EMBL PhD Symposium - the online version

EN: Working in (life) sciences? No budget for visiting a conference anymore? Give the First Online EMBL PhD Symposium a try. This virtual meeting will start next Monday and is for free. You are warmly invited to participate and to contribute. (I have to admit ... I am involved in it.)

Improved Google Book Search interface

EN: I can warmly recommend to test the new interface of Google Book Search. Much more JavaScript magic was added which make scrolling through and searching in the book much better. So you can start to burn your hard copy books now*.

[Via Google Blog]

* (if you can life with the fact that some book in Google Book Search are only previews ;))

Everything you always wanted to know about sex ...

EN: The Lancet was not afraid to ask and made a series about sexual and reproductive health public. Unfortunately the articles are only available with a subscription but the free podcast gives already a good impression about the series. Many topics are covered including sexual transmitted diseases, contraception, abortion and general sexual behaviour. Some surprising findings contradict the usual expectations (previous studies). For example it seems that promiscuous behaviour cannot be blamed for the higher rate of sexual transmitted diseases in developing countries. Another result is that the average age at which people have sex the first time is not decreasing.

[Via Spiegel Online]

OpenBSD 4.0 released

EN: As every half year OpenBSD the open-source unix flavour for the practical paranoid released it's newest version. Some new features are the support for three new platforms (armish, sparc64, zaurus) the Zaurus 3200 (in zaurus), for UltraSparc III (in sparc64) and for various ARM-platforms in the newly introduced armish, the replacement of GNU RCS by OpenRCS, more IPSec functions and new network card drivers.

Install it and make the internet a safer place!