Computer Science News

Computers Do Better Than Humans at Measuring Some Radiology Images

Metin Gurcan Scientists have automated the measurement of a vital part of the knee in images with a computer program that performs much faster and just as reliably as humans who interpret the same images.

Having more precise information about wear and tear on this portion of the knee – a blend of fibrous tissue and cartilage called the meniscus – could lead to its use as a biomarker in predicting who is at risk for developing osteoarthritis, researchers say.

Petascale Tools Could Provide Deeper Insight into Genomic Revolution

Computer Science - Medical

by Abby Vogel

Technological advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing have opened up the possibility of determining how living things are related by analyzing the ways in which their genes have been rearranged on chromosomes. However, inferring such evolutionary relationships from rearrangement events is computationally intensive on even the most advanced computing systems available today.

Physician Training 2.0

Computer Science - Medical

Collaboration forged to bring traditional case-based teaching into the Internet age

A patient shows up at a hospital after having periodontal work done that morning. The problem, she says, is that her gums haven’t stopped bleeding, although it has been several hours since the procedure.

With that setup, physicians and medical students in training follow a real-world case, complete with test results, audio of heartbeat, and photos of the condition. Using an online interactive interface, they can order tests, examine results, and answer questions on where to delve next. The patient’s case is part of a new collaboration between physicians at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the venerable New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) to bring traditional case-based teaching into the Internet age.

Scientists Create NICE Solution Vaccine Testing Problems

Computer Science - Medical

Medical clinics the world over could benefit from new software* created at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where a team of scientists has found a way to improve the efficiency of a pneumonia vaccine testing method developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Pneumonia is the world's leading cause of death in children under five years of age and poses a serious risk to elderly adults. The leading cause of pneumonia worldwide is the pneumococcus bacterium, which also causes meningitis, sepsis and other complications. Pneumococcus has more than 90 strains that vary by geographic region and change over time. Consequently, ongoing testing is necessary to monitor existing vaccines and advance new ones.

'Bacterial Computers': Genetically Engineered Bacteria Have Potential To Solve Complicated Mathematical Problems

Computer Science - Medical

US researchers have created 'bacterial computers' with the potential to solve complicated mathematics problems. The findings of the research demonstrate that computing in living cells is feasible, opening the door to a number of applications. The second-generation bacterial computers illustrate the feasibility of extending the approach to other computationally challenging math problems.

A research team made up of four faculty members and 15 undergraduate students from the biology and mathematics departments at Missouri Western State University in Missouri and Davidson College in North Carolina, USA engineered the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria, creating bacterial computers capable of solving a classic mathematical problem known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem.

Making Picky Proteins

Computer Science - Medical

by Anne Trafton

New computer model can design specific protein interactions

Interactions between proteins underlie nearly everything that happens inside a cell -- from reading DNA to communicating with the outside world. Many of those proteins have very similar structures, yet somehow they locate and interact with only their specific partner. For years, scientists have been trying to model and design such interactions, with limited success. Now, MIT researchers have developed a model, reported in this week's issue of Nature, that can be used to design new protein interactions and could help scientists create proteins for use in developing new drugs.

"The proteins we design now are not likely to become drugs or therapeutics, but can be used in order to figure out the basic mechanisms of these interactions, which could be extremely valuable," said Amy Keating, associate professor of biology and senior author of the paper being published in the April 16 issue of Nature.