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Planet Maemo  -
4 hours and 9 minutes ago
The last week has seen some interesting progress for the n900. Firstly it was great to see
phototranslator finally being availiable in
extras-devel. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about having lost patience waiting and played
with OCR myself. However phototranslator has put it together in a slick package and combines
with google translate api to provide a pretty cool application.
Obviously it is of most use if you are travelling to a foriegn country, translating signs and
menus as you go, but it is still interesting to play with and just show off the capabilities of
the device (without having to drop to a terminal).
Perhaps the major new item this week is sygic’s mobile maps being released
for sale. There was much rumour that they had been waiting to release via Nokia’s ovi
store. However, they have made it aviliable for sale via their own site.
I purchased it on Friday after some of the initial rush had died down, and sygic had some chance
to get their servers working properly. Some of the first off the mark reported painfully slow
downloads which dropped and they had to use resuming downloaders to get all the way through. At
1.8gb I didn’t really want to deal with download problems. Given that the program requires
activation via their site, it’s not clear why they didn’t just torrent the file and
save their servers a lot of problems.
Nonetheless when I came to make my purchase I got about 200kb/sec and it downloaded in about
90mins.
I had read the maemo forums and seen people had trouble with segfaults if the data folders
weren’t in the right place. So I copied to the /home/user/MyDocs folder as instructed. What
I didn’t do was unplug my usb cable, just unmounted the n900 and left it charging only. I
got a segfault running the application 
I rebooted the phone, unplugged the cable and then it ran fine to the point of product
activation. Where I selected ‘automatic’ and entered my product code. Only to find it
sat doing nothing for a minute then segfaulted….
At this point I was a little concerned about the quality of the app. It’s response to the
unexpected seems to be to segfault, which doesn’t seem like good code to me.
However, after actually reading some instructions I realised I should go through manual
activation, and that product code != Activation code. I went via their site and got my activation
code and at last I was up and running.
Once going, I’ve had no further problems. It’s a fast application and seems very
good. I’ve only used it to route me home from work, but it did so well. The thing I noticed
was how fast it recalculated when I intentionally deviated from the route. No sooner than I made
the turn than I looked down to see new route laid out. To be fair I’m comparing to a now
pretty old tomtom, but it’s recalculation always took a few seconds of processing.
The other thing I noticed was that the map has a housing estate in my town that was built perhaps
5 years ago, but does not have some mini roundabouts on my route home from years before that.
I also note that it doesn’t seem to care about traffic lights. By which I mean it gives no
indication that it would consider them as a factor in routing decisions. I don’t know if
any do, but I hold out hope one day to get routing that knows that 9am on a weekday could mean
several extra minutes going through traffic lights.
The maemo forums where quickly full of interesting tips/hacks to enable fullscreen operation
& open up more menu options. This allows for portrait operation and more controls. I
don’t know why sygic didn’t have these enabled by default, perhaps they are not fully
tested so have been left in an implicit ‘unsupported’ state, but easy to switch on.
Some think it’s crazy to pay €59 for something nokia might do for free in
ovi maps. However given nokias track record so far I’m not at all convinced they are going
to give away anything even close to as good as sygics offering. In terms of price, I paid more
for just the France maps addition on my old tomtom, so €59 for the whole of
europe seems very good value to me. Now I just need my brodit active holder to ship…
Rumours have increased that firmware release 1.2 is imminent. Based on some wishful thinking and
the fact that the UK has finally gotten the 1.1.1 release that the rest of the world got weeks
ago. Along with a number of bugs being marked explicitly as in pr 1.2. Neither of these things
need have any baring on the release of the next update, but wishful thinking is hard to put down
 .
I also became aware this week of TweeGo, a new twitter
client. This one written with c++/qt and looking very nice. A much slicker ui than my own witter.
I am really glad to see more options being actively developed, bringing more choice to n900
users.
Perhaps more significantly than the other things this week… I wrote the code to add avatar
support to witter. Though as yet it’s not ready to release, it should be reasonably
shortly. (Perhaps this should really be something for next week rather than last)
For a long time I pretty much refused to consider avatar support. I figured it would do nothing
but take up memory, use up screen space, and slow things down. And it would cost time in coding I
was unwilling to spend. However, this week I came accross a thread on maemo forums with some good
examples of what I would need. So I had a play and found it didn’t take too long to get
basic support working. Although it must make the memory footprint bigger, it doesn’t appear
to hurt performance. So at somepoint soon witter will look something like this:
To have a few new things arriving for the n900 in a short space of time really gave me the
feeling that it is gathering momentum. Getting better and better all the time.
This momentum enourages more development, and hopefully more good information such as the thread
I found, which in turn leads to more, better applications.
With a cool new technology demo in phototranslator, a great pay-for gps option from sygic and a
slick new twitter client in TweeGo, it’s hard not to feel optimistic about the future for
the N900 after a week like this.
Filed under: maemo, Thoughts Tagged: maemo, mobile maps, N900, ocr, performance, Phototranslator, Python, sygic, tesseract, tweego, witter  
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BMC Bioinformatics -
10 hours and 24 minutes ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 18 PMID: 20298601Authors: Hue, M. - Riffle, M. - Vert, J. P. - Noble, W.
