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Life Is Bull

This is my philosophy, it’s the collection of my personal musings and one day I got bored so I wrote it all down. I am very interested in what other people think of what i have to say so please let me know.

Gene function discovery: Guilt by association

Palo Alto, CA — Scientists have created a new computational model that can be used to predict gene function of uncharacterized plant genes with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The network, dubbed AraNet, has over 19,600 genes associated to each other by over 1 million links and can increase the discovery rate of new genes affiliated with a given trait tenfold.

Remembering returns brain states to when the actual experience happened

William James, the influential American philosopher and psychologist of the late 1800’s argued that remembering events reactivated motor and sensory brain regions involved during the original event. How right he was! Danker and Anderson has written an extensive review of the research literature looking at how this all happens, cleverly titled “The Ghosts of Brain States Past”. Here is there abstract from the latest issue of Psychological Bulletin.

My take on “Climategate”

Another blogger stirred up a predictable argument with his assessment of “Climategate.” I waited for the inevitable bomb-tossing to ensue before commenting. But I think it’s worth making those comments a blog posting of my own. I think they could lead to a civil discussion of how scientists should act when dealing with politically sensitive topics. Care to chime in? Here’s what I wrote:

“Climategate” or how to transform a mouse into an elephant

In the past months the climate change skeptics have been hurraying. Thanks to criminals that broke into the email of the web server of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, a large amount of semiprofessional communications between leading climate scientist. Once, the data went public the hyenas tried to do their job. Thereafter, reviewers found mistakes in the IPCC report.