Cavalcade of Mammals

Here’s an idea: wall moisture sensor. Water damage can be hard to spot early on and by the time you notice it the damage and rot may be extensive. So add a cheap moisture sensor.

The sensor is a 5cm spike with a nickel-sized head. To install it, you push it through the drywall. It expands a bit inside the wall and this helps fix it in place. Also, the back side of the sensor head is adhesive covered so it sticks to the plasterboard and seals the hole.

Now on to the working bits. It contains a cheap humidity sensor IC, a control chip, and a battery. On the head there is a tiny solar cell, a pair of contacts, and a red LED. The solar cell gets a bit of energy from room lighting and keeps the unit working for more than a decade. When humidity is detected, the LED flashes. Touch the contacts and the LED lights to show it works. The sensor and a control chip are embedded in the spike.

It should be cheap to make and long lasting. Home owners can buy a couple and pop them into walls they want to monitor–walls of finished basements, walls containing plumbing, exterior walls, etc. Installed, the sensor is unobtrusive.

If you think this could be useful and are interested in manufacturing/selling this send an email.

       [   ]-plasterboard
 R     [   ]
 o   ||[   ]
 o   ||========* -sensor spike
 m   ||[   ]
       [   ]  Inner wall
       [   ]

A high-end CPU these days uses nearly 100W of power. But it doesn’t have nearly the computing power of a human brain. AI is in good part, perhaps mainly, a software problem, but raw computing power seems lacking too. So how many of today’s CPUs would it take to build a computer with human intelligence? Say at least 10,000 Opterons.

This 10K CPU computer system would use 1MW of power. So how does that compare to a human brain? A person runs on 2000 Kcal / day.

At 86400 s / day this is 23 cal / s x 4.187 calories / J = 97 J / s. J / s are equal to Watts so this is 97 W.

Say 40% of the body’s energy is used by the brain. Then a person’s brain uses 40 W, as much a weak light bulb. Which is order-of-magnitude correct–your head is a little cooler than a weak bulb but the bulb is smaller.

So a human intelligent computer would use 1MW of power while a person’s brain uses 40W. The human brain is 25,000X more effcient than a computer. This says a few things about today’s computers. They are terribly inefficient, at least for the types of computations an AI needs to do. And today’s AI software design doesn’t capture the organization of biological computers. We have 1000 CPU systems today, and could build 10K CPU systems. But no system today is as clever as a mouse. Today’s AI may have crested the house fly brain goal post. But the lack is clearest in the hardware architecture.

Read an article by Confessions of a Community College Dean on Textbooks

Some students have been complaining about the price of textbooks for certain classes. Curious, I went to the bookstore and roamed the stacks, seeing just what they’re paying.

Wow.

The students are right. The costs are absurd.

Intro to [a popular foreign language] — $200.

He starts out getting it, then rambles on about how not much can be done by the College.

Come on now, why would an introductory language class *need* a new textbook? Language instruction changes very slowly. Why not pick the best from the last decade’s editions and use only used textbooks?

And your complaints about a system where the college buys the books seem poorly thought out. The *point* of such a system is to put the college in the crunch zone. And the college is better able to handle it–pressure publishers, reuse books, or pick inexpensive titles.

Here’s a picture from a story making the rounds because it turned up in a London fishmarket. It’s Cymothoa exigua, a fish parasite.

The 3.5cm creature had grabbed onto the fish’s tongue and slowly ate away at it until only a stub was left.

It then latched onto the stub and became the fish’s “replacement tongue”.

The bugs are usually found off the coast of California, so it’s possible the fish was imported to the UK.

Here are two pictures from the London story:

Here’s a pic from a web site about parasites:

Two pics from the Australian Museum:

Be glad you have hands to pull it off you if it bites your tongue. The poor fish is stuck–his fins can’t reach in and grab it!

I installed Expression Profiler Next Generation (EPNG) on my site. My interest is in canabalizing parts of it to show gene expression clusters. Turns out that part uses SVG which is a poor choice–SVG requires a browser plugin, a separate install, and isn’t even available for Mozilla/Firefox (the Adobe plugin for Netscape 4.x seems to work on the Mac, but not on the PC).

