August 20th, 2011
We sailed on the boat of Turmares in Tarifa, hosted by Whale Watch Tarifa.
We sailed along the Spanish coast of the Strait of Gibraltar and the north-African one. It was a bright afternoon with good visibility.
I remembered to flash up my GPS device in the middle of the trip to record the coordinates of the whale watching trip. We saw the dolphins in southern points of the itinerary and the fin whale near the entrance of the Tarifa port.
Spotted lots of striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba):
Among the birds, shearwaters, a young alcatraz. The best surprise was a sighting of a (leatherback?) sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea?).
We failed to spot killer whales (Orcinus orca). The local killer whales usually move from the north of Africa to Spain in the second half of July. This year they remain busy near Morocco, apparently enjoying easy catches from the local fishermen.
The captain insisted to find a whale before heading back to Tarifa. He managed to spot a fin whale. This was a special moment. We only managed to see the top of the head and upper back of the whale. That was enought to appreciate how huge that beast is. The jets of water are very conspicuous and powerful.
The guides at Whale Watch Tarifa are friendly, although their English is a bit lacking. The founder started taking 76 tourists in her first season to sea, in the mid 1990′s. The captain of the Turmares ship showed the cabin and the navigation instruments.
June 25th, 2011
Nature published a seminal case of successful genome sequencing for one single patient. A chronic disease was identified and treated thanks to a study costing about US$100,000. The study took two months. Scaling of technologies, uptake of demand and economics of the sequencing process will, in a few years time, drop the cost of full sequencing to $1,000 per patient.
Therapeutical uses of personal genomics other than diagnostics include diseases risk prediction, response to drugs
Paternity tests are by far the most popular use of the sequencing of personal genetic information. Other uses are being explored commercially, led by 23andme:
- find the geographical original of the ancestry
- track the migrations of the lineage
- connect with living cousins
Pricing models are being tested, with upfront fees of $99 followed by $9 monthly subscriptions for at least one year. The company allegedly has 65,000 customers so far. In contrast to its high profile in the technology, Internet and media, 23andme features a bit less than 10,000 followers at the time of writing this post on Twitter. Concerns over privacy protection of individuals of the business model and the lack of regulation of therapeutical uses of the information have been covered in the mdia. The article about the company on Wikipedia includes the history of the relation of direct-to-consumer gene tests and regulators. New York State sent ‘cease and disease’ letters in 2008 to 23andMe, Navigenics, Illumina , DeCode and Affymetrix.
Some laboratories go as far as to offer turnkey labs, complete with project, building, training and transfer of technology and technical support.
May 19th, 2011
Heather Stark @HAStark blogging at Insight Analysis
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Feed posts statistics via Facebook insights
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K-factor
May 2nd, 2011
Milko Kelemen is a Croatian composer. I got to heard one of his works in The Forge, a small venue in Camden, London.
The programmes of the Forge puches well above its weight. They invited Diana Brekalo to perform a piano concert on March 2nd 2011. Brekalo is a mesmerising and versatile pianist who treated an audience of 14 with Brahms’ Klavierstücke, Opp 117 & 119, Mozart’s Rondo No. 3 in A minor and some works by Liszt. I did enjoy Brahms and Mozart a lot.
The surprise of the evening was Milko Kelemen’s Sonata. Never mind punk, heavy metal and drum&bass if you need some tough action on your eardrums. Although the Sonata has been performed around 200 times so far at the major venues, I do not know of any recording. If you can read sheet music you might get a taste of how much rage and frustration can be distilled into a piano composition. Brekalo hit the keyboard with an energy that you can hardly imagine in the body of the elegant German pianist. Her hands moved so fast that you could hardly see them stomping salvagely across the range.
Kelemen, born in 1924, composed his Sonata in 1954. The three-movement work reflects Kelemen’s disappointment of the autarchic drift of the Yugoslavian regimen. The piece features Classic and ethnical elements although I could not identify most of them. I was most impressed by the stream of angry vibes. You could almost figure out the depths of the despise of a musician trained in Europe and most probably trapped by the threads of the aparatchik of the Yugoslavian elites back home.
