Bird flu vaccine production boost. Researchers discover how to stretch out bird vaccine stocks so more people can be immunised in a pandemic. [BBC News | Health | World Edition]
A simple reformulation could increase the number of doses 4-fold. Not bad.
Banning Anyone Who Reviews Your Shop Online Isn’t Likely To Generate Much Business. We all know that sometimes customer reviews online can be a bit harsh, but it’s something that companies need to learn to deal with. Some take proactive approaches by responding to the complaints with their own side of the story or by apologizing and promising that changes will be made to avoid similar problems in the future. However, one cafe owner has taken things to a different level, apparently putting a sign in the window of the cafe, saying that users of popular online review site Yelp are not allowed as customers. This is effectively saying that the shop owner has no interest in what its customers think of it, has no interest in improving the quality of service and doesn’t seem to realize that this will only encourage anyone who has a bad experience to go to Yelp and post about it. In fact, putting this sign in the window seems likely to damage the reputation of the cafe a lot more than any bad review on Yelp. [Techdirt]
Not a good business move, I think. How is this business planning on enforcing this?
SF Chronicle’s Stages Of Google Grief Lead To Suggestion For Google To Just Buy Newspapers. First off, before someone brings it up in the comments, I’ll point out that the following post refers to the views of various columnists at the SF Chronicle, rather than any sort of discussion among those who have any real impact on the SF Chronicle’s strategy. However, it is quite amusing to see the “stages of Google grief” showing up on the editorial pages of the struggling San Francisco newspaper who has had to rid itself of hundreds of reporters lately. Back in March, columnist David Lazarus (who apparently is no longer at the paper) vented his frustration about the internet by suggesting that newspapers get rid of free content entirely, with the goal of blocking off so-called moochers like Google News (despite the fact that, yes, Google News actually sends the Chronicle more readers). Then, in May came the bizarre suggestion on the SF Chron editorial pages that Google had a social or moral obligation to simply hand money over to newspapers. That got lots of people laughing, so now, yet another columnist at the Chron has adjusted the thinking to suggest that rather than just hand over money, Google should buy some newspapers, but then just leave them alone, noting that Google would probably make for a better newspaper boss than Rupert Murdoch. This seems to be sort of the full circle Google of thinking here. First, denial that Google is an opportunity to actually drive more business to newspapers. Then, anger at Google and a plan to block it off. Then there’s the bargaining/begging phase where they suggest Google simply owes them money. Next comes depression (represented by all the layoffs) and finally acceptance that Google as a buyer could be the savior for newspapers. [Techdirt]
More papers will be going through the 7 stages of Google grief. I would imagine most would rather Google buy them than Murdoch.
I guess it’s not just Andrew Wakefield who doesn’t do controls when running PCR. Remember a couple of months ago, when I discussed testimony at the Autism Omnibus trial that showed how Andrew Wakefield had failed to do the controls when running PCR that would have revealed that the results that he interpreted as the presence of the measles virus from a vaccine strain in the guts of autistic children was nothing more than a bunch of false positives due to widespread contamination of the laboratory with plasmid containing measles sequences?It turns out that it’s not just autism pseudoscientists who forget to do the right controls when running PCR. Mike the Mad Biologist describes an example of a very similar sloppiness of experimental technique in the microbiology world that also lead to what is almost certainly a false positive result.I just can’t understand how such obvious, first year graduate student mistakes manage to get published in the peer-reviewed literature. It doesn’t happen that often, but it does happen at a rate that is high enough to be distressing. In the case of Andrew Wakefield, the results of his sloppy science were catastrophic, namely an antivaccination scare about the MMR that nine years later still hasn’t fully run its course.Read the comments on this post… [Respectful Insolence]
Usually it is good to do the control BEFORE you submit the paper for publication. And usually the reviewers will notice such a mistake.
Erasing memory in rats gives dementia patients hope. LONDON (Reuters) – Researchers have found a way to erase long-term memory in rats without damaging their brains in a study that could lead to targeted drugs for people suffering from dementia. [Reuters: Science]
Sounds like the beginning of a Jim Carrey movie.
Common Plastic Ingredient May Be Cause for Concern. Federal panel says bisphenol A may be harmful to babies [ScienceNOW]
As they say, invoke the precautionary principle.
