streamspace

There are a few issues on the personal genomics boo-hah that I've been meaning to write down, so, time for a brain dump. Context: The cost of sequencing DNA is dropping, fast, companies like 23andme have been offering direct-to-consumer SNP genotyping at affordable prices for quite a while now, and they even recently started offering exome sequencing for around 1000 dollars. (Explaining the lingo: a SNP is a single nucleotide polymorphism - a single base in the genome where at least 1% of the population under study have a different "letter" than the rest. The exome is the set of all exons in the genome; very roughly speaking, it's the subset of the genome that codes for proteins and functional RNA. That doesn't mean the rest of the genome is junk, but the exome is a handy, sufficiently interesting subset that can already be sequenced at relatively low cost.) And now, to the issues I mentioned. For me, the two major ones are " Analysis and interpretatio...

Benjamin commented on the post "DIYBio and biotinkering - Laws and regulations in Germany" : The legal issues are pretty simple actually - you just cannot do any genetic engineering (including bacterial transformation) in your garage. Simple as that. Sorry. Since writing the original post, I've learned that this is not completely true. You can do some genetic engineering even without a BSL 1 license - namely, "self-cloning". The legal text is a bit mushy on the subject, but essentially, you can genetically engineer known-to-be-safe organisms if you use only sequences that are naturally found in this organism, or one that is "phylogenetically close", provided you don't release the result into the environment. I've talked it over with the office that is responsible for granting BSL licenses, and they suggested it may be OK for a biotinkerer to, for example, modify E. coli K12 with elements found in E. coli. The University Reading off...

The following be a motley collection of points that keep rattling around in my head as I follow the current discussions around gender roles, feminism, masculism, and anti-feminist backlash. Complex 1) Often-heard statement: There is no such thing as sexism directed towards men. Alternatively often-heard statement: sexism directed towards men is fundamentally different from sexism directed towards women, since these sexisms are merely "cloaked" versions of sexism directed towards women. Often-heard statement: Feminism has brought about the oppression of men and made them the laughing stock of humanity. Wrong, all of it. And related. (Also, I do not ever want to hear the phrase "reverse sexism" again. It's moronic. Sexism denotes prejudice or discrimination based on sex. Sexism directed towards men simply denotes sexism against men, period, no need for verbal acrobatics.) I found an interesting paper a while ago, entitled "Down So Long. Why Is It So Hard...

Mit spektakulärer Verspätung habe ich nun doch noch mal beschlossen, meine Philosophie-Zwischenprüfungsarbeit zum Thema Geistiges Eigentum der allwissenden Müllhalde Internet zuzuführen. Beim Lesen dieses nunmehr fünf Jahre alten Texts fand ich, dass er stellenweise sehr trocken und akademisch ist, dass mir der Schreibstil nicht mehr gefällt, und dass einige Argumente klarer formuliert werden könnten - vor allen Dingen ist er aber tl;dr. Ich habe also mal ein paar Punkte aus der Arbeit hier zusammendestilliert. Wem das alles zu viel Text ist, empfehle ich trotzdem den letzten Absatz . Enjoy. Einige der grundlegenden Fragen, über die ich mir im Zuge dieser Arbeit Gedanken gemacht habe: Was ist Geistiges Eigentum? Um was für Rechte für wen geht es dabei? Wie sind diese Rechte begründet? Wie weit reichen sie, und insbesondere: wo finden sie ihre Grenzen? Welche gesamtgesellschaftlichen Verhaltensregeln lassen sich aus ihnen ableiten? Den Diskussionen um Geistiges Eigentum liegen u...

I've been meaning to summarize what happened in 2011 in the DIYBio and biotinkering sphere, and I finally got around to it. So here's the review of my personal year 2011. First off, the main thing that happened in 2011, I think, is that both the global and the European community started connecting on a personal level. Which was awesome, and I hope this trend will continue in the future. The first months, working alone For the first few months of 2011, I was mostly tinkering on my own in the non-space in the old location of the Space Agency, a Berlin-based hackerspace ( https://trac.raumfahrtagentur.org/ ). I was just trying to get my hands dirty, trying to get the basics to work, such as gel electrophoresis and PCR. After getting frustrated with my semi-functional old thermocycler, I had decided to fork out a substantial amount of money and buy a new one in late 2010, a 24-well Piko thermal cycler. Part of the reasoning in this was that the OpenPCR was still unavailable,...

This concept sloshes through pop culture (see for example: The Lysistrata Gambit on TvTropes.org), and I've always considered it dodgy at best. The idea just seemed nonsensical to me (spoiler: it still does). I've recently come to think about it some more, because a friend of mine told me that this has happened to him frequently in past relationships. I've found this curious but hey, just because there's something I can't relate to doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But - yesterday, we somehow arrived at this topic again, and I asked my friend whether maybe the women in question didn't actually intend to punish him by withholding sex; instead, maybe they were simply upset with him and thus not in the mood for physical intimacy. Which turned out to be a completely new idea to him. This struck me as extremely odd and made me think of the old trope of female sexuality existing not in its own right but as a means to an end and mostly a tool for exercising con...

Zwei der möglichen Arten, als Mann über Genderfoo zu schreiben: 1) Zu der Erkenntnis kommen, dass allgegenwärtige, normative Genderstereotype auch für männlich identifizierte Personen Nachteile, Probleme und Einschränkungen mit sich bringen, und dass ein Gegenhalten gegen diese Stereotype häufig zu Frust und schlechter Laune führt; darüber reflektieren und die Erkenntnisse aufschreiben. 2) Für Obiges den Feminismus verantwortlich machen, seinem Beissreflex gegenüber dem bösen F-Wort freien Lauf lassen, selbigen vorwiegend mit vagen und noch nicht reflektierten Eindrücken von "Feminismus" begründen ("Ich hab da vor 15 Jahren mal gelesen, dass eine Feministin Männer doof fand") und ansonsten sein "Argument" vor allem aus Anekdötchen konstruieren über all die Male, die man von Frauen schlecht behandelt wurde. Hausaufgabe für die Leserschaft: Welche der beiden Varianten ist konstruktiv und lädt zu empathischer Auseinandersetzung ein, und welche ist destruktive...