The clear winner: Big Data
Several biomedical computing projects received big money in the fall of 2012. If there’s one clear winner, it’s “Big Data”: three of the grants focus on building new...
Feb, 19, 2013
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
Janelia farmers pursue novel, cross-disciplinary collaborations to work on long-term, unwieldy scientific problems difficult to tackle in a single laboratory
The folks at Howard Hughes Medical Institute who dreamed up Janelia Farm say it is as much a social innovation as a scientific one. “We are creating a different culture here,” says Gerald...
Jul, 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
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
"Fold-It" players find best protein conformations to fight cancer
When it comes to folding proteins, even modern supercomputers don’t always get things exactly right. Enter FoldIt, an online video game that harnesses the human brain’s natural pattern-...
Jan, 01, 2010
Principal component analysis of gene expression signatures may help determine prognosis
Researchers have long speculated that many of the genetic programs responsible for rapid growth of tumors are also important for the growth that occurs during normal embryonic development.
Now...
Oct, 01, 2010
Still unknown: Whether they can get inside cells
Recent research illustrates a nightmare scenario for nanotechnology: simulated particles called buckyballs eagerly glomming onto nearby DNA. The study, published in Biophysical Journal in December...
Apr, 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
Competition inspires model improvements
During the summer of 2009, the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility in Stockholm dangled a nearly $10,000 cash prize in front of neuron modelers and challenged them to do better. And...
Jan, 01, 2010