Konstantin Popadin, Leonard V. Polishchuk, Leila Mamirova, Dmitry Knorre, and Konstantin Gunbin Accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations in mitochondrial protein-coding genes of large versus small mammals
PNAS
published
August 6, 2007,
10.1073/pnas.0701256104
(
Evolution
)[Abstract]
Very nice approach, using large body size as a measure of small populations vs. small body size and large populations. I’ll have oto check this out in more detail
Evolution is driven by gene regulation. It is not just what’s in your genes, it’s how you turn them on that accounts for the difference between species — at least in yeast — according to a report by Yale researchers in this week’s issue of Science. [EurekAlert! - Biology]
Very nice approach from the latest Science. WHat is cool is that the PR has a link to some audio describing the work. How long before vidoe podcasts are included.
S. Ciliberti, O. C. Martin, and A. Wagner
Innovation and robustness in complex regulatory gene networks
PNAS
published
August 9, 2007,10.1073/pnas.0705396104
(
Evolution
,
Physics
)Kay D. Bidle, SangHoon Lee, David R. Marchant, and Paul G. Falkowski
Fossil genes and microbes in the oldest ice on Earth
PNAS
published
August 8, 2007,10.1073/pnas.0702196104
(
Geology
,
Microbiology
)OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE
[PNAS Early Edition]
To read soon.
Biotech: Big risk, big rewards?. Sympatico MSN Finance Aug 12 2007 5:43PM GMT [Moreover Technologies - Biotech news]
Nice basic article about investing in Biotech. Not for the weak of heart.
Sharrows on the street. Those odd symbols popping up on Seattle streets that look like small bicycles wearing big, pointy hats? They’re called sharrows and they’re “friendly reminders” that motorists must share the road with bikes. By brianchin@seattlepi.com (Brian Chin). [Buzzworthy]
Sharrows. Very cute.
Ecstasy Trip. Video shows a 2-year-old girl who had purportedly been given the drug Ecstasy. [New Urban Legends]
Nice. Someone posts some video for family and friends, others take it , mislabel it and the parents end up getting visited by the police. Be careful of what you post, especially if it has children in it.
Deerly Departed. Photographs show a live deer pulled out of the water by fisherman. [New Urban Legends]
Nice gesture by the fishermen.
Environment: Are the Bees Dying off Because They’re Too Busy?. Are bees dying because factory farms are “overworking” them? California bee farmers who let their hives take it easy find their colonies are thriving. [AlterNet.org: Coverage Areas]
An interesting hypothesis.
Wired’s Long Tail web strategy: the Three Cs.
One of the questions I get most often is how I apply the Long Tail strategy to my day job of running Wired.
(Actually, the question I get most often is how I can work for a blockbuster company, Conde Nast, by day and celebrate the decline of the blockbuster by night. My physics-geek answer: it isn’t hypocrisy, it’s wave-particle duality!)
The short answer is what I call the “Three Cs”: Catalyze and Curate Conversations.
Wired, as a mass market magazine (paid circ of around 675,000 and an estimated 2 million readers per month) is unavoidably a one-size-fits-all product. To be sure, that “all” as in “all people who are interested in how technology is changing the world” but in an era where nearly everyone in the Google generation has broadband, an iPod and a cellphone, that’s pretty mass.
So in the magazine, with limited pages and a huge general-interest readership, we remain in the blockbuster business. Thus Transformers and Martha Stewart (albeit with a Wii cake) covers.
On the web, however, we have “unlimited shelf space” (an infinite number of pages, which can be created at close to no cost), so that’s where we focus on the niche as well as the mass. We have room for geeky blogs on hacker subculture and Lego. Obsessive drill-downs. And for loads of user-generated content (best shown in the form of our Reddit news aggregation and voting site).
As we roll out new features over the next year, you’ll see the ratio of conversational catalysis to traditional journalism climb. Not to say we’ll do less traditional journalism. We’re just going to be starting and curating a lot more user-driven conversations. Our new How To wiki is just one example.
Some of these experiments aren’t going to work. That’s fine–”fail fast” is as good a motto as any for online media. Indeed, we were just honored by the Knight-Batten awards for our Assignment Zero experiment in crowdsourcing journalism, which was highlighted as “an excellent example of learning from failure.”
Here’s a question: how should you reward failure? And how can you tell the difference between failure that came from commendable risk-taking and failure that came from sloppy execution?
Wave-particle duality!! ANd it sort of fits – the demands of mainstream media vs. the long tail. Maybe Wired will do a good job meding both.