But on to EPNG… It’s a beast, a Frankenstein monster of code, composed of bits of a host of web technologies stitched together. It’s Perl based, which is what got me interested in it. And it has a database backend (Postgresql or Oracle, though I was able to port it to Mysql). And there’s some Javascript, everyone uses Javascript. But the developers were not content, they use gobs of Perl modules, including some that require libraries (PGPLOT), and a set of cirucular module requires (the stats modules)! R is used for the stats, that makes sense, and some R modules, and then SVG because the fewer users the better, and SVG/Javascript to take advantage of the SVG, and some Java, just to mix it up. And some AJAX is thrown in to pull in dataset histories.

So it’s a large and sprawling. I found it hard to install. Admittedly, I made it harder than expected by porting it to Mysql, but it was a pain even apart from that. Among the install joys are the release not working–the database schema doesn’t match the code! Boy that was a fun set of bugs to find.

And one of the modules required, XML::LibXML::SVG doesn’t exist! Google doesn’t know about it! It looks to be a private or temporary module, perhaps it got converted to SVG–most of the API and function is shared by the two. I converting the code to use SVG, but it was a huge bother!

Detailed EPNG install log.

I checked my blog, and found out that WordPress had lost PHP.

Turns out as part of the Mysql upgrade to version 5 I had to uninstall php-mysql.
No binary or package of php-mysql for Mysql version 5 is available so I had to
compile it myself. It took awhile, here’s how it went:

The php module of Apache (httpd) incorporates mysql connection support. It is
built as part of the php build process. So I download php-5.0.4
(PHP).

Building the php webserver module requires the Apache source. I *really*
don’t want to totally build and replace my webserver, there are too many ways
to screw it up. So I’ll just build it, and use the build for making the php
module, but not replace my working web server with the new build.
Find out what version of Apache is installed:
&gr;rpm -qa | grep http
httpd-devel-2.0.51-2.7
httpd-2.0.51-2.7
system-config-httpd-1.2.0-3
httpd-manual-2.0.51-2.7

So find and download the httpd-2.0.51 source from the old version site,
old Apache
untar it, and build it:

./configure --enable-so --enable-cache --enable-cgi
--enable-rewrite=shared --enable-vhost-alias --enable-module=headers
--enable-module=perl --enable-module=log_agent --enable-module=log_referer
--enable-module=include
make
make install

Since I won’t use this build, the exact options aren’t critical. This installs it in the default location, /usr/local/apache2. My old version is still the active one though.

Now go to PHP, untar and build it.

./configure --enable-force-cgi-redirect --with-apxs2 --with-mysql=/usr
make
make install

I had to play around with the configure parameters and still got build errors:
----------------
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient.a(libmysql.o): relocation
R_X86_64_32 can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient.a(libmysql.o): could not read symbols: Bad
value
----------------

Looking around the web, it looks like php can’t find the shared mysql library.
I look at mysql:

ls -l /usr/lib64/*mysql*

and see a shared library in /usr/lib64 and a static one in /usr/lib64/mysql.
PHP is trying to use the /usr/lib64/mysql one instead of the /usr/lib64 one.
To fix this, I edit the Makefile, replace occurances of /usr/lib64/mysql with
/usr/lib64. Then ‘make clean’, ‘make’. Now it compiles fine.
Do ‘make install’.
It puts the Apache module in /usr/local/apache2/modules. Copy it to my module
dir:

cp /usr/local/apache2/modules/libphp5.so /etc/httpd/modules

Check that /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf points to it:
LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

restart the web server:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

and WordPress is back online!

My youngest brother has been reading “healthy eating” books, and was telling me that wild animals don’t get cancer. He wasn’t content with my correction and wanted some evidence. Fair enough. Looking around online, I found a few references and was reminded of the Laetrile nonsense.

