Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

-- Comment()
Publish (Electronically) And Perish? "The moral of the story is that there is a downside to electronic publishing, and even those things you do with the best of intentions can come back to bite you if not approached with the utmost care." (TidBITS via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

-- Comment()
Technological advances: "I'm totally stunned by the technological advances made by the Gillette Company. You'd think razor blades are fairly simplistic things, yet every few years they come up with an entirely new concept, and somehow they manage to market it in such a way that they can effectively sell the new product at a 50% higher price than that of the previous model." [The Aardvark Speaks]

-- Comment()
Critics say Rumsfeld plan ignored obvious pitfalls: "Wolfowitz is one of the architects of Rebuilding America's Defenses which details the need for American domination of Iraq. Robin Dorf, director of national security strategy at the U.S. Army War College, lists as one of the things that has gone wrong so far a 'mismatch between expectations and reality.' Rumsfeld wanted to show the military that civilians were in charge by micromanaging this war. Time will tell how right he is." [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

Systems Biology resources -- Comment()
A definition for Systems Biology: "Systems biology attempts to understand how an organism works from an overall perspective. We're building this understanding starting from the molecular level. Conventional molecular biology is devoted to learning more about the parts - describing the structure, properties and interactions of the individual components. Systems biology looks at how the components work together as a system. Using the analogy of an automobile, systems biology is like understanding the different parts of a car and how the different parts work together to achieve motion." Another quote: "The map of the genome is just the rule book; systems biology is the ball game."

Here are pointers to resources in Systems Biology:

The Treasure Trove of Our Genes -- Comment()
I'm writing a short popular article on biosciences and drug discovery. The article is tentatively titled 'The Treasure Trove of Our Genes' (in Finnish). To quote Genome 'Treasure Trove': "[...] we are also astonishingly alike. Every person on Earth shares [99.9%] of the same genetic code with all other people." I had to check some facts, and thanks to a couple of Google searches here are some pointers: