Crap worms and serious science.

[zotz]

Very annoyed by the latest MS worm. I only had two or three hundred of them, though, which isn't as many as some. Having said which, Citizen Bill's just given 100 million quid to fight malaria, so there's definitely an upside to the whole Microsoft thing.

And in other biomedical news, the much-heralded Biobank has just published its ethics framework. Unfortunately I suffer from a bigoted refusal to download documents in anything as worthless as Word format, even now that I have a WP that would almost certainly read them. Their press release is here, though. In a sensible form.

I guess the era of Big Science has now reached Biology with a vengeance. The idea of trying to link lifestyle and medical data to people's genetic makeup isn't new, but to attempt it with the ability to look for genetic variation across the whole genome has only just been possible, and to use a panel of half a million subjects . . .

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

I shalf a million enough? I'd have thought not, but I suppose it's a start.

[zotz]

Half a million people should be more than enough. This involves doing serious amounts of sequencing to identify the genetic variations in each one, so it can be related to their ongoing health and illness. The resolving power of that size of study should be quite immense.

[reddragdiva]

Bill budgeted $100m to fight AIDS in India. He also budgeted $423m to fight Linux in India.

[zotz]

He announced that 400 million of Microsoft's money was being invested to protect MS' business interests. He also announced that 100 million of his own money was going to fight AIDS in the subcontinent. Bad company . . . but I believe Andrew Carnegie was fairly ruthless in business as well.

[reddragdiva]

No, 100 million of the Foundation's money, which is almost but not quite the same thing. And has a tendency to make grants in order to fund buying Microsoft products.

[zotz]

It's close enough to being the same thing. He could still personally own that money if he wanted to.

I'm sure that any IT-related grants they give favour the use of MS products, but the proportion going towards third-world healthcare probably comes with fewer strings attached. Apparently this was 500 million dollars last year.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I suppose you've noticed that INNOGEN is recruiting web people and also mediacl/admin type people? Not sure quite what you do but might be worth a look at their website..

[zotz]

Oddly, my old boss pointed me at them a couple of days ago. Maybe the world's trying to tell me something.