Multi-scale modeling is now at what might be called its gestational stage
For centuries, mathematics has been an indispensable ally of the physical sciences and engineering. Planes fly and telephones work because engineers know how to simplify physical systems into...
Apr, 01, 2006
In science, there is a need to balance research in domain sciences and the infrastructure to support that research. Basic research mediated through peer review is understood to produce useful...
Jan, 01, 2007
The edict that academics must “publish or perish” serves not merely to advance careers, but also to stress the importance of transmitting knowledge from scientist to scientist and...
Jan, 01, 2006
The study of HIV evolution is not only critical to fighting the virus; it has also driven advances in the computational tools used to study evolution in general.
When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, it would be decades before HIV would jump from monkeys to humans and set off a devastating worldwide pandemic. But evolution is at the heart of...
Jul, 01, 2009
Biomarker research, genetics, and imaging are all coming into play
In 1906, at a small medical meeting in Tübingen, Germany, physician Alois Alzheimer gave a now-famous presentation about a puzzling patient. At age 51, Auguste D.’s memory was failing...
Oct, 01, 2007
Simulations illuminate the inner workings of blood at multiple levels
Understanding blood flow and coagulation is crucial to treating blood disorders such as hemophilia and thrombosis, and to dealing with diseases such as AIDS, malaria, and diabetes that have...
Jun, 07, 2012
A safe haven for asking fundamental, wide-ranging questions
In the summer, it can be hard to find a place to sit at the Santa Fe Institute. Much of the year, only about a dozen researchers make their home at the multidisciplinary research organization. But in...
Oct, 01, 2006
Mimicking the social behavior of groups of animals to search for the minimum value of an objective function
Optimizing the solution to a problem occurs commonly in engineering and in nature. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm borrows ideas from nature and is a fairly new method of...
Jan, 01, 2007
A grant to develop software tools to analyze how neurons distribute themselves within the brain
Do neurons need personal space like people in an elevator? Are they influenced by their neighbors or do they randomly find a home in the brain? If the arrangement is patterned, what is the cause of...
Jun, 01, 2005
How Simbios' state-of-the-art software tools are contributing to high-impact biomedical research
Simbios began with a simple idea: that physics-based simulation of biological structures at all scales could benefit from a
unified tool-building effort.
At the same time, the thinking went,...
Oct, 01, 2009