S.Journal: BMC BioinformaticsABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The prediction of protein-protein interactions
is an important step toward the elucidation of protein functions and the understanding of the
molecular mechanisms inside the cell. While experimental methods for identifying these interactions
remain costly and often noisy, the increasing quantity of solved 3D protein structures suggests
that in silico methods to predict interactions between two protein structures will play an
increasingly important role in screening candidate interacting pairs. Approaches using the
knowledge of the structure are presumably more accurate than those based on sequence only.
Approaches based on docking protein structures solve a variant of this problem, but these methods
remain very computationally intensive and will not scale in the near future to the detection of
interactions at the level of an interactome, involving millions of candidate pairs of proteins.
RESULTS: Here, we describe a computational method to predict efficiently in silico whether two
protein structures interact. This yes/no question is presumably easier to answer than the standard
protein docking question, "How do these two protein structures interact?" Our approach is to
discriminate between interacting and non-interacting protein pairs using a statistical pattern
recognition method known as a support vector machine(SVM). We demonstrate that our structure-based
method performs well on this task and scales well to the size 1 of an interactome. CONCLUSIONS: The
use of structure information for the prediction of protein interaction yields significantly better
performance than other sequence-based methods. Among structure-based classifiers, the SVM
algorithm, combined with the metric learning pairwise kernel and the MAMMOTH kernel, performs best
in our experiments.post to:
CiteULike |
Comics Should Be Good! -
21 hours and 9 minutes ago
It's another Jacques Tardi-drawn comic! All hail Tardi! (And hey! I get to break out the
Not-Safe-For-Work warning! Just so you know!)
Yesterday, I looked at an adaptation by Jacques Tardi of a book written in the 1970s. Today, we
look at a comic that actually came out in the 1970s and is now back in print! It all works out!
You Are There was written by Jean-Claude Forest, who is best-known for this (well, the comic on which it
was based), and drawn by Monsieur Tardi.
 Kim Thompson translated this sucker, and Fantagraphics published this bad bear. You will be charged no
more than $26.99 for this, which isn't bad considering it's 163 big-ass pages chock full of grand
Tardi art.
This is a very strange comic that doesn't completely work. Forest, channeling his inner Mark
Twain, wrote in an early book edition about You Are There: "No one should see in Ici
même a pamphlet, a satire on our society or the men who represent its political
regime. Nor did I have any specific intention of mocking man's attachment to property. If this
attachment leads to grotesque situations in this book, it does so no more than politics, law,
groceries or fornication; it serves through its ramblings a story, a plot whose basis lies
elsewhere and was intended, so far as I was concerned, to speak of something entirely different."
If that's so, it's too bad, because You Are There works best as an absurdist critique of
society and politics. It's a rambling, occasionally surreal look at a man who is crazy only
because a crazy society says he is; who then is really insane?
 Perhaps Forest meant it as a love story, and there is a romance at its heart, but
the romance is just as odd as the rest of the book, so it's unclear what, exactly, Forest was
saying with this comic.
The situation is certainly interesting: Arthur There, the protagonist (and hence the title of the
book) lives in a place called Mornemont, which, as we learn early on, was once a vast tract of
land of which he is the sole heir. Over the decades and centuries, however, Mornemont has been
subdivided into smaller plots of land, each owned by a different family. Arthur is embroiled in a
lawsuit to get all the land back, but in the meantime, his one victory has given him ownership of
all the walls and the gates through them. He lives in a narrow shack built on one of the walls
and makes a living by charging a toll every time someone wants a gate open, gates to which he has
the only keys. Throughout the book, he rarely comes down off the walls - the residents, he
believes, would kill him for trespassing. His lawsuit to reclaim the rest of the land, however,
continues throughout the book. In Paris, the president fears that he's going to lose the
election, so he begins making plans to hole up somewhere and plan his triumphant return.
Naturally, he picks Mornemont, but the reason he does is clever and changes Arthur's life quite
significantly.
Ultimately, this is a story of a man fighting against the forces of conformity, as Arthur
desperately tries to remain his own man. Everyone wants him to change, and even if some of the
things that happen in the book are in his own mind, he clings to a dream when a lesser (or,
perhaps, saner) man would have given up on them. He falls for Julie, who's the daughter of one of
the couples living on "his" land, and their relationship is bumpy, to say the least. Julie is a
bit crazy, too, in a different way than Arthur. She has what we might categorize as Tourette's,
with no internal filters to stop her from saying whatever's on her mind or doing whatever's on
her mind.
 Arthur's behavior is the polar opposite of Julie's, as he keeps everything inside
him. This provides the very odd climax of the book, at which their personalities have switched
places, to a degree. Julie believes in nothing, while Arthur believes in everything, so when
they're on a row boat, about to escape from their pasts, suddenly things are different for both
of them. The final image of the book, a surreal summation of events in the book, becomes a
comment on what men will do to change their lives. It's not a particularly happy ending, but it
is a logical ending.
