I don't read a lot of fiction, but this novel was quite appealing in its subject matter. Written by "Anonymous" (the author would appear to be auniversity academic), the novel is an accurately targeted satire on modern university politics and life. It was lent to me by a colleague, who'd bought it for holiday reading over Christmas.

The principal character is a well to do Professor of Christian Ethics. He's married to lower aristocracy and is successful in academic, if not in modern RAE terms. He is a few years short of retirement, and clearly doesn't fit the bill in terms of academic style. In response to an accusation of sexual harassment, he's hauled over the coals by university officials, many with unhelpful (to the main character) relationships with each other - accusations of bullying and libel fly.

It was a quick and quite entertaining read, though I found the writing style rather unexceptional. nd finally, how does it work as holiday reading? Unfortunately, it is so close to the truth of University politics and devious machinations that at times it really isn't pleasant to read! This hasn't stopped me from borrowing the sequel "Degrees'r'Us".

The GNU General Public Licence (GPL) is one of the most (if not the most) widely used licence under which open source software is released. There's a Wikipedia page on the GPL (but be cautious as with all Wikipedia pages on contentious topics). Recently the author of two software packages (atscap and pchdtvr) has announced that he has revoked their licensing under the GPL. This has predictably released a storm of comment on the internet. As usual, the best coverage is over at Groklaw, where PJ has provided a clear analysis of whether the software author can indeed take such an act, and many of the regular contributors add observations.

It's not clear whether the author of the software and the author of the announcement are indeed one and the same, and on the basis of PJ's article it doesn't look as though he can actually revoke the GPL. It is possible that some attempt to challenge the GPL is being made (but this has been tried before in several jurisdictions, without success).

It isn't clear why the software author is taking this step. A change of heart regarding FOSS? Patent infringement (in which case the problems lie only in those jurisdictions where software patents are permitted)? Perhaps over the next few days, these issues will be clarified.

Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

I got a copy of this book over the Christmas period (I now have all four of Tufte's books). This follows the pattern of the other three - beautiful production values, and an authoritative view (some might say didactic!) of design as applied to the graphical display of information. The book was originally published in 1990; the copy I have is the 10th printing from 2005.

The book has six chapters: Escaping Flatland, Micro/Macro Readings, Layering and Separation, Small Multiples, Color and Information, Narratives of Space and Time, and finally a brief Epilogue.

A neat spoof of the (ab)use of physics terminology for explaining homeopathic effects.

Picked this one up from this week's Swift (18/1/08).

P.J., who runs the famous blog site Groklaw, has received her OLPC (those lucky enough to live in , or have an address in, North America can order one on a "buy one, give one" arrangement), under the most exciting circumstances, as she relates in Groklaw today. The pictures of the kids with their OLPCs are great!

Also worth reading is this item from linux.com. It gives a nice overview of how the device operates. Incidentally, I have an earlier version of the OLPC's OS, Sugar, running in the emulator qemu on a Linux laptop. From the two articles that form the basis of this item, I would judge that kids have no issues with using Sugar, and that posts such as this one are misguided. The standard conventions of the typical PC desktop environment are not actually intuitive, as anyone who has tried to get someone who genuinely has no computer experience up and running with a relatively modern computer will know.

David Colquhoun's blog "DC's Improbable Science" often takes issue with quack medicine. I noticed this article on the spread of quack medicine quangos - it's well worth a read, as is the article over at quackometer.', '

Two quango-style organisations are discussed: the Natural Healthcare Council and Skills for Health. The NHC (a nice authoritative sort of abbreviation, no?) has been set up by the Prince of Wales Foundation for Integrated Healthcare through funding from the Department of Health to regulate 12 alternative therapies, such as aromatherapy, reflexology and homeopathy. The problem here is that none of these mumbo-jumbo therapies work (other than via a placebo effect, I guess). Isn't this just money down the drain? And worse than that, should we encourage the public to genuinely believe these "therapies" offer any kind of real health benefit?

