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2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine

Tue, 2004-10-05 10:29 — chris

This year's Nobel went to Richard Axel and Linda Buck

"for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system"


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Tue, 2004-10-05 21:07 — Neil

And go informatics

Reading some background to this work is interesting. There is what you might call some "insight through informatics":

"I had tried so many things and had been working so hard for years, with nothing to show for it", says Buck. Axel then highlights 3 key strategies that she used to get results (my italics):

"Her first assumption


Sun, 2005-03-13 19:44 — chris

True enough... It seems to me

True enough... It seems to me (and this is not a particularly novel insight, by any means) that one is at a loss if one cannot:

  • Interact with people in the field;
  • Combine disparate sources of information
  • Do both efficiently and retrievably

    • So although faffing about with your geek tools may sometimes be displacement activity (no!), there is an intangible benefit: that of increasing your power and acuracy of information retrieval. Sounds a little sententious, but it's really just the Google principle...


    Tue, 2004-10-05 10:52 — Neil

    Go puns

    Of course, this has led to inumerable headlines, all based around the "sweet smell of success" theme. Gah.
    It's fascinating research though and interesting how much of our genome is comprised of these genes, both working and remnant.