The one thing you must deal with as you commence reading the book is that, even with a fairly
standard narrative, Forest writes oddly. Apparitions appear for no reason. The scene shifts
quickly in the middle of a page with no narrative tags to show it. Julie and Arthur often appear
to be saying simply what's on their minds and not actually talking to each other. Julie's
frankness about nudity and sex is unusually disconcerting (not because she likes sex and being
naked, but because of the way she's so aggressive about it, especially in public). There's a
strange, detached tone to the book, so even when serious things are occurring, Forest presents it
absurdly, making it difficult to penetrate the author's intent (if, indeed, he had any). It's a
complex work that keeps the reader at arm's length, which makes it hard to love.
Tardi, however, is stunning. The strange world of Mornemont and its walls are fully realized,
with astonishing detail that makes Arthur's desires even more concrete. The warren of homes and
barriers along which Arthur runs provide a surreal backdrop for Arthur's fantasies, which Tardi
simply places in the panels with no preamble, integrating the hallucinations so well into the
"real" that they occasionally catch us off guard.
 It's a beautiful evocation of how Arthur sees the world. The stolid governmental
world crashes against the private lives of the politicians, a theater of fluid sexuality and
vice. At the end of the book, Tardi turns the tenants of Mornemont into costumed caricatures,
medieval archetypes, and fools, who attack Arthur's home because they're tired of his lawsuit.
Tardi pulls out all the stops, with the army moving in and the homeowners turning riotous and the
two worlds crashing together. The absurdity of Forest's script is brought to amazing life, from
Arthur's odd gatekeeper outfit to Julie's unabashed sexuality - at one point she sucks her thumb,
and it's a creepily erotic sight. It's a tremendous work of art, heightening the weirdness of the
narrative very well.
I would recommend You Are There because it's a thoughtful look at the pressure of
conformity and what drives a man mad. But it is a difficult comic, because Forest isn't
interested in making too much sense, even though it's fairly easy to figure out "what happens."
Tardi is fantastic and makes the book even wackier, which isn't a bad thing. I have to warn you
about it, but it's definitely worth a look.
|
Impact Lab -
22 hours and 37 minutes ago
The study found that married people ‘let themselves go’. Greek researchers found that
married couples were more likely to become fat due to their significantly changed lifestyle as they
“let themselves go”. The research, based on the study of more than 17,000
couples aged between 20 and 70, found that married couples exercised less frequently, had [...]
|
CiteULike: Borelli's watchlist -
1 days and 4 hours ago
Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 123, No. 1. (10 April 2007), pp. 437-443.
We perform feature selection (FS) on an electronic nose (EN) dataset composed of 30 features,
obtained by extracting 5 diverse features from the response curves of six metal oxide sensors. The
5 features are: the classical relative change in resistance R / R 0 ; the curve integral both over
the gas adsorption and desorbtion process and the phase space integral, again over adsorption and
desorbtion. The phase space integral is a novel feature introduced in [1] . We show that
performance (in terms of the cross validated test error of a three nearest neighbour classifier) is
always significantly better for the best selected features than for all 30 features. Moreover
– for some of the 5 features types – performance with all
30 features is worse than performance with just the 6 features of a single type. Results are not
univocal regarding the best feature type. Yet, on average over the four datasets in which the
complete dataset can be decomposed, the phase integral calculated over the desorption wins. Also,
the features (phase and integral) calculated on the desorbtion seem to consistently give higher
performance than the corresponding features calculated during adsorption. The standard R / R 0
stands in the lower part of the ranking.
M Pardo, G Sberveglieri
|
BMC Neuroscience -
1 days and 10 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20236508Authors: Strom, J. O. - Theodorsson, E. - Holm, L. -
Theodorsson, A.Journal: BMC NeurosciABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: : Numerous stroke studies have
controversially shown estrogens to be either neuroprotective or neurodamaging. The discordant
results observed in rat brain ischemia models may be a consequence of discrepancies in estrogen
administration modes resulting in plasma concentration profiles far from those intended. To test
this hypothesis we reproduced in detail and extended an earlier study from our lab using a
different mode of 17beta-estradiol administration; home-made silastic capsules instead of
commercial slow-release 17beta-estradiol pellets. Four groups of female rats (n=12) were
ovariectomized and administered 17beta-estradiol or placebo via silastic capsules. All animals
underwent MCAo fourteen days after ovariectomy and were sacrificed three days later. RESULTS: : In
contrast to our earlier results using the commercial pellets, the group receiving 17beta-estradiol
during the entire experiment had significantly smaller lesions than the group receiving placebo
(mean+/-SEM: 3.85+/-0.70% versus 7.15+/-0.27% of total slice area, respectively; p=0.015). No
significant neuroprotection was found when the 17beta-estradiol was administered only during the
two weeks before or the three days immediately after MCAo. CONCLUSIONS: : The results indicate that
different estrogen treatment regimens result in diametrically different effects on cerebral
ischemia. Thus the effects of estrogens on ischemic damage seem to be concentration-related, with a
biphasic, or even more complex, dose-response relation. These findings have implications for the
design of animal experiments and also have a bearing on the estrogen doses used for peri-menopausal
hormone replacement therapy.post to:
CiteULike |
Brain - current issue -
1 days and 10 hours ago
Neuro-axonal degeneration occurs progressively from the onset of multiple sclerosis and is
thought to be a significant cause of increasing clinical disability. Several histopathological
studies of multiple sclerosis and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis have shown that the
accumulation of sodium in axons can promote reverse action of the sodium/calcium exchanger that,
in turn, leads to a lethal overload in intra-axonal calcium. We hypothesized that sodium magnetic
resonance imaging would provide an indicator of cellular and metabolic integrity and ion
