Dear Reader,
In this eighteenth issue of Biomedical Computation Review (BCR), we bring you a special edition devoted to the work of the magazine’s publisher: the Simbios National Center...
Oct, 01, 2009
Researchers are not simply retrieving and repackaging what is already known, but are also deriving new knowledge by discovering connections that were previously unnoticed.
Not long ago, reading biomedical literature involved hours in the library combing through rows of dusty periodicals—not to mention pocketfuls of change for the copy machine. Now, although the...
Jul, 01, 2008
I'd like to pay homage to James Burke and his inspiring PBS show Connections by taking you on my own short journey of connected ideas.
The timeless game of chess has long been a grand challenge for artificial intelligence, with the number of possible games being much greater than the number of atoms in the universe. Baron...
Jan, 01, 2006
Exploring the current state of connectomics--in the midst of hype
Connectomics is having a moment. Following on the heels of genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and microbiomics, the latest “omic” to seize the spotlight is generating...
Jun, 20, 2013
The complexity and variability of aging itself, along with the fragmented nature of researchers’ current understanding of aging, call for tools that can help scientists dig through mounds of data to find often subtle connections.
Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France rode a bicycle until she was 100 years old. When she gave up smoking at age 117, her doctor suspected it was out of pride. (She couldn’t see well enough...
Apr, 01, 2008
A virtual lab rat; simulated DNA; an artificial pancreas; & integrating mental health data
Several biomedical computing projects received multi-million dollar funding in the fall of 2011, including efforts to: simulate the cardiac physiology of the rat; build a state-of-the-art DNA...
Jan, 02, 2012
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
An elegant new model of balance control suggests the brain only cares about one thing: the body’s center of mass.
Bumped from behind, a person may step forward to avoid falling. Perhaps her arms fly out as well. To the untrained eye, these movements seem like the result of the brain controlling individual nerve...
Jan, 01, 2008
One of our goals at Biomedical Computation Review is to create a sense of kinship among members of this very diverse community of researchers. This column provides reviews of some of the latest and...
Jun, 01, 2005
Public databases impact not only how research is done but what kind of research is done in the first place.
The setting: a scientific conference in January 2008. The speaker, Bruce Ponder, MD, PhD, an oncology professor at Cambridge University, is describing a previously unknown link between a particular...
Oct, 01, 2008