'em from the British
This artist seems to think the answer to your first question is yes.
Your complaints about money going to someone other than the artist seem to contradict these comments by an artist. Sounds like artists have the option of doing exactly what you want.
There's also a discussion of graphics packages on Tufte's website (which is worth visiting in its own right, as well).
Mathematica doesn't directly implement any of Tufte's ideas, but again, the ability to directly control every aspect of the figure makes it possible for the user to do so him/herself. I try to follow Tufte's advice as much as possible, and I don't think I could do it if I used anything but Mathematica+Illustrator.
I don't think any graphics package produces truly publication-quality figures. What I do is make the figures in Mathematica, and bring them up to publication quality in Adobe Illustrator. Okay, it's not the cheapest solution, but Mathematica allows precise control over every quantitative aspect of the figure, which is missing from all but the most user-unfriendly command-line packages out there. If you use Mathematica already, this is your best option.
The New Scientist article is (presumably, I haven't read it) referring to the observation that when a stress-related protein called Hsp-90 (Heat-shock protein #90) is turned off or otherwise knocked out of whack, "cryptic" genetic variation is made non-cryptic. Hsp-90 basically buffers the development of an organism, making sure that, say, a fruit fly can function as a fruit fly even if there are a bunch of small errors (caused by genetics or the environment) in the development process. So if Hsp-90 functions, a fly can have a large number of mutations in various proteins, but those proteins will still function as normal. That is, you can have a large amount of DNA sequence variation that doesn't actually cause any outward ("phenotypic") change in the functioning of the organism.
So the basic idea is that, as long as Hsp-90 is working, the organism can build up genetic variation without paying any cost in the face of natural selection. If Hsp-90 gets shut down or loses effectiveness, all that genetic variation then leads to phenotypic variation. Since the circumstances under which Hsp-90 fails are also likely to be circumstances under which the organism needs to be able to respond rapidly to selection (because Hsp-90 only fails under extreme conditions), all this genetic variation gets converted to phenotypic variation exactly when it's needed.
That's the idea, anyway. At this point, the evidence is pretty good that removing Hsp-90 really does convert "cryptic" genetic variation into non-cryptic variation. The argument that this is actually adaptive (i.e. that Hsp-90 and similar proteins have been specifically selected to shut down when the organism needs to respond to selection) is not supported at all.
This is not the same as punctuated equilibrium, contrary to someone's assertion above. It could be seen as a possible mechanism for PE, but it was never proposed by the originators of the PE idea. In fact, the basic idea harkens back to work by CH Waddington 40-50 years ago.
I know it's very tempting to join the fray and sue their asses off. But did you try a simpler remedy first -- like, for instance, trying to return the CD for a refund? I doubt you really have a course of action unless you experienced real harm (e.g., a broken computer or lost money because you couldn't (as opposed to didn't) return the disc.
Though, as some others have pointed out, some portions of the installer to Office for MacOS X run as root (but only after asking for an administrator password), the Office programs themselves run as user processes, not as root.
Or, alternatively, point out to M$ that if schools can't use their products because they can't afford them, they'll have to teach students to use F/free software instead. Given M$'s recent campaign against the GPL et al., that should give them pause... [/naivete]
(1) To many biologists, the "value" of the genome project has been questionable from the beginning. It's not hypothesis-driven science, which is usually the interesting kind; instead, it's blind data collection.
(2) To many others (dare I say most biologists -- including myself), the immediate value of genome projects has not been in the ability to track down the causes of genetic diseases -- any reasonably informed biologist has known all along that having an entire reference genotype sequenced is neither necessary nor sufficient to fulfill this goal, though it will undoubtedly help in the long term. Instead, the value has been twofold:
So, sure, we won't be getting thousands of new gene-therapy strategies for genetic diseases within a couple of months of getting the genome. But everyone's always known that that aspect of genome projects has been oversold. But, wow, what an incredible opportunity this database is for the rest of the biologists in the world!
Awww, hell with it.
The "Nazi is short for National Socialist, therefore the Nazis weren't right-wing" blather is frankly offensive. Totalitarianism isn't unique to either the right wing or the left.
And anyone who thinks the Conservative Party is resurgent in the UK is either in the UK and in a dreamworld, or elsewhere and twenty years behind the times.
So, if Napster caused the decrease, local sales should have increased again after Napster was banned. Why do I suspect these RIAA flacks didn't bother to look at that piece of data?