homeostasis in patients with multiple sclerosis. Using a three-dimensional radial gradient-echo
sequence with short echo time, we performed sodium magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T in 17
patients with relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis and in 13 normal subjects. The
absolute total tissue sodium concentration was measured in lesions and in several areas of
normal-appearing white and grey matter in patients, and corresponding areas of white and grey
matter in controls. A mixed model analysis of covariance was performed to compare regional tissue
sodium concentration levels in patients and controls. Spearman correlations were used to
determine the association of regional tissue sodium concentration levels in T2- and T1-weighted
lesions with measures of normalized whole brain and grey and white matter volumes, and with
expanded disability status scale scores. In patients, tissue sodium concentration levels were
found to be elevated in acute and chronic lesions compared to areas of normal-appearing white
matter (P < 0.0001). The tissue sodium concentration levels in areas of
normal-appearing white matter were significantly higher than those in corresponding white matter
regions in healthy controls (P < 0.0001). The tissue sodium concentration value
averaged over lesions and over regions of normal-appearing white and grey matter was positively
associated with T2-weighted (P ≤ 0.001 for all) and T1-weighted (P ≤
0.006 for all) lesion volumes. In patients, only the tissue sodium concentration value averaged
over regions of normal-appearing grey matter was negatively associated with the normalized grey
matter volume (P = 0.0009). Finally, the expanded disability status scale score showed a
mild, positive association with the mean tissue sodium concentration value in chronic lesions
(P = 0.002), in regions of normal-appearing white matter (P = 0.004) and
normal-appearing grey matter (P = 0.002). This study shows the feasibility of using
in vivo sodium magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T in patients with multiple sclerosis.
Our findings suggest that the abnormal values of the tissue sodium concentration in patients with
relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis might reflect changes in cellular composition of the
lesions and/or changes in cellular and metabolic integrity. Sodium magnetic resonance imaging has
the potential to provide insight into the pathophysiological mechanisms of tissue injury when
correlation with histopathology becomes available.
|
BMC Bioinformatics -
1 days and 11 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20236520Authors: Veeramalai, M. - Gilbert, D. - Valiente,
G.Journal: BMC BioinformaticsABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Although methods based on highly abstract
descriptions of protein structures, such as VAST and TOPS, can perform very fast protein structure
comparison, the results can lack a high degree of biological significance. Previously we have
discussed the basic mechanisms of our novel method for structure comparison based on our TOPS+
model (Topological descriptions of Protein Structures Enhanced with Ligand Information). In this
paper we show how these results can be significantly improved using parameter optimization, and we
call the resulting optimised TOPS+ method as advanced TOPS+ comparison method i.e. advTOPS+.
RESULTS: We have developed a TOPS+ string model as an improvement to the TOPS [1-3] graph model by
considering loops as secondary structure elements (SSEs) in addition to helices and strands,
representing ligands as first class objects, and describing interactions between SSEs, and SSEs and
ligands, by incoming and outgoing arcs, annotating SSEs with the interaction direction and type.
Benchmarking results of an all-against-all pairwise comparison using a large dataset of 2,620
non-redundant structures from the PDB40 dataset [4] demonstrate the biological significance, in
terms of SCOP classification at the superfamily level, of our TOPS+ comparison method. CONCLUSIONS:
Our advanced TOPS+ comparison shows better performance on the PDB40 dataset [4] compared to our
basic TOPS+ method, giving 90 percent accuracy for SCOP alpha+beta; a 6 percent increase in
accuracy compared to the TOPS and basic TOPS+ methods. It also outperforms the TOPS, basic TOPS+
and SSAP comparison methods on the Chew-Kedem dataset [5], achieving 98 percent accuracy. Software
Availability: The TOPS+ comparison server is available at
http://balabio.dcs.gla.ac.uk/mallika/WebTOPS/.post to:
CiteULike |
Nature -
1 days and 11 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 18 PMID: 20237568Authors: Paczolt, K. A. - Jones, A. G.Journal:
NatureMale pregnancy in seahorses, pipefishes and sea dragons (family Syngnathidae) represents a
striking reproductive adaptation that has shaped the evolution of behaviour and morphology in this
group of fishes. In many syngnathid species, males brood their offspring in a specialized pouch,
which presumably evolved to facilitate male parental care. However, an unexplored possibility is
that brood pouch evolution was partly shaped by parent-offspring or sexual conflict, processes that
would result in trade-offs between current and future pregnancies. Here we report a controlled
breeding experiment using the sexually dimorphic Gulf pipefish, Syngnathus scovelli, to test for
post-copulatory sexual selection within broods and for trade-offs between successive male
pregnancies as functions of female attractiveness. Offspring survivorship within a pregnancy was
affected by the size of a male's mate, the number of eggs transferred and the male's sexual
responsiveness. Significantly, we also found that embryo survivorship in a current pregnancy was
negatively related to survivorship in the prior pregnancy, clearly demonstrating fitness trade-offs
between broods. Overall, our data indicate that post-copulatory sexual selection and sexual
conflict occur in Gulf pipefishes. The conflict seems to be mediated by a strategy of cryptic
choice in which males increase rates of offspring abortion in pregnancies from unattractive mothers
to retain resources for future reproductive opportunities. Hence, the male brood pouch of
syngnathid fishes, which nurtures offspring, also seems to have an important role as an arbiter of
conflict between the sexes.post to:
CiteULike |
BMC Bioinformatics -
1 days and 12 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20236517Authors: Licamele, L. - Getoor, L.Journal: BMC
BioinformaticsABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: There is a large amount of gene expression data that exists in
the public domain. This data has been generated under a variety of experimental conditions.
