October 5, 2012 – 7:39 pm
Two years ago, I learned about 23andme.com, a company that does genetic testing for health, traits and ancestry. The idea is as follows: you send them a sample of your saliva (containing your DNA, I guess from cells in the mouth mucosa), they process it and check for specific genes. Then, they compare your genetic [...]
More than a year ago, I decided to propose a Question/Answer site for Academia on the StackExchange platform. The idea was to gather academics to share their expertise in academic career strategies, grant proposals, publication process, visa and immigration for academics, and generally all the troubles of an academic lifestyle. A few days ago, the [...]
Some time ago, I proposed the foundation of a Question and Answer site for Academia. Now, the Academia StackExchange has reached commitment phase, meaning that the proposal aggregated a consistent number of people who may have an interest in it, and further aggregation of active participant is sought after. You may report your interest in [...]
August 30, 2010 – 5:30 pm
The community-powered news site Digg played an occasional role on the development of this blog. Some of the findings I posted here started, in some cases, as a spark from a Digg submission, further developed through my personal research. This is the reason why I am writing here about it. News on Digg were frequent [...]
August 6, 2010 – 10:39 am
I just created a new proposal at Area51: Academia. The aim of such Question/Answers site, when opened, is to provide assistance to academics of any level and discipline, with particular focus towards academic life, grants, papers and posters, conferences, career, management, research group directions, and academic services. You can subscribe to the proposal by following [...]
I am observing with great interest the development at Area51 for new Question/Answers sites to be opened with the StackExchange system. One thing that makes me cringe a bit is the very strong fragmentation. I think this stems either from the need of personal protagonism of each person (nothing bad with it, progress happens also [...]
The kind folks behind StackOverflow, a free Question/Answers website for programming questions, recently decided to open new Q/A websites for many additional interesting topics, from wine tasting and cooking to mathematics. The fundamental requisite for such new sites to be opened is a rather strict community review and development of a critical mass of contributors [...]
This is something interesting. What about a prize for unscientific claims: “the Unscientist award”? At the moment, only Patrick Lockerby (the author of the post linked above) proposes such prize according to the following rules: the potential candidate must either make use of an already debunked argument, a logical fallacy, or (verbatim) “self-aggrandising puerile prosey [...]
January 21, 2010 – 4:15 am
After the recent tragic events in Haiti, it is a priority to help doctors without borders as much as possible. Please donate, even a small amount from a lot of people can make a sizable difference.
January 14, 2010 – 1:02 pm
I love xkcd. A comic combining fun and math by definition has to be good and geeky and the author, Randall Munroe, is a real genius on this. The latest comic is pretty interesting The image is self-descriptive, meaning that each graph represents information about the image itself. For example, the first panel contains a [...]