Disentangling the different types of skeptics and what modelers can learn from each.
What are the telltale signs of a modeling talk at a biology conference? Just look for the sighs, shifting, and eye-rolling in the audience, says Donald C. Bolser, PhD, professor of physiological...
Jun, 05, 2012
Machine learning for an artificial pancreas and deep brain stimulation
Embedded medical devices that both detect symptoms and treat them have existed for decades. Take, for example, the heart pacemaker. But a new generation of implants could soon emerge to do something...
Oct, 19, 2012
Incremental progress and measured successes
Personalized cancer therapy is now a reality. A handful of tumor-classifying tests and targeted drugs are in widespread clinical use; and early attempts are underway to match high-risk cancer...
Jan, 02, 2012
The first four National Centers for Biomedical Computing take off
WHY NATIONAL CENTERS?
Four National Centers for Biomedical Computing were launched by the NIH in 2004 with $20 million in funding for each center over five years. The reason: We need to make...
Jun, 01, 2005
As barriers to massive imaging collections fall, researchers can look at human systems in their entirety rather than in pieces
In the beginning there was the Visible Human. It broke new ground by gathering some 2,000 serial images from a death row inmate’s cadaver, and was the first time researchers had sectioned a...
Jul, 01, 2007
No two cancer patients respond identically to treatment. Some will be cured while others will see their cancer return, and physicians are at a loss to explain why. Now, using MRI imaging researchers...
Oct, 01, 2009
By computationally combining incomplete imaging information with bits and pieces of structural data from all sorts of different experiments, researchers have worked out the protein-by-protein structure of an important cellular assembly called the nuclear pore complex.
Like puzzles? Here’s a tough one: Try figuring out the construction of a nearly 500-piece machine without blueprints or a complete picture. Biologists have now accomplished just such a feat,...
Apr, 01, 2008
Transparent peer review, replication studies, and journals of negative results all suggest change is on the horizon
As I was writing this editorial, I learned about yet another scientific paper being retracted. This time it was a genetics paper in Science, one of the hundreds of retractions that the blog...
Sep, 01, 2011
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
They've gone from hype to backlash. Now it's time for reality: How microarrays are being used to benefit healthcare
When DNA microarray technology emerged more than a decade ago, it was met with unbridled enthusiasm. By allowing scientists to look at the expression of enormous numbers of genes in the genome...
Oct, 01, 2006