Unfortunately, these experimental variations have generally prevented researchers from accurately
comparing and combining this wealth of data, which still hides many novel insights. RESULTS: In
this paper we present a new method, which we refer to as indirect two-sided relative ranking, for
comparing gene expression profiles that is robust to variations in experimental conditions. This
method extends the current best approach, which is based on comparing the correlations of the up
and down regulated genes, by introducing a comparison based on the correlations in rankings across
the entire database. Because our method is robust to experimental variations, it allows a greater
variety of gene expression data to be combined, which, as we show, leads to richer scientific
discoveries. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate the benefit of our proposed indirect method on several
datasets. We first evaluate the ability of the indirect method to retrieve compounds with similar
therapeutic effects across known experimental barriers, namely vehicle and batch effects, on two
independent datasets (one private and one public). We show that our indirect method is able to
significantly improve upon the previous state-of-the-art method with a substantial improvement in
recall at rank 10 of 97.03% and 49.44%, on each dataset, respectively. Next, we demonstrate that
our indirect method results in improved accuracy for classification in several additional datasets.
These datasets demonstrate the use of our indirect method for classifying cancer subtypes,
predicting drug sensitivity/resistance, and classifying (related) cell types. Even in the absence
of a known (i.e., labeled) experimental barrier, the improvement of the indirect method in each of
these datasets is statistically significant.post to:
CiteULike |
Nature -
1 days and 13 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 18 PMID: 20237566Authors: Li, J. F. - Huang, Y. F. - Ding, Y. - Yang, Z.
L. - Li, S. B. - Zhou, X. S. - Fan, F. R. - Zhang, W. - Zhou, Z. Y. - Wu de, Y. - Ren, B. - Wang,
Z. L. - Tian, Z. Q.Journal: NatureSurface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a powerful
spectroscopy technique that can provide non-destructive and ultra-sensitive characterization down
to single molecular level, comparable to single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. However,
generally substrates based on metals such as Ag, Au and Cu, either with roughened surfaces or in
the form of nanoparticles, are required to realise a substantial SERS effect, and this has severely
limited the breadth of practical applications of SERS. A number of approaches have extended the
technique to non-traditional substrates, most notably tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) where
the probed substance (molecule or material surface) can be on a generic substrate and where a
nanoscale gold tip above the substrate acts as the Raman signal amplifier. The drawback is that the
total Raman scattering signal from the tip area is rather weak, thus limiting TERS studies to
molecules with large Raman cross-sections. Here, we report an approach, which we name
shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, in which the Raman signal amplification is
provided by gold nanoparticles with an ultrathin silica or alumina shell. A monolayer of such
nanoparticles is spread as 'smart dust' over the surface that is to be probed. The ultrathin
coating keeps the nanoparticles from agglomerating, separates them from direct contact with the
probed material and allows the nanoparticles to conform to different contours of substrates.
High-quality Raman spectra were obtained on various molecules adsorbed at Pt and Au single-crystal
surfaces and from Si surfaces with hydrogen monolayers. These measurements and our studies on yeast
cells and citrus fruits with pesticide residues illustrate that our method significantly expands
the flexibility of SERS for useful applications in the materials and life sciences, as well as for
the inspection of food safety, drugs, explosives and environment pollutants.post to:
CiteULike |
Journal of Neuroscience -
1 days and 14 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20237283Authors: Pang, Z. P. - Cao, P. - Xu, W. - Sudhof, T.
C.Journal: J NeurosciCalmodulin regulates multifarious cellular processes via a panoply of target
interactions. However, the central role, multiple isoforms, and complex target interactions of
calmodulin make it difficult to examine its precise functions. Here, we analyzed calmodulin
function in neurons using lentivirally delivered short-hairpin RNAs that suppressed expression of
all calmodulin isoforms by approximately 70%. Calmodulin knockdown did not significantly alter
neuronal survival or synapse formation but depressed spontaneous neuronal network activity.