Laetrile was a quack cancer cure popular in the 70’s. The tout was that sharks don’t get cancer, and that taking pills made from ground up shark cartilage would cure cancer. This paragraph give a summary of the Laetrile cure fad:

Crude shark cartilage extract is not a cure for cancer in humans
Promotion of cartilage extracts from sharks has had two negative outcomes: a decline in shark populations, and a diversion of patients from effective cancer treatment. The argument has been that sharks don’t get cancer. However, both malignant and benign neoplasms of sharks and their relatives were described by Gary Ostrander and associates at Johns Hopkins University (Maryland), Penn State College of Medicine, and Registry of Tumors in Lower Animals (Virginia). So far there is no evidence to support the use of crude cartilage nor any cartilage extract to reach and eradicate cancer cells. The authors see the use of shark cartilage extracts as another example of pseudoscience used in decision making where the facts are not considered. (Cancer Research 64: 8485-8491, 2004)

The reference to the Registry of Tumors in Lower Animals sounds intriguing so I looked it up. The collection is searchable online after registering, and I’ve included a link. The Registry includes many cases of cancer in wild animals.

Looking around a bit more, I find someone else has considerately done a search of the literature, and posted abstracts. I’ve includes them below (lost track of the original source). These reports come from journals indexed by Pubmed which indexes biomedical journals, so papers in ecological or field biology journals would be missed. As you can see, there are many reports describing cancer in wild animals. The list is long, but skimming shows that tumors in wild animals have been observed many times.

Next up, I’ll look into the notion you’ve gotten that microwaving your food makes it dangerous to eat.

Cesk Patol 1996 May;32(2):78-83

[Tumors in wildlife].

[Article in Czech]

Karpenko A, Bukovjan K.

Oddeleni patologie SZZ, Benesov u Prahy.

Wild animal tumours have not been much studied yet. Authors found six
mostly benign cases in Czech Republic in checking hunts between the years
1988 and 1993: Mature differentiated ovarian teratoma and apocrine skin
adenoma in field hare, intraductal mammary papillomatosis in a roe,
complex odontoma and pleomorphic mammary carcinoma (single malignancy in
the group) in fox. A soft tissue tumour in a fallow-buck’s neck could not
be histogenetically classified. A high structural equivalence of animal
and human tumours allows using ICD-O classification as a whole.

PMID: 9560906 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

J Vet Med Sci 1997 Aug;59(8):703-6

Spontaneous gastric carcinoid tumors in the striped field mouse (Apodemus
agrarius).

Oh SW, Chae C, Jang D.

Department of Veterinary Pathology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul
National University, Suwon, Kyounggi-Do, Republic of Korea.

Gastric carcinoid tumors were found in seven of 135 striped field mice
(Apodemus agrarius) by routine histopathologic examination. All these
carcinoids occurred in mature striped field mice aged 72-100 weeks. Six
animals were females and only one was male. Only two of seven tumors were
detectable by gross examination. Grossly, tumors were located in the
fundus of the glandular stomach. All seven tumors were microscopically
single in the stomach and two mice exhibited extragastric metastasis.
Tumors from all the mice were characterized by densely packed sheets of
round to polygonal cells, subdivided into packets by a fine fibrovascular
stroma. The cytoplasm of all tumor cells from all the mice contained
argyrophil granules when stained by Grimelius and Sevier-Munger silver
procedures. All seven mice with gastric carcinoids exhibited positive
immunoreactivity to neuron specific enolase. Psammoma bodies,
concentrically laminated microcalcification, were characteristic findings
in gastric carcinoids from five mice. There were also a concomitant and
independent hepatocellular adenoma in one case and hepatocellular
carcinoma in two cases. The present cases provide the first description
of spontaneous gastric carcinoid tumors in the striped field mice.

PMID: 9300368 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Leukemia 1997 Apr;11 Suppl 3:170-1

Plasmacytoid leukemia of chinook salmon.

Kent ML, Eaton WD, Casey JW.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Pacific Biological Station, Nanaimo,
B.C., Canada.

Plasmacytoid leukemia is a common disease of seawater pen-reared chinook
salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in British Columbia, Canada, but has
also been detected in wild salmon, in freshwater-reared salmon in United
States, and in salmon from netpens in Chile. The disease can be
transmitted under laboratory conditions, and is associated with a
retrovirus, the salmon leukemia virus. However, the proliferating
plasmablasts are often infected with the microsporean Enterocytozoon
salmonis, which may be an important co-factor in the disease.

