Thoughts on scientific code...

Two interesting articles I've just read on the way to work:

The Low Quality of Scientific Code

Why bad scientific code beats code following "best practices"

On (roughly) the same subject" this is also quite interesting:

Scientific computing’s future: Can any coding language top a 1950s behemoth? - Scientific computing’s future: Can Haskell, Clojure, or Julia top Fortran?

The Future of Mobile

So I'm exploring possible software solutions, in the form of a pilot project, to treat and analyse neutron data.
Although, for now, no decisions have been taken, I do feel that we have to provide (only?) a web interface, in the form of a rich HTML5 internet application.

There's not many (if any) scientific internet applications: Well, something with 3D and 2D plotting facilities and a scripting console for math operations (a restricted/safe ipython console being the ideal). Looking forward for suggestions :)

Coming back to the main subject: tablets and smartphones market will explode in the coming years:



There's a great presentation about this topic available on the Business Insider web site:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-mobile-deck-2012-3?op=1

It's interesting to see in this presentation that app developers still prefer iOS to Android! Even worse they might be loosing interest in Android!
And I though Java was easier and more intuitive than ObjectC !?!?!?! 
Android version fragmentation appears to be the source of the problems..

For the capitalists out there, the cross-platform revenue is 3 times higher with iOS than with Android: `"iOS is where the money is"!

I do believe that we will all be using a browser and HTML5 in future. Well, let's see!

New article

My last publication while working at the ESRF is finally out:

J. Synchrotron Rad. (2013). 20  [ doi:10.1107/S0909049512049114 ] A survey of global radiation damage to 15 different protein crystal types at room temperature: a new decay model R. M. Ferraz Leal, G. Burenkov, S. Russi and A. N. Popov Synopsis: A systematic study of the sensitivity to radiation damage of crystals held at room temperature for a large set of model macromolecular structures is presented. Online 6 December 2012

Abstract: The radiation damage rates to crystals of 15 model macromolecular structures were studied using an automated radiation sensitivity characterization procedure. The diffracted intensity variation with dose is described by a two-parameter model. This model includes a strong resolution-independent decay specific to room-temperature measurements along with a linear increase in overall Debye-Waller factors. An equivalent representation of sensitivity via a single parameter, normalized half-dose, is introduced. This parameter varies by an order of magnitude between the different structures studied. The data show a correlation of crystal radiation sensitivity with crystal solvent content but no dose-rate dependency was detected in the range 0.05-300 kGy s^-1. The results of the crystal characterization are suitable for either optimal planning of room-temperature data collection or in situ crystallization plate screening experiments.

Keywords: radiation damage; room temperature; X-ray diffraction; data collection.