Biomechanical models contribute to a better understanding of both the normal and the diseased eye.
Squint, and you can almost make out that bird soaring over the horizon. But determining whether it’s a hawk or a raven will be nearly impossible for someone with myopia, also known as...
Feb, 19, 2013
Even when we simply stand still on two feet, our brains communicate with our muscles—firing them appropriately to keep us upright against gravity. So when scientists simulate simple or complex...
Jun, 06, 2012
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
Using packing software to convey humanity’s complex relationship with HIV in short films or images
Three-D animators have long sought algorithms that can pack odd-shaped things into tight spaces. Now, Graham Johnson, PhD, a QB3 Faculty Fellow in bioengineering at the University of California, San...
Feb, 19, 2013
Columbia’s Jung-Chi Liao seeks pathways within proteins using AlloPathFinder, a Simbios tool he co-developed while at Stanford.
from http://biomedicalcomputationreview.org/content/simbios-bringing-biomedical-simulation-your-fingertips
As a Simbios post-doc, Jung-Chi Liao, PhD, sought to understand how a conformational...
Oct, 01, 2009
How precise an image can fluorescence microscopy provide?
As modern optics and cell biology have flourished in recent years, they’ve each driven innovation in the other. Yet commonly employed imaging techniques, such as fluorescence microscopy, have...
Sep, 01, 2011
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
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
Pattern-classifiers interpret fMRI data
Peek inside the skull of a couch potato watching reruns on TV and you’ll see non-stop patterns of blood flow throughout the brain. If you learn to pick out which activity patterns match up with...
Oct, 01, 2010
Simulation of a one-million-atom virus reveals unexpected twist
Giving new meaning to the phrase computer virus, researchers have created a computer simulation of an entire biological virus comprising approximately one million atoms.
“It wasn’t...
Jul, 01, 2006