PMID: 9209333 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Pathol Int 1996 Dec;46(12):919-32

Mouse mammary tumor virus and mammary tumorigenesis in wild mice.

Imai S.

Nara Prefectural Institute of Public Health, Japan.

The current knowledge of the distribution of the mouse mammary tumor
virus (MMTV) proviral genomes and the mechanism of mammary tumorigenesis
by MMTV in mice, with the main emphasis on Asian feral mice, is reviewed.
The relevant earlier discoveries on the mode of MMTV transmission are
summarized to provide an outline of the biology of MMTV. Finally, the
viral etiology of human breast cancer will be discussed.

Publication Types:
Review
Review, academic

PMID: 9110343 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Adv Neurol 1991;56:473-9

Retroviral leukemia and lower motor neuron disease in wild mice: natural
history, pathogenesis, and genetic resistance.

Gardner MB.

Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis
95616.

Publication Types:
Review
Review, tutorial

PMID: 1649545 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

J Wildl Dis 1985 Oct;21(4):386-90

Diseases diagnosed in wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) of the southeastern
United States.

Davidson WR, Nettles VF, Couvillion CE, Howerth EW.

Diagnostic findings are presented on 139 sick or dead wild turkeys
examined during the period 1972 through 1984. Turkeys originated from
eight southeastern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia) and included 31 turkeys
categorized as capture-related mortalities and 108 turkeys categorized as
natural mortalities. Frequent diagnoses (greater than or equal to 10% of
case accessions) in the natural mortality group were trauma, avian pox,
and histomoniasis. Less frequent diagnoses (less than or equal to 4% of
case accessions) included malnutrition/environmental stress syndrome,
coligranuloma-like condition, crop impaction, bumblefoot, organophosphate
toxicosis, infectious sinusitis, a lympho-proliferative disease,
salmonellosis, aspergillosis, toxoplasmosis, crop trichomoniasis, and
melorheostosis.

PMID: 4078973 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Acta Vet Scand 1985;26(1):61-71

Leukaemic neoplasia in free-living mammals in Denmark.

Elvestad K, Henriques UV.

PMID: 3839967 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Int J Cancer 1981 Aug 15;28(2):241-7

Natural killer cell activity in a population of leukemia-prone wild mice
(Mus musculus).

Scott JL, Pal BK, Rasheed S, Gardner MB.

Natural cell-mediated cytotoxicity against YAC-I targets was measured in
splenocytes from leukemia-prone wild mice trapped near Lake Casitas (LC)
in southern California. Cytotoxicity was mediated by cells that were
non-adherent to nylon wool, non-phagocytic and resistant to thy-1.2
antiserum plus complement. Natural MuLV viremia in LC mice did not impair
splenic cytotoxicity against TAC-I target cells, Cells infected with
amphotropic and ecotropic MuLV of wild mouse origin were not appreciably
lysed by LC splenic effectors. Although variable levels of cytotoxicity
were detected against TAC-1 by normal spleen cells, consistently low
levels of cytotoxicity against allogenic LC lymphoma, sarcoma and
carcinoma targets were found using the same splenocytes. These results
indicate that LC mice possess splenocytes with the characteristics of
natural killer (NK) cells as defined in inbred mice. The resistance of
LC-derived targets to lysis by LC NK cells suggests that NK cells may not
be involved in natural tumor immunosurveillance or that the development
of spontaneous tumors may involve escape from NK-mediated effector
mechanisms.

PMID: 6274813 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Vet Pathol 1977 Nov;14(6):539-46

Gynecologic pathology in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta). II. Findings in
laboratory and free-ranging monkeys.

DiGiacomo RF.

The most prevalent findings in reproductive tracts of 38 laboratory and
17 free-ranging Rhesus female monkeys were vaginitis, cervicitis,
metritis, pelvic endometriosis and uterine adenomyosis. Several monkeys
had cervical dysplasia and one had a serous cystadenoma. The findings in
the two groups were similar although prevalence for several diseases
differed. There was a significant relationship between the occurrence of
vaginitis, metritis, adenomyosis and endometriosis and gravidity, time
since last pregnancy, number of matings, hysterotomies, reproductive
ability and reproductive status.

