Scientific MOOCs follower. Author of Airpocalypse, a techno-medical thriller (Out Summer 2017)


Welcome to the digital era of biology (and to this modest blog I started in early 2005).

To cure many diseases, like cancer or cystic fibrosis, we will need to target genes (mutations, for ex.), not organs! I am convinced that the future of replacement medicine (organ transplant) is genomics (the science of the human genome). In 10 years we will be replacing (modifying) genes; not organs!

Anticipating the $100 genome era and the P4™ medicine revolution. P4 Medicine (Predictive, Personalized, Preventive, & Participatory): Catalyzing a Revolution from Reactive to Proactive Medicine.

I am an early adopter of scientific MOOCs. I've earned myself four MIT digital diplomas: 7.00x, 7.28x1, 7.28.x2 and 7QBWx. Instructor of 7.00x: Eric Lander PhD.

Upcoming books: Airpocalypse, a medical thriller (action taking place in Beijing) 2017; Jesus CRISPR Superstar, a sci-fi -- French title: La Passion du CRISPR (2018).

I love Genomics. Would you rather donate your data, or... your vital organs? Imagine all the people sharing their data...

Audio files on this blog are Windows files ; if you have a Mac, you might want to use VLC (http://www.videolan.org) to read them.

Concernant les fichiers son ou audio (audio files) sur ce blog : ce sont des fichiers Windows ; pour les lire sur Mac, il faut les ouvrir avec VLC (http://www.videolan.org).

Insuffisance rénale : découverte capitale en Israël

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Bullies don't believe in digital degrees

I am a MOOC worm.
MOOC = massively open online course.

Matilda is a book and a musical about a little girl who is a bookworm. She gets bullied a lot (parents, school director...)
I am a MOOCworm. I also get bullied a lot. Bullies don't believe in digital degrees (even when these are MIT degrees).

Matilda the Musical, Shubert Theatre, June 3, 2014.

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Genomic entertainment: from the Broad Institute to Broadway?

If you think that MIT genomics Professor Eric Lander and TONY Nominated B'way Producer Michael J. Moritz Jr. -- 2014 GRAMMY Nom - Matilda OBC, Music Director -- have nothing in common and will never interact, think twice. Biotech and Broadway, from the Broad Institute (MIT) to Broadway, genomic entertainment hitting Broadway, "Human Genome Project" the musical... Let's see...




I'm a big fan of "Matilda" the musical. Saw it in London, NY (Broadway), humming the tunes... Loved the story of this bookworm child, how it was told and staged. I'm also a MOOC student, a MOOC worm, so to speak. A great fan of MITx MOOC courses on edX MOOC platform. So I was wondering the other day: why not merge both? Now, imagine a musical about brilliant MOOC worms (profs and studs)... From the Broad Institute to Broadway? This could be serious fun. This would be... the first piece of genomic entertainment ever... hitting Broadway?


Matilda the Musical, Shubert Theatre, June 3, 2014

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Welcome!

@cathcoste
People who impress me most:
Jack Andraka, Ray Kurzweil, Eric Topol, Maurice Béjart.

People who changed my life:
Steve Jobs, geneticist and MIT Professor Eric Lander PhD.

My favorite music:
Pomplamoose!

My favorite book (2014):  
J. Craig Venter: "Life at the speed of light".

Favorite writers:
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas), Philip Pullman ("His Dark Material" -- Movie: "The Golden Compass"), Paul Auster, Jasper Fforde: Fantasy/SF/Comedy/Crime author who lives in Wales, Atul Gawande, Jean Cocteau, Paul Valéry, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Gosh ("The Calcutta Chromosome"), Jhumpa Lahiri ("Interpreter of Maladies"), Novalis, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tieck, Paul Celan, Christa Wolf ("Cassandra")...

Favorite movies:
Avatar, Cloud Atlas, The Matrix. Life of Pi. 

As I love genomics and musicals, I'm trying to merge both... Monster High Institute of Tech is hitting Growlway: ever heard of the ughsome clawsome MIT Salem genomic musical?





MIT edX Certification in Genomics obtained 18/12/2013. 

Professor: Eric Lander PhD. 

I'm a Personal Genomics Advocate with strong social media skills, interested in genomics entertainment.

