Thursday

Sinopec vying for Tar Sand
I found it to be very intriguing. I guess Canada is closer to China and require less risk in transport? I just love it when they say US will have a hissy fit!

New cell energy cycles other than ATP etc?
I am sure glad I don't have to retake my biochemistry classes again!

Prion cross species methods
More new theories

CrossRef Search vs Google Scholar?
Found this in Nature about CrossRef Search

NPG is participating in the CrossRef Search pilot project. The project enables free full-text inter-publisher searching of scholarly research content.
This service launches a typical Google search but filters the result set to the content from participating publishers.

I thought there might be some overlap here..

But more interesting is actually the DOI more info and API here

Saturday!

New scanning technology for scriptic historical documents

It is always nice to see new technology which digitize more and more thing.. It reminds me of an old American scifi show called where the evil monster in the show digitize all the innocent people.. I think it was called Captain power or something or the other.

Wednesday

Chinese Prefers Homegrown Product:

Interesting part

"

To qualify as "domestic", software will have to be 50 per cent developed in China, according to the Financial Times. Government buyers will need special permission to buy non-domestic products. The changes will bring software into line with guidelines for procuring other products.

"

I wonder what that signifies.. I mean 50% of lines? or 50% of functionality?

Related Links:
Beijing to Review deals with Microsoft

Interesting part:
"

In fact, many domestic competitors and some government officials said Beijing has failed to respect China's law on government procurement, which stipulates that when a local product is available it should receive preference over foreign products.

"

Monday

Pretty good insight about Supercomputing and China

I thought it gives people a pretty good idea on the situation in China. With computing power a commodity, Beowolfs are everywhere. The only problem is with bandwidth/ memory sharing between each nodes. I don't think it is an insurmountable problem.

I think Supercomputing is not restricted to military anymore especially with things like CFD and other modelling techniques are getting more common place and rightly so.

Sunday

French Goat might have contracted BSE

This is the first time that BSE was detected but haven't been verified in goats (instead of usually in cows). It is potential frightening but it was not unexpected. Though I think rendered cow are still used to feed other species.. eg chicken etc I wonder how safe is that?

Wednesday

New Prion research center at UofAlberta

This is so weird.. now innovation/important scientific happenings in Canada actually get first mention in a US newspaper?

It is a short mention basically $41Cdn will be spent at the new University of Alberta Center for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases. It seems to be a cross discipline research center.. I think it is a good move for UofA. I wonder when they are going to have a vet school?

Further Reading:
The Official Press Release from UofAlberta

Tuesday

This week's issue of new@Nature seems to be full of results from IVF studies.. I wonder if it a seasonal thing?!

All these years we have blamed the wrong gene!

Looks like they need a new model for Down syndrome. Apparently new mice studies have found that chromosome 21 was not at fault. Think about all the biopsych books that need to be changed! :-)

Using Stem cells to hunt out Brain cancer

It is so interesting that so much stem cell research is coming out of Korea these days. I wonder even if the stem cell research ban gets resolved over the US presidential election, how long (or ever) would it take US to catch up?

New Brain Prosthesis developed

It looks like a neat way to reverse engineer a product, except we are reverse engineering brain tissue! Now if only they can make it so that we can all think smarter! I wonder if that would ever happen.. perhaps we can by parts to hot rod our brain from eBay some time in the future?