PMID: 412291 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

J Wildl Dis 1999 Oct;35(4):804-7

Relating tumor score to hematology in green turtles with
fibropapillomatosis in Hawaii.

Work TM, Balazs GH.

U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resource Division, National Wildlife
Health Center, Honolulu Field Station, Hawaii 96850, USA.
thierry_work@usgs.gov

The relationship between hematologic status and severity of tumor
affliction in green turtles (Chelonia mydas) with fibropapillomatosis
(FP) was examined. During 1 wk periods in July 1997 and July 1998, we
bled 108 free-ranging green turtles from Pala’au (Molokai, Hawaii, USA)
where FP is endemic. Blood was analyzed for hematocrit, estimated total
solids, total white blood cell (WBC) count and differential WBC count.
Each turtle was assigned a subjective tumor score ranging from 0 (no
visible external tumors) to 3 (heavily tumored) that indicated the
severity of FP. There was a progressive increase in monocytes and a
decrease in all other hematologic parameters except heterophils and total
numbers of white blood cells as tumor score increased. These data
indicate that tumor score can relate to physiologic status of green
turtles afflicted with FP, and that tumor score is a useful field monitor
of severity of FP in this species.

PMID: 10574546 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

J Wildl Dis 1999 Oct;35(4):753-62

Descriptive epidemiology of roe deer mortality in Sweden.

Aguirre AA, Brojer C, Morner T.

Department of Wildlife, The National Veterinary Institute, Uppsala, Sweden.
aguirre@wpti.org

A retrospective epidemiologic study was conducted to examine causes of
mortality of 985 wild roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) submitted to the
National Veterinary Institute (SVA; Uppsala, Sweden) from January 1986 to
December 1995. Age, sex, body condition, and geographic distribution as
related to disease conditions are reported herein. The most common causes
of mortality in roe deer were trauma (19%), winter starvation (18%),
gastritis/enteritis (15%), bacterial infections (11%), parasitic
infection (11%), systemic diseases (11%), neoplasia (2%), congenital
disorders (1%), and miscellaneous causes (6%). Cause of death was not
determined in 6% of the cases. The distribution of causes of death
reported in this study differ from previous works in Sweden in that
infectious and parasitic diseases were more common than winter
starvation. The pathologic findings in studies like this do not
necessarily represent what is occurring in the natural environment, but
they do provide a good indication of distribution of diseases over time
as well as age and sex structure in relation to disease conditions.
Further research and more detailed studies are in progress to better
understand specific mortality factors as well as etiologies of certain
described diseases in roe deer in Sweden.

PMID: 10574535 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

J Zoo Wildl Med 1999 Mar;30(1):165-9

Herpesvirus-associated papillomas in koi carp (Cyprinus carpio).

Calle PP, McNamara T, Kress Y.

Wildlife Health Sciences, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York
10460-1099, USA.

From January through November 1994, 32% (7/22) of koi carp (Cyprinus
carpio) maintained in indoor aquariums developed proliferative cutaneous
lesions that consisted of single to multiple 2-10-mm whitish to pink
fleshy masses usually associated with fin rays. Although scaleless koi
were more commonly affected (3/6) than were normally scaled koi (4/16),
the difference in incidence rates was not significant (chi2 text, P >
0.05). Lesions typically resolved spontaneously in 1-3 wk, occasionally
persisted for >3 mo, and recurred in several fish after 2-5 mo. Fish were
otherwise asymptomatic. Wet mount preparations from lesions were densely
cellular and consisted of hyperplastic epidermal cells of normal
morphology without parasites or inflammatory cells. Histologically,
biopsies were consistent with papillomas and were characterized by a
marked benign epidermal hyperplasia without inclusion bodies or
inflammatory infiltrate. Transmission electron microscopic examination
revealed intranuclear and intracytoplasmic herpesvirus virions. Virus
isolation attempts were unsuccessful.

PMID: 10367660 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

J Wildl Dis 1999 Apr;35(2):392-4

Adenocarcinoma of the mammary gland in a red fox from Austria.

