Sexy Science Rocks Evolution: March 2013

Sunday 31 March 2013

ARGO f.. yourself

wouldn't actually have thought Ben Affleck capable of something like this. Hmmm, then again he was involved in making Dogma, wasn't he. Not that his character (although the lead) is played fantastic or something, but the film as a whole is really really good. So he has to be credited for that.

https://joindiaspora.com/i/cddd661dd62e

Saturday 30 March 2013

„Ich hatte ein Konto in Zypern, am Fuße des Zinsberges.“

" Nur die Briten fordern lautstark ihr Geld zurück, aber das kennt man ja aus der EU."

http://goo.gl/EWJ0b

https://joindiaspora.com/i/cddd661dd62e

Wednesday 27 March 2013

"I am a rock, not just another grain of sand"

Yippee ki-yay, there is a new Bon Jovi album - and even better, they are coming into town this summer. Yippee ki-yay indeed.

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Yeah, es gibt ein neues Bon Jovi Album. Und das beste: die kommen nach Kölle im Sommer. Müngersdorfer Stadion. Hurraaaah!

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"I ain't a soldier but I'm here to take a stand because we can"

Astonishingly how fast one can go down the impact ladder...

it has to be said, I suck at most board games. Actually most at "Die Siedler" - sometimes I manage to win at "Carcassone". What has one to do with the other? Don't know, but I read on about Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance...

Saturday 16 March 2013

Proudly presenting the 1st of Sexy Science Pieces

With this, I am creating a series of short reports running under the name of Sexy Science Pieces. I will use this to make analyses available to the public which popped up during my daily work. These "Pieces" I think are interesting and/or important for the scientific community, but are not "full fledged" scientific analyses.

The first one actually deals with the finding that the CEGMA pipeline to access completeness of de-novo sequenced eukaryotic genomes does annotate genes in bacterial genomes. This might be a problem if the de-novo genome is not cleaned from possible contamination before running the pipeline.

Please have a look at Figshare and tell me what you think. ;-)

Sexy Science Piece #1: E. coli is 16% CEGMA complete. Philipp Schiffer. figshare.
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.653690

Friday 15 March 2013

Darwin proved right again!

Going back to work on a MS one left on the (virtual) shelf about 3 years ago is guaranteed for an awkward feeling with some embarrassing textual surprises...

Wednesday 13 March 2013

The biggest surprise in this: they elected an old man!

Haha, the Italian Bishops issued a press statement with congratulations and it still said Angelo Scola as the new pope's birth-name. Somebody a bit to sure there I guess. #pope

https://joindiaspora.com/i/cddd661dd62e

Zen and the art of Fenchelauflauf

hmmmm....

https://joindiaspora.com/i/cddd661dd62e

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Lamprey HOX cluster - can somebody explain?

Smith et al., Feb. 2013, Nature Genetics

Here is a picture taken from a recent paper (doi:10.1038/ng) on the Lamprey genome. The authors make some interesting assumptions on the initial timing of whole genome duplications in the vertebrate lineage. However looking at this picture I just don't get it. Assuming that co-linearity is not really important (let's call it my own believe for now), but how to construct an ancestral* state of a cluster in this scenario? Or is there a problem with the assembly (could be when looking at the mirs)? Is it weird? Well, could well be, that I don't understand right now.

* "ancestral" is always a very bad word when looking a species we see today, but in this case it is called for by the paper itself I think.

Monday 11 March 2013

Na danke!

Okay, verstanden, ich sag nichts mehr... :D

It is a disgrace screaming into your face

that the so-called free world is just standing by:

http://goo.gl/8Yh4f

Unternehmen Sie etwas Frau Merkel, Herr Westerwelle, unternehmen Sie etwas!

#Syrien

#Engagez-vous!

https://joindiaspora.com/i/cddd661dd62e

Dear Mr. Wintersmith, really I think it is enough for this year

I mean, it was fun having you around with some snow pre-Christmas. However, it already got a bit too excessive in January. February, well seeing you in Oxford was okay, but actually you could have been a day earlier to help with getting that footy. But now, honestly, it is mid March and this is central Europe, not Lapland or something.