Exploring personal genomics involves dedicated microchips. Navigating their own genome on their iPhone, thanks to an "app" that will show a list of variants that can be tailored to the patients' genomic data, and with the help of their physician, patients will be able to become the Risk Manager of their own genome... And oh, yes, of course, we will need to have those FDA guys on board!

To cure diseases like cancer and cystic fibrosis, we will need to target genes (mutations, etc.); not organs.

7.00x The Secret of Life - Intro to Biology

https://www.vizify.com/catherine-coste/connections

Catherine Coste in 3 words: I SELL IDEAS! I LOVE GENOMICS.

Looking for Marketing ideas from London to Singapore!? Look no further!

Passionate about excellence in science (= Perpetual Ascension). Committed to excellence in writing. Scientific + Creative Writing = Marketing.

English, German, French & Basic oral Mandarin Chinese... My family lives in Malaysia (plenty of opportunities for me to improve my Mandarin Chinese), in NY & in Germany -- I'm a German native speaker.

OK, OK, now you're hooked, keep reading.....

A health geek and travel buff, I love meeting new faces. People around me say I'm all about creativity and marketing, new ideas and sustainable everything.

My 2014 favorite book: "Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)" by George Lois.
I'm a Robin Cook and Tim Burton fan.
Science and society: genomic entertainment.

cath.coste@gmail.com
LinkedIn Page here.
Facebook Wall here.
Twitter Account here.
Google+
Singularity Hub

"A transplant is not a cure": my letter to Steve Jobs.


2013: MOOC student, registered for the course MITx: The Secret of Life, Intro to Biology, by Eric Lander, PhD.  



Follow me on Twitter:  


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And since I have nothing to lose...


At Barnes & Noble Fort Wayne, IN, with two of my favorite books: APE by Guy Kawasaki (a book about artisanal publishing); "The Death of Money" by Jim Rickards.




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The Heart & Lung Repair Shop - Opening Soon!

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The Digital Degree

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Portable Genomics is at BIO International Convention (June 23-26, San Diego, CA)

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"Championing biophysics research: MIT professor Jeff Gore brings together interdisciplinary team"


==> http://gorelab.homestead.com
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"Brand new way of doing a biopsy: Instead of sticking a needle in your chest wall, we can see disease-derived cells in the blood"

“We have a brand new way of doing a biopsy," Kuhn told U-T San Diego in 2012. "Instead of sticking a needle in your chest wall, we can see disease-derived cells in the blood."(source)

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"A scientific paper with a serious flaw gets through peer review and is now in the permanent record. What can we do about this kind of situation?"

MITx MOOC course "Quantitative Biology Workshop" 7QBWx: 

"Bad-Scientist XX submitts his 'p' value and his explanation to the journal editor, and the editor accepts the changes and publishs the paper. There are no rules enforcing that analysis code is submitted with papers for review, but as we know, sometimes it takes a lot of eyes to find a bug, and Bob isn't exactly motivated to debug his code in the first place. He thinks that if it produces a number, then it's right. So a paper with a serious flaw gets through peer review and is now in the permanent record. What can we do about this kind of situation?"

My answer: Well, there is this rise of open, post-publication review on Facebook and Twitter. Include educated patients who took MITx MOOCs.

MITx Answer:

"There is no one right answer here. But if you're thinking about it, you are on the right track. Here are some ideas for what we can do individually:

Treat code-writing as a craft. Always be learning, teaching, and improving.
Treat doing science as a sacred duty. Career ambitions will often conflict with your sacred call to objectivity. Stay objective.
Do not be a scientist who's "bad at coding". If you get behind the wheel of a computer and write any code, don't endanger others while doing so!
Keep your code hosted at github. Learn version control. Let others see your code and help to make sure it's right. Help others by reviewing their code.
Write unit tests.
 
Don't be embarrased by your code. Learning to code well takes a very long time. Embrace the void of the unknown - just aim to be slowly improving, and you will be ahead of the curve in no time."

Copyrights: MITx, edX.


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"The Molecular Stethoscope...a future of genomic tracking for health and disease via a single tube of blood"

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"The modern marketer: Part artist, part scientist"

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Doing MIT MOOC course on Quantitative Biology

This is my current assignment... To hear from this MOOC course, follow #7QBWx on Twitter!

