FluTE is an influenza epidemic simulation model written by Dennis L. Chao at CSQUID. It works out-of-the box on GNU/Linux (just type make and run it). I wanted to see how it works. But since I’m temporarily stuck with a Windows laptop, I downloaded a free C++ compiler for Windows ( wxDev-C++), imported all the files in a project and compiled. For those who want to try, here is the project file and the specific makefile in a zip file (2 kb). Just decompress the FluTE archive (I used version 1.15), copy the two files from the zip file above and launch the IDE. In the project options (Alt+P), specify the custom makefile (in the “Makefile” tab) as the one from the zip file above. Compile (Ctrl+F9). Done. ...

Following this article (French), official phone eavesdroppings again increased in Belgium in 2009: Belgian police listened 5265 times to private conversations. The French transcript is here. One doesn’t get much more than these numbers: nothing about the number of hours spent listening, nothing about the percentage of effectiveness/results, nothing about internet eavesdropping (e-mail e.g.). One thing struck me: all requests for eavesdropping were accepted. Or, at least that what the Minister implied when he wrote “there is no distinction between the number of requests and the number of effective eavesdropping”.

Well, now I understand a bit better why experts said the small fall in carbon emissions indirectly due to the volcano is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate (see previous post) … InformationIsBeautiful made a correction following comments and the difference in CO2 emission is smaller: However, although the air traffic is to slowly come back to normal, we can still enjoy some very nice moment without any plane in the sky: ...

One side-effect of the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano is that there is no more plane in the European sky for the last few days. On one side, people are obliged to stay longer on holidays, others can’t make business trips, some food and other items can’t be transported, plane companies are crying but train and coach ones are more than happy. The last week-end was sunny and a lot of people enjoyed going outside in North Europe. ...

As I promised before, you’ll find here the text and slides of my Ph.D. thesis (btw text and slides are in French). The oral presentation was on March 24th, 2010 and everything was fine :-) Slides can be watched below. Effets du sommeil et de la privation de sommeil sur le protéome hippocampique de rat après apprentissage topographique http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=3557617&stripped_title=effets-du-sommeil-et-de-la-privation-de-sommeil-sur-le-protome-hippocampique-de-rat-aprs-apprentissage-topographique-3557617 ...

In one of his buzz, Cédric Bonhomme drew my attention on the Highcharts javascript library. This library can produce beautiful charts of various types with some Ajax interaction. The only negative point imho is that it is dual-licensed and all cases deprive you from your freedom: there is a first Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License: you can use the library for your non-profit website (see details on the licensing page) ; there is a commercial license for any other website. Now what if we only need the end-product, i.e. the resulting chart, in a commercial environment? What is covered by the license is just the re-use of the javascript library in a website, not the resulting chart. If a company choose to use Highcharts internally to render some beautiful charts and just publish (*) the resulting image, I guess they can just download the library and use it (* by “publishing”, I mean: publish a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal, not publishing on its website). On the other hand, no one ever questioned the fact commercial companies have licenses for all the proprietary software they use to produce anything else, from charts to statistical data, just because they publish results with these software as tools. So the “trick” here would be that, by changing the medium on which you display end-results (from website to paper, even if it’s in PDF on the journal website), you can use the free-to-download license, even in a commercial environment, for an article from a commercial company. I’m not sure this was the original intention of Highslide Software.

A small post to welcome the new website for the Open Clip Art Library (OCAL). The OCAL was created more than 6 years ago and now has more than 24.000 vector illustrations in the Public Domain (in the SVG format that can be read by most graphic software). For me, a major improvement is the direct visualisation of thumbnails. In the previous version of the website, it was indeed painfull to open each result of a search in order to see if the illustration was what one was looking for. I’m using the Library since a few years and I am always amazed at the quality of most illustrations in the science and biology sections (the two sections I use the most). ...

Every year, same resolutions. And same end? As I did previous years, I promised to myself to update this blog more often but it seems “daily life” events caught me up. This year, I resigned from my position at Callataÿ & Wouters ( C&W). A lot can be said and written but overall, it was an interesting experience. I’ve learned a lot about software development and how to manage people (or not). Finally, I’ve met some very interesting people. Let’s close this chapter now. ...

Three months ago, I complained about the fact we can’t see comments made in PDF files in Evince. With a recent update to Fedora Core 12, Evince was also updated to version 2.28.2 and, among many improvements, comments ( annotations) added to PDF files are now visible :-) Bye, bye, Adobe Acrobat Reader ;-)

When I first opened the Belgian State Security Report 2008 (PDF in French or in Dutch), I had the a feeling of déjà vu: the cover picture is in fact a part of the Great Court of the British Museum in London, UK. Strange for a report on Belgian security and surveillance … Comparison between an actual photo of the British Museum Great Court (left, by Guillermo Viciano, under CC-by-sa) and the cover of the Belgian State Security Report 2008 (right) ...