The one about CERN

About a month ago I visited CERN, arguably the most famous research organization in Europe. It is the place where the World Wide Web has been invented, and the home of the Large Hadron Collider. I was very excited about the trip, much like Sheldon Cooper. Here are some facts which were new to me:... about CERN:CERN was founded after the WWII by a bunch of European countries. They were exhausted by...

Oh noes, it's women CEOs!

Today at Scientopia I discuss the latest debate raging across the pond - hiring quotas to ensure there are more women CEOs of compani...

How NOT to train for the 2011 Soiled Sport Trail Series

Should the snow ever stops falling and temperatures decide to ever rise above freezing, the start of the Soiled Sport 2011 Trail Running Series will start on April 2nd at Meadowlilly Trail.Our 2010 Trail Series winner, Chuck Edwards, will cut the ribbon at the trail head to start our 31 weeks of trail running bliss.As always, you will be awarded points for each Saturday trail you attend and complete along with any Ontario Ultra Series race. Bonus...

happy weekend.

i feel like this is a good thought to send us off into the weekend....it's easy to get caught up in wanting all the "stuff" and living "the life"...i need to remind myself that i am ultimately a mom so wiping my children's nose for 100th time is my duty, as well as cleaning spit up off the new rug, hanging out in the doctor's office sick room for 2 hrs, and wearing mix match pj's is just a fact of...

Polyphenols, Hormesis and Disease: Part II

In the last post, I explained that the body treats polyphenols as potentially harmful foreign chemicals, or "xenobiotics". How can we reconcile this with the growing evidence that at least a subset of polyphenols have health benefits?Clues from Ionizing RadiationOne of the more curious things that has been reported in the scientific literature is that although high-dose ionizing radiation (such as X-rays) is clearly harmful, leading to cancer, premature...

frozen pizza...

since moving a little over a month ago, our family's nutrition hasn't been the best.  when you are surrounded by boxes and you can't find your silverware, you tend to eat not so good for you things.  i think one of our major food groups was frozen pizza.  i'm over convenient food and craving getting back into the kitchen and cooking.  not necessarily fancy meals, but good for you...

Rabu, 23/02/2011 08:29 WIB Bawang Putih Mampu Membersihkan Plak di Pembuluh DarahVera Farah Bararah - detikHealthJakarta, Bawang putih lebih dikenal untuk mengatasi tekanan darah tinggi. Peneliti menemukan mengonsumsi bawang putih bisa berfungsi membersihkan arteri atau pembuluh darah.Bawang putih bisa memperlambat perkembangan aterosklerosis, yaitu suatu kondisi yang bisa menyebabkan plak dan berbahaya bagi pembuluh darah.National Center for Complementary...

NCCDC is coming - My favorite time of year

Once a year the fine folks at the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition invite a team of people to participate in their event as red or white team members. I'm happy to announce that I've been asked to return as captain of the red team this year again on April 8-10 in San Antonio, Texas. I got my start as a professional in network security and though I speak about computer forensics publicly we at G-C still do network security for select...

dream home

today i am over at la dolce vita sharing my idea of a "dream house"....hope to see you over there! thanks so much paloma for letting me dream...it's kind of nice considering currently i am surrounded by runny noses, laundry, and dirty dishes...

Sorry, but don't apologize

One of the bits of advice floating around for scientists is, "Don't apologize for your work". Usually this advice is dispensed within the context of giving a presentation - don't start a presentation with, "Sorry", don't apologize for unreadable graphs, etc.But I think this advice should be extended to all professional scientific communication. If you hurt someone's feelings or spill their coffee, absolutely you should apologize. Of course you...

Youth Training Announced for Green Code Meetings

The next round of Green Code meetings has been announced! The meetings will take place between Monday, February 28th and Saturday, March 5th. Check out the map to find the meeting closest to you!HKHC Buffalo has been working closely with its partners to determine the best ways to get Buffalo youth out to the meetings. We have met with many community groups and youth leadership groups - including...

my new "grab bag"

i have something new going on at the Designer's Attic on Fridays now....it's my version of an instant room!  i had a lot of fun making the first one...i hope y'all will enjoy it too!  thanks jenny for the twitter shout out, i'm honored you like it...

New year, New book!

Hello Readers,                       I thought I'd take this weeks post to announce that I just signed the contract with McGraw Hill to write a new book. It will be called 'Computer Forensics, A Beginner's Guide'. It's meant for those of you already in the IT field who are looking for a jump start into your first computer forensics investigations....

Prescient spam

I work in area X. I recently wrote a paper on area X_1, and submitted it to a conference. It was rejected. So I revised it and resubmitted it to a more topic-relevant conference, and it is currently under review. There is absolutely nothing in the public sphere indicating that I have done work in field X_1 that I am aware of.Today I got a spammy email from one of those shady journals that spams anyone who ever published something in IEEE Xplore or...

Those who trade security for coffee deserve neither

A recent article reports results from a survey which shows, among other things, that companies are spending more money on coffee for their employees than securing their "web applications", whatever that means. (In this day and age, is there any application that doesn't have at least some network-facing capability?)In any case, being an advocate of both strong coffee and strong encryption, I can understand the dilemma. You need to caffeinate...

these past couple of sunny days can do wonders for a girl.  grey days totally mess with my mood!!  i am longing for spring...i hope these pretty days are here to stay...*images courtesy of suzie beezie, emily henderson, design darling, my home ideas, emily hender...

