Computational modeling can help fill gaps in how we develop and review new drugs and devices
What role does computational modeling play at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? If you ask Paul Watkins, MD, director of the Hamner—University of North Carolina...
Sep, 01, 2011
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
New approaches extend multiscale models to represent cellular mesoscales and bridge from molecular to cellular models
In an era of increasingly comprehensive molecular characterizations of living systems, computation has emerged as a key technology to facilitate integrative understanding of biological mechanisms....
Feb, 19, 2013
New release improves both GUI and API
OpenSim, the neuromuscular modeling and simulation software, is now available in a new digit: 3.0. The change (up from 2.4) reflects significant improvements that make this open source tool more...
Oct, 19, 2012
How errors in data, software, and methodology can teach us how to do better
In 2006, a paper in Nature Medicine suggested a novel and potentially revolutionary method for predicting patient responses to cancer therapies using gene signatures. The finding piqued the interest...
Sep, 01, 2011
Computing using time steps -- a necessary approximation
Time flows like a continuous, steady river. And it moves forward—never back. These facts create inherent challenges for computer simulations of biological molecules in motion.
It would...
Jun, 19, 2013
Many systems models are strikingly vulnerable to even small changes in the variables
Systems biologists seek to model many complex biological interactions all at once. Typically, they input tens or even hundreds of variables to produce predic- tions about a system—for example,...
Jan, 01, 2008
How researchers are predicting specific thoughts from brain activity
Revealing the brain’s hidden stash of pictures, thoughts, and plans has, until recently, been the work of parlor magicians. Yet within the last decade, neuroscientists have gained powerful...
Jan, 02, 2012
Thirty years ago, molecular biologists routinely constructed protein models out of brass rods (“Kendrew models”). In recent years, researchers put away such tinker toys and turned to...
Aug, 31, 2005
The availability of free and open access data, models, and software indisputably accelerates scientific progress. Unfortunately, dissemination necessitates organization, documentation, and quality...
Jan, 01, 2010