Strikingly, calmodulin knockdown decreased the presynaptic release probability almost twofold,
without altering the presynaptic readily-releasable vesicle pool or postsynaptic neurotransmitter
reception. In calmodulin knockdown neurons, presynaptic release was restored to wild-type levels by
expression of constitutively active calmodulin-dependent kinase-IIalpha (CaMKIIalpha); in contrast,
in control neurons, expression of constitutively active CaMKIIalpha had no effect on presynaptic
release. Viewed together, these data suggest that calmodulin performs a major function in boosting
synaptic strength via direct activation of presynaptic calmodulin-dependent kinase II.post to:
CiteULike |
Electronista | Gadgets for Geeks -
1 days and 14 hours ago
 The first indication of the clock speeds of AMD's Thuban six-core chips for
consumer PCs has been leaked on Friday. According to BIOS updates and CPU support lists released by
Gigabyte, the six-core X6 1035T will be rated at 2.6GHz, while the X6 1055T will run at 2.8GHz and
the top-rung, six-core AMD chip will be the Phenom II X6 1075T, with a 3GHz clock speed. This is
significantly below the 3.33GHz frequency of Intel's fastest chip, the Core i7-980X, but doesn't
necessarily reflect the actual performance gap.... |
TechCrunch -
1 days and 17 hours ago
 Last month we
wrote about Crocodoc, a new Y Combinator-funded company that makes it very easy to upload a
text document or PowerPoint deck and mark it up online to share with your colleagues.
Unfortunately, it was also pretty bare boned — you couldn’t
even save your edited document to your hard drive. Today, that’s changing: Crocodoc has
rolled out some key new features (including the ability to save) that make the service
significantly more flexible, and also pits it more directly against Adobe’s Acrobat Pro.
Aside from the ability to save to PDF, the new version includes a freehand pen tool, a tool to
convert any website to PDF (which you can then add notes to), and a new API. In a few days, the
company will be releasing its application on Google’s recently-launched App Marketplace. The service will
also be rolling out a Flash-based embeddable document viewer (similar to what you’ll find
on DocStoc and Scribd) that lets you both view and mark up embedded documents.
CEO Ryan Damico says that these features make Crocodoc more competitive with Adobe’s $400
Acrobat Pro software because the free Acrobat Reader most people have doesn’t allow them to
mark up and save their documents (personally, I’ve been avoiding any software with the word
‘Acrobat’ in its title for years). Damico does acknowledge that there are still
plenty of premium features that Crocodoc doesn’t have that Adobe’s paid
software does, but says that this basic editing/saving functionality is what most people are
after, anyway. Damico says that in the long term, Crocodoc is hoping to “do to
Acrobat what Gmail did to Outlook” by taking a widely used desktop application and bringing
it online.
CrunchBase InformationCrocodocInformation provided by CrunchBase
    
 
  
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Planet Ubuntu -
1 days and 18 hours ago
The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long-Term
Support) Desktop, Server, and Netbook editions and of Ubuntu 10.04 Server for Ubuntu Enterprise
Cloud (UEC) and Amazon’s EC2. Codenamed "Lucid Lynx", 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu’s
proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a
high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop and Netbook Editions continue the trend of ever-faster boot speeds, with
improved startup times and a streamlined, smoother boot experience.
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition provides even better integration of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud,
with its install-time cloud setup.
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server for UEC and EC2 brings the power and stability of the Ubuntu Server
Edition to cloud computing, whether you’re using Amazon EC2 or your own Ubuntu Enterprise
Cloud.
The Ubuntu 10.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu,
also reach beta status today.
Desktop features
————————
Social from the start: We now feature built-in integration with Twitter, identi.ca, Facebook, and
other social networks with the MeMenu in the panel.
New Design: Cleaner and faster boot, new notification area, new themes, new icons, and new
wallpaper bring a dramatically updated look and feel to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu One: Choose any folder in your home directory to sync, choose from millions of songs for
purchase in the Ubuntu One Music store.
Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1 for
details.
Server features
———————-
Cloud computing: The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud installer has been vastly improved in order to
support alternative installation topologies. UEC components are now automatically discovered and
registered, even with complex topologies. Finally, UEC is now powered by Eucalyptus 1.6.2
codebase.
UEC and EC2: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS continues the tradition of official Ubuntu Server image releases
for UEC and for Amazon’s EC2, giving you everything you need for rapid deployment of Ubuntu
instances in a cloud computing environment. UEC images, and information on running Ubuntu 10.04
on EC2, are available at:
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04/beta1
Stability and security: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS brings many improvements over Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to keep
your servers safe and secure for the next five years, including AppArmor profiles for many key
services, kernel hardening, and an easy-to-configure firewall.
Ubuntu Netbook features
———————————-
Ubuntu Netbook Edition is optimised to run on Intel atom based netbooks. It includes a new
consumer-friendly interface that allows users to quickly and easily get on-line and use their
favourite applications. This interface is optimised for a retail sales environment.
