Do you miss your bad germs after you were sick? If you do, this is for you …
Nice outfit too. Found out about this from Laist.
Tag: humor
Winner of the biggest & best overselling of the microbiome -@theallium on Salmonella Diet
OK. Now this is some serious overselling of the microbiome: New Salmonella diet achieves “amazing” weight-loss for microbiologist | The Allium. A must read for anyone interested in microbes and microbiomes. My favorite part:
“For some time now, we have known that the microbes of the gut – what we term the “microbiome” – play a very important role in our daily lives. What we eat, how healthy we feel, etc. is all controlled by our microbiome. In fact, nothing else is important to our health, except the microbiome – it can defeat cancer, cure hunger, poverty, restore amputated limbs, everything”, said Dr. Nofit.
Although it might seem to be an exaggeration, I think this Dr. Nofit must be correct. I will now never claim that anyone has oversold the microbiome, because, well, it does everything.
Top alternatives to quilt plots and heat maps
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| Quilt Plot from PLOS One |
If you have missed the uproar over Quilt Plots and whether or not they are Heat Maps, well, you have then missed the uproar over Quilt Plots and whether or not they are Heat Maps. It has been uproarious. But you may not know that the literature pre-anticipated this uproar and many already developed alternatives, even if they did not know it. And here are the top ones.
Guilt plots
In “Prediction of gene function by genome-scale expression analysis: prostate cancer-associated genes” by Walker et al. they report the development of a method “we call Guilt-by-Association (GBA).” Unfortunately, and amazingly, there are NO FIGURES IN THE PAPER. Fortunately, lots of other people have done similar GBA methods. A figure from one such study is below
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| A Guilt Plot |
Alas even though some people now call these Eisengrams, they certainly should have been called Guilt Plots. And that is what I am renaming them.
Beet maps
Not much to say other than this is simply visionary:
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| Beet Map |
Wheat maps
Jorge Dubcovsky at UC Davis just won the Wolf Prize. What did he win it for. Wheat Maps of course. Like this one from a Genetics paper in 1996.
Seat maps
If only someone had thought to make maps of seating arrangements in different facilities, like stadiums, or planes, they could have been famous. Oh well.
Meat maps
I love meat maps. They are just awesome. And here are a few good ones. And each should be trademarked in some way
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| Meat Map from Grist |
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| An App of Course |
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| The Meat Map of the World |
Feet maps
OK. I don’t really know what reflexology is but the “feet maps” here are cool to look at.
Tilt plots
See this one.
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| Tilt Plot |
Wilt Plots
Many different kinds here. This one is nice
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| A Wilt Plot |
Of course there are so many more maps and plots that are on par with quilt plots that I could go on like forever. I may post more – stay tuned. This is just exciting stuff.
Science music video of the week: Some budding yeast I used to grow
Hat tip to Gian Baucom and Susan Perkins
The biggest academic scam ever (caution – attempt at humor here)
Bad words: Nebraska declares many words and names to be off limits when spelled/written
For immediate release
From the Nebraska State Government Headquarters
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In response to criticisms of our handling of the sign language based signing of a child’s name we have decided that it would only be rationale to also apply the same standard to written and spoken words. Therefore, be it declared that any words or names that are one letter substitution away from anything bad should be banned.
For example, due to the danger associated with the word G-U-N (which we note – we are just spelling here but not actually writing the word) the following names have been banned: GUS, GUY and the following words are not allowed either GUM, GUY, BUN, RUN, SUN, FUN, GIN, PUN, GUT
For similar reasons it has been deemed that the following names and words to be banned:
- Names: Ash, Bart, Buck, Butch, Cam, Coco, Dick, Dirk, Fitch, Huck, Luck, Mitch, Nick, Santorum, Tito
- Words: abs, ads, ash, ask, asp, batch, bits, buck, bum, bunt, butch, can’t, cart, cent, chit, cub, cud, cup, cut, dart, deck, dice, dink, disk, diss, ditch, dock, dock, duck, fare, farm, fits, fort, funk, hiss, hitch, hits, hum, hunt, itch, jock, kick, kiss, kits, lick, lock, luck, miss, mock, muck, mum, nits, part, pick, pitch, pits, puck, punt, rock, rum, runt, santorum, shin, ship, shot, sick, sits, skit, slit, snit, sock, spit, such, sum, tart, tats, tick, tins, tips, tots, tuck, wart, witch, wits, yuck, yum
To help everyone out we have organized the names into clusters based on the banned word (which we would rather not spell out here).
Group 1:
- Names: Butch, Fitch, Mitch
- Words: batch, butch, witch, ditch, hitch, pitch, itch
Group 2:
- Names: Coco
- Words: dock, jock, lock, mock, rock, sock
Group 3:
- Names: Tito
- Words: tots, tats, bits, fits, hits, kits, nits, pits, sits, wits, tins, tips,
Group 4:
- Names: Ash
- Words: ash, abs, ads, ask, asp,
Group 5:
- Names: Bart
- Words: farm, fare, fort, cart, dart, part, tart, wart
Group 6:
- Names: Santorum
- Words: santorum
Group 7:
- Names:
- Words: spit, slit, skit, snit, chit, shot, shin, ship
Group 8:
- Names: Huck, Luck, Buck
- Words: funk, buck, duck, luck, muck, puck, tuck, yuck, such
Group 9:
- Names:
- Words: can’t, cent, bunt, hunt, punt, runt
Group 11:
- Names:
- Words: miss, diss, hiss, kiss,
Group 12:
- Names: Nick, Dirk,
- Words: kick, lick, pick, sick, tick, deck, dock, disk, dink, dice
Group 13:
- Names: Cam
- Words: gum, bum, rum, hum, mum, sum, yum, cut, cud, cub, cup, cut
More groups / banned words coming
Trying to track down source of cartoon about coining "ome" words #badomics
I have this cartoon of direct relevance to my crusade to end the use of badomics words. I have been trying to track where it came from for – like – ever. And though I did not want to post it without getting permission I have decided to do so to try and track it’s source. Here it is
I note – I tried using Google Image search (see a discussion of how to do this here) and it finds some other versions of this cartoon online but none of them have a source for it either.
So – does anyone out there know where this came from?
Mars Curiosity discussion on Colbert
Microbe humor of the week: Jon Stewart from 1999 on Giant Bacterium
Jon Stewart from 1999 on Giant Bacterium
Best. Microbiology. Video. Ever.
Well, I could say so so much about this. But it speaks for itself. Funny. Gross. Cute. And more. Just watched it – like – seven times in a row. Best. Microbiology. Video. Ever.
From Jennifer Gardy.
Jonathan Eisen's Lab 