Youtube learning

I was browsing the Youtube today. I wrote "learn" to the search to see what comes up... After 2 clicks I got to the video below. This is what I have learned :)

Not too much, I know, but at least there is some result for the two minutes I invested into it.

The Padova trip

Saturday, September 18, 2010, 9.36 a.m. (in the train)

I am just returning from a week long journey in Padova, Italy. I attended the course "Statistical methods for genome-enabled selection" given by Daniel Gianola and Gustavo de los Campos, dealing with Bayesian statistics, machine learning and other statistical tools that can be used in evaluation of genomic information.

The group of attendants was very diverse, consisting mainly from Italians of course, but also people from Slovenia, Slovakia, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia/Ireland, Austria, US and others.  The content was very advanced (as one can expect from prof. Gianola), but it was presented enthusiastically and sometimes with very funny commentary (as one can expect on prof. Gianola).

I also liked the course not because of its content, but also because it helped some the new ideas to pop up in my mind. In particular it drove my attention to machine learning. I knew also before that something like this exists, but until now I omitted the topic. After this week it seems that I will dive into it more deeply. Gregor Gorjanc mentioned a video site dealing with Machine learning, perhaps this is a good place to start.

At the end of this short post I also would like to thank you Alessio Cecchinato for the great organization! 

Update: Here is a video showing a part of the course.

Book counting exercise

If you ever wondered how many books are out there, now you can get an "educated guess" from Google. After reading the whole post it turns out that it was not a simple sum, but rather a sophisticated algorithm what they had to use.

Read the post if you are interested in details, if not, I give you the short answer:
The "educated guess" mentioned above is 129,864,880 books.

World Congress on Genetics full papers online

Beginning of August I was in Germany on the 9th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production. It was a great event with excellent organization. If you don't know the event, I can describe it briefly as the Olympic Games of animal breeders. It is organized every 4 years with participants from all over the World.

The only thing is that after some time it is very hard to find the full papers from the congress. Partly from this reason, and partly because I was asked by our Erasmus Mundus - Animal Breeding and Genetics students, I put the full CD online. Also I put up the previous two from France 2002 and Brazil 2006. These are not reachable on their original websites, so if you need them, just click the link.

• 7th WCGALP, France, 2002
• 8th WCGALP, Brazil, 2006
• 9th WCGALP, Germany, 2010

Happy downloading! :)