Cancun

Going to Cancun for a week. It is time for a break.

From the Lancet: The JHU Study on Rencent Changes of Iraq Mortality Rate

It is a politically controversal study. Since I said it is "politically" controversal, anyone comment on this study's validity should at least read the original article can be found here.

Comments to this report ranges from GW Bush's "... the methodology is pretty well discredited..." to "If this is indeed a random sample and truly representative and they did everything they said they did, these numbers are probably in the ballpark ..." by Theodore Holford, head of biostatistics at Yale University's School of Public Health, quoated by the Chicago Tribune. ary on this issue.

A good commentary from Daniel Davies, from the Guardian, can be found here.

One the sample size:
"The results speak for themselves. There was a sample of 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in 47 geographical locations. That is a big sample, not a small one. The opinion polls from Mori and such which measure political support use a sample size of about 2,000 individuals, and they have a margin of error of +/- 3%."

"This is the question to always keep at the front of your mind...
How Would One Get This Sample, If The Facts Were Not This Way? There is really only one answer - that the study was fraudulent. It really could not have happened by chance. If a Mori poll puts the Labour party on 40% support, then we know that there is some inaccuracy in the poll, but we also know that there is basically zero chance that the true level of support is 2% or 96%, and for the Lancet survey to have delivered the results it did if the true body count is 60,000 would be about as improbable as this. Anyone who wants to dispute the important conclusion of the study has to be prepared to accuse the authors of fraud, and presumably to accept the legal consequences of doing so."

"... in the strictest sense, the doubling of the civilian death-rate is usually taken to constitute a humanitarian crisis..."

YouTube blog posting problem

It seems that when I edit the automatically posted blog directly from Youtube, there's a "/embed" tag missing. This causes the blogger editor refusing to publish the post due to "unclosed tags".

The easiest way to post is in fact copy the embed code manually from youtube.

The inner vision of a cell

Created by BioVision from Harvard



First came cross this fantastic animation from Jean's blog. The high quality flash version can be found at Studio Daily, and at, whoelse, YouTube. Unfortunately that I can't seem to find the web site in Harvard.

Detailed explaination see Andrew Sobala's blog:
"You are in a blood vessel, then zoom in to a cell rolling along the endothelium wall (basically looking for injuries or cells that are generally "upset"). The closeup of the long spindly proteins are, I believe, contact proteins between the two cells. You then see a cell membrane - not the GCSE model, but what it actually looks like - including a lipid raft surfing containing a group of localised proteins. You then zoom out and see some of the general cytoskeletal structure under the cell membrane (if anyone can identify specifics, please let me know).

You see an actin filament being manufactured from its constituent monomers; these fibres are instrumental in pulling subcellular structures around the cell and also for providing a framework for materials to be transported around the cell on. A protein comes in and chop the actin fibre - the manufacture and dissociation of both actin and microtubules is a regulated, dynamic process. Similarly you see microtubule formation and a microtubule catastrophe - when microtubules dissociate, it's very fast. Then the coolest bit of the video - a microtubule motor protein pulls a vesicle to its destination in the cell. The cellular motor proteins really do look like this - their mechanism of action is basically a walk forwards.

The aniation fades to the nuclear surface, and some mRNA pops out of the nuclear pores - these molecules are derived from DNA and contain the code to make a single protein. They form loops and a ribosome comes in and scans for the start of the protein coding sequence. It moves along the mRNA and a protein comes out of the end. An orange and blue thing floats across the screen for no apparent reason. Then you see another ribosome land on the ER translocon and repeat the protein synthesis process - it injects the protein straight into the ER, which is the beginning of the pathway for proteins that are required on the cell membrane or outside the cell (there are other reasons for sending a protein down the ER pathway). You see the walker again, then a shot of some vesicles fusing with the Golgi body - a series of membrane stacks that forms a protein modification machine.

The animation then cuts to outside the cell again, and you see some proteins being thrown out by exocytosis - in the process, some integrins are placed on the cell surface. The cell they are on decides it wants to form an adhesive interaction with the basal lamina, because after about 10 seconds the integrin molecules all "stand up" - they move into their active, adhesive form. Then you see the blood vessel again, and the cell that was rolling along the wall enters into a cellular junction and disappears."

LA Times' publisher and editor are leaving the newspaper

LA Times' publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson has been fired for not cutting enough staff and other cost. Times editor Dean Baquet resigned to protest the decision by its parent company, the Tribune.

I see both sides of the argument. There may be more than just these above mentioned differences between Johnson and the Tribune board. Although very successful in publishing Pulitzer winning articles, day-to-day profitability is what Tribune cares.

As much as I enjoying reading the times, which is my favorite, I have to admit that I am not a subscriber. Just buying the Sunday edition from time to time while shopping at the Albertson's. Most of the articles I got are from its web site while not (yet) bought anything from their ads sponsors. How do they make money off me?

May be eventually, we will also get use to paying for these services. I've been saying that for years, still not there yet.