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
Supercomputers open up new horizons, offering the possibility of discovering new ways to understand life’s complexity
Their very names sound like dinosaurs. Teracomputers. Petacomputers. These are, in fact, the dinosaurs of the digital world—monstrous, hungry and powerful. But unlike the extinct...
Oct, 01, 2006
Simulations can teach us how young bodies and faces develop; how an artery compensates for decades of fatty plaque deposits by growing and thickening its walls; how tissue engineers can best coax endothelial cells to develop into organized sheets of skin for burn patients; and how cancerous tumors invade neighboring tissue.
For better or for worse, and on many levels, our tissues never stop growing and changing. While developing from childhood to old age, we grow not only bone, cartilage, fat, muscle and skin, but also...
Apr, 01, 2008
The Salivary Proteome Knowledge Base
If spit could talk, it might tell us whether we’re sick or healthy.
According to David Wong, DMD, DMSc—professor and associate dean of research at the School of Dentistry at the...
Jun, 01, 2005
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
A novel approach to publishing for large research projects
When a large research project generates lots of data over a long time, that data can tell many different stories. Such was the case when the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) project geared up to...
Oct, 22, 2012
Computer vision program rivals the human ability to rapidly recognize objects in a complex picture
Our brains can recognize most of the things we pass on an evening stroll: Cars, buildings, trees, and people all register even at a great distance or from an odd angle. Now, a new computer vision...
Jul, 01, 2007
Unlike most classical engineering materials, biological tissues can adapt to external stimuli by growing in volume: Skin grows in response to wounding; muscles grow in response to exercise; cancer...
Apr, 01, 2011
Decades of steady progress in pharmacogenetics have unearthed hundreds of associations between genes and drug response. But the field has to solve some theoretical and practical issues before it can deliver on the promise of personalized drug therapy.
As algorithms go, it’s deceptively simple. Just add together eight weighted pieces of patient information—age, height, weight, race, data about two genes, and a pair of clinical...
Jul, 01, 2009
3D images help physicians design appropriate interventions.
Images of realistic and colorful 3D human body parts line the hall outside the lab. Blood and muscle look like blood and muscle; bone looks like bone. You almost expect to find human cadavers being...
Sep, 01, 2011