The minus 10% syndroma.

A number of French colleagues, including me, have seen a drop in funding from our fellow institutions of 10% or more this year. It came as a surprise given how loud were the voices announcing that Science would be a national priority. But this 10% syndroma should not be restricted to money. As my own research projects are dedicated to a family of unusual nucleic acid structures called Gquadruplexes or “G4”, should I rename the field “G3.6” to take this reduction into account? And now that I think of it, this 10% seems general. For example some of our internet facilities seem out of reach at least 10% of the time. Yes – still 90% of your emails will reach me – so please repeat the process 3 times and I will have a 99.9% chance of getting the message at least once. Not too bad. Simply submit your papers 3 times to be on the safe side. And if this internet facility is the one that allows you to place orders, it is actually logical to have it active only 90% of the time – that way, its nominal activity per hour remains the same if your credits are reduced by 10%. Are you following me? Our heating system in the lab is also close to 90% functional. The missing 10% could be seen as a minor nuisance, except if you consider that heating won’t work at all for the coolest 36.5 days of the year as it seems. Alternatively, if that 10% drop means a 10% decrease in room temperature, switching from 19 to 17.1 C is fine. I will bring an extra pullover which is actually too small anyway – nothing to do with budget cuts, more with bad temperature choice during the washing program. But see, we are hard core scientist, eh? So we use Kelvin rather than C? So a 10% cut from 292 K is. forget it, I am freezing. My cell phone has never been 100% functional. Rather the opposite. Until last year 100% of my communications were cut or never placed. Does this mean I can also expect a 10% drop in failure rate? In that case, I would warmlywelcome that change. I am actually not allowed to disclose the phone company name. Could I transpose this 10% drop to other concepts as well? 6nation Rugby players (or should I write “5.4-nation”?) also start to apply this principle: 10% of the games will be postponed (for reasons related to heating, see above – again a sad miscalculation between cuts in Kelvins, Celcius and Fahrenheit !). More interestingly, could I send a letter to my Bank announcing that my mortgage will be decreased by 10%? I am planning a 10% cut in my calorie intake (remember the pullover too small – my partner may have a different explanation for this 10% smallness) to provoke a 10% decrease in body weight? Should I welcome this? Can I also ask for a 10% decrease in mortality rate (especially for my mortality rate as, like others, I am allergic to dying [1])? Concerning Biochimie, to save space and money, we have decided to apply this 10% principle to the articles we publish. You