Janovsky M, Steineck T.

Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, University of Veterinary Medicine,
Vienna, Austria.

A mammary gland adenocarcinoma was diagnosed in an adult red fox (Vulpes
vulpes) which was shot in Austria in August 1995. Metastases were found
in the kidneys and liver. This is the first reported case of an
adenocarcinoma in a fox, and lack of mammary gland carcinoma in this
species may be age related.

PMID: 10231770 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

tried running the Graphviz programs on OS X (sudo fink install graphviz) and got a font error message, ‘Could not find/open font : Times in…’

To use the Graphviz programs with OS X, need to specify

-Nfontname=luxisr

The program can use fonts in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF. This is part of
the Apple supplied X11 (part of the optional/developer OS install disk? I don’t recall when/how I installed it.).
Found this info at: link

From an interview with National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado’s Gerald Meehl discussing an NCAR paper in Science:

Experts say sea levels have risen 4 inches already over the past century and could rise between 4 and 40 inches more in the next century.

If completely melted, the Greenland ice sheet would add 25 feet to overall sea level and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise it by 16 feet — enough to swamp most of Florida, Bangladesh and New York City’s Manhattan island.

So that’s the upper limit on sea level rise. And while the modelers predict a mm/year rate, ice sheets melt catastrophically and we’re getting into the range of losing some of them, so I’ll make a wild-ass guess that we’ll see a bad decade with a foot or so sea level rise this century.

(To digress, this reminds me of how bad the premise of Waterworld is. You know a movie’s science is bad when it makes you look fondly on the scientific plausibility of Planet of the Apes. Waterworld is a full point higher on the Scientfic Implausibility Richter scale.)

From the abstract of the paper, “The Climate Change Commitment”. Wigley, TML. (2005) Science 307:1766-9:

These constant-composition (CC) commitments and their uncertainties are quantified. Constant-emissions (CE) commitments are also considered. The CC warming commitment could exceed 1°C. The CE warming commitment is 2° to 6°C by the year 2400. For sea level rise, the CC commitment is 10 centimeters per century (extreme range approximately 1 to 30 centimeters per century) and the CE commitment is 25 centimeters per century (7 to 50 centimeters per century).

The CE senario predicts 2.5 mm/year rise, but emissions are rising so this is definitely an underestimate.

Notes on some bioinformatics books from two perspectives. Here’s what I’m looking for: 1) advanced discussion of computational and statistical methods for genomics, especially microarray analysis, and 2) suitability for an intro and survey bioinformatics course I teach.

THE ANALYSIS OF GENE EXPRESSION DATA: METHODS AND SOFTWARE
edited by Giovanni Parmigiani, Elizabeth S Garrett, Rafael A Irizarry, Scott L Zeger
companion website
Great medium depth howto. Covers R, dChip, SAM, and packages that take more sophisticated approaches to analysis, clustering, and visualization.

Bioinformatics for Geneticists
Edited by Michael R. Barnes and Ian C. Gray
Published Online: 22 May 2003
Genomic orientation, but too light and introductory for my needs, too genomic focused for my course. Good starting point book for a geneticist.

Advances in Systems Biology
Series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, Vol. 547
Opresko, Lee K.; Gephart, Julie M.; Mann, Michaela B. (Eds.)
2004
Pulled this book for A Systems Approach to Discovering Signaling and Regulatory Pathways—or how to digest large interaction networks into relevant pieces by Trey Ideker.

Microarray Gene Expression Data Analysis: A Beginners Guide
by Helen C. Causton , John Quackenbush , Alvis Brazma
2003
What it says it is: design, image processing, normalization, basic stats, clustering.

Bioinformatics: Databases and Systems
Edited by Stan Letovsky
Kluwer Academic Press, Boston, 1999
A chapter a database. Covers the usual gang, plus chapters on WIT/WIT2, KEGG, BioWidgets (Java), and AceDB (overview).

Statistical Methods in Bioinformatics An Introduction
Series: Statistics for Biology and Health
Ewens, Warren J. and Grant, Gregory
2nd ed. , 2004, 588p
errata
Heavy statistical treatment of sequence analysis. Starts with stats, then stat properties of one seq, multiple seq alignments, BLAST, Marlov chains, HMMs.

