Group items tagged

First paper I know of that seems to confirm what we see with our daughters since they are born ... Would this also be observable with astronauts? We should have some data from the ISS it seems to me...

"As the shift to open source software continues, computational biology will become even more accessible, and even more powerful, while intellectual property and other bureaucracies continue to hobble traditional forms of research." Spot on, I'm very glad to see this happening :)

A toc of a spcial issue on synthetic biology: How to assemble organisms from scratch. Could one day be intersting for large scale deterministic self assembly or some other crazy idea...

The partnership brings together leading IT providers and three of Europe's leading research centres, CERN, EMBL and ESA in order to provide computing capacity and services that elastically meet big science's growing demand for computing power.

Helix Nebula provides an unprecedented opportunity for the global cloud services industry to work closely on the Large Hadron Collider through the large-scale, international ATLAS experiment, as well as with the molecular biology and earth observation. The three flagship use cases will be used to validate the approach and to enable a cost-benefit analysis. Helix Nebula will lead these communities through a two year pilot-phase, during which procurement processes and governance issues for the public/private partnership will be addressed.

This game-changing strategy will boost scientific innovation and bring new discoveries through novel services and products. At the same time, Helix Nebula will ensure valuable scientific data is protected by a secure data layer that is interoperable across all member states. In addition, the pan-European partnership fits in with the Digital Agenda of the European Commission and its strategy for cloud computing on the continent. It will ensure that services comply with Europe's stringent privacy and security regulations and satisfy the many requirements of policy makers, standards bodies, scientific and research communities, industrial suppliers and SMEs.

Initially based on the needs of European big-science, Helix Nebula ultimately paves the way for a Cloud Computing platform that offers a unique resource to governments, businesses and citizens.

"Helix Nebula will lead these communities through a two year pilot-phase, during which procurement processes and governance issues for the public/private partnership will be addressed." And here I was thinking cloud computing was old news 3 years ago :)

An incresingly popular scientific enome re-writting tool. Might prevent future generations from being born with some types of disorders or disabilities! Also, for fun, can be looked at one step closer to having a real wolverine..

"Chinese team uses CRISPR to genetically modify human embryo" http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-04-chinese-team-crispr-genetically-human.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-nwletter

Quantum processes shouldn't survive in hot, wet biological systems and yet a growing body of evidence suggests they do. Now physicists think they know how

Yes, because our bosses forced us to write strategic reports on "system of systems" :-)

Oh these terrible ignorant slave masters .... Would love to see your "reports on system of systems" :-)

Related to yesterday's post on RNA computers

What synthetic biology can offer to AI... 

looks like a mythbuster paper!

This is an interesting report from a student in sociology, who worked with a group of scientists on a synthetic biology project for the competition IGEM (http://2009.igem.org/Main_Page). This is what happen when you mix hard and soft sciences. For this project they won the special prize for "Best Human Practices Advance". You can read the part on self or exploded governance (p.34). When reading parts of this reports, I thought that it could be good to have a stagiaire or a YGT in human science to see if we can raise interesting question about ethics for the space sector. There are many questions I'm sure, about the governance, the legitimacy of spending millions to go in space, etc...

I like this work... it mixes physics, networks and biology ! Anyone heard about her ? Here's an interesting paper found on this website: http://nuweb.neu.edu/gbianconi/condensation.pdf

We worked on this with Luzi a few years back ... while the analogy is original and interesting it fails to capture the dynamics of a network, e.g. if a network has hubs that grow and shrink .... Luzi worked on an extended model to solve this issue, but, if I remember correctly, he got stuck in a computationally very hard problem .... We intended to develop and use the extended model to define relevant characteristic of the ESA network formed by mail exchanges.....

...but then the CMS YGT didn't really like the project

Researchers developed a new imaging method that can measure cell mass using two beams of light, offering new insight into the much-debated problem of whether cells grow at a constant rate or exponentially. They found that mammalian cells show clear exponential growth only during the G2 phase of the cell cycle. This information has great implications not only for basic biology, but also for diagnostics, drug development and tissue engineering.

A Tutorial on machine learning. Esp. the unsupervised learning could be interesting.

Reading Hidden Intentions in the Human Brain

In nature, the molecular-recognition ability of peptides and, consequently, their functions are evolved through successive cycles of mutation and selection. Using biology as a guide, we can now select, tailor, and control peptide-solid interactions and ex

Scientists have discovered how algae that survive in very low levels of light are able to switch on and off a weird quantum phenomenon that occurs during photosynthesis. The function in the algae of this quantum effect, known as coherence, remains a mystery, but it is thought it could help them harvest energy from the sun much more efficiently. Working out its role in a living organism could lead to advances such as better organic solar cells.

very very nice! we tried already a few years back to find an angle to see how we could study quantum phenomena occuring in plants and photosynthsis is one of the great examples since somehow plants manage to make the phenomena work for them at elevated temperatures, a feat in itself ... any good idea most welcome!!!

Anna maybe? Joe?

Research in active-matter systems is a growing field in biology. It consists in using theoretical statistical physics in living systems such as molecule colonies to deduce macroscopic properties. The aim and hope is to understand how cells divide, take shape and move on these systems. Being a crossing field between physics and biology "The pot of gold is at the interface but you have to push both fields to their limits." one can read

Maybe we should discuss about this active matter one of these days? "These are the hallmarks of systems that physicists call active matter, which have become a major subject of research in the past few years. Examples abound in the natural world - among them the leaderless but coherent flocking of birds and the flowing, structure-forming cytoskeletons of cells. They are increasingly being made in the laboratory: investigators have synthesized active matter using both biological building blocks such as microtubules, and synthetic components including micrometre-scale, light-sensitive plastic 'swimmers' that form structures when someone turns on a lamp. Production of peer-reviewed papers with 'active matter' in the title or abstract has increased from less than 10 per year a decade ago to almost 70 last year, and several international workshops have been held on the topic in the past year."