It includes the same faster boot times and improved boot experience as Ubuntu desktop.
Kubuntu features
————————
Kubuntu 10.04 LTS will be the first LTS to feature KDE 4 Platform and Applications. KDE 4 has
come a long way since its early releases and is now suitable for the high demands of LTS users.
Being an LTS we have focused on bug fixing and stability for this release, but we did find time
to add features such as touchpad configuration, Firefox KDE integration, Kubuntu notification
improvements, and cross-desktop systray menu standardisation. Kubuntu features the Plasma Desktop
while Kubuntu Netbook Remix comes out of preview status with the Plasma Netbook workspace.
See https://wiki.kubuntu.org/LucidLynx/Beta1/Kubuntu
for more details.
Edubuntu features
————————-
Edubuntu in Lucid features a more complete live environment containing more software from
universe and all existing language packs as well as our usual educational software in their
current version. For Lucid the text installer has been removed and so is LTSP for the time being.
We expect to have LTSP back on the DVD for the next beta. The DVD is then much smaller than it
used to be but will still provide a complete education environment based on Ubuntu Lucid.
Also included on the Edubuntu DVD is a small repository containing the required packages to
transform the regular Edubuntu desktop into a LTSP server or install the Netbook edition
interface.
Mythbuntu features
—————————
Mythbuntu 10.04 introduces MythTV 0.23. This new version is significantly faster and should feel
more responsive and stable than older versions. It also integrates better into the OS with better
support for things like ConsoleKit and Upstart.
Please see http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.23
for more details about changes introduced in 0.23.
See http://mythbuntu.org/10.04/beta for information
about the Mythbuntu beta release.
Other
——-
* On the Desktop: GNOME 2.30, KDE SC 4.4, XFCE 4.6.1, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, X.Org server 1.7.5
* On the Server: Apache 2.2, PostgreSQL 8.4, PHP 5.3.1, LTSP 5.2
* "Under the hood": GCC 4.4.3, eglibc 2.11, Linux 2.6.32.9, Python 2.6.5
The full release notes can be found at
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta1
About Ubuntu
——————
Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, with a fast and
easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications
is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.
Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other
companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support
To Get Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1
———————————————
To upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 from Ubuntu 9.10 or Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, follow these
instructions:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LucidUpgrades
Or, download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 here (choose the mirror closest to you):
Africa:
* http://ubuntu.saix.net/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(South Africa)
Asia:
* http://mirror.rootguide.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(China)
* http://ubuntutym2.u-toyama.ac.jp/ubuntu/10.04
(Japan)
* http://mirror.khlug.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Korea, Republic of)
* http://ubuntu.qualitynet.net/releases/10.04
(Kuwait)
* http://ftp.mtu.ru/pub/ubuntu/releases/10.04
(Russian Federation)
* http://tw.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04
(Taiwan)
* http://ftp.linux.org.tr/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Turkey)
Europe:
* http://ubuntu.linuxbe.com/10.04 (Belgium)
* http://ubuntu.ipacct.com/releases/10.04
(Bulgaria)
* http://hr.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04
(Croatia)
* http://releases.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/releases/10.04
(Czech Republic)
* http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/ubuntu-cd/10.04
(Denmark)
* http://ftp.estpak.ee/pub/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Estonia)
* http://ubuntu.trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/releases/10.04
(Finland)
* http://ftp.oleane.net/ubuntu-cd/10.04
(France)
* http://ubuntu.mirror.tudos.de/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Germany)
* http://speglar.simnet.is/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Iceland)
* http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Ireland)
* http://releases.ubuntu.fastbull.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Italy)
* http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04
(Netherlands)
* http://no.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04
(Norway)
* http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/ubuntu/10.04
(Portugal)
* http://rs.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04
(Serbia)
* http://ubuntu.cica.es/releases/10.04
(Spain)
* http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Sweden)
North America:
* http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/10.04
(Canada)
* http://mirror.pnl.gov/releases/10.04 (United
States)
* http://mirror.yellowfiber.net/ubuntu/10.04
(United States)
* http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/releases.ubuntu.com/10.04
(United States)
* http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/10.04
(United States)
South America:
* http://ubuntu-cd.innova-red.net/10.04
(Argentina)
* http://mirror.pop-sc.rnp.br/mirror/ubuntu/10.04
(Brazil)
* http://ubuntu.c3sl.ufpr.br/releases/10.04
(Brazil)
Rest of the world:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Great Britain)
Please download using Bittorrent if possible.
The final version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is expected to be released in April 2010.
Feedback and Participation
—————————————
If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/
Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn this Beta into the best
release of Ubuntu ever. Please note that, where possible, we prefer that bugs be reported using
the tools provided, rather than by visiting Launchpad directly. Instructions can be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but are not sure, first try
asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu
forums:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/
More Information
————————
You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on our website, IRC channel and
wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please visit:
http://www.ubuntu.com/
To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume
announcement list at:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce
[Discuss Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 on
the Forum]
Originally sent to the ubuntu-announce
mailing list by Steve Langasek on Fri Mar 19 16:32:05 GMT 2010
|
Media Matters for America -
1 days and 23 hours ago
Following the Congressional Budget Office's score of the health care reform reconciliation
package, Fox News has attempted to portray the nonpartisan CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable.
