Brain implants are giving hope to the disabled and revolutionizing neuroscience
Matthew Nagle can move a cursor on a computer screen with only the power of his thoughts. It’s a remarkable feat for anyone, but especially momentous for Nagle, who is paralyzed from the neck...
Aug, 31, 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
To understand biology—and provide appropriate medical care—scientists need to understand interactions across multiple scales. Hence the Physiome.
This is the reality of human biology: events span a 109 range in lengthscale (molecular to organismal) and a 1014 range in timescale (molecular movement to years). To understand this biology—...
Jun, 01, 2010
What can open-source software do for biomedical research? Based on our experience at the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC), we believe that open source software can be used very...
Mar, 01, 2009
Using Rosetta@Home, a program that runs on the personal computers of 150,000 volunteers worldwide, David Baker’s team predicted the structure of a 112-amino-acid protein from scratch.
When nature folds an amino acid sequence into a protein, it usually knows that just one conformation is the right one. But when a computer tries to do the same thing, it often predicts multiple...
Jan, 01, 2008
Putting neural and behavioral information together to model addiction
To non-smokers, the nasty-smelling habit is inexplicable. But now neurocomputational researchers have developed a hypothetical model to explain how nicotine produces addictive behavior. The first...
Apr, 01, 2006
A computational model of alpha-synuclein as it aggregates
Under a microscope, the curious protein clumps that dot the brains of Parkinson’s patients stick out like the culprits they are. But no one has yet caught the protein—alpha-synuclein...
Jul, 01, 2007
Computers and human experts duke it out over who is better at diagnosing disease, interpreting images, or predicting protein structure
Dorothy Rosenthal tenses over her microscope, peering at the problematic nucleus on the Pap smear yet again. “It’s abnormal,” she decides, and then hesitates. “No, it’s...
Jul, 01, 2006
A closer look at the curation of models discussed in The Physiome: A Mission Imperative
Multi-scale quantitative models need to be validated and reproducible if they are to be useful for clinical workflows, says Hunter. The Physiome infrastructure developed by Hunter, Dr Poul Nielsen...
Jun, 01, 2010
As leaders and participants of an effort to build an infrastructure that enables biomedical computing on a broad basis, it is incumbent upon us to define clear and challenging goals that will dazzle the world
The world changed when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. Humans could survive outside the earth’s atmosphere! Science and engineering could achieve great things! And the nerds at the...
Jan, 01, 2008