After a brief absence, it is good to see the XML Summer School is back again this September (20th-25th) at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. This is “a unique event for everyone using, designing or implementing solutions using XML and related technologies.” I’ve been both a delegate and a speaker here over the years; back in 2005, with Nick Drummond we presented the Protégé and OWL tutorial which was good fun. So here is what I.M.H.O. makes the XML summer school worth a look: (more…)
May 13, 2009
XML Summer School, Oxford
January 15, 2008
Who’s the Daddy? PCR…
♫ PCR, When you need to know who the Daddy is ♫ …
♫ There was a time when to amplify DNA,
You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells.
Then along came a guy named Dr. Kary Mullis,
Said you can amplify in vitro just as well.
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers,
Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending.
Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.
PCR, when you need to detect mutations.
PCR, when you need to recombine.
PCR, when you need to find out who the daddy is.
PCR, when you need to solve a crime. ♫
(repeat chorus)
When you’ve finished chuckling at that ridiculous viral marketing video, go and Dance Naked in the Mind Field with Kary Mullis. Found via Respectful Insolence: Scientists for better PCR.
October 17, 2007
The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)
Calling all Scientists, is your hair luxuriant and flowing? Perhaps you’re a bouffant bioinformatician, a hairy hacker or share a lab with somebody who is? If this is you, its high-time you joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.
To propose somebody for membership, send email to Marc Abrahams at Harvard University marca /ate/ chem2.harvard.edu. Your email needs to include evidence of your luxuriant, flowing hair (a photo) and your credentials as a scientist. Some current members have impressive hair, see Simon Gregory, Carlisle Landel and Sterling Paramore for examples. Honorary and historical members include Dr. Brian May (Queen guitarist / astrophysicist), Dimitry Mendleyev and Albert Einstein, “Physicist. Bon vivant. A bold experimentalist with hair”.
So, if you are a scientist with a copius coiffure, ask yourself, will you ever get another chance to be in such distinguished company?
O'Really? 