Skills For Health appears to be a real ticky-box mentality run riot. It offers competency descriptors for dubious alternative medicine practices, and is also informed in this endeavour by Prince Charles' Foundation for Integrative Health. How about this description of a homeopathy "skill competence":

Presentations, software and design

Over the last few months, I've read several books and articles that concern the graphical presentation of data and information using presentation software, such as PowerPoint and OpenOffice.org Impress (both of which I have used a lot) and Keynote (which I have never used. I am approaching the problem of presentation from the angle of making scientific presentations, often with considerable quantities of complex data.

Edward Tufte on the cognitive style of PowerPoint

Withdrawal of funding for equivalent or lower qualifications (ELQs) - In yet another bizarre and capricious decision, the Government have instructed HEFCE to remove financial support for students studying for a degree of Equivalent or Lower Qualification than one already possessed.This is a smack in the face for those students who wish to retrain, for those who wish to learn for the sake of learning, and is discriminatory - students in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland are at present unaffected. Here is John Denham's letter directing HEFCE. I work at the Open University. Of the £100 million to be clawed back by HEFCE (such an clean, arbitrary number), somewhere between £30-40 million is likely to be wiped from our income sheet.

Our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brenda Gourlay has reported on the impact of the ELQ policy. John Denham will be at the Open University on 13th December, and will speak to students and staff at 15:00 (Berrill Lecture Theatre, Walton Hall campus, Milton Keynes). It will be interesting...watch this space.

Updated 8/1/08:

Here's a report concerning file formats, Microsoft and MS Office 2003. In a slightly under-publicised move, it turns out that Service Pack 3 for MS Office 2003 removed the opyion of opening older file formats. These file formats include Word 6.0 and Word 97 for Windows, Word 2004 for Macintosh, along with older versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Lotus Notes, Corel Quattro spreadsheet, and the Corel Draw graphics package.

It's a pretty good example of why MS cannot be allowed to control a supposedly open standard for office file formats - witness the dubious shenanigans as MS attempts to have OOXML certified as a standard. It's just not in MS' nature to be open about proprietary formats, especially where these are key to the market dominance of their premier product.

Fortunately, we have an alternative: OpenOffice.org - a full-featured suite of office applications, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It supports the genuinely open standard, open document, and furthermore has the capacity to deal with the older MS Office file formats that MS don't want you to work with.

Microsoft feels the heat from Linux...again - A report on Ars Technica about MS striving to gain a foothold in the flash-based laptop market - typified by the OLPC project, and by the remarkable Asus Eee (but what a silly name!). It's difficult for me to see the merits of XP on these small capacity systems, particularly since MS schedule ending support for XP next year.

What is Drosophila?

My laboratory uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model for biological processes, and in particular the biology of oxidative stress resistance and ageing. The value of this organism stems largely from its highly developed background of genetic research, and the sophisticated techniques of genome manipulation which are available.

 Keeping Drosophila

The Gal4-UAS system was devised by Andrea Brand and Norbert Perrimon some years ago, and it remains one of the more powerful contributions to the modern Drosophila genetic toolbox.

The system relies on a combination of two engineered P elements.  P elements are a naturally occuring transposable element in the Drosophila genome: a complete 2.9kb element encodes a transposase enzyme that catalyses the element's excision and reintergration at novel sites.  P elements were the first germline tranformation system developed for Drosophila.  An engineered P element contains a marker gene that confers an easily recognised phenotype on flies bearing the element.  Nowadays. the most common marker gene is white, which is required for the eyes of the fly to take up the red and brown pigments that give Drosophila its brick red eyes (white is so-named because mutants have white eyes due to an inability to take up pigments).  

