Linxe's eye

Phoronix had prepared a second test, now is testing also Fedora 7 to 10 and compare the results with the big U. In my consideration, Fedora became slow in some parts, but there are some results showing big problems with the U like this: So, if you improve your user-friendly don't means you need better hardware every release. Testing many version of a same distro can show its evolution. Whatever, I'm happy with my Mandriva 2009.

Last day, I need to download some sequences from NCBI GenBank, I have a list of ids, typically I used BioPerl to connect and get the fasta sequence of each one, with a code like this: #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use Bio::DB::GenBank; my $gb = new Bio::DB::GenBank; open F, "gene_list" or die "cannot open genes_list\n"; while (<F>) { chomp; my $seq = $gb->get_Seq_by_id($_); print $seq->seq; } Because Broadcast with Mac OS X 10.5.X cannot compile the BioPerl modules (I found many problems when you try to compile from source code, because many dependencies are broken). So, I take a look to BioPython , install it (with some warnings and missing optional packages), and use the next script: #!/ usr /bin/python from Bio import Entrez Entrez .email = "mymail@something.org" # Always tell NCBI who you are f = open("genes_list", "r") while True: myid = f. readline () if not myid : break handle = Entrez . efetch (db="n...

I will not comment this article, I still want to conserve my U-emo-friends, so please read the original in Phoronix: Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 Benchmarks: Is Ubuntu Getting Slower? Yes, but still looks nice in brown/gold ;)

Are my computers happier? Source: Abstruse Goose

This week in one of most famous scientific journals has been published this report: Camara CG, Escobar JV, Hird JR, Putterman SJ, "Correlation between nanosecond X-ray flashes and stick–slip friction in peeling tape.", Nature 455, 1089-1092 (23 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07378 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7216/abs/nature07378.html Abstract: Relative motion between two contacting surfaces can produce visible light, called triboluminescence. This concentration of diffuse mechanical energy into electromagnetic radiation has previously been observed to extend even to X-ray energies. Here we report that peeling common adhesive tape in a moderate vacuum produces radio and visible emission, along with nanosecond, 100-mW X-ray pulses that are correlated with stick–slip peeling events. For the observed 15-keV peak in X-ray energy, various models give a competing picture of the discharge process, with the length of the gap between the separating faces of the tape b...

From: http://hackaday.com/2008/10/20/bjork-teaches-you-about-electronics/

Bioinformatics Zen had released the results in a text-file of the Bioinformatic Career Survey 2008 , the survey include data from ~650 people from academia and industry, it's interesting to take a look in the data, I summarize this in some graphics: Career Background Bioinformatics area Computer Language