nodalpoint.org

Via the always very very good snowdeal: Biologist quits research laboratory to earn more money fitting gas boilers. Karl Gensberg, 41, has been a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham for 13 years discovered his plumber earned more money. So he retrained as a boiler fitter, so what is everyone planing to retrain as ? Janitor, carpenter, wine maker ?

Interesting list of Journal declarations of independence, where editors from a journal have resigned in order to launch a comparable journal with a friendlier publisher.

Once again I find myself recommending a link from Snowdeal and a link to The Scientist, specifically this article on software maintenance (free registration).

Some really choice quotes here (and as an aside, some confusion over the noun for "one who practices bioinformatics" - they try "bioinformatician" and the surely-misspelt "bioinformatist"):

Excellent article on the work of the Bioteam at Sun Life Sciences.

Some really choice quotes here, including answers to the perennial "why do we need local resources when we have e.g. the NCBI" type questions, often to be heard around our school...

via snowdeal:

Apple releases new workgroup cluster

So admittedly I'm a Mac guy trapped in a PC world, but this had me drooling. It wouldn't be as much fun as building a cluster yourself, but still, this is a pretty impressive system for the money. Plus in comes preinstalled with BLAST, hmmer, clustalW and more from BioTeam's Inquiry) I wonder if I can talk my boss into this......

The University of Puerto Rico High Performance Computing facility (HPCf) and
the Puerto Rico Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN-PR) are
pleased to announce the release of bioknoppix.

Science magazine and online has a special feature on Mathematics in Biology, in which the interface between these two disciplines is reexamined. I'm particularly impressed by William Bialek and David Botstein's article, in which they argue for a common core education for all science degrees, to replace the hitherto "soft" biology approach.

GenomeDiagram: A genomic and biological sequence schematic drawing package using BioPython.

Via boingboing:

Extremophiles comprise principally bacteria, which have the remarkable ability to thrive in conditions that would be hazardous to other lifeforms - extremes of temperature, radiation, salinity, and metal toxicity...
One promising discovery is a glycoprotein which prevents Antarctic fish from freezing... Other Antarctic discoveries include an extract from green algae for use in cosmetic skin treatment, and anti-tumour properties in a strain of yeast.

Read the Original BBC story.

The Snowdeal links down the bottom right of this page are often worth following. Currently there is much news from the 1st annual Frontiers in Bioinformatics conference at the UB Bioinformatics Center.
Seems there are mixed feeling about what might be achieved and how long it might take - par for the research course then! The center is also being touted as something of a "jobs saviour" for the region, which may or may not be a good thing. Still, with Hilary Clinton behind them, how can they fail. My favourite quote: "One 4,000-processor supercomputer is worth a thousand words" [Skolnick] said.