By contrast, after the CBO gave a "favorable" score to the GOP health care plan, Fox praised the
office as "nonpartisan" and advanced false GOP claims about the CBO's findings.
Fox News does damage control, attempts to portray CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable
Beck mocks CBO score of health care reform: "Well, that's a party in my
pants." On the March 18 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, Beck asked, "How would the CBO numbers even make any
difference? You know, 'Only 900 and' -- what is it -- '$954 billion.' Ooh. Well, that's a party
in my pants. Thank you for sending that one by. How does that make a difference?"
Doocy: "[C]an you really rely on the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office
comes out with?" On the March 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends,
co-host Steve Doocy claimed, "Democrats
say it will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion over the first decade." After guest host
Dana Perino responded by saying, "Well, but there are other members who say that it actually will
cost $2.4 trillion over the 10 years once you add it all up," Doocy asked, "Because, can you
really rely on the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office comes out with?"
Perino: "[C]an we trust these numbers?" Introducing an interview with Rep.
Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on the same edition of Fox & Friends, Perino said, "Nine
hundred and forty billion dollars over the next decade. That's the preliminary price tag for the
Democrats' health care bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It also says the plan
will cut the federal deficit by $130 billion in that time, but can we trust these numbers?"
Weiner said the score "came out really better than we thought it would. It was a great savings
number, and so the deficit hawks now have things that they can point at and say, 'You know what?
This really does save money." Perino then asked him, "But do you think ... that those numbers can
be trusted later on?"
Johnson Jr.: "I don't expect or anticipate that their numbers are real."
On the same edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said that the "average
person" would say, "[I]f a plan costs $940 billion, tell me how I'm saving 130 billion. So it
doesn't make any sense." Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. then noted that Perino had
asked, "Do we really trust these numbers?" and claimed that "if you read carefully the latest CBO
things, they say, 'Well, we don't usually project out another 10 years.' And there's so many
variables and so many wiggle words that I don't expect or anticipate that their numbers are
real." He later said, "I think we're being spun."
Hannity calls CBO score "budgetary gimmicks and tricks." On the March 18
edition of Fox News' Hannity, host Sean Hannity called the CBO score of the health care
bill reflected "budgetary gimmicks and tricks" and said that it is "[f]lat-out dishonest" that
the score didn't contain separate legislation that cancels scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to
doctors. After guest Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) claimed "the only way that [Democrats] pay for those
additions is to reduce seniors' health care benefits on their Medicaid or raise taxes," Hannity
responded, "[W]hy would the CBO not highlight this to give a truly educational, informational,
you know, scoring of this to the American people?"
Hemmer asks Juan Williams "do you believe" the CBO long-range forecast. On
the March 18 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Fox News contributor Juan Williams
called the CBO score a "deal-maker"
because it will "reassure those independents and, by extension, those Democrats that have been on
the fence because they are deficit hawks" because of the deficit reduction. Co-host Bill Hemmer
then said to Williams, "That's 20 years out. You've lived in Washington a long time. Do you
believe that?"
Fox Nation headline: "CBO Score Called a 'Lie.' " On March 18, Fox Nation
posted a National Review article under the headline "CBO Score Called a 'Lie.' "
From Fox Nation:
By contrast, Fox News touted "favorable" CBO score of the GOP health care bill
Fox's Shively touted "favorable" CBO report on GOP health care bill and advanced
false GOP claim that GOP plan would lower premiums more than Democrats' plan. On the
November 5, 2009, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, contributor Caroline Shively
adopted the GOP spin by reporting, "Now, on the other side of the aisle, Republicans have gotten
favorable reports from the Congressional Budget Office on the cost of their health care bill. GOP
lawmakers say that means premiums for millions of families will be almost $5,000 lower under
their plan, compared to the cheapest plan in the Democrats' exchange." In fact, the $5,000
difference Shively cited ignored premium caps in the House Democrats' plan. As Media Matters
for America has noted, because
the Democrats' health care bill provides premium caps on a sliding scale based on income, the
lowest amount that a family would have to pay in premiums is significantly less than the GOP
alternative.
America's Newsroom attributes Republican talking point to CBO. On the
November 5 edition of America's Newsroom, host Martha McCallum claimed, "The nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office is saying that the Republican bill ... will carry lower costs for
Americans. The CBO estimates that health insurance premiums would be nearly $5,000 cheaper under
the Republican reforms than the Democratic ones." In fact, the CBO never made that claim. The
comparison was based on calculations done by Republican members of the House Ways and Means
Committee. From America's Newsroom:
Fox & Friends report obscures that GOP plan wouldn't cover uninsured,
wouldn't significantly lower premiums, would reduce deficit less than Democrats' plan.
Shively's Fox & Friends report ignored that the GOP plan would not cover most
uninsured Americans. Shively also did not report that the CBO estimates indicate that House
Democrats' bill lowers the deficit more than the GOP's proposal.
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