‘In Silico’ Simulation of Biological Processes
No. 247 Novartis Foundation Symposium
270 pages January 2003
Picked this up for the GO chapter. Also has a chapter on KEGG.

Micr
oarrays Methods and Applications: Nuts and Bolts
Edited by Gary Hardiman
2003
Covers topics from basic MA howtos to more specialized applications. A mixed bag. One chapter on microarray scanner evaluation, another on C. elegans 50-mer oligos made by the Hardiman lab at UCSD. Chapter text and figures are online.

Microarray Quality Control
by Wei Zhang, Ilya Shmulevich and Jaakko Astola
136 pages February 2004
What the title says. Microarrays from a core facility perspective. Ends with normatization. Covers long oligo design.

Microarray Bioinformatics
by Dov Stekel
Cambridge University Press. 2003
Thorough and clear coverage of microarray design, construction, image proc, and normalization. What caught my eye was the chapter on oilgo design, but its all good. Best single book on microarrays I’ve seen.

Bioinformatics: Methods and Protocols
Edited by Stephen Misener, Stephen A. Krawetz
Humana Press; 1st edition 2000
Program based by chapter. Too program based for a course. Has good chpaters on Clustal and Phylip. A chapter on Trascription control regions using MatInspector/GenomeInspector, weight matrix based sequence scanning for single or paired binding sites.

Computational Molecular Biology: an Algorithmic Approach
by Pavel A. Pevzner
MIT Press, 2000
Takes a unique approach. Looks at interesting computational aspects of seqeunce-based biology, and sometimes takes an odd sideways view of problems, getting deep into the underlying mathematics. A great complement to a more straightforward survey book. The topic coverage isn’t broad enough for my course, and the topics get covered in more depth than I need. Runs thorugh algorithmics of restircition digests to microarrays including, of course, sequencing by hybridization. Covers algorithmics of genomic comparisons. Great source book for a serious comp bio student.

DNA Microarrays: A Practical Approach
Edited by Mark Schena
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1999
A book on microarray technology. From DNA spotted on glass to enzymatic oligo arrays to ink jets, to microelectronic arrays. Written early on when many different approaches were being explored. Great source for technical information.

Mathematics of Genome Analysis
by Jerome K. Percus
Cambridge University Press; 1st edition 2002
Not a genomics book, but a mathmatician’ s look at DNA sequence, from clone libraries through seq alignments.

Post-genome Informatics
by Minoru Kanehisa
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000
Cool cover! Written by the guy behind KEGG. An eclectic choice of topics, first databases, then sequence analysis basics, then network analysis. Had a few pages on comparing networks that I found useful.

Guide to Analysis of DNA Microarray Data
by Steen Knudsen
John Wiley and Sons, New York, 2002
A what-to-do book on microarray data analysis. Very short, too short to explain how to do things, but describes what to do, issues to consider, and what results will look like. Useful as a place to start, will show you what you don’t know. The linked site has example R and BioConductor code.

Methods of Microarray Data Analysis II
Edited by Simon M. Lin and Kimberly F. Johnson
Springer, 2002
Papers from CAMDA ‘01 Various array analysis, especially advanced clsutering methods. Particularly interesting are:

• Biology-Driven Clustering of Microarray Data; K.R. Coombes, et al.
  GO-based clustering.
• Analysis of Gene Expression Profiles and Drug Activity Patterns by Clustering and Bayesian Network Learning; Jeong-Ho Chang, et al.
• Topomap and bayesian clustering

DNA Arrays: Technologies and Experimental Strategies
Edited by Elena V. Grigorenko
CRC Press, 2001
What caught my eye are the technology chapters, one on oligo arrays and another on electrochemical array detection.

DNA Arrays: Methods and Protocols
Edited by Jang B. Rampal
Humana Press, 2001
This is another array technology book. Great information on ink-jet and photolithographic oligo synthesis. There are several sequencing by hybridization articles. It starts with a chapter on the history of the field by Southern. Great book for a collection of articles!