The first element of the Gal4-UAS system carries to transgene to be expressed, downstream of several copies of the yeast Gal4 Upstream Activating Sequence (UAS).  Essentially, the UAS is a sequence to which the yeast Gal4 transcription factor binds, thereby driving transcription of the downstream sequences (in this case, the transgene of interest).  In the absence of Gal4, the transgene contained within this element is transcriptionally inactive.  We can refer to this element as the responder element.

 

When I became interested in cycling again in the late 1980s, Robert Millar was for me the big name in the professional peleton. Only being peripherally involved in cycling at that time, I was really unaware of the Millar's full career at that time. Richard Moore has written an excellent account of Robert Millar's rise from Glasgow club cyclist to arguably Britain's finest professional road cyclist.

cyclingnews.com reports that Iban Mayo's B sample has been retested and found to be EPO positive.', '

What's interesting here is that following the A test positive, the B tests performed in a lab in Gent were "inconclusive". The B samples have now been re-tested at the the French national anti-doping laboratory (LNDD) in Chatenay-Malabry. This lab is the focus of the Landis appeal - as far as I can tell not on the basis that the test results were wrong, but on procedural grounds - so i can see this one run and run. For my views on why EPO tests can be hard to interpret see my posting on EPO and EPO testing.

There are enough procedural uncertainties here that this story is very likely to run and run, particularly if Mayo is suspended or banned as a consequence. It's not good that these cases get prolonged while the protagonists argue the toss over procedural irregularities. Athletes have a capacity to lie over their guilt for a long time before evidence forces them to come clean - see for example the sad story of Birillo.

Opera tries to force IE into W3C compliance with EU complaint; Firefox's success may work against it (report at ArsTechnica) - The internet browser company Opera has filed an antitrust action against Microsoft. The complaint is about the bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows and the alleged breakage of international web standards. There's another analysis over at Groklaw, of the usual high standard.

Ars Technica's belief is that FireFox's success will undermine Opera's case somewhat- but the case seems to go beyond merely bundling IE, but the inability to remove IE should you wish to, and the well-known MS attitudes to international standards.

 

 A child's view of the $100 laptop - Here's a report on the BBC describing the first experiences of a UK 9 year-old child with the XO laptop from the OLPC project. I think what's striking here is the ease with which the laptop's software is explored, and all of a sudden he's communicating with kids on another continent!

 

Give me rice, but give me a laptop too - A very strongly worded pro-OLPC opinion piece from Bill Thompson, a journalist and regular on the BBC World service.

Dutch government threatens to sideline Microsoft - here's a report from macworld (and the original Dutch report which i cannot read). One of the important feature about open file formats is that they are open. The consequence is that the contents will always be accessible in the future, even when the software that was used to open, edit and save those formats is long gone. Now despite Microsoft naming their new file formats OpenXML, the file formats are not open. In fact despite their efforts to pack ISO committees world-wide, Microsoft have so far failed to get their 6000 page partial description of the OOXML standard approved. If you are interested in a detailed description of MS activities, and issues to do with OOXML, here is the GrokDoc Dirty Tricks page and a summary of links (Groklaw).

What is evident is that there are half-truths being peddled, and MS are seeking to maintain user lock-in to their popular Office suite of applications: Office 2007 uses the new OOXML formats (e.g. docx). However the Open Document Format, being open (!), does not lock the user into any specific software package. It may, of course lock some packages out until such time as the software writers add odf filters.

It is reported at cyclingnews.com that the Kazakhstan cycling federation has imposed a one year ban on Vinokourov. He'll be banned from ProTour racing for four years, though, and this seems to have forced him into retirement. Vino, you may remember was busted at the 2007 Tour de France when, after an astounding recovery from injury and some really bad days in the saddle was found to have blood doped. I, along with many others I suspect, was rooting for Vino. he was at that point the underdog, and had a track record of combative riding (though some would call it a lack of tactical sense).

It's darkly amusing that Vino is represented by Maurice Suh, who also represents Floyd Landis (stripped of Tour de France victory following a positive testosterone test)

Note also that