During my postdoc in Jernej Ule’s lab at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK), we studied the genome-wide regulation of splicing (aka, alternative splicing, but these days all splicing is “alternative”). This involved integrating information on protein-RNA interactions with information on splicing isoforms (mRNA transcript variants from the same gene) from next generation sequencing. I could spend hours talking to you about how complicated this type of thing can get. Or, I can show you this figure from Eduardo Eyras.
Author: Josh Witten
http://www.thefinchandpea.com
This is not a Prisoner’s Dilemma, or is it?
A little bit ago, Cory Doctorow posted a story from Inside Higher Ed about students organizing to beat the curve in a Johns Hopkins computer science class. The professor, Peter Fröhlich, scales grades based on the highest grade1. The students all refused to take the test, making the highest grade a 0. Thus, a 0 was an A, meaning they all got As.
…students in Fröhlich’s…classes decided to test the limits of the policy, and collectively planned to boycott the final. Because they all did, a zero was the highest score in each of the three classes, which, by the rules of Fröhlich’s curve, meant every student received an A…The students waited outside the rooms to make sure that others honored the boycott, and were poised to go in if someone had. – Zack Burdyk, “Dangerous Curves” from Inside Higher Ed
Doctorow labeled this as a solution to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. A brief perusal of the 113 comments on his post will convince you that the internet thinks that this is NOT an example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Continue reading “This is not a Prisoner’s Dilemma, or is it?”
’80s Creep – Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme
Everyone identifies the 1980s as the decade before the discovery of irony. I grew up in the ’80s and will testify that they were frighteningly sincere. What is forgotten when we look at the ’80s is that social trends do not care for arbitrary time units. There was a lot of “’80s” in the ’90s* – a point proven by the release in 1990 of Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme. In Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme, Mother Goose goes missing and her son must embark on a musical adventure to find her before bad things happen. What makes Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme ’80s sincere is the star level at the time of the singing nursery rhyme characters he encounters on his way. Harry Anderson (Night Court) is Peter Piper. Cyndi Lauper is the Mary who had a little lamb. Little Richard (co-inventor of rock ‘n’ roll) is a very merry Old King Cole. ZZ Top are the Three Men in a Tub. The list goes on.
Today, only Sesame Street has that kind of pull.
*Nirvana wasn’t even a thing until 1991 when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from Nevermind broke big for them.
**This came up because my daughter’s dance class appears to be using one of the songs from Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme, which, to my undying shame, I recognized and may have sung along too.
Knit frog guts
Emily Stoneking is not only the name of my favorite Jarl from Skyrim, but also knits dissected frogs. You read all of that right.
Cast your eyes to port on that wonderment. Frog dissections have never been so adorable.
According to the description:
3 out of 4 biologists agree: Knitting in Biology 101 is the cutest biology project, ever!
What I want to know is who is that fourth broken soul? Actually, I know who it is. I went to grad school with him. Yeah, I’m talking about you.
Home field intimidation
According to a paper from Marshall Jones of Penn State in Psychology of Sport and Exercise (you can read it for only $31.50), home field advantage is far more prevalent in subjectively judged, independent sports, like diving and gymnastics, than in objectively judged sports, like sprinting and the biathlon.
Subjectively evaluated sports such as diving, gymnastics, or figure skating usually show sizable and significant home advantages. Otherwise, occasional findings have been reported but they are not consistent within a sport, are generally weak, and often statistically unreliable. – Marshall Jones
This dovetails nicely with the home field advantage phenomena reported by L Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz in Scorecasting for team sports like baseball, basketball, and association football (aka, soccer) on points of subjective judgments (eg, strike zone, certain fouls, and extra time, respectively).
Taking together, this suggests that home field advantage is a result of the crowd intimidating the officials, not the crowd boosting the morale of the home team.
The Finch and Pea 