I found this Economist piece interesting - it's about the difficulties translators can encounter when trying to localize software. Most software works under the expectation that the user is familiar with technical jargon like windows or caches. That's a difficult hurdle in English but it's even more challenging when the target language doesn't have an equivalent term.
Given the choice, I would never use a version of MS Office more recent than Office 2000. It all comes down to memory: the software's core functions have barely changed in the last 15 years but it uses orders of magnitude more system resources.
As an example, I opened an Excel spreadsheet of about 10,000 lines (less than a megabyte) in both Excel 2000 and the free Excel Viewer. The latter software intentionally lacks nearly all functionality. Even so, it uses more than 12 MB of memory on my machine while Excel 2000 requires just 3 MB to have the same file open. A larger spreadsheet (multiple sheets, some with well over 100,000 lines, at a total of about 29 megabytes) opened in Viewer leads to memory consumption of about 109 MB while good old Excel 2000...well, it can't open that one since it's a docx and can't even parse it with the Compatibility Pack.
The newer file format was a genuine improvement so I really can't complain about that. I'm also using a machine with 8 GB of memory. That isn't a phenomenally large amount and I can handle a bit of software bloat. I'd still rather use the old, streamlined software any day, until I consider the other feature introduced in late 20th century Office versions:
As an example, I opened an Excel spreadsheet of about 10,000 lines (less than a megabyte) in both Excel 2000 and the free Excel Viewer. The latter software intentionally lacks nearly all functionality. Even so, it uses more than 12 MB of memory on my machine while Excel 2000 requires just 3 MB to have the same file open. A larger spreadsheet (multiple sheets, some with well over 100,000 lines, at a total of about 29 megabytes) opened in Viewer leads to memory consumption of about 109 MB while good old Excel 2000...well, it can't open that one since it's a docx and can't even parse it with the Compatibility Pack.
The newer file format was a genuine improvement so I really can't complain about that. I'm also using a machine with 8 GB of memory. That isn't a phenomenally large amount and I can handle a bit of software bloat. I'd still rather use the old, streamlined software any day, until I consider the other feature introduced in late 20th century Office versions:
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| This guy. |
I've been trying out the scientific paper recommendation site Sparrho lately. It's one of those stupidly-simple designs: give it some keywords and it retrieves papers with those keywords. It can be personalized by labeling individual papers "relevant" or "irrelevant" in much the same way one might modify a Pandora playlist. The results are respectable. Sparrho has found a few papers which I probably wouldn't have seen as they're from distant fields. This one, a study about using filamentous bacteriophage to make what they call "covalently linked virus material", is a good example. I don't normally read about biointerfaces but it's an interesting application of phage to engineering.
The suggestions I've seen are better than those Google Scholar suggests. Google has also never provided me with the following suggestion:
Thanks, Sparrho. I will keep that one in mind.
The suggestions I've seen are better than those Google Scholar suggests. Google has also never provided me with the following suggestion:
There's gold in them thar science mines!
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Today, during a lecture by NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak, I learned something rather odd about how scientific publishing is rewarded in China. Dr. Tabak cited this 2011 article in the context of data reproducibility; it shows how researchers are explicitly paid by their host institutions to publish their results. One first-author paper in Nature or Science could yield up to 200,000 RMB (about US $32,560), at least at Zhejiang University. For context, a Chinese researcher with a stellar, international reputation might make that much in a year at a Chinese university.* Authors are frequently rewarded smaller amounts depending on whether they're first author (other authors get less, though I wonder what the senior author receives) and the journal's impact factor.
There are at least two obvious issues here. The first is that the Chinese system essentially formalizes how scientific careers actually work. A first-author Science paper may not net a cash prize in most countries but it'll turn nearly any CV into solid gold. Most researchers don't get paid by the publication but they won't get paid if they never publish.** More worrying are the potential results of either system (that is, either explicit or implicit payment-per-publication). When jobs depend on whether the science works, the science is going to work, one way or another. That tends to be a problem when someone finally discovers that the science never worked to begin with.
*Source: a comment on a blog post about the 2011 article in question. See also.
**Paying scientists for individual papers mostly sounds like freelance writing. It's an interesting counterpoint to my rant about postdocs last week. Postdocs aren't really employees yet they're expected to perform as if they were for brief yet intense periods of time. Perhaps scientists are closer to, say, freelance bloggers than we may think.
There are at least two obvious issues here. The first is that the Chinese system essentially formalizes how scientific careers actually work. A first-author Science paper may not net a cash prize in most countries but it'll turn nearly any CV into solid gold. Most researchers don't get paid by the publication but they won't get paid if they never publish.** More worrying are the potential results of either system (that is, either explicit or implicit payment-per-publication). When jobs depend on whether the science works, the science is going to work, one way or another. That tends to be a problem when someone finally discovers that the science never worked to begin with.
*Source: a comment on a blog post about the 2011 article in question. See also.
**Paying scientists for individual papers mostly sounds like freelance writing. It's an interesting counterpoint to my rant about postdocs last week. Postdocs aren't really employees yet they're expected to perform as if they were for brief yet intense periods of time. Perhaps scientists are closer to, say, freelance bloggers than we may think.
flow instabilities in Felis catus
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My sister forwarded me this recent issue of the Rheology Bulletin, notable for its article On the rheology of cats (starts p.16). I am no rheologist but my sister is a food scientist and the field is a bit closer to the type of material she studies. That being said, cats are not food but they are fluid. A selected quotes:
Fig. 2b gives an example of a lotus effect of Felis catus, suggesting that the substrate is superfelidaphobic. This behavior is usually distinguished from the yield stress that cats can also display, as shown in Fig. 2c, where the kitten cannot flow because it is below its yield stress, like ketchup in its bottle.If you read one paper about fluid dynamics today, make it this one about cats.