For more than a decade, gene sequencers have been improving more rapidly than the computers required to make sense of their outputs. Searching for DNA sequences in existing genomic databases can already take hours, and the problem is likely to get worse. Recently, Bonnie Berger’s group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has been investigating techniques to…
Tracking mobile phone data is often associated with privacy issues, but these vast datasets could be the key to understanding how infectious diseases are spread seasonally, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Princeton University and Harvard University researchers used anonymous mobile phone records for more than 15 million people to track the…
Big data: It’s a term we read and hear about often, but is hard to grasp. Computer scientists at Washington University in St. Louis’ School of Engineering & Applied Science tackled some big data about an important protein and discovered its connection in human history as well as clues about its role in complex neurological diseases. Through a novel method…