Mailund on the Internet

The story is all over the net these days, see e.g. here, but are women really getting more beautiful?

Walking down town in the summer time I wouldn’t necessarily say no.  They do look beautiful in their summer dresses and miniskirts, but still… the genetics would have to be a bit special for it to be true, and the statistics isn’t really supporting it.

My bet would be on a classical multiple testing problem, as described here (PDF).  I’m not saying that multiple testing is all there is to it, but I would like to have that ruled out before I believe the story…

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209-208=+1

If you want your very own genome sequenced, you know have the chance for just $48,000.  Not only will Illumina sequence the genome for you, at 30X coverage, they’ll throw in a Mac for you to store it on.

Read much more about it here:

• GenomeWeb: Illumina Launches Personal Genome-Sequencing Service Using Genome Analyzer II
• Genetic Future: Illumina launches personal genome sequencing service for $48,000
• Forbes: Genomes! Get Your Genomes! Just $50K

This is both exciting, and then also not so much…

Personal genomics with actual sequencing is exciting.  Companies like DeCodeMe and 23AndMe only genotypes selected common variants.  About a million of them, so covering the genome quite well, but far from the (two times) three billion nucleotides in the full genome, so not likely to capture the rare variants in your genome.

Providing the full sequence is also what Knome does, but while Knome will charge you $99,500, Illumina will only charge you $48,000 (and throw in a Mac).

Of course, the price is what makes it less exciting.  While Illumina’s offer is half the price of Knome, it is still far from DeCodeMe (1M markers for $1000) or 23AndMe (500K markers for $400) and not really in the range of the average citizens.

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162-164=-2

Ok, with the RSI I didn’t collect a list for last week, so here’s a list spanning the last two weeks instead…

Fun

• How Gay Marriage Causes Earthquakes (Green Gabbro)

Genetics

• MHC & Mating (Gene Expression)
• Richard Lewontin: “[T]oo rapid for genetic adaptation” (John Hawks)
• When whole genome sequencing becomes passe (bbgm)
• American Journal of Bioethics special issue on personal genomics (Genetic Future)

Geology

• Return of the Quaternary (All of My Faults are Stress Related)

Programming

• Short bioinformatics Hacks, ch. 1 (Byte Size Biology)
• Short bioinformatics hacks, ch. 2: chunk it. (Byte Size Biology)
• The 4 levels of making code work (Programming for Scientists)
• A short list of things I don’t like about Python (Jesse Noller)
• Using polymorphism with boost::shared_ptr (The Lone C++ Coder’s Blog)
• Plotting in Python: matplotlib vs. PyQwt (Eli Bendersky)

Public health

• One more time: Vaccine refusal endangers children (Respectful Insolence)

Research life

• The “Ida” fossil: on missing links and media circuses (Ars Technica)
• A few thoughts on “Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor” (Laelaps)
• Top five annoying questions at scientific meetings (Byte Size Biology)
• EndNote maker’s lawsuit over open-source Zotero dismissed (Ars Technica)
• On the challenges of conference blogging (Genetic Future)

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159-162=-3

It is Monday again, so you have a week of work to look forward to, but first, here’s a list of blog posts and news items from last week I think you should read!

Biology

• Protein sequencing gone awry: 1 sample, 27 labs, 20 results (Ars Technica)
• Altruistic chimpanzees clearly help each other out (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
• Superfreaks about the face (Gene Expression)
• The Fitness Cost of Resistance Could Be… (Mike the Mad Biologist)

Genetics

• Why the indigenous still dominate the Andean region (Gene Expression)
• Personal Genome Project: waiting list now 13000 long (John Hawks)
• The next generation of genome-wide association studies (Genetic Future)

Intellectual Property

• “A Breakthrough In Data Licensing For Open Science” (Common Knowledge)
• “Could You Patent the Sun?” (Mike the Mad Biologist)
• Reminder from the MPAA: DRM trumps your fair use rights (Ars Technica)
• Lawyer: RIAA must pay back all $100M it has collected (Ars Technica)
• Copyleft v. Copyright: FSF, RIAA face off in court (Ars Technica)

Paleontology

• Sahelanthropus: Did camelherders bury Toumaï facing Mecca? (John Hawks)
• Darwinius
  • Human Descent from Lemurs? Could be, sortalike (Neuron Culture)
  • Poor, poor Ida, Or: “Overselling an Adapid” (Laelaps)
  • No, it’s not an ancestor either (Evolving Thoughts)
  • Getting to know “Ida” (Laelaps)
  • Interview w/ The Scientist on Ida’s Media Strategy (Framing Science)

Programming

• Fetching docstrings from objects: easy, right? A painful exploration of the Python object model (Void Space)
• Book review: “Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt” by Mark Summerfield (Eli Bendersky)
• More PyQt plotting demos (Eli Bendersky)
• Make text stand out with outlines (Revolutions)
• How to Motivate Programmers (Coding Horror)

Space

• Habitable planets & Alpha Centauri (Gene Expression)
• To the stars! (John Hawks)

Statistics

• Profile of R creator Ross Ihaka (Revolutions)
• Taming tapply (Revolutions)
• Difficulties in communication, the reader is always right, etc etc (Statistical Modeling)
• Handy statistical lexicon (Statistical Modeling)

The Web

• Mozilla preparing to scrap tabbed browsing? (PC Pro)
• Online social networking isn’t for everyone (Confessions of a Science Librarian)
• How Google’s cute “doodles” became Satan’s pawns (Ars Technica)
• Cloud computing (Good Math, Bad Math)

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144-155=-11

Another week is gone by.  I didn’t post so much myself, but luckily a lot of other people did, and here is my list of favorites.

Biology

• How does salt melt snails? (Adventures in Ethics and Science)
• There is no missing link (Evolving Thoughts)
• Swine flu: estimating pandemic potential with a computer model using early data (Effect Measure)
• Origin of life: building an RNA world from simple chemicals (Ars Technica)

Computing/programming

• The web browser address bar is the new command line (Coding Horror)
• The basics of SWIG (Programming for Scientists)
• Google: 15,000 searches = 1 cheeseburger (Ars Technica)
• Canonical aims for the cloud with new Ubuntu One (Ars Technica)
• Why do computers suck at math? (Coding Horror) … please ignore the nonsense that addition and subtraction is not equally problematic, that is a truth with modifications…
• A year with Python (Eli Bendersky)
• Copy, load, redirect and tee using C++ streambufs (Word Aligned)
• You can’t write that number; in fact you can’t write most numbers (Good Math, Bad Math)

Copyright and patent rights

• Big Content’s “theater of the absurd” at DMAC hearings (Ars Technica)
• ACLU wants patents on gene tests declared unconstitutional (Ars Technica)

Genetics

• Who can “pass” as white? (Gene Expression)
• More on the X variation conundrum (John Hawks)

Physics

• How massive is the Milky Way? (Starts with a Bang)
• What are the strings in String Theory made of? (The Scientific Indian) … I don’t really see how the Incompleteness Theorem applies, but hey…

Statistics

• Not all causal relationships are created equal (Gene Expression)
• Advice on statistical model building (Statistical Modeling)

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138-148=-10