The National Institutes of Health are on a mission: To understand and tackle the problems of human health. To make that daunting problem approachable, 15 of the 20 institutes divvy up human health...
Oct, 05, 2012
RunBot, already the world’s fastest bipedal robot, has now also learned to keep its balance when walking up ramps. “We have achieved a synthesis of different functionalities, between...
Oct, 01, 2007
Computational simulations of life in motion at every scale—molecular, cellular, tissue-level, and whole organism—are boosting our understanding of the role mechanics plays in controlling life.
From atoms and molecules to insects, dinosaurs, and humans, computational researchers are finding that much of life can be understood in mechanical terms. Indeed, the machines of life are...
Jan, 01, 2008
How cell-centered models are adding fundamental insights into our understanding of cell behaviors
The cell is like our financial system: Even if you have a diagram of all the complex interactions going on, you still cannot intuit how the whole system will react when perturbed. Indeed, the cell...
Apr, 01, 2010
The flu virus is an evolutionary marvel. Teams of experts design an appropriate flu vaccine annually just to keep up with the microbe’s ability to evade the human immune system. Multiple...
Jul, 01, 2006
Simulations illuminate the inner workings of blood at multiple levels
Understanding blood flow and coagulation is crucial to treating blood disorders such as hemophilia and thrombosis, and to dealing with diseases such as AIDS, malaria, and diabetes that have...
Jun, 07, 2012
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
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
Postdocs get a glance at the entire field and their first inside view of NIH grant-making
If he were a graduate student now, Francis Collins would be studying computational biology. That’s what the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told a rapt audience at the...
Feb, 19, 2013
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