Scienceroll.com readers know well I'm an admirer of WolframAlpha: I use WolframAlpha because sometimes (if I know exactly what I want to find) it saves me plenty of time and clicks. If I want to calculate BMI, Google lists me several calculators. WolframAlpha calculates it itself.

Before the development of cell culture, many viruses were propagated in embryonated chicken eggs. Today this method is most commonly used for growth of influenza virus. The excellent yield of virus from chicken eggs has led to their widespread use in research laboratories and for vaccine production. In fact the vast majority of influenza vaccines -- both inactivated and infectious -- are produced in chicken eggs. How is influenza virus propagated in eggs?

The Joel Tenenbaum " RIAA case has produced a terrific opinion by Judge Nancy Gertner of the District of Massachusetts. This is the most thoughtful, balanced, and insightful copyright opinion I've read in years.

One of the slightly odd things that emerges when one looks at the history of health problems in the developed world is that, although the incidence and severity of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, has steadily declined, the incidence of allergic and auto-immune conditions, such as eczema and asthma, has increased. In some cases the increase is quite significant.

A student of mine, apparently taken by my enthusiasm for design, once asked me how I had come to the field. This gave me pause, because as I tried to formulate an answer, I found myself pushing further and further into my memory. Finally, I told the student, "It's a long story," because I realized it all started when I played in my parents' gravel driveway as a child. I think the story is interesting, not because I love talking about myself, but because of how natural a progression it was.

There's many time management systems and software tools that include the concept of priorities. But priorities change with time and circumstance. Priorities can be useful, but not if you're constantly re-evaluating them to keep them accurate. I think we can get around this conundrum with a combination of due dates and measuring one or both of two other characteristics: impact and effort.

Recently, on CBC Spark, host Nora Young interviewed Luis Suarez about quitting email at work. You can also see Suarez's Web 2.0 Expo talk at Youtube. It got me thinking about the role of software in our lives -- especially in our work lives, and that regardless of how many new applications and systems are popping up, we're still missing the Next Big Thing -- maybe.

My father died in 2008, of colon cancer. He went into hospital April 17th and he died June 8th at the age of 91. For those seven weeks " most of which he spent in the palliative ward -- he showed remarkable grace and dignity, in spite of what was happening to him and around him. There was relatively little physical pain, thanks to the drugs they administered. At first, the doctors held out some hope that they could do something to help him. There was a battery of extensive and conclusive tests conducted immediately upon his admission to hospital. By April 19th, they knew his condition was terminal, because the cancer had spread aggressively to his liver. And that's when my dad started asking, calmly and seriously, for a morphine overdose.

As copyright folks know, fair use is messy, case-specific, and fact-intensive; it's a muddy standard and not a crystal rule. Thus, it's generally something that ought to be handled by juries, upon which we depend for resolution of tough fact issues. However, I don't think that Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum was correct in arguing that his fair use claim should go before a jury.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage.

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