yessssssssss!!!!
finally submitted my Msc. thesis officially!
I'm a free man!!!
2040 is a good number. what you do with that good number is entirely up to you.
$2 each only! but only 2nd ed. the newest is 5th ed costing usd22. so still quite worth it as its published in 2001, not too long ago.
got to prepare myself before going over!
Its the only book you need because after going through the 1020 pages, I dont think any sane reader will want to read another word of advice on using Office 2007. Read through till p353 and skimmed the last ten or so chapters and already loosing steam to finish up anther 500 important pages dealing with Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
But the book is good. Actually I have no right in saying that because I have never read any other Office book so throughly before. Office 2007 is different because its so different from the other versions previously. Flash based and no more menu bars. Instead it is context driven ribbons, i.e. the menu only comes out when you 'need' it, eg. the edit picture buttons are not there until you click on an inserted clip art or picture in the document. And for most commands, the mouse right-click that normally pops up a drop down selection menu is no more, which gave me much frustration, hence the book.
But once you get a hang of it, and its normally not that long if you have to submit a progress report to the boss 5 days just after you installed the new Office, you'll suddenly realize that the menus and location of the buttons are really intuitive and logical - and how come Microsoft took so long to make this change. Really, the unlearning of 2003 is harder than the learning of 2007. I strongly recommend upgrading Office if you use it daily. It does things better and faster.
5 things I love about the new Office:
1. The instant formatting options where you have this list of pre-saved 'templates' that you can instantly apply on your document. One click to professional looking documents and presentations.
2. Powerpoint templates, backgrounds, and picture enhancements really rock. Plus the size of xml files for all Office documents are smaller than 2003.
3. The one click graph creation button in Excel. Excel intuitively selects data and plots the graph in one click. You then make adjustments from the graph ribbon. So much easier than 2003.
4. Save as... You can now in any Office program save your file as a PDF, not needing Acrobat to load and do it.
5. Its cheap! Office 2007 Professional Plus goes only for S$119 for needy guys like me on campus. Thats alot cheaper than the S$700+ retail price out there.
Then of course there's the flip problem of having to use another pc with Office 2003 in it. Got to learn to dual boot now...
Just in case someone doesnt know what 'thick' means
Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory
by Michael Christopher Carroll
Just finished this book a couple of hours ago and found it a pretty good read. Got it for S$8 at a book warehouse sale months ago. The reason why I picked it up is because the synopsis talked about West Nile, which I am working on in the lab.
However, West Nile is covered only sparingly in the book, instead, the author talks alot about other diseases like Foot and Mouth, Anthrax, and Lyme. The book isnt primarily about diseases, its about a federal lab that was not well run. At first part of the army then handed over to the FDA and just recently to the Homeland Security, the lab languishes because of inadequate funding, lack of trained personnel and self-centered directors.
At first the army with its fat budget raises up the lab (against public will) and tests out really biohazzardous viruses in the hope of creating a bioweapon. Still, its ok because the island was well guarded and had strict biosafety rules. Then decades later, it gets transfered to FDA who starts flaunting the rules by terrible safety lapses, cuts in budget which means the already old buildings cant even be kept in shape with decontamination facilities and electricity failing frequently. Then there was two admitted incidences of a virus leak, scores of personnel who came down with strange diseases and directors who are just too self centered to care for the island or who dont give an atom about safety ( in the name of doing better science).
So the island starts to collapse as the 1930's built infrastructure not just cant be upgraded, it could not even be maintained. The FDA privatizes the island's running, causing dissent amongst long serving workers and cost cutting in safety spending. Politicians, local leaders, scientists, media and even the island's own people start speaking up against the lab but still nothing happens. (the government cant sue itself). There was also a biological meltdown when a hurricane hit the island and another time some viruses leached from the lab to infect clean animals on the island outside the labs.
When the book comes to a close, I expected it all to be ironed out and the "happily ever after" but not so for this lab. Its still functioning at a low budget and the list of biologicals they handle and the safety levels it operates at is still anyone's guess.
I felt the book was very informative although I spotted a couple of misexpressed scientific terms. One which I remember is when the author said prions were DNA in nature, which is false as its actually a protein. The other one had to do with transfection in bacteria but I cannot remember the exact fault.
As one who actually handles viruses (though attenuated strains), this book is a reminder that people outside the lab constantly view the closed doors with curiosity and if not given correct information from inside, they will formulate their own stories. The other thing is responsibility of scientists to be cautious with infectious and transmissible living things that could escape the lab, no matter how docile.
It was an eye opener because the book tells of two breakthroughs Lab 257 had in its research (diamonds lost in the mud of mess it came to). It was the first to proof that a recombinant protein could be made into a vaccine (one of the staff in my lab is also doing the same thing, when i read this part, I went WOW!!) and secondly they created a rapid detection kit for Foot and Mouth disease that only takes 90 minutes compared to the traditional 2 days. The other interesting thing to me was the lab's connection with Fort Detrick which has been renamed the US army medical research for infectious disease. The fort that once tried to create bioweapons now publishes peer-reviewed journals that I come across so often when reading up on the latest West Nile research.
I was always wondering why the heck the army was playing with the same virus I was researching on...
