Archive for February, 2010
MapReduce goes evolutionary
Scientists from Texas A&M University have developed a new algorithm MrsRF (MapReduce Speeds up Robinson-Foulds) for analyzing large collection of evolutionary trees using MapReduce framework. Matthews et. al, have used their MapReduce algorithm to compute all-to-all Robinson-Foulds (RF) distance matrix [...]
Science changes the world, sometimes the world changes the science, we are overdue
Dr. Monica Anderson talks about reductionism vs holism in science. She also suggests that artificial intelligence failed because intelligence is too holistic and by its nature it always attracted the hardcore reductionists. One of my favorite quote from this talk [...]
After phylogenetics Microsoft patents personal data mining
I hope you remember that some time back Microsoft tried to patent clustering phylogenetics methods which was a socking news for the bioinformatics community as community used these methods for a long time without any restriction. Now Microsoft had patented [...]
Bullet-Shaped Vesicular Stomatitis Virus
In a latest online article in journal Science Ge et al. report a cryo-electron microscopy structure of a model rhabdovirus, a bullet-shaped vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Using their structural data they suggest a mechanism of VSV assembly in which the [...]
Computational Biology: Is reproducibility overrated?
Recently I was reading a bunch of articles on computational reproducibility in scientific research including one from my fellow blogger Grant Jacobs of Code for life blog. The term reproducibility in computational science is not monolithic – what seems essential [...]
