Code for life

Automatic video captions for YouTube

Grant Jacobs • Nov 21, 2009

Great news for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, or those wanting to follow videos in other languages: you can now ask YouTubeâ„¢ to caption their videos automatically using a voice translation service. There’s an introductory article with instructions on the google blog and a demo: (Demo of automatic captioning.) Currently this service … Read More

Genetic tests and personalised medicine

Grant Jacobs • Nov 20, 2009

How will genomes and direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests affect medicine? [caption id="attachment_619" align="aligncenter" width="576" caption="The Doctor, Luke Fildes (source: wikipedia)"][/caption] Recently I wrote about an up-coming roundtable meeting to be held in Wellington looking at aspects of genomics, medicine and law. Over the next few days I will direct a few posts at the subject … Read More

Study of where academic careers lead

Grant Jacobs • Nov 17, 2009

Just a quick follow-on of sorts from my earlier post Universities and (lack of) showcasing use of science degrees I’d like to point out an ‘Issues & Perspectives’ article from the Science Careers section of Science By Beryl Lieff Benderly: “Taken for Granted: Shocked, Shocked! to Find Disappointment on Campus”. It’s an interesting (re)examination of the academic … Read More

Meeting–Genomics, medicine and law

Grant Jacobs • Nov 16, 2009

Genomics technologies including genetic screening, disease diagnosis and so-called "genomic" or "personalised" medicine, raise legal and moral rights concerns with the public. In a later post I hope to briefly examine some of the key issues from the point of view of the science, but here I would like to draw attention to … Read More

Kiwi twitter power-allwhites hit #2 trend for day, worldwide

Grant Jacobs • Nov 15, 2009

[Not science related.] Let’s repeat that: Kiwis twittering on ‘allwhites’ hit the #2 trend for the day on twitter, worldwide. Just shows that little New Zealand has a decent presence on twitter and they’re collaborative enthusiastic bods who get together and get a trend going. Here’s the graph that shows the state of things at about 1am, from … Read More

Massey university cutting science budget

Grant Jacobs • Nov 14, 2009

Just off the Manawatu Standard: Massey to take knife to sciences, prompting concern over staff redundancies and courses being dropped. Staff are being offered voluntary retirement or redundancy, with a sweetener package offering long-serving staff up to 16 weeks’ extra pay. But if enough staff do not take up the offer, a series of “staffing reviews” … Read More