Gallaudet University plans to cut Computer Science

Read this, and tell me if anything looks unusual to you:Be it resolved that the Board of Trustees, recognizing the need to strategically reallocate resources, approves the recommendation of the university administration to close the following major degree programs: • Ed.S. Change Leadership in Education • M.S. Administration • Ph.D. Special Education Administration • M.A. Deaf Studies: Deaf History • M.S. Leisure Services Administration • B.S. Computer...

Check yo self

FSP's post today on getting blogged about reminded me of something I meant to write about awhile ago. And that is - ways to actively monitor how others talk about you publicly.I highly suggest setting up several Google Alerts. This is a great service that emails you whenever someone mentions your name on a site Google indexes*. You can set this up for general search results, as well as for blogs, twitter, and news articles.You also can set up citation...

questions answered...

i had several questions and emails about painting my kitchen so i thought i would do one last post and then you don't have to hear about it anymore :)painting: while i would love to say that i was cool enough to tackle this project myself, i'm not.  i left it to the professionals but i did buy all of the supplies so i can guide you a little on what they used.  our cabinets were a light stained...

Top Secret Rosies

A special "rose" for you for Valentine's Day - I've just posted at Scientopia about the incredible new documentary "Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWI...

Polyphenols, Hormesis and Disease: Part I

What are Polyphenols?Polyphenols are a diverse class of molecules containing multiple phenol rings. They are synthesized in large amounts by plants, certain fungi and a few animals, and serve many purposes, including defense against predators/infections, defense against sunlight damage and chemical oxidation, and coloration. The color of many fruits and vegetables, such as blueberries, eggplants, red potatoes and apples comes from polyphenols. ...

Sejarah Linux/unix

Nama Linux merupakan kombinasi unik antara nama penciptanya dan namasistem operasi yang menjadi targetnya (UNIX). Semuanyaberawal dari sebuahsistem operasi bernama Minix. Minix dibuat oleh Profesor Andrew Tanenbaum.Minix adalah sistem operasi mirip UNIX yang bekerja pada PC.Torvald adalah salah seorang mahasiswa di Universitas Helsinki yangmenggunakan Minix. Walaupun cukup bagus, ia belum menganggap...

Oh no, it's GroupWise!

Hi there Reader,For many years when I talked to a client about their network environment, these would be my words 'Oh no, it's GroupWise!' but not anymore!Read more...

Dear Randall

You are, truly, the reason why Computer Scientists* make fantastic comic writers. Thanks for making me laugh today.♥,FCS(*) I guess technically you're a physicist, but really, what's a few bits and atoms between friends?http://xkcd.com/8...

My Gluten-Free January

I've been avoiding most gluten, particularly wheat, for over a year now. I never had obvious symptoms that I could clearly link to eating wheat, although I had my suspicions. I've made many changes to my diet over the last decade, and I feel much better than I did ten years ago, but it's hard to disentangle all the factors. I don't think I ever went an entire month without eating any gluten at all before this January. After posting Matt Lentzner's...

The Role of CS Postdocs

The Computing Research Association (CRA), the major professional organization for Computer Science in the US, has a new white paper on the role of postdocs in CS Research. It's excellent, very thorough, and has several interesting graphs. (Including who's hired in what areas over the past few years.) The white paper is up for people to leave comments if they are so inclined, until March 15th.I...

Phew!!

it's taken me long enough but i think my kitchen is finally okay to show y'all. when we moved in the previous owners had a lot of green accents throughout the house so the kitchen color made sense with their design scheme (real estate listing pic).when our stuff moved in, the color stuck out a little (and a bomb went off obviously)...i debated and debated on what direction I wanted to go with the...

Gluten-Free January Raffle!

Hi, Gluten-Free January participants. Matt, Janine and I have collected about 200 survey responses at this point. So far, the results are very interesting! But we want to get as many responses as possible, because the more responses we get, the more informative the data will be for all of us. So please fill out the survey Matt sent you by e-mail, no matter what your results were, and no matter...

Punch Beating

Recently, two different people have told me they were all excited about a revolutionary new idea, went to the literature to read about it, and found someone had already invented it.I said: "Great!"They said: "Great?"I say "great!" for several reasons:1) You clearly had a great idea if somebody else already came up with it.2) You are capable of lots and lots of great ideas and will have more2.1) People who only have one great idea usually have very...

i can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it makes me truly happy...my kitchen is 99% done...i need to clean it up, hang some pictures, and squirt some mrs. meyers and it will be ready to go.  can't thank my dad and hubby enough for doing the backsplash and lighting this weekend!  hope y'all are having a wonderful monday...i can finally say i am...

Scientopia

The folks over at Scientopia have kindly invited me to join their blogging community. I have accepted, and created a new blog called The Difference Engine.I've decided to keep this blog going, because as much as the Blogger UI drives me nuts I actually kind of like it. And I like that I can metaphorically and literally paint the walls purple here without troubling anyone.So over there I will post occasionally (weekly I hope),...

Assorted Thoughts About the 2010 Dietary Guidelines

In the past week, I've been rooting through the USDA's 2010 Dietary Guidelines (1). Here are a few of my thoughts.PositiveOne of the things I've been enjoying recently is watching health authorities shift away from a nutrient-oriented philosophy in favor of a more food-oriented philosophy. For example, I recently read a nice editorial by Drs. Dariush Mozaffarian and David S. Ludwig (not associated with the USDA) that encapsulates this (2). Here's...

Cryptocontributions

John Regehr of Embedded in Academia has a great post about Cryptocontributions in writing:Even when interesting and unexpected results make it into a paper (as opposed to being dismissed outright either by the PI or by a student doing the work) the discussion of them is often buried deep in some subsection of the the paper. When this happens — and the interesting development is not even mentioned in the abstract or conclusion — I call...