The Real Reason Craig Venter May Deserve A #Nobel Prize: Contains a plug for the engineers behind 454 & #Illumina
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/11/01/the-real-reason-craig-venter-may-deserve-a-nobel-prize
Unreliable research: Nice #stats graphic showing why many of the positive results of low-powered studies are false
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble
Nice graphic showing when testing lots of hypotheses, most of which are negative, using low powered studies, coupled with a reasonable FDR, results in most of the positive conclusions being false.
Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not
QT:
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A statistically powerful study is one able to pick things up even when their effects on the data are small. In general bigger studies—those which run the experiment more times, recruit more patients for the trial, or whatever—are more powerful. A power of 0.8 means that of ten true hypotheses tested, only two will be ruled out because their effects are not picked up in the data; this is widely accepted as powerful enough for most purposes. But this benchmark is not always met, not least because big studies are more expensive. A study in April by Dr Ioannidis and colleagues found that in neuroscience the typical statistical power is a dismal 0.21; writing in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Marjan Bakker of the University of Amsterdam and colleagues reckon that in that field the average power is 0.35.
….
With this in mind, consider 1,000 hypotheses being tested of which just 100 are true (see chart). Studies with a power of 0.8 will find 80 of them, missing 20 because of false negatives. Of the 900 hypotheses that are wrong, 5%—that is, 45 of them—will look right because of type I errors. Add the false positives to the 80 true positives and you have 125 positive results, fully a third of which are specious. If you dropped the statistical power from 0.8 to 0.4, which would seem realistic for many fields, you would still have 45 false positives but only 40 true positives. More than half your positive results would be wrong.
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The Best Way for Americans to Reduce Their #Energy Use: Quantify It. Is Your House a Prius, a Malibu or a Hummer?
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304644104579194033304041984
Metrics seem to be key. Insulation is mentioned… but not that much!
One day in 1997, while supervising a well in north Texas, a group of geologists made a small mistake that would help change the future of fracking.
Accidental Discovery That Revolutionized American Energy: Steinsberger & Mitchell, behind key bits of #fracking tech
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/breakthrough-the-accidental-discovery-that-revolutionized-american-energy/281193
Breakthrough: The Accidental Discovery That Revolutionized American Energy
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/breakthrough-the-accidental-discovery-that-revolutionized-american-energy/281193
Interesting discussion by Ken Dill reviewing the field of protein folding over the past 50 years. Dr Dill links it to a number of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and type II diabetes, which are transmitted by aberrantly folding proteins. There is also a bit of discussion about folding landscapes in the funnel.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6110/1042
The #Protein-Folding Problem, 50 Years On: Broad review, ranging from funnels to misfolded proteins & Alzheimer’s
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6110/1042
Interesting discussion about the creation of smart rocks and smart pebbles, which allow the tracking of current. These contain a data logger embedded in either aluminum or plastic. The tricky bit is how one finds them after they have been dropped off. Some ways might be radio transmitters, metal detectors and so forth but all of these have downsides.
How to Build a Smarter #Rock? Put a data #logger into aluminum or plastic; then track via radio or metal detector
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6113/1412.summary
Trash Incinerator Roof Will Double as Ski Slope: Inventive Urban Adaptation http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/01/incinerator-roof-ski-slope #environment
What If #Extinction Is Not Forever? & Is Genetically Reversible? Developers might preserve specimens before building
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6128/32