Unrelated to VR but still: if anyone here hasn't yet watched drmeister's talk about Clasp and his "molecular metaprogramming" project, please do. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
Is there an article or initial analysis somewhere summarizing all that's known right now about this scary NSA/PRISM business (with links to sources ideally)? Or is it still too soon for such a thing?
I'm participating in a Google Student Ambassador program at my university and since I've always stressed the importance of privacy (especially in the era of the cloud) I feel obligated to educate my friends and colleagues about this.
All that exists so far is four vaguely worded power point slides, although their is allegedly a lot more which is not being released for unknown reasons.
I can't know how will this turn out eventually but I really hope for this (or something like this) to be a turning point for the music industry.
I love music, I really do, but at some point I became so disgusted by the way the industry works that I almost stopped caring. There surely is a better way to distribute music which would allow musicians to earn more money and the consumer to spend less at the same time by leaving out labels and distributors.
What you're hoping for is already here. I'm sorry since I already praised bandcamp in another comment, however this comes very close to the better way you mentioned. As an artist you have a lot of options today - a label contract is just one of them. Bandcamp, Topspin, CDBaby (are they still around?) or direct website sales are the alternatives. And of course let's not forget smaller independent labels. It is perfectly possible to be successful without a major label these days. If an artist decides to go the traditional route, it is his decision and it wasn't his only option.
I seriously doubt that Dotcom has the artists in mind with this new venture, it is a nice way to advertise the service though and he certainly knows that. Let's see.
Labels, both big and small, benefit many artists in ways outside distribution. Many musicians join labels to be financed, hand-held for recording, cross-marketed and advertised. The financing is significant, allowing many to produce novice music for long periods while improving their talents. Websites alone and zero-cost distribution methods, including streaming, don't allow the artist to survive. Not all artists want or need labels, but many opt for them. Interestingly, even the few artists who become popular without labels usually sign label deals for the business management and exposure. Free distribution doesn't help artists to pay for production, so Mega might have a problem there.
When I was young my attitude was similar but in my elementary school and high school two foreign languages were mandatory (English, German or Fench) so I didn't have any other choice. I live in Czech Republic.
At that age I couldn't care less but now that I'm thinking of doing a PhD in Germany (from what I've heard a very affordable country with many great life science labs) I'm very glad that I remember at least basics even that I haven't actually spoken German for six years.
I think that learning two major foreign languages should be mandatory. Almost everybody can learn one language quite well after +/- 10 years during childhood and to learn at least basics from the second one should not be that much of a problem too.
I'm not discouraging, but once you're considering a particular position, please try and talk to previous PhD students of your prospective supervisor. Germany has hardly any fully-funded PhD positions. Instead you typically get employed as staff and have to combine that with your PhD work. The problem is, often professors take on lots of PhD students to get more funding and end up having hardly any time. I've heard stories of a professor having 8 or so PhD students that still wait on him to read their thesis and give the go-ahead for their viva (PhD defense). I'm not saying this is the case everywhere, but it's something to be aware of. So try and find out beforehand.
Thanks a lot for advice. I have still more than a year ahead before I need to make a decision so there's enough time to ask around when I narrow my choices. I haven't even made my mind whether I want to get into neuroscience or stay in molecular/cell biology.
Sadly, the situation as you decribed is almost the same with PhD students in the lab where I currently work on my diploma thesis and in some around in the institute. Having seen what I've seen (troubles with disertations and giving the PhD defense go-ahead) that's definitely something I want to avoid.
Human cells may have tens of times more forms of proteins expressed from these 23,000 genes if you take into account alternative splicing of pre-mRNA and many other post-translational modifications. These are all processes which prokaryotic organisms like M. genitalium generally lack.
Even when we look aside from the level of DNA/RNA there are huge differences in morphological organisation of eukaryotic cells when compared to most prokaryotes: dynamic compartmentalisation of cytoplasm, different types of cytoskeleton, vesicle trafficking, complex signal transduction networks instead of usually simple two-component regulatory systems... So the simulation of whichever human cell type could be much more complicated than one could initially thought.
I don't want to sound too much pessimistic, as someone with background in both CS and molecular biology I'm truly excited about this, but I still had to cool myself down a little bit after reading the article. I can't wait to read the original paper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g
Also recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9721801