jmcgready’s misc universe

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Money, Viruses, and Unexpected Resources

I’ve seen those dollar bills with the Where’s George website URL on them,
but I always thought it was just another I-have-nothing-better-to-do site -
alas. now it seems that a group of scientists have used it for serious research:

UC Santa Barbara’s Lars Hufnagel, along with Theo Geisel and Dirk Brockmann from the Max Planck Institute, have taken an Internet curiosity involving the travels of dollar bills and used it to create a breakthrough model of human travel patterns, one that could greatly boost our ability to respond to emerging epidemics.

just goes to show you how sometimes the seemingly frivolous and useless
can be the key to far deeeper things than supposedly serious pursuits…

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Real Time PCR for Bad Beer

I can see it now… someone in Vegas dies from bad beer,
so Grissom and the team head off to the offending brewery….

Real Time PCR - Seminar at Nutfield

BRi is hosting, on the 15th of March, a seminar on the use of Real-Time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) for detection and identification of beer spoilage micro-organisms. This sponsored seminar is open to all with only a nominal charge being made for catering. The two sponsors of the seminar are Applied Biosystems, a leading manufacturer of Real-Time PCR systems and Pika Weihenstephan, a manufacturer of Real-Time PCR detection kits.
Ensuring that spoilage micro-organisms are not present in beer is critical to brand value. Spoilage micro-organisms invariably lead to deterioration in beer appearance and flavour, changes which are easily noticed by consumers. Traditional methods for detecting beer spoilage micro-organisms take up to 7 days and therefore are of limited value in commercial situations, however DNA based Real-Time PCR techniques greatly reduce detection time. Coupled with robotic pipetting and commercially available, beer specific, detection kits such systems can provide a perfect quality control tool with high sample throughput capability.
For further information about this seminar please contact Karin Pawlowsky at k.pawlowsky@brewingresearch.co.uk.

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