» RIP Phoenix
It lasted far beyond when expected, but it’s finally kicked the bucket. RIP Phoenix Lander you taught us much.
November 11, 2008
October 16, 2008
» Baldness Genetics
Coincidentally, less than an hour after I cut my hair to one inch all around because of androgenic alopecia, a link to this article came up in my feed reader this morning. Apparently they have found the genetics that cause it. As I understand the article, there are two genetic variants (which they just discovered) on chromosome 20, which when combined with the one they already knew about on the X chromosome (which you get from your mother), increases your chances of going bald sevenfold.
If you have both the risk variants we discovered on chromosome 20 and the unrelated known variant on the X chromosome, your risk of becoming bald increases sevenfold."
Does this mean you have to get genes from both parents to be bald? What if you don't have the one on the X chromosome but you get the ones on chromosome 20 from your dad? Well, as you can see this report of the findings isn't very enlightening, but it does tell us that yes if your mom's dad and brothers are bald you have increased "risk" (so no, contrary to what you might have read (but probably haven't), it's not a myth), but just because your mom's dad isn't bald doesn't mean you might not be.
September 10, 2008
» Linux Running on Large Hadron Collider
“The most powerful physics project in the history of the known universe - The $10 Billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC)- shot its first light speed beam this morning around its 27 km circuit. Beyond the 20 years it took to build and half of all the world’s astrophysicists, it also takes another key ingredient to make LHC work — Linux.” How much better could you say it?
Not only that, we have a screenshot of their Linux usage. Apparently, they are using KDE, the best desktop environment there is:
Click for larger image
Read “Large Hadron Collider - powered by Linux.”
March 1, 2008
» World Wide Telescope
 Miscrosofts World Wide
Telescope (click to visit) |
Scoble says that when he visited Microsoft a few weeks ago he was blown away by the World Wide Telescope. Actually he said it made him cry.
The WWT isn't available yet, but you can see a demo in this TED talk. My impression after viewing the TED talk is that it's like a Google Earth for the sky, seemlessly integrating pictures and information in a single platform.
I'm just hoping there's an OS X version--but if not, there's always Parallels or Fusion.