Did you know that over 70% of American citizens just ignore this fantastic opportunity to move up -- doing a MOOC course online, where you can earn a verified ID certificate from prestigious universities like Harvard, MIT etc? For example, MITx MOOC verified ID certificates can be earned for free on MOOC platform edX! MOOCs are NOT the norm in the US. So, I was just wondering: how long will the US need to adapt to this new "norm"? My guess here: longer than Asia and India. Meanwhile, students from emerging countries are clawing their way up... earning one MIT or Harvard MOOC certificate at a time, piling them up, moving up... I'm doing this MOOC course based from UK, the US and Europe...

 



Photos taken at the Museum of Sciences and Industry of Chicago, IL, a few days ago ("Genomics" and "Fast Forward").
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Here's How To Cure Brain Death (according to Google)

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"Cell-free DNA in the plasma will be transformative in *transplant* medicine"


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"The creative destruction of medcine" & "The Walking Gallery": A Fix For the US Healthcare System

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Benjamin Franklin effect, "Brain Death" & the "cognitive dissonance" theory


Students … signed up for a two-hour experiment called “Measures of Performance” as a requirement to pass a class. Researchers divided them into two groups. One was told they would receive $1 (about $8 in today’s money). The other group was told they would receive $20 (about $150 in today’s money). The scientists then explained that the students would be helping improve the research department by evaluating a new experiment. They were then led into a room where they had to use one hand to place wooden spools into a tray and remove them over and over again. A half hour later, the task changed to turning square pegs clockwise on a flat board one-quarter spin at a time for half an hour. All the while, an experimenter watched and scribbled. It was one hour of torturous tedium, with a guy watching and taking notes. After the hour was up, the researcher asked the student if he could do the school a favor on his way out by telling the next student scheduled to perform the tasks, who was waiting outside, that the experiment was fun and interesting. Finally, after lying, people in both groups — one with one dollar in their pocket and one with twenty dollars — filled out a survey in which they were asked their true feelings about the study.
Something extraordinary and baffling had happened: The students who were paid $20 lied to their peers but reported in the survey, as expected, that they’d just endured two hours of mind-numbing tedium. But those who were only paid a dollar completely internalized the lie, reporting even in the survey that they found the task stimulating. The first group, the researchers concluded, were able to justify both the tedium and the lie with the dollar amount of their compensation, but the second group, having been paid hardly anything, had no external justification and instead had to assuage their mental unease by convincing themselves that it was all inherently worth it. McRaney extends the insight to the broader question of volunteerism:
This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard. Without an obvious outside reward you create an internal one. That’s the cycle of cognitive dissonance; a painful confusion about who you are gets resolved by seeing the world in a more satisfying way." (Source)

Now, it is practice time: ever tried to ask a transplant surgeon what he thinks of the ethics of brain death diagnosis? On several occasions, I did this little experiment: I said to (obviously underpaid and overworked) transplant coordination teams that they had to tell a lie to donor families: a brain-dead patient is a *dying* person; not a cadaver or a mere reservoir of organs (object). I can tell you one thing: their reaction was pretty violent. I had to run for my life. Really. Now, try the same thing on a transplant surgeon. He will try to discuss with you but won't go for your jugular. I mean, most of the time. So, from my own end, I'd say this theory is pretty much accurate. Yeah.
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"99 percent of people don't have an inkling on how fast this revolution is coming"




Aubrey de Grey: "Ending Aging" (book). Biogerontologist. "Free radicals may damage mitochondrial DNA causing potentially harmful mutations. Fix: insert backup copies of mitochondrial DNA into cell nucleus. Muations of the DNA in the cell nucleus contribute to cancer. Fix: delete the genes that let mutant cells divide forever,so that they die before killing us. Lysomal junk: waste builds up inside cells. as we age. Fix: use genes from soil microbes to break down those chemicals. Extracellular junk: waste builds up between cells. Fix: Stimulate the immune system to move the junk into the cell where it can be broken down. Sugar-protein molecular bonds: sugar & protein molecules bond, creating hardened layers of tissue. Fix: develop chemical compounds to break the unwanted bonds." --  "Fast 4ward", Chicago Museum of sciences and industry, Aubrey de Grey, "Ending Aging" (book), biogerontologist.
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"Is it just us or is Apple's new HealthKit app missing a Genetics tab?"

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23andMe CEO on Her Mission to Shake Up Preventive Care

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"In 10 years, we'll ID cancer types by genetic; not by organ or body part (colon, breast)"

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