Once in a while, /. comes good (tip: just go to the story links, ignore the comments). This just in: 96 Processors Under Your Desktop, a concept called the "cluster workstation". See also tech blog story, press release and CNET news.
The 12-CPU, 24 GB RAM model apparently markets for <USD 10 000. I want.
PLEASE NOTE: Nodalpoint recently moved servers (we got cracked), during the move I lost the figures, images and data from this article.
Looking for any possible distraction from writing my PhD thesis I have tracked and analyzed the first artificial meme (a GoMeme) through the blogosphere. The GoMeme was observed to mutate, and those mutations propagated. Limited evidence suggests that the network is scale free.
A meme can be defined as self-propagating unit of information similar to the biological concept of a gene, the term was first used by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene). Familiar examples of Internet memes are well known: I kiss you, All your base are belong to us, The Nike sweatshop story and more recently p23s5 and the order of words meme. Memes are are often considered "idea viruses" that spread in communities, with many believing that various religions can be considered meme like. The study of memes, termed "memetics", has seen recent interest in the blogosphere, with many people keen to understand how ideas spread through weblogs. However the means of tracking memes, how network structure relates to the spread of memes and elucidation of the characteristics of a meme have not been well studied.
This is probably old news for many here, but I just discovered a list of BioMed Central RSS feeds. It includes a range of journals and news sources (including my favourite, The Scientist).
Surely all journals should provide their current contents as RSS? Nature does, Science doesn't so far as I can tell. It's a great way to quickly check the latest publications, in a news reader or on your website. I was about to say that I'm amazed how few biologists are aware of RSS...but actually, I'm not surprised at all.
Anyone know any other comprehensive, relevant RSS listings?
Biobar is a search toolbar for searching bioinformatics databases including NCBI, EBI, DDBJ, Plant, Animal and Functional data collections. At the present moment, over 20 different databases can be searched from the toolbar. The toolbar can be installed on firefox, mozilla and netscape (1.6+) browsers.
In addition to its searching capabilities, biobar also provides quick links to bioinformatics tools for sequence, structural and functional tools on the internet.
This essay (ps) by Michael Nielsen gave me pause for thought. Although written from a theoretical physicist's perspective, he discusses many issues relevant to all scientists. His problem solver/problem creator analogy is reflected in an essay (ps) by Fields medallist Timothy Gowers, based on the two cultures principle by CP Snow.
For another spin on the current status of the two cultures phenomenon, visit the ever-current Edge
I should read Wired Magazine more often. Current stories include 10th anniversary of the Beowulf but more interestingly, a 10-page article on Craig Venter's global circumnavigation and plans to "sequence the globe". Whatever you think of the guy, it's a fascinating read.
Interesting debate over at The Scientist, on the relative merits of BLAST from Paracel versus the NCBI.
I've long been interested in Paracel, except (1) I don't like paying for software, (2) I work in circumstances where I can't pay for software. Interestingly, Tom Madden from NCBI says:
"NCBI currently runs 150,000 searches a day, at peaks of 180 searches a minute, on a distributed system of CPUs," Madden writes in an E-mail. The NCBI hopes to make this version of BLAST publicly available in about six months, Madden says.
Some other notes on 64-bit, AMD